More Cuts Slated for Staff at District 204

Without some sort of financial miracle, a number of classified employees at will end the school year jobless.

On Monday night, the District 204 Board of Education held its regular meeting and discussed a proposal to cut a number of library media center (LMC) assistants, among the many classified staffing cuts expected to be made in an effort to balance the district’s budget.

No action was taken, that will happen at the board’s first meeting in May, but the board was resigned to the facts: The District has to reduce its budget and barring any sort of miracle, staff will need to be cut.

On the line are seven LMC assistant positions and several people spoke out during the meeting, asking that the district find some other way to make ends meet.

During the meeting Dave Holm, the district’s Assistant Superintendent of Business, advised the board that the district has identified additional cuts of $800,000 in addition to the $8.5 million already identified, that need to be made that would allow the district to have a balanced budget, provided the amount it expects to receive from the state doesn’t change. If the board was to decide to keep any of the positions currently slated to be cut, the district would need to identify cuts to be made somewhere else.

All of the board members spoke out during the discussion and said that they weren’t happy that the LMC assistant positions would need to be cut, but the district was left with few choices.

“It pains me that I have to be the superintendent at a time when it is so painful in the state of Illinois,” said Kathy Birkett, adding, “the bottom line is the district has no assurances and we have to go after things we are sure of.”

The board was apologetic that the cuts were needed and they all expressed the wish that another resolution could be found, with one member lightheartedly saying if Bill Gates was watching the district would gladly accept a donation.

“I love being a new board member, but this is not fun for me. It is painful and I think we all struggled with having to lay off teachers and now we have to look at laying off classified staff … It’s getting tougher. We don’t want to do these things, but it’s difficult,” said board member Mark Rising. “We don’t want to affect the kids because we want to make sure they are getting the same education. We don’t want to have to raise taxes. We don’t want to have to do any type of referendum. But we want to make sure we work on a balanced budget and that is what the administrators have tried to … I just pray, it doesn’t have the effect with the libraries it doesn’t have the effect on the education. We all hope that.”

On May 7, the district will present the board with 62 classified full-time positions for reduction, according to District 204 officials. Of the 62 full-time positions, 48 are considered the typical annual releases the district does each year because the positions’ funding is from grants, fluctuations in enrollment or other funding sources. The budget reductions account for the remaining 14 positions (7 LMC assistants and 7 secretarial positions). Those numbers may change before May 7 depending on whether other staff decide to take early retirement.

The district is hopeful that just as with the certified reductions, it will be able to hire as many of the 48 employees back once enrollment and funding becomes more solid, according to District 204.