Coffee/Conversations Q & A

Communications

In an effort to improve communications in the Rock Island-Milan School District about budget concerns, “Coffee and Conversations” was created to help answer questions and provide accurate information. The answers below are from questions submitted through the Coffee and Conversations form. Submit a question here >>

It may take some time to get answers to certain questions. For individual or private concerns, you should contact the school building principal or district office by phone. We will not answer comments about specific individuals by name, nor will we print individual names.

Questions will be posted on this page for a couple of days, then moved to an archive page to be created at a later date. Any questions or concerns call 309-793-5900 x281.

Last update: 05/06/2012

Question:
Is it true that the district provides free busing to the students at RICMS? If so, how much does this cost? Has there been any thought to asking parents to pay more in fees for sports and other extracurricular activities?

Response:
Since the Rock Island Center for Math & Science is not a neighborhood school, the school district provides transportation from each home elementary school to RICMS. The cost of providing this shuttle is $93.09 per day. Based on 176 days of attendance, the district will spend over $49,000 for the service. No any discussions about passing on the cost to the parents of children who attend the Rock Island Center for Math & Science.

The school district starting charging admission fees last year to all athletic events, including sports at the jr. high level, to increase revenue. Parents of athletes do pay participation fees and also incur the costs of some equipment associated with the various sports. Many of the teams also hold fundraisers to defray the costs of the sport.

Question:
I have 4 children in the Rock Island School District. One is currently in 6th grade and involved in the orchestra program. Another is in 4th grade and has expressed an interest in orchestra. I am concerned that orchestra has been recommended for budget cuts. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening?

Response:
The list of reductions that the Board of Education received at the January 11 meeting has been broken down into Tier I and Tier II reductions. At the January 25 meeting Superintendent Oberhaus will present those reductions to the board members. Tier I reductions are items that the administration will recommend to be removed from the 2011-12 budget; Tier II items will not be recommended to be removed from the 2011-2012 budget. The Orchestra programs fall under Tier II and therefore are not recommended to be removed from the budget.

Question:
When I was young, I rode the school bus to school. We all walked to a central bus stop and boarded the bus there – which went to two different schools. After school, we were dropped at that same bus stop and walked home.? However, on our block alone, there are three separate school buses who pick up and drop off students at their front doors!?? Could some savings be found by utilizing the bus stop idea in District 41, thereby consolidating the bus routes and need for bus services? Also, is there a way to reduce the number of students taking the school bus?

Response:
The school district does not provide transportation to neighborhood schools (Rock Island Academy, Denkmann, Earl Hanson, Eugene Field, Frances Willard, Longfellow, Ridgewood, Thomas Jefferson) for students. The school district, by law, has to provide bus transportation for Special Education students and contracts with Illinois Central Bus Service. There is no way to reduce the number of Special Ed students who need to take the bus to school as the district is required by law to provide transportation for those students. The students are picked up at their residence and transported to school.

There are parents who contract with a school bus individually/separately (and pay for the service themselves) to transport their children to school.

Question:
Why is the district so eager to make majority of the cuts from the Elementary Schools and not in the administration office? If we want to put the best interest of the children first and keep families in our community then we need to show we care. By taking counselors, teachers, etc out of the elementary level we are sending a message that we don’t care.

Response:
The school district is not eager to make cuts in any of the areas proposed in the initial list presented at the January 11 Board of Education meeting. The reductions have a mix of administrative, educational and extra-curricular items. Reductions were prioritized to have a minimal impact on student offering and programs.

When budgeting discussions started at the end of last year, each building principal was asked to look at their individual situations and make recommendations for reductions. The school district has 9 elementary schools, 2 jr. high schools, 1 high school, 1 alternative high school and 1 early/pre-elementary education building.

From a percentage of the budget standpoint, elementary expenses are more than $13.7 million. Overall administrative expenses are near $4 million, which includes building principals, assistant principals and deans. From a staff perspective, there are 33 administrators, six in the administration center with the remainder serving in the buildings. At the elementary level there are more than 150 classroom teachers, special education teachers, and other support teachers. Administrators agreed to a pay freeze in 2010-2011.

Question:

1. Is it possible to privatize Driver’s Education like they do in Iowa? If so, wouldn’t we save money by placing those teachers back in the classroom?

