Big Cuts Eyed for Special Ed (IL)
February 16, 2011
Carrie Koenig of Algonquin came to Monday night’s Community Unit School District 300 Board of Education meeting holding her breath, she said.
Next to “special education,” the dollar amount had been blank in the first version of the administrative proposal for 2011-12 budget reductions that the school board is considering. In the version brought before the board for the third time Monday night, it read nearly $400,000.
“I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach,” Koenig told the board.
Koenig’s 12-year-old son is a student at Dundee Middle School in West Dundee; her daughter, 9, attends Lincoln Prairie Elementary School in Lake in the Hills. Both have Cohen Syndrome, marked by obesity, mental retardation and craniofacial dsymorphism. And both have individualized education plans, or IEPs, as part of the Carpentersville-based school district’s special education program.
They’re just two of 3,029 students in District 300 who have IEPs, according to district spokeswoman Allison Strupeck. That’s nearly 15 percent of the total 20,544 students in the Carpentersville-based district.
“That is a huge number,” Koenig said. “And that is a number that needs your support.”
The latest revisions to the proposal, aimed at cutting $8.3 million from the school district’s budget for next school year, now make special education the second hardest-hit program, after transportation. In the worst-case scenario, they include cutting as many as 93.6 full-time positions across the district, shortening the school day for middle and high schools, eliminating the Preschool for All program and closing the Oak Ridge Alternative School.
The cuts to special education include two full-time teachers and nine paraprofessionals. Yet, Koenig said, “I can speak for both of my children. They already don’t have enough staff in their programs.”
Those cuts come as District 300 CFO Cheryl Crates said she figures District 300 will end the current 2010-11 school year anywhere from $6.3 million to $24.7 million in the red.

 ;
Laying it all out
The cuts in the original administrative proposal are based on priorities set by administrators through the school district’s annual Educational Program Review Technique process, and insurance, wage and benefit concessions that the district hopes its unions will make.
The revisions in version two are based on input made after school principals and members of the district’s Community Finance Committee weighed in on the proposed cuts and brainstormed their own, Crates said. They included putting a dollar amount to the cuts to special education and removing a proposal to reduce the number of nurses in the district.
The proposed reductions follow about $9 million in reductions the school board made before the start of the 2010-11 school year to make up for $12 million the state then owed District 300.
The state now owes the District 300 about $9 million after it missed its first two payments for the school year. If it misses all four, that would leave the district $24.7 million in the red.
The school board will discuss the proposed budget cuts at a work session at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Westfield Community School, 2100 Sleepy Hollow Road, Algonquin. And board member Karen Roeckner said, “I don’t want anything omitted because of a committee. I want to make sure it’s all there in front of us.”
The school board will vote on reductions at its meeting Monday, Feb. 28. A complete list of all the proposed reductions that the school board is discussing, and a timeline of that process, is available at d300.org.
“Interested?” board president Joe Stevens asked at Monday’s meeting. “You should be there Wednesday.”