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| Board of Higer Education Hears Pleas for Better Funding |
(IRN)-State school board members are hearing about the need for money, though there is not much to go around. The Illinois State Board of Education is conducting public hearings for the fiscal year which begins next July 1. The board controls about $11 billion in federal and state funds, a total which is on the decline each of the past two years.
"It's not a good story for education … We owe school districts and vendors lots of money from last year and lots of money into this year," says Jim Baumann, the board member who chairs the Finance and Audit Committee. He says bill payments are about seven months behind.
One person testifying Wednesday in Springfield, Carrie Link Underwood, says she, and, in turn, her students, are beneficiaries of Teach for America, the public private organization which places young teachers in disadvantaged areas for two years each. Underwood says with a 100 percent low income population at Chicago's Harper High School, she resuscitated a school newspaper which had not come out in a decade.
Not everybody has a positive story to tell. The board was told preschool funding is going backward, preparing fewer of the neediest 3 to 5 year olds for academic excellence. "In Fiscal Year 2010, the Early Childhood Block Grant was cut by 10 percent, which was a $38 million reduction," said Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, representing the Ounce of Prevention Fund. "More than 10,000 less [sic] children from ages 3 to 5 were given the opportunity to attend preschool."
(Illinois Radio Network) |
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| 10 27 10 by Newsroom |
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