By Robert Channick
Special to the Tribune
Published April 27, 2005

Four newly elected board members of a Grayslake elementary school district who ran on an anti-tax platform have been sworn in amid concerns that a failed attempt to raise taxes this month–the fourth such failure in three years–may have crippled the cash-strapped school system.

Even with extensive program cuts and a shortened school day, both instituted this year, the district will need to borrow $1.2 million to pay the bills in May, officials said Tuesday.

About 200 residents packed the Meadowview School cafeteria Monday, with more than a dozen waiting until nearly midnight to grill the new board members about campaign promises to reinstate dropped programs without a tax increase.

“We need to know how you are going to return the quality education District 46 has known in the past without digging this district into a further hole,” said Teresa Monaghan of Grayslake, who has three children in the district’s schools.

Supt. Kurt Anderson, who is retiring in June after six years in the job, said that without an education-fund tax increase, his replacement will face a $15 million deficit by 2010.

The rapidly growing district has six schools and about 4,000 pupils from Grayslake, Third Lake, Hainesville, Lake Villa and the Round Lake area. On Monday ground was broken for a seventh school, the $34 million Madrona School in Round Lake.

The district has cut more than $5 million from programs in the last two years, officials said.

Last May the seven-member school board voted to shorten the day at its four kindergarten through 4th-grade schools and eliminated band, art, chorus, foreign language and gifted classes.

Staff reductions increased the average class size from 26 to more than 30 pupils across the district.

Officials had said the tax increase would restore many of the programs.

But school board members Mark Hannan, Kristen Coe Peek, Jill Rohrer and incumbent Karen Weinert were swept into office by opposing the increase, which was rejected by nearly 57 percent of voters.

Steve Perlstein, 39, of Grayslake was one of five pro-increase candidates defeated April 5.

“The best way to lose an election in Grayslake is to say you’re for a referendum,” said Perlstein, who has two children in the district.

“I got slaughtered.”

Perlstein was among a number of residents who challenged the new board members to back up promises that the tax increase was not needed to reinstate programs.

Outgoing board member Maureen Engelhardt, who did not run for re-election, warned her successors, “You will be held accountable to the promises that you made to this district.”

Rohrer, a Third Lake resident with two children in the district, said she received more than 30 e-mails before the meeting asking for a specific plan to restore the programs without raising taxes.

Rohrer declined to address those questions Monday, but said, “I would think that as a board, somehow you want to respond to people’s concerns.”

Several residents said they had put their homes up for sale and were moving to other school districts because the tax increase failed.

“It was a very hard decision because we have a beautiful house–it’s our dream home–but we decided our kids’ education was more important,” said Grayslake resident Bob Wasserman, 36, who has two children in the district and plans to move to Buffalo Grove.

Although a majority opposed the tax increase, supporters of the new board members were at best a silent minority at Monday’s meeting.

“I feel like there should have been more of us to stand up and say that we’re excited for what they think they can do,” said Grayslake resident Nancy Engdahl, 40, who has two children in the district.

Last year Engdahl organized a protest against the program cuts, but in April she voted against the tax increase as too costly.

“It really was a no-win for this community,” she said.

———-

rchannick@earthlink.net

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0504270267apr27,1,81364.story?coll=chi-newslocal-hed