Brianna DeWert

The SCEA officially recommends Bell, Fairgrieve, Hancock and Rich.

Recently, a flyer claiming that District 303 educators endorse school board candidates Heidi Fairgrieve, Thomas Lentz, Elias Palacios and Antoinetta Berton-Nicklaus has been distributed throughout St. Charles. This flyer has raised concern among community members because of its incongruence with the official recommendation made by the D303 teacher’s union, the St. Charles Education Association (SCEA), which recommends candidates Heidi Fairgrieve, Jenna Hancock, Kate Bell and Kim Rich. 

The flyer was paid for by the political action committee People of Kane County, which is associated with the group St. Charles Speaks. They argue that the flyer is not false on account of phrasing, claiming that it is not meant to speak on behalf of the teacher’s union but highlight that there are many individual D303 educators who endorse those candidates. 

“We merely added, ‘educators endorse.’ Several educators within St. Charles D303 endorse these candidates. End of conversation,” said Brian Anderson on behalf of St. Charles Speaks. 

Despite this argument, SCEA president Jennifer Adam emphasizes that the flyer still gives the impression that Lentz, Palacios and Berton-Nicklaus are the official recommendations provided by the teacher’s union. 

“We really do believe this is intentionally misleading by mimicking the way we had phrased things [in the SCEA’s recommendations], by saying ‘D303 educators,’ and they really are speaking on behalf [of the collective] when they don’t have the right to do that,” said Adam. “The only people who are authorized to speak on behalf of our educators and any of the unions are the union president or their designee.” 

Adam believes that this is an instance of disinformation — the intentional spread of false information — in order to sway the upcoming school board election on April 1.

“[The flyer] is really an effort to get out a false, misleading endorsement that looks like it’s coming from the St. Charles Education Association, from our educators as a collective, to kind of get a jump up so that they can get their candidate’s names out there and make it appear that they align with who our unions endorse,” said Adam. 

St. Charles’ three unions, the SCEA, the St. Charles Education Support Professionals (SCESP) and St. Charles Transportation and Maintenance (SCT&M), operate as a coalition and endorse the same candidates. This recommendation process involves considering multiple factors of each contender’s candidacy, such as their understanding of fiscal responsibility, their willingness to engage in conversation with the unions, understanding of the district’s diversity and support for high quality public education. 

“We discuss whether or not their platforms, their positions, what they have shared with us about their priorities, align with the priorities that we have chosen as associations,” said Adam. “Through checking yes or no on different boxes, we’re able to decide if we feel comfortable recommending each individual candidate.”

Adam stresses that this disinformation campaign abuses the trust the St. Charles community has in its educators. 

“There has been a very long standing trend in our district that the association recommendations tend to produce very positive outcomes for our recommended candidates,” said Adam. “To spread that type of disinformation takes advantage of the long standing respect that the community has for the educators and manipulates them into believing they are voting for people supported by the educators in the district when the educator’s representative bodies have not chosen to recommend those candidates.”