2. Why can’t you combine the District’s Marketing position and the Director of Development position? This is a nice luxury which is probably sensible in better economic times…right now, I feel we need all of our salaried staff and teachers in the classroom, especially if we need to reduce full-time teaching positions as part of budget reduction considerations.

3. Are we simply taking refugee students into District classrooms for the potential benefit of State Funding dollars based upon overall enrollment? For a District that already faces financial (budget) challenges, has a high percentage of free or discounted lunch participants and struggles to collect fees from students, this seems to be a huge risk and financial undertaking that we simply cannot afford at the present time.

4. Rock Island High School was constructed for an enrollment of well over 3,000 and the current enrollment is under 1,700. The facility is well under utilized and it makes sense to consider consolidating more grades (7-12, perhaps) under one roof or campus. While this may seem like a radical thought, it only makes economic sense to utilize the facilities and space that we have to the fullest extent…specifically in times of economic challenge. We could explore staggered starting and ending times to maximize the utilization of one facility.

Response:
In Illinois, driver education is a requirement for graduation from high school. The District could contract with a third party to complete the requirement, but the private contractor would need to have staff that meet the highly qualified teacher status required by the Illinois State Board of Education. An unresolved issue, for contracting this course to a third party, is who would pay for the instruction, the District or individual student. A question still being investigated is if the student has had his/her fees waived due to low income, will they be able to waive the driver education fee. These questions are currently being investigated by the curriculum department.

The Marketing and Development Director positions both bring value to the District. The Development Director teaches a portion of the day. Each have full-time duties to complete. By reducing a position some of those duties would not be able to be completed.

Refugee students are placed in schools based on their home residence. The District has the responsibility to educate all children within its boundaries. As families locate within the District boundaries, they attend their home school. The school district does not control who moves into its boundaries. However, each child within the boundaries are offered the full range of services from the District. Even in these financially challenging times every effort is made to provide high quality instructional opportunities for each child.

At the time of construction of the High School, special education, English Language Learners, and other low incidence programs were not in existance. With these programs, the rated capacity is well below 3,000 students. Although there may be some opportunities for expansion of students, it is not enough to accomodate the 800 students in 7th and 8th grades.

Question:

I’m nervous about the upcoming funding for our schools. Does the district get any direct funding from the Casino?

Response:
The District does not receive any funding from the Casino operations. Unlike the Iowa gambling procedures, grants are not funded to local agencies. All ongoing casino revenues are provided to the City of Rock Island. The construction of the casino was completed in a tax increment finance (TIF) district. With a TIF, the District would not receive any property taxes for the increase property value for 23 years. Under the development agreement with the City of Rock Island, the school district will receive 25% of the property tax increment after the City has recovered its initial development costs.

Question:
Is the district hiring consultants at the high school to do the schedule? If so, cut that item and have the HS Adm do the scheduling. It appears that more Elementary Schools could be closed and save the Adm., custodian and some instructional costs.

Response:
The District utilizes consultants to develop organizational capacity. The High School consultants have been used to train in-house staff to effectively schedule students, rewrite the course offerings, update the student handbook, and to write curriculum.

As a part of the Building Excellence plan, two elementary schools were closed. The average elementary enrollment has moved from an average of 331 to 405. In order to accommodate the increase additions were placed on existing schools and a new school constructed. The targeted enrollment was determined to be 405 students. This number was developed by looking at operational efficiencies. At an enrollment of 400 students, full-time staff for PE, music, and nursing could be used rather than having them travel between buildings losing work time.

To reduce additional elementary schools would require construction of additional classrooms to house the students. More importantly, more traveling staff would be needed, becoming inefficient. Most important is that too large of an elementary school enrollment has been shown to not provide as good an environment for students to be successful.

Question:
It would be nice to have an online payment system to check and add money to student lunch accounts.

Response:
The School District would love to have an online/web based payment system, however it is not an option in the immediate future, as it requires extra costs associated with the Food Service software program. Given the high rate of free & reduced lunch numbers (currently at 63%) there is also not enough “demand” at this time to implement the program without incurring extra costs.

Question:
I am very concerned about our music program facing cuts. Is this a potential issue? We really care about it!

