“We used to have orchestra and band at fourth and fifth grade”, former Unit 5 School Board member Meta Mickens-Baker told Cities 92.9. “And we went to only having 5th grade band and orchestra.”
Mickens-Baker served on the board from 2004 to 2021. She was a panel member at the McLean County League of Women Voter’s educational session held on Wednesday night regarding the Unit 5 Referendum, school board candidates and future education.
We talked with Mickens-Baker after the event to see what we could learn about how Unit 5 got to where it is today regarding its financial situation. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to talk about her full 17 year tenure on the board. But we did get to discuss her early board member years.
At about the same time the housing bubble burst around 2008, state education funding in Illinois took a turn for the worse and went south.
“There was just 10 cents in the ed (educational) fund.” Mickens-Baker told us. “Assuming everything else remained equal, that would continue to be enough. But what changed was the state prorating their funding, meaning there was less.”
“They cut the funding for schools,” Mickens-Baker said. And they didn’t say they were going to do it for ten years. They did it one year. And then the next year they did it again. And then the next year they did it again. It was a different amount. Sometimes it was 90%, 89%, 83%, just different deductions in what they were supposed to give to the schools.”
Mickens-Baker informed us that the district faced a transportation fund problem after the state funding decrease. And while that was a separate fund, money from reserve cash was used to solve the problem. That reduction in reserve cash is impacting the problem with the education fund that is being faced today.
At the time the Board increased class sizes to help adjust for the funding losses. Kindergarten and First Grade classes went from something like 20 to 22 students in a classroom to a range of 25 to 27. This allowed for a reduction in teachers.
Interventionist and Specialist positions that provided assistance for teachers and services for special needs students were cut.
In addition to cutting Fourth grade orchestra and band, AP classes that didn’t attract enough interest from students were cut.
As our conversation was coming to its necessary end Mickens-Baker concluded, “The board every year tries to be very responsible to what are we getting in terms of revenue? What are the expenses? Where can we make reasonable changes to use that money as efficiently as possible?”
