We spend a lot of time looking at trees.
Sometimes it’s helpful to step back and look at the forest.In the 2014 school year, enrollment in District 155 was 6,733.
The last time it was this low was 2006.
Below is a table that shows many interesting statistics about District 155 over those years, followed by some useful conclusions that can be drawn from the statistics about how the district has changed.
Selected District 155 statistics from 2004 through 2014.
In 2006, total direct expenditures were $67.6 million.
In 2014, expenditures were $95.8 million.
That’s an increase of $28 million in eight years or 41%!
You can be sure the costs rose again in fiscal 2015.
The cost per pupil increased from $9,934 to $14,210 or 43%.
During this same period, the Consumer Price Index increased 17.6%.
Despite the increase in cost, there has been NO improvement in PSAE (“Prairie State Achievement Exam”) scores:
So, neither students nor taxpayers are getting any greater value for their money in 2014 than in 2006 despite spending 43% more.
Let’s look at expenditures a bit more.
If the cost per pupil had risen by the same amount as the CPI, expenditures in 2014 would have been $79.5 million or $16.2 million less than the actual.
If the cost per pupil had risen by CPI each year, the AGGREGATE cost over those eight years would have been $93 million LOWER.
Now let’s look at staffing:
While enrollment was declining:
- the number of teachers increased by 11
- the number of administrators increased by 5
- and total staff increased by 27.
We had one Assistant Superintendent in 2006; we now have three.
So it takes more administrators and more teachers to teach fewer students and the costs have ballooned while test scores have stagnated.
The moral of this story for trustees: get some perspective; ask the big questions first; THEN go looking for the details.
The moral of this story for taxpayers: no one is watching out for you.
How many pupils are illegal aliens???
That’s the $64,000,000 question!
It does not matter how many illegal aliens are in the schools.
Congress just approved funding for the complete “transformation” agenda.
The courts had slowed the perversion of our immigration laws but Congress just gave tacit approval. Here is what Congress just did:
• Increased the number of H-2B low-skilled foreign workers by almost a factor of 4
• Maintained the tax credits to illegal aliens
• Funded a large increase in Syrian and other refugee resettlement in this country
• Funded Obama’s catch-and-release policy that virtually stops deportations
• Provided continued funding of sanctuary cities
• Continue to fund the relocation of unaccompanied minors into the country
Just imagine what is going to happen next year.
And ‘they’ wonder why people support Trump.
Someone could submit this information to all attendees at a school board meeting, making a comment during public comments, and if a newspaper reporter is present, they might mention the information or some of it in a story.
But then the board or administration would have a rebuttal to marginalize the data or put another spin on it.
Schools are experts at doing so because they live every workday in school data world and network amongst themselves informally and at conferences.
As they would be at work there is typically not much personal time involved to mount a defense, unlike the lone wolf taxpayer trying to expose what is occurring.
Since public school administrators work in the system they are perceived as having expertise in the subject matter, lending their cause credibility.
There are monopoly unions in the monopoly schools which are organized at the local, regional, state, and Federal levels.
The local PTA/PTO and the Illinois School Alliance of IASB, IASA, Illinois School Principals, etc. is not an effective counter to the unions to represent taxpayers.
Typically the PTA/PTO/booster club are teacher and administrator cheerleaders and do not analyze school or district financial numbers, instead they are busy with this or that fundraiser because the schools say they do not have any money for this or that.
Too many school boards including this one do not videotape board meetings.
Union rank and file receive labor contract negotiation updates but the board or administration depending on the district provides no, little, or less updates to parents, taxpayers, and the press; in some districts that is changing.
There is never a change document released to the public which shows the exact changes in the collective bargaining agreement, wih for example ynderlined text for additions and stricken through text for deletions.
At the state level all the changes to the pension law, collective bargaining law, school code law, and retiree healthcare laws are little publicized, in many cases not publicized.
Right now the big push amongst school reform groups such as Advance Illinois is to reform the school funding formula, which would likely mean less state funding for districts such as Crystal Lake High School 155.
Of all the problems in public education in Illinois, by far the most egregious was legislative pension and retiree healthcare hikes while pensions and retiree healthcare was already underfunded.
Followed by coklective bargaibg and local benefit hikes while pensions and retiree healthcare was already underfunded.
This has been happening for 45 years.
Gross political neglect has occurred in properly notifying and protecting taxpayers and for that matter just about everyone in the state.
coklective bargaibg typo on smartphone, should be collective bargaining.
Public schools do track English as a Second Language (ESL) students.
That would include refugees brought over and/or sponsored by organizations such as World Relief.
That might be the closest one would get to illegal alien numbers.
Not sure if those numbers are further broken down by race, or if they were, how easy they would be to obtain.
That issue is not the biggest problem though, unless one were to get into the issue of homeland security.
But to date, the biggest issue of safety of school children and employees and children in general as it relates to the education profession is educator misconduct including educators deciding to have some sort of sexual contact with minors.