Posted in 220, Agendas, Barrington Education Association, Barrington High School, Board of Education, Deception, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Elections, Ethics, Illinois State Board of Elections, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Public Safety, School Districts, Taxes, Topics Of Interest, Unions, Video Streaming, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on January 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 6:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Items on their agenda include:
REGULAR MEETING
COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MEETING
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be live-streamed on the district YouTube channel.
Posted in 220, Agendas, Board of Education, Education, Guest Essay, OP/Ed, Property Taxes, Public Safety, School Districts on January 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »
To the Editor:
I am compelled to share my ongoing concerns about Barrington 220’s leadership, which I believe has prioritized performative gestures and social initiatives over addressing the actionable and critical issues that directly affect students, parents, and the community at large.
On two separate occasions—during fugitive search incidents in South Barrington and Lake Barrington—the district failed to communicate timely updates to parents regarding the safety and whereabouts of our children. Despite the clear urgency of these situations, there were no communication protocols in place to inform parents whether their children were being picked up or released safely. As a parent, I reached out via email to the superintendent and board members, only to be met with complete silence. This lack of acknowledgment during a crisis is both alarming and unacceptable.
When I raised concerns about safety communication failures, staff behavior, and a dismissive culture within the district, the responses I received ranged from deflection to outright avoidance. For instance, instead of addressing these issues directly, I was provided with a canned response about “communication protocols” that ironically highlighted the very absence of such protocols when they were most needed. When I finally received a phone call from the superintendent, it was not to address the concerns meaningfully but to dismiss my points. When I respectfully pushed back and called out the lack of empathy and action, the conversation was abruptly ended, further illustrating the unwillingness to engage with real feedback.
The district continues to release newsletters and emails promoting its commitment to inclusion and transparency, yet these claims ring hollow in practice. For example, a recent email about support for immigrant families seemed like a political and social gesture rather than a response to any pressing concerns raised by the community. As an immigrant myself, I found it baffling that the district would prioritize such performative messaging while ignoring actionable concerns about public safety and the dismissive treatment of parents by staff.
The underlying issue appears to be a leadership culture that deflects responsibility, avoids accountability, and focuses more on optics than substance. Parents are expected to accept these empty gestures as progress while genuine feedback is dismissed or ignored. Transparency should not be limited to carefully curated initiatives and newsletters—it must extend to meaningful engagement with parents, acknowledgment of mistakes, and a commitment to improvement.
As parents, we all want the same for our children: a safe environment and a quality education. We are not asking for favors—we are asking for accountability, responsiveness, and genuine leadership from those entrusted with running our schools. It is time for Barrington 220 to stop hiding behind a façade of inclusion and transparency and start addressing the real issues raised by the families they serve.
I hope that sharing my experiences will encourage the district to reevaluate its priorities and foster meaningful dialogue with parents. I also hope this resonates with others in the community who may feel similarly unheard.
Sincerely,
Sam Mehic
Posted in 220, Agendas, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, District 220 referendum, Elections, Ethics, His Master's Voice, Immigration, Open Meetings Act, Organizations, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, Unions, Video Streaming, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on January 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 6:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Items on their agenda include:
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be live-streamed on the district YouTube channel.
Posted in 220, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Pension Funding, Politics, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »
“At our Dec. 17 meeting, the Board approved the district’s share of the local property taxes for 2025. Barrington 220 collects property taxes from Cook, Kane, Lake and McHenry Counties, and property taxes account for approximately 80% of the district’s annual operating revenues. While the district expects to receive an overall levy increase of 4.5% compared to last year, it has requested a 5% increase in the event new construction costs are higher than expected. This includes the capped funds and debt service obligations.
Based on projections, the total expected tax revenue to be collected in 2025 is $164,454,578. The Board did not issue Debt Service Extension Base (DSEB) this year; however, we still have the option to do so this fiscal year.”
