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Summary of Homer District 33C School Board Meeting February 11, 2016

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Summary of Homer District 33C School Board Meeting February 11, 2016

 
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The Board of Education approved revised job descriptions for Custodian, Sec- retary (building level), Clerical Aide and Administrative Assistant for Curriculum and Instruction; revised title and job description for Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent; job description for Homer 33C coaching position.
 
Kathleen Robinson, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, presented  an update on the District’s five-year Strategic Plan, which was launched at the begin- ning of the 2013-14 school year. The District is on track with its goals, which were established with the help of a committee of parents, teachers, administrators, non- certified staff members and community members as well as feedback from stake- holders. The five strategic goals that are guiding the District, are:

  • Student Achievement: Provide an effective and instructional program that supports academic success for all students.
  • Learning Environment: Provide a safe, welcoming and inspirational learning environment that compels and motivates students to participate in their own educa
  • Professional Environment: Maintain a positive, dynamic work environment in a self-renewing organiza
  • Partnerships: Build and strengthen productive partnerships among all stakeholders to effectively communicate the District’s ongoing journey.
  • Resources: Manage and maintain the District’s positive fiscal status while

addressing the District’s strategic priorities.
 
To aid in the implementation of goals, the District developed eight high-level strategies to serve as a roadmap and timeline for completing objectives. Those eight high-level strategies are:

  1. 1. Provide a standards-based curriculum that ensures each child will have the same essential learning opport
  2. 2. Provide an aligned system of common formative and summative assessments for each grade level and department to guide instruction in a timely fashion and determine whether expected mastery and growth have occurre
  3. 3. Provide directive, timely support within the school day for students who need challenge beyond their required learning and students who are challenged in their learning.
  4. 4. Provide a District-wide data system that provides timely, accessible metrics de- scribing the District’s/schools’/classrooms’/students’ achievements, successes and challenges and share results, where suitable, to both internal and external stakeholder
  5. 5. Provide time and resources for staff to regularly and frequently meet within the school day around best practices, common data-based results and improving instructional offerings as focused, accountable collaborative tea
  6. 6. Provide a safe, welcoming and inspirational school learning environment where students will demonstrate responsibility for their own learning and staff will demonstrate their commitment to and caring of stude

 
 
 
 

 
Barb Wilson, President Angela Adolf, Vice President Amy Blank, Secretary
Ed Campins, Member Elizabeth Hitzeman, Member Debra Martin, Member
Russ Petrizzo, Member

 
 
 

  1. Provide structures to engage and feedback mechanisms to elicit the educational aspirations and talents of parents and community members as partners in the Homer 33C educational proces
  2. Ensure that District fiscal, technological and human resources are efficiently utilized to further the District’s strategic priorities while also ensuring long- term fiscal solvency and technological and human resource effectivene

 
Under each high-level strategy is a list of objectives to complete and a school year in which to complete them. Most of the objectives have been completed. Those remaining include:

  • Unpacking Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and establishing benchmarks for each grading period as well as District science curriculum pacing guides and aligned curricular mater
  • Evaluating gifted/talented service delivery and resource
  • Developing clear technology standards for each grade leve
  • Developing a Parent Advisory Counc

 
Toward the end of the five-year strategic plan in 2017-18, Robinson suggests
the District form another committee to establish goals that will guide the District for the next five years.
 
The Board of Education approved a waiver of facility use fees for Olivet Nazarene University to offer a cohort program at Young School. In exchange, Homer 33C staff will enjoy a 20 percent discount on tuition. Those pursuing doctorates will receive a 10 percent discount. For more information, click here or visit the district’s website and click on the “Employee Page” tab on the left side of the screen. There, you will find a link to the Olivet Nazarene University informational flyer.
 
The Board of Education approved Letter s of Intent to Retire from Susan Jagust and Jane Fojtik.
 
John Reiniche, Assistant Superintendent for Business, presented a report on the District’s Cash Flow and Fund Balances, which are expected to hit a low of $2.7 million in May before rebounding to a projected $18.8 million in June. The report will aid the Board in its conversations about how much cash the Dis- trict should have on hand to meet financial obligations at low points in the tax cycle.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The Next Regular School Board Meeting is February 23, 2016 at 7:30

Northwest Homer Fire Protection District looks to raise tax rate

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Northwest Homer Fire Protection District looks to raise tax rate

Elissa Chudwin, Editor
5:47 pm CST February 11, 2016
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The Northwest Homer Fire Protection District is seeking an increase to fire service fees during the March 15 general primary election to help pay for building maintenance and new equipment.

