The year 2015 in Forest Park was a year of big plans and new beginnings. New public festivals were initiated, the village council got a re-boot and a new police chief was hired. But most significantly, citizens of the village began to take themselves seriously as stakeholders in their high school district for the first time in almost 50 years.

Author Archives: Jean Lotus
Jean Lotus loves community journalism. She covers news, features, two school boards, village council, crime, park district and writes obits for Forest Park Review. She also covers the police beat for Oak Park and River Forest in Wednesday Journal.She graduated from University of Chicago and is a former daily reporter/night editor for the Lafayette, Ind. Journal & Courier (Gannett).In 2014, she won the Peter Lisagor award for best in-depth reporting in a non-daily newspaper. She also won the first prize University of Illinois Knight Award for Investigative Journalism (2013), and first prize for feature writing from the Illinois Press Association.