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Suzyn Price is an incumbent District 203 School Board member who spent seven years as Director of Grants & Special Projects at North Central College and next month will become Vice President of Advancement at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. Terry Fielden is a candidate for the school board who has spent years in K-12 school construction with Turner Construction as a Project Executive, working with area school districts including Deerfield, DeKalb, Grayslake and Highland Park. Mike Jaensch is a candidate for school board who brings an international perspective to education as a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force formerly stationed in Germany, who today flies for American Airlines.

These three candidates with totally different backgrounds each sought out Naperville for its top quality schools to educate their children - and each offers a unique perspective on how to make District 203 even better.

Mike Jaensch

Mike and Rebekah Jaensch chose to live in the Midwest after Mike retired from the Air Force and was hired by American Airlines. As they looked around the Chicago area for a place to live they focused on Naperville because of the school district and community. They have always been involved in their children’s school districts, including during Mike’s last tour in Germany where they served on the equivalent of the school board of the small German school district their children attended.

In Naperville District 203 Mike has been involved in numerous aspects of the schools, serving as President of Madison Junior High School Home and School, Chairman of Madison SFCP (School Faculty Community Partnership) and as a member of the District 203 Finance and Facilities Committee and the district’s Elementary Foreign Language Committee.

In speaking with Mike you can’t help but be struck by his how his experience informs his positions. Mike and Rebekah’s children spent two years in German schools, taught in German (his daughter in 3rd and 4th grade and his son in 2nd and 3rd grade) and when they came to Naperville they found that despite the district’s high standards for the United States, the children were one to two years more advanced in math. Mike believes “in most cases you can’t ask too much of our kids,” and he believes we can become an even better school district by teaching our children more material earlier. He has a particular interest in improving foreign language instruction.

One is also struck by Mike’s commitment to children, he told me that “once I get involved in something I like to see it through - even if my kids are no longer involved” - and this has been true of his coaching both soccer and swimming. It’s this type of generosity and dedication that one looks for in a school board candidate - and speaking with Mike you see he has it. Read more at Mike Jaensch’s website.

Suzyn Price

Suzyn Price and her husband Derke, who was raised and educated in Naperville, considered moving from Chicago to Evanston, La Grange, Hinsdale and Naperville when Derke started working in the area. They settled on Naperville because they found it offered the best value of great schools for their children and low taxes. While Suzyn Price is only finishing her first four-year term, she has already held her third annual SFCP grant writing workshop for District 203 parents who want to learn how to write grants for schools, leveraging Suzyn’s longstanding background in grant writing. The effort has made an impact. Among the successes, a Kingsley Elementary teacher who took Suzyn’s workshop wrote a grant for technology from Best Buy that went from awarding that classroom a grant to awarding a district-wide grant. The effort shows how Suzyn Price’s impact as a school board member expands well beyond the traditional role of studying the issues and voting.

Before working as Director of Grants & Special Projects for North Central College in Naperville, Suzyn Price worked as Director of Development for the Ounce of Prevention Fund, where research on early childhood development is tested through real-world experiences, and developed into best practices. Suzyn has taken this approach and adapted it to her own philosophy on the school board. Seeking to understand best school board practices, Suzyn took outside coursework, earning the designation of Master Board Member from the Illinois Association of School Boards. In the same vein as a researcher might, Suzyn strongly believes in gathering information before making decisions, and told me how important she thinks it is for parents from individual schools to come to the school board and let them know their views on issues. As Suzyn put it, that involved parent is likely to have a lot of expertise on that one individual school - perhaps more than Suzyn has with her responsibility for looking after the entire district. Suzyn welcomes the input, and is open to the perspectives of others. Having witnessed the benefits of early childhood education at the Ounce of Prevention Fund, Suzyn recognizes that informed, effective investments in education improve our community, as well as our business environment and housing - the results of which are what drew Suzyn Price and her family to Naperville in the first place. It’s also why she is so committed to giving back to the community through the school board.

Suzyn has taken a leadership role on the District 203 Board in developing a long-term strategic plan for the district because she believes the plan is necessary to guide board actions to their ultimate goal of having “the district and the students thriving.” When you talk to Suzyn you recognize that she’s serious about the planning because she’s serious about providing top quality education to our children - and improving that education. Suzyn told me she loves working as a school board member because ultimately you’re working to improve education for the kids and the community. The work is its own reward for Suzyn - and if you care about what the school board does, you want members like Suzyn Price that dedicate their time and effort because they enjoy it - it means they’re working hard for the kids in our schools.

Terry Fielden

When Terry Fielden and his wife Nancy were moving from Indiana and looking for a place with great schools and quality housing in the Chicagoland area they kept coming back to Naperville. Terry’s work as a Project Executive in school construction focuses on working with school boards, their business managers and architects to find the best, most cost-effective materials for the budget to build schools. This direct experience of working with school boards, along with attending state and national school district conferences, and being a member of the Association of School Business Officials, has given him a great perspective on numerous school districts and school boards - and what works, and what doesn’t for effective communication.

One thing Terry stressed to me is a strong belief that school boards “need to cooperate with each other and work together towards common goals.” When I asked him what qualities he had that would help him in this regard he mentioned that most people consider him level-headed, reasonable and far-thinking. He also told me, “One thing I’ve learned is that you need to say what’s on your mind in a clear, concise, non-offensive manner.”

I also asked Terry Fielden what he’s learned from kids that he thought might help him as a school board member. He told me that as a soccer and baseball coach he’s learned that it can be really hard to teach children how to kick or throw a ball until one of them does it successfully, “but once a kid does it, it’s easier for the others to mimic it and learn.” Terry tied that into his proposal to expand foreign language education to elementary schools through foreign language immersion programming, and suggested that not only is foreign language immersion a lower cost form of teaching foreign language - but his experience, as well as academic studies, suggests that it may also be the best in part because of kids learning from other kids. The other thing you see speaking to Terry, and by his example of child learning, is that at a fundamental level Terry gets it. It’s not about the school board - it’s about the kids. That’s another example of what you’d like to see in a school board member.