The recent housing crisis will impact our community in many ways. Often overlooked, our schools may be greatly affected by the thousands of foreclosures in Berwyn. Concerns include a rise in homeless children, an increase in the mobility rate, increased stress level on students and families, less funding due to lower EAV and tax revenue and likely many unanticipated consequences.
This Thursday evening at 7p.m. at City Hall (6700 26th Street), the All Berwyn Committee hosts a forum to discuss the Foreclosure Crisis. I encourage all who can to attend, but especially those who are facing foreclosure. If you know of someone, a neighbor or a friend, who might need this information, please urge them to attend. There will be a Spanish translator participating. Here is the line-up of speakers:
Ruben D. Feliciano
Housing Policy Analyst & Outreach Coordinator, Latino Policy Forum
PowerPoint presentation “An Overview of the Foreclosure Crises” with information from the Center for Responsible Lending. Terms to help you, Prime Loans, Government Insured or Guaranteed Loan, Subprime Loan, Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMS), Pre-payment Penalties, Interest Only Loans, Low Doc/No Doc Loans or Lack of Stated Income Loans, (Negative Amortization Loans, Option ARMs, Deferred Interest Loan), High Debt Service-To-Income Ratio Loans, Piggyback Mortgages, Jumbo Loans, Broker Steering, Predatory Lenders, High-Risk Lender Loans, (Service Fees and High Cost of Refinancing Loans), Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITIN) and No/Low Doc Loans, and Latino Foreclosure Filings
Robert E. Dwan
Director of the Department of Community Development for the City of Berwyn will speak to the impact of the Home Foreclosure Crisis on Berwyn
Jay Reves, Attorney at Law, Riverside Law Group, LLC, 161 North Clark Street, Suite 4700, Chicago, IL 60601 will speak regarding rights of the individual in the foreclosure process. According to a judge, when a mortgage company appears in court, 80% of the time, the individual is not present and/or not represented.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
District 201 Meeting
Here is a summary of last week's District 201 School Board Meeting written by Ted Korbos. Click here to read the discussion of the meeting on Berwyntalk:
This is a summary of the District 201 board meeting that occurred on November 12, 2008. The meeting started at 8 PM and ended at 9 PM. All board members were present except for Max Flores, who yet again was missing in action.
1. Old Cicero Town Hall is new District 201 headquarters - The board voted tonight to approve a lease with the Town of Cicero to lease Old Cicero Town Hall as the new headquarters for District 201.The district will move its headquarters from its current location, which is 32nd street and 55 avenue. Board President Jeff Pesek stated the district was moving its headquarters to gain more room for all the new administrative staff that the district has hired in the last few months (Curriculum Director, Curriculum Leads, Supports Services, Business Manager, etc.)
2. Building a Freshman Center in Berwyn ? - The board approved a feasibility and funding study to see if it is possible and necessary to build a new Freshman Center building to serve the Berwyn, Stickney and Lyons communities. Acting Superintendent Senters stated that the district would be applying to the state to be put on the state's school construction list. The board president stated that Morton West has become over crowded and that alternatives need to be looked at. Alternatives that will be looked at is expanding just the cafeteria; bringing in mobile units; sending some students to Morton East; and building a new building to act as a Freshman Center. The acting superintendent stated that the Cicero Freshman Center cost $30 million dollars (a figure, I believe, is too low based on my looking at actuals spent on building the Freshman Center)
3. Teacher's contract - The board approved new contracts for the teachers, teacher assistants and clerical staff. The new teachers contract calls for an increase in salary of 3.4% over the next three years. Teacher assistants will receive an increase of 3.5% over the next 4 years and clerical staff will get a salary increase of 4% over the next 3 years. The district lawyer claimed that Lyons Township just negotiated a teacher's contract that was an 8% increase in years 1 and 2; a 5% increase in year 3 and a cost of living increase in year 4. The lawyer stated that the District 201 contract compared favorably to the LT contract.
In addition, the union agreed to increase health benefits deductables by $100 and co-payments by $250. That will save the district $350,000 per year. The union also agreed to a professional attire clause that requires teachers to wear business casual (no jeans) Monday through Thursday with jeans allowed on Friday as long as the teacher also wears Morton spirit wear. Teachers will also now be required to attend Open House (apparently in the past attendance by teachers to Open House was optional).
Finally, the union agreed to increase the length of the school day with the school day going from 8 AM to 2:35 PM. There will not be an extra period. However, each period will be increased by 5 minutes and announcements will be limited to home room time. Split classes have been eliminated and home room time has been increased by 10 minutes. The lawyer stated that the total increase in instructional time would be 45 minutes and in other time by 25 minutes. One mother who was sitting behind me said the numbers did not add up based on the start and end times.
The union also agreed to require that teachers take more instructional workshops and increase orientation time to 3 days.
