Showing that he is making progress penetrating the Crystal Lake community is Trib Local reporter Lawerence Synett’s article on a new group looking at High School District 155.
I sat next to Scott Smith, one of the organizers of the group calling itself GAND (for Grafton, Algonquin, Nunda, Dorr Townships) Community Advocates at the Congressional Town Hall Meeting last week.
TribLocal reported the immediate goal of the group, according to founder Chris Williams “is to try and prevent the district from deficit spending.”
Chris Williams can be reached at gandca@comcast.net.
He told me that he was an active member of the Reform Party and had done some research on District 155. I asked him to send to me. You can see it below (click to enlarge the images):
Here is a comparison for the Crystal Lake High School, Huntley Unit District and Barrington Unit Districts. There are also comparisons for the McHenry and Schaumburg High School District, plus the Woodstock Unit District with which I am having formatting problems.
The problem with this comparison chart is that District 155 is a high school district and Huntley (not Algonquin) 158 and Barrington 220 are both community districts (K-12). Those districts have all teachers K-12 on the same pay schedule.
I would recommend that this group instead compare District155 to other high school districts such as Glenbrook 225, Glenbard 87, Downers Grove 99, Hinsdale 86, and others. In fact, also look at these area’s residential and commercial tax rates for these districts. You may want to look at test scores as well. GANDCA may find more accurate data to analyze.
Also, I notice that numbers in this chart are for different years. Do the numbers look more alarming that way or could same-year be a more accurate reflection of the situation?