When Brian Mendralla entered Round Lake High School as a freshman in 2002, he found dirty walls and dark, trash-filled hallways as the most visible reminder that his school district had neared financial collapse and was under state control.
“I heard Round Lake was like a scary place, not very good,” said Mendralla, now a senior.
Four years later, the school–and its parent school district–are enjoying a striking turnaround in financial health, learning climate and morale. The district still faces tremendous academic hurdles, but other financially strapped districts are taking note of its balanced budget.
As the first Illinois school district besides Chicago to enter an unusual form of state financial control, Round Lake Area School District 116, which has eight schools, provides a road map of how the intervention can work.
“Round Lake’s problem was really severe,” said Roycealee Wood, regional school superintendent for Lake County. “They have really done a good job. . . . Unfortunately, more and more school districts are in financial distress.”
The superintendent of nearby Winthrop Harbor School District 1 recently welcomed the state’s intervention after the district failed for a fifth time to raise taxes. Supt. James Tenbusch is hopeful that state oversight will allow the lifting of a property-tax cap that he believes is too low to adequately pay for the district’s schools.
Mendralla didn’t spend much time thinking about tax caps as he made his way through four years of high school. But the honor student said tangible improvements at his school have made him proud as he nears graduation Saturday.
“The school is full of good people,” he said. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
Beyond the balanced budget, students, faculty and parents credit change at the district’s only high school to an energetic new principal, Jeffrey Brierton, a former Army drill sergeant with a doctorate in history who arrived with new rules and high expectations.
Four years ago, the district couldn’t afford to provide hallway trash cans or replace lights, leading to dark, dirty public spaces. Morale was so low that many students chose to just stay home. The daily truancy rate rose to 36 percent.
Today, truancy in Round Lake High hovers at 4 percent to 5 percent. Hallways and bathrooms are clean. The lights are on.
Brierton said his first mission was to gain trust.
“That takes time,” Brierton said. “You can’t do it by words. You have to do it by showing people you don’t get punished for speaking up. It’s the hope factor.”
Hope was in short supply when Brierton arrived in 2002.
That year, the district borrowed nearly $14.5 million just to make its payroll and pay for short-term expenses. In addition, its long-term debt grew to more than $88 million. Its financial standing was so precarious, the district did not qualify for a bond rating.
The district had already imposed a salary freeze, eliminated dental benefits for its staff and cut jobs for assistant principals and teaching assistants at elementary schools, three psychologists, two social workers and a high school assistant principal.
But the district still had no long-term solution, so the Illinois General Assembly took control and created a five-member State Finance Authority to run it.
The authority, whose members were appointed by the state school superintendent, was given the power to sell bonds, negotiate with employees and raise property taxes.
The school board continued to set policy but had to adhere to financial constraints imposed by the authority and three administrators it hired, including Dennis Stonewall, chief executive officer.
“We examined every expenditure line-item in the school district within the first 45 days,” Stonewall said.
The newcomers discovered a stunning lack of basic business policies and practices, allowing problems to go unchecked for years, Stonewall said.
For example, the officials saved $850,000 per year just by putting special-education transportation out to bid. They saved nearly $250,000 on a five-year contract on copying machines. Before that, “vendors had control over the district,” he said.
The district received very little federal Title I funding for disadvantaged students, counting only 1,400 students as eligible for free or reduced lunches. After reanalyzing the enrollment, 3,900 students were found to be eligible, Stonewall said.
There had been no uniform method of counting daily attendance, he said. Once a standard methodology was put in place, the district began receiving an additional $2 million per year in state funding, he said.
Terre Ezyk, former school board president, described the self-examination as painful but necessary.
“There’s got to be a bit of ego involved,” she said. “But at the end of the day, the kids have to be educated. You don’t get a do-over in education.”
The oversight authority also suspended the local tax cap for one year, raising taxes by 17.5 percent for the 2002 levy.
At the same time the district tackled some of the more visible symptoms of its financial malaise.
It enlisted volunteers to paint hallways and classrooms, and workers refurbished lockers scarred by graffiti and time.
At the high school Brierton helped parents build a new athletic concessions stand, and trucks removed a mound of excavated dirt that had sat near the baseball field for so long that it grew vegetation.
People noticed.
“It picks up your spirit,” said Mendralla, pointing to newly painted “Home of the Panthers” lettering in the gym hallway.
“I think it’s good the state took over,” said Diana Bresemann of Round Lake, whose son, Jacob, is a sophomore. “Obviously, they weren’t doing so good on their own.”
The district has maintained a balanced budget for five years, while reducing its long-term debt to $77.5 million, said Walter Korpan, chief financial officer.
Moody’s Investors Service just awarded the district an A3 bond rating, signaling confidence that the district is back on financial track, he said.
The state will continue to oversee district finances through 2010 unless officials decide to return the reins to local leaders before that, Korpan said.
While many who work in the district are proud of the work they have done, they concede the successes will be hollow if they don’t produce academic success.
Most crucial is the outcome of the Prairie State Achievement Exam, administered to high school juniors. In 2005 only 41 percent of Round Lake’s juniors met or exceeded state standards for reading, up from 36.9 percent the previous year. Math scores decreased by 1 percentage point over the same period, to 32 percent in 2005.
The slight reading gain was not enough for the high school to get off the state’s academic watch list. Elsewhere in the district, standardized test scores have inched up as well but not enough to keep Round Lake Middle School and Ellis Elementary off the state’s early academic warning list either.
The state could impose sanctions such as forcing the district to restructure its administrative team, but for now has required only that the district submit and adhere to a two-year improvement plan.
“It’s better now, but it’s got to get better faster,” Brierton said.
State officials “want to hear you’re meeting standards,” Brierton said. “They don’t care about clean hallways.”
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lblack@tribune.com
