U-46 not banking on aid from Springfield

New desks and chairs aren't usually luxury items for Elgin Area School District U-46 students.

They soon could be.

Still waiting on upward of $6 million in promised state funding, U-46 has been forced to dip into reserves and will soon stop buying classroom equipment if Gov. Rod Blagojevich doesn't approve the funding districts hoped to get six months ago.

That's why U-46 officials refuse to count on promises from Springfield.

"We passed a budget this year we could live with if there was no increase in state aid. A tight budget. We wouldn't bank on promised state funding coming through," said John Prince, the district's chief financial officer. "If you borrow money, you have to pay it back by the end of the fiscal year."

A state budget deal last summer was supposed to send millions to schools, increasing reimbursement for special education teachers' pay, assisting the state's most overcrowded schools and bumping up by $400 the guaranteed minimum spent on a child's education.

But that deal fell apart amid claims of political betrayal and it wasn't until October that the state's legislative leaders managed to get along long enough to approve the technical language needed to spend the new education funding.

Since then, however, the paperwork has languished on the governor's desk. His signature is needed before the dollars can be released.

Asked about the situation at a recent news event, the governor said he and his staff were exploring ways to possibly add even more to the education budget.

State aid to school districts is based on variables that include average daily attendance, corporate property replacement tax and equalized assessed valuation. School districts with higher levels of local resources receive less state aid, and districts with fewer local resources collect more.

According to state school report cards, the state supplied U-46 with $3,090 per pupil in 2005-06 -- $108.9 million in total.

Prince estimates U-46 will receive between $3.5 million and $6 million more if and when this all shakes out. He's not counting on seeing the money anytime soon, though.

The governor has until early January to act. If he does nothing, the aid increases automatically take effect. His other options are rejecting the entire plan or portions of it, after which lawmakers could vote to restore the original amounts.

If pupils come back from holiday break and the budget deal still has not been signed, the district will be forced to cut expenditures on desks, chairs and other similar materials, Prince said.

U-46 is by no means the only district hamstrung by the stalling in Springfield.

Other districts, including Carpentersville-based Community Unit District 300, are in a similar boat.

"We obviously can't hire the staff we'd like to hire" until Blagojevich approves the plan, District 300 Chief Financial Officer Cheryl Crates said earlier this fall. "We worked too hard to get out of the red" to do that.

Republican state Rep. Ruth Munson, whose daughter attends Elgin High School, doesn't understand the governor's actions.

"We fight hard to make sure the schools are adequately funded. When the governor doesn't act on the budget for schools, it's incomprehensible to me, especially when education is supposed to be his top priority," Munson said.

In the meantime, the clock continues to tick.

"Let's face it: The sooner he signs the bills, the sooner the schools will start receiving their money -- money they should've received in July," Munson said. "Am I frustrated? Of course I am. (U-46) is clearly trying to be financially responsible … yet they're being promised money they're not seeing."