The fire district is comprised of two stations — located at 16152 W. 143rd St. and 13010 W. 143rd St. — that serve 10 square miles in Lockport, Homer Glen, Lemont Township and unincorporated Cook County. It is requesting a temporary 9-cent increase to raise the tax rate from .491 percent to .5796 percent for four years.

If the referendum were to pass, a homeowner with a house valued at $100,000 would see an approximate tax increase of $30 per year, according to a Northwest Homer Fire Protection District release.

“We’re hoping it generates [at least] $325,000 over the next four years,” Fire Chief Ken Vrba said.

The fire district is requesting additional revenue to replace overhead garage doors for 15 bays, both stations’ windows,  a water tanker and the stations’ generators, according to a Northwest Homer Fire Protection District release. The fire station also needs new roofs, new furnaces at Station One, and new A/C units at both stations within the next five years.

“The roofs were replaced 20 years ago,”  Vrba said. “They’ll be due to be replaced soon.”

Deputy Fire Chief Todd Fonfara said the building and equipment’s age is why so much maintenance is needed. The water tanker, which transports water to neighborhoods without fire hydrants, is roughly 33 years old, and many of the parts are no longer manufactured, he said. The estimated cost to replace the tanker is $230,000.

“Now we’re at the point where we can’t do everything else,” Vrba said.

Vrba added several vehicles are also aging and that the fire district has already pushed back their replacement dates.

“We don’t want to provide people with old equipment when we’re taking them to the hospital,” Fonfara said.

While a referendum has not passed since 1980, this is the third time the fire district is attempting to increase fire service fees since 2007, according to Fonfara.

Vrba said the recession impacted the referendum in 2007 and may have prevented it from passing.

“We lost dramatically,” he said. “Unfortunately, there were three other referendums on the ballot … The economy was starting to take a turn. Every ballot in the spring failed.”

Because past referendums have failed, lack of funding left the fire district unable to renovate the building and replace equipment, according to Vrba. The tax rate of the Northwest Fire Protection District also is significantly lower than surrounding areas’ fire districts, he said.

According to a Northwest Homer Fire Protection District document, the Homer Township Fire Protection District, which encompasses 20 square miles, has a tax rate of 1.1093 percent. The Lockport Township Fire Protection District, which serves 42 square miles, has a tax rate of 1.2328 percent. The Lemont Fire Protection District, which covers 40 square miles, has a tax rate of .899 percent.

“We’ve had our numbers very tight,” Vrba said. “We’re half of what Homer Township spends, but we’re accused of being fiscally irresponsible. So that’s not true.”

Firefighters plan to walk door-to-door to advocate for the referendum on Feb. 20, according to Fonfara. The fire district also has posted information on its Facebook page and website at www.nwhomer.org.

– See more at: http://www.lockportlegend.com/northwest-homer-fire-protection-district-looks-raise-tax-rate#sthash.Z0tTAFYZ.dpuf

Obama Wants Universal Internet ID

Obama Wants Universal Internet ID That Is Not Facebook

human bar code Obama Wants Universal Internet ID That Is Not FacebookThe Obama Administration is planning to give the Commerce Department control over a new effort to create auniversal Internet ID for every American.
According to CBS, the gig was given to the Commerce Department, as opposed to the NSA, to ease concerns that government intelligence agencies were learning too much about the average citizen. Wait…aren’t the online advertising companies the ones building the most detailed profiles of users? Oh well, moving on.


 

“We are not talking about a national ID card,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”
As the recent Gawker hack showed, Locke has a point. It turned out that tons of users were protecting their identity with passwords like “1234567” and “cheese.” Not only was Gawker’s site compromised, but the hack quickly rippled out to other sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, where users employed the same puny passwords.
Check Out The 25 Dumbest Gawker Passwords, In Order, Right Here >>
The solution being considered now is a switch to more secure logins, like the OAuth system, which allows users to sign in from their Google or Facebook accounts.
Government ID would likely function in a similar way, an optional profile that users can create which is protected and validated by the government for use logging in to sites or paying for goods online.
Privacy sensitive users uncomfortable with giant corporations or government agencies acting as the arbiter of their online identity may want to get out a pencil now and start writing their passwords down in a very safe place.

