Funding for new DeKalb elementary school included in early 2024 budget

DeKALB – Funding for a new elementary school and staffing are among expenditures supported by the DeKalb District 428 school board and its $137.6 million tentative budget for fiscal 2023-24.

The district recently approved a $1.86 million lease-to-purchase agreement with Northern Illinois University as the latest step in a $33 million plan to turn NIU’s School of Nursing building into a new elementary school. The new elementary school building is meant to help reduce class sizes from 28 to 25 for grades K-5 and 35 to 30 for grades six through 12, as redistricting is intended to follow when budgets and facilities allow, according to school board documents.

At the district staff’s recommendation, the tentative budget was adopted in a 6-0 vote at a recent meeting. The district will hold public hearing on its fiscal 2024 budget Sept. 19 meeting. A final vote is still required before the budget is approved.

Officials said there may be changes made to the district’s spending plan between the tentative budget’s adoption and final budget approval.

Armir Doka, the district’s director of business and finance, said the district is in a good position financially speaking.

“Back in 2017, this new funding formula came in and it really touched upon many type of factors and [gave] a more boost to those districts that were financially inadequate,” Doka said. “If you look at it back in 2017, we were at 58% financial inadequacy by the state. So, we weren’t getting paid by the state as much. We are part of the Tier 1, which is the biggest bucket of funding we can take. From then on, we were at $22 million. Go all the way to this year, we are at $51 million. So, you can see the big amount of money that the state is paying us. It’s paying us on time. It’s paying us what they promised and giving us tax relief money. So, the state-evidenced based funding has been very beneficial for the district.”

However, the district moves to Tier 2 this year, officials said.

Doka pointed to the reason for the change being rising annual incomes.

“Bad news is we may not get part of the big bucket of Tiers as we call it,” Doka said. “The bigger the tier, Tier 1 has the biggest bucket of money. Tier 2 [has] a little bit less. And then, [tiers] 3 and 4 is just much considerably less.”

Doka said the district intends to see what it can do to continue extending property tax relief to taxpayers.

Under evidence-based funding, there is a provision allowing school districts with high tax rates relative to other school districts to lower property tax burden on local taxpayers with the state replacing part of foregone tax revenue, according to school board documents. Since 2019, grant money from the state has been used to abate $33.7 million.

With the new fiscal year, the district anticipates paying $3.8 million toward renovating the new elementary school, which is budgeted to cost the district $33.8 million, according to school board documents. Along with that, the district intends to pay for additional staff using Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds, which officials said must be used or the district will lose the ability to spend them.