Leadership Matters - May 2013

How school districts can use the Lease Fund Law

The Lease Fund is an authorized levy at $.05 for all kinds of districts that can be increased to $.10 by referendum. Normally, the fund is used for leasing (not purchasing) educational facilities (mobile classrooms), computer technology or both. School districts often don’t take full advantage of this law. The fourth paragraph of the law lists ways these funds may be utilized, such as the acquisition of buildings,

Dr. Bill Phillips IASA Field

Services Director

rooms, grounds and appurtenances to be used by the district for school or administrative use plus the equipment, fixtures, renovations, and improvements to existing facilities of the district necessary to accommodate computers, computer hardware and computer software. Therefore, a district may utilize these funds for the direct lease purchase of computer hardware, software, or enter into a lease purchase agreement with a lending institution for these same items. This simply means that if you want to lease purchase more hardware than a year’s levy allows, you may utilize these funds to pay a lending institution for the lease purchase with lease levy funds. Now let’s discuss the expansion of the word and the meaning of the word “appurtenance.” The dictionary defines “appurtenance” as something added to equipment. While not saying it directly, it implies that something added to a computer can IASA members approved a change to the Association’s Bylaws to merge the Legislative Committee and the Resolutions/Position Statement Committee into the new Governmental Relations and Advocacy Committee. The motion was approved by voice vote at the IASA Annual Meeting held on February 26 in conjunction with Leadership Week. The change was proposed to eliminate overlap and redundancy and reduces the number of IASA committees from five to four. As with all committees, the new Governmental Relations and Advocacy Committee will be composed of one representative elected from each of IASA’s 21 Regions for a three- year term, and the Chair and Associate Chair shall

also be lease purchased. What is normally added to a computer but a printer? This very normal addition to a computer is where I am going with this utilization of the word “appurtenance.” The normal utilization for school districts for printers are large and expensive machines that possess the capability to send remote print jobs with the utilization of the internet and are normally lease purchased. I will come to the point now and suggest to you that districts may utilize the lease fund to lease purchase copy machines as long as they have the capability to receive remote print jobs for a computer. Copying costs are extensive for all school districts and any way to remove these costs from the educational fund is a welcome relief to a school district budget. be members of the Board of Directors. The mission of the new committee will be the same as that of the two committees included in the merger. That mission includes:  Monitoring legislative and political activities that may impact Illinois public schools;  Serving as a statewide voice for excellence in education; and  Working to ensure that legislative positions, public positions and governmental communications accurately reflect the interests of administrators and students across Illinois. The new committee will meet after July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

IASA members approve new combined Governmental Relations and Advocacy Committee

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