The Indian Prairie School District 204 Board of Education unanimously voted on Aug. 19 to approve a balanced $435 million operating budget for the 2024-25 school year.
Despite the budget being roughly $12 million more than last year’s, the district is cutting eight full-time-equivalent positions from the budget, according to a presentation on the budget given to the board by Matt Shipley, the district’s chief school business official, at a meeting on July 15.
He said the cuts were needed because the district is no longer receiving roughly $4 million a year from federal pandemic-era relief funds through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, Fund.
Those cuts are down from an estimate of 10 full-time positions Shipley made in February, when he presented the board with a five-year budget forecast. According to that presentation, the loss of ESSER funds would likely mean the district would need to cut around 30 positions over the next three years.
He said at the time that the district is looking at “gradually stepping down some of those extra supports we’ve provided over the last several years, whether that is social-emotional supports, various community engagements and different supports we were able to use ESSER funds to support in our buildings,”
In July 15’s presentation, Shipley said the eight cut positions will not have a direct impact on classrooms, meaning that they are not core classroom teachers — the district is instead cutting from its support services and central office staff.
Summer and after-school programming are some of the areas hit hardest by the ending of ESSER funding, according to Shipley. He said the district is looking to apply for grants to support these services.
The newly-approved budget will also move positions around.
Shipley said in his presentation that the district will be adding six new middle school core teacher positions, which should help to reduce class sizes.
The district will also be getting 10 new certified nursing assistant positions, which Shipley said will help to support the district’s students “with unique needs.” The funds for the nursing positions will come from lowering the number of teacher assistant positions, he said.
A position was also added to help with record keeping in the special education and English language learner departments, Shipley said.
Indian Prairie School District has a number of high priority capital needs, and the 2024-25 budget sets aside $13 million for these types of projects, according to Shipley. He said that, while the district does need to spend some funds to improve its learning environments and its programming, the majority of the funds will go toward basic infrastructure.
That $13 million will also primarily help to pay for ongoing capital projects, especially those that are being worked on this summer, instead of all new projects, Shipley said.
The district needs a new source of funding to address its capital needs, according to Shipley’s presentation. He said that, if something doesn’t change, the district will need to divert funds from its educational budget starting in 2027 to pay for just the minimum work required to keep district facilities up and running.
That’s why the district is set to ask voters for a $420 million bond issue through a referendum question during November’s general election. District officials have previously said that the bonds would help the district catch up on deferred maintenance, make schools safer and make improvements to nearly every district building without a net tax increase.
The budget passed on Aug. 19 does not assume that the district will be receiving those funds.
Shipley has previously said that Indian Prairie School District has less funding per student than comparable districts, such as Naperville 203. It also has less than the state average and was determined by the state to have only 84% of the funding it needs to adequately educate its students, he previously said.
In total, the district’s 2024-25 budget shows $435,502,360 in revenue, of which the vast majority — around $338 million — comes from property taxes. The district also is expecting to receive around $24 million in other local taxes, around $58 million in total state funding and almost $15 million in federal funding.
Shipley has said that the district continues to more heavily rely on property tax to fund its schools as state funding continues to fall.
The district expects to have $435,281,080 in expenditures in the next school year. Of that amount, around $281 million is going to salaries, around $66 million to purchased services, almost $54 million to employee benefits and $15 million to supplies or materials, among other expenses.
In total, the district expects to have a fund balance of almost $170 million at the end of the 2024-25 school year.
Health insurance and transportation costs saw the most significant increases over the past year. While the overall budget increased by around 3%, health insurance costs jumped 10% while transportation costs rose by 9%.
According to Shipley’s presentation on July 15, current estimates show that the budget will have a total impact to taxpayers that is less than inflation. The current property tax rate is also the lowest it has been in the past 10 or more years, he said.
However, because of rising home prices and the quadrennial reassessment, the tax burden has shifted more toward homeowners and away from industrial and commercial properties, according to Shipley.
He said that means homeowners likely saw an increase in their property tax bill that was larger than last year’s 4.5% tax levy increase while other property owners saw less of an increase, if any at all.
Now that the 2024-25 budget has been approved, district staff are set to present the tentative levy in November with a public hearing and final approval set for December, according to Shipley’s presentation on Aug. 19.
He said that, if the $420 million bond issue is approved by voters in November, the board would need to amend the budget sometime in winter 2025.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
