In Community Consolidated School District 89, we empower all learners to recognize and optimize their full potential.

We are passionate about our students’ success and committed to building a stronger community. Across our five schools, we have hundreds of learning spaces that are used every day to keep students safe, inspired, and educated. In our family-focused district, we all work together to ensure every single student is successful. This collaboration creates a well-balanced learning environment for our students that helps them succeed academically, socially, and emotionally. It’s working: our students achieve the highest Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) scores of all Glenbard feeder schools and rank in the top 15 percent in the nation for academic achievement.

Even while being one of the highest-performing districts, we are one of the most fiscally conservative. We ensure the public’s resources are focused on classrooms because that is where they have the greatest impact for students, teachers, and our community. Our administrative spending per student is the third-best in all of DuPage County. We made nearly $3 million in cuts from 2008 to 2018, and we continue to find savings for taxpayers through joint purchasing, grants, federal funding, and smart policies. As a result, our district spends the lowest per pupil of all Glenbard feeder schools and the fifth-lowest of all elementary districts in the county.

The biggest challenge facing us today, and for the past two years, is the COVID-19 pandemic. Keeping our students and staff healthy while keeping kids in school has been our top priority. We’ve upgraded ventilation systems, implemented key mitigation practices, and hired additional custodians and lunchroom staff. Many of these improvements will continue beyond the pandemic. 

While we stay focused on our response to the pandemic, we have not lost sight of our other major challenges.

We need schools with clean air, secure entrances, and increased accessibility. All five CCSD 89 schools are more than 50 years old. Although the buildings are well-maintained, their age creates significant infrastructure needs. Enrollment has increased 12.4 percent since 2012 and is projected to continue to rise.

We’ve tackled major challenges together in recent years. We implemented boundary changes that eased overcrowding in one building and underutilization in another. We collaborated on a responsible operating-rate increase that solved our district’s structural deficit and kept us from having to make budget cuts inside classrooms. This is what CCSD 89 is known for: working calmly and deliberately as a community to proactively overcome challenges. 

Our next challenge is addressing the growing infrastructure needs of our aging buildings. This work isn’t flashy, but it’s necessary. We must maintain our district's largest physical asset and protect the community’s investment in these buildings. We must provide our students an even safer and more comfortable place to learn and grow. We must have clean and well-circulated air so our kids stay healthy. We must make our buildings more accessible for all our students. 

While we’re doing the best we can with limited resources, we need the community's input on how to address our infrastructure challenges.

We’re stretched to the limit; much of this work has been deferred as long as possible. With current operational funds, it would take about 20 years to complete these projects. Waiting that long could create health and safety problems for our district.

Our dedication to fiscal responsibility affords us a rare opportunity to tackle this challenge while achieving property tax relief for residents. Because the district paid off a set of bonds that will expire in 2021, property taxes for district residents will already be reduced by an average of $239 per year.

The district now has a second set of bonds set to expire in the coming years. We need to consider how much of this second set of bonds to renew so we can address urgent infrastructure projects while still providing additional property-tax relief. 

In the coming months, our community will collaborate on a long-term infrastructure plan for our schools. While other districts pursue tax increases to build expensive new buildings, we will develop a fiscally responsible plan that protects our infrastructure, improves educational environments, keeps our students and teachers safe, and provides property-tax relief.