Superintendent's Corner

• A final note from our Board of Education ... vote!
• Three more questions about the referendum - answered
• Women's History Month
• Nurturing Diversity - Religious Observances
• Summer Learning in D39 & Galileo at Avoca West

Dear Community Members,

Please vote by March 19th

As you likely know, the Avoca District 37 Board of Education has placed a referendum on the ballot for the municipal elections on March 19. This is the outcome of many years of work, which intensified during the last two years when three committees of around seventy community members examined the district’s financial and physical infrastructure. The final committee presented the board with three options from which we chose the option on the ballot. The proposed plan is to build a new PreK-5 school on the Marie Murphy property and make much needed improvements to Marie Murphy. The board’s intention is to sell the Avoca West property to the Glenview Park District to be used for public purposes consistent with the mission of the park district. These are substantial changes to the configuration of our public assets in an effort to secure the future of our district's schools. Your voice is important. Please vote!

The board has provided a lot of information about the process and the choice available at avoca37.org. Many community members spoke eloquently to present their opinions on the referendum at the last two Board of Education meetings. You will find recordings of these meetings on the district website as well (click here). Please invest a bit of your time to familiarize yourself with the information. Then, please vote!

Public education is one of our country’s greatest assets. Elementary public education is funded largely by local property taxes. In a district such as ours, fortunate in many respects, funding comes almost entirely from local property taxes. Thus, the schools are our responsibility. It is our collective duty to determine how best to maintain or enhance the quality of education for future generations of students, just as we have for previous ones. No matter your opinion about the referendum, this important decision needs your voice. Please vote!

There will be much more to do regardless of the outcome, and we urge you to seek us out, remain engaged and participate in those future decisions. We are grateful for and proud of our schools, and our community. We proudly serve on the Board of Education because of this. Thank you for voting.

Sincerely,

Avoca D37 Board of Education

How will this referendum possibly be more cost effective than other options?

• Everything is a matter of comparison, but when the Board examined investing only in rehabbing the buildings with small additions to Avoca West compared to building a new elementary school and rehabbing Marie Murphy, the long term savings were better indicated by the latter opportunity.
• Specifically, as a building gets older, in a number of ways it becomes harder and harder to keep up and the money invested in it becomes less efficiently invested. (see Ornstein 1990, 1994). Buildings are not like homes in this sense - their use over time is much more intense and relentless and when they are not cooled this effect is exacerbated. If the buildings were only rehabbed, then the life, safety, and maintenance work would be less efficient and would start needing to be revisited starting at the 15 year mark, meaning potentially millions of dollars of work from year 15 onward, whereas investing in a new building is more efficient and what is installed will not need to be revisited for replacement for likely 25 years.
• While solar and geothermal at a new building would create close to $100,000 per year in savings compared to today (a conservative estimate), geothermal at an existing building the age of Avoca West would not be as efficient and that building cannot sustain solar installations.
• A related financial matter is that the sale of the Avoca West property will generate revenue that can be used to shore up any potential financial headwinds in the future without generating concerns for an operating tax increase, thus saving every taxpayer from potential future increases.
• Finally, these are only the financial matters. If Avoca West were only rehabbed, it means the majority of it still will not have spaces that are designed for best practices in instruction or operations (for today let alone 20 years from now).

What are the educational and operational reasons for having both schools on one campus?

Educational reasons include but are not limited to:

• More accessible collaboration between teacher vertically, meaning more efficient preparation of students for success in a subsequent grade.
• When appropriate, actually having teachers from an upper grade actually working in a class in a lower grade as a means to better prepare students for the next grade.
• Older students mentoring younger students for both academic and social-emotional reasons.
• Acceleration opportunities. Moving a student up a grade from 5th to 6th for a whole grade or subject is rare and student maturity must be considered, but that decision is more easily made with the schools sharing a site.
• More efficient use of staff. Right now there could be multiple part-time staff when having fewer overall staff hours could be achieved if travel was not necessary.

Operational reasons include but are not limited to:

• Collaborating with only two first responder groups (Wilmette PD and Wilmette Fire Dept.) instead of four first-responder groups (Wilmette and Glenview PD, Wilmette and Glenview Fire Dept.)
• Better operational efficiency and support in custodial and maintenance services with no distance for those staff members to travel and snowplowing labor will be reduced.
• Better operational and crisis support from administrators and staff. Specifically, if Marie Murphy's principal needs to walk across the parking lot to help the Avoca West principal with a crisis, that can now be easily done. Same is true for our student services staff, like social workers and psychologists.

Doesn't the District just have another plan under wraps if the referendum fails?

There is no "Plan B" if the referendum fails. There was a very long and extensive process before the Board came to its current decision. If the referendum fails, community engagement would take place again to determine the next steps, since all agree that something must be done to address the needs of the schools. What those steps are and how long they will take is not determined. Future steps are unlikely to be less expensive than the current steps on a square foot basis.

No matter how you vote on March 19, please know that the most important factor in your vote should be that you are accurately informed. Please email with any questions you have any time about this important issue.

I have the honor today and have in the past had the honor of working with many accomplished women professionals. However, careers in many fields did not readily admit women and many fields still have substantial barriers to women advancing. In fact, our society is not currently designed to promote the advancement of women on an equal basis with men.

That is just one reason why we must continue to celebrate Women's History Month and hold up for all of our students - no matter their gender - examples of women who have made important contributions to our society.

A good place to start is how we can share resources and stories with each other and our students. Below are some excellent examples, and I hope you will take a moment to peruse them and consider sharing them at home with your own child.

History Channel Page for Women's History Month and More

The National Women's History Alliance

Many religions' significant observances happen annually, often on a calendar different from the Gregorian calendar that serves as a shared international public standard.

Our community values its racial, ethnic, and religious diversity because it is so rich and can teach us all something powerful about living in the world. Just in the last month and in the coming weeks, the following religious observances or celebrations haven taken place or are taking place.

• March 11 to April 9 - Ramadan - a thirty-day observance by Muslims that includes daily fasting and self reflection and serves of one of the pillars of the Islamic faith. Eid Al Fitr is supposed to take place on April 10.
• March 25 - Holi is an annual Hindu celebration lasting two days to mark the end of Winter
• April 22 to April 30 - Passover - Also called pesach, a weeklong Jewish observance that recounts aspects of the Ancient Jewish people's captivity and deliverance
• March 29 & 31 - Good Friday & Easter - two days in the Christian calendar representing the religion's holiest of days.
• Orthodox Christians might observe these on May 3 and 5 respectively

The above observances and respective traditions are too rich to recount here, so I encourage you to seek out trusted sources to learn more about the religions practiced by our neighbors.

And please know that whether school is in session on a given date of a religious observance, no student absences for religious observance will result in any academic penalty.

We're in the middle of the sign-up period for our Summer Enrichment Programs (SEP). You can access the registration link until Friday, March 22, on the Wilmette District 39 website. The summer classes cater to K-7 grade students. Take a look at the Summer class offerings brochure online at SEP Class Offerings 2024. If teachers have recommended R&R (Review & Reinforcement) classes for your child, register them for the suggested subjects. The R&R recommendations are based on classroom performance, MAP scores, and curriculum-related assessments. Please sign up your child for their current grade level in the 2023-2024 academic year, not their future grade.

The Avoca handles transportation for its students attending the Summer programs, not Wilmette District 39. To arrange for the Avoca Summer bus service, get in touch with Dawn Scaramuzza in the Student Services office at scaramuzzad@avoca37.org or 847-728-4142.