Editor's note: This story was originally published in the Belleville News-Democrat.
At its meeting Tuesday evening, the board of education of Grant District 110 approved a financial plan required by the Illinois State Board of Education to show its ability to reduce deficits and improve internal controls following the district’s recent “financial difficulty” certification.
For the second month in a row, the meeting was held in the Grant Middle School gym to accommodate a crowd of teachers, staff and parents who are calling for more transparency and accountability from the administration.
In March, the state board of education certified Grant 110 as being in financial difficulty due to the district’s failure to submit financial information such as its annual budgets by required deadlines. It also cited factors like the district’s long-term deficit spending, reliance on working cash bonds and failure to apply for several federal grant programs.
The action by the state board — which it hasn’t taken against any district in Illinois since 2016 — requires Grant 110 to submit a financial plan that addresses its deficits as well as shortcomings in its internal controls, grant management and financial reporting by April 29.
Superintendent Matt Stines declined to provide a copy of the plan to the BND until the state board of education approves it. At that point, the district will make it publicly available on its website, he said.
During the meeting, Stines said he sent an initial plan last week to board members and the state board for them to preview.
He said that he and Board President Lauren Zelechowski met Monday with state board of education financial consultants, who had a couple recommendations for changes. Those changes were made and sent to the financial consultants Tuesday morning, and now he’s waiting to hear back for any further recommendations.
“But basically, the financial plan is a deficit reduction plan over a three-year period and then a narrative that goes with it,” Stines said.
In fiscal year 2025, the district will reduce its expenditures by about $266,000 due to staff attrition and some students not being placed in out-of-district programs.
Moving into fiscal years 2026 and 2027, “it gets a little harder to predict,” because of difficulty in anticipating enrollment and student needs, but the district does know it will have some administrative retirements and turnover in staff.
“What ISBE has is a plan that does show some reductions,” Stines said. “I do believe they want to see a little bit more, but they’ll get back with us in the next day or so and we’ll get anything cleaned up.
“Where we sit tonight, we can approve the plan that’s in front of you, pending any other recommendations from ISBE.”
Three board members asked questions about the financial plan, including whether cuts outlined in one section will have to be made. Stines said those drastic cuts are for a theoretical “worst-case scenario” that could get the budget to a “zero sum,” but those cuts wouldn’t be beneficial for students and he doesn’t think they will have to happen.
After the questions, the six board members that were present voted unanimously to approve the financial plan.
Public comment
Before the board’s discussion of the financial plan, six people spoke during the public comment period: five staff — at least one of whom is also a parent with kids in the district — and a former longtime board member.
The first to speak was Rachel Pehle, vice president of the Grant-Illini Federation of Teachers and social studies teacher at Grant Middle School, who read a statement on behalf of the union.
“The financial situation of our district is dire,” she said. “Our students deserve better.”
Pehle questioned the status of some of the district’s federal grants, including Title I funding for low-income students and IDEA funding for students with disabilities that are both currently frozen.
The financial plan “may offer what seems like solutions. Don’t forget that we should not be in this situation in the first place,” she continued, adding that the reason the plan was mandated was because of Stines’ failure to submit information to the state, meet deadlines and secure grants.
“We expect accountability from our students every day. Why shouldn’t we expect it of our boss? Shouldn’t he be an example to the students he serves?” Pehle asked.
She finished the statement by calling again on the board to remove Stines. The union first made this appeal to the board in March a few days after the district’s financial difficulty certification.
Christine Arbeiter, a preschool paraprofessional at Illini Elementary, then read a union statement about staff departures in the past two years.
“By the end of this school year, the district will have lost over 150 combined years of experience due to staff leaving in just two years’ time,” Arbeiter said. She and Pehle estimate that about a dozen teachers and staff have left the district in that time.
“There are many reasons why staff move on. That reason should never be the uncertainty created by the superintendent’s poor management. This is, however, the cause for several of these departures over the last two years,” Arbeiter continued.
These departures are a loss for students and the school community, she said, and leave vacancies that need to be filled with dedicated educators.
“The board should consider the future educators of District 110 and the need for highly-qualified staff to want to work here, which means strong leadership. Different leadership. Our kids deserve no less,” Arbeiter concluded.
Two other staff spoke briefly to ask whether the district’s Title I funding is still frozen and whether the $1.54 million in ESSER III funding has been allocated and when the required public input was gathered.
According to the state board of education, District 110’s Title I, IDEA and ESSER digital equity grants are currently frozen for noncompliance with reporting requirements. Title I is frozen, in part, due to a refund the district owes back but has not yet paid following a finding from a federal and state monitoring compliance visit.
Last to speak was Tiffany Baldwin, a former board member from 2005 to 2023, who read a statement that she also posted on Facebook.
Baldwin said she watched March’s board meeting online and was disappointed because “what we got last month was a master class in deflection … and shirking responsibility.”
She emphasized that the state board of education certified District 110 as being in financial difficulty because the Illinois School Code allows the state board to do so when a “district refuses to provide financial information or cooperate with the state superintendent in an investigation of the district’s financial condition.”
Baldwin continued by saying that a bookkeeper that started in February 2023 and failed bank reconciliations for six months in 2023 are not the reasons for missed deadlines in fiscal or calendar year 2022, which she then outlined.
One of the documents was the fiscal year 2023 budget that the board approved at its Sept. 26, 2022 meeting, which Baldwin voted on. That budget then needs to be filed with the county clerk and submitted electronically to the state board of education within thirty days.
According to the state board of education, the district didn’t submit its fiscal year 2023 adopted budget until Dec. 30, 2023.
“I don’t know of a legitimate reason why it could not be submitted in a timely fashion. This is not a bookkeeper task. It’s a superintendent task,” Baldwin said.
Public remarks were limited to five minutes each, so she didn’t finish her full statement at the meeting. In the Facebook post, it continues with: “We are human, and these things happen. We have stuff going on in our personal lives that spill over and impact our job performance. If we were talking about a couple late filings over a brief period of time, I think most could get beyond that and extend some grace. But this is a lot of failures over more than 18 months. Something is amiss.
“When staff and citizens are fed excuses, we have no confidence that this will not continue.”
Contract extension offer
Earlier in April, the Grant-Illini Federation of Teachers — which represents 76 teachers and non-certified staff in District 110 — offered to extend its current contract with a stipend to offset inflation, instead of negotiating a new agreement. The current contract expires June 30.
“We know firsthand that our district’s financial future is unclear, possibly unstable, thanks to the inaction and lack of transparency coming from Superintendent Stines,” the union said in a statement after it submitted the extension proposal to district leadership on April 6.
“This gives Superintendent Stines and his team the information needed to demonstrate a complete representation of our district’s circumstances and immediate needs to ISBE, and more time to focus on accomplishing that goal on deadline.
“Teachers and paras and parents have spoken out about what is necessary to give our students the education they deserve. It’s time for Superintendent Stines to make that a priority as well. We submitted this offer to the board of education in a good-faith effort to assist with this process, and we hope they are agreeable to our proposal,” the statement reads.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Pehle said she received acknowledgement that the union’s offer was received but nothing else yet.
Kelly Smits is a reporter with the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
