QUINCY, ILL. -- There's more bad financial news for the Quincy School District.
After announcing almost four million dollars in cuts at Wednesday night's school board meeting, the district has been placed on the state's financial watch list. It's now one of 29 Illinois districts in the most severe category. Quincy ranks a one on a scale of four for the amount of cash it has on hand. Superintendent Lonny Lemon told KHQA the district only has about 13 days of cash on hand.
"Obviously, our numbers would be better if we had the money the state owes us. We have to start transferring money from our funds now because we can't make payroll because the state owes us $3.4 million. If we had their monies, we wouldn't be in this predicament.", Lemon said.
The Quincy school district is the only district in the KHQA viewing area on the financial watch list, put out by the Illinois State Board of Education. The state board's website says that it used revised data to avoid penalizing district for late payments from the state. Only 29 out of 869 districts across the state are under financial watch; that's just more than 3 percent.
On the flip side, several local districts made the state board's annual report for positive financial recognition. You can find that complete report at www.isbe.net/news/2010/mar24.htm.
Also on Wednesday night, the Quincy Board of Education voted 6-1 to transfer more than $2.5 million from the district's working cash to the education fund so the district can pay its employees.