As an Oak Park resident, parent, and teacher who has worked with Jim O’Connor, I encourage you to vote for him for the District 97 school board. Jim wants all Oak Park students have the knowledge, skills, and character traits to be successful. I met Jim in 2006 when he was the principal of the school where I taught in Chicago’s Austin community — 86% of our students qualified for free or reduced lunch.
As someone who knows Jim well, I’m supporting Jim for the following reasons: As a principal, he worked to develop the “whole child.” Students in our school learned the academic fundamentals along with the importance of persistence, teamwork, and empathy. As a board member, he will ensure that students have the social and emotional skills to enable them to have a good life. Jim values experiences that make connections between our schools and the broader world. At our school, we organized field lessons for our students. We built college tours into many of our field lessons so our students — who often would be first-generation college students — could see what college was like and hear from college students about what it takes to get in and graduate.
Jim will continue to bring best practices home to make D97 one of the finest districts in the country. He wants to ensure that all students have the opportunities that students in our school had. I encourage you to learn more at VoteJimOConnor.com and vote for him on April 7.
Jayson Franklin
Oak Park
