Schools

D-211 Budget Balanced, Includes Raises For Administrators

The Township High School District 211 school board approved a tentative budget early this month.

approved a tentative budget with a surplus of more than $580,000.

All of the district's operational funds are in the black, including the education fund that contains expenditures such as teacher salaries. District 211's projected expenditures for the coming year will be about $228.9 million with about $229.5 million in revenue.

"One of the things that is significant is that we maintained $4 million in reductions from (last fiscal year)," Associate Superintendent Dave Torres said. "It has a favorable, compounding affect."

Find out what's happening in Palatinewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The budget picture might actually be more positive – the district budgeted $1.8 million for contingency expenses. If there are no contingency costs, the budgeted surplus would be $2.3 million.

District 211 projects finishing the 2011-12 fiscal year with a combined fund balance of more than $150 million.

Find out what's happening in Palatinewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The school district also continued its policy of using money – $3.7 million – from the working cash fund to abate a portion of property taxes used for a $50.4 million bond issue in 2006. The bottom line for taxpayers is that their tax burden for the 2006 bond issue is lessened.

As part of the budget, the district did approve raises for 65 administrators. The raises were authorized by the school board in June by a

The district also shifted to a performance-based system to determine salary increases. Torres said overall the raises were 2.6 percent on average, although some administrators received no raise and others received more than 2.6 percent. Some administrators also received salary adjustments.

Torres said the administrative cost to the district would rise from about $7.5 million to about $7.7 million.

A full breakdown of the salaries will be posted on the district's website by the end of September. The tentative budget is on the district's web site. A public hearing will be held Sept. 22.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here