Frederick Arkin is an incumbent running for reelection for the District 200 Board of Education . Arkin believes the Oak Park, River Forest school board has done a great job recently, especially with equity and inclusion.
Arkin has lived in the Oak Park, River Forest neighborhood for decades and has grown up in the neighborhood.
Arkin’s main mission in his reelection campaign is to maintain continuity with the school district. He believes the school board has done a great job and wants to continue improving the community. He also wants every student who attends OPRF to achieve their highest potential, and he believes students can only do so under proper leadership.
OPRF is a great, valuable institution to Arkin, and he hopes he can inspire and help the youth become great with another term on the school board.
He said that he has had an impact on students even after graduation. Some students call himand ask him for advice as some view him as a mentor, he said.
Arkin said he believes that critiques from rival candidates Nathan Mellman and Josh Gertz are irrational and that the two are running for only a few reasons: student outcome achievement, safety, and discipline.
After being asked for his opinion on opponents, Arkin said, “I’m not impressed by them.”
“I have not seen either one of them around when the Board of Education has been doing that work for the last 10 years,” he said. “I don’t think (these reasons) are motivation for running for the board.”
Additionally, Mellman filed claims of antisemitism against OPRF in the past, with Gertz supporting the claims.
Arkin, who is a Jewish man, believes that while there may be some cases of anti-semitism but for the most part, every student at OPRF is celebrating their culture to which Arkin believes they all have the right to do as it does not make Arkin uncomfortable as a Jewish man.
“I think what Nate Mellman has done is (create) hyperbolic antisemitism to get people in the community upset,” he said.
Arkin also believes that student discipline shouldn’t have to be established to ruin a student’s academic career, but as a way to steer students away from acting up and put students back on track with correct morals and guidance on how things could’ve been handled differently while keeping school work as a priority.
“What we do with … discipline is no longer 100% punitive and we’ve gone to a more of a restorative practices model,” he said.
The school board had established a plan to deal with disciplinary issues called the Behavior Education Plan. The goal was to decrease out of school suspensions by 10% from 2023 to 2024; the outcome, however, was a decrease of 56%.
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