Jim Collins, District 205 Board Candidate

ELMHURST, IL — Jim Collins is one of six candidates for three seats on the Elmhurst School District 205 board. Here are his responses to the Patch questionnaire:

Jim Collins

Age (as of election day)

62

City of residence

Elmhurst

Family

Wife: Julie, a physician, board certified in Internal Medicine

Daughters:
Katherine, York class of 2015. Graduate of Indiana University, Kelly School of Business, 2019 Anna, A Senior at York High School

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No one in my family works in politics or government

Education

Field School, IC, Sandburg, York High School
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Engineering B.S. Systems and Enterprise Engineering
University of Chicago, Booth Graduate School of Business MBA, Concentration in Corporate Finance

Occupation

Wells Fargo Securities, Markets Division, Fixed Income Department
Managing Director - Chicago Office
26 years in Investment Banking/Institutional Capital Markets, retired 12/2018
Helped large corporations borrow money directly from institutional investors through the bond market.
Issued Fixed Income Securities in primary markets and provided liquidity in secondary trading markets.
Prior: Credit Suisse/First Boston, Director, Fixed Income Division
Prior career:
10 years in Information Technology at AT&T, and Digital Equipment Corp.

Campaign Website
JimCollins205.org

Previous or current elected office

Board Member, Elmhurst CUSD #205, first elected in 2009

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

In my opinion, the answer to that question depends upon the timeframe you choose:

ASAP: We need to get our students back in their classrooms with their teachers.
In the over 10 months since our COVID response began there has only been one case of virus transmission in our classrooms. The science shows kids are safer in our schools than they are out of school.

Short term: Assess the learning deficit of each of our students due to the district’s change in instructional methods during the COVID crisis.

Medium term: Develop a plan for each student to fill in their learning deficit. Strategies can include an extended school year, summer programs, or one on one or small group instruction during the remainder of this school year.

Long term: In many areas, student achievement has flatlined over the past several years. We must improve student achievement throughout the entire district. This needs to be a top priority and a top criteria in selecting the next superintendent.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I spent a 26 year career on a bond market sales and trading desk. I have used my knowledge of the bond markets to our taxpayers advantage. I used my professional experience to lead the District’s successful effort to refinance our prior debt. That saved taxpayers about 14.9 million dollars in interest payments. We refinanced at a much lower rate and are paying that debt off early. That allowed the district to pass a referendum about two years earlier than if we hadn’t refinanced, offering all day kindergarten, building two new schools, and constructing safe and secure entrances at all of our schools. Overall, making Elmhurst a more desirable community to live in.

Second, I have used my capital markets experience during the District’s issuance of new, referendum authorized debt. The Board of Education promised taxpayers that if the 2018 referendum passed, the property tax bill on a $500,000 home would only increase by $150.

So far, we have issued $100 million of that debt. I’ve used my financial markets experience to take advantage of disruptions in the fixed income markets and issue our bonds at opportune times. Because of our judicious timing, we have driven that tax increase down to just $34 on that half million dollar home. And, we issued debt ahead of schedule, saving tax payers money, and allowing the construction of the new Field School to begin a year ahead of schedule. We still have $68.5 million of debt to issue in the next few years. I hope there will be further opportunities to drive down our cost of borrowing. My personal goal is to drive that tax increase down to $0. Taxes were due to go up a small amount in 2021 due to the referendum authorized debt. That would have been the first tax increase due to the referendum. The board abated that tax increase for 2021.

Finally, in my private sector role, I am accustomed to holding people accountable, assigning measurable goals, and setting high expectations. I bring those skills to my role on the school board.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform

As I mentioned previously, we need to get our students back in their classrooms as soon as possible, we need to thoroughly assess their learning deficiencies from this past year and develop an action plan for each individual student to get them up to grade level.

