Kindergarten classes in Arlington Heights Elementary District 25, like Kathy Riesing’s at Dryden Elementary School, would go to full-day beginning in August 2024 under a plan by the district that will add several new classrooms to most schools. (Joe Lewnard | Staff Photographer)
If Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs a bill requiring full-day kindergarten in all elementary and unit school districts within four years, at least nine suburban districts would be forced to comply, even if voters rejected proposals in the past.
That’s according to a Daily Herald analysis of 80 suburban districts in five counties.
The percentage statewide is similar: About 11% of elementary and unit districts statewide don’t currently have full-day kindergarten, education officials said.
And the cost of changing that would be shouldered by taxpayers in those districts.
All nine of the suburban districts without full-day kindergarten offer half-day classes. Some of the districts are in the process of making the transition to full-day after recent voter-approved — and costly — tax hikes.
Both Palatine Elementary District 15 and Arlington Heights Elementary District 25 schools will soon have full-day kindergarten no matter the outcome of the proposed legislation that was sent to Pritzker last week.
District 25 is borrowing $75 million to make additions and renovations at six of the district’s seven elementary schools to accommodate the shift. They also estimate another $1.4 million is needed annually to cover operational costs for personnel and supplies.
In the suburbs, there are five other suburban elementary districts without full-day kindergarten: Des Plaines 62, Mount Prospect 57, Prospect Heights 23, Bloomingdale 13 and Glen Ellyn 41. Two unit districts in Lake County, Barrington 220 and Wauconda 118, also are without full-day kindergarten classes.
While District 220 offers an “enrichment program” for kindergartners that allows students to remain at school all day, changes to that curriculum would be needed for it to be considered full-day kindergarten, district officials said.
“What a special ribbon-cutting ceremony this week, as community members came together to celebrate the end of Build 220 construction at the Fields of Dreams, the varsity baseball field, and the new multi-purpose turf field at BHS!
These new and improved spaces will be used by BHS and youth athletic teams, as well as physical education classes. Thank you to the Barrington 220 community for supporting the March 2020 referendum, which made this work possible, as well as the many donors who enabled the district to install wonderful enhancements to the various spaces!”
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 7:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Topics on their agenda include:
Consideration for the Board of Education to authorize the Assistant Superintendent of Business Services/CSBO to approve contracts for the procurement of natural gas and electricity and to elect and designate the price terms of such contracts. The price terms of such contracts shall not exceed the rate of forty-four cents ($0.4400) per therm for natural gas and 6.9 cents ($0.069) per kilowatt hour for electricity, and for periods not to exceed 36 months.
Consideration to Approve BHS Trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be livestreamed on the district YouTube channel.
On the recommendation of current BOE member, Erin Chan Ding, Rouse reached out via his Barrington220 issued email address to recruit Clopton to run for BOE: “As you are aware we’ve got some political craziness going on and we are anticipating some strong opposition to equity work moving forward in the district without the support of a sound board of education.”
In order to facilitate Clopton’s placement on the BOE, Rouse offered to put Clopton in contact with “people that are very interested in getting behind/supporting good candidates and putting them in contact with the right people.”
It is no secret that Rouse works closely with Jessica Green, founder of Courageous Community, an organization listed as a Community Partner on Rouse’s Equity220 website. Green hosted a “Meet the Candidate” fundraiser, exclusive to candidates Clopton, Altschuler, and Collister-Lazzari, 3 of the 7 running for BOE in the recent election. Green is also a member of the Equity Committee run by Rouse, but closed to the D220 community, as only “those who support the mission” are allowed to participate. So much for Rouse’s DEI initiative “We Belong to Each Other” ~ it clearly should come with a disclaimer: We Belong to Each Other… but only if you’re the ‘right people.’
Rouse took his support of Clopton running for BOE even further by connecting her with Melissa Atteberry. Atteberry is the current President of the Barrington Education Association (BEA), the D220 teacher’s union. Atteberry was very eager to meet with Clopton, “I would love to meet with you and learn more about your motivations, as well as goals for the district.”
Clopton will be called upon to vote on the BEA Union contract. What influence does Atteberry hold over her in that regard. We know that Chan Ding took political donations from, as well as the endorsement of, the BEA two years ago when she ran for BOE. This subjected her to much criticism. It appears from this election cycle that the BEA has found other ways to influence the BOE elections other than by making public endorsements and donations.
