Talk of the Town with SJO Superintendent Brian Brooks

Every week we ask a village mayor, school superintendent or board member three questions. This week we talked to St. Joseph-Ogden Superintendent Brian Brooks.

This post is sponsored by St. Joseph Siding and Window.

1. What is the biggest challenge facing your district? 
The challenge right now of finding quality teachers any time we have a teaching opening due to the massive teacher shortage.  There are not many teachers coming out of college right now, and haven’t been for a few years.  The few that are coming out, usually end up going to the Chicago area. 

2. What was your biggest accomplishment this school year? 
I think our biggest accomplishments over the last two years have been finishing brand new science labs, and then putting up the first ever SJO Greenhouse this past summer.  All of this was done with Sales Tax money, and not Property Tax money.  Both of those areas are outstanding academic resources for our student body, and have been great additions to SJO.

3. What projects is your district going to tackle next school year? 
We will be doing something with our track surface this summer, as well as replacing the football/track light poles and lights this summer.  We are replacing our wood poles with new steel poles, and adding LED lights onto those poles.  The extent of the work on the track surface will be voted on by the BOE at the April meeting.  We are also looking at a few smaller projects over the summer inside of the school that will be discussed with our Board of Education over the next two meetings.  .