AREA ILLINOIS SCHOOLS ON FINANCIAL `WATCH LIST'

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- The Cairo Unit School District 1 in Alexander County and Anna-Jonesboro Community High School District 81 of Union County have been added to the Illinois State Board of Education's latest financial "watch list."

Also on the latest list, which includes 145 names out of more than 900 schools, are Union County schools, Cobden District 17 and Dongola District 66.

Other Southern Illinois schools on the latest list are Crab Orchard Community Unit School District 3, Herrin Community School District 4, and Carbondale Elementary District, all in Williamson County.

Sixty-three new districts were added to the 1994 list, which increased 30 percent over a year ago's list of school districts which are having financial difficulty, or on the verge of doing so.

"This state needs a plan for the future that will give schools an adequate and stable funding source and an equitable system for distributing the money," said Illinois State Superintendent Robert Leininger, in a statement released with the latest list Wednesday. "The concern should be for the long run."

The state uses the list as "an early warning signal," Leininger said. "If districts are spending 95 percent of their revenues and any reserves they might have had, they could be courting more serious problems in the future."

"We think we'll come through this all right," said Geneva Elaine Bonifield, acting superintendent of the Cairo School District.

There has been talk of eliminating athletic programs in the school district as a cost-cutting means.

"But we have a strong booster's club here," said Bonifield, a Cairo native who previously taught at Cairo. "There's a lot of commitment to keeping athletics."

Leininger said expenditures exceed revenues in 70 percent of Illinois school districts. "The trend has been that schools are getting a smaller and smaller share of the state general revenue funds," he said.

The list is based on the districts' financial condition on June 30, 1993. School districts are placed on the list if year-end balances in four major funds are 5 percent or less of the revenues for that year.

Fourteen districts were certified as being "in financial difficulty," the state's most severe category of financial trouble.

Twenty-nine districts on last year's list were removed; however, seven of them no longer exist because of mergers with other districts.