D-15 Elects Millar School Board President

A new era began in Community Consolidated School District 15 Wednesday, with the seating of three newly-elected school board members.

Scott Herr, Manjula Sriram and Gerard Iannuzzelli were to the school board April 5. Former school board president Gerald Chapman and vice president James Ekeberg were defeated in the election. Sue Quinn chose not to seek re-election.

School board member Dave Seiffert also is relatively new to the board having been appointed in February to replace Mark Bloom who resigned his seat because of scheduling conflicts.

After seating its new members, the school board elected Tim Millar president by a vote of 4 to 3. Millar voted for himself along with Herr, Sriram and Iannuzzelli. Millar is the longest serving school board member having first been elected in 2005. He served as school board vice president in 2005 and 2006 and was the board president in 2007 and 2008.

"It really is a seven member board so the key is to bring out everybody's opinion, to be able to share that and understand their position without casting aspersions," Millar said.

"You can't disagree until you understand what their position is. Sometimes we have not had very many discussions. And I'm hoping that we can open that up, have better dialogue and work together better as a team," he said.

Board member Richard Bokor nominated Herr to be school board president. Herr received votes from Bokor, Seiffert and Peggy Babcock. However, Herr voted for Millar, not himself.

"It's really unusual for a new board member to go immediately to president," Herr said. "I've got a lot of confidence in Tim's ability to facilitate the coming together of the board."

Herr was elected school board vice president by a 4 to 3 vote with Iannuzzelli, Millar and Sriram supporting for him. Bokor received three votes for vice president.

Correction: This story originally stated that the meeting occurred on Tuesday. It happened on Wednesday. Palatine Patch regrets the error.