Response:
As of this post 12/22/10, there has not been any discussion about cutting extra or co-curricular items. The next few weeks the administration will be taking the feedback from the Coffee & Conversations forums, talking to building principals and formulating a plan for potential reductions. The administration will start addressing items at the Board of Education meeting on January 11.

Question:
We’ve had curriculum specialists in the budget, but are their services measurable in their impact on student achievement? Is this to satisfy school progress for the state? Rock Island hires good teachers, let them teach-in the classroom.

Response:
Rock Island hires great teachers – and they deserve to have an aligned curriculum to guide their work. This is at the heart of what the curriculum specialists do for the district.

The role of the district curriculum staff has changed over time. Initially, the district curriculum staff trained and supported grade/subject area data teams that reviewed student achievement and planned changes in instruction on an ongoing basis. A Title I Language Arts Professional Development Coordinator provided training in best practices and K-6 teachers received extensive training in Language Arts and Math over a two year period.

The focus of the district curriculum staff later changed to supporting the development and alignment of the district curriculum. This was linked to an expectation of the Illinois Board of Education that our district would provide all students with equal access to a core curriculum. We are still in the process of aligning the Pre-K to 12th grade curriculum in all subject areas. Once this is fully implemented we expect to see a positive impact on student achievement.

Question:
I HAVE NEVER REVIEWED THE BUDGET FOR DIST. 41;HOWEVER, I WOULD IMAGINE THAT CONSIDERABLE DOLLARS ARE ALLOCATED TO THE VARIOUS SPORTS PROGRAMS. I FIRST OF ALL QUESTION THE NEED FOR SEPARATE POSITIONS WITHIN THE SPORTS PROGRAM AND THE ROLE THAT THOSE INDIVIDUALS PLAY.

I KNOW WHEN I WENT TO SCHOOL AT R.I. THE HEAD FOOTBALL COACH WAS THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR. WHY AREN’T THESE COMBINED? IN FACT, EVERYONE INVOLVED IN COACHING TAUGHT IN THE CLASSROOM FULL-TIME AND VOLUNTEERS WERE RELIED UPON HEAVILY TO ASSIST THE COACHES.

THE ONLY OTHER AREA THAT I WOULD TOUCH UPON IS FINDING A WAY TO HAVE THE LIBRARIES IN THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS STAFFED FULL-TIME.

Response:
The Head Football Coach is also the District Director of Development. He also teaches a partial schedule in the PE department and devotes the majority of his time to the Development job in which works to generating funds for District 41 through donation solicitation and fundraising projects. Annually, the efforts of the Development position raise far more money than coaching, teaching, and development salaries combined, and in essence, doesn’t cost the taxpayers anything since he brings in more than he “costs.” Money in the Development program is also distributed to the schools, which is another added benefit.

While is true that in the past schools such as ours had coaches serve as athletic directors, the requirements of Title IX lead to a near doubling of athletic activities in our schools. The addition of more teams requires more coaches, more officials, more facilities, more busses, for paperwork, etc. Society has also become much more litigious requiring substantially more documents, waivers, permission forms, and protections for our youth. Rarely now do you see schools of any size operating without a full-time athletic director.

The reason organized athletics have been a part of the American educational system for two centuries is that many of our most critical character lessons needed by our youth are best learned through athletic team participation. If we felt the purpose of athletic teams was merely to teach kids how to run, jump, throw, and kick, then it would have been discarded decades ago.

Extra-curricular activities, whether athletic, music, or drama teach the critical character skills necessary to get along in a competitive, goal oriented world, and needed to successfully implement and make practical use of the knowledge gained from academic studies. Study after study show that students involved in extra-curricular activities regularly have better grades, better attendance, and less discipline incidents than students not involved in extra-curricular events. Nor is it surprising that the vast majority of Fortune 500 Presidents and CEOs were active participants in school athletics. Most credit their success to the critical character lessens learned from their coaches and through their athletic experience.

In our school district a bit more than half of our high school students participate in athletic activities during their four years at Rocky. We endeavor to offer a wide variety of activities so that all children can find an area that fits their skills and interests. Overall the athletic budget, including everything from coaching salaries to bus trips, baseballs, tennis nets, and the salary of the athletic director and his secretary amounts to just a bit over 1% of the school district budget.