I feel strongly that we need to choose a superintendent with a proven track record of improving student achievement. In my opinion, York is capable of being ranked as one of the top ten high schools in the state, and every one of our elementary and middle schools can achieve a 9 or 10 rating. I believe we underperform our potential, or another way of looking at it is we are on the verge of greatness. However, we have been in that position for too long. We owe it to every student and parent to provide not just a good education, but a great one. We have the resources. We have dedicated teachers, talented, hard working students, and supportive parents. Great schools don’t cost more money than good ones. Great schools have a world class management team that help every student achieve their potential without burning them out or causing undue stress.

We not only owe that to our students and parents, we owe that to every property tax payer in town. The quality of our schools drive our property values. We cannot settle for good schools. We must demand great schools.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I was elected to the board of education in 2009.

Here are a few examples of our successes while I have have served on the board:

I joined the board in 2009 to find the school district was incurring a deficit- it couldn’t pay all of its bills that year. Additionally, it was projecting a structural deficit for future years.

In 2010 we went through the painful, but necessary process of cutting expenses and laying off 56 staff members.

Since fiscal year 2011, we have had a balanced budget and have run a revenue surplus EVERY year. We attained the State of Illinois highest financial recognition in almost every year, and we have maintained a AA+ credit rating by Standard and Poor’s.

Over the next few years, we took advantage of generationally low interest rates and refinanced the school district’s debt -saving tax payers approximately $14.9 Million.

When I joined the board in 2009, York High School was ranked #60 in Illinois by the Chicago Tribune.

By 2017 York was ranked #14 in Illinois by the Niche Group. In 2017, US News ranked York #17 in Illinois and #186 in the United States. That is the top 1% of all high schools in the U.S.
Also, York was named to the AP Honor Roll for five consecutive years by the College Board. That also placed York in the top 1% of all high schools in the United States.

By 2017 District 205 was ranked #9, out of approximately 900 school districts in Illinois by the Niche Group.

Today, York ranks about 30th in Illinois. To me, this unacceptable. Even though York is ranked within the top 1.5% of all high schools in the nation. I know we can, and will, do better.

York was the first high school in Illinois to partner with Indiana University to offer IU college classes to York Students. Now, York also offers dual credit college classes with the College of DuPage.

During my tenure, serving approximately four years as board president, we won four US Department of Education Blue Ribbon Awards for exemplary schools. They were awarded to Edison, Lincoln, Bryan, and Sandburg.

Recently, we have placed instructional coaches in all of our buildings to help our teachers become more effective.

We added a Business Incubator program at York. We are now going to extend that program into the middle schools and into the fifth grade curriculum to introduce our students to entrepreneurship.

We have begun the effort to balance academic achievement with the social emotional health of our students.

We added Project Lead the Way into our middle school curriculum to promote student’s interest in STEM fields.

We have obtained a permanent place to house our transition center and have begun planning for remodeling the building.

We introduced the option for all-day kindergarten.

We introduced the District wide K-5 Spanish/English immersion program, now in its third year, at Fischer Elementary School, open to all students in District 205.

We are expanding Edison Elementary School and we will begin construction on a new Lincoln Elementary and a new Field Elementary Schools, making Elmhurst an even more desirable community in which to raise and educate children.

Why should voters trust you?

I do my very best to listen to our parents, students, and all of our taxpayers and represent their best interests.

As highlighted in the previous question, I have helped bring many positive changes and financial stability to our school district.

My parents moved from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago to Elmhurst with a three year old and a new born baby. They chose Elmhurst because they felt this community would give their children a great education and the opportunity to achieve a better life. Our schools prepared me well for success in college, graduate school, and an interesting and successful career. We decided to stay and raise our children in Elmhurst because we wanted to give them the same opportunities. My children attended the same schools I attended. In hindsight, it was absolutely the right decision.

Today, families move to Elmhurst for the exact same reasons my parents moved here decades ago.

This community service is my way to express my gratitude and pay it forward.

If you win this position, what accomplishment would make your term in office a success?

There are several things I would like to achieve in this term:

First, I believe we can choose the right superintendent that will significantly improve student achievement and help us make the leap from good to great. I believe our school district, and York High School, can earn a place in the top ten in Illinois. Keep in mind, most of those top ten spots are occupied by Chicago Magnet schools. All of those schools have entrance exams, and are highly selective. For that reason, top ten is a lofty achievement.

