" This may be one of those head count accounting practices. Just like allowing charter schools was. Might also be a No Child Left Behind coping mechanism. The religious schools may well be next to shut down to get the head counts up.

Not sure if the students sent to the 3rd party, get counted in the districts stats for NCLB compliance, or the state and federal per pupil various funds.

I imagine gutting EIASE, depends heavily on the proposed to be proposed sales tax for education. No they can't spen that money on teaching, but money they aren't spending on stuff they can spend it on probably can be.

Here comes the brand spanking new District 2 special ed facility, then they can staff it, equip it, and become the areas 3rd party special ed monopoly.

Its probably a given, if the biggest participating school district drops the co-op, it will cease to exist.

Where will they opt to build their new life safety dire need complex of learning. Will they tie it in with the transportation logistics annex? If they get that new sales tax, they may need to also life safety the Jr high, high school, admin building, and add a district 2 technical/service industry preperatory academy. "

" It will be a disaster waiting to happen.

WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court has ruled that parents of special education students who opt for private school instead of trying the public system cannot be barred from seeking public reimbursement for their tuition costs.

The court ruled 6-3 Monday in favor of a teenage boy from Oregon whose parents sought to force their local public school district to pay the $5,200 a month it cost to send their son to a private school.

5200 a month per child X 9 months X Mattoons 29 students = $1,357,200.00 a year. EIASE is looking pretty cheap now. "

" You both made some excellent points, mickeygarlock and Mike P. The local school board needs to do their homework and not act hasty, as they are prone to do at times, on this issue.

We should applaud them for looking for cost cutting measures for a change, but it appears this might be all that they think it is. "

" There is no possible way, they can save a dime without spending a dollar to do it.

They will have to add staff, facilities, materials, and who knows what else. They want people to think they can do all that for less than 510k a year.

Why the convenient creative accounting. 1.53 million over 3 years, sounds like a huge sum, but the 510k for Special ed per year, out of a 35 million annual budget is only 1-66th of it. Just a hand full of administrators eat up more than that, every year. Possibly even as few as 2 or 3.

They just had to cut teachers. They are proposing to propose the extra county wide sales tax. The state isn't paying its bills, so taxpayers can just cough a little harder to keep them all in the situations they have grown accustomed to.

Citizens should see about getting a board and council recall on the primary ballot, to go along with the referendum for a school sales tax. Cut the dead weight and clean house asap, and not wait for terms to expire. Administrations need gutted and the dead wood abacus show replaced with a simple quicken 2+2=4 no frills or creative accounting savy group.

PTELL failed to send a strong enough message. They all seem to look for every possible angle to circumvent voters, and then pull on those sympathy cords to get their hands on more and more tax dollars to spend. They have the gall to do this in stagnation before recession circumstances. Reality is nowhere on their radar. They couldn't find their heads with two hands and turn by turn navigation.

How many students were in Mattoon schools last year. Divide 35 million by that number. Then recall they failed to make the grade in math, for that much money per student. If I over estimate 350 a grade K-12, 4550 students, that is 7777.77 per. They want more, and to add back in all the stuff they shed, when they went with the Co-op for special ed. "

" I think it's funny that no one has mentioned that two of these concerned Mattoon Unit 2 employees working on the proposal are bitter ex eiase employees. Something fishy is going on! "

" How many of you were actually at this board meeting? Yep, thats just what I thought. "

" Doesn't matter if they cut Eiase out of the way or not, federal law says thay must educate the children until they are 21 years old. If Mattoon Cuts Eiase out of the way then the parents can send their special ed children ANYWHERE thay want and Mattoon still has to pay., even if they are expensive private schools and even if they have never been in a Mattoon School. "