THE SCHOOLHOUSE
IS FALLING DOWN

Most of Illinois' schools need repairs.
Meanwhile, more kids are on the way.
Where will we put them?

by Jennifer Davis

Come April Fool's Day, taxpayers in DuQuoin School District 300 will decide whether they're willing to double their debt limit to build a new grade school. It's a question, given the area's depressed economy, that interim schools Superintendent Gary Kelly hates to ask. But he fears his century- old schools can't hold up much longer. "I truly believe we're getting close to the point where we're putting students at risk every day," says Kelly, noting how asbestos ceiling tiles rained down in his grade school last spring, forcing a month-long evacuation and an expensive cleanup. "There is more pitch in our floors than in our roofs. We've got beams literally pushing up the floors and water coming in. You drill into a wall and it's full of mush from water damage. How can I update our wiring for computers in that mess?"

Faced with overcrowding, the Ball-Chatham School District wants approval of a $22 million bond referendum this spring to build a new elementary school and a new junior high school.

Still, voters in that southern Illinois town have continually defeated referendum for school construction — even once back in 1978 when the state was slated to pay 60 percent of the cost. Today, the average new elementary school costs about $6 million, and the average secondary school about $15 million. "We are at a crossroads," Kelly says. "Our backs are against the wall."

School districts statewide are singing the same song. Statistics from recent federal and state surveys provide the discordant melody:

• Eighty-nine percent of Illinois schools need repairs or upgrades to bring them into overall good condition, according to a June 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office survey.

Sixty-two percent cited at least one inadequate building feature, such as poor plumbing or leaky roofs, and 70 percent described such deficient environmental factors as below par heating and lighting.

• Illinois already uses almost 1,000 temporary classrooms to ease overcrowding. Add to that a rising public school enrollment that is projected to continue to surge throughout the collar counties.

• Illinois is one of a dozen states that fails to provide any state funding for school construction or renovation, yet the financial need for new buildings and repairs, excluding Chicago, is an estimated $7 billion over the next seven to 10 years. Chicago's five-year, $806 million capital improvement program falls far short of meeting the true need, says Jim Gallagher, that district's manager of renovations.

Nationwide, an estimated $112 billion is needed for school repairs. Yet in fiscal year 1994, all 50 states spent a total of $3.5 billion.

"In my opinion, we are paying the price for 30 years of cuts in education," says U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun of the GAO reports she commissioned.

Those reports, apparently the first

24 / March 1997 Illinois Issues

"I don't think it's unreasonable to believe [school construction assistance] could pass as a concurrent issue."

Novak's proposal, one of many already introduced, would earmark a $1 billion bond authorization for specified school construction projects over the next 10 years. Under the bill, poor school districts could receive up to 90 percent of the cost of construction from the state.

Phelps has introduced his own bill, one he believes is "more realistic" than Novak's because it provides only $330 million in bond authorization.

"This is the year to talk about it, to get it closer to reality," says Phelps, a former 6th-grade teacher and assistant principal.

While education funding reform was the crux of Gov. Edgar's State of the State address earlier this year, he has had a more tepid response to school construction funding.

"I could see that, maybe, as one of the ingredients of the resolution of the school financing issue, but we're going to have to identify a source of revenue to pay for that," he said last month after he met with the four legislative leaders to discuss state borrowing.

House Speaker Michael Madigan's position is also noncommittal, hopeful yet not specific. "It's more likely to end up as part of an overall package on school funding, but I notoriously try to avoid predictions," says Madigan spokesman Steve Brown.

At the federal level, a plan has already been detailed and presented to Congress. In his February State of the Union address, President Clinton outlined a 10-point program for education reform, which includes more than $5 billion to help finance $20 billion in school repair and construction nationwide over the next four years.

Moseley-Braun and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, introduced the Education Facilities Improvement Act in late January.

The bill, which was included in the balanced budget proposal Clinton sent to Congress February 6, allocates $5 billion to pay a portion of the interest

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The remainder of the $5 billion would be administered by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Richard Riley and competitively awarded to the 100 school districts with the largest numbers of poor children, as well as 25 additional districts chosen at the secretary's discretion.

"My home state of Illinois is a microcosm of the nation," Moseley-Braun said back in June while explaining how Illinois, despite diverse regions that encompass farmland, wealthy suburbs, some of the poorest slums and one of the largest cities, is struggling with crumbling schools across the board.

