A District 300 Friend of McHenry County Blog came up the question of who will be the next District 300 school board president:

With the stunning victories of John Ryan and Monica Clark in the District 300 school board elections this week, it will be interesting to see who will succeed defeated Board Member Mary Fioretti as the President of the D300 School Board.

Ryan and Clark, along with the other two winners on Tuesday, Chris Stanton and Joe Stevens, will join School Board Members Anne Miller, Mary Warren and Karen Roeckner on the new board which will be sworn-in next month.

So among these 7 board members, who will be the next president?

While it is unlikely newcomers Ryan, Clark, Stanton, as well as Stevens will ascend to leading the D300 board meetings, which of the other 3 would, or should, be the next D300 board president?

Between the 3 choices, this “Friend of the Blog” would prefer Anne Miller, who, given her election to the School Board in 1997, is the longest-serving member of the D300 Board.

Miller, who is an attorney by profession, would bring a legal mind to the head of the school board table, and she would help guide the D300 board in keeping in compliance with various laws, most notably the Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information statutes.

While Miller was initially elected to the D300 board with the backing of the then Citizens Organized for Responsible Education (CORE), a previous incarnation of Advance 300, Miller’s outspokenness during her first term, most notably her standing up to CORE during the high school boundary changes debates of 1999, made her a target for defeat by the former leaders of CORE during the 2001 School Board elections, when a slate led by Mary Warren and Richard Traub were running.

Miller survived the electoral opposition to her first term and served with both Warren and Traub on the School Board, and was re-elected to a 3rd term in 2005 when all of the D300 school board members won election/re-election without opposition.

Miller has never served as D300 School Board President, but given her legal background and her seniority of service, this makes Miller the best candidate, in my own honest opinion.

What does everyone else think?

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The photograph is of District 300 board member Anne Miller.