District 65 Administrative Growth Over Time

A Legion of Data Nerds analysis of how D65’s administrative footprint has evolved, what it costs today, and how right sizing can save $8M.

+67% 2× +55%
Admin-to-student ratio increase Certificated central-office admins (TRS) Per-pupil admin spending rise
10.0 → 16.7 per 1,000 students 11 → 24 administrators $2,201 → $3,401
SY2015–16 to SY2025–26 SY2015–16 to SY2025–26 FY16 to FY25 · inflation-adjusted

Key Findings

Between SY2015-16 and SY2025-26, K-8 enrollment fell from approximately 7,500 to 5,625 students — a 25% decline. Over the same period:

  • The total admin compensation pool grew 21% in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, from $16.56M to $19.99M.
  • General Administration more than doubled (+103%), from $2.40M to $4.88M. This category includes the superintendent, assistant superintendents, and curriculum directors/coordinators.
  • Per-student admin spending rose 55% after inflation, from $2,201 to $3,401 per pupil.
  • Higher-paid admin headcount grew 25% (75 to 94), and per-1,000-student admin density rose 67% (10.0 to 16.7).
  • Certificated central-office administrators (TRS Admin) more than doubled, from 11 to 24.
  • Per-person compensation has roughly tracked inflation. The cost growth is driven by adding more positions, not paying existing administrators more.
  • Right-sizing the administration could save $8.3M+ annually based on the District’s own April 2026 proposal. The cuts can be phased, with $1.7M to $4.9M in immediate annual savings under three Legion scenarios.

All dollar figures on this page are in 2026 dollars (inflation-adjusted using BLS CPI-U). The analysis uses two independent public data sources — the District’s Annual Financial Report (AFR) and state public-disclosure reports — detailed in the methodology sections below.

What Could Right-Sizing Save?

The chart below puts recent enacted and proposed cuts (dark grey) next to the District’s own admin-cut proposal (orange) and three Legion right-sizing scenarios (red shades) — all expressed both in dollars and as a percentage of the FY25 AFR admin compensation pool. These proposals can be used to gradually move the district to the Admin’s proposed $8m in cuts.

Even on the most conservative basis the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual admin savings are accessible — and the District itself has identified $8.3M. The detailed comparison below documents the source and methodology behind each bar.

Implications

This page presents the data without prescribing a specific policy response, but a few observations follow naturally:

  1. The buildup is real on every defensible measure. Two independent data sources — AFR official ISBE filings and PA public-disclosure reports — both show substantial real-dollar growth in admin spending and headcount over a period of significant enrollment decline. The trend is not an artifact of the $75,000 PA threshold (all admin salaries above 75K need reported – see more below); it survives every methodological adjustment we have applied.

  2. General Administration (function 2300) is the most concentrated growth area. It more than doubled in real terms over the decade. This function captures the superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, curriculum directors, and content-area coordinators.

  3. Per-person compensation has tracked or slightly lagged inflation. When total real comp is up 21%–33% but per-person real comp is roughly flat, the math forces the conclusion that the cost growth is overwhelmingly driven by adding more positions, not by paying existing administrators more.

  4. The District’s current cost-cutting focus is heavily on student-facing services (counselors, librarians, school buildings) while the central-administration buildup of the past decade has received much less scrutiny. The District’s own April 20, 2026 deck identified $8.3M in admin cuts available — but presented the proposal 19 days after the contractual deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27, deferring those cuts to FY28 at the earliest.

  5. Comparable K-8 districts operate with substantially leaner administrative structures. Larry Gavin’s Evanston RoundTable reporting notes that D65’s −25% enrollment decline since FY 2019 is the steepest among 21 nearby K-8 districts; the next-largest decline was 14.3%. Meanwhile, D65 spends substantially more per pupil on central administration than peer districts.

