D112 Board Members Get Death Threats After Referendum Failure

HIGHLAND PARK, IL - Members of the North Shore School District 112 board of education have reported receiving death threats in wake of the $198 million planned school reconfiguration referendum vote earlier this month.

Board President Michael Cohn called out “all those people using fake names on the internet” during a board workshop called less than a week after the vote, according to the Daily North Shore.

“The death threats and calls for people to resign are inappropriate. If you want to help solve the problem, great. (Otherwise] stop embarrassing Highland Park.”

Voters in Highland Park, Highwood and Fort Sheridan decided with a near 68 percent majority on March 15 not to pass a bond issue that would have closed six neighborhood schools and created a Middle School Campus for all district fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders in southwest Highland Park.

Board member Jane Solmor-Mordini, an outspoken proponent of the proposed reconfiguration model who blamed the referendum defeat partially on the board not providing enough information on it to voters, has also received death threats.

“It disappoints me because I think we’re better than that,” she said.

The board decided during the same workshop that a similar referendum plan will not be on the ballot come November. Not because of the death threats, but because no feasible alternative exists at this point, according to the Highland Park News.

The wide margin of defeat, which included all of the district’s 25 precincts opposing the referendum, made even backers of the plan want to look in a different direction.

"If the margin of failure had been slight, we would have been the first ones to say let's go again in November," Art Kessler, a pro-referendum Highland Park resident said. "Even after the community begins to feel the pain of [budget reductions], this referendum has no hope of passing."

A backup plan decided upon before the referendum failure calls for the closing of Ravinia Elementary School, Lincoln Elementary School, Elm Place Middle School and the Green Bay Road Early Childhood Center before the 2017-18 school year.

Superintendent Michael Bregy will create a new citizens’ committee to try and find ways to operate with fewer buildings.