By: Diane Benjamin
Community meetings by Unit 5: https://blnnews.com/2022/04/14/unit-5-community-meetings/
Board President Amy Roser tearfully explains why the District needs more of your money in this video. She claims they have deficits of $13 million which will grow to $26 million in 5 years. She doesn’t mention how it will double in a short time.
Things Unit 5 needs to explain before a tax referendum is on the ballot:
1)
Unit 5 enrollment is dropping: https://blnnews.com/2022/03/04/unit-5-enrollment-is-decreasing/
At the School Board meeting last night claims were made about schools bursting at the seams. Normal Community is adding 4 portable classrooms, nobody asked if space is available at Normal West.
From 2018 to 2021 enrollment dropped over 1000 students. At 25 kids per classroom, Unit 5 should have 40 empty rooms and 40 fewer teachers. Do they?
Why are salaries a lot higher? https://blnnews.com/2022/04/01/unit-5-did-esser-funds-inflate-salaries/
2)
Rising property values will increase property tax revenue even if the tax rate remains the same. New construction is everywhere in the District, those homes will also add tax revenue. In 2026 the Uptown TIF expires that will provide Unit 5 with at least another $1.6 million a year. What affect do these have on the deficit?
3)
Board Chair Amy Roser claimed Unit 5 hasn’t had a significant tax increase for the Education Fund since the 80’s. Unit 5 plays the same FUND game all other levels of government do. Gas taxes are used for roads when before those taxes existed roads were funded from taxes people already pay. It’s a magic act to tax you more.
4)
Your property tax bill doesn’t say what fund Unit 5 is putting your taxes in. A 12.25% increase since 2018 needs explained. Where did that money go? Where did the ESSER money go? Wasn’t ESSER suppose to help kids catch up? None of ESSER reduced the deficit in the Education fund?
Tax rate payable in 2021: $5.647040 (5.44552% increase)
Tax rate payable in 2020: $5.355410 (.682674% decrease)
Tax rate payable in 2019: $5.391970 ( 7.06638% increase)
Tax rate payable in 2018: $5.036100 (.425131% increase)
Tax rate payable in 2017: $5.014690
5)
Below are Property taxes collected by year. In 5 years tax receipts increased 16.21% while enrollment decreased 8.25%. Unit 5 needs to explain where this money went.
2021 Total Tax Revenue $127,301,654.93 PDF page 25 https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/21098/District-1—100?bidId=
2020 Total Tax Revenue $120,281,141.23 PDF page 23
https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/19713/Settlement-Sheet-001—100?bidId=
2019 Total Tax Revenue $119,980,100.14 PDF page 25
https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/17048/Settlement-Sheet-001—100?bidId=
2018 Total Tax Revenue $110,399,516.85 PDF page 25
https://il-mcleancounty2.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/14545/Settlement-Sheet-001—100?bidId=
2017 Total Tax Revenue $109,543,709.20 PDF page 24
https://www.mcleancountyil.gov/DocumentCenter/View/10805/Settlement-Sheet-001—100?bidId=
6)
All of these numbers don’t include the $16.5 million borrowed in 2018 for the Education Fund: https://www.wjbc.com/2018/12/13/twin-city-school-boards-approve-tax-levies-as-unit-5-land-owners-will-pay-more-next-year/
They also don’t include money from the State, I don’t have those figures without more research.
Maybe what is really needed is a Board that doesn’t believe everything they are told.
A couple of other things.
What will be the effect on enrollment caused by the roll out of their Equity Action Plan? As that crashes and burns, exodus from Unit 5 will increase.
So the cost per student must be skyrocketing, but a fundamental issue is – are they turning out capable students? Their own reporting show that no they are not. The signs that they will turn academic achievement around are pointing the the opposite direction.
The Equity Action Plan is only part of the evil. The Comprehensive Sex Education passed into law in Illinois is tucked with the so-called Social Emotional Learning. They literally want to ELIMINATE Childhood Innocence. The target is right over Childhood Innocence. This is all part of the decades long push to impose Marxism in our public schools. They are coming after our children like a freight train. They want them indoctrinated and brainwashed, mind, body and soul.