Second, I would like to make significant progress in relieving the stress our students experience. I believe the first step would be to move the start time at York and our middle schools later in the morning. The American Academy of Pediatrics acknowledged the shift in adolescent’s sleep cycle’s and in 2014 made the recommendation to shift high school and middle school start times later. Several leading school districts in Illinois have done so. We should do the same.

We can also make other progress. A few examples: Introducing anti cyber bullying into our curriculum, introducing programs that make all students regardless of race or ethnic background feel welcome and comfortable in our schools. We need to keep working to improve the social and emotional health of our students. Every student should see that our system is set up to help them achieve success, not prevent their success. We need to be tireless in making incremental improvements each year. This is a long term effort.

Finally, I would like to return some of our surplus funds to our tax payers. We started the process this year. We abated the first $500,000 tax increase due to the referendum and we abated the 2.6 million dollar tax increase in our operating budget. In total, we will return $3.1million dollars to tax payers in 2021. I would like to see more money returned to tax payers while maintaining a responsible financial reserve.

What are your views on fiscal policy, government spending and the handling of taxpayer dollars in the office you are seeking?

We must be good stewards of our tax payers money. During my tenure on the Board of Education, we have achieved that goal.

I have used my education and professional financial experience to make sure we are using tax payer money wisely. Over the past decade, we have held the line on spending while improving the quality of education we deliver to our students

On January 14, 2020 David Giuliani at the Patch highlighted that fact in article pointing out that over the past ten years, District 205 has increased spending per pupil at a rate less than the rate of inflation. (The inflation rate has averaged just 1.7% per year over the past decade)

https://patch.com/illinois/elm...

As I said in a previous question, I joined the board in 2009 to find the school district was incurring a deficit- it couldn’t pay all of its bills that year. Additionally, it was projecting a structural deficit for future years.

In 2010 we addressed the issue and balanced our budget.

Since fiscal year 2011, we have had a balanced budget and have run a revenue surplus EVERY year. We attained the State of Illinois highest financial recognition in almost every year, and we have maintained a AA+ credit rating by Standard and Poor’s.

We refinanced the school district’s debt -saving tax payers approximately $14.9 Million.

In 2021, we are returning $3.1 million dollars to our taxpayers. I believe, in the future, we can return more money to tax payers while maintaining a responsible financial reserve.

Once again, I firmly believe great schools don’t cost any more than good schools. We can have great schools and hold the line on spending. Great schools have a world class management team and employ state of the art teaching methods. We already have dedicated teachers, excellent facilities, hardworking students, and supportive parents. To make the leap from good to great, we need to support our teachers through relevant and impactful continuing education, and effective coaching.

Return on our investment:
89% of school district’s revenues come from local sources: our property tax payers, and the parents of our students. Property taxes comprise 86% of our school district’s revenues. The school district receives 3% of its revenues from the federal government, 7% from the state of Illinois, and the remainder comes from fees we charge our students.

As you know, the bulk of your property tax payment goes to the school district. I believe the school district owes taxpayers a return on their investment. We owe it to our community to provide a great education to our students. That’s what we are paying for.

However, 70% of our tax payers don’t have kids in our schools. We maximize their return on their investment in exactly same way. Families move here for our schools. If we have great schools, providing a world class education, demand for our homes increases, and drives real estate values upward.

Do you support Black Lives Matter and what are your thoughts on the demonstrations held since the death of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake?

(No answer)

Do you think the current board has done enough to support racial equality, and if not, what specifically should be done to do so?

The board recently entered into a partnership with Equal Opportunity Schools, a non profit organization based in the state of Washington. The program was recommended to us by York’s new principal, Dr. Shahe Bagdasarian. Dr. Bagdasarian found this partnership to be very effective when he was in the Glenbard High School District.

