A Super Post about Firefighters, Summer Camps, Trump's Federal Cuts, and Municipal Bonds

Follow ups and corrections for everyone

D65 SACC Summer Camp Lives On

My son and I spoke last night at the Board meeting in support of retaining the District 65 summer camp at Lincoln Elementary. It’s honestly the most affordable and best camp in town for working parents and I wrote about it the other day. Last summer it was $1,800 for 8 weeks of camp which provided free breakfast, lunch, snacks, and they did a ton of activities. It’s less chaotic than the City camps and has a pickup/dropoff window of 8am to 6pm. Ideal for working parents, especially if commuting.

The Roundtable reported that the program will live to see another day;

But after several staff and parents showed up during the public comment portion of Monday’s meeting to voice support for SACC, the board decided to hold off on a vote until a later date. And, importantly, the before-and after-school care provided through SACC during the year will remain in place regardless.

I thank the board for taking some of the suggestions made seriously, including finding ways to make the program self-sustainable through fees. Even at a higher price point, this remains the best deal in town for working families.

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D65 Deficit Reduction Plan 2 Selected

The Board voted to move ahead with the Plan 2 of the SDRP. The slide is visible below;

A couple of notes;

• The transportation savings have been reduced to $2.3 million, down from the $4 million in the original proposal, written about here. It’s still about 20% of the overall transportation budget, which is more in line with my estimate.

• This plan eliminates 26 central office positions.

Turner, who is now tasked with eliminating these positions commented;

The white glove service that we used to provide, that won’t exist anymore. The ability to be quick and responsive, holding people to a 48 hour response time … is starting to dwindle off, and we have to be realistic with folks on how things are going to look going forward.

She continued, presumably alluding to the SACC Summer Program which was slated for cuts due to the lack of return on investment.

Some stuff we’ve done for twenty or thirty years, might fade away and die if it’s not giving us a return on investment.

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Firefighters Apologize

First, the Roundtable covered the apology by the firefighters, related to a story from about a week ago (oh boy, it’s only been 6 days).

“I want to set the record perfectly straight that we are not the racist, bigoted, sexist, uneducated fools as has been described and portrayed on blogs, forums and social media,” Lynch said. “When someone calls 911, I want to offer firm confidence and reassurance that we will answer that call, we will fix problems no matter how big or small, and we will have no other consideration in mind other than to make someone’s life better.

“We do not, nor will we ever contemplate the level of care and service people provide based upon someone’s skin color, religious or gender identity, documented status or any other personal identifier,” he said. “Our oath, which we take very seriously, is simply to save lives and protect property. There are no contingencies. There are no asterisks on that oath.”

I appreciate the shout out and think the apology is reasonable.

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D65 Federal Funding in Trouble?

In my post advocating that District 65 hold a referendum this Spring (it’s too late now), one of the reasons I cited was the uncertainty regarding federal funding. In particular, my concern was the specific promise that Elon Musk made regarding impoundment of federal funds for education.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that essentially virtually all federal funding is paused.

The memo said that agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” the memo said. The memo refers to programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as Democratic climate-related initiatives.

District 65 receives about 6% of their overall funding from the Federal Government, most of which goes towards homeless and special education. This is around $10 million dollars.

Even if the Federal Government resumed payments, it’s unclear whether District 65 will receive retaliatory funding cuts due to curriculum such as Equity Week. In my prior story on the referendum, there were some comments suggesting I was fear mongering with relation to Trump - but things do seem to be moving in this direction. For instance, the University of Chicago suspended purchases made with federally funded projects this morning.

By not at least considering a referendum, we’ve removed our own optionality on this front.

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Correction on Municipal Bonds

In this story, I incorrectly reported that the District was going to use a $21.5 million bond towards the lease certificate. This is false. There will be one year of payments made on the lease certificate with bond funding (about $3.25 million).

The rest of the bond issuance is related to refunding prior bonds. So lease certificate payments for the Foster School in calendar year 2026 and beyond will come from operating funds as before.

In addition, the Board authorized additional financing, which will provide $3.425 million working cash bonds. The District provided more detail below, which I have included verbatim.

We wanted to send over some clarifying information re: your article on this week's board meeting. The administration did not present an option to refinance the lease certificates at the January 13 Committee of the Whole Meeting. What was presented was:

• Debt-Service Extension Base (DSEB) Financing - the Board authorized the issuance of $6.5 million of working cash bonds that fit into the district's debt-service extension base (DSEB) in June 2023. The structure of this authorization called for two separate bond sales. The first sale occurred in September 2023 in the amount of $3.075 million. The issuance of $3.425 million in DSEB bonds now is simply issuing the balance of bonding authority granted by the Board in 2023. The bonding authority is good through 2026. As part of the district's financial stabilization efforts, these funds will be used to make the interest payment on the lease certificates in June 2025, and the principal and interest payment on the lease certificates in December 2025. This strategy is recommended to preserve as much fund balance as possible as we continue structural deficit reduction efforts.

• Refunding of 2014 and 2015 Bonds - this is essentially refinancing these bond issues and is projected to yield about $2.2 million in savings.

We want to be certain that accurate information regarding this financial matter is in the community and avoid any confusion. Attached is the presentation from the District's municipal advisor PMA.

Also, here's the public hearing information from June 2023 and the presentation from Raymond James from April 2023.

I thank them for this comment, I really want to get this stuff right but even for me, the phrase Debt-Service Extension Base (DSEB) makes my eyes glaze over!