Despite a state budget crisis, Gov. Rod Blagojevich asked the Illinois State Senate to reconfigure the State Board of Education, criticizing the body for its high spending and lack of accountability Thursday in his State of the State Address.
“Instead of being an independent body that could regulate and support our schools, the Illinois State Board of Education is like an old, Soviet-style bureaucracy,” Blagojevich said. “It’s clunky and inefficient, it issues mandates, it spends money, it dictates policy and it isn’t accountable to anyone for anything.”
He proposed making the state board into a new Department of Education. The board was created in 1970 to make education officials less political, but Blagojevich said it is now not accountable to parents, teachers and students.
The governor is advocating new funding for programs that would require high school students to complete 40 hours of community service before graduation. He also wants to give every child under age 5 a free book each month and to revive Project Success, a social services program.
Although Evanston schools did not participate in Project Success, which provides health care and nutrition services for parents and children, administrators said the new book program could benefit their students.
Valerie Gudgeon, Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s director of special services, said reading to a young child can foster emotional bonds between adults and children as well as teach children skills such as how to hold a book.
“Things you take for granted, someone taught you,” Gudgeon said. “If families don’t have a book around, sometimes those opportunities are not available.”
Gudgeon also said State Superintendent Robert Schiller wrote administrators to tell them they might be receiving more funding for special education programs. However, that funding, like the proposal to change from a state school board to a Department of Education, first must be approved by the state senate. Politicians are not sure how long such changes will take.
“(The governor’s proposal) would require changing parts of the state constitution,” said Christy Bond, press assistant at the governor’s office, “so obviously not in the next two weeks.”
The State Board of Education opposes the governor’s proposal. In his response to the speech, Schiller pointed out the board received ratings of excellent or satisfactory by 76 percent of the people surveyed by Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn.
The governor also congratulated politicians on a new health care plan for the elderly and disabled aimed at lowering prescription drug costs and on raising the state minimum wage. He encouraged their support on a proposal to let residents import prescription drugs from Canada.
He said Illinois is in a much better state now than this time last year.