"We have neglected the needs of our elementary and secondary schools, and it has shown up in our children's test scores," says Braun. "[That neglect] affects their ability to concentrate and to learn and to receive the kind of education they need to keep America competitive in the 21st century."

Indeed, the GAO surveys indicate every state is facing a school infrastructure crisis to some degree. Georgia, for instance, has two school construction entitlement programs and spent about $151 million in the 1993-94 school year on public elementary and secondary schools. That state reports the lowest number of schools in need at 62 percent.

Meanwhile, Delaware has fewer students than Georgia (107,000 kids to 1.2 million) and spent more than double per student on school facilities through its three capital improvement programs ($275 per student versus Georgia's $123). Yet, Delaware reports the highest number of schools in need of repair and renovations nationwide: 97 percent. What is Georgia doing right and Delaware doing wrong? It's impossible to judge based on the survey results, researchers admit. "The states vary so much in their philosophy as well as what they're doing," says Eleanor Johnson, the GAO's assistant director of education and employment issues. "There's no clear-cut way to draw a conclusion as to which state is doing the best job." Even so, Illinois can pretty much count itself out of the running.

The Land of Lincoln has the dubious distinction of ranking in the top 10 states with the most students sharing computers. In Illinois, an average of 19 students share a computer. Ohio is the worst with an average of 25 students per computer. The best rate, seven students per computer, was reported by Wyoming.

Indeed, despite support from Illinois officials for moving the state's students into the information age, 53 percent of Illinois schools surveyed report inadequate wiring for communications; 30 percent report insufficient computer capability; 43 percent report they even have trouble installing cable TV.

This is all secondary, however, to the "leaking roofs, rusted plumbing, overworked heating systems, crumbling plaster and sagging fire escapes" cited in the Illinois State Board of Education's December 1996 survey.

In Cass County, a steel beam supporting Beardstown High School is rusting through. In Kankakee County, the walls at St. Anne High School are separating — enough to put your hand through. In Saline County, Eldorado High School is still heated with a coal furnace.

"Some of our buildings, to be honest, probably should be closed, but where do we put the kids then?" says Gary Ey, associate superintendent for fiscal and shared services at the Illinois State Board of Education.

Ey, who helped prepare the survey, says while there may be some cases of neglect, most districts are not to blame for decrepit schools.

"There just isn't enough money to take care of every facility's needs," says Ey, adding that maintenance and repair funds are used to pay rising operations costs, including utilities.

26 / March 1997 Illinois Issues

In fact, many of the districts worrying about paying their electric bills and removing asbestos from their ceilings and walls are the same ones with another nagging concern: More kids are on the way.

State enrollment projections released last spring point to a rising school population at all levels, with the heaviest concentrations expected in the booming counties that ring Chicago.

While the overcrowding is concentrated in the wealthier suburbs, many school districts there are still having a hard time convincing voters to override their property tax caps.

For the 1999-2000 school year, projected enrollment increases range from less than 1 percent in Kankakee County, just south of Chicago, to about 19 percent in McHenry County, northwest of Chicago. By 2004, Boone County, near the state's northern border, is expected to face a 47 percent enrollment increase over 1994-95 figures.

In that respect, DuQuoin interim Superintendent Kelly is fortunate. Enrollment in his county is expected to drop slightly.

Not that he doesn't have worries. A special window of opportunity runs out for his district on January 1, 1998. That's the expiration date for special legislation passed during last fall's veto session allowing the DuQuoin school district to raise its debt limit.

If the referendum fails, the district won't have the bonding power needed to build an $8.8 million new grade school, but it will still be faced with the $10.5 million cost of bringing existing facilities into minimum safety compliance.

Meanwhile, an $880,000 state grant used to get plans for the new school rolling will have been wasted, and the district will lose an option to buy 20 acres from the state at the bargain price of $20,000. As nice as those perks are, Kelly isn't counting on them to assure the referendum's passage.

"Back in 1978, the district was trying to build a junior high school. They also had a one-year window to pass a referendum. They tried three times, and it failed three times, although I think they came pretty close the second time, like within 100 votes," says Kelly, noting the average taxpayers' bill at that time would have gone up an estimated $30 a year.

"If they had passed it, that building would've been paid off this year."

This time around, school officials are estimating an average $ 150 to $200 annual tax increase.

"If they vote no, we'll just have to do something else," says Kelly. "I just have no idea what that might be though."

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