Only way to change this – change the Board and Illinois Labor laws relative to binding arbitration after you change the attitude of the ‘public at large’ who will start to scream if a strike or stoppage interferes with the taxpayer subsidized baby sitter called “public school”. No! Charter schools are not the magic answer. What would your response be if a religious group takes over your Charter School Board? The members are not elected.

When I saw this comment, the debt was sickening. We owe it to ourselves to investigate other municipalities and school districts. It’s time to get involved.

Debt as percentage of total home value is 6.5%.

Statutory debt cap (13.8% of EAV) is meant to keep schools from borrowing more than 4.6% of total home value.

While the debt was accumulated technically within the law, it was structured in a way indicating knowledge of clever strategy to evade the spirit of statutory debt maximums.

Typo correction:
2014 employees : 1010

Susan,
Excellent comments. Thank you.
Which raises a question…how in the world can they justify a $900,000+ athletic field? The money can certainly be put to good/better use elsewhere in the district.
Why are the CUSD 200 costs so high?
This school board is way out of sync with realty.

There is so much to analyze.

The balloon payments.

Obviously it was never meant to be paid.

It will be refinanced, and taxpayers will pay refinance costs.

How is that good for taxpayers.

++++++

Prevailing wage.

Labor deserves a fair wage.

In Illinois prevailing wage has spiraled out of control in many probably not all instances.

Unfortunately Illinois Policy Institute didn’t go into enough detail with this article, but the numbers none the less are eye opening and just one more reason why prevailing wage needs to be further examined.

Prevailing wage gives 6-figure salaries to workers on public projects in DuPage County
June 9, 2015
http://www.illinoispolicy.org/prevailing-wage-gives-6-figure-salaries-to-workers-on-public-projects-in-dupage-county

++++++++++++++

We are in big taxpayer trouble in Illinois.

The state has not been run by either Republicans or Democrats or locally (in many instances) in a sustainable fashion.

It’s been an image PR, money grab, satisfy the special interests for political gain, marginalize opposition, discredit opposition, game.

So taxpayers need to become organized.

Boards need watchdogs.

What school districts are in the “peer average?”

More and more school districts are charging for all day kindergarten and pre-k, except for low income students.

And the percentage of low income students has been increasing in many districts.

Here is where I obtained almost all data about D200 borrowing, spending, claimed enrollment, school capacity, debt:

1. go to Municipal Bond website: emma.msrb.org

2. type CUSIP number of Woodstock CUSD200 into search box: 581158

3. choose a bond listing, I chose the most recently issued bond (March 2015).

4. choose ‘Official Statements’ tab.

5. download the official statement. It’s almost 300 pages. Read them all. There is a lot of info. Go all the way to the back, you’ll see a lot of specific info about the schools.

The peer tool helpful as it’s good to know how IL compares to other states, but is there some way to override the automatic selection of peers and input user selected peers from say the Chicago metro area, Rockford metro area, etc.?

Perhaps Huntley D-158 might be a good comparison.

They are also a unit district located in McHenry county.

Enrollment is 9,436 vs 6,498.

You might want to go to ISBE’s school report card site

http://www.illinoisreportcard.com/Default.aspx which contains some relevant data by district.

If you want to pull any district’s Annual Financial Report submitted to ISBE, you can find it here:

ftp://ftpfinance.isbe.net/AFR/

Woodstock’s reporting number is: 44-063-2000-26

Huntley’s number is: 44-063-1580-22

From the report card data, a couple of things jump out from the main summary:

# of Schools for Huntley’s 9,436 kids is 8 vs Woodstock’s 6,498 students in 11 Schools.

Instructional Spending/Student for D-158: $4,797, D-200: $6,063.

If Woodstock had the same Instructional Spend/Student as D-158, D-200 would save $8,226,468 per year.

The AFR data is helpful to look at the spending by each functional area.

This data shows that D-200 with 3 more schools spends more on School Admin even though D-158’s enrollment is 45% higher.