Posted in 220, 300, Barrington Education Association, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Immigration, Pension Funding, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Springfield, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Peter Hancock | Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD – Public schools in Illinois have enjoyed several consecutive years of substantial increases in state funding, thanks largely to steady growth in state revenues and a new funding formula that lawmakers approved in 2018.
But whether that can continue into the upcoming fiscal year is an open question that state lawmakers will have to face when they return to the Statehouse in January.
With budget forecasters predicting flat revenue growth over the next year and continued demands for increased spending in other areas of the budget such as pension costs and health care, members of the Illinois State Board of Education were told Wednesday that they are now in a different fiscal environment.
“I do not envy anybody involved in that process because it won’t be a fun time,” Eric Noggle, revenue manager of the legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, or COGFA, told the board.
COGFA is a nonpartisan agency that provides economic and budgetary analysis to the General Assembly. It operates independently of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, or GOMB, although the two agencies are often in agreement in their general findings and analysis.
In November, GOMB issued a report projecting a $3.2 billion deficit in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2025. That was based on projections of essentially flat revenue growth of about $53.4 billion, and a 6% increase in spending due to statutorily required increases in things like pension contributions, Medicaid and state employee health care costs, and PreK-12 education.
In the current fiscal year, state spending on public schools totals just under $11 billion, or about 20% of the state’s $53 billion General Revenue Fund Budget.
Andy Krupin, right, the Illinois State Board of Education’s director of funding and disbursement, and Thomas Bazan, ISBE’s director of budget and finance, brief the board on budget issues facing the agency during a meeting Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. | Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock
Two factors are primarily responsible for the demand for increased state spending on schools. One is the 2018 funding formula, known as the Evidence-Based Funding model, that calls for annual increases of at least $350 million.
That law sets out a formula for determining what would be an “adequate” level of funding for each district based on factors such as total student enrollment, poverty rates, and the number of English language learners in the district. The adequacy target includes both state aid and money the district is able to raise on its own through local property taxes.
The law then directs that the new money each year be sent to districts that are furthest away from their adequacy target. The annual funding increases are supposed to continue until all districts reach at least 90% of their adequacy target.
But some advocates argue the state needs to increase its evidence-based funding by more than the minimum $350 million each year.
Ben Varner, chief economist for the legislative Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, along with COGFA revenue manager Eric Noggle and executive director Clayton Klenke, brief the Illinois State Board of Education on the state’s budget outlook during a board meeting Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. | Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock
“One thing that we know is that three out of four children in Illinois are still in underfunded districts. That’s more than 1 million students,” Jelani Saadiq, director of government relations for the advocacy group Advance Illinois, told the board during the public comment portion of its meeting Wednesday. “The latest school report card shows continued challenges with chronic absenteeism and lagging recovery in math. We need to set our schools up for success in addressing these challenges in the absence of federal stimulus funds by doubling down on our EBF investment moving forward.”
The other factor driving increases in public school spending is known as “mandatory categorical” spending, or MCAT, which includes such things as transportation costs, the state’s free breakfast and lunch program and the cost of educating children in foster care.
Andy Krupin, ISBE’s director of funding and disbursements, explained that the state often does not fully fund MCAT expenses and thus “prorates” the amount it reimburses districts for those expenses. The level of proration varies depending on how much the General Assembly appropriates in each category.
Based on the agency’s estimate of next year’s costs, Krupin said, the General Assembly would need to add another $142.2 million to its PreK-12 budget just to maintain the same level of proration as this year.
Combined with the $350 million increase called for under the EBF formula, that would be a total increase in PreK-12 spending of $492.2 million next year.
Read more here.
Posted in 220, Agendas, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, Deception, District 220 referendum, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Economy, Education, Elections, Ethics, His Master's Voice, Look For The Union Label, Organizations, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Real Estate, School Districts, Taxes, Transparency, Unions, Video Streaming, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 6:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Items on their agenda include:
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be live-streamed on the district YouTube channel.
