Yellin Ostrovich, District 62 art facilitator, said, "The most rewarding part of this process was seeing everything come together," describing a months-long collaboration among teachers and students to create individualized mascots and logos for CCSD 62 schools.

Teachers said the project began with student research. Jessie Arnold, art teacher at Iroquois Community School, said NJHS students researched animals significant to the Iroquois tribe, narrowed choices to three, and "made a whole presentation, which they showed the staff, the parents, the homerooms, and then we all voted on it as a community." That student-led research and the community vote were presented as the basis for each school's selection.

The design process moved from hand sketches to digital art. Howard Kanter, a longtime Algonquin Middle School art teacher who retired 10 weeks ago after 33 years, said he gathered reference material from National Geographic and YouTube, made iterative sketches and shared them with colleagues for adjustments. Carly Canter, art teacher at Chippewa Middle School, said she used Micron pens and Sharpies to produce more graphic black-and-white art, which staff then converted to color and finalized digitally.

Jessie Arnold described the technical work of ensuring cohesion across schools: resizing, measuring and color-blocking in Procreate so each logo could be used uniformly. She noted a core design challenge: "to take a nature drawing and somehow come up with a mascot for that nature drawing," citing examples where similar animals (puma, cougar, panther) needed distinct treatment so each school's logo would be recognizable.

Teachers said the project balanced two goals: giving each school its own identity while maintaining a districtwide visual unity. Canter said one objective was that "each school's individuality" show through "but also all the logos look like they're supposed to go together," and that students could feel a sense of pride similar to high school team branding. Several teachers described pride in the department-wide collaboration, noting that such cross-school teamwork was uncommon and that it was rewarding to see the designs in the community.

No formal district vote or official board action was recorded in the transcript; presenters described the process and community vote used to select designs but did not outline next administrative steps or implementation timelines.