Bill Harrison: District 21 School Board Candidate

Name: Bill Harrison

Age: 54

Family: I have been married for almost 24 years to my wife Deborah. I have two sons who attended District 21 schools: Alex, a senior in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois and Ben, a sophomore in Music Education at the University of Illinois.

Education: I received my B.A. in Economics with a minor in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana and my J.D. from DePaul University. I have also pursued a Masters in School Business Administration through Northern Illinois University.

Occupation: Attorney

Previous Elected or Appointed Offices: I have been a member of the Board of Education of District 21 since 2001.

Other community involvement: I have been a volunteer chess instructor at Indian Trails Public Library and my wife and I currently volunteer with One Brick Chicago.

Position sought: I am seeking re-election to the Board of Education of District 21.

Campaign E-mail address: My personal email address is wsharrison50@yahoo.com. 

Campaign committee: None

Campaign Website: None

Campaign Facebook: None

Campaign Twitter: None

Why are you running?

District 21 is an excellent school district and I would like to keep it operating smoothly for the benefit of the students and the community. We face a number of challenges, both educational and financial and I believe that I can help craft solutions to keep us moving forward.

In what ways would the school district benefit from your service?

I believe that both my background and experience make me a valuable member of the Board. I have been a part of two successful superintendent searches and have been a part of a team that has maintained a balanced budget for the past 10 years. Additionally, I have made a strong effort to improve myself as a school board member by focusing on professional development and continued education. I have become a Master Board Member and Leadershop Academy Fellow through the Illinois Association of School Boards. I have also pursued a Masters in School Business Administration through Northern Illinois University.

I believe that my approach to community service is also of value to the district. I have been a very accessible board member, attending events in all of our schools each year so that I can connect with the community in informal settings. This allows me to discuss issues with district residents and to hear their concerns. This creates greater transparency for board and district actions.

What is the biggest challenge the school district faces and what should be done to address it?

The most significant issue currently facing most schooldistricts including District 21 is financial stress. The District’s revenues are challenged by both the property tax cap as well as inconsistent and declining funding by the state. At the same time, we are impacted by continued unfunded mandates created by the State legislature and the threat of passed through pension costs.

We have little ability to affect our revenue streams (other than working with and educating our representatives), so we must continue to be both innovative and conservative when it comes to the expenditure side of the ledger. As education is a heavily labor intensive field, personnel costs is the largest portion of our budget. We must therefore do what we can to control labor costs at all levels while maintaining a high quality education for our students.

I would like to see the District investigate modifying the salarystructure for new employees to the district. I believe that we can find considerable long term savings by reducing the number of salary lanes the schedule offers and by standardizing and reducing the cost of each step and the salary ladder. This would have the additional benefit of providing greater transparency to the community when the parties discuss future negotiations with the public.

What do you think the district does well?

District 21 is a very diverse learning community, and we do a good job of educating all of the students that we have, regardless of background. We prepare all of our students well for their future academic careers. This can be evidenced by the fact that the two high schools our students feed into, Buffalo Grove High School and Wheeling High School have both been nationally recognized for excellence. As the majority of students in both schools come from District 21, our staff is placing our students in a position to excel in their futures.

What should be some of the school district’s priorities over the next four years?

First, we must continue to address the financial issues facing the District and make sure that we remain on a sound financial footing so that we can continue to provide an excellent education to our children without excessively burdening our taxpayers. This will be challenging given the likelihood of continued cuts in state funding combined with the possibility that the state will pass its responsibility for pension funding on to local districts.

Second, we must continue to align our curriculum with the coming Common Core education standards. As state testing (currently ISAT, soon to be PARCC) will be tied to these standards, our curriculum must be aligned to both make the test meaningful and to allow for proper accountability.

Finally, we must continue to integrate technology into our classrooms and continue to provide increased access to all of our students.

What else would you like voters to know?

District 21 has been a very well run school district and we need to keep good leadership in place to keep it that way. I look forward to continuing to work with the community to make the district an excellent place for our children to begin their education, and to keep our community strong and successful.