News Stories Related to State Proposal to Pull $30 Million Out of Aurora Schools
Beacon: State set to cut funding for schools
February 11, 2010
By PAUL DAILING
Current negotiations in Springfield could result in 10 percent cuts to the state's school funding foundation level, meaning millions less in state aid to local schools.
State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, an Aurora Democrat who chairs the Elementary and Secondary Education Appropriations Committee, said this week the state budget crisis will likely affect general state aid, lately the only consistent funding source from Springfield to local schools.
Estimated funding loss
The approximate amounts local schools would lose if the state cuts its foundation school funding level by 10 percent:
East Aurora: $7.1 million
West Aurora: $6.8 million
Batavia: $339,000
Geneva: $319,000
Hinckley-Big Rock: $51,000
Indian Prairie: $16.6 million
Kaneland: $1.4 million
Newark: $19,000
Newark High School: $11,000
Oswego: $8.6 million
Plano: $1.3 million
Sandwich: $1.5 million
Somonauk: $592,000
St. Charles: $732,000
Yorkville: $265,000
Based on 2009-2010 ISBE General State Aid Entitlements
"This has turned from the Mississippi to the Grand Canyon sort of thing," Chapa LaVia said of the funding gulch.
While the state has stopped and started other payments to the schools during its current budget crisis, general state aid was the only part that continued uninterrupted.
If Chapa LaVia is correct, that could change next year.
"It looks like we're coming to some huge drops in general state aid," Chapa LaVia said. "It's looking like anywhere from $600 to $700 per-pupil drop."
By law, districts must announce possible layoffs for the next school year by next month. Budget predictions so far have been based on the Illinois State Board of Education's proposed budget, which kept the foundation level the same. Chapa LaVia, however, is predicting a 10 percent cut for schools.
"That just pulled the rug out from us and every other district," West Aurora School District spokesman Mike Chapin said. "We were marching forward under the assumption that the foundation level was the same."
And the poorer the school district, the more this will hurt.
Cut hurts poor most
One use of the school funding foundation level is to break districts into three groups based on an area's wealth.
In the bottom two groups -- where all the Fox Valley's schools fall -- the number is popped into complicated formulas that come up with the dollar amount a district gets for each student. Poorer districts get more per student.
The wealthiest group, which includes the Barrington and New Trier schools, gets a flat per-student fee.
So if all other factors remain the same as last year, a 10 percent reduction in the foundation level could cut more than $7.1 million from the low-income East Aurora School District's state aid, but only $732,000 from St. Charles schools.
Locally, St. Charles, Geneva, Batavia and Yorkville fall in this middle group. The rest are "foundation level" districts, a group that includes the lion's share of Illinois' 871 school districts, State Board spokesman Mary Fergus said.
"It's not going to be fun, but it's not going to be the crisis it is for some of the 'foundation level' schools," Batavia Assistant Superintendent for Finance Kris Monn said.
A 10 percent cut would push four local districts -- Kaneland, Indian Prairie, Hinckley-Big Rock and Newark -- from that "foundation level" group into the middle group, where they'll get even less money.
Waiting to see
A cut to general state aid isn't the only part of school funding bracing for a hit.
By and large, schools get their money from two sources -- the state and local property taxes. The economy already has smacked down local property taxes.
School Superintendent Laurel Walker said the Plano School District was already looking at cuts in everything from staff to textbooks. The current estimate is they could save $400,000 from next year's budget by not updating technology, buildings, maintenance and textbooks. Another $300,000 could be saved by not replacing retiring employees.
But the cut Chapa LaVia fears would take another $1.3 million away from Plano's state funds.
"We would have to look at more cuts if that comes true," Walker said.
East Aurora, which got 45 percent of its budget from general state aid last year, is waiting for an official decision by the Legislature before it announces additional cuts.
"Once there's a decision made by the state, we'll make decisions accordingly," district spokesman Clayton Muhammad said.
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Daily Herald: Indian Prairie facing major budget cuts
By Justin Kmitch | Daily Herald Staff
Indian Prairie Unit District 204 already has chopped $9.2 million from next year's budget, but uncertainties about when and if state funding will arrive could force it to cut even deeper.
District officials said Wednesday they believe the state's $13 billion debt will force the legislature to reduce payments to individual school districts.
"We just are not sure what we can count on from the state of Illinois and our best estimate is that we're potentially facing another $14 million to $20 million in additional cuts," Superintendent Kathryn Birkett said. "And some of those cuts will be very difficult because we have worked hard to prioritize cuts outside of the classroom but we're running out of cuts that we can make."
Compounding the district's problem is the $7.8 million the state is already late in paying.
With that in mind, the district is discussing how many of its roughly 680 non-tenured teachers may be released by the April 1 deadline. Those teachers account for about 31 percent of District 204's instructional staff.
"We are still working to determine the number of teachers that release could include but we feel we have to be forward with the non-tenured staff so they know that's a possibility," Birkett said. "We have about 680 non-tenured (teachers) but we're nowhere near cutting that number. There's a lot of Chicken Little out there."
Birkett, realizing the district cannot "make up the whole deficit on the backs of staff," said program cuts, building closures and increased class sizes are all on the table. The only thing not up for discussion, she said, is a tax increase.
"We have not talked about a referendum at all, not at all," she said. "We believe that in these fiscal times and what our community is dealing with, we are not looking at that at this time."
The solution, Birkett said, is for community members to contact legislators to make sure the message is clear.
