The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Board vote looming for Dist. U-46 expense items

By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 is set to vote on $3.4 million in expenditure items at its upcoming meeting on Monday, Jan. 24. The items were presented on Jan. 10.
  Included is $88,000, an increase from $51,000 last year, to Alignment Collaborative for Education (ACE). U-46 will continue to be the largest individual contributor to the organization despite original promises the district taxpayers wouldn’t be funding it at all.
  ACE, comprised of business and government entities with a stated purpose to serve U-46, was founded in 2013 under former Superintendent Jose Torres. In 2016, Superintendent Tony Sanders said ACE “is all paid for through fundraising” with the exception of a “portion to kick it off.”
  Last year, ACE had $220,000 in revenue with 65 percent going towards two full-time staff, and U-46 represented 23 percent of the funding. This year’s increase request would mean 35 percent coming from U-46.
  There are no plans to stick to that original promise, and ACE could seek future increases.
  Nancy Coleman, ACE’s executive director, said “what we are running into is that we do not have program support to be in all the high schools” as the reasoning for the increase.
  Asked if this will be a one-time increase, Coleman said “with the more students that we serve, the more funding that we’re going to need,” and Peter Sikorski, ACE’s chairman, said “it really depends.”
  There are six new programs ACE wants to use the added funding for, the proposal states, including $6,000 for a freshmen experience program for Larkin and Streamwood high schools’ AVID students, $8,000 for internship preparation, $4,000 for teacher pipeline job shadowing, $7,5000 to expand dual credit at Elgin Community College, $5,000 for summer outreach and $3,000 for a youth empowerment program.
  Education fund items include $1.5 million for network switches from Sentinel Technologies, $209,808 to the Crisis Prevention Institute for training and materials and $72,500 for community engagement, surveys and communications with Creative Entourage, LLC.
  Operations and maintenance fund items include $1.2 million for lintel and window replacement at Elgin’s Ellis Middle School with Northwest Contractors, Inc., and a three-year agreement with Cintas, Inc. for annual fire alarm inspections and testing costing $67,988.
  From the nation’s taxpayers through grant funds, the district is asking for $144,750 for a consultant through Gorbold Behavioral Consulting. The proposal states: “This is a supplementary contract to the $85,000.00 approved by the Board of Education in August 2021.”