Photo by Maria Thames, Illustration by Kevin Loumeau

In the next five to six years, the district’s reserves of money will be used up if a policy to change the current budget situation is not implemented.

It’s not common for high school students to think of a school district as a business. And it’s not their job to have to think about education through that lens (wait for college), but it’s not a bad idea for both students and parents to be aware of the recent developments in the district’s finances.

As the school board met this summer, it became increasingly evident that the current $81 million in reserves is expected to fall every year, until being completely exhausted in a time frame of five to six years.

So what are reserves and why do they matter?

Superintendent Dr. Prentiss Lea, over a phone interview, explained it like this: “It’s a rainy day account so to speak…that would be the event that there’s some catastrophe or change in federal/state funding or if we had roofs go out in the middle of the winter, any of those type of things.”

To understand why the district even has reserves in the first place, it’s important to go back to 1997, when the community approved of a referendum to raise property taxes in order to build Vernon Hills High School and the west gym at LHS. That tax increase became permanent, thus contributing towards future reserves. In addition, Dr. Lea stated that prior to to housing market crash of the mid-2000s, Libertyville experienced tremendous new growth and the district was able to capture that growth and add it to the tax rolls.

However, the referendum was almost two decades ago. What’s happened in the last few years is that expenses have risen faster than revenue is being absorbed. At the same time, the district had been using reserves to underwrite day-to-day operations — a practice they’ve pledged to end for the sake of preserving the reserves for as long as possible, according to Dr. Lea.

The complication lies in how the district can move forward in a way that extends the lifeline of the reserves without drastically impacting its job of educating young people. According to LHS principal Dr. Marina Scott, some steps were already taken in advance of this school year.

“They [the board] did ask us to bring our budget back to what we spent last year before they approved them — usually your budgets can go up with the consumer price index, but they asked us to cut back and go to what we spent last year, so I cut approximately $130,000,” remarked Dr. Scott. “We skimmed some gravy off the top in places where we budgeted but didn’t spend that money in the last couple of years.”

Aside from that, the board has floated around other ideas as well. (It’s critical to note that nothing has been voted on yet.) The district, for legal reasons, can’t raise money through a tax levy as they’re capped by the Consumer Price Index. Instead, there are other options, one of which is raising student fees. The state of Illinois limits schools from charging more than $350; Libertyville currently charges $250.

Moreover, in late September or early October, the district will be forming a committee of volunteers tasked with identifying places where the district can save money without directly impacting the quality of programs. Dr. Lea, as a hypothetical example to clarify the purpose of the committee, commented that while raising driver’s education from $190 to $350 wouldn’t generate millions of dollars, that increase, in addition to other small nudges in the budget, could raise significant revenue.

Now, to address the elephant in the room: the pool, which has no definitive status.

District 128 operates with several rolling financial plans, and one of those is a major capital projects plan. There are three current capital projects planned: constructing a new pool at LHS, building a new gym at VHHS, and repurposing the old pool at LHS — in order of priority.

While the original plan involved using reserves to pay for one, two, or maybe even all of the projects, the current situation has shifted the conversation to whether the district should move to start anything now, or simply put some or all of the projects on hold. That will be decided in future board meetings.

“The district is not running out of money tomorrow. What the board is doing, working with all of us, is trying to manage the issue,” stated Dr. Lea. “The goal is to stretch those resources out as long as we can…we believe we’ll be able to do it.”