"The message is that this timing is not of our doing. This isn't our timing based on some strategic plan," she said. "We feel we've gotten the highest financial recognition in the state for the last several years because we have balanced our budgets and been responsible,"
Lawmakers say they're hearing the district and others in similar situations but their influence is limited until Gov. Pat Quinn introduces his budget proposal and they begin dissecting it. The budget introduction, however, still could be weeks away.
Sen. Randy Hultgren, a Winfield Township Republican, said he thinks school districts eventually will get what they are owed but could not say how long the process will take.
"It feels like we're pushing against a wall right now," he said,
Over in the House, Naperville Republican Rep. Darlene Senger said she's frustrated with the lack of education funding.
"I am optimistic that Districts 204 and (Naperville Unit District) 203 (which is also owed between $4 million and $5 million in back payments) will get those late payments that are owed to them but I'm worried when those payments will be made," Senger said.
"We're hearing what our districts are saying and everyone here knows what the problem is. We need to fix it but there's only so much control we have," she said. "I can't make state funding change because I don't have that power. All I can do is be very fiscally responsible to our taxpayers here and make sure we provide the best possible education we can."
If and when the back payments are made, Birkett said she anticipates released teachers would be brought back in under their contract. But she can't guarantee it.
"Given the state of the state, we are trying to put ourselves in good position so that whatever they throw at us, we'll be ready," Birkett said. "We are now doing business in a world we have never done business in before."
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New York Times: With Federal Stimulus Money Gone, Many Schools Face Budget Gaps
By SAM DILLON
Federal stimulus money has helped avoid drastic cuts at public schools in most parts of the nation, at least so far. But with the federal money running out, many of the nation’s schools are approaching what officials are calling a “funding cliff.”
Congress included about $100 billion for education in the stimulus law last year to cushion the recession’s impact on schools and to help fuel an economic recovery. New studies show that many states will spend all or nearly all that is left between now and the end of this school term.
With state and local tax revenues still in decline, the end of the federal money will leave big holes in education budgets from Massachusetts and Florida to California and Washington, experts said.
“States are going to face a huge problem because they’ll have to find some way to replace these billions, either with cuts to their K-12 systems or by finding alternative revenues,” said Bruce Baker, an education professor at Rutgers University.
The stimulus program was the largest one-time infusion of federal education dollars to states and districts in the nation’s history. As the program took shape last year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and other officials repeatedly warned states and districts to avoid spending the money in ways that could lead to dislocations when the gush of federal money came to an end.
But from the start, those warnings seemed at odds with the stimulus law’s goal of jump-starting the economy, and the administration trumpeted last fall that school districts had used stimulus money to save, or create, some 250,000 education jobs.
Now the new studies point to the problems likely to beset thousands of school districts when the federal money runs out.
One study, which Dr. Baker wrote with David Sciarra and Danielle Farrie of the Education Law Center in Newark and which is to be presented on Monday at a conference at Teachers College of Columbia University, examines how 11 states have used their education stimulus money. The 11 states received amounts from the stabilization fund ranging from $234 million (Nebraska) to $2.5 billion (New York).
Nine of the 11 states had already allocated most of that money for this school year and last, the study found, leaving a third or less of their federal money available for the 2010-11 school year.
Another bigger study, also to be presented at the conference, found that some states facing pressing financial problems last year as the stimulus program emerged decided to use 100 percent of their education stimulus money almost immediately.
Of the 20 states in the study by Michael A. Rebell, a professor at Teachers College, and two colleagues, Jessica Wolff and Dan Yaverbaum, six of them — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey and Washington — had allotted all of their education stabilization money to schools for this school year and last, leaving zero to spend on the school term beginning this fall.
The two new studies based their findings on data supplied by the states last year to the federal Department of Education on their applications for stimulus money, as well as on other financial reports that have allowed the scholars to document states’ actual expenditures on public schools. Professor Rebell’s study also involved phone interviews with state and local school officials in the 20 states, he said.
The new studies align with results of a broader, 50-state survey on the stimulus program carried out by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The conference’s survey, based solely on an examination of the states’ stimulus applications, found that 20 states said when applying that they intended to spend 100 percent of their stabilization funds in the 2008-9 and 2009-10 school years.
The 20 states were Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
But Dan Thatcher, who conducted the conference’s survey, said that Idaho, and perhaps others among the 20, had reconsidered those plans, deciding to reserve some stimulus money for the coming school year.
On average, according to the conference’s survey, states allotted 38 percent of their stabilization money to the 2008-9 year and 48 percent to the current school year, leaving only 14 percent for the school term that begins this fall.
About $65 billion of the $100 billion in education stimulus money went to states in three pots: $39.5 billion as part of a stabilization fund intended to bolster the finances of state public education systems, $13 billion for the federal program for poor students known as Title I, and $12.2 billion for students with disabilities. Congress directed the rest of the $100 billion to smaller initiatives, including $4.3 billion to a school improvement grant program the Obama administration calls Race to the Top.
Professor Rebell’s study examined in some detail how school districts have used the stimulus money they received under the federal programs intended for poor and disabled students. Many districts have chosen to spend much of the money they received for students with disabilities on things like lift buses, handicap-accessible vans and renovated bathrooms.
“This was a godsend, and the investment will last for years,” Professor Rebell said. “In most cases, districts didn’t put people on the payroll that they would now have to lay off.”
But many school systems have not been so prudent in their use of Title I money.
“The need to spend these funds quickly has led districts to add large numbers of temporary staff positions,” Professor Rebell’s study says. “In most states that we studied, some school districts appear to have spent a considerable amount of their Title I funds to save jobs formerly paid for through state and local funding that were threatened as a result of cuts in that funding.”
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