North Cook News

Two decades ago, in 1997, school leaders described the situation in Northbrook’s West Northfield District 31 as critical.

An “enrollment boom” was near and the district needed to expand-- right now.

School board members told taxpayers a $14 million tax hike would do it— that’s $21.3 million in today’s dollars.

They would use the money to remodel the district’s two schools— Field Middle School and Winkelman Elementary— and to build a brand new one; its capacity would accommodate the coming influx of students.

“Why the dickens should we build another school, there is no justification for that whatsoever” Northbrook resident and former school board member Robert Lynch, who organized the opposition, told the Chicago Tribune at the time. “It’s preposterous.”

Lynch and Northbrook taxpayers proved more than agitated-- they were prescient. 

They voted down that 1997 bond referendum in a rout, with 80 percent of the vote, 1,111 to 273. 

The student boom? 

It never came. 

West Northfield District 31 enrollment actually fell as much as ten percent over the ensuing years, from 843 in 1997 to a low of 773 in 2013.

In 2016, district attendance was 818, three percent lower than it was two decades ago, in 1997.

But an analysis by North Cook News has found that district spending has actually increased, in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, up 24 percent over the same period, to $19.02 million from $15.03 million.

The analysis comes amidst calls by the District 31 school board to hike spending-- and Northbrook property taxes-- even higher. The board increased its tax levy for this year eight percent, and is now set to vote on whether to borrow $8 million.

A public hearing on the tax hike is set for Thursday.

The money, board members say, would go to “facility improvements.”

Spending more, doing less

The District 31 board’s determination to increase spending and hike property taxes-- even though its district enrollment is flat to shrinking-- challenges Cook County's climate of taxpayer rebellion.

Last summer, Cook County taxpayer activism led to the rapid downfall of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s “Pop Tax,” leaving her with a cutting nickname-- Queen Sugar-- and once certain re-election chances, in doubt.

Nearly every major Democratic gubernatorial candidate is emphasizing property tax reform on the campaign trail, seeking to distance themselves from Cook County’s oft-maligned property assessor, Joseph Berrios, as well as culpability for Illinois’ soaring property tax bills, now the highest in the nation.

According to Blockshopper.com, the median Northbrook property tax bill rose 6.52 percent last year, from $9,128 to $9,723.

Its effective property tax rate of 2.2 percent is more than twice the national average and nearly three times the average rate in neighboring Indiana (0.87 percent), where the bill on a Northbrook median-priced home would be about $3,900.

Indiana enforces a one percent hard cap on property taxes. 

Northbrook’s median home sale price was $448,000 in 2017, up two percent from 2016 ($440,000) but still 25 percent lower than it was ten years ago ($590,885), adjusted for inflation. 

Escalating costs...

Stanley Field School cost $230,000 to build in 1964, or $1.8 million in today’s dollars. It had six classrooms and a gymnasium.

Enrollment was 531 three years later when Northbrook voters approved a $1 million ($7.3 million) bond referendum to expand the school.

That funded a major 1968 addition to Field that included “three seminar rooms, seven classrooms, a library, group lecture room and audiovisual station,” according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.

The district spent $15.7 million in local property tax dollars in 2016, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. That's up from $12.6 million in 2013. 

School performance has been middling.

Just 54 percent of District 31 students passed the statewide standardized “PARCC” examination in 2017, deeming them qualified to move on to the next grade.

That’s compared to 81 percent of neighboring Northbrook Elementary School District 27 and 77 percent of Northbrook/Glenview Elementary School District 30.