After voters rejected a school tax increase last April, Mundelein Elementary School Supt. Ray Partridge says, the district raised student fees, cut the budget and postponed building repairs–but very little has changed the bottom line.”We’re still running a deficit,” Partridge said Tuesday.
He and school board members expect to ask voters again in March for more money so District 75 can avoid further deficit spending.
“My recommendation is that we do a referendum. We need it to pass,” board member Todd Seiler said.
No decision has been made on an amount to request, but Partridge said a steering committee that began meeting last month leans toward recommending a 47-cent increase–the same rate voters shot down last spring. If it passes, the owner of a $200,000 home would pay about $297 more in taxes a year.
The board would have to approve the measure sometime in December to get it on the March ballot.
The district has about 2,200 students in four schools, all in Mundelein.
Since last April, the need has intensified for the tax increase and the estimated $1.2 million it would generate annually, Partridge said.
“If the referendum doesn’t pass this March, we’d have to reduce staff,” he said. “We’ve tried to have budget cuts in the past that didn’t affect our instruction, but now we’re out of options.”
The district has had to dip into its now non-existent reserves over the last few years, making regular budget cuts and keeping teacher salaries low for the area. It has a deficit of nearly $600,000 that will grow rapidly in the next two years without deeper cuts.
Teachers regularly leave the district, with more than half the 160-person staff departing in the last five years, most of them for higher salaries, Partridge said.
And the district’s doubling in size in the last decade has compounded the problem, creating a need for more teachers.
“We’re fine for right now. We can keep running,” Seiler said. “But down the road, we’ll be in the same financial situation everyone else is in.”
He was referring to several surrounding districts, such as Round Lake District 116, that are in worse economic shape.
Officials believe they would have passed the referendum last April if it weren’t for a contentious Mundelein mayoral race that nearly doubled voter turnout.
“The higher turnout hurt us,” Partridge said.
Even then, the referendum narrowly failed, with 1,809 voting for the tax increase and 2,155 voting against it.
The district is trying to learn from its mistakes. The steering committee started work in September this time. Last time, work started barely three months before the election.
The district also intends to focus more effort on holding neighborhood coffees and meeting people, particularly senior citizens, said board Vice President Lisa Lerner.
“We want to get out earlier and be more visible. And we want to have more of a face-to-face campaign than a yard-sign campaign this time,” Lerner said.
That approach will be even more important, Partridge said, given the economic picture.
“We’re still optimistic. We think we can get it passed,” Partridge said. “But the downside is the economy. It could hurt us.”