  6. Achievement has not improved. D65 math proficiency on the IAR went from 44.8% meeting benchmark in 2018 to 42.3% in 2024 (per Gavin’s March 2026 RoundTable analysis). Whatever the administrative buildup has produced, it has not produced the academic outcomes its hiring case would have presumably promised.

The Legion of Data Nerds publishes this data to inform public discussion. We encourage residents, board members, and District leadership to consider it alongside other operational and educational priorities. Additional D65 source documents are available on the D65 BoardBook archive and the D65 Data Dashboard. Independent journalism is available in the Evanston RoundTable.

Admin Growth in Detail

The AFR Admin Pool Over Time

This chart shows D65’s total compensation paid to administrators across all four major admin function codes, in real (2026) dollars, from FY2012 through FY2025. No salary threshold is applied — every employee whose salary or benefits hit these function codes is counted.

The trend is unambiguous:

  • The pool grew from $15.36M (FY12) to $19.99M (FY25), a +30% real increase over a period when enrollment fell roughly 25%.
  • General Administration (2300) more than doubled in real terms, from $1.98M to $4.88M (+147%). This function code captures the superintendent’s office, assistant superintendents, executive directors, and curriculum directors / coordinators.
  • The biggest single-year jumps are visible in FY17 (early Strategic Plan / new initiatives) and FY23 (Devon Horton’s first full year as superintendent) — both represent moments when the administrative buildup accelerated.
  • School Administration (2400) and Business Services (2500) have been roughly flat in real terms over the decade. Central Support (2600) — which includes IT, planning, and data processing — grew about 28% in real terms, partly reflecting the technology buildup discussed below.

Per-Pupil Admin Spending

Normalized by enrollment, the picture is more dramatic. As enrollment fell, per-student admin spending rose substantially even after adjusting for inflation.

Real per-pupil admin spending grew from approximately $2,201 to $3,401 (+55%) between FY16 and FY25. Excluding principals (which are largely school-level operations), per-pupil central-office and support spending grew from approximately $1,246 to $2,125 (+71%) over the same period.

Higher-Paid Admin Headcount Over Time (CPI-Indexed)

The AFR gives us the dollar story but does not break out individual employees. For year-by-year headcount trends we use the PA disclosures, applying a CPI-indexed threshold so the comparison is apples-to-apples across years.

Higher-paid admin headcount rose from 75 in SY2015-16 to 94 in SY2025-26 — a 25% increase over a decade in which K-8 enrollment fell 25%. Most of the year-to-year volatility between TRS Admin and IMRF Support Staff reflects positions being reclassified between funding sources rather than net hires or losses (the SY22-23 → SY23-24 transition is the largest example: about 11 IMRF Support Staff were reclassified into TRS Admin that year). TRS Admin doubled from 11 to 24 — a clean signal that doesn’t depend on the threshold framework, because TRS Admin is reported in full under PA 96-0434 regardless of the $75K rule.

Higher-Paid Admin per 1,000 Students

This is the most consequential headcount chart on the page. Even under the strict CPI-indexed apples-to-apples comparison, per-pupil admin density rose from 10.0 to 16.7 per 1,000 students between 2016 and 2026 — a 67% increase. Peer K-8 districts in the surrounding area cluster around 12 per 1,000 students.

Average Compensation per Administrator

This chart plots each role-class’s average compensation in 2026 dollars against a dotted horizontal line at the 2016 real-dollar baseline. Most lines stay near or below their 2016 baseline — meaning per-person compensation has, on average, kept pace with inflation or slightly lost ground. Administrators are not, on average, getting big raises that outstrip the cost of living. Combined with the AFR pool growth, the math is forcing: total real cost grew because D65 added more administrators, not because it paid existing administrators more.

Right-Sizing vs. the District’s Other Cost-Cutting Measures

In recent months, the District has enacted or proposed a series of reductions targeting student-facing services: middle-school counselors, middle-school librarians, and school closures. The chart below (reproduced from the summary at the top of this page) puts the estimated annual savings of these measures next to two scenarios for right-sizing the central administration instead, plus the District’s own April 20, 2026 admin-cut proposal.

