Lyons Township High Board In Dark About Village Objections?

LA GRANGE, IL – Western Springs residents let the community know last month that their village ordered Lyons Township High School to stop a construction project at South Campus.

Among those surprised may have been the school board itself.

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Documents obtained last week indicate that the school proceeded with the project, even after the village said the school needed to get a permit.

Public records also show the school's administration was in the loop about Western Springs' objections for about three weeks before the elected board was apparently informed.

At the board's April 20 meeting, South Campus' neighbors spoke of their concerns about the construction of a discus and shot put area. It was moved from another area of the campus.

Three weeks earlier, a Western Springs official notified school officials that they had not received permission to build the facility.

A few days before the meeting, the village ordered the school to stop the work.

Through a public records request, Patch last week obtained internal correspondence on the issue, which officials had not discussed publicly.

The day after the meeting, Superintendent Brian Waterman emailed the board about the discus project.

He said the school had hoped it would complete the project by the latest track season.

But Waterman said Western Springs advised the school it would need to get a conditional use permit. He acknowledged the village's order to stop work, which he said the village did as of the previous week.

With that timeline, the school stopped construction after a village official said in an April 9 email to officials, "Please note the work for the discus throw area cannot move forward without necessary Village approvals."

The stop-work order was issued eight days later, on April 17.

In the email to the board, Waterman said the administration was deciding how to proceed.

He said the school could file for a permit, starting a four- to six-month process involving public hearings and more costs.

Another option, Waterman said, was to move the discus area to another part of South Campus that does not involve construction or permits.

In the meantime, he said the school was ordering a portable "throws" pad, which he said would arrive in three to four weeks.

He said discus participants were practicing at Hinsdale Central High School.

Last week, Patch emailed an inquiry to all seven board members about what they knew about the issue before residents spoke up.

In response, board President Tim Albores, who said he was speaking on behalf of the board, said the relocation of the discus and shot put area was part of the scope of work for the girls softball field project.

The board approved that work last June.

Albores did not specifically address Patch's question about what the board knew about the village's objections before the April 20 meeting.

"Communicating with residents and developing solutions to potential concerns is a core function of day-to-day administrative management and falls within the responsibility of the Superintendent," Albores said in an email. "As the Illinois Association of School Boards defines it, the board's role is to establish direction, goals, and policy, not to be involved in each operational decision.

Albores said the board was confident the matter was "being handled within the appropriate administrative purview."

Patch also asked whether the discus facility had been discussed during a closed session of the board.

Albores said it had not been. He said no final decision on the discus facility's site has been made.

The board's six other members did not respond to Patch's inquiry about what they knew before the April 20 meeting. They are Jill Bill Daniels, Gioia Giannotti Frye, Kari Dillon, Christine Kozelka Campbell, Shawn Kennedy and Elias Lopez.

In 2022 and early 2023, the board held repeated closed meetings about selling the school's land in Willow Springs. Members strategized over how to keep their plan a secret for as long as possible, fearing neighbors' reactions.

The attorney general later found that the sessions violated the state's open meetings law.

Dillon and Daniels are the only holdovers from that board.