Geneva school district says officials did not lie in 2007 enrollment data

The Geneva school district has released more information about why enrollment projections differed between those presented in 2006 by a consultant and those presented in 2007 in campaign literature for a referendum asking to borrow money for new schools.

And again the answers given failed to satisfy some of the district’s critics.

The document, “District 304 Responds to Claims of Impropriety,” was released via email and on the district’s website at 5:17 p.m. Tuesday. It was brought up at Tuesday night’s school board meeting by President Mark Grosso after a resident who did not know of its existence asked the board to supply more answers about the projection issue.

“As a taxpayer, I don’t want to vote for something under false conditions,” resident Mark Ferguson said.

“I hope that what we just released and published will answer your questions, Grosso said.

Projected enrollment figures on a referendum handout in 2007 were higher than those provided by a consultant in 2006. In April 2007, voters agreed to let the district borrow $80 million to build an additional elementary school and a replacement elementary school, upgrade technology, and make repairs and renovations throughout the district.

Members of Geneva Taxpayers for Accountable Controlled Spending questioned the numbers in early April. Grosso, who was not on the board in 2007, promised to look into it.

He reported back several weeks later and said it was difficult to find out because of the departures of some board members and district administrators but that it appeared the district had used the consultant’s projections plus numbers from other sources, including real estate agents and the Kane County Regional Office of Education.

He also said he didn’t think it was a good use of the district’s time and money to pursue an investigation further.

Geneva TaxFACTS pressed on, presenting a report of its own in early May.

In Tuesday’s response, the district said, “The accusation that District officials did anything deceptive is untrue.” The statement did not list an author, and Grosso did not provide names when asked who he or she was.

According to the statement, district workers spent a week looking at minutes of school board meetings from 2005, 2006 and 2007 for answers. It said they found that the district had used its own projection model “for years” before the referendum, using information from local developers, the ROE, Kane County birthrates and historical enrollment changes and used several methodologies

The district hired the demographer in 2006 to support its projections, the statement said.

The number from that report — 6,670 students — was lower than the 2007 estimate of 7,472 listed in the referendum campaign literature. The district statement says the 2006 report did not take into consideration the expected development of the large Settlements of La Fox subdivision and several other factors.

“There is no record of which individual(s) was responsible for the exact statement used in the referendum campaign literature, but it is understandable that some might call into question the discrepancy between the projections and the wording used,” the statement says.

“Nothing deceptive or unlawful was done in the process of the referendum campaign. It is understandable that the wording of the campaign literature could be considered a poor choice of words. But this misunderstanding should not erase the good planning and good intentions of the Board members and staff that did what they believed was best at the time to avoid overcrowding at the elementary level and to replace an aging building.”

TaxFACTS member Sandra Ellis said the statement was “loaded with misstatements” and that the board’s not knowing who was responsible for the figures “is not a satisfactory answer.”

Data: TaxFACTS says response is ‘loaded with misstatements’