Tuitions have skyrocketed to pay for administrative bloat and exorbitant salaries,

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Every young adult in Illinois deserves a chance at college. For many, a college degree is the path to breaking out of a cycle of poverty. For others, it’s a badge of honor to build upon the hard work of their parents. And it used to be that if someone couldn’t afford the cost of college, he could work his way through.
But years of massive growth in higher-education bureaucracies and outrageous increases in administrative pay and employee pension benefits have had an incredibly harmful effect.
Lower-income students are now priced out of a college degree. Tuitions have skyrocketed to pay for the administrative bloat and exorbitant salaries, and the costs are falling on taxpayers – and on families and students who are trying to get ahead through higher education.
Now, if low-income students want a college degree, they are forced into crippling debt. More than 1.7 million Illinoisans hold student-loan debt, including 70 percent of the state’s class of 2013 – the fourth-highest rate in the country. Total student-loan debt in Illinois is approaching $50 billion.
In addition to debt, many students are now forced to depend on grants. But for too many would-be students, college is no longer an option.
It’s not surprising to see university and college administrators across Illinois searching desperately for a scapegoat as the state’s budget crisis exposes the mess they’ve created. Instead of admitting their problems are self-inflicted, university officials have settled on blaming the state instead.
Due to the budget gridlock, the state has not appropriated nearly $2 billion in funding for higher education. That’s obviously had an impact on university and college budgets. But higher-education institutions don’t steward this money responsibly to help keep college affordable. Instead, those funds are funneled into skyrocketing administrative costs.
Listening to university officials, however, doesn’t provide the real story. So here it is:
Students are losing access to college because colleges and universities have massively increased tuitions. Combined tuition and fees have grown by over 100 percent at many universities. Even at institutions such as Chicago State University, which serves low-income students, annual tuition and fee costs now equal $11,758, up 77 percent since 2006.
Illinois’ public universities and colleges have forced students and families to pay more and more each year in tuition, whether in the form of cash, federal student loans or state money, then used those funds to hire more and more administrators. Administrative staff increased by 31 percent between 2004 and 2010, while the student and faculty populations each increased by less than 3 percent. Chicago State University has the most administrators per student, by far, of any Illinois university.
Tuition increases have also been used to push executive compensation to exorbitant levels. Over half of Illinois’ 2,465 university administrators received a base salary of $100,000 or more in 2015.
And Illinois’ top higher-education administrators receive additional compensation – housing allowances, cars, club memberships and generous bonuses – that cost colleges and universities millions of dollars each year.
Those big salaries have led to pension benefits that neither Illinois taxpayers – nor students – can afford.
Over 25 percent of university pensioners will receive between $1 million and $2 million in total retirement benefits, while 15 percent will receive more than $2 million in benefits. Early retirement ages – 50 percent of university workers retire in their 50s – and high salaries, coupled with a 3 percent automatic annual benefit boost, allow many university workers to become millionaire pensioners.
That combination of higher salaries and generous pension benefits has put a tremendous strain on the universities’ pension system. The retirement benefits accrued by university workers have grown by 780 percent since 1987, or 8.4 percent yearly.
As a result, the state now appropriates more than 50 percent of its $4.1 billion higher-education budget toward retirement costs. A decade ago, retirement costs made up only 20 percent of the state’s total higher-education spending.
College and university officials and politicians are taking advantage of the budget gridlock to blame the state for their current woes – but all the evidence shows the crisis in higher education is self-inflicted.
Rather than blame the state for their own mistakes, universities and colleges need to reform their spending, with the primary goal of increasing the accessibility of college for all students.
To that end, they must reduce salaries and eliminate administrative bloat – then pass the resulting savings on to students so that all Illinoisans can afford a quality higher education.
The state can also help by fixing the broken university pension system – starting bymoving new university workers onto 401(k)-style plans based on the current SURS self-managed plan program.
In addition, enacting a constitutional amendment allowing Illinois to reform pension benefits for existing workers going forward will go a long way toward fixing the problemswith higher education in Illinois.

Ted Dabrowski
Vice President of Policy

Homer Glen State of the Village Address

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The Homer Township Chamber of Commerce Cordially Invites You to the 2016 State of the Village Address Presented by Mayor George Yukich Thursday, March 31, 2016 DiNolfo’s Banquets 14447 W. 159th St. Homer Glen, IL 60491 Registration begins at 11:15 a.m./Lunch promptly at 11:45 a.m. $35 Chamber Member $40 Non-Member
 
Kindly reply by March 24th Business / Organization ____________________________________________ Contact: ______________________ Address _______________________________________City ____________________ State _____ Zip _________ Phone ______________________ Email ____________________________________________________________ Please reserve ________ places at $ _______ per person.
 