4. Financials - The board approved a property tax levy for the next fiscal year of $32.1 million dollars with the actual levy expected to be $31.9 million because of PTELL (a state law that limits the increase in property taxes to the cost of living). The increase in the levy was under 5% so no public hearing was required. Revenue has been coming in slowly because of the lateness of the property tax bills this year and because the state of Illinois has been slow in providing money. In the first quarter, revenue was $9.9 million dollars (11.3% of budget) and expenditures were $14.6 million dollars (16.6% of budget). The district has also been receiving less than expected revenue from the replacement tax (an income tax that is in lieu of property taxes for certain types of corporations). In the first quarters, the replacement tax was down by $400,000. The budget is expecting the year's replacement tax to be $7 million dollars.
5. Expulsions - There were 16 expulsions tonight, with 2 being permanent expulsions and 6 of the other 14 expulsions without service at the alternative school. The acting superintendent stated that one of the expulsions was due to a charge of drug possession on school property. This is the highest number of expulsions that have occurred in quite some time and it is also the highest (8 out of 16) that I can remember where the student was expelled completely out of the district (i.e. not sent to the Alternative School). Most of the audience attendees at the board meeting appeared to be parents whose kids were getting expelled.
6. Skyward Software - The board asked the principals how the take up was of the new Skyward software that allows parents to go online via the internet and see how their child is progressing. The Morton East principal claimed that 20% of the parents had logged in at least once. The Morton West principal claimed that 25% of the parents had logged in at least once and that 15% to 20% of the parents were regular users. The district also announced the replacement of its current Food Service software with the Skyward module for tracking food service, at an additional cost of $13,000. The Food Service software tracks food usage to get re-imbursements from the federal government. The current software was crashing a lot so the district was losing information that would be used for submitting re-imbursement data to the federal government.
7. Morton West news - Morton West principal John Lucas stated that there had been an increase in parental attendance at the Parent/Teachers conference of 150 parents. A MW baseball player has received a baseball scholarship to the University of Missouri; another student was one of 30 students nationwide to participate in a program last weekend in Washington D.C.; the Morton West theatre department will be presenting Guys and Dolls on November 13th, 14th, 15th, 2oth, 21st and 22nd.
Also, an MW parent told me that the group Iraq Veterans Against the War will be coming to Morton West on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (on November 25) at 2:30 to discuss their opposition to the war in Iraq. This group picked Morton West in particular because of the protest against the War in Iraq that occurred a year ago at Morton West.
8. Student presentation - The book club at the Freshman Center gave a presentation to the board about their activities (including going to see a new movie called Twighlight and getting donations from Borders book store in Oak Brook over the holidays to expand reading at the Freshman Center). The book club also spoke about bringing in a prominent Mexican author to speak to both the student book club and an associated parent book club.
Another group called TAG (Teens Achieving Goals) talked about their activities, including food drives and gift drives for the holidays for poor families; writing letter and doing other things to support the troops in Iraq and acting as "ambassadors" at school events such as the Open House.
9. Usual business - The usual business of paying the bills and payroll; personnel hiring, firing (one person), resignations and retirements; Staff travel (Illinois Board of Education conference in Chicago); Student travel (Operation Snowball retreat in Oregon Illinois, Theatre festival in Champaign Illinois); approval of contracts (one of which was a contract to adminster the 403b retirement funds program); facility requests; and sundry other matters.
10. Next Board meeting - The next board meeting will be on December 10 at 7 PM at the Alternative School in Cicero.
This is a summary of the District 201 board meeting that occurred on November 12, 2008. The meeting started at 8 PM and ended at 9 PM. All board members were present except for Max Flores, who yet again was missing in action.
1. Old Cicero Town Hall is new District 201 headquarters - The board voted tonight to approve a lease with the Town of Cicero to lease Old Cicero Town Hall as the new headquarters for District 201.The district will move its headquarters from its current location, which is 32nd street and 55 avenue. Board President Jeff Pesek stated the district was moving its headquarters to gain more room for all the new administrative staff that the district has hired in the last few months (Curriculum Director, Curriculum Leads, Supports Services, Business Manager, etc.)
2. Building a Freshman Center in Berwyn ? - The board approved a feasibility and funding study to see if it is possible and necessary to build a new Freshman Center building to serve the Berwyn, Stickney and Lyons communities. Acting Superintendent Senters stated that the district would be applying to the state to be put on the state's school construction list. The board president stated that Morton West has become over crowded and that alternatives need to be looked at. Alternatives that will be looked at is expanding just the cafeteria; bringing in mobile units; sending some students to Morton East; and building a new building to act as a Freshman Center. The acting superintendent stated that the Cicero Freshman Center cost $30 million dollars (a figure, I believe, is too low based on my looking at actuals spent on building the Freshman Center)
3. Teacher's contract - The board approved new contracts for the teachers, teacher assistants and clerical staff. The new teachers contract calls for an increase in salary of 3.4% over the next three years. Teacher assistants will receive an increase of 3.5% over the next 4 years and clerical staff will get a salary increase of 4% over the next 3 years. The district lawyer claimed that Lyons Township just negotiated a teacher's contract that was an 8% increase in years 1 and 2; a 5% increase in year 3 and a cost of living increase in year 4. The lawyer stated that the District 201 contract compared favorably to the LT contract.
