Building A Better District was born out of a group of parents and resident taxpayers that believe transparency, community engagement, intentional & ongoing two-way dialogue, and open processes are critical to the trust in and success of our school district and Board of Education.  While there are a number of parents and empty-nester residents involved in this effort,  Building A Better District has been brought to the internet by Andy Dogan and Micheline Welch, local parents with children attending the schools in our distrct.

We are a non-partisan movement!  Our aim is to bring together a broad audience in our community to work together on challenges we face in our district with a special focus on increasing district transparency, accountability, and communication for the community.

Open processes and community engagement are critical factors when developing solutions to community challenges.  Whether it is capacity issues or programming, extra-curricular activities to transportation issues, engaging the community in strong two-way communication is critical to building and maintaining public trust.

Employing values such as honesty, integrity, transparency, and accountability, humility and a willingness to listen, reconsider, and regroup are also critical.  We have many passionate parents in our community that share a desire to be an active part of the conversation of our district, but feel as if they have no forum to truly be heard.  As parents and taxpayers, we believe none of us should have to resort to a FOIA request just to find out what is happening inside the school district we pay for and only in extreme circumstances should those requests for information be outright denied rather than fulfilled at least in-part.  We have heard from parents, resident taxpayers who are empty nesters, and even teachers about how much the "voice of the community" is needed here.   

We have been working for months with a number of community members on the research we've presented on this site.  We have taken great care to base our research only on the data shared by the district itself, starting with the 2022 Focus Group Presentation and FAQs, and the official enrollment reports issued by the district and numbers shared with ISBE.  Any other supplemental data gathered has been used to try and validate claims made by the district when no source has been provided by them.  Sources are cited whenever we present information (and if it is missing...let us know...we're a small volunteer team trying to cover a lot of ground an information in our "spare" time).

Our hope is by unifying our voices through Building A Better District, we can establish better two-way, open communication with the district, the members of our Board of Education, and make sure moving forward, the broader community is considered the most valuable partner and a necessary voice at the table from the beginning to the end of any issues our district faces. 

We can and must do better for our students and our community. 

Thank you for taking the time to visit this site and look around.  We hope you find the information here useful, relevant, and informative!