Posted in 220, 300, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Illinois Policy Institute, Politics, Property Taxes, School Districts, Topics Of Interest, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A report outlining public education reform in Illinois doesn’t address a core issue facing students: reading proficiency. It also lowers standards for students and threatens to muddle the understanding of students’ progress.
By Hannah Schmid | Illinois Policy Institute
A new vision for Illinois public education has been released by eight Illinois education organizations, but it fails to address one of the core issues facing Illinois students: poor literacy.
Neither literacy nor reading specifically is mentioned a single time in the report.
The Vision 2030 report is intended to articulate what “the education community stands for and aspires to realize.” But what it reveals is the stakeholders in Illinois public schools want less rigor, less accountability and less transparency.
A few of the actions recommended by the report include calling for the state to lower proficiency benchmarks for students and switching Illinois’ current state assessments from outcome-based assessments to more holistic assessments.
Just 2 in 5 students in third through eighth grade can read at grade level on state assessments. Even fewer 11th graders met grade-level reading standards in 2024.
Here are four things you should know about the report’s failure to address literacy and recommendations which could ultimately harm students.
There is a literacy epidemic facing Illinois students, especially young Illinois learners.
Yet literacy was not mentioned once in the Vision 2030 report, authored by the Illinois Association of School Administrators, Illinois Principals Association, Illinois Association of School Boards, Illinois Association of School Business Officials, the Superintendents’ Commission for the Study of Demographics and Diversity, Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools, Illinois Alliance of Administrators of Special Education and the Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools.
Studies show third grade marks a critical literacy point for students. In Illinois, only 31% of third graders met proficiency standards on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness in spring 2024. Research shows these low levels of proficiency threaten the wellbeing of students throughout their lives.
“Students who do not ‘learn to read’ during the first three years of school experience enormous difficulty when they are subsequently asked to ‘read to learn,’” according to the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators. If a student struggles to read at grade level by the end of third grade, up to half of the printed fourth-grade curriculum is incomprehensible.
A report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation warns about the harms of a student’s inability to read effectively by the end of third grade. The research shows a student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by their reading skill at the end of third grade. By the beginning of fourth grade, students transition from learning to read to reading to learn math, social studies and the rest of the curriculum.
The foundation warns “if we don’t get dramatically more children on track as proficient readers, the United States will lose a growing and essential proportion of its human capital to poverty, and the price will be paid not only by individual children and families, but by this entire country.”
The low literacy rate among Illinois’ early learners is a core issue facing the Illinois public education system. Education organizations and lawmakers can learn from major advances in states such as Mississippi and Florida to promote meaningful literacy reform in Illinois.
Read the 3 others here.
Posted in 220, 300, Barrington Education Association, Board of Education, Chicago Tribune, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Springfield, The New Normal, Topics Of Interest, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias holds his 11-month-old daughter, Alexia, and the bill signed by Gov. JB Pritzker to prevent book bans on June 12, 2023, at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, while Pritzker applauds. | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune
By OLIVIA OLANDER and JEREMY GORNER | Chicago Tribune
Starting this year, public libraries in Illinois had a choice: adopt principles against book banning or give up state grants.
A number of school districts, many of them in deeply conservative areas of south and central Illinois, appear to have taken the latter option. Administrators at some of those districts acknowledged being concerned about giving up any measure of control on what books are allowed on their schools’ library shelves.
“I’m sure there are certain politicians that want to score political points for themselves and maybe make an issue of it,” said Keith Price, superintendent of the North Clay Community Unit 25 school district in southeast Illinois. “But we feel strongly about our local decision-making here.”
The state library grants are not large — about $850 for small districts. No district that opted out of applying for funding this year received more than $4,000 in grant money during the last fiscal year, according to state records.
Dustin Foutch, superintendent at Central Community High School District 71 in downstate Breese, said his district’s leadership didn’t feel an $850 grant was worth giving up any independence in making decisions on books.
