CFC reviews draft fiscal‑stewardship section of board atlas, debt guidelines and dashboard plan

The Oak Park–River Forest SD 200 Community Finance Committee on June 10 reviewed a new fiscal‑stewardship preamble for the board’s Education Atlas and discussed a proposed financial dashboard and draft debt‑issuance guidelines meant to shape how the district funds capital projects going forward.

Committee members said the proposed material is intended to give board members and the public a single reference for fiscal policy, benchmarks and procedures related to capital planning and borrowing. The presenter described the Atlas addition as a “mission statement” to anchor operating and capital decisions for the board and future administrations.

The Atlas draft calls for a standing community financial advisory oversight committee that would be a board committee (not an administration committee), meet four to six times per year, and provide ongoing advice and accountability for the board. The draft lists structural requirements and suggested best practices for fiscal stewardship, and proposes an initial set of peer‑district benchmarks including operating expense per pupil, salary and benefits per pupil and five‑year growth rates.

Tony (finance staff) walked the group through a proposed minimum viable product (MVP) for a public financial dashboard: basic pie charts showing revenue sources and spending uses paired with benchmarking metrics against peer districts. He said the MVP should include operating fund balance snapshots and basic peer comparisons before adding deeper analytic layers tying spending to academic outcomes.

Tony also presented a seven‑step framework and a table that maps common reasons to issue debt to the appropriate debt instrument (for example, school building bonds, working cash, debt certificates or lease certificates). He described the table as a practical guide that lists statutory questions (referendum requirements, term limits), payback terms and implementation steps. “This walks through just the general requirements … whether it’s building bonds or working cash, debt certificates and lease certificates,” Tony said.

Committee members discussed the practical goal of using school building bonds as the preferred long‑term instrument for major capital projects, and of modeling hypothetical bond issuances so board members can see what additional debt service would look like as a share of the total tax levy. The draft Atlas includes simple Excel models and stack charts to visualize several hypothetical bond issuances alongside projected operating levy growth.

Several members said the Atlas and dashboard should explicitly tie financial benchmarks to academic outcomes — for example, showing how per‑pupil spending relates to test scores — and suggested the CFC should nominate additional metrics to include as the dashboard evolves. The presenter described the work as “crawl, walk, run”: start with a small, reliable data set and expand.

The committee asked for written feedback quickly so the Atlas could be updated for the district’s next regular board meeting. The presenter asked members to email comments by the following day if possible and said the Atlas will be updated monthly as a living document.

Ending: Committee members agreed to continue refining the dashboard, benchmark set and debt guidelines and asked staff to return with revised materials and models at future meetings.