It was announced late last week that the Regional Office of Education #33 would be receiving most of their funding for pre-kindergarten education after learning earlier in the summer that funding was cut completely.
It had been announced back in June that the schools within ROE #33 were losing over $2.5M in Pre-K funding.
Funding was found at the state level thanks to the Illinois State Board of Education and Governor Bruce Rauner, but the region is still coming up much shorter than what they had received last year.
ROE #33 Superintendent Jodi Scott went over the specifics with WGIL on what Pre-K funding the region was getting, “Our early childhood birth to three program received $930,000 . It used to be a little over about $1.2M . And then our preschool programs received about $850,000 more which it should have been about $1.6M more but we’re getting closer.”
Scott says that the region was able to get the money thanks to several factors, including advocacy.
“We had a group of people that worked really hard to kind of question and get to the bottom of why some of the existing high-quality programs were not funded. Our legislators went to bat for us and ultimately with our legislators, the Governor’s office, and Illinois State Board of Education found additional dollars to fund programs that they called fundable.”
She added that because of the funding cut, staff had to be moved around to account for the lack of Pre-K education.
Scott says the funding puts the region in a better place, and she’s hopeful all the funding will be restored.
