What do you see as the three biggest drivers of the current financial crisis and what controls will you put in place to prevent similar overspending in the future?
When schools are closed/consolidated (including BR) what are your plans for addressing the feelings of hurt, abandonment, and disenfranchisement of the stu…
What do you see as the three biggest drivers of the current financial crisis and what controls will you put in place to prevent similar overspending in the future?
When schools are closed/consolidated (including BR) what are your plans for addressing the feelings of hurt, abandonment, and disenfranchisement of the students, families, and teachers? In other words, how will you show that community that they are still valued members of the district worth more than the price of their school's land?
Thank you for making yourself available for questions!
I think the current financial crisis has its deep roots, as well as recent catalysts. Evanston as a town has several baked-in challenges that make the school system financially fragile, even if we are taking in a decent amount of revenue. The practice of funding schools with property taxes in a district where much of the valuable property is owned by tax-exempt organizations (Northwestern University and, to a lesser extent, all the houses of worship downtown), is putting a strain on the school system before budgets are even drawn up. Secondly, redlining the Black and minority populations into one area and keeping them economically deprived has historically deflated the property value of those neighborhoods through good old-fashioned racism, further reducing the tax-base. Furthermore, after Brown v. Board of education and the Civil Rights Act, Evanston decided to de-segregate schools through bussing, as opposed to a broader attempt to diversify the neighborhoods. This made our budget vulnerable to increases in transportation costs. If we want to talk about equity, that's where I think we have to start: the literal costs to a city and school district of maintaining a segregated town.
Then came the pandemic. Whenever I get heated about the board's spending decisions of during the pandemic I have to ask myself "how LITTLE should we have spent in an attempt to mitigate learning loss during the shelter-in-place order?" It was a novel situation, with a lot of unknown variables and served to tip an already fragile system into a spiral from which we are trying to recover. I have empathy for the school board during that time but little sympathy. They failed to rise to the occasion and I believe their decisions, or indecision in some cases made a bad situation worse.
The third cause is well-known by readers of this Substack: the financial mismanagement of the district by the Horton administration. I've gone on long enough about the other causes so I'll try to keep this short, but the record shows that superintendent Horton made bad financial decisions that not only dug the district deeper in a financial hole but strained the bonds of trust between the board, administration, educators and the community. It will take time and effort to rebuild that trust which is unfortunate because some big decisions will have to me made in the near future. Which brings us to.....
School Closures
I won't mince words. This is going to be really difficult. I wish I had an answer that would reassure the community that everything will be all right. In the absence of such an answer I have to try and prepare the community for undertaking a difficult task. The start of that preparation is making the case that the task itself is necessary. Phase 2 of the structural deficit reduction plan involved getting the administrator-to-student ratio closer to districts with similar numbers of students. Phase 3 will involve doing the same with the school-to-student ratio. A quick scan of the Illinois Report Card website shows that we have enough schools for a district with twice our student population. Looking through the Master Facilities Plan we can see that many of our schools are old and represent an ever-increasing financial liability. We cannot afford to keep all of them open.
Of course, a school is not like an old water-heater that is past its product lifespan and needs to be replaced or the repair bills will get increasingly expensive and frequent. Schools are centers of community and the people who make up that community will have to be treated with respect, not like pieces on a chessboard to be moved around to suit the needs of the player.
An important concept in personal fitness training, borrowed from the medical field, is that of client/patient agency. Making someone an active participant in their recovery, as opposed to a passive recipient of care, is key to having a patient or client adhere to a recovery/training plan. I want to carry this philosophy to the process of school closure/consolidation. It will take a lot more effort, both from the board and the community but it will be worth it.
I have two questions:
What do you see as the three biggest drivers of the current financial crisis and what controls will you put in place to prevent similar overspending in the future?
When schools are closed/consolidated (including BR) what are your plans for addressing the feelings of hurt, abandonment, and disenfranchisement of the students, families, and teachers? In other words, how will you show that community that they are still valued members of the district worth more than the price of their school's land?
Thank you for making yourself available for questions!
I think the current financial crisis has its deep roots, as well as recent catalysts. Evanston as a town has several baked-in challenges that make the school system financially fragile, even if we are taking in a decent amount of revenue. The practice of funding schools with property taxes in a district where much of the valuable property is owned by tax-exempt organizations (Northwestern University and, to a lesser extent, all the houses of worship downtown), is putting a strain on the school system before budgets are even drawn up. Secondly, redlining the Black and minority populations into one area and keeping them economically deprived has historically deflated the property value of those neighborhoods through good old-fashioned racism, further reducing the tax-base. Furthermore, after Brown v. Board of education and the Civil Rights Act, Evanston decided to de-segregate schools through bussing, as opposed to a broader attempt to diversify the neighborhoods. This made our budget vulnerable to increases in transportation costs. If we want to talk about equity, that's where I think we have to start: the literal costs to a city and school district of maintaining a segregated town.
Then came the pandemic. Whenever I get heated about the board's spending decisions of during the pandemic I have to ask myself "how LITTLE should we have spent in an attempt to mitigate learning loss during the shelter-in-place order?" It was a novel situation, with a lot of unknown variables and served to tip an already fragile system into a spiral from which we are trying to recover. I have empathy for the school board during that time but little sympathy. They failed to rise to the occasion and I believe their decisions, or indecision in some cases made a bad situation worse.
The third cause is well-known by readers of this Substack: the financial mismanagement of the district by the Horton administration. I've gone on long enough about the other causes so I'll try to keep this short, but the record shows that superintendent Horton made bad financial decisions that not only dug the district deeper in a financial hole but strained the bonds of trust between the board, administration, educators and the community. It will take time and effort to rebuild that trust which is unfortunate because some big decisions will have to me made in the near future. Which brings us to.....
School Closures
I won't mince words. This is going to be really difficult. I wish I had an answer that would reassure the community that everything will be all right. In the absence of such an answer I have to try and prepare the community for undertaking a difficult task. The start of that preparation is making the case that the task itself is necessary. Phase 2 of the structural deficit reduction plan involved getting the administrator-to-student ratio closer to districts with similar numbers of students. Phase 3 will involve doing the same with the school-to-student ratio. A quick scan of the Illinois Report Card website shows that we have enough schools for a district with twice our student population. Looking through the Master Facilities Plan we can see that many of our schools are old and represent an ever-increasing financial liability. We cannot afford to keep all of them open.
Of course, a school is not like an old water-heater that is past its product lifespan and needs to be replaced or the repair bills will get increasingly expensive and frequent. Schools are centers of community and the people who make up that community will have to be treated with respect, not like pieces on a chessboard to be moved around to suit the needs of the player.
An important concept in personal fitness training, borrowed from the medical field, is that of client/patient agency. Making someone an active participant in their recovery, as opposed to a passive recipient of care, is key to having a patient or client adhere to a recovery/training plan. I want to carry this philosophy to the process of school closure/consolidation. It will take a lot more effort, both from the board and the community but it will be worth it.
TL:DR
1. It's complicated
2. It's going to be difficult and require extra effort from both the board and the community but it will be worth it.