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Pro-referendum candidates win 4 seats on Unit 5 school board

On the top row, Amy Roser, Kelly Pyle, Alex Williams and Mark Adams are running as a group. On the bottom row, Brad Wurth, Mollie Emery, Amee Jada, and Dennis Frank are running together. A ninth candidate, Steve Mackowiak, declined a WGLT interview and said he would let "the two slates … battle this one out."
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WGLT
On the top row, Amy Roser, Kelly Pyle, Alex Williams and Mark Adams are running as a group. On the bottom row, Brad Wurth, Mollie Emery, Amee Jada, and Dennis Frank are running together. A ninth candidate, Steve Mackowiak, declined a WGLT interview and said he would let "the two slates … battle this one out."

After a heated and crowded race, candidates from both informal slates running for four open seats on the Unit 5 school board said they are exhausted, albeit for different reasons.

The eight candidates actively running were divided neatly between two camps, one in favor of the passage of a tax referendum and one against its passage: Incumbents Amy Roser and Kelly Pyle, along with newcomers Alex Williams and Mark Adams, comprised the pro-referendum slate; each of them won a seat on the board, according to vote tallies late Tuesday night.

Brad Wurth, Mollie Emery, Dennis Frank and Amee Jada comprised the other informal slate that advocated against the referendum and in favor of alternative solutions; each of those candidates lost their races.

Steve Mackowiak, not affiliated with either slate, was also an option for voters, though he stopped actively campaigning in February.

With nine candidates running for four seats and a higher-than-anticipated 25% voter turnout, Roser said the race differed significantly from her prior experiences. She also won in the 2019 election.

“There was a lot of competition and there was a central, core issue of school funding, with the referendum on the ballot, so this really brought … a lot of attention to the school board,” Roser said. “This particular campaign, it was so heartwarming to see such broad support from so many in the community that I didn’t know.”

Like Roser, Pyle was also an incumbent initially appointed to Unit 5’s board in 2018 and then a winner in the 2019 election; like Roser, Pyle said the crowded race and the turnout marked the major differences between campaigning then and now.

“I really feel like the referendum … was the driving factor that drove people to want to run for the school board, to have an influence on how that would look going forward,” Pyle said. “There was a lot of engagement — I’m certainly pleased to see the voter turnout has been so high for a municipal election.”

Contentious campaign

Not all of that engagement was positive.

Emery attempted to run for school board in 2021 but withdrew following a challenge to her petitions. After this election cycle, she said, she does not see herself running a third time due to personal attacks.

“You quickly realize that you have to have thick skin and you have to have a lot of time,” Emery said. “The climate was completely different. It was bananas. If I’m being super transparent, I anticipated that one-to-two of us would have made it. I’m disappointed; I think I anticipated that it would be split in some way, shape or form.”

Frank, too, said he does not intend to run again — in part because “what you get called by running on the GOP side, you’re called all kinds of names” — and in part because he may not be around to do so.

“I’ll probably leave the state. I’ll probably leave the state of Illinois … is where I’m heading. I mean you can’t stay here and hope for better things. … We just keep voting the same way,” Frank said. “I don’t think you can fix it.”

Both Frank and Emery said they felt there was nothing that they, nor Wurth nor Jada, could have done differently to win the race.

"There was a lot more money on the other side, there were a lot more resources," she said. "I wholeheartedly mean this: I don't think there's a single thing we could have done differently."

Money flowed in the Unit 5 school board race in part from the district's teachers union, the Unit Five Education Association (UFEA). Candidates are invited to interview with UFEA, which then makes its endorsements accordingly; Emery, Frank, Wurth and Jada declined to go through that process.

Adams, Roser, Pyle and Williams did sit down with UFEA and were subsequently endorsed by the union. In a previous interview with WGLT, UFEA president Julie Hagler said the referendum was among the most important issues for the union in this election cycle.

"Unit 5 is a mess, I truly believe that. There's a lot of work to do and we just voted back the same people who helped us get there," Frank said. "But the teachers union is strong and they have a lot of money."

The McLean County Republican Party endorsed Frank and the three other anti-referendum candidates on social media and contributed at least $1,500 accordingly.

Late in the election cycle, the Democratic Party of Illinois also spent money to support the slate comprised of Roser, Williams, Pyle and Adams.

Pro-referendum candidate Mark Adams echoed the sentiment that not all of the engagement in the election cycle had been positive. He said the McLean County Republican Party and anti-referendum slate of candidates were partially responsible for that.

“Overall, I’m very exhausted,” Adams said. “I was very dismayed with the amount of misinformation coming from … the McLean County Republicans. … That was probably the most aggravating part because we were trying to educate the public and misinformation does the opposite of that. That probably was the part I wasn’t expecting to be that bad.”

Williams, who campaigned with Adams, Roser and Pyle, said much of the work of the school board now will be to re-establish trust between McLean County’s largest school district, its leaders and the community it serves.

“I’m going to focus on working with the board, engaging the community early and often to make sure there’s a high level, if we ever get to a point where we need strong input, (of) trust,” Williams said. “It doesn’t happen overnight. I do think that the informal slate I was part of … we spent a lot of time pushing back on disinformation and I think part of the reason we had to spend that time was because there wasn’t that trust that we would expect.”

Lyndsay Jones is a reporter at WGLT. She joined the station in 2021. You can reach her at lljone3@ilstu.edu.
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