What’s actually happened or been proposed (with sources)

The school-closure savings figures use the District’s Dec 1, 2025 revised SDRP III financial model (foiagras doc 12033), not the higher Sept 29, 2025 numbers.

  • Layoff of 2 middle-school counselors (April 2026) — On April 9, 2026, the Superintendent informed nine middle-school counselors they would lose their jobs at the end of the school year. After public outcry, on April 14, 2026 the Board curtailed the action and approved layoffs of only 2 of the 9 positions. Estimated annual savings: ~$200K. (Source: FOIA Gras post 264, April 18, 2026; D65 Board action April 14, 2026.)

  • Reassignment of middle-school librarians (April 2026) — The Superintendent announced “reassignment” of the middle-school librarians at all three middle schools (Chute, Haven, Nichols). Because the staff are being reassigned to classroom positions rather than terminated, the direct salary savings are up to approximately $270,000 only if coupled with firing additional teachers; otherwise zero. Did not require a Board vote. (Source: FOIA Gras post 264 and post 267, April 2026.)

  • Kingsley Elementary closure — Resolution adopted January 9, 2026. Three statutorily-required public hearings underway; intended closure end of SY25-26. Modeled recurring annual savings ≈ $1.66M (Scenario 1A). (Source: D65 Resolution of Closure 1/9/2026, foiagras doc 13846; SDRP III revised model 12.1.25, foiagras doc 12033; D65 SDRP Phase III School Closures Hub.)

  • Lincolnwood Elementary (conditional trigger) — The January 2026 resolution states: “If by October 2026 the District has not achieved financial sustainability and the district-wide average K-5 building utilization rate is below 75%, the Board will recognize the need to propose the closure of Lincolnwood Elementary School.” Not yet voted; estimated incremental annual savings ≈ $1.57M (Scenario 2D minus Scenario 1A: $3,235,277 − $1,662,529). (Source: foiagras doc 13846; SDRP III revised model 12.1.25, foiagras doc 12033.)

  • 2-school closure scenario (revised) — Kingsley + Lincolnwood together (Scenario 2D). Total recurring annual savings: ~$3.24M.

  • Decline iPad/keyboard purchase (March 2026, one-time) — On March 23, 2026 the Board approved a $528,279 purchase of 1,231 iPads and 1,295 keyboard cases for SY26-27, ignoring a Screen Sense Evanston petition with 1,200+ signatures urging less screen time. Declining the purchase would have produced a one-time $528,279 savings (shown on the chart at full value, not annual recurring). The District’s parallel four-year operational lease (approved Dec 2024) runs $750,966 / 4 years = ~$200K/year on a separate stream. (Source: FOIA Gras post 249, post 255, post 262, post 264; D65 Board action March 23, 2026.)

  • Choose lowest bidder for special ed transport (KalaJu over BriteLift) — On December 15, 2025 the Board awarded the special ed transportation contract to BriteLift in a 6-1 vote (Maria Opdycke opposed) at $2.04M annual for 55 routes. KalaJu Elite Fleet’s headline bid was approximately $1M lower at $1.04M but only priced 30 of the 55 routes needed — CFO Tamara Mitchell stated KalaJu’s bid reflected their existing fleet capacity, not the 55 routes required. Tom Hayden’s analysis notes nothing in the KalaJu bid explicitly stated this limitation. The chart shows the headline $1M figure as reported; defensible savings range is ~$143K (linear extrapolation of per-route cost across 55 routes) to ~$1M (headline bid difference). (Source: FOIA Gras post 253; D65 Board action December 15, 2025.)