This is the introductory statement in the agreement we signed with them:

“The mission of EOS is to ensure that students of color and low-income students have equitable access to America’s most academically intense high school programs and succeed at the highest levels. We focus on challenging high school courses, with a focus on Advanced Placement (“AP”) and International Baccalaureate (“IB”) courses (sometimes referred to as “college-ready courses”), because the academic intensity of the high school curriculum is the biggest driver of college completion. We help school leaders identify and enroll historically underrepresented students of color and low-income students who can succeed in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses (“AP/IB”) but are not yet enrolled in AP/IB for systemic reasons related to race or socioeconomics.”

I think this is a good start, but I also think we can do much more. I will leave it to the education professionals we employ to evaluate and recommend programs to our board that are effective in achieving the goal of achieving educational equality in our district.

I also believe there are additional things we can do to help all of our students receive the best education we can offer, and close the achievement gap. For example, District 88 uses analytical software to determine which of their high school teachers make the best personal connections with, and are most effective teaching, students of color. They assign those teachers to the classes their students of color are enrolled in.

What are your thoughts on the district’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic? Are you in favor of remote learning, in-person learning or a hybrid of the two? Do you support a mask mandate for students and school staff, or mandatory coronavirus testing for both students and staff?

Hindsight is 20/20, but I think the school district could have done a much better job of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

Since July I have urged the superintendent to form an advisory board of four physicians: an Infectious Disease Medicine specialist, an Epidemiologist, a Pediatrician, and a mental health professional.

There are competing factors to be considered when deciding whether schools should be open or closed, when to reopen schools, how many students can be in a classroom at one time, the effects of isolation on students and when the risk of suicide is greater than the risks of contracting the virus, etc. I believe these are decisions best made by board certified physicians, not by a rubric. Those decisions also need to be made on a school by school, and classroom by classroom basis.

I also strongly recommended that we educate our employees. For example, other school districts have hired the Infectious Disease Prevention Team from Rush Medical School to educate their staff about the disease and the most effective ways to stay safe. Knowledge about this virus increases every day, and too many people have their own version of what it takes to stay safe. So to me, having medical experts educate our employees is just common sense, and part of being a responsible employer.

I want to keep everyone safe, so I absolutely support a mask mandate, because the science supports a mask mandate.

I want to transition back to in person schooling as soon as feasibility possible in this priority order: the more special needs a child has, the more important they are physically in school. The younger a child is, the more important they are in the classroom. In hindsight, I think the best model for elementary schools would have been the half day model. In that model, every students attends school five days per week, in either a morning or an afternoon session. The academic subjects are covered in person, while the “specials” are covered remotely.

We need to acknowledge that in the past year, only one case of virus transmission has been found to have occurred in our schools.

We need to get all of our kids back into their classrooms ASAP. The Harvard School of Public Health has determined that three feet of social distancing is safe for kids, ESPECIALLY for kids wearing masks! Our students also rely on their extra curricular activities for their social and emotional well being. We need to get them back on our sports fields and into their extracurricular activities ASAP!

I would very much like to hear from an expert about the benefits, and correct uses, of surveillance testing, when testing should be implemented, and what portion of the population needs to be tested in order to be a reliable and effective tool in helping prevent the spread of the virus. Once our adults are vaccinated, surveillance testing could be used to prevent the spread of the virus among students. We should also acknowledge that so far, COVID-19 has been found to be less harmful and lethal to children than the seasonal flu.

When the vaccine is available to them, do you support mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for students and staff?

Our staff members are adults. Each staff member should make that decision with advice from their personal physician. However, once the vaccine is available to our staff, we need to get back into classrooms full time.

Vaccinations for students is pretty much a moot point.
Moderna did not include anyone under the age of 18 in their clinical trials. Pfizer did not include anyone under the age of 16 in their clinical trials. So, the Moderna vaccine is not FDA approved for children and the Pfizer vaccine is not FDA approved for anyone under 16. It is going to be a long time before vaccines are available to our students, and once we achieve heard immunity in the population, it is possible that our kids wont need to be vaccinated.

Is there any reason you would not serve your full term of office, other than those of health or family?

I’ve learned that I can’t predict the future. I’ve served my previous terms to completion. I don’t expect this term to be any different.

The best advice ever shared with me was ____________

“You can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets the credit”
-Ronald Reagan