District 65's Free Lunch Program for Administrators

District 65 Spent More than $112,000 on Catered Food last year alone, more than $23k at the Grecian Kitchen, $40k at Panera and $12k worth of Paninos

Tom HaydenApril 16, 20235 min read

Edit: Folks have reached out to me to indicate that some of the expenses, in particular the Panera and Corner Bakery expenses are related to expenses for Teachers on the Wednesday School Improvement Days and are not necessarily related to Administrative costs. More to come on this later in the week.

After the events of March 17 (the school lockdown day)1, I had about 100 people email me the below screenshot. For one, it’s an epic burn, and I love a sick burn. Second, I’ve been working on a story regarding District 65 food expenses for months and this is relevant.

I aggregated all the expenses posted in the District's monthly list of bills. You can view all the raw data on this spreadsheet. Below is a summary for 2019, 2021, and 2022. I skipped 2020 because it was COVID year, and it's worth noting that part of 2021 is also a COVID year. Dr. Horton was appointed on 6/30/2020, so all spend before that is from the Dr. Goren administration.

I’ve highlighted the restaurants with >$10,000 spend in yellow.

Last year alone, District 65 administration spent $112,817 on food expenses alone. This is up 4x compared to the previous year and 10x compared to 2019. Since 2021 alone, the District has spent more than $23,000 at Grecian Kitchen, over $50,000 for breakfasts at Panera and Corner Bakery, and over $12,000 on Panino’s Pizza.

In 2022, the District spent at least $18 per student on catered food for administrators alone! If you have a child in the District, they’ve effectively purchased a couple lunches for administration.

I reached out to the District and School Board for comment more than a week ago and haven’t heard back. I would be happy to update the story if I hear from them.

The District 65 MasterCard: More Hidden Food Expenses

The District also has a corporate BMO Harris MasterCard. I FOIA’ed a single month worth of expenses on the card (March and April 2022)2. You can view a summary of the charges on Dr. Horton’s card. In that one month alone, the District spent $4,106.47 on food on Dr. Horton’s card. These numbers don’t appear in the above summary, since in the list of bills, the payee is “BMO HARRIS MASTERCARD.” What types of bills are included in the hidden MasterCard charges?

Given the MasterCard’s relative secrecy (the line items aren’t in the list of bills), I’m not even quite sure how to get the true expense amount spent on food.

Grecian Kitchen

Below is an example receipt from April 2022 obtained via FOIA which is a copy of a Grecian Kitchen receipt. In the last two years alone, the District has spent more than $23,764 on food and catering from this restaurant alone.3

The receipts, at least the ones I have seen, are usually labeled as “Mtg” and in some cases, the District is paying tax on these orders (see above). The District paying tax on orders is quite literally, giving money away.

Regarding the March 17th order, I do not know if the District ordered delivery that day, and I’m not going to spend time FOIA’ing those records. However, given the past two years of expenses at Grecian Kitchen, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Panera & Corner Bakery

When it comes to Panera, for instance, the number is so high - over $25,000 that I’m not even sure whether they have to report this to the board or not, in compliance with 105 ILCS 5/10-20.44. I’m going to inquire with the ISBE on this subject.

An example Panera order from April for 23 people costs about $361. So to spend $41,374.69 in 2022 on Panera in 2022 is the equivalent of 110 fully catered breakfast/lunches. On top of that, the District spent $15,000 on Corner Bakery during the same time period (40 fully catered breakfast/lunches). That number is just baffling to me - if this is entirely expenses related to administrators, it would essentially constitute catered breakfasts/lunches on most school days.

I’ve reached out to the District on this subject and have not heard back yet.

Comparison to 2019

I tried my best to compare the current spending to the previous era, when Dr. Goren was superintendent. I literally went through every line item in 2019 trying to find food expenses and came up pretty dry. I invite the reader to go through the 2019 expenses on this spreadsheet and find food expenses I missed. I couldn’t find any more.

Two things could be possible:

  • The Goren administration spent little money on catered food (about $10,000 in 2019)

  • The Goren administration spent money on catered food but it is entirely on the MasterCard, records that I do not have access to.

I honestly don’t have a way to do a complete accounting of this - it would be likely impossible to FOIA all the MasterCard receipts from 2019 for comparison. Either way, if it was Dr. Horton or Dr. Goren, this kind of lavish spending on food by a public organization is absolutely improper. The Board needs to reign this in. Even if the funds are budgeted, spending more than $18 per student on food for administrators alone is absolutely unacceptable. Recall, we laid off reading specialists because their hourly cost was too high!

Meanwhile, my son, the recess beat reporter, reports that the school-provided chicken nuggets have been consolidated into a single chicken strip.

1 If there was one positive to that day, it was the experience on Twitter as the angry ETHS students tweeted angrily at the EPD. Don’t deny those kids their daily McDonalds lunch!

2 I have not made this document publicly available because I am in a long drawn out argument between D65 and the IL AG regarding whether records containing student information were properly redacted. I will make this available in some future case but do not want to publish records which contain student identifying information.

3 I say “More Than” because $23k is only the amount on the list of bills and doesn’t contain hidden MasterCard expenses.