| BUILDING A BETTER DISTRICTA Movement By Citizens Demanding Transparency, Accountability, and Community Engagement for Central CUSD 301/Burlington in the State of Illinois.Building A Better District is a taxpayer-led movement and is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, the Illinois State or Kane County Regional Board of Education, nor any individual school district, or administration/Board of Education. |
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This content related to the proposed $195 million referendum on the March 19, 2024 Ballot and was based on the information available at that time. It is preserved here for the reference of the community.
THE DISTRICT PRESENTS A "FORECAST"
The district recently placed a slide on their website that makes it appear an enrollment forecast analysis was done. Given the district just stated they do not know how they calculated their numbers for the 2016 referendum, it is interesting that the blue line seems to show "analytics" data from 2006 through 2024.
Frontline Analytics is a software package used by school districts to help determine things like staffing needs, student performance, human resources management, inventory management and more. Frontline Analytics is NOT an independent demography firm nor should it be used for facilities planning purposes. The "analytics" you see in blue in the district's graphic were numbers recently generated by district administration using their own software, not an outside organization or consultant. These numbers have not been vetted or confirmed independently. It is unknown what factors were selected to create the blue line, nor what access Frontline Analytics has to the many variables used by demography firms including live birth rates, county population decline, and potential future development. |
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SOURCE: https://central301.net/referendum-2024/enrollment-challenges/
Numbers for the years 2020 through 2022 are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to school closures and the withdrawal and later re-enrollment of students due to pandemic concerns and mask mandates and should not be used for forecast calculations.
- It is unknown why the district is using ISBE numbers in this chart. For every year on the chart except 2024, they have ACTUAL year-end numbers that show what total enrollment ended up being for that school year.
- The district reports numbers to ISBE in September at the start of each school year so the numbers shown in the chart above (with the exception of 2024) are not the final year-end totals, which the district SHOULD be using for comparing enrollment numbers. They are the numbers from the beginning of each school year.
- For example, school year 2022, the final actual year-end enrollment was 4,834. The chart above shows 4,795. Why understate enrollment by 39 students?
- Conversely, we are overstating December enrollment by 22 students.
- The December 2023 Enrollment Report from the December 18th board meeting states total enrollment for the current year is 4,909. The district's graphic shows 4,931 "as of December 2023". This would mean the district picked up 22 more students between December 18, 2023 and December 31, 2023.
- The numbers used for 2023 and 2024 make it appear we have grown by 136 students (2.8%), however, according to the official December 2023 Enrollment Report, we have grown by only 75 students (1.55%).
The district's graph is trying to tell a story of significant year-over-year growth using faulty data.
This is another example of why the Board of Education must direct the district to commission an independent enrollment forecast and facilities analysis by a professional demography firm as St. Charles/D303 recently did for their district. The district administration cannot tell us what calculations they used to ask for $22 million in 2016. We have no reason to believe their numbers to be trustworthy now.
VOTE NO TO THE REFERENDUM.
DEMAND TRANSPARENCY & ACCOUNTABILITY.
About us
We are a local group dedicated to cultivating an empowered and engaged community of parents and taxpayers to build an environment of transparency, accountability, and communication within Central Community Unified District 301 (D301), representing the unified voice of the people for a successful and sustainable future.
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