In addition, the union agreed to increase health benefits deductables by $100 and co-payments by $250. That will save the district $350,000 per year. The union also agreed to a professional attire clause that requires teachers to wear business casual (no jeans) Monday through Thursday with jeans allowed on Friday as long as the teacher also wears Morton spirit wear. Teachers will also now be required to attend Open House (apparently in the past attendance by teachers to Open House was optional).
Finally, the union agreed to increase the length of the school day with the school day going from 8 AM to 2:35 PM. There will not be an extra period. However, each period will be increased by 5 minutes and announcements will be limited to home room time. Split classes have been eliminated and home room time has been increased by 10 minutes. The lawyer stated that the total increase in instructional time would be 45 minutes and in other time by 25 minutes. One mother who was sitting behind me said the numbers did not add up based on the start and end times.
The union also agreed to require that teachers take more instructional workshops and increase orientation time to 3 days.
4. Financials - The board approved a property tax levy for the next fiscal year of $32.1 million dollars with the actual levy expected to be $31.9 million because of PTELL (a state law that limits the increase in property taxes to the cost of living). The increase in the levy was under 5% so no public hearing was required. Revenue has been coming in slowly because of the lateness of the property tax bills this year and because the state of Illinois has been slow in providing money. In the first quarter, revenue was $9.9 million dollars (11.3% of budget) and expenditures were $14.6 million dollars (16.6% of budget). The district has also been receiving less than expected revenue from the replacement tax (an income tax that is in lieu of property taxes for certain types of corporations). In the first quarters, the replacement tax was down by $400,000. The budget is expecting the year's replacement tax to be $7 million dollars.
5. Expulsions - There were 16 expulsions tonight, with 2 being permanent expulsions and 6 of the other 14 expulsions without service at the alternative school. The acting superintendent stated that one of the expulsions was due to a charge of drug possession on school property. This is the highest number of expulsions that have occurred in quite some time and it is also the highest (8 out of 16) that I can remember where the student was expelled completely out of the district (i.e. not sent to the Alternative School). Most of the audience attendees at the board meeting appeared to be parents whose kids were getting expelled.
6. Skyward Software - The board asked the principals how the take up was of the new Skyward software that allows parents to go online via the internet and see how their child is progressing. The Morton East principal claimed that 20% of the parents had logged in at least once. The Morton West principal claimed that 25% of the parents had logged in at least once and that 15% to 20% of the parents were regular users. The district also announced the replacement of its current Food Service software with the Skyward module for tracking food service, at an additional cost of $13,000. The Food Service software tracks food usage to get re-imbursements from the federal government. The current software was crashing a lot so the district was losing information that would be used for submitting re-imbursement data to the federal government.
7. Morton West news - Morton West principal John Lucas stated that there had been an increase in parental attendance at the Parent/Teachers conference of 150 parents. A MW baseball player has received a baseball scholarship to the University of Missouri; another student was one of 30 students nationwide to participate in a program last weekend in Washington D.C.; the Morton West theatre department will be presenting Guys and Dolls on November 13th, 14th, 15th, 2oth, 21st and 22nd.
Also, an MW parent told me that the group Iraq Veterans Against the War will be coming to Morton West on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (on November 25) at 2:30 to discuss their opposition to the war in Iraq. This group picked Morton West in particular because of the protest against the War in Iraq that occurred a year ago at Morton West.
8. Student presentation - The book club at the Freshman Center gave a presentation to the board about their activities (including going to see a new movie called Twighlight and getting donations from Borders book store in Oak Brook over the holidays to expand reading at the Freshman Center). The book club also spoke about bringing in a prominent Mexican author to speak to both the student book club and an associated parent book club.
Another group called TAG (Teens Achieving Goals) talked about their activities, including food drives and gift drives for the holidays for poor families; writing letter and doing other things to support the troops in Iraq and acting as "ambassadors" at school events such as the Open House.
9. Usual business - The usual business of paying the bills and payroll; personnel hiring, firing (one person), resignations and retirements; Staff travel (Illinois Board of Education conference in Chicago); Student travel (Operation Snowball retreat in Oregon Illinois, Theatre festival in Champaign Illinois); approval of contracts (one of which was a contract to adminster the 403b retirement funds program); facility requests; and sundry other matters.
10. Next Board meeting - The next board meeting will be on December 10 at 7 PM at the Alternative School in Cicero.
I Heart Berwyn
There are limited "I love Berwyn" T-shirts and Totes available for purchase at Flyright Gifts in Berwyn. These would make great gifts! They are only $10!! ALL proceeds go to support Berwyn teachers through The Berwyn Challenge at Donorschoose. You can see a photo at the blog for Flyright Gifts, a GREAT Berwyn business! Scroll down to Thursday, Oct. 30th to view (boy am I late in writing this post!). Thanks to Flyright for supporting our Fall Kids Concert!!
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Illinois releases 2008 School Report Cards
The Illinois State Board of Education released to the public the 2008 report cards this week. Report cards give valuable information about student population, academic performance and school district finances. Click here to view your school or district report card.
Freedom Students Participated in Underground Railroad Simulation
Click here to read more facts about District 100.
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