By: Diane Benjamin

How many students did Unit 5 have last year? I don’t know because the Illinois Report Card website hasn’t been updated since the 2024-2025 school year. Once again, government transparency doesn’t exist.

I do know 2 years ago the district had 12,219 students: https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/district.aspx?source=studentcharacteristics&Districtid=17064005026

I FOIA’d Unit 5 for how many they have this year. The FOIA was one day late which meant the day after the new budget was approved. Below is the response:

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Unit 5 has 224 few students than 2 years ago. In 2018 total students was 13,346. That means in just 8 years the number of students has decreased by 1351!

Have your property taxes decreased because Unit 5 is educating far fewer students?

Details WGLT reported on this year’s budget: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2026-09-17/unit-5-oks-contract-for-changes-resulting-from-enrollment-study-and-252m-budget?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Quote:

In other action, the Unit 5 school board approved the budget for the 2027 fiscal year. The budget was 3% larger than the prior year’s budget at $252.1 million.

2 years ago expenditures were $236,969,185 for 224 more students than Unit 5 has now. The budget increased 6.39% in two years to educate fewer students.

This brilliance is brought to you by a school board hand picked by the teachers union. 2 years ago there was no opposition on the ballot.

Considering running yourself?

The real tell will be when the Board passes the Levy. They set an amount they want to collect in property taxes. That number says how much property owners in the district will be charged next year. It will be higher than this year.

Below is a screen shot from the Pantagraph website:

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Don’t be deceived by “tax rate falls” propaganda. When the assessed value of properties continues to increase dramatically, the tax rate can fall even as more of your money is seized. You are still being taxed on unrealized gains, and you won’t get a refund if your property values fall.

Unit 5 will be taxing you out of the state because their needs have priority over yours. You get to pay higher Sales Tax too because voters fell for that con.