Question:
Your “issues and challenges” appears to be the beginning of a campaign to finance programs within the school district. Perhaps you should develop the same approach that we residents have to abide by…ie. living within your budget. To envision projects/expenses without means to pay for same is foolish. Taxpayers are not a “horn of plenty” from which unlimited dollars can be drawn to pay for endless program development /continuance.

Response:
The District takes the fiduciary responsibility of fiscal stewardship very seriously. Steps have been taken to reduce expenditures in the last two years to live within the financial assets available. It will continue to take the necessary actions to remain fiscally responsible while offering the best opportunities possible for students. The District has maintained a stable property tax rate (ranging from a high of $5.17 to a low of $5.05) over the past ten years. Over reliance on property taxes to fund education has been an issue for at least two decades with no movement for equitable funding from the state level. With the current state economic condition, this issue will most not likely be addressed in the next couple of years. The District will continue to maintain a stable property tax rate.

Question:

When will the City of Rock Island, like Milan, enter into an intergovernmental agreement with District 41 to have a portion of TIF dollars go toward public education?

Response:
The Village of Milan agreed to the intergovernmental agreement in order for the District to write a letter of support for the extension of TIF I for an additional 13 years. The City of Rock Island has indicated plans to utilize all of their TIF funds for redevelopment projects and have none available to distribute other local taxing districts.

Question:
How closely are you looking into consolidating/combining school districts?

First, what % of costs come from “administrative OPEX” and CAPEX expenditures supporting the administration? I understand I am suggesting job reductions – but at the cost of long-term significant cost savings.

We simply do not need as much administrative staff as we do today – not simply in 41, but across Illinois.

Second, the average D 41 teacher’s salary in 2009 was $69, 975. Assuming it’s for 9 months of work, the annual run rate is $93,300. Simply stated – that’s an annual average salary far and above the QC average. Some may say it’s a bit “out of whack” if you will.

I don’t have an answer to this issue, but something seems to be broken – if indeed these numbers are accurate or close to. Specifically, we are paying a driver’s education teacher over $100,000. Really? Taking a pragmatic approach – something seems broken.

Response:
At this time there is no discussion to consolidating or combining the Rock Island-Milan School District with another district. Reviews are underway to consolidate some non-core functions such as payroll, purchasing, technology, etc. Superintendent office and Board of Education expenses are $413,000, Business office expenses are $555,000, Human Resources office expenses are $367,000. This represents 2.35% of the Education Fund of the District. Other support functions include: Curriculum office expenses $731,000; Technology office expenses $831,000. The Curriculum and Technology offices account for 2.75% of the Education Fund expenses.

The District maintains over 1,200,000 square feet of buildings. The capital expenses for the year are $837,000. There is $1,300,000 budgeted to complete the Building Excellence program. The teachers are paid according to a salary schedule that has been negotiated. Starting salaries for a teacher with a Bachelor’s degree and no experience is $35,364. A teacher with a doctorate and 17 years of experience are paid $90,152. The average salary indicates that most teacher have advanced degrees and an average of 15 years of experience.

Teachers are contracted for 182 days per year. Each day teachers work diligently to prepare each student to be successful and competitive in the world after high school. Many hours beyond the contract are worked by the staff members. They work many days beyond the 182 to develop or refine lesson plans, prepare materials for the classroom, post student work, and many other extra duties for students.

Question:

It seems like there are plenty of opportunities for students to play sports on teams outside of the school district. Are there areas where the school district could cut a sports program and have it picked up by an outside entity? Would the IHSA allow or credit student participation in outside sports teams?

Response:
Most outside the school teams are “league” or “travel” teams where participants are required to pay significant fees for registration, uniforms, travel expenses, and tournament expenses. With more than 50% of our high school students classified as eligible for the federal free and reduced lunch program, many of our kids would be unable to participate in private programs. Additionally, most private teams have tryouts and limit the number of kids that can participate. Most of our school teams are “no cut”, meaning that any student that wants to participate may do so.

For some sports there are very few opportunities outside of school unless a student is financially able to join a country club, a swim club, or a tennis club. Sports like track and football do not have private high school teams in our area because of the facilities and equipment needed.

Finally not only will the IHSA not recognize or credit non-school team participation, but they specifically forbid students from participating in such programs during the high school sports season. A student who does participate in non-school sports loses their school eligibility for up to 365 days from the date of the rule infraction.

