Technically, the process for developing the River Forest School District 90 budget for the next fiscal year begins the day after the prior year ends.
“It doesn’t mean you’re working daily on it, but the heavy-duty information-gathering is after the first of the calendar year,” said Anthony Cozzi, the district’s chief operations officer, ahead of the 7 p.m. Tuesday fiscal year 2027 proposed budget public hearing at Roosevelt Middle School.
The board of education reviewed draft iterations of the proposed final budget in July and August, ahead of Tuesday’s public hearing and likely final adoption that evening.
The district anticipates a balance in its operating funds of $44.9 million by June 30, 2027, with $31.5 million in the Education Fund, $1.2 million in the Operations and Maintenance Fund, $1.9 million in the Transportation Fund and $10.4 million in the Working Cash Fund.
The district is budgeting to receive $1,081,800 in state Evidence-Based Funding for fiscal year 2027, which is merely $1,200 more than last fiscal year, but consider that District 90 is in the fourth of four tiers and 99% of that funding goes to districts in the first two tiers.
Does that seem fair? It’s a rhetorical question, Cozzi said.
“It is when you base it on your available local resources, and that’s a technical term,” he said. “We have a very high percentage of available local resources, so we are on the lowest end of the Evidence-Based Funding receipt.”
Another budgetary factor was the addition of $31,000 in Operations and Maintenance Fund expenditures in a prior budget projection due to HVAC repairs that needed to be completed at Roosevelt and Lincoln School. Some of those repairs were uncovered during preventative maintenance procedures, but some were due to an August storm that impacted 10 HVAC units at Lincoln, resulting in over $12,000 in repairs.
“On Aug. 1, there was a power outage and when it returned, there was a power surge and that damaged the motherboards for 10 individual air-conditioning units at Lincoln,” he said. “It was an unforeseen thing.”
There is no timeline yet for completion, “because we had to go straight to the manufacturer,” Cozzi said.
With board approval of a new four-year teacher contract in March, retroactive pay for teachers, who had been working without a contract since the previous August, was completed by the end of April. Cozzi said an efficiency plan proposed by former superintendent Dr. Edward Condon, and subsequently approved by the board, reduced staffing costs by over $800,000 and other costs by over $300,000, meaning the proposed fiscal year 2027 Education Fund expenditures would increase by only 1.4% compared to the prior year.
“It was a staffing plan with a reduction in the number of staff as the superintendent and the building-level administrators tried to gain efficiencies,” Cozzi said. “I guess you can say that was sharpening the pencil.”
Taken together, that means the district is in solid financial shape as the new fiscal year unfolds.
“With a lot of good financial stewardship from the board and the administration, the total Education Fund alone, that’s our biggest fund, the expenditures only went up 1.5%,” Cozzi said.
To review the draft budget, visit the district website.