Campus Safety and Support staff at Oak Park and River Forest High School expressed concern about potential budget cuts at the March 26 Board of Education meeting.

Antonio Lopez, a campus safety and support officer, worried about the effects that cuts could have on the safety of after-school events due to a potential decrease in overtime opportunities for staff.

“Calling other officers in to help with events and games is absolutely necessary,” Lopez said. “If the proposed budget cuts go into effect, you’ll be spreading an already thin staff in the evening even thinner.”

Carol Blackshear, another campus safety officer, emphasized that Campus Safety and Support staff go beyond keeping the building safe, also serving a family role for students.

“Students know us, they trust us and rely on us,” Blackshear said.

Campus Safety and Support staff members’ concerns originate from a directive from the Assistant Superintendent for Business Services Anthony Arbogast, asking department heads what they would cut hypothetically if they had to do a 5% budget cut for the next year.

While the budget is still in its early stages of being formed, Arbogast doesn’t envision widespread cuts this year, he said. He called the 5% directive a “pricing exercise.”

“As you [department heads] prepare your budget, if we asked you to reduce 5% how would you do it? What would you take from it?” Arbogast said. “Tell us if it is a really painful 5% or was it easy to find savings.”

This directive also stems from the Board of Education desiring for OPRF to reduce its fund balance, which is how much money OPRF has in the bank compared to its expenses, to be compliant with the fund balance policy of the board of education. It functions almost as a savings account.

“Historically, that’s lived at 75-90% in the past,” Arbogast said. “The Board of Education, three and a half years ago, decided to change their policy to say we want the district to carry between 25-50% of those expenses in fund balance, which is more aligned to best practice recommendations.”

The lower fund balance has required increased scrutiny of the budget, Arbogast said.

World history and government teacher Toni Biasiello doesn’t foresee any potential cuts hurting her, yet worries for her younger colleagues.

“I have some colleagues, who I think are great, who are not tenured and that would be upsetting if they were to have to lose their positions,” Biasiello said. “I think the people that we hired, in my department, who aren’t tenured are all fabulous.”

Science Division Head Matthew Kirkpatrick was not worried by the hypothetical 5% spending cut exercise, as he goes through the process every year to en-
sure that the science department wisely uses its money.

“Part of our responsibility is to make sure that we’re being good stewards of that budget money and constantly evaluating from year-to-year what are the things that are obsolete that we don’t need to be spending money on anymore and what are new things that are more relevant to the current or modern world of science that we should be spending money on,” Kirkpatrick said.

In the past, Kirkpatrick has found savings through switching from a subscription service for a statistical program, Graph Pad, to a free product, Jamovi, that permits students to do the same functions.

If the science department was forced to make a budget cut, day-to-day expenses would not be considered, Kirkpatrick said.

“Our biology classes a lot of times do a DNA electrophoresis or polymerase chain reaction (PCR), where they copy DNA,” Kirkpatrick said. “We would leave those things in the budget because that is a relevant application in science.”

District 200 remains in good financial standing, Arbogast said.

“This is a pretty normal budgeting exercise for districts that have lived within a fund balance policy like we have. It’s just the first time we’re going through it, so it feels new,” Arbogast said. “Anytime anything is new, it can be difficult the first time.”