Comment:
How soon can a property tax increase be levied to cover the $1 million plus funds needed to retain all music & PE instructors and all library employees to guarantee that these positions remain “off the table” options in the future? District 41 MUST retain the specialized and dedicated instructors to teach and foster the inquiring, creative and healthy minds of our future global citizens.

Response:
The Board of Education approves a property tax levy each fall. In December 2010, the board approved the 2011 Tax Levy of $28,362,375, which is a slight increase over the 2010. The tax rate for 2011 was $5.1145, a slight decrease from the previous year’s rate of $5.1148. If the district were to raise the tax rate it would need to go to a referendum.

Property taxes account for approximately 40% of the district’s budget and are the most stable form of revenue for the district. The rest of the district revenue is depended on from the State of Illinois, which calculates its number based on the amount of property taxes levied. An increase in tax levy results in less money for the district from the State of Illinois. Additionally, there are six Tax Increment Financing (TIF) in the school district encompasses 6 Tax Increment Financing (TIF) areas, of which the EAV total comes to $87,443,416. The additional revenue would mean $2.8 million for the Education Fund, however the district is not allowed to receive a portion of TIF areas.

Comment:
If there is one available, please post list of all the non-teaching positions the school district is currently employing. (Excluding all principals, councellors, coaches, cafeteria workers, custodial staff, security, and librarians) Included on this list I would like to see the position “title” and at minimum a starting salary for said position. The reason being, some have suggested their may be positions being held that may be considered less than vital. I believe a list containing that particular information may enlighten us all as to how money is being spent away from the classroom.

Response:
There is an Administrator Compensation list on the web site at http://rockislandschools.org/finance/?page_id=70 and an additional list of Administration Center staff compensation list is available here (PDF) >>

Comment:
RIMSD41 library paraprofessionals are one of our district’s best kept secrets. The proposed $71,000 saved by cutting the hours of TEN experienced and professional employees is really not much of a savings, and would actually be costly to the district. Currently elementary libraries are staffed for only 25 hours per week; reducing their staffing to 12.5 hours per week would have a significant negative impact on our students.

Not long ago our community invested in new and remodeled libraries for our elementary schools–we should make sure that our wonderful new libraries continue to be staffed for as many hours as possible during the school day with experienced library personnel. The library paraprofessionals are not among the highest paid personnel groups in our district, but they do have a very high degree of student contact, and positive influence on our students. The library paraprofessionals provide significant service to students for their personnel-dollar cost. They have received substantial training in using the district’s library circulation software, in which our district has made a significant financial investment. Without trained library paraprofessionals on duty to help children select appropriate books, properly check books out/in and reshelve, our library collections will suffer through disorganization and disappearance. Parent or other volunteers can not and should not replac! e our trained and experienced library paraprofessionals. Continuing current funding for these important personnel will preserve our investment in books, facilities and in our children.

Comment:
I believe maintaining adequate staffing is the top priority. Do not cut teaching staff, custodians and administrators. Review each cut by looking at its impact on the students, least hurtful to most hurtful. With a $23 million reserve, what is the minimum amount of cuts needed to stay financially sound (to assure a min. cash flow balance)? The District has historically taken the worst-case scenario on finances. I would be pleased if it took a balanced approach and worked to keep quality education going in each classroom and school.

Comment
I suggest that new teachers are hired under a new and reduced wage scale different from the current teachers’ scale. I have never met a person that refused a teaching position because it was not enough money. Lobby the state for an early retirement incentive. Both make business sense.

Comment:
Our primary goal as teachers is to make sure each student that we encounter learns the most that he or she possibly can and is successful. We need to narrow the achievement gap. Increasing class sizes so that we have less time with individual students will not help teachers do that. Eliminating music and gym will not help teachers do that. Teachers do not really have enough time in the day to teach the core curriculum, especially with new science and social studies curriculums coming. Getting rid of the interventionist and assistant principal at RIA is also a huge mistake. They already do many more duties than are on their job descriptions. The interventionist and assistant principal are available for support when a classroom needs help with a student who is disrupting the learning of others. If they are not there, there will be no one to take those children, talk with them, give them a break, and get them ready to come back to the classroom and learn. We want what is best for our children.

