State report: Troy schools make gains
• Amid cuts and fund shortage: 'Students are
performing well with less,' official says
JOLIET — Despite sweeping program cuts and swelling class
sizes, students in the Troy School District made significant academic
gains in some areas during the past year, newly released Illinois School
Report Card data shows.
All Troy schools are making adequate yearly progress, a
barometer used to measure whether schools are meeting expectations of
the No Child Left Behind Act. The report card reveals telling financial
and demographic data about Troy, where officials are considering asking
voters to approve a tax-rate increase referendum next year in order to
staff a new school for fifth- and sixth-graders.
For starters, operating expenditure per pupil dropped to
$7,816 during 2004, compared to a state average of $8,786. Despite
rapidly rising enrollment, the district has a hiring freeze in place and
has actually eliminated dozens of staff positions in order to cut
personnel costs and erase a budget deficit.
"We've done it with existing staff, and yet our scores
are just as good," Superintendent Larry Wiers said. "All our financial
indicators are below state average, and all our academic indicators are
above. Our students are performing well with less."
Some of the biggest percentage gains were posted in
fourth-grade science, where 82.1 percent met or exceeded expectations
this year compared to 70.7 percent a year ago, and eighth-grade reading,
where 80.3 percent made the grade compared to 70.7 percent last year.
Another area where a high-water mark was set was in third-grade reading,
where 70.1 percent passed muster compared to 68.4 percent last year.
The report card also indicates a decline in academic
performance in some areas, such as third-grade math (84.6 percent, down
from 86.6 percent), fifth-grade math (79.7 percent, down from 82.9
percent) and eighth-grade math (64.1 percent, down from 70.4 percent).
Troy officials say the numbers should help demonstrate
that the district is doing all it can to cut costs and maintain quality.
For example, the average teacher salary in Troy is $45,991, compared to
a statewide average of $55,558. The pupil-administrator ratio in Troy is
282.5 to 1, compared to the state norm of 209.5 to 1.
"We're getting real efficiencies out of our teachers,"
school board President Jim Relyea said, adding the board has tried to
cut costs without sacrificing quality. "But at what point do they
counteract each other?"
A bookkeeping change more accurately reflects Troy's
true administrative costs, business manager
Al Gegenheimer
said. In prior years, Troy classified its health insurance costs for all
district employees as an administrative expense, but this year Troy
adopted the more complicated method used by nearly all other school
districts, he said.
"That's why we were out of sorts with other districts,"
Gegenheimer said. "It was giving the public the impression that we were
overspending in this area."
The report card shows that Troy's administrative costs
are 2.6 percent of total expenditures, the same as the state average.
Demographic data illustrates the changing racial and
economic makeup of the district, whose 3,673 students live in Shorewood,
west Joliet and parts of Channahon and Crest Hill. Minorities now
account for 31.1 percent of Troy pupils, and the district's low-income
population has climbed to 9.6 percent.
"There was a time when our minority population was 1
percent," Wiers said. "Our low-income population has doubled since
1986."
Troy's mobility rate is its highest ever, 23.8 percent,
meaning nearly one in every four students changes schools during the
course of the year. Rapid growth is the primary reason, officials said,
as families move into the district and enrollment climbs by about 200
students per year.
Enrollment has reached critical mass at Crossroads
Elementary School, housed in the former middle school building. All five
first-grade classes now have 30 or more students, while the largest
first-grade classes in Troy's three other elementary schools have 22
students at most. Wiers said that for the first time he has cut off
enrollment to a school in the middle of a school year, telling
developers to change their advertising to show that children from new
subdivisions will attend Troy Shorewood or another school instead.
"First grade is the year where you learn to read," Wiers
said. "There is no other situation like this in the district."
