Interest-free loans offered to Ill. schools

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Martin Payne has a thick file folder on his desk stuffed with his staff's suggestions for opening Monmouth schools if there's no state budget agreement and state-aid payments don't arrive on time.

The unpleasant options include using cash on hand, relying on local property tax receipts that haven't arrived yet and borrowing.

"We'll operate. Our kids will go to school," Payne, superintendent of the Monmouth-Roseville School District in western Illinois, said Monday.

As Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the General Assembly wrangle over a state budget that's nearly six weeks overdue, public schools across the state have more than just the usual August headaches of registration, transfers and finding classrooms and teachers.

On Friday, the state comptroller is supposed to write checks for about $170 million in state aid. Another $170 million is due Aug. 20. Without a budget, he can't send those checks and schools don't know how much money to expect in the year ahead.

Blagojevich moved to ease school officials' worries Monday. He directed the Illinois Finance Authority to make available $175 million to strapped school districts at no interest, according to a letter sent to local districts by state schools Superintendent Christopher Koch.

Whatever a school district borrows will be subtracted from future aid payments, Koch said.

Still, school officials want the governor and legislators to decide how much money schools will get.

"We're a district that, like so many others in the state, depends heavily on general state aid, and the sooner this gets resolved at the state level, the better off our kids will be," Payne said.

The Chicago Public Schools released its spending plan for the coming year Monday, something it normally does before August.

A frustrated chief executive officer Arne Duncan said the plan assumes just $100 million more in state money, although he said the nation's third-largest school system needs $300 million.

"In this budget, we're making the investments we can afford, not the investments we know are needed," Duncan said.

Illinois' next-largest district, Elgin U46, maintains a $75 million working cash fund and has been relying on that, chief financial officer John Prince said.

"You're committing to teacher contracts, programs starting up or continuing, in the spring, and you're still in late summer not knowing what the funding levels are going to be," Prince said.