The Warren Township High School District 121 will again operate with a deficit, after the district’s Board of Education unanimously approved a budget for the 2025 fiscal year at its meeting Tuesday.
Throughout the fiscal year, which began on July 1, and will run through June 30, 2025, the district will be operating with a deficit of $9.4 million.
The district had been operating with a deficit for years before a referendum was approved in 2022 granting the district more funding through the increase of taxes. The approved referendum increased taxes by $16.67 a month, or $200 a year, for every $100,000 of a home’s fair market value.
Last fiscal year was the first the district had been operating with a surplus since the referendum passed.
The 2025 fiscal year budget includes an operating income of approximately $114.4 million, with more than $70.6 million of the income coming from local sources, like property taxes and impact fees.
The district has budgeted to spend approximately $120.8 million throughout the fiscal year.
Before the meeting began, the board held a public hearing where Christine Green, the assistant superintendent of business services and operations spoke about the budget and the school’s funding. She attributed much of the increase in expenditures to staff hires, and increasing salaries and benefits.
“As far as expenditures, we have the increases in salaries and benefits,” she said.
Over the past year, health insurance costs for the district went up by 9.3% for PPO plans, and 10.8% for HMO plans, according to Green. Dental insurance costs also went up by 6.3%.
Some of the district’s spending is also on new staff hires, and purchasing new equipment, including a golf cart and a tractor for the O’Plaine campus. The district also installed new cameras on all of its buses.
“We did have some additional staff hires, including six more security guards,” Green said. “We’re purchasing some new equipment to replace some aging equipment. We put all new cameras on the buses, and we have phase two of the roof project, which finished up this summer. And we’re looking at phase three for next summer.”
Green also said that another major expenditure for the district is a locker room addition, for which the district has budgeted $11 million, although it might not be spent within the fiscal year, she said. The district had already budgeted funding for the locker room project, and Green said the expenditure is a “planned deficit spend.”
“I’m not sure if we’re going to spend $11 million this year for the locker room,” Green said. “We haven’t finished the design yet, and we do have a process that we have to go through for bids and everything. So it’s going to take a couple of months. By the time that we break ground, we may not have $11 million that we’re spending at that point, but I budgeted for $11 million.”
