By Jim Broadway, Publisher of State School News Service
As we reported late last week, the Illinois State Board of Education must now hold a special meeting to stretch $511 million to cover "discretionary" programs that were funded at a total of more than $900 million in FY 2009. They must make more than $400 million in funding cuts to such programs as:
Early Childhood Education; Career and Technical Education; ADA Block Grants; Gifted Education; Homeless Education; Truants Alternative/Optional Education; Regional Office of Education Services; Bilingual Education; National Board Certification; Principal Mentoring - and the list goes on to include more than 40 established education initiatives of proven effectiveness.
That funding-reduction meeting will begin Tuesday at 10 a.m. in Springfield.
We have posted a notice of the meeting at www.stateschoolnews.com. A period of "public participation" will be a part of the meeting, as is the case for all open SBE meetings. We will be on hand to cover the event and will post updates on our home page as the day progresses.
While the testimony is sure to be compelling, the meager amount of funds available will not change Tuesday. The General Assembly's failure to generate the revenue to avert disaster in education, human services and other areas of state responsibility made the damaging funding reductions necessary.
Most of you will be represented at the meeting by leaders of constituencies of which you are members. We will report what is said and, of course, the details of final actions taken. Check back at the SSNS home page, www.stateschoolnews.com, periodically on Tuesday for the latest information available.
If you have specific questions or comments, use the "Contact SSNS" button on our home page for that. Due to the changing situation (and some transitional distractions that we are experiencing at SSNS as well) we may be slower than usual to respond, but we will do our best.
Thank you,
Jim
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