Agree Fedup but Unit 5’s “Equity Action” also includes the crazy idea that the oppressed (who must get favored treatment and status) include the sexually confused among many, many other categories. And all students are given identities, entered into the database, their grades monitored and the mythical conclusion is that if not for being oppressed they would get much better grades.
Below is a list of the “identities” used in the Unit 5’s Equity Audit as shown in the Glossary of Terms.
These identities and mixtures of identities (called intersectionality) are what every student and teacher are given in the minds of the Equity Rulers and are what each person must identify within themselves and the act accordingly.-
They are identities that they say are –
“explicit or implicit, known, or unknown”
“visible or invisible”
“acknowledged or not” acknowledged
What are these people doing? Our poor children!
(straight from their document)
Cisgender
Class
White
male
heterosexual
upper class
abled-bodied
U.S. born
native English-speaker
college-educated
Christian
young
desirable in stature,
size,
appearance.
ancestry
heritage
history
geography
language
background
culture
minoritized identities
race/ethnicity
gender/gender identity
sexuality
ability
socio-economic status
age
national origin
religion/non-religious affiliation
physical attributes
education attainment
family status
Intersectionality status
oppressed
White people, or those that identify or are perceived White
Black
Indigenous and/or People of Color (BIPOC) or those that identify as BIPOC
men, or those that identify as males
women, or those that identify as female
male supremacists, also known as the patriarchy
dominant
non-dominant
light skin colored
#7. How much of the $13 million deficit is interest on the $16.5 borrowed? Which members on the current school board voted for this? Amy Rouser? Remember she wasn’t elected in 2018, she was appointed. Same with Kelly Pyle and Alan Kalitzky.
Is Rivian tax income being considered? I’m guessing the Uppity-town TIF isn’t.
Also, I wonder how much money Unit 5 would have if we had no TIF’s in B-N? TIF’s are nothing more than corporate welfare…they shouldn’t even be allowed.
The increase in property value wouldn’t have happened without the TIF. Unit 5 was only hurt by the increased value that would have happened naturally, probably minimal. Normal kept that.
Oh! The drama? Not! Starts off so sad, ends with a smile. Pathetic. Get outta town!
How much “free” covid money did they get and spend on what? That should have been gravy money to reduce their worries and need for more taxes.
$24,000,000.00
That should have plugged the $14 million hole.
They spent it on hiring an Equity Czarina. They spent it on brainwashing teachers to push their marxist agenda. They spent it on staff to push the marxist agenda. The rot that is currently happening in the schools is absolutely breathtaking.
We also need to point out and shout from the rooftops that Amy Roser cannot serve past June in the role of school board President. Not that her replacement will be any better. Probably Kelly Pyle or Alan Kalitzky. Although, and this is extremely significant, his term expires in 2023. So he will likely be doing everything I’m his power to make the unions happy by pushing for the construction of a building they don’t need AND keeping the Marxists happy who have taken over the schools with their ideology throughout every subject, corridor, website, etc.
Can hear it now “We will have to cut services, staff, extracurriculars, technology plans, admin, busing and the list goes on. Anything at the kids expense and to inflict taxpayer and parent fears. All while budgets are finagled regularly to grant raises, big salary bumps, buildings and what they always call “infrastructure”
Oh “the students wont have opportunities or the best if we don’t raise taxes”. All while actual money spent per student is minimal. Strategy- is still fear and worry. It’s manipulation of the system and decades of the same theme.
Decades of the same mantra and games.
Research is easy. Words are weapons to keep the system status quo ad money flow. It’s how unions work the system too.
1000% on point!
They have a ton of young parents now that never heard the script. Easy game
In the face of parents asking for their tax money to follow their students AWAY from public schools, we should NOT give public schools MORE tax money. ABSOLUTELY NOT!