The District’s own April 20, 2026 admin-cut proposal — and the missed deadline. At the April 20, 2026 SDRP Phase III board meeting, the administration’s deck identified an additional $8,287,312 in potential annual savings from eliminating 22 administrators and 42 non-union support positions (slide 13: “Items for Analysis – Potential Additional Personnel Reduction Considerations”). The same slide explicitly notes a contractual deadline of “April 1, 2026 for admin to go into effect for FY27.” The proposal was presented 19 days after the deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27; as a result, these cuts are deferred to FY28 at the earliest. The dollar figure is the District’s own — sized at $129,489 per position (the FY26 average admin compensation) × 64 positions. The District’s $8.3M proposal is 41.5% of the FY25 AFR admin compensation pool ($19.99M). (Source: D65 Expenditure Reduction Plan: SDRP Phase 3 Reductions, presented April 20, 2026, slide 13.)

What right-sizing the admin would save (Legion scenarios)

Three reference scenarios, all computed using the District’s own per-cut average ($129K) so the Legion and District proposals are directly comparable. Headcount targets are based on the CPI-indexed PA-disclosed roster (94 administrators in 2026):

  • Moderate — return higher-paid admin/support to 2016–2019 baseline (~81 admin, ~13 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $1.68M = 8.4% of the FY25 AFR admin pool. This is the lowest-controversy scenario and ties directly to D65’s own pre-buildup baseline.
  • Match peer K-8 median (~12/1k students; ~68 admin, ~26 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $3.43M = 17.2% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.
  • Match D65’s own SY2015-16 ratio (~10/1k students; ~56 admin, ~38 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $4.91M = 24.6% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.
  • District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal: $8.29M = 41.5% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.

All three Legion scenarios are smaller than the District’s own April 20 proposal. That is not a contradiction — the District is willing to propose a larger cut than the Legion is calling for. The empirical takeaway: even on the most conservative apples-to-apples basis the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual admin savings remain accessible — and the District itself has identified $8.3M.

Putting these in perspective

The two-counselor layoff saves roughly the cost of a single mid-level administrator position. The librarian reassignments save effectively nothing in dollars. Closing Kingsley saves ~$1.66M annually; adding Lincolnwood (Scenario 2D) brings the total to ~$3.24M — comparable to the Legion’s peer-median right-sizing scenario ($3.4M). Even the District’s own April 20 proposal is bigger than every closure measure combined.

This isn’t an argument that the school closures are wrong — there are legitimate facility-utilization and capital-cost reasons to close under-utilized buildings. It is an argument that the District’s current cost-cutting efforts focus heavily on student-facing services while a substantial admin-side savings pool exists, the District itself has identified $8.3M of it, and even on the most conservative apples-to-apples measurement the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual savings remain accessible.

IMRF Support Staff: Who’s in This Category?

The chart breaks the indexed-eligible IMRF Support Staff count down into broad role categories for the two most recent reporting years (SY24-25 and SY25-26). Earlier years are excluded because their IMRF reports either lacked Position strings or used inconsistent terminology that resists reliable bucketing. The “Directors / Managers / Coordinators” bucket is the most administrative-feeling subset of IMRF; the rest are operational support functions like custodians, IT, nurses, and SACC.

What Roles Have Been Added?

The TRS Admin roster in SY25-26 includes a number of senior positions that did not exist in the SY15-16 organization, among them:

  • Executive Chief of Communications
  • Executive Chief of Human Relations
  • Executive Director of RAAD (Research, Assessment, Accountability, and Data)
  • Executive Director of Technology
  • Director of MTSS & SEL (Multi-Tiered System of Supports & Social-Emotional Learning)
  • Director of STEAM (formerly Director of STEM)
  • Director of Multilingual Services (formerly Bilingual Coordinator)
  • Director of Climate & Safety
  • Director of Strategic Projects
  • Director of Programs & Partnerships
  • Director of Schools Management
  • Director of Humanities
  • Director of College and Career
  • Director of Science
  • Asst Director of Teaching & Learning
  • Diverse Learning Supervisor / Coordinator
  • Talent Development Coordinator
  • Special Assistant to Cabinet
  • Manager of Student Specialized Services

On the IMRF side, the SY25-26 roster includes newer specialized roles such as Sustainability Coordinator, Wellness Coordinator, Network & Cybersecurity Manager, Substitute Staffing Specialist, Family Center Managing Director, Senior Manager of HR Operations, Culture and Climate Manager, and a Science & Sustainability Education Coordinator.

