District 204 Board Candidates Discuss Budget and Finances

While class size and preparing students for the real world of the 21st century after graduation were among some of the concerns expressed by school board candidates in , it was budget cuts and the financial health of the district that dominated much of a discussion earlier this week. 

“We have to accept the fact that there is no money in Springfield and there’s not going to be any money. Illinois is going broke, it’s second to California,” candidate Tricia Tillotson said. “And no matter how many caravans to Springfield we spend, we are not going to get that money.”
The district needs to rely on “common sense and living within our means,” she said.

The district needs to stop “wasting money on bad decisions.
“Like Brach-Brodie, things like that. We spent a lot of money on bad decisions,” said Tillotson, who lives in Naperville and is serving her second year as secretary of the PTSA. “It can’t happen any more.”

Approximately 40 people attended the candidate forum at the district’s Crouse Education Center in Aurora Wednesday night. The forum was sponsored by the Indian Prairie Parents Council and the League of Women Voters. Indian Prairie serves students in portions of Naperville, Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield.

Running in the April 5 election are incumbents Curt Bradshaw and Alka Tyle, along with Lori Price, Mark Rising, and Tillotson. The five candidates are vying for three seats on the District 204 Board of Education. Longtime board member Mark Metzger, whose fifth term on the board ends in April, is not seeking re-election.

Price, who lives in Aurora and serving her fourth year as president of the Indian Prairie Special Needs PTA and member of the Indian Prairie Parents Council, sought to clarify Tillotson’s reference to last spring’s Caravan to the Capitol. With the state owing the school district millions of dollars, two buses traveled to Springfield to urge lawmakers to pay the state’s bills to the district and explain what the loss of funding would mean to students.

“We did not go there to make more money or produce money for this district. We went there to advocate for the district for the restoration of the funding,” Price said. “We knew we weren’t going to produce any money out of it, but it was simply an effort to create awareness and advocate for the district.”

The district, she said, will continue to feel the effects of the recession on its residents.

“One of the biggest issues may be just a result of the bad economy, in which we’re seeing more families move from their single family homes into apartments, just to stay in the district,” Price said. “I think we’ve already seen evidence of this—Nancy Young (Elementary School) for example—they’ve got portable classrooms they’re well over capacity. And I think the district’s going to see more of this before the economy stabilized.”

When asked what budget cuts the candidates would advocate for in light of the expected loss of tax revenue to the district, current board president Bradshaw, who was elected to the board in 2005 and lives in Naperville,
said with the district cutting about 10 percent of its budget over the year, the reductions are “past much of the fat and is getting to much of the muscle.”

“I think our focus really needs to be in finding efficiencies,” Bradshaw said.

That includes looking for ways to save money in areas that don’t impact students in a negative way, he said.

Naperville resident Tyle, who was elected to the board in 2006 and currently serves as vice president, agreed. The district should seek operational, program and staffing efficiencies in a way that minimizes the impact on the classroom, she said.

“This approach last year allowed us to not have to cut any programs. We were able to keep all the district programs going, despite cutting 10 percent,” Tyle said.

Candidate Mark Rising, who lives in Aurora and serves on the IPPC, Special Needs PTA and is an executive board member of the Parents Diversity Advisory Council, said there is still more room to trim the budget.

“I really question that we cut the fat and now we’re into the muscle. I seriously question that. As a matter of fact, it you want to know the operational efficiencies that we cut, we’ve only cut $1.6 million,” Rising said. “You’re talking out of a $288 million budget, $1.6 million... To me that’s still fat. There’s a lot more fat that we can take care of.”

Nothing is off the table, he said, “but everything needs to be dissected a lot more. We need to bring in some experts.”

Two additional District 204 candidate forums are scheduled this month:
March 9, 7 p.m. at . The forum will be held in the auditorium, and is sponsored by Indian Prairie Education Association and Indian Prairie Classified Association.

March 14, 7:30 p.m. at the . The forum is sponsored by Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation.

The March 2 forum will be rebroadcast on Wide Open West channel 6, Comcast channel 10 and . A video file will also be available at the IPPC website at http://ipsdweb.ipsd.org/IPPC/Default.aspx until the election.

Copies of the District 204 voter’s guide, which includes candidate biographies and questionnaires can be found on the IPPC website at
http://ipsdweb.ipsd.org/IPPC/Default.aspx and the League of Women Voters website at http://naperville.il.lwv.org/