Please list all attendees and dietary requests on back. Please list me as a __ $500 PLATINUM Sponsor or as a __ $250 GOLD Sponsor or as a __ $125 SILVER Sponsor Sponsorships are also available as follows: $500 PLATINUM Sponsor: Four luncheon tickets; Recognition on email and newsletter correspondence; Business name on event sign; Business name on event program; Chamber website advertisement space for six months and chamber mailing labels for current members. $250 GOLD Sponsor: Two luncheon tickets; Recognition on email and newsletter correspondence; Business name on event sign; Business name on event program; Chamber website advertisement space for three months. $125 SILVER Sponsor: Business name on event program; Business name on event sign; Recognition on chamber website; Recognition on email and newsletter correspondence.
 
Please make check payable to: Homer Township Chamber of Commerce Please charge my VISA, MasterCard or American Express (circle one) Card Number ______________________________________________ Expiration __________________________ Print Name ________________________________________________ Code ______________________________ Signature _________________________________________________ Amount $___________________________ You also have the option to register and pay online at the new Chamber website  http://homerchamber.com/

We need your help to get the Homer Township Property Tax Referendum Passed

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Last year we hit the pavement hard and knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors. In the end we successfully placed or property tax  referendum on the March 15th ballot, but the work isn’t over yet. Now we must make sure that the residents of Homer Township know what is at stake.
 Americans for Prosperity has loaded a script and call list into their state of the art phone banking system and I’m asking all of you to join us Saturday, February 27th at Mullets in Homer Glen from noon- 4pm. We will be hitting the phones to educate residents about our property tax  initiative and urging them to vote yes on March 15th.
AFP will be buying lunch for all the volunteers so come hungry. Please RSVP as soon as possible to tkoehn@afphq.org so that we have a head count for food. I hope to see everyone there.
God Bless You and Your Family
-Steve Balich

Todd Koehn | Field Director | Americans for Prosperity Foundation – Illinois m: 224.239.5311 | e: TKoehn@afphq.org

A Daughters Journey to Far Off Places

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Hi!!
It’s been since Sunday that we have been non-stop traveling but we are finally settled in! After our flight to the Philippines Manila, we took a small plane an hour south to a smaller island called el nido. It is absolutely beautiful here!! Today we just took it easy hanging out at the beach and waking around town and we made some new friends from Canada.

Rauner to Dems: Work with me or pass tax hike


Editors Note: The People in Illinois are fed up with increased taxes to pay for excessive salaries, benefits, and pensions that exceed more than the average private sector worker who may get laid off or loose their job on any given day.

Rauner to Dems: Work with me or pass tax hike

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Bruce Rauner on Tuesday evening closed out a tour of speeches to civic groups around the state with an often-repeated message for Democrats:
Work with him on what he considers reforms or pass a tax hike and wear the blame for it.
Eight months into fiscal year 2016 without a state budget, the Republican from Winnetka continued to put the onus for the budget impasse on Democrats in general and House Speaker Michael Madigan of Chicago in particular.
After a speech to the Springfield and Illinois chambers of commerce Tuesday, the governor told reporters, “I’ve said to the speaker, ‘I will work on tax reform and new revenue, but we need to do reforms.’ So far, he’s refused.”
Asked if his position was so weak that he must simply wait for the speaker to act, the governor said: “I can’t unilaterally raise taxes, and I won’t unilaterally raise taxes. And I can’t pass a budget; only the Legislature can pass a budget. ”
Rauner said Democrats, who hold supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, “know that only doing a tax hike isn’t either the right answer or politically popular. They just want to try to force me to do that, and I’m not going to that, so we’re going to stay the course.”
Democratic leaders, including Sen. President John Cullerton of Chicago, have recently said Rauner’s wrong, that without some agreement with the GOP, the votes simply aren’t there for a tax increase.
They’ve also rejected the core of the Rauner “Turnaround Agenda,” with a Madigan spokesman recently calling it “neither structural nor reform” but “another whack at middle class families so the 1 Percenters can get further ahead.”
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Rauner has said while he’s never said one thing must or must not be included in a grand bargain with Democrats, he wants:

  • Term limits for elected state officials, including legislators, and independent legislative redistricting.
  •  A property tax freeze coupled with local governments being given the option to cut costs by removing some items from collective bargaining, the prevailing wage and contracting rules.
  • Significant changes to the state’s civil lawsuit and workers compensation systems.

