District 65 Free Lunch Program for Administrators - $139,403 in Catering
Despite Massive Short falls last year, District 65 continues to bleed money
I wrote about this topic last year, documenting that District 65 spent more than $112,817 on food for administrators. Back then, roughly $18 per student paid for lunches and meeting expenses for administrators, including a fancy steak dinner in Los Angeles for Dr. Horton.
The end of the 2024 fiscal year for the District has passed, so we can now add up all the expenses. This year, District 65 started including expenses from the purchasing card in their monthly reports and you can see the raw line item here in my 2024 Spreadsheet, where I digitize all the reports. The purchasing card is limited to a handful of administrators, including the Superintendent.
I’m sad to report that the issue has only gotten worse. According to my math, District 65 spent around $139,403 alone on catered lunches and meeting expenses for administrators from July 2023 to June 2024.
I have spoken with dozens of teachers around District 65 - to date, I’ve heard of almost no catered food for education staff, except for some Panera that was served during visits by the Board and Administration. As far as I am aware, almost every other expense is related to administrative catering, particularly the P-Card expenses, which are labeled as “Meeting Expenses” in the financial reports.
You can view my compiled list of food expenses below. I’ve separated the expenses that arrive via the bills versus those charged against the District’s Purchasing Card.
Monday Meeting on $10m Budget Deficit
On Monday the Board is having a meeting to address the surprise $10 million dollar budget shortfall. It’s been kind of a mystery where the shortfall is coming from, because if you look at the budgets for 2023-24, there are pretty large budgets for things like special education and transportation.
Since they did close out the year and post the final numbers comparing the 2023-24 expenses versus budgets, we can take a look. You can view the document here.
I can’t quite figure out how to back into the overall deficit number, mostly because I don’t have a good sense of how to handle capital costs and fund transfers. But you can look at the individual line items to see where District 65 missed the budget. The biggest ones are related to special education and a $2.8 million dollar budget miss on temp services. In addition, the District overspent on private schools and taxis, which my understanding is partially related to District 65’s new discipline policies.
If you know anything about the temp agency stuff, please leave a comment or email me at tom@foiagras.com.
What would you rather have: 1. The higher ups stuffing themselves full of Panera bread bowls or 2. A couple of reading specialist positions?
I think we would all pick hearty bread bowls.
This is yet another reason why we should all be thinking long and hard about consolidating the school districts. This is not only untenable but it’s also unethical. This is PUBLIC SCHOOL. Every dollar spent should be considered with the students in mind. These people —admin leadership and BOE —are shysters. They are running our elementary school district into the ground.
For people opposed to consolidation, it should be noted that there are hybrid forms that could be implemented… A previous board looked into this in collaboration with Northwestern at one point. It’s doable. The overwhelming majority of school districts downstate are K through 12. This model that we have in Evanston is a relic that needs to be kicked to the curb asap. We are failing our kids.