Ken Maurer has been superintendent of Metamora THSD 122 for the past 23 years. Now in his 41st year in education, he spent 10 years teaching high school before serving as a principal and later serving as superintendent of Elmwood CUSD 322 in Peoria County.
W hile I am most appreciative of the estimated $189,921 that Metamora Township High School District 122 is supposed to receive as a result of the $26 billion Education Jobs Bill passed by Congress, I will recommend we use our dollars to pay for unfunded mandates from the federal and state governments.
An old adage says, “When you are in the hole, stop digging.” The federal government needs to stop digging the deficit hole.
The federal government does not have an extra $26 billion. The only way they can get it is to borrow and go even more into debt. The state of Illinois would be wise to take the $415 million it expects to receive and use it pay last year’s bills or pay down pension obligations, rather than spend it on additional programs.
The state did this with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) dollars the past two years. Illinois used ARRA dollars to replace general state aid dollars. Schools stayed even and Illinois was able to use the dollars elsewhere.
When governmental bodies that are in the hole financially receive new dollars, they need to use the dollars to fund the current programs and not dig the hole deeper by adding new expenditures. The current indication is that the state will send the $415 million on to local school districts to be used to hire additional teachers and pay teacher salaries.
The state also reduced or eliminated much of their funding for mandated programs such as special education, transportation, agricultural education, professional development for both teachers and administrators, and other programs. They did not reduce or eliminate the mandates. Before asking schools to use the money to hire new staff, the state needs to pay for the programs they currently mandate on schools.
The federal government also almost never pays the full amount of what their own laws require. Two big examples are the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB). As originally passed in 1975, IDEA required the federal government to pay 40 percent of special education teacher salaries. While this act and the 40 percent requirement have been continued every time the Education and Secondary Education Act has been renewed, federal dollars have never equaled 40 percent of special education salaries. Metamora receives between 15 and 18 percent of the salary cost, depending on the year.
When President George W. Bush and Congress passed NCLB in 2001, it added more than 500 programs and paper work requirements for school districts. But they failed to appropriate enough dollars to pay for these new programs. The financial hole was getting deeper.
Should the state of Illinois send our share of the jobs bill on to us, I will recommend that we spend it on the mandates that the federal and state governments are not currently funding. I will not recommend that we hire additional teachers that we will not be able to afford the following year.
Should the state and the federal government require us to spend the dollars on teacher salaries, I will recommend we follow the path the state used with ARRA dollars. We will replace the dollars budgeted from our local funds for teacher salaries with the jobs bill money, and use our money to pay for the unfunded mandates. We will be able to say we used the jobs bill money to pay teacher salaries. We will not dig a deeper hole.
If the federal government refuses to stop digging the financial hole, and the state refuses to stop digging the financial hole, then it is incumbent on local governments to stop it on the local level. If not, both the federal and state governments will continue to mandate additional programs without paying for their current ones.
The reality is we started school August 17. By that date, teachers had been hired and classes were set. It may take another month or two to actually receive the jobs bill dollars. Besides digging a deeper hole, the federal government was a little late to actually make a difference.