It is impossible to start a farewell editorial about Dr. Susan Bridge without noting her generous enthusiasm, her determined effort and her passion for orange and blue. Dr. Bridge is preparing this month to retire as superintendent and principal of Oak Park and River Forest High School. She’s been in place for eight years, and we are certain that many days it feels like 18.
We have said that incoming Superintendent Attila Weninger has the toughest job in Oak Park and River Forest. This post has not become newly tough. It has been a thicket of intractable challenges and wearying personalities for at least two decades. It has also, we hasten to add, been a place and a time of genuine success, though that success has not been evenly attained by all students.
Dr. Bridge gets credit for renewing the energy and morale of a dispirited school. She worked successfully to rebuild tattered relations with District 97 and 90. Along with the board, she actually changed the financial culture of the institution with the critical hiring a new chief financial officer and most recently the extrication of the district from the fetid Cicero Township Trustees of School system.
Yet beyond the hiring of Cheryl Witham as CFO, Dr. Bridge has not assembled a stellar team of administrators, and various reorganizations of duties and leadership structures haven’t gained great traction for change. And even on the financial side, an expensive and much touted early retirement program was mismanaged into a revenue neutral event rather than the notable cost savings program promised.
Normally, a departing superintendent would receive plaudits for leaving stockpiles of well-funded reserves and a lengthy teachers contract in place. Not in this case, not from this newspaper. Taxpayers have been manhandled in building up District 200’s cash and anyone could have negotiated the overly rich teachers contract just inked.
Most critically, we are eight years further along and have seen no progress, no true innovation, no momentum of any sort toward addressing the academic gap between white students and their African-American counterparts. The problem is complex, its dimensions reach well beyond Oak Park and deep into Oak Park. Yet its complexity can be no excuse, for if it is an excuse, then there is no hope.
We have been critical for many years of the leadership culture at Oak Park and River Forest High School. School boards have been timid and inbred. The faculty is too powerful and aligned with the status quo. The parent community is split between those who lavish uncritical praise and those who criticize every effort. The past two superintendents–Dr. Bridge and Dr. Donald Offerman–have been unable to break out of this vise. The result has been too many years of placeholding in an era when OPRF has needed to be redefined.
We offer Dr. Bridge our thanks for her sincere dedication to our high school. And we wish her the peace of mind she has earned in retirement.
A community gathers
The ending of this sad story is not yet written as we write these words on Monday. Might Oak Park’s Kathleen Garrigan still be found alive in Alaska after a Memorial Day weekend boating mishap? We can only hope and pray.
What we can say clearly at this moment, is that it is in such moments that community matters, that we prove for certain that Oak Park is a village of strong and generous hearts.
In the hours after word was received a week ago that Garrigan and two fellow Americorps volunteers were missing in Alaska, the e-mails flew, the phone calls rang out. And so by Wednesday evening, Ascension Church was filled for an impromptu prayer service with some 700 people attending. Over the past weekend, when it seemed possible that the formal state police search effort would be terminated, a fundraiser was created for Monday evening at the Carleton Hotel to raise cash to continue the search. A fund was also established at Community Bank to receive donations for the search.
We are certain that the Garrigans, a longtime South Oak Park family, feel enveloped and nourished by the love and concern of their neighbors.