Were these additions justified?

This is the harder question. The Legion of Data Nerds doesn’t have a definitive answer. In his November 2025 RoundTable essay (cited in the External Validation section below), Larry Gavin flagged several specific role-clusters as candidates for review without endorsement: the 9 IES Coordinators, multiple positions in the Human Relations department, a cluster of director-level roles created in recent years (Strategic Projects, Workforce Analytics, Communications), and assistant principals in small elementary schools with 300–370 students. We don’t have an independent basis for naming specific positions, but we agree these clusters warrant scrutiny.

Several questions would help the public — and the Board — evaluate whether these roles are essential, useful, or expendable:

  1. Was each new role created with a documented business case that included measurable outcomes the role was supposed to deliver?
  2. Are those outcomes being measured today, and what do the results show? For example, after creating an Executive Director of RAAD several years ago, has the District’s research/assessment/accountability/data work measurably improved? Has student achievement responded?
  3. For roles created during a specific initiative (e.g., Director of Multilingual Services, Director of MTSS & SEL), what is the evidence that the function would deteriorate if the role were eliminated and the work absorbed elsewhere?
  4. For directors and coordinators whose work is largely internal coordination, what concrete deliverables changed or new programs launched in the past year that would not have happened without them?
  5. Which of these roles have been previously eliminated and re-created, and what does that history tell us about whether the function is essential?

The District has not made comprehensive answers to these questions publicly available.

Why Two Data Sources?

The PA public-disclosure reports and the District’s AFR each have strengths and limitations. Using both makes the analysis bulletproof.

  • PA disclosures (96-0434 + 97-0609) give us headcount. They list every individual administrator and IMRF-participating support staff member above the $75,000 statutory threshold, with their position title and total compensation. This is the only public source for year-by-year admin headcount. But the $75,000 threshold has not been indexed to inflation since the statute took effect — it understates the true workforce in early years and overstates growth in recent years. We address this by applying a CPI-indexed threshold (anchored at $75,000 in 2016, equivalent to approximately $103,000 in 2026), so each year’s count includes only employees whose comp meets or exceeds the year-specific real-dollar equivalent of $75K-2016. This delivers an apples-to-apples headcount comparison across years.

  • The AFR (Annual Financial Report) gives us total dollar pool. Each year D65 files an AFR with ISBE that reports expenditure totals by function code. Functions 2300 (General Administration), 2400 (School Administration), 2500 (Business Services), and 2600 (Central Support) capture admin compensation across every employee in those functions, regardless of salary — including admin support staff who make less than $75,000 (school office secretaries, lower-tier coordinators, admin assistants). The AFR does not break out individual employees, only function-level dollar totals. So we use it for the dollar pool and the right-sizing denominator.

The two sources converge: the PA-disclosed total comp in FY26 ($20.04M) and the AFR admin pool in FY25 ($19.99M, in 2026 $) sit within ~$50K of each other, even though the populations they capture differ in detail. That convergence is reassuring — both methods agree on the size of the admin compensation footprint.

Why this matters for the cost-cutting case. A common critique of any single threshold (whether $75,000 fixed or $103,000 inflation-indexed) is that it excludes some real D65 admin employees. The AFR sidesteps that critique entirely: it captures every admin-function employee. The District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal also uses this approach implicitly — the $8.3M figure is sized at workforce average compensation ($129K per position × 64 positions), not at the $75K threshold subset. Our right-sizing scenarios on this page use the same methodology the District itself applied, anchored to the same AFR pool the District actually budgets against.

Categories Used

D65 admin compensation is reported under two complementary disclosure regimes, plus the AFR functional breakdown.

