Two years ago, at the urging of her teenage daughter, clinical psychologist Donna Marino ran for school board in far west suburban Oswego, Illinois, thinking her background in mental health could help students recover from the isolation, stress and trauma brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken to slow its spread.
But less than a year after winning election and being selected by her peers to chair the board, Marino abruptly quit. She said she feared for her and her family’s mental and physical health following threats from some parents opposed to the district’s continued masking mandates as well as how culture, race and sex education were being addressed in the classroom and in books in Oswego’s elementary and high schools.
“I was excited to be able to contribute that mental health lens after all our children have been through. I wanted to be a catalyst for rebuilding our community and crossing that divide. I had high hopes. But I underestimated the severity of that fracture,” Marino wrote in her resignation letter when she stepped down from the board of Oswego Community Unit School District 308, recounting how she’d been called a “coward,” “F----n scum,” a “low IQ knuckle dragger and worse.”
