SUN CITY – School District 158 and Sun City have a very, very unique relationship.
The district has about 5,000 families who send children to its schools. It also has nearly 5,000 families of seniors in Sun City who do not send children to schools and who provide a special challenge to the district. (A small portion of the south end of Sun City is located in School District 300.)
While the relationship between Sun City residents and the district have been generally cordial, the situation is fragile. Many Sun Citians are tired of paying what most of them consider unreasonably high property taxes. Furthermore, some are skeptical about district communications and actions.
The district does not serve one Sun City child educationally, but it is accountable to senior residents because it uses property taxes paid by them to support one of the largest unit districts in the northwest suburban area.
This was the context for Mark Altmayer, District 158 chief financial officer, when he appeared before a meeting of the Sun City Civics committee in Drendel Ballroom on October 2. He presented an update of the district’s finances, its current 2012-13 budget, enrollment trends, and the financial challenges it faces.
While the district isn’t in serious financial trouble, Altmayer said the district’s current 2012-13 budget is expected to yield a $1.4 million deficit (expenses above revenues by that amount) by the end of the fiscal year next June. The “good news” part of this is that the district expects to have nearly $21 million in reserves at that same time.
Making a public school district’s life even worse these days is the Illinois’ deficit, which has led to lower levels of state aid to the district, slower payments of property tax income, and cancellation of special grants. Adding to all this, Altmayer said, is the economic downturn of the last four years, leading to declining revenues while costs continue to rise or remain at high levels.
The meeting attracted just 18 people, compared to the hundreds who showed up two years ago to hear district officials and county assessors discuss property tax assessments in Sun City.
“This is important information, and I’m surprised so few bothered to show up,” an attendee said.
Though small in number, the audience members asked a lot of questions, and two of them expressed opposition to the district’s transportation policies, size, debt policies, and future plans.
The district serves families in Huntley and small parts of Lake in the Hills and Algonquin. Altmayer’s presentation was largely factual, designed to inform Sun City residents about the district’s financial structure, where revenues come from, how they are spent, and a lot of statistics.
“We are a very, very big district now, both in terms of geography and numbers,” he said. “We are the second largest employer in McHenry County.”
Using a Powerpoint presentation, Altmayer ticked off these facts:
The district has about 9,300 students in grades K-12 in eight schools and an administrative building. This compares to about 2,500 in 2000. Huntley has been one of the high-growth areas in the Chicagoland area in the last decade or more.
The district’s students perform above state averages on standardized tests, with about 93 percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards on ISAT tests.
The district has 1,100 full-time employees and a higher total of about 1,500 employees when part-time and seasonal employees are added.
The district spends $1.4 million annually on custodians, $2.4 million on technology equipment, $5 million on transportation of students (some high school students live several miles from the high school campus), $2.6 million on food services, and about $60 million on teacher and staff salaries and benefits. The current 2012-13 budget projects about $79.2 million in revenues for the current fiscal year, and $80.7 million in expenses.
“We’re always comparing our finances to those of other unit districts in our area,” Altmayer said. “We spend about $8,200 per student, the lowest among similar districts in our area. That fact provides added value to the community.”
On the negative side, he said the district’s debt is high – about $229.5 million now. That is the result, he said, of constructing several new schools in the early part of the last decade, when the district was experiencing an incredible annual growth rate of up to 35 percent.
That rate slowed, but enrollment increases slightly each year now because high growth rates in kindergarten and lower grades is offsetting a small slowdown in growth rates at the high school.
“Current plans call for our debt to be paid down significantly by 2025,” he said. “With the current economic downturn, the board of education doesn’t want to pay off a lot of debt now and risk not taking care of current student needs,” Altmayer said.
Budget challenges are now many, he said: declining revenues; state budget cuts; decreased federal funding; increasing enrollment; the near-future need to upgrade aging buses, buildings, and technology; and the possibility that state legislators may decide to require school districts to pay some of the cost of retiring the pension debt. “We don’t know if that will happen, but if it does, that will cost us $3 million annually,” Altmayer said.
He ended the meeting by discussing an unexpected windfall of a $39.4 million grant applied for in 2003 that the district received from the state earlier this year.
“Huntley High School now has 2,500 students and is very crowded,” he said. “We expect that in the next few years that number will grow to 3,000. We will have to do something to expand our high school facilities. The board of education was tentatively planning to conduct a referendum to get funds for a new high school. But now, the board is tentatively planning to use some or all of this grant to build an addition on the present high school building on the Harmony campus.”
