Rally emboldens D300 in battle over Sears EDA

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On the Web

Sears Holdings Corp. launched its own web page this week to share facts about the Sears EDA. Get its take: searsholdings.com/EDA.

District 300’s web page with its take on the Sears EDA is at bit.ly/NoWayEDA.

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Updated: November 16, 2011 3:32PM

ALGONQUIN — More than half an hour before Community Unit School District 300’s informational meeting about Senate Bill 540 Thursday night, hundreds of students already were marching around the Jacobs High School parking lot.

They chanted, “No way, EDA!” and “Schools over profit. Stop it!” They wore T-shirts that read “D300 wants EDAs, too: Education Development Areas. They’re called schools,” and, “23 years is long enough.”

They carried signs that said, “Is it worth my future?” and “We won’t go quietly into the night.”

That’s because “I personally think it’s selfish of them,” Dundee-Crown High School sophomore Akemi Almeida of Carpentersville said. “They know we’re in a deep hole.”

Her classmate Dustin Kopp of West Dundee, taking video of the protest on his phone, added, “We’re in deep poop.”

That’s because, District 300 has said, an amendment to that Senate bill will cost the cash-strapped school district about $14 million a year.

About 3,000 people turned out for the District 300 meeting, a rally against Amendment 3 to Senate Bill 540, which would extend tax breaks for the economic development area around Sears Holdings Corp.’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates. That included students, teachers, parents, administrators, school board members, former District 300 Superintendent Ken Arndt, state senators Michael Noland and Chris Lauzen and state Rep. Mike Tryon.

And that’s a crowd District 300 Superintendent Michael Bregy encouraged to continue the protest — maybe in Springfield, he suggested, or outside the Thompson Center in Chicago.

“We are one school district, and we are one school district that will not go quietly into the night,” Bregy said.

The issue

The state legislature is set to vote on Illinois Senate Bill 540, which includes an amendment to extend tax breaks for the EDA, when its veto session begins Tuesday, Oct. 25. Otherwise, those incentives are set to expire in 2012 for the area generally bordered by I-90, Route 72, Beverly Road and Prairie Stone Parkway.

That expiration would make moving its 200-acre Prairie Stone headquarters out of state more attractive, Sears has said. Already, the company has visited possible sites in Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio.

That move would take 6,100 jobs from Hoffman Estates, the village has said. The amendment to Senate Bill 540 not only would extend tax breaks for the EDA for another 15 years, but also require the company to keep 4,000 jobs in the area, it has argued.

“I want to make something very clear to you,” Bregy said. “We really want Sears to stay in Illinois. We want them to stay. The Sears employees are the parents of the children we service — maybe 1,000 of them. We want to come up with a win-win situation.”

But the extension of the EDA also would take another $217 million away from District 300, as the school district now receives only the tax dollars from the area it would have before it was developed. Already, the Carpentersville-area school district estimates it has lost $160 million in increased property tax revenues to the EDA and will lose $43 million more before the original incentives expire.

That $14 million a year, coupled with funding the state has cut or still owes the district, has meant higher class sizes, fewer classroom supplies and cuts to programs, according to third-grade teacher Dalila Muro of Golfview Elementary School in Carpentersville. She and more than a dozen Golfview teachers waved glittery poster boards Thursday that read “Student need vs. corporate greed.”

“You can tell we’re elementary school teachers,” Muro said, laughing.

Towns now are lining up behind either the school district or the company: Both Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg have passed resolutions supporting the extension of the Sears EDA. West Dundee has passed a resolution supporting District 300, Gilberts is set to vote on a similar resolution next week and Carpentersville Village President Ed Ritter said after Thursday’s meeting his village likely would do the same.

Protesting the amendment

Noticeably absent from Thursday’s meeting were Gov. Pat Quinn, Sears CEO Lou D’Ambrosio, state Senate President John Cullerton and Hoffman Estates Mayor William McLeod and others District 300 had invited. Students Meghan Linder of Hampshire High School, James Fletcher of Jacobs and Kelsey Moss of Dundee-Crown read questions they had prepared for the leaders, including whether they thought the amendment would keep Sears from leaving the state.

Noland, Tryon and Lauzen all answered with their support for pulling Amendment 3 from Senate Bill 540.

Noland’s response drew a standing ovation from the crowd: “When you see a good fight, get in it. I’m in it!”

But despite assurances from the state legislators, 11,000 signatures the district has collected on paper and online petitions and the enthusiastic response Thursday, Bregy admitted, “It’s not going well. I’m on the front line.”

“We’re beat down because it’s our school district that takes cut after cut after cut, that has millions of dollars that we’re owed by the state. People get tired of that because we are a punching bag,” he said.

The superintendent hadn’t slept in two days, he said after the rally, because if the event had been a flop, “We were done.” But after everyone at the meeting stood to pledge to continue the protests, he said, the first thing on his agenda for Friday is to meet with parents, students and teachers, re-energized, to decide “where will our presence be most effective.”

“Seeing this rally gives me the hope and the inspiration that we can and we will win this fight,” Bregy said,