While D-158 spends about 25% more in the Trans Fund, I would’ve thought that disparity would have been MUCH higher given that:

1)D-158’s enrollment is 45% higher,

2) with the increased geographic coverage of 11 schools D-200 should have a much higher percentage of “walkers” vs “busers” (i.e. lower percentage of students requiring bus service),

3) I think D-158 has a much larger boundary footprint than D-200 which means more bus routes and longer routes, and

4) D-158 only has 1 High School (located in the middle of nowhere) which means a huge percentage of all of the high school students are required to be bused.

As to the Debt Fund, both experienced a lot of growth resulting in a lot of borrowing for new construction.

In looking at D-200’s CAFR

http://woodstockschools.org/sites/default/files/woodstockschooldistrict200/document/CompAnnualFinancialReportFY14.pdf

The Debt Service schedule on pg 38 in truly frightening.

Total debt service out to 2035 is $225,955,179!!

Current annual debt service is relatively flat at $10.4 million/year until 2022 when it skyrockets to $19.7 million and continues to grow through 2026.

One last fun fact from the CAFR indicates that as of June 30, 2014 the statutory debt limit for the District was $104,640,993 providing a legal debt margin of ($14,157,217). With 6/30/14 total debt of $125.6 million in outstanding debt, they have blown through their legal debt limit by $14.2 million.

Given that Woodstock is currently in a state where they have exceeded their legal debt cap by $14.2 million, I’m wondering what the repurcussions are for the district in order to bring the district into compliance with the law?

The debt cap was borrowed to the brim (on basis of a well-marketed 2006 referendum) in the years the real estate market was known to crash, but was not in technical breach because the EAV from prior years held higher evaluations.
So as EAV (denominator) fell, and debt (numerator) stayed relatively constant, the percentage rose.

So the borrowings only exceeded debt cap in subsequent years as EAV fell.

Borrowings for Fire&Safety seems excessive, having occurred twice at high amounts, but I believe there is no statutory limit for this type of debt, nor for the other specific types of debt you mentioned above. (I am fairly sure, but could be wrong, that these classifications of debt are outside and in addition to the 13.8% of EAV debt cap).

Interesting you mentioned the technology loan.

Last month or so there was a NWHerald editorial ‘thumbs up’ for D200 purchasing tablets/pads for students.

The headline for the article was something like D200 finds money in budget for tablets or notebooks for students.

In the body of the article it indicated they would be issuing yet more debt to purchase the tablets.

It stated the schools for which it would be purchasing tablets, and the net projected cost.

I looked up the enrollment at the stated middle schools on Official Statements of bonds issued by D200 in 2015.

Dividing the projected cost by the number of students affected, I found that the District intended to spend about $700 per tablet per student.

In ads at Walmart that day, the recent popular tablets ranged in price (retail) from $160-$500.

I searched NWHerald for other tech articles at local schools.

There had been a somewhat recent NWHerald article describing CL schools updated tech and issued tablets, at FAR lower cost-per-pupil.

The original ‘thumbs-up’ to D200 implied that D200 students needed internet access.

I looked on D200 website.

There is a Technology Report from 2014, of their own devise, indicating that over 96% of their student population has internet access at home.

Susan,

The Legal Debt Margin Calculation for FY14 can be found on page 136 of Woodstock’s CAFR referenced above.

The debt applicable to the limit is: General Obligation Bonds $124,700,940, Technology Loans $397,334 and Capital Leases $514,338.

So, since the leases and technology loans are subject to the statutory limit, this is why I wondered how the district could legally add new loans and leases during FY14 when they were already over the legal debt limit coming into FY14.

And, you are right that the rate of EAV decline, and therefore the statutory debt limit, is declining faster than the rate at which the district is paying off principal.

Thus the amount that they are over the debt limit continues to grow each year.

Of course, this is compounded by the fact that they continue to ADD to the debt through new technology loans and capital leases each year.

As a side note, given that the district has the cash on hand to outright purchase technology instead of lease and/or borrow, one has to wonder why the district would incur the additional interest expense by financing these purchases.

