Kelly Asseff: Elmhurst D-205 School Board Candidate – No Response

Editor's note: The following is a reader's commentary. This is unrelated to Patch's reporting on the race.

Ms. Kelly Asseff, Elmhurst school board candidate, did not respond to our voter questions to provide an overview of her positions and perspectives regarding school board issues. Each of the nine candidates listed on the April 2023 ballot for District 205 School Board positions were asked to answer the same set of questions. We reached out to Asseff via several published email addresses and received no response.

As she is a neophyte candidate with no previous school board experience, we have reviewed her campaign website along with communications involving concerned parents given her role on the District 205 Sandburg Middle School PTA. Asseff is listed as president-elect for the 2022-2023 school year and parents interested in chairing committees are instructed to reach out to her at kasseff2@gmail.com (one of the emails through which our inquiries received no response).

Asseff’s campaign website lists one of her objectives as Transparency and Accountability, where she opens with the sentence, “Parents, students and community members should have a voice in our schools to contribute to forward-thinking curriculum and promote the best interest of all students.”

In blatant contrast to that, Asseff’s August 30, 2022, email response to a parent inquiring about a possible PTA curriculum committee read: “…as a school counselor, I would definitely not take any input from someone who is not an educator,” and berated the parent for not agreeing with Asseff’s social emotional learning stance.

That disconnect between Asseff’s promises and documented past behavior is an issue that I wanted to give Asseff the opportunity to comment upon, when I submitted candidate questions to her on February 24. Her refusal to respond is troubling for a board member, as one of the current criticisms of the existing D205 Board is that they are dismissive of parents’ concerns about their child’s education.

Other feedback that this reporter has gleaned about Asseff from other parents is that she is stubbornly dogmatic about social emotional learning, and will not substantively discuss any criticisms of SEL practices. Asseff also supported York teacher Kelly DeLoriea, an English teacher caught on tape in an unhinged classroom rant berating “values,” Thomas Jefferson, and screaming that America had “a problem in the founding.” In that same recording, DeLoriea told students that “in this class, you’re not gonna get individual comments on your papers,” because “the requirements of this job, and the time that exists and that we’re paid for and what they’re making us do does not allow for that.”

Asseff’s eagerness to advocate the political views of the far-left teacher’s unions, who have vigorously fought any oversight and accountability metrics for Illinois teachers, and who also demanded to keep classrooms closed during COVID, also earned Asseff their endorsement.

Asseff, like Kelly Henry, also has been supported by ROSE D205 (which originally demanded to extend school closures during COVID), and other local left-wing political groups and personalities who routinely agitate on social media, including Jim Colbert, who recently protested outside the Elmhurst Knights of Columbus holding a “baby Hitler” sign, and Engy Sutherland, the First Ward aldermanic candidate and political activist who founded an anti-police organization that recently described law enforcement as tools of white supremacy and racism that no amount of reform can fix.

Asseff has also gone on record insisting that the PTA could not get involved in curriculum discussions on the theory that curriculum is solely “determined at the state level with ISBE [Illinois State Board of Education],” which is seemingly at odds with her stated campaign objective about parents and students “having a voice…to contribute to forward thinking curriculum.”

Asseff promotes her experience as a guidance counselor at a “high-achieving middle school.” Prior to having moved to Elmhurst ten years ago, Asseff worked at Kahler Middle School, in Dyer, Indiana. U.S. News and World Reports ranks Kahler in the bottom 34 percent of Indiana middle schools with 53 percent of its student scoring below the proficient level in math and 37 percent reading below grade level. That’s even worse than the 47 percent reading below grade level that set off alarms in Elmhurst’s District 205 in 2017.

This citizen view perspective seeks to inform voters of their options well ahead of the April 4 election. Here are the questions, posed to all nine candidates, to which Asseff did not respond:

Question 1. As a school board member, how will you work with parents to further their children's education?

Question 2. Describe what you consider appropriate oversight of curriculum and the role you envision parents having in that oversight?

Question 3. Do you believe the current board has adequately enforced its controversial issues policy? What would you do differently?

Question 4. What is your understanding of transformative SEL and do you think that it has a place in District 205?

Question 5. In November 2022, District 205 admitted to falling SAT scores. A year previously, in October 2021, the district laid the blame for drooping academic performance at the feet of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the district's test scores have been plummeting steadily downward since 2014. What would you do to improve this chronically unsatisfactory situation?

Question 6. In November 2018 Elmhurst voters approved a $168.5 million bond issue for District 205. In May 2021, drastic overages were reported, to the tune of $400,000. As of March 2022, the overspending had risen to $18.1 million, and in May 2022, the total over budget had dropped slightly to $17.7 million. That is still more than 10 percent of the referendum budget. What remedies do you propose for this enormous project that is obviously over budget and reportedly behind schedule?

Question 7. If elected to serve on the school board, what is the number one objective that you will pursue and seek doggedly to accomplish during your term?