Cheryl Oprisko is the Vice President of the Board of Trustees for Portage Township and has lived in the Region her entire life. She graduated from Calumet High School and went on to receive an associate’s degree in respiratory therapy from Indiana University Northwest and a bachelor’s from Purdue University Calumet. She then went on to receive her law degree from Valparaiso University. She then went to IUN to teach.
Oprisko taught at IUN for many years before she and her husband decided to open their own business. The Oprisko’s have been proud owners of the Mark O’s Bar and Grill in Portage for 17 years and the Mark O’s in Munster for 4 years.
Other than owning her own business, Oprisko was not very present in the professional world. It was not until her oldest son convinced her to jump back into corporate America that she joined the Board of Trustees. Oprisko said that she joined the Board because she wanted her children to see her in a more professional light.
Oprisko was the President of the Board two years ago, but now serves as the Vice President. She admits that the President and Vice President do not hold any more power than any of the other board members and feels that, as a member, it is important for her to be aware of what is going on in education. She stresses that the students of Portage Township need to be able to enter a global market and it is the board’s job to make that happen.
Oprisko said that she is life-long learner and that, in order to be one, you have to be willing to “take risks, do your homework, and educate yourself.”
When she was a professor at IUN, Oprisko would often ask her students if they were going to make mistakes. None of them would raise their hands, but she would. Oprisko asserted that you only “learn by doing things wrong [and in order to] keep learning, you have to make mistakes.”
Oprisko focuses on bringing programs into the district and having them implemented in the schools. She says that it is her job to bring change to the community.
“If we don’t bring positive change to schools, we are not doing our job,” Oprisko said. The Board of Trustees are elected to be the steward of Portage Townships Schools, Oprisko said, and if the Board remains stagnate or if it begins to go backwards, then we “need to look at the electives.”
Board members have to be elected into office by the Township. According to Oprisko, the Township includes the city, Ogden Dunes, South Haven, and a portion of the county. She said that elections happen every two years and two elections will occur this November.
When asked where she wanted to be in 10 years, Oprisko did not have an exact future in mind.
“All I know is that my role in my 10 years will be to continue to be a lifelong learner, to continue to make mistakes, and to continue to make change,” Oprisko said.
Oprisko also admitted that though she doesn’t know where exactly she’ll be, she knows that she will be able to accomplish her goal of being a lifelong learner. She says that she enjoys being on the school board and she enjoys making positive change.
“If you shoot for the moon and you miss, you’ll land among the stars and that’s not a bad place to be,” Oprisko said.