The four million dollars in cuts announced at Wednesday night's Quincy School Board meeting were deep and sweeping.
The School Board has cut 81 certified and non-certified staff members, including almost 40 non-tenured teachers. That's about eight percent of the teaching staff. When you include retirements, absences and resignations, the number of eliminated positions totals 130.
Click here to view the entire list of teachers and support personnel cuts made by the Quincy School Board.
The cuts touch 17 different programs and departments in the district, including transportation, food service and extracurricular programs.
Superintendent Lemon says every school was touched by the cuts.
The Teen Parent Service Program will close. Those students will be transferred to a program at the Senior High School. Students spoke out Wednesday, saying without Teen Parent Services, they won't be prepared to move forward.
Board members also voted to close Irving Alternative School. Some students attending there will be served by Chaddock next year. Most of the 115 students at the Alternative School will be served by the Ombudsman Program. Board members voted to contract with that program for a year, which offers a combination of online work where students can work at their own pace. Superintendent Lonny Lemon says students' success will hinge on the students themselves.
Lemon said, "But a lot of it is going to depend on the kids, if they show up and are dedicated and parents are willing to give them support, every bit of information we have received say that they will succeed, they'll get high school programs and succeed."
Perhaps the program hit hardest was the Reading Recovery program which focuses on literacy in the schools. That program will essentially shut down, and its teachers will move back into regular classrooms. Superintendent Lemon says it may take several years before the district sees the effects of the loss of literacy programs in students' test scores. But he hopes to restore that program if and when funding becomes available. Other cuts include several paraeducators, but Lemon says no children with special needs will lose services. And he has hope that the district's Positive Behavior Intervention program will mean fewer referrals to special education programs.
What happens to the education in Quincy? Lemon said, "Obviously it will be affected because despite all the cuts the last four to five years we have not affected class size. We're at the point now we can't take much more of this or we will have no choice but to affect class sizes."
If there is a silver lining, it's this. Because those special literacy teachers will move back to regular classrooms, Lemon says class sizes won't really increase. But that could change if something isn't done soon.
Should parents be concerned?
Lemon said, "We should all be concerned as citizens of Illinois. Something has to be done on a state level."
You'll recall the board already had made 110 thousand dollars worth of cuts to extracurricular activities throughout the district. That includes eliminating about 25 assistant coaching positions for junior and senior high sports programs. The School Board has also voted to completely eliminate high school boys and girls swimming and diving programs.
Superintendent Lonny Lemon says that was a difficult decision, because the goal was to pare back on coaches, not cut programs completely.
One thing we hear from the public all the time are concerns that the administration is not being cut while teachers and students are losing out in the classroom. We asked Superintendent Lonny Lemon about that. He told us an administrator's position is being eliminated with the closing of Irving School. He says the district is down nine administrators from six to eight years ago and those administrators cost less.
Lemon said, "The district is paying less money now for administrators than they did in 1999, down nine percent from 1999. We've lost an administrator each of the last three years. We'll never win that battle with the public but the bottom line is you have to have a principal in every building."
Less money coming in, higher expenses and the state budget crisis have caused the Quincy School District to cut eight-and-a-half million dollars in the last three years. Since then, Superintendent Lonny Lemon says the district has been cutting into the bones of the district's operation to balance the budget. But he says the bad news is, the cuts may not be over anytime soon.
Lemon said, "I would love to be able to sit here and say that this is the end of it, but given the state of the fiscal status in the state of Illinois, there is no way. We're looking towards next year and we're worried it might even be worse. I'm not sure we're even close to being out of the woods yet."
You'll recall Illinois Governor Pat Quinn recently proposed $2 billion in new state cuts. That's expected to trickle down to local school districts as well.
By the way, there's at least one program which may be reinstated, if federal funds come through. Family Link is the program which provides mediators or links between school and the families of at-risk children in order to garner support at home for the child's education. Five Family Link staff members were given notice of impending layoffs, in case the federal stimulus dollars used to pay for the program aren't available this fall. The school board hopes to keep the program for the upcoming school year if stimulus money is offered again.
Meanwhile there's more bad financial news for the Quincy School District. After announcing almost $4 million dollars in cuts at last 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 tells KHQA the district only has about 13 days of cash on hand.
Lemon said, "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 dollars. If we had their monies, we wouldn't be in this predicament."
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 it used revised data to avoid penalizing districts for late payments from the state. Only 29 out of 869 districts across the state are under financial watch - that's just more than three percent. You can find that complete report at www.isbe.net/news/2010/mar24.htm.
On the flip side, several local districts made the state board's annual report for positive financial recognition.
Also on Wednesday night, the Quincy Board of Education voted six to one to transfer more than $2.66 million from the district's working cash to the education fund so the district can pay its employees.
TV Station Profiles & Public Inspection Files forKHQA