Representatives from New Trier High School District 203 and the New Trier Educational Foundation said Monday they were relieved that a procedural disagreement between them has been ironed out.
The agreement will allow the foundation, which raises money for programs and district needs that are not covered by district budgets, to continue what district Supt. Paul Sally called a “very collaborative relationship.”
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The two sides have talked since last year, after discovering that the foundation has operated without district oversight since 2007, thanks to bylaw changes proposed that year by the foundation. The 2007 changes weren’t actually approved, which no one realized until a foundation consultant’s assessment report uncovered the situation, Sally told school board members last month.
Foundation bylaw changes, approved by school board members at an Aug. 28 meeting and by foundation directors on Aug. 22, tighten district control over the foundation while letting it remain autonomous, school board President Greg Robitaille said after the vote.
They require the school board to approve foundation board appointments, and to approve any change in the organization’s bylaws, but only after appointments and changes have been approved by the foundation board, Sally said.
“It’s the right level of governance and oversight, but it allowed for that autonomy the foundation needed,” Robitaille said.
David Buyer, who chairs the foundation’s board of directors, also praised what he called “excellent conversations” between the two entities as they negotiated the bylaw changes.
Sally said Monday that the newly written bylaws – which the school board approved after convening as the foundation, following their regular monthly meeting – return the two sides to the relationship that existed between the foundation’s 2001 incorporation and 2007.
Despite the board’s unanimous approval of the new bylaws, the foundation and the district must still review bylaw language, Robitaille said after school board member Patrick O’Donoghue worried about what he called “typos” in the agreement.
“We’re going to work with the foundation to clean up any problems. I don’t know how long that will take. It won’t be a year, but it won’t be by next meeting,” Robitaille said.
During the school board’s regular meeting, Glencoe resident Wendy Serrino told members that she was troubled by the ratio between foundation expenses and the amount it gives out to the district in grants.
That currently stands at 62 cents spent for every dollar raised, according to the same consultant’s report that indirectly led to the most recent changes. The consultant recommended lowering that to between 30 and 35 cents for every dollar raised.
Serrino, who is board president of the North Shore Exchange consignment store charity in Glencoe, said the cost ratio was far above those of other charitable organizations.
“Expense ratios of about 20 percent are standard benchmarks for the (charitable) community,” she said, adding, “It’s clear to me that the foundation needs more board oversight.”
The cost-benefit ratio was also a concern to school board members, including O’Donoghue and Marc Glucksman, when they first discussed the bylaw confusion at their July meeting.
Earlier this month, Sally said he, the school board and the foundation all want to lower the ratio: “I think every foundation really wants to continually lower its costs.”