Question:
Can you clarify the “0% increase for all contracts, including steps and lane increases”? I thought Superintendent Oberhaus said the steps and lane increases would cost another $500,000 next year even with a 0% increase. In addition, can you also confirm his comments that if the district has to start paying for the state’s contribution to the pension program, that it would result in another $3,000,000 liability in the district’s budget? Thanks.

Response:
The school district has three bargaining agreements up this year for negotiation. The current 2012-2013 budget forecast assumptions are based on a 0% salary increase, however employees would still receive steps and lanes. Steps and lanes would cost the district about $700,000.

If the State of Illinois shifts the pension burden to the local school district level, it will result in an additional $3.1 million expense for RIMSD.

Comment:
I truly don’t understand why our children’s education must be sacrificed. The hours of 8 to 3 should be sacred learning time for all students. Any activities outside of the school day should be the first items to be eliminated. Unfortunately this means all organized sports, all clubs, all academic teams, all music groups etc. Don’t sacrifice reading, writing, math, sciences and the arts.

Question:
Nobody ever talks about cutting football or basketball…why is that? To some those sports maybe to “important”. I all reality lets look at freshman boys & girls basketball games. I know for a fact these games are not bringing in the money for the school or sports department. If you look in the stands at most of these games who do you think you will see? The majority of people that attend these games to support your school are the cheer parents. Alot of the players parents don’t come until at least the third quarter as they know that if they come later they will not have to pay the “fee” to get into to help support the school and watch their child play. Maybe this could be another source of money for the sports department. Charge the fee for the entire time the game is being played. Another option in addition to the above one and the option in my previous email of increasing the sports fee would be to increase the fee for the season passes. These are just a few more ideas for you to think about rather then just putting several of the sports on the chopping block!

Response:
The coaches representing all sports met several times prior to the proposed cuts to discuss how the potential cuts should be handled. It was the unanimous opinion of the coaches that if it got to the point where coaches had to be eliminated, they strongly urged that programs either be eliminated totally or kept in tact as is. The coaches were opposed to “bleeding” away bits and pieces of quality programs and making the district non-competitive across the board. In essence, the coaches felt that if the district is going to field a team in a sport, it should field the best team and be as competitive as possible. If the district took the approach of eliminating portions of each sport, the varsity level would suffer serious damage. Performance and skill level would drop off significantly, and results would be embarrassing to Rock Island, humiliating to students, and reflect unfairly on coaching staff. It was very tough deciding which sports would be cut if such cuts are necessary. We used a criteria that considered the number of students affected, the overall competitiveness of the program, the money the sport bring into the district, our community’s reliance on the sport for entertainment and price, and the commitments held within our conference and to other schools.

Three years ago the athletic budget was cut by $60,000. In order to avoid losing coaches and teams at that time, our coaches agreed to start charging admission for freshmen games and also agreed to volunteer their time to be the ticket sellers for those games. As a result, the coaching staff brought in enough money to offset some of the proposed cuts. Since we are dealing with volunteers giving their time to work, it is difficult to tell them that they must work additional time at each game to pick up admissions from the few people that come after half-time.

The school district has considered raising the price for a season ticket, however, do try to stay within the range that the other Western Big 6 Conference schools are charging. Currently, RIMSD charges more than some of the schools and slightly less than others. The price of a season ticket is linked to the price of individual game tickets. For instance adult game admission for a varsity football or basketball game is $5. Last year there were 4 home varsity football games, so individually a fan would pay $20 to see those games. Consequently, the district sold fall season tickets for $20 (general admission) and $25 (reserved seat). If we want to raise the season ticket price, we would probably need to raise the individual game price to $6 to avoid a season tickets being seen as a “bad deal.” Currently Quincy and Galesburg charge $6 for basketball, all of the other schools charge $5 or less for basketball and all charge $5 for football. Any raise in ticket prices requires Board of Education approval.

Comment:
I find it completely appalling that the district would no longer offer PE/Music to grades k-8 and require regular classroom teachers to be responsible for this. My son already attends a school in the district with NO art education in k-6. As a parent and an educator I truly believe it would be a disservice to the students of Rock Island school district to eliminate the physical education and music programs.