Rouse also took time away from his DEI work to meet Clopton for an extended lunch in Deer Park, where they apparently discussed her ability to combat the “political craziness” going on and the “strong opposition” to the equity work no one other than those deemed privileged enough by Rouse to serve on his private DEI Equity Committee Team know anything about.
Each of the meetings Rouse scheduled with Clopton were conducted on D220 time, on D220 email, and many on D220’s Zoom platform. As seen above, Rouse further orchestrated and participated in meetings between Clopton and BOE incumbent candidate Collister-Lazzari.
Collister-Lazarri and Superintendent Hunt made it very clear at the BOE meeting of September 20, 2022, that only people who “support the mission” would be welcome to participate on Rouses’s DEI Equity Team. The first Equity Committee meeting was reported on at this BOE meeting starting at 48:55, wherein Collister-Lazzari advised the meetings are “not open to the public” because, similar to the Safety & Security Committee, “there’s things that maybe the whole public shouldn’t be aware of.” When pushed as to how one might get involved, Chan Ding advised that administrators (i.e. Rouse) ask parents to be involved based on the ‘fit’ for that specific committee, to which Hunt reiterated, “you want people who support the mission of the work, obviously…” Those people are:
It is clear from these communications that we have a D220 Administrator actively seeking candidates for BOE that support his taxpayer paid position. A position that is closed off from public scrutiny and only available for his “District Equity Team” to be part of. He then puts said candidate in contact with the head of the BEA Teacher’s Union, on whose contract said candidate will soon be voting, as the BOE is currently involved in contract negotiations with the BEA. He then takes it one step further by offering to put said candidate in contact with community members that directly support his paid, closed to the public, District position.
Now, this may all be well and fine if Rouse and BEA President Atteberry offered to meet with all candidates running for BOE so they could share their goals for the District and what constitutes a “sound” BOE. However, Rouse was directly contacted by another candidate prior to the recent election, Leonard Munson, who requested a meeting with Rouse to learn more from him about the DEI programs and initiatives. Rouse refused to meet with Munson, stating his “admin team” has been advised to let D220 Superintendent Hunt know if any requests to meet are made from candidates and to refer requests to Hunt’s office as it was Hunt’s job to meet with candidates to discuss the District’s programs, “including our equity work.”
This should come as no surprise as Rouse has already decided that there are parents who are and who are not on the D220 “District Equity Team” and he has said so publicly, in BOE meetings and on his Twitter feed. Rouse clearly does not believe Munson “supports the mission” as he was denied any meeting with Rouse. Yet, the District emails indicate Rouse not only recruited Clopton, but met with her multiple times on the taxpayer’s dime. Is this Rouse’s idea of “equity”? The BOE candidates, parents and taxpayers of D220 deserve better.
Macy’s at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg is among commercial properties in Cook County’s north and northwest suburbs that have seen their property values fall in Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s latest reassessments. Kaegi assessed the Macy’s at about $4.1 million last year, down from $7.1 million in 2019. | Mark Welsh / Daily Herald
North and northwest suburban retailers, office owners and apartment landlords were apoplectic in 2019 when Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi raised property assessments on commercial properties as one of his first acts after taking office.
Though the effect was blunted through thousands of appeals to the Cook County Board of Review, many homeowners felt relief as their commercial neighbors caught the worst of the following year’s tax hikes.
Four years later, taxpayers can expect the opposite impact.
Residential valuations in five north and northwest suburban townships are 15% higher for the 2022 tax year than in 2019, the last time north Cook County was reassessed, according to new data from the Board of Review. At the same time, combined commercial and industrial valuations edged downward by 1%.
Assessments aren’t a direct stand-in for property tax bills, and there can be a wide variation in results for individual properties. But the numbers from Schaumburg, Hanover, Barrington, New Trier and Norwood Park townships — the first newly reassessed townships whose appeal results have been finalized by the Board of Review — make clear that homeowners are in for higher taxes while many commercial landlords are set to take less of a hit.
Because of the county’s delayed tax cycle, the impact of the new assessments from the 2022 tax year will show up on this year’s property tax bills. Second-installment bills due later this year will reflect the new assessments.
Barrington School District 220 hired longtime school administrator Nathaniel Rouse as the district’s first-ever director of equity, race and cultural diversity initiatives in August of 2020. Apparently, Rouse recruits Board of Education candidates HE (and presumably his union) deems to be “sound” during school hours.
