Lake County Gazette

At the March 14 Waukegan Public Schools Board of Education meeting, Principal Catalina Quinones-Nelson and some of her students came to discuss the recent, unexpected death of Oakdale teacher Kaitlin Schaumberger. The board held a moment of silence in her honor near the beginning of the meeting, and allowed Oakdale to step into the Spotlight session to honor her memory.

“So some of the things I want you to know that we're going to be doing is we're going to lay a brick in our retirement walk in honor of her name,” Quinones-Nelson said. “We're also going to either plant a bush or a tree in honor of her. Some of the staff thought maybe a Schaumberger Award. So when kids or staff do something incredibly rare, it has to be really up here because Kaitlin was way up here. So the criteria is, you have to be positive, you have to be giving, you have to work hard. All of those things will win you that Schaumberger Award."

Quinones-Nelson said the school was considering a day for volunteering.

"We're also thinking of a Schaumberger Volunteer Day at the building once a year in honor of her, because that's what Kaitlin would do," Quinones-Nelson said. "And Kaitlin would find a way to continue to give and to continue to give to our Waukegan community and our Oakdale community. So in honor of Kaitlin, God bless her, make sure you keep people like this in mind. They don't come by every day.”

Quinones-Nelson told the board that Schaumberger was a younger teacher, who had just started at Oakdale in August of 2022 as a second grade teacher, and that she absolutely loved all of her students. She spoke about her excellence as a teacher, saying that not only did her students grow and learn and show amazing test scores, but they all loved their teacher and coming to school to get to see her every day. She remembered Schaumberger as a constantly positive and smiling person who was always kind. She said everyone in the building was devastated by her death, from the students to parents to staff.

The students told the board she was a kind and loving teacher who always made them smile and hyped them up for all their accomplishments. They already miss her greeting them all by name in the halls everyday. 

Schaumberger’s family wrote much of her obituary about how much she loved her students and the job of teaching. They created a memorial fund in her honor, saying that all she wanted was to impact the students of Oakdale and they would be making a donation to the school in her honor. The fundraiser has since raised over $18,000 in Schaumberger’s name.

The board uploaded a livestream of its public meeting to the district’s YouTube channel.

In other business, the board discussed paying $2,000 to have an Advance Placement Summer Institute for Waukegan High School math teachers.

The board will meet again at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Lincoln Center’s board room at 1201 North Sheridan Road.