A message from Becky Kotsinis
Hi! My name is Becky Kotsinis and I'm running for re-election for Gurnee District 56 School Board. I've been an elected member of the Board of Education for District 56 since April, 2007.
These last eight years have been a great time for parents and students of our district. In the last eight years we have built an award-winning building for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders and replaced Gurnee Grade School, the most flooded building in Illinois with the newly renovated River Trail School. We have also rolled out a nationally-recognized 1 to 1 iPad program for our students in all grade levels and expanded gifted education for all of our students. We have accomplished all of this with strong support from our parents and our teachers and without increasing the burden to our taxpayers.
While we have done well the past few years, I still believe we have room to grow. Though we have done reasonably well in the past in coordinating with local governments, we have not done a good job coordinating our district calendar with our local high school and park districts. Having different start and end dates for our school year places a greater burden on parents with children in both high school and District 56, and for parents who rely on our park district for before and after school care for our children. Moving forward I would like to work with our administration and the other members of our board to promote greater cooperation with these other districts in setting our school calendars.
Our iPad program is nationally recognized as one of the most comprehensive of its kind, but it is still just a beginning. We are using only a fraction of the capabilities of these fantastic devices. If reelected, I plan to work with our administration to encourage our schools to use the advanced interactive capabilities of these tools to provide more interactive and more engaging learning experiences for our students. I also plan to work with our administration to help ensure that our schools have the resources needed to properly support these devices to avoid some of the technical glitches and delays we've seen with these iPads these past couple of years.
Finally, while our classroom teachers do an excellent job educating our students, one area we still need to improve is access to our schools' libraries. For the past few years, we have been weakening our school library instruction by replacing qualified librarians with less experienced staff who are not trained in library sciences. Trained librarians don't just shelve books. They teach students how to research subjects and sort vast amounts of information, skills that are vital as these students go into high school and college and prepare to enter our knowledge-based work force. If reelected, I will work with our administration to reevaluate this practice and identify or train from within resources who can fill this critical gap in our instruction.
I thank you for your support. Please remember to vote on Tuesday April 7, 2015 at your local precinct or vote early anytime from March 23rd through April 4th.
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