Summary of 12/9/13 Board Meeting -- Tax Levy Increase Held to CPI Despite Flip Flop of Turek and Nelson

Thank you to the person who submitted a summary of last night's Board of Education Meeting as a comment to our post on the Fall Survey Comments.  We agree with everything he/she describes, so we have chosen to publish the comment as a free standing post.  After we listen again to the 4 hour 13 minute long meeting (by podcast) we might supplement this post with some choice quotes made by various participants, but for all of you who are eagerly waiting to find out what took place, please read the following:

"Ms. Vorobiev, Mr. Heneghan, Ms. Garg,and Mr. Yaeger voted last night to keep the tax levy at CPI even though the administration wanted it higher. Turek, Nelson and Clarin voted to have it higher than CPI. Keeping the tax levy at CPI won. Dr. Schuster and team did a bunch of scare tactics about what was going to be cut and how it would affect the children. Yaeger cryptically alluded to two months from now things would be different and we would not need drastic cuts.

The Administration Changes its Tune on the Recommended Tax Levy -- Ignores Board Directive to Live within Means and Only Increase Tax Levy by CPI

We have come to expect a bait and switch game from the current D181 Administration. For example the Gifted review morphed into the Advanced Learning Plan then morphed into the Learning for All Plan.  Or the minimum standard required to stay in an advanced or accelerated math level was lowered from 80% to 70% to now no percentage needed, just some number on a scale of 1 to 4. Now it appears that actions by Dr. Schuster and her "team" -- as Board Member Nelson likes to call them -- are about to have a direct negative impact on the wallets of every D181 tax payer.  As Concerned Parents we wanted to make sure that all of our readers were made aware of her most recent bait and switch as, in our opinion, it evidences that we can no longer trust that anything Dr. Schuster represents -- even to the Board of Education -- will not be flipped, switched or changed.

This time it is the annual tax levy extension that the Board of Education must approve at the December 9, 2013 Board Meeting. 

Back on September 23, 2013, during the Board Meeting at which the BOE approved the 2013-2014 Annual Budget, Dr. Schuster represented to the Board that the administration understood that the "directions" given to it by the board were that the upcoming tax levy would only be increased by "the cost of living increase," that the district must "live within our means" and that it must "balance the budget." (Click to open and then scroll to page 2 of Budget PowerPoint.) Page 7 of that PowerPoint assumed that the 2013 tax levy would at most be increased by 1.7% which was the CPI.  The rest of the PowerPoint explained how the proposed revenue would be spent in order to achieve a balanced budget.

Well guess what?  Seems that despite her representations to the board made less than 2 1/2 months ago, Dr. Schuster does not intend to comply with the Board's directive that the upcoming tax levy at most be increased by CPI or 1.7%.  Instead, on Monday night Dr. Schuster will ask the BOE to approve a 2.79% tax levy increase, a full 1.09% over what she was directed to do by the Board.  (Click to open the Administration's Tax Levy Presentation for the 12/9/13 meeting.)

In less than 2 1/2 months, the additional revenue that Dr. Schuster represented would be