Forest Park’s elementary school board welcomed local parent and high school special education specialist Nora Bowker to the board at its Oct. 9 meeting.
Bowker takes Heather Cianciolo’s spot on the board, as Cianciolo and her family are moving out of Forest Park.
Bowker was a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Council for two years and has three children, two enrolled in Garfield Elementary. Bowker helped revive the North Parent Teachers Council, which was disbanded in 2011 after parent infighting. A new Grant-White principal, Chyla Weaver, and Garfield’s Jamie Stauber are working closer now thanks to more parent involvement, Bowker said in her letter to Superintendent Lou Cavallo.
“I am a vested member of the community, have background in education and have worked as an advocate of parents in this district for the past two years,” Bowker wrote to Cavallo.
Bowker works as an inclusion facilitator for special education students at Lyons Township High School. She also worked in a therapeutic day school, Joseph Academy, for children with behavioral disorders, and served as an assistant principal at a high school in Des Plaines. She has a master’s degree in Special Education and has certificates to teach math, anthropology and special education and holds a Type 75 certificate to be a principal or director of special education.
Bowker will run for election to a full term on the District 91 board in spring 2015, because she is taking the seat of John Tricoci Jr., who was elected in spring of 2011. Tricoci also stepped down from the board in Sept. 2013 when he announced he was moving out of Forest Park.