Posted Tuesday by CUSD 220:
“At the May 2 Barrington 220 Board of Education meeting, the new Board was sworn into office. New Board member Diana Clopton, along with re-elected Board members Barry Altshuler and Leah Collister-Lazzari, will all serve four-year terms on the Board.
Clopton and her husband moved to the Barrington area in 2011. They have two children who attend Prairie Campus and Station Campus. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign and a MBA from Northwestern University. Clopton currently works as an Associate Marketing Director at a bio-pharmaceutical company.”
There’s no indicator quite as damning of a state’s failure to govern than the flight of its residents to other states. In Illinois’ case, the state is doubly damned as IRS migration data shows there’s not a single group of people that the state attracts more than it repels.
Everyone is leaving Illinois. Old and young, rich and poor, it doesn’t matter.
The latest data from the IRS shows Illinois lost a net 105,000 people to other states in 2020 due to out-migration. 53,000 of those leavers were the tax filers and the other 52,000 were their dependents.
Outmigration-deniers say the state’s losses are due to retirees seeking better weather. But the data shows the urge to leave is universal. Illinois lost tax filers from every age and income group in 2020.
Notably the biggest losses of residents were two that should be a big cause for concern: the prime-working-years age bracket of 26 to 35 (-13,448 filers) and the higher-income-class bracket of $100 to $200K (-12,915 filers). Illinois is losing its mobile young and its wealthy cohorts more than any other groups.
The IRS report provides hard, indisputable data on the movement of Americans between states. The department reviews tax returns annually to track when and where tax filers and their dependents move. The IRS has also broken out the ages and income brackets of filers since 2011.
This year’s report is based on tax returns filed in 2020 and 2021, covering taxpayers and their dependents who moved from one state to another between 2019 and 2020 (See appendix for changes in Wirepoints’ reporting methodology).
The District 220 Board of Education meets tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Items on their agenda include:
Approve Settlement (Abeyance) Agreement with Student A
Consideration to Approve Middle School SRO Contract
Consideration to Approve 5th Amendment to the BHS SRO Contract, and
Consideration to Approve Canvassing Completed by Cook County as a result of the April 4, 2023, School Board Election
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be livestreamed on the district YouTube channel.
The District 220 Board of Education meets this evening at 7:00 PM at the District Administration Center, 515 W. Main Street. Topics on their agenda include:
Consideration to Approve a Resolution Authorizing the Honorable Dismissal due to Reduction in Force of Part-Time or Full-Time Educational Support Staff
Consideration to Approve Sodexo Contract Renewal
Consideration to Approve Student Breakfast and Lunch Prices
Consideration to Approve Minibus Lease Extension, and
Appeal of Student Suspension (Student #505009)
A copy of the agenda can be viewed here. The meeting will be livestreamed on the district YouTube channel.
A group of conservative challengers lost in the Barrington 220 school board race, which saw only a 17% voter turnout.
Katey Baldassano, one of the challengers, said the race decided the majority on the school board. Baldassano ran on a slate with Leonard Munson and Matt Sheriff, and they were hoping to tip the scales toward a conservative majority on the board.
“It was pretty consistently a 4-3 split on pretty much every issue,” Baldassano told Lake County Gazette. “But now it will be 5-2. So much more one way. If two of the people in my slate or a different challenger that was not on my seat had won, then there could have been a shift in the majority the other way.”
Baldassano said she thinks they “had a super strong core team and a super strong group of supporters.”
“It’s hard to imagine a group of candidates that did more to meet people and get our message out there than we did,” Baldassano said. “It would be really hard to imagine that. I guess at the end of the day, just the voter turnout was pretty abysmal across the state. And I guess based on the voters, the people who voted sent a message for what they want for our community and it wasn’t what we were pitching, even though we do think that more represent the community as a whole. But if the people don’t vote, then they can’t expect change. They are going to expect more of the same. Or things to get worse and that they’re going to get what they asked for.”
Baldassano’s slate is grateful to their supporters, and they hope “that people will keep speaking out for what they especially want for their own kids.”
“Because at the end of the day, the parents are the most important thing in raising their kids,” Baldassano said. “And if we aren’t happy, then we need to advocate for what’s best for our kids because they’re the ones that are the end user of the system and they deserve a really great education. I hope that people keep fighting for that.”