Response:
It is true that the school district does not offer arts instruction at the k-6 level. Art is offered at the Jr. High level as an elective. Many elementary teachers feel it is important to have art instruction at the grade school level and do write grants to obtain money for artistic endeavors. That approach has created a lot of positive partnerships within the community (through the Rock Island Art Guild and Isabel Bloom as an example).

Comment:
[We] are currently enrolled as ninth graders at Rock Island high School. We are concerned about cutting the sixth grade music program. In sixth grade students learn the fundamentals to caring and playing their instrument of choice. Without this year-long training session the music program will take a step back as a whole. In Jr. High students move on to learning how to read different types of notes, without knowing the basics this would be nearly impossible. Many students would miss out on scholarship opportunities. Moving on to the High School would be very difficult especially for those planning on going on to marching/ symphonic band. This year in marching band we have accomplished more than ever before. Eliminating the sixth grade program would be like taking one step forward and two steps back. We would like to invite you to our concert on either Tuesday the 21st or Thursday the 23rd In Rockys auditorium to see for yourself the progress we have made. All ages of students will be participating.

Response:
Thank you for your comments and the invitation to the concerts!

Question:
I am a freshman at Rock Island High School. I think we should not cut any of the sports because that is the reason some of the kids get good grades. You aren’t cutting any of the other sports, so why would you cut the other ones?

It was very tough deciding which sports would be cut if such cuts are necessary. The district used a criteria that considered the number of students affected, the overall competitiveness of the program, the money the sport bring into the district, our community’s reliance on the sport for entertainment and price, and the commitments held within our conference and to other schools.

Question:
How many teachers could be saved if there weren’t so many miscellaneous employees? The school district does not need a marketing director, or liaison, or positive behavior coordinator, not to mention top heavy administration. Administration should take a pay cut first, then start a list of cuts from there.

Response:
From the message, not sure what the author considered as miscellaneous employees, however, there are 400 teachers and 400 other employees in the District. The other employees include cafeteria workers, para-professionals, secretaries, custodians, technology, and administration. All areas are carefully considered as a recommendation is formed. The reduction ideas presented included reductions to many staff members beyond teachers.

Question:
Mr. Oberhaus stating, “The district has a revenue problem, not a spending problem”…may or may not be factual. I do know that IF your shortfall is entirely due to the state not providing you promised funds, your efforts need to be directed toward exciting citizens to pressure politicians. If you do not receive funds from state….you should take immediate steps to live within a supportable budget…Just as my family has had to do over many years. The idea is not to fund/propagate numerous programs without prior…full means of paying for them.

Response:
The District has maintained fiscal integrity over the past three years of the lingering economic downturn. It will take steps to live within its means as it moves into the future. The list was a compilation of ideas received from teachers, administrators, secretaries, custodians, food service workers and from prior years’ reduction lists. The list was not prioritized nor was a recommendation made as the District is soliciting feedback from other stakeholder groups, particularly citizens, business, parents, and others through community forums and website “Coffee and Conversations”.

Question:
Studies have shown that the most important factor in student learning is small class sizes. The class sizes are already too large! When I was in elementary we had 18-20 students in each class. To increase each class would be a big step in the wrong direction. It’s a shame the state cannot come through with funds. Wasn’t reduction in class size the main reason given for school consolidations a few years ago? This was definitely not the end result of that project!

Response:
The District is firmly behind class sizes remaining as small as possible. In the past three years, during other budget reductions, classroom teachers were not reduced. As reduction of revenues from Federal and State sources with increasing costs continues, options for reduction outside of teachers become less available. Currently, 87.5% of the expenditure budget is in salaries and fringe benefits. As reductions are considered, there are not many non-staff member expenses to utilize. To remain fiscal integrity when facing a $4,600,000 operating deficit requires consideration for staff adjustments.

Question:
How was the figure $71,000.00 for Elementary libraries achieved? The elementary libraries are only staffed 25 hours a week, does that qualify as “FTE”? How many hours will this reduce from the elementary library office position, if any?

Response:
Currently all 10 elementary libraries are staffed with 1 paraprofessional who has the libraries open 5 hours per day, 5 days per week. The potential reduction would mean a loss of 5 paraprofessionals. The remaining 5 paraprofessionals would be split between two buildings resulting in the elementary libraries being open on an every other day basis and every other Wednesday. The cost of salaries and benefits for these 5 individuals totaled $71,312.

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