While the technology loans carry a rate of 2%, they can’t possibly be earning anywhere near that rate on that same amount of cash that is sitting in a district bank account.

That’s just more money down the drain.

And, can you think of any cogent reason why the Chairwoman of D200 school Board is reluctant ( putting it lightly) to engaging in an objection to Lakewood tif ?

Lakewood tif, the only logical place to stick low income housing for compliance with Illinois Affordable Housing Act , can predictably be expected to add 60 students total cost burden to D200 in very near future.

( all Lakewood children attend CL schools, all Lakewood property owners pay taxes to CL schools. D200 taxpayers will bear entire cost burden of new tif students, as tif EAV at present is near zero and all incremental taxes will be sent to Lakewood managers to distribute to developers).

60 students at $15000 per pupil annual cost (first year…cost per pupil per year have been rising parabolically) will add $900,000 annual cost burden to Woodstock taxpayers.

Why would the School Board Chairwoman not try to protect her District from this tax dump incursion?

I am not up to speed on the Lakewood TIF that you mentioned.

I’m not sure why they would need a TIF if they’re going to put in affordable housing developments under an IHDA program.

Those projects already get preferential tax credits and reduced property tax benefits.

See: Pedcor in Crystal Lake and Cary.

The impact on enrollment for those projects can be calculated with this table:
http://dekalbcounty.org/PDF_INTERNET/Zoning/TableEstdPopnPerUnit.pdf

Based on the number and size of apartments/townhomes/etc, this table estimates the incremental number of students coming into a school district.

For those incremental students, do not use the district’s average cost per student to determine its financial affect on the district.

Most of that number represents fixed costs.

As to the chairwoman’s lack of interest in objecting to the TIF district (assuming its for affordable housing), my guess is that since she is running a district that is woefully under-utilized, adding to enrollment would help fill up schools that have siginificant excess capacity today.

Of course, there is an inherent financial gamble that since there would be no incremental property tax revenue coming into the district from a TIF-based affordable housing development, she must be hoping that whatever incremental State Aid the district receives for those new students offsets whatever incremental expenses the district incurs to teach those new students.

Which is probably a big gamble given the state’s financial woes, pending pension cost shift to the district, and pending legislation that would reallocate current funding away from districts like D-200.

The second alternative is that she (and perhaps the rest of the board) doesn’t know what she is doing.

And given the district’s financial performance, I think there is plenty of evidence of that as well.

Imo, the Lakewood tif is intended to be operated as a for-profit tax burden shift.

Tifs last 24 years, then are ( rubber stamps) extended another 12 years.

The schoolchildren will be shifted to another district so Lakewood citizens will not suffer the property tax burden., and are less likely to object to Village officials promoting this tif.

The tif district land is a golf course and farmland, so virtually all development will be ‘tax increment’ and so virtually all property tax revenue subject to diversion from normal tax collection/distribution channels to Lakewood management control for disposition.

Yes, D200 has operated several schools at well below capacity for many years.

But we D200 taxpayers have paid the tax burden, and suffered the consequences of creating that excess capacity, and did not do so to now fill these schools with ‘non-paying customers’.

We will not placidly, obsequiously subsidize the profits of Lakewood— we would be better off to shut down schools and lower our own tax rate, and let Lakewood pay for the education costs engendered by their tif by redistricting the tif into the school districts attended by Lakewood children.

If the remaining parcels of developable land in D200 are filled with tifs ( and Lakewood tif ensures that this will be the case; what idiot developer will not now insist on public money giveaways when they have to compete with tif developments given public money giveaways?):

We are at higher than 4% tax rate now, and this tif will raise the tax burden, which will further crush property values, which will further raise the tax rate, which will further crush property values…the death spiral is ensured.

I feel absolutely trapped.

I’m paying $6800/yr in property taxes for an 1867 sq ft home in District 200, just got my assessment which raised the value by 11.24% so at a minimum I’ll be paying $764/yr more and THAT’s if they don’t raise the rates.

Who the heck would want to buy a house with that kind of tax rate?