State public-disclosure (PA) categories — used for headcount trend

  • TRS Admin (red) — Certificated administrators reported under PA 96-0434: superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, directors (Curriculum & Instruction, MTSS & SEL, STEAM, Multilingual Services, Climate & Safety, Programs & Partnerships, etc.), and supervisors. Salaried under the Teachers’ Retirement System. TRS Admin compensation is reported in full regardless of the $75K threshold, so the TRS trend is essentially identical between the unindexed and CPI-indexed views.

  • IMRF Support Staff (blue) — Non-certificated, IMRF-participating administrative and support staff whose compensation package (salary plus benefits) exceeds the year-specific indexed threshold. PA 97-0609 only requires reporting of IMRF members above $75,000 to begin with; this page additionally applies the CPI-indexed threshold for trend rigor.

  • Principals (green) — Principals and assistant principals (extracted from the same PA 96-0434 reports as TRS Admin but tracked separately because they fill a distinctly school-level operational role).

  • Not included. Paraprofessionals (~200 D65 staff, comp typically below $30,000), counselors, librarians, classroom teachers, and support staff below the indexed threshold are not in the PA-disclosed pool.

AFR function categories — used for the dollar pool

  • 2300 — General Administration (Supt., Asst Supts, board, executive admin, curriculum directors and coordinators)
  • 2400 — School Administration (principals, asst principals, school office staff: secretaries, attendance clerks)
  • 2500 — Business Services (CFO, fiscal services, payroll, business; excludes 2540 O&M and 2550 Pupil Transport)
  • 2600 — Central Support Services (planning/research, IT, staff services, data processing)

The AFR captures every employee in these functions regardless of compensation level, including sub-$75K admin support staff that the PA disclosures omit.

All compensation figures on this page are inflation-adjusted to 2026 dollars using the BLS CPI-U All Urban Consumers index (US city average). Total compensation includes base salary, retirement (TRS) contribution, bonus, health/dental/life/vision insurance, car allowance, retirement annuities, and sick/vacation payouts. AFR figures additionally include MR/SS pension contributions allocated by function.

External Validation

Two pieces of independent journalism by Larry Gavin in the Evanston RoundTable corroborate the trends documented on this page:

  • Gavin, Larry. “Analysis and Viewpoint: District 65 Has 25% Fewer Students but 10% More Staff. Why?” Evanston RoundTable, March 22, 2026
    • D65’s −25% enrollment decline since FY 2019 is the steepest among 21 nearby K-8 districts; next-largest decline 14.3%
    • Total district FTEs increased by approximately 130 (+10%) over the same period
    • Math IAR proficiency declined from 44.8% (2018) to 42.3% (2024) despite the staffing buildup
    • Cross-referencing all three state disclosure lists yields 62 administrators for FY26 — 10 higher than the 52 the District reported under PA 96-0434 alone — raising the question of how many employees are performing administrative functions without being formally classified as administrators
  • Gavin, Larry. “Guest Essay: District 65 Employees and Enrollment.” Evanston RoundTable, November 2, 2025
    • Earlier independent analysis of the staff-to-enrollment ratio problem
    • Identified specific role-clusters (9 IES Coordinators, Human Relations layers, recent director-level positions, assistant principals in small schools) as candidates for review

The District has separately conceded the magnitude of the available admin savings: the April 20, 2026 SDRP Phase III deck identified $8,287,312 in additional admin/support cuts as available — roughly 41% of the AFR admin pool — but presented the proposal 19 days after the contractual deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27.

A reader who wants to verify our data has at least three convergent sources to cross-check: this page, Gavin’s RoundTable analyses, and the District’s own April 20 admission, all backed by underlying D65 board documents on FOIA Gras.

