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Sunday, June 3, 2012

The plan to unload rural districts in Illinois. « Fred Klonsky

The plan to unload rural districts in Illinois. « Fred Klonsky:


The plan to unload rural districts in Illinois.

I am new to all of this but I noticed that the Madigan Family Foundation of Chicago is an Investor to the New Schools for Chicago (Charter Schools). As a downstate person people down here think Charter schools will never happen to us but I think they are wrong.
If they cost shift it will kill us. We pay higher property taxes in our rural communities than the suburbs of Chicago’s wealthier districts and Chicago itself. We cannot afford any more property tax increases and they will not pass, we tried a few years ago and it failed so we had to RIF. You see with cost shift all that is left is deep, deep budget cuts and we have already cut 2.6 million in our district 2 years ago, and it almost killed us.
Now if cost shift is passed and goes into effect, we will have to fund our pensions, and health care crippling us and making the union look bad when we cannot negotiate salary increases, pension or healthcare. In fact, we will have to go for cuts, with SB7’s effect on the riffing process, which really