State education superintendent pleads for funding

Money's hard to come by these days. Even that which has been promised.

On Wednesday, State Superintendent for Education Christopher Koch urged the Illinois General Assembly to maintain the financial commitment the state has made to public schools.

"Illinois schools recognize that the state currently has more bills than cash on hand. Indeed, despite the issuance of $1.4 billion in bonds in December 2008 to help pay down the backlog of bills, the Comptroller's office still had more than 9,000 vouchers for Illinois schools totaling more than $550 million," he wrote to legislators.

While Koch noted that general state aid claims are still being paid on time, some of the other grant funds upon which school districts rely for daily operations up to three months behind.

My colleague Susan Sarkauskas learned Monday that Geneva school administrators concerned about cash flow are working on cutting the 2009-10 fiscal year operating budget by $1 million.

School principals and department heads have been asked to keep down spending for the remaining five months of this fiscal year.

The plan was announced at Monday's school board meeting, as Superintendent Kent Mutchler reported about how a late state reimbursement for transportation, school lunches and a few grants forced the district to tap into its reserves.

"The challenges that we face in our budget, and especially this year, they have been made even larger with the uncertainty in state payments," he said.

The state was due to send the district $1.4 million in August, but didn't send the check until the end of December.

As of mid-December, Elgin Area School District U-46 was still missing about $9.1 million owed by the state.

To help combat this, Chief Financial Officer John Prince has advised the District U-46 school board to start trimming spending in discretionary areas like energy.

Lake District 304, Carpentersville-based Community Unit District 300, also owed millions, has been forced to dip into reserves as they wait on state funds.

These delays place strain enough on school districts. But Koch, in his letter, was clear that he was even more worried about an actual reduction of dollars promised for the fiscal year.

"School districts have built their respective budgets around the FY09 budget enacted by the General Assembly-local labor agreements have been put into place, and leases and other contracts have been signed.

Moreover, a reduction to the amount of state funding flowing to our schools places corresponding federal funds at risk, Koch said.

Times are tough, yes, even for the state, but enough is enough.

It's time to stop squeezing the littlest of the little guy: the school kid.