The candidate field in the Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 School Board race is growing. David Schaafsma, a 25-year resident of Oak Park, is filing this week to run as a write-in candidate after candidate Tania Haigh was knocked off the ballot last month due to challenge to her nominating papers by fellow candidate Josh Gertz. Haigh did not file the required statement of candidacy form. Schaafsma, an English professor at University of Illinois Chicago, won’t have his name appear on the ballot, but he and fellow progressives will mount an extensive campaign to get voters to write his name in, he said. The main reason Schaafsma is running is to try to prevent board candidate Nate Mellman and his slate mate Gertz from winning a seat on the School Board. Haigh’s removal from the ballot left only five candidates — Mellman, Gertz, Kathleen Odell and incumbents Fred Arkin and Audrey Williams-Lee — running for four seats, seemingly assuring that at a minimum either Mellman or Gertz would be elected. The opposition to Mellman comes in the wake of his criticism of some school officials for allowing what he describes as an atmosphere of antisemitism at the school. Mellman filed a formal complaint last summer with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois attorney general’s office accusing three teachers, one of whom resigned last month for unrelated reasons, of antisemitism. The other two teachers Mellman has targeted are the sponsors of the school’s Middle Eastern and North African Students Club. Mellman has criticized some actions of the group in the wake of activities following the start of the war in Gaza in 2023. Schaafsma, 71, is the director of the English Education program at UIC, where he supervises the program that prepares students to become high school English teachers. “Many of the members of the English Department at OPRF High School are former students of mine,” Schaafsma said. “They encouraged me to try and get on the board as a write candidate, texted me and wrote to me, they encouraged me to do this.” Schaafsma, who is the father of two recent OPRF graduates and a current OPRF senior, said his participation is an overt effort to keep Mellman and Gertz off the School Board. “That’s a factor in others encouraging me to do this, and I was unaware of Mellman before they had called attention to it,” Schaafsma said. “They said ‘we need you; we really don’t want him to be on the School Board because of actions he has taken.’” Schaafsma said he is concerned that Mellman seems to be targeting a student group. “I’ve never met this guy but what I’ve heard, if true, encouraged me to be a different kind of representative on the board than Mellman,” Schaafsma said. Schaafsma said he would take a more cooperative approach if he had concerns about the actions of a student group. “He may have a good point about some aspects of what students were doing, but my approach would be more listening than I think he was doing,” Schaafsma said. “I would be a person that would work with that group and listen to all parties involved, and I think that’s the function of a board, to listen to various constituencies and not come in with an axe to grind.” Schaafsma also said he didn’t like that Mellman challenged the nominating papers of Williams-Lee and Gertz challenged Haigh. Mellman’s challenge of Williams-Lee’s filing was unsuccessful. “To try to get the two women of color off the ballot strikes me as something that’s not consistent with Oak Park values,” Schaafsma said. Three people connected with the group Committee for Just Peace in Palestine/Israel mounted an unsuccessful challenge seeking to knock Mellman off the ballot, claiming that he had a conflict of interest because he had filed a complaint against the school and specific teachers. Schaafsma has formed an alliance with incumbents Arkin and Williams-Lee. “I’ve talked to Audrey and Fred and we think it’s a wise thing to form a kind of informal slate,” Schaafsma said. Schaafsma and Arkin appeared Saturday evening at a campaign launch party at Tacos ’76 restaurant in Oak Park, an event sponsored by Activate Oak Park, a local progressive activist group. They were among a handful of candidates for various local offices running in the April 1 election who spoke at the event which drew a crowd of approximately 50 to 75 people. “I think there ought to be somebody on the School Board from someone who knows about teaching, who knows the classroom,” Schaafsma said, referring to his experience as a high school and college teacher. Arkin, who is Jewish, made clear his concerns about Mellman and Gertz without naming them saying that they are special interest candidates. “It’s a political interest that has nothing to do with what’s in the best interest of all of our students, and I know that David has that in his heart so I will be supporting David and I encourage everyone to support him,” Arkin said. School Board members Graham Brisben and Jonathan Livingston, who are not up for election this year, attended the launch party. Mellman and Gertz had their own launch party on Jan. 9 at the home of a River Forest supporter. They also just rolled out a campaign website that features endorsements from River Forest Village President Cathy Adduci and former Oak Park Village Clerk Sandra Sokol. Mellman welcomed Schaafsma to the race. “We wish him the best of luck,” Mellman said. “We’ll still run the campaign we set out to run and believe the community support is behind us. We have a number of great endorsements.” Schaafsma said he knows it will be an uphill battle to get elected as write in, especially with a name that is not the easiest to spell. “Almost everybody mentions that this is the greatest disadvantage for me as a candidate is that nobody can spell the damn name but we’ll have pieces of paper we’ll be handing that out all day on Election Day,” Schaafsma said. Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.