“I think there’s a concerted effort around the state of Illinois from a lot of school boards to kind of take back a little bit of control,” Foutch said.
Book bans have been the subject of intense debate in recent years amid heightened political partisanship. Democrats on the state and national level say book bans often discriminate against the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups, while Republicans have argued that some titles need to be out of the reach of children if they contain pornography or obscene imagery.
Illinois’ library measure was pushed in early 2023 by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, whose office administers the library grants for elementary and high schools, colleges and universities and municipalities. The Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly passed the measure mostly along party lines before Gov. JB Pritzker signed it into law shortly thereafter.
The law allows the secretary of state’s office to withhold grant funding from municipal and school district libraries if they don’t adopt the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which holds that “materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
The law also gives libraries the option of developing their own written statement prohibiting the practice of “banning books or other materials within the library or library system.”
Illinois’ law received national attention during a September 2023 U.S. Senate hearing, where Republican senators including Lindsey Graham of South Carolina questioned Giannoulias about the measure’s intent and the potential for government overreach.
“Am I supposed to take over every school board in the country and veto their decisions about what books go into public schools?” Graham asked Giannoulias during the hearing.
Some 700 school districts statewide have regularly applied for state library grant funding in the last two years. Since the law took effect on Jan. 1, about 40 elementary and high school districts opted not to seek the funding from the secretary of state’s office for the current fiscal year after acquiring the grant money during the previous two years, according to state records obtained by the Tribune.
Read more here
Posted in 220, 300, Barrington Education Association, Deception, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Elections, Ethics, Illinois Policy Institute, Look For The Union Label, Politics, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
NEA has lost nearly 400,000 members since its peak in 2009. It could be because just 9% of the union’s spending is on representing teachers – with the rest on politics, administration and other union leader priorities.
By Mailee Smith | Illinois Policy Institute
The National Education Association’s own federal reports show the union is not focused on teachers.
NEA continued losing members in 2024, according to its federal report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor at the end of November. Losing 17,895 members in the 2024 fiscal year alone, the union’s membership has dropped by 395,327 education workers since its peak in 2009. That’s more than a 12% drop.
It’s no surprise, given NEA’s failure to prioritize teachers and their needs. Its federal filing revealed the following:
And while membership decreases, NEA dues increase – meaning it’s charging those members that remain more to cover its exorbitant spending.
NEA was granted a federal charter in 1906. At the time, its federally established purposes were to “elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching” and “promote the cause of education in the United States.”
But according to the union’s own reporting, those are no longer NEA’s focus. Its federal charter should be reevaluated.
Just 9% of NEA’s spending was on representing teachers
NEA spent more than $432 million in 2024. Yet not even $40 million was on “representational activities” – which should be the core purpose of the union. The rest was spent on politics, administration and other union leadership priorities.
To put this in perspective, the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance states at least 65% of a nonprofit’s total expenses should be on program activities.
While the Wise Giving Alliance evaluates spending by charities, it stands to reason NEA’s spending of just 9% on representation should be a cause for concern among members.
NEA spent over 4X as much on politics and “contributions” as it did on representing teachers in 2024
NEA spent over $39.15 million on “political activities and lobbying” in 2024, along with an additional $127.97 million on other “contributions, gifts, and grants,” which are often political in nature – such as the $500,000 the union funneled to the main super PAC supporting the Kamala Harris campaign.
That means the union spent over four times more on politics and contributions than it did on representing members. And that $167.12 million encompassed 39% of NEA’s total spending in 2024.
Read more here.
Posted in 220, Agendas, Barrington Education Association, Barrington High School, Board of Education, District 220 referendum, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Elections, Ethics, His Master's Voice, Look For The Union Label, Organizations, Pension Funding, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Taxes, Traffic, Transparency, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on December 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 6:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Items on their agenda include:
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be live-streamed on the district YouTube channel.
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