Copyright Joliet, IL Patch
For a year, the school board was quiet on a low financial ranking. The silence was broken last week. ELMHURST, IL – For a year, Elmhurst School District 205 was in the lowest financial category in the state's eyes. That fact was ignored during its public meetings until last week. Late last month, the Illinois School Board of Education released its latest financial profile scores for school systems. District 205 was placed in the top category of "recognition," along with about 90 percent of the state's 850 districts. For a year, District 205 was in the lowest designation, "watch." It shared that distinction with only a handful of school systems, most of them in low-income areas. For three years before that, the district had received lower designations than recognition. At last week's meeting of the school board's finance committee, Joe Blomquist, assistant superintendent of finance, broke the silence about the financial profile rating. Blomquist, who started in July, said the district's rating dipped for several years because of the way it deferred tens of millions of dollars in property taxes. For accounting purposes, the infusion of the property taxes that the district received in late May was delayed until July 1, the start of the new budget year. In the state's eyes, it appeared as if the district's fund balance had plunged to an unacceptable level by June 30, Blomquist said. The district then decided to change back to the accounting method that is used by most others, he said. "We made that change just over a year ago and are now proud to say that we are back into the recognition category for our financial profile," Blomquist said. He said the previous method only works if there is an adequate fund balance. "It gave us a very low score," Blomquist said. "It made us look like we were in a financial hardship, but we were not." Board President Athena Arvanitis told Blomquist it had been hard for the board to explain the situation to the community. "I do want to thank you for so eloquently illustrating (the issue) and how I can translate this to why our ratings were where they were for one simple decision of deferral and now we are back in the highest rating," she said. Last November, the district's staff responded when Patch found that the district's rating had fallen dramatically earlier that fall. The staff pointed to the change in accounting methods. In a newsletter mailed to residents last December, District 205 said the state's preliminary review of its financial report had indicated the local school system ranked in the recognition category, which Patch was unable to confirm at the time. But the newsletter did not inform the public that the district then had the lowest designation.