Rauner on Tuesday argued that simply using his veto and other executive powers to control out-of-whack spending or to fashion a one-year patch would not be addressing Illinois’ fundamental flaws in its political and business environments. Those flaws, he says, are costing the state population, jobs and the ability to compete.
“Higher taxes or fewer services … I say that’s not the choice,” the governor said Tuesday. “Let’s do faster economic growth and less government waste and bureaucracy. We’ll free up billions to put into our schools and human services. That that needs to be the conversation.”
“If we were just an average-growing state — average-growing over the last 15 to 17 years — we wouldn’t have a budget deficit, we wouldn’t have unpaid bills, we wouldn’t have had the need for a tax in 2011 and we’d have money for our schools. We need to grow and we need to shrink the cost of government.”
Not everyone agrees with the idea that Illinois can right itself solely by downsizing government and promoting growth, especially in the short term.
Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois-Springfield, said that while both are legitimate goals, even eliminating the state’s entire payroll wouldn’t let Illinois balance its budget and pay its debt.
Democrats and Republicans alike, he said, are probably going to have to accept some bitter pills — likely reduced spending on social services for Democrats and some form of tax increase for Republicans — if there is to be a budget agreement anytime soon.
Without an overall budget for fiscal 2016, the state is still making payments on roughly 90 percent of the bills it covered in the previous year by paying for costs mandated in continuing appropriations, by court decrees, in the primary education budget that did pass and for its debt service.
And that spending does not include funds for higher education or most social services.
Illinois also is sitting on about $6.9 billion in unpaid bills, and that amount will grow to $10 billion to $12 billion by June 30, the end of fiscal year 2016 if action isn’t taken, according to state Comptroller Leslie Munger, R-Lincolnshire. Additionally, Illinois unfunded pension obligations are estimated at $111 billion to $113 billion.

Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed

Surprise, Parents! Co-Ed Restroom in North Shore High School

Editors note: When we speak of rights of students to feel comfortable does that imply making the majority uncomfortable to satisfy the needs of a few. Where is the school in standing for the rights of students who are uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with anyone but their own sex. Since when should everyone have to conform to political correctness at their own expense. Don’t I have a right to say no to co-ed lockers and bathrooms. This is all part of the Obama Administration shredding American culture values and traditions in an attempt to give us his version of hope and change.
Surprise, Parents! Co-Ed Restroom in North Shore High School
Written By Laurie Higgins
A couple of months ago, Deerfield High School (DHS) in Deerfield, Illinois quietly changed a multi-stall girls restroom to a co-ed restroom. Worse still the administration has not notified either parents or students. Rumors are circulating that the administration chose secrecy over transparency in order to avoid controversy.
This is not a single-occupancy restroom, nor is it a girls restroom restricted to actual girls and boys who wish they were girls. Rather, it is a co-ed restroom euphemistically called an “All Gender Restroom,” presumably to divert attention from the reality of what the administration has created. They have created a co-ed restroom that girls and boys may use together.
Of course, schools that allow only gender-dysphoric students to use multi-stall opposite-sex restrooms, have in reality created co-ed restrooms too. In reality, it makes no difference if the boy in the girls restroom dislikes his body and cross-dresses or likes his body and dresses normally. In both cases schools are creating de facto co-ed restrooms.
But DHS has gone a step further than most schools have yet dared to go in the steady march to obliterate respect for and recognition of the nature, meaning, and importance of objective, immutable sexual differentiation. DHS has skipped over the interim step of allowing only gender-dysphoric students to share restrooms with opposite-sex peers. No intermediate step for the “progressive” science-denying administration at DHS. All boys and girls may avail themselves of this co-ed restroom.
It should be noted that during the day this restroom is in a remote part of the high school and therefore a more convenient place for a sexual assault. This restroom, however, is located near the pool and gyms, so during public events like swim meets, basketball games, and pep rallies, it is easily available to any and all community members. A high school girl or a younger sister of a high school girl may be in a stall when a strange adult male enters.
A faculty member posed this question to an administrator about the brave new bathroom world in which restrooms and locker rooms are invaded by opposite-sex students: What would happen if a girl student said she didn’t want to share a restroom with a boy. The administrator said the school would make separate accommodations for the girl.
Our hapless neighbors in Alberta, Canada are willing to make similar accommodations for the properly ordered desires of girls who don’t want to shower and use restrooms with those whose sex they don’t share. In the “Guidelines for Best Practices: Creating Learning Environments That Respect Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Gender Expressions,” the Alberta the government wrote that “A student who objects to sharing a washroom or change-room with a student who is trans or gender-diverse is offered an alternative facility.”
I told my millennial children (who happen to be DHS alumni) about these bizarre statements. Their first response was incredulity, and then they worked out the absurd implications of such fecklessness. First, one girl will object to using a locker room with a boy and will receive a special accommodation. Next, so many girls will express opposition to using locker rooms with actual boys that schools will have to create restrooms exclusively for actual girls, at which point gender-dysphoric boys will complain that they deeply desire to change and shower with girls, insisting on their “right” to use the new girls-only restroom. And then Leftists will step in to stop all this nonsense, claiming that students have no right to privacy based on objective, immutable biological sex.
Alternatively, parents and their representatives on school boards could insist steadfastly and passionately that restroom and locker room policies and practices recognize and respect immutable sex differences.
Right now Leftists are demanding that schools create de facto co-ed restrooms but will grudgingly permit schools to limit the commingling of sexes to gender-dysphoric students and will grudgingly allow schools to require gender-dysphoric students to use private stalls for excretory functions and changing clothes. But those are merely transitional accommodations.
The next step in their truly wicked effort to “eliminate the binary” will be to demand that gender-dysphoric students be allowed unrestricted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and showers, which is to say, no more requirements that gender-dysphoric students use private stalls for excretory functions, changing, and showering.
Then comes the coup de grace. Leftists will demand that all facilities be open to any sex, including those who are not gender-dysphoric. Once society has allowed objectively male persons unrestricted access to women’s private facilities, there will remain no rational justification for prohibiting non-gender-dysphoric males from using opposite-sex facilities.
Kind readers, if you think this is an absurd line of thinking, you have not been paying attention to how “LGBTQQIAP” activists have been using incrementalism successfully for the past 45 years. These are their pernicious goals, and they count on the ignorance and cowardice of Christians—including church leaders, many of whom refuse to lead. While conservatives cower, stubbornly ignoring warnings, “LBBTQQIAP” activists and their accomplices scurry onward, ten steps ahead and bold as brass.

