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Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

Education Desk: Year-Round Schools First To Feel The Pinch

Courtesy of Rock Island Schools

Thanks to the ongoing budget impasse, school districts around Illinois are scrambling to figure out how to open without state funding. Schools that operate year-round will be the first to face their day of reckoning.

The Rock Island – Milan District is one of the few districts where every school is on a year-round calendar. Some school districts designate just a handful of buildings to operate year-round, but in Rock Island, every school is on that schedule. Spokeswoman Holly Sparkman says the district plans to use its $23 million savings account to keep the doors open.

“I mean, we’re basically going to wash away 30 years of fiscal prudent management, of building up our reserves to $23 million, and that’s going to be gone in a year. That’s kind of a bitter pill to swallow,” she says. “Even though you build up the reserves for a rainy day, to plan for something, we didn’t necessarily think that not having a state budget was going to be the thing.”

 

The school board has considered cost-saving measures, like eliminating athletics and band, but Sparkman says the amount that could save wouldn’t equal the community’s loss of beloved programs. The district’s chief financial officer has explored debt options like opening a line of credit, but advised that the fees would be too high.

Without state funding, the district’s reserves will run out in February 2017. If the state still hasn’t come through by then, the district plans to borrow against future property tax revenue.

After a long career in newspapers (Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Anchorage Daily News, Illinois Times), Dusty returned to school to get a master's degree in multimedia journalism. She began work as Education Desk reporter at NPR Illinois in September 2014.
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