The Edwardsville School District has decided to layoff 60 teachers and teachers aides while reducing funding to athletics, performing arts, drivers ed, and vocational. These actions will cut 3 million dollars from the budget which is hurting because the state of Illinois is way behind on its funding and the property values in the city have declined enough that the income from property taxes is much lower than previous years.
That is a lot of cuts. It's brave of the school board to do this but it's shocking to see it coming from Edwardsville, one of those local districts others point to as being among the best.
Secondly, a state legislator has submitted a bill which would end East St. Louis own private board of elections and put the city's elections under St. Clair County like every other local city in St. Clair is. This is long overdue, it would save East St. Louis money but it would also put an end to the constant "reputation for having unfair elections." Unfair is an odd word to use, fraudulent is the word used when arrests were made. Not so much reputation as reality.
Collinsville Unit 10 will be making those same choices in about a year, after spending millions of dollars on the football field and possibly spending more on the gym. Edwardsville at least went out and raised significant private funding for their althletic facilities. Collinsille did little to raise money. The Collinsville board members must be living in a dream world to think the tax revenue will not be decling.
Posted by: Ron | January 26, 2012 at 09:29 AM
I agree.
Posted by: Frank | January 27, 2012 at 12:11 AM