Sycamore school board sends failed referendum back to voters

SYCAMORE – The Sycamore school board will again ask voters to decide if they can hold at-large elections, enabling anyone living in district boundaries to run for any open seat on the board, in the April 2025 election.

The referendum initially was posed because not enough people ran for Sycamore School Board in the last consolidated election.

Board member Eric Jones said Tuesday that he encountered a lot of confusion over what referendum meant, ahead of November’s failed vote. He said some members of the public conveyed to him incorrect beliefs that the policy change would allow Cook County residents to be on the board. He opined that the district needs to do more to educate voters on the subject.

The filing window for the 2025 Consolidated Election has passed.

“The current race in the spring is a perfect example of why this would be beneficial for the district, because once again we have an opening that nobody’s running for on the school board in the spring,” Jones said.

Currently, residents can only run for open district seats that correspond to the township they live in within district boundaries, whether in the city or township of Sycamore, or the district’s portion of Cortland Township. If the referendum were to pass, any resident living within the district’s overall boundaries could run for any open seat on the school board.

As the board stands now, no more than three members of the board can be elected from any one district township. The referendum change, if approved, would remove the three-person restriction. Anyone from any township could run, even if four board members ended up living in Sycamore Township for example.

Voters rejected the referendum once already on the Nov. 5 ballot in a narrow margin: 6,088 no votes to 5,928 yes votes.

Sycamore school board members on Tuesday voted 5-2 to put the measure back on the ballot for the spring.

When a board seat is left vacant, the school board is required to fill it through their own at their own discretion, provided the candidates meet board member requirements.

“You’ll be left with a school board that’s going to get to choose it’s own members, effectively, which we’ve now done twice in the past two years,” Jones said.

Alan Zantout, who was elected to the board by current board members after board president Jim Dombek died in August, was one of two members who voted against putting the referendum back on the ballot.

Zantout said he was surprised to find that a lot of constituents he talked to about the referendum told him they weren’t in favor of the change.

“What’s been surprising to me is that most of them, it wasn’t an education process of why it’s important, but that they understood that and they wanted to maintain the process as it was today for representation,” Zantout said.

The referendum in November, which is identical to what the board passed Tuesday, failed by 148 votes.

“Just very surprising to me,” Zantout said. “I won’t be supporting it for that reason, because I had quite a few discussions throughout the city that had that point of view, which surprised me.”

Board member Alex Grados noted that only people who reside in the district would be able to run for a board seat if the referendum was passed.

“That was something that people surprisingly did not realize,” Grados said. “You have to actually live in Sycamore 427 to be on Sycamore 427 board regardless of if we have precincts [districts] or not.”

Board member Christian Copple, who voted in favor of putting the referendum on the ballot, said he had an issue with the referendum’s language.

“I took issue with this the first time we put it on the ballot,” Copple said.

Jones, Copple, and Grados were joined in their yes voted by Board President Michael DeVitto and board member James Chyllo. Beth Marie Evans sided with Zantout and voted no.

Before they voted, Jones offered his musings on the policy change.

“Being able to allow people that are engaged and want to be on the board to fulfill that role is perhaps better than letting us try and find somebody that meets the criteria and force them on the board,” Jones said. “But we’ll just see what the voters want.”