Methodology Notes

  • Data sources. Year-by-year admin headcount and individual-level compensation come from PA 96-0434 (TRS administrators) and PA 97-0609 (IMRF employees with comp packages over $75K), filed annually with ISBE and indexed in FOIA Gras. Total admin compensation pool comes from the District’s Annual Financial Report (AFR), which D65 also files annually with ISBE and which we obtained from districtvitals.com and our local archive at data/afr/.
  • Year labels show the ending school year (e.g., 2026 = SY2025-26 = FY26).
  • Total Compensation (PA disclosures) = Base Salary + TRS/Retirement contribution + Bonus + Health Insurance + Dental Insurance + Life Insurance + Vision Insurance (where reported) + Car Allowance + Retirement Annuity + Sick/Vacation Payout.
  • Total Compensation (AFR) = Salaries (object code 100) + Employee Benefits (object code 200) + MR/SS pension contributions allocated by function code (reported in the SUPPORT SERVICES (MR/SS) section of the Expenditures sheet).
  • CPI-indexed threshold for headcount. The threshold is anchored at $75,000 in 2016 and inflated each year using BLS CPI-U (US city average). In 2026 the threshold is approximately $103,000. Anchor choice is conservative — anchoring at the statute year (2011) would yield a higher 2016-equivalent threshold and make the apparent growth larger.
  • Inflation adjustment uses BLS CPI-U All Urban Consumers (US city average) annual averages, with 2026 as the base year. CPI values are stored in data/cpi_history.csv; the SY25-26 value is estimated from monthly Jan–Nov 2025 BLS data.
  • AFR functions counted as admin. 2300 (General Administration) + 2400 (School Administration) + 2500 (Business Services) + 2600 (Central Support Services). Operations-side functions (2540 O&M, 2550 Pupil Transport, 2560 Food Services) are explicitly excluded — they are operations, not admin.
  • Right-sizing per-cut comp ($129,489) is computed from the District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal: $8,287,312 ÷ 64 cuts. This is the District’s implicit average of the admin/support workforce they propose to cut from. Using the same per-cut figure for all Legion scenarios makes them directly comparable to the District’s number.
  • PA 097-0609 (IMRF) reports include only IMRF-participating employees whose compensation package (salary plus benefits) exceeds $75,000. This page’s CPI-indexed threshold is additionally applied on top of that legal threshold.
  • Some staff appear to move between TRS Admin and IMRF Support Staff categories across years as positions are reclassified for funding purposes. The SY22-23 → SY23-24 transition is the most prominent example.
  • Principals are tracked separately from TRS Admin even though they appear in the same PA 96-0434 reports.
  • The SY2020-21 PDF rendered the Health Insurance column as “#######” (an Excel column-too-narrow rendering artifact in the source PDF). This causes Total Comp to be slightly under-counted for that year only.
  • Enrollment for years not present in the website’s existing enrollment dataset (SY2015-16, SY2016-17, SY2025-26) is sourced from the District’s annual Opening of Schools reports on FOIA Gras. The SY2025-26 enrollment is from D65’s Data Dashboard. Note on enrollment-counting differences: this page uses the K-8 + PreK-with-IEP figure (5,625 for SY25-26) consistent with how D65’s Opening of Schools reports count students. Larry Gavin’s RoundTable analyses use ISBE’s “total served” figure (5,941 for SY25-26), which adds students in early-childhood programs, Park School, Rice Center, and JEH that are not in graded K-8 classrooms. Both figures are correct under their respective methodologies.

Acknowledgements

This analysis was prepared by the Legion of Data Nerds with the assistance of Claude.ai (Anthropic), which helped with extracting and reconciling data across the multi-year PA compensation reports and AFR Expenditures sheets, building the visualization pipeline, and drafting this page. All source data is from public District 65 board meeting documents indexed on FOIA Gras and from publicly-filed ISBE Annual Financial Reports. All editorial decisions, methodology choices, and conclusions are the authors’.

Underlying CSV data is available at data/d65_admin_comp_combined.csv (PA disclosures) and data/afr_admin_pool_summary.csv (AFR pool). Source AFR Excel files are in data/afr/. Build scripts for the dataset and visualizations are in build_admin_growth_data.py, build_afr_admin_pool.py, and build_admin_growth_final_charts.py.