Shift in state funding would cost Homer 33C $237,000

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News Release
Homer CCSD 33C
Goodings Grove   Luther J. Schilling   William E. Young   William J. Butler
Hadley Middle   Homer Jr. High
 
Contact: Charla Brautigam, Communications/Public Relations Manager
cbrautigam@homerschools.org | 708-226-7628
 
stock-photo-pile-of-united-states-dollar-hundred-usd-banknotes-on-white-table-and-blurred-baby-looking-on-it-on-258857819
 
For Immediate Release:
Feb. 8, 2016
 
Shift in state funding would cost Homer 33C $237,000
 
A proposal to redirect state funding from children requiring special education services to lower poverty schools would have a detrimental effect on Homer School District 33C.
 
Administrators estimate Homer 33C would lose $237,000 in state funding if the General Assembly approves the proposal put forth by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE).
 
“This proposal to cut special education funds represents yet another hit from the State of Illinois,” said Superintendent Kara Coglianese. “Our demands for services are on the rise in Homer 33C, but the state continues to chip away at our limited resources, jeopardizing our ability to meet the needs of every child.”
 
According to state data, the percentage of students requiring special education services is on the rise in Homer 33C. Two years ago, 15 percent of the district’s student population was identified as having disabilities. This year, it’s 16 percent — 2 percent higher than the state average.
 
Under ISBE’s proposed budget, the state would take $305 million from an account designated for special education services and give it to lower poverty schools for their general expenses.
 
The goal is to create equity between school districts. Problem is, school districts like Homer 33C would still have to provide special education services (which cost four times more than that of regular education services) but with less funding.
 
If the proposal goes through, it won’t be the first time Homer 33C has been asked to do more with less money. For the past several years, the state has not only reduced funding to schools but skipped payments altogether.
 
Administrators have responded by implementing a number of cost-saving measures, including a realignment of job duties throughout the district and a sharing of resources between departments and schools to meet student needs when possible.
 
Recently, the district embarked on a plan to save $100,000 by converting 500 aging laptops to Chromebooks using CloudReady.
 
“We are cognizant of our responsibility to be good financial stewards,” said Coglianese. “Everyone in our district is on the lookout for ways to be more efficient and save taxpayer dollars.
 
“The State of Illinois is trying to do the same,” she acknowledged. “We just hope it doesn’t fall on the shoulders of our students with disabilities.”
 
 
 

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