(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music swells) - Good evening.

The Trump administration wants to eliminate the US Department of Education.

Staffing at the agency has already been cut in half, as has the budget.

So what does this mean, if anything, for schools here in Central Illinois?

We are joined in studio by Beth Crider, Peoria County Regional superintendent, and on Zoom from Macomb, Illinois, John Meixner.

He's the Region 26 superintendent of schools in Fulton, Hancock, McDonough, and Schuyler Counties.

Welcome to both of you.

- Thank you.

- [John] Yeah.

- Beth, let's start with you.

Things are changing by the minute, it seems, with the Trump administration.

When you heard about wanting to eliminate the Department of Education, what was your reaction?

What are your thoughts?

- Well, let's start with the short answer is that we have a local control state.

That means that in your school district, you're not gonna see changes to curriculum, you're not gonna see changes to the way they do their day-to-day business.

The concern becomes, what about kids that need extra support?

What about families that need that extra support?

So think about kids that wanna go to college that don't have the funding, kids with special education needs and an IEP that support their work, and all those kinds of support services that help kids be successful.

Title IX, or excuse me, Title I funding that supports kids that are living in poverty.

So those help kids have the opportunities that they need from a public education.

- And John, what are your thoughts on this?

- Yeah, I mean, the issue we have really is we just simply don't know what's all the true effects are gonna be.

There's a lot of money that flows into the state of Illinois from the feds, and it could either be arranged from Title money.

There's nutrition money, which is all our free and reduced lunch, you know, reimbursements.

And IDEA, kind of the special education money, low-income, homeless education money.

I mean, there's just a whole slew of money.

So we can only expect that that is going to continue.

We just don't know how it's going to flow into the state and then down to the schools and the ROEs and like that.

So really, a lot of this is just to sit back and wait and see how this is all gonna play out.

I can't imagine that they're going to just eliminate billions of dollars, you know, to the state of Illinois, let alone along with some other states.

It's just a matter of how it's gonna flow, I think.

- Well, John, in general, how important is federal money to our school districts?

- Well, that's a good point.

It ranges.

I mean, some schools can have anywhere from like 8 to maybe 20% of their funds come from the federal side.

Now, it all depends on, you know, the demographics or poverty numbers on how much you do receive.

And, you know, Beth says it really well about, you know, we just don't know.

And there is a lot of need out there.

It's just dependent on what districts and how much they have.

- Illinois is expected to receive about 3 1/2 billion in federal funding for fiscal year 2025.

About 1/3 of that is going to students who need special education services.

So Beth, can you expand a little bit more on what those education services are for those kids?

- Well, let's zero in on Peoria Public Schools, which is right here in the heart of who you serve.

Peoria Public Schools has a more than 70% poverty rate of the students that they serve.

And they have several students that have what's called an Individualized Education Plan, an IEP.

And both of those funding streams, whether it's IDEA that supports those students with special needs or the Title I funds that support students that are living in poverty, it's all about giving them equal opportunity.

We want them to be successful.

We want them to be able to join this economy and have good-paying jobs.

And sometimes they need a little bit more extra support to get there, and so those funds become critical because those are different services than you would provide for what goes to everyone.

- And John, with your district, you serve a lot of rural areas.

Can you tell us a little bit about poverty levels in your areas and what effect potentially losing that money would mean?

- Yeah, rural poverty is quite a large issue now.

And as you notice, rural poverty is probably one of the fastest growing poverty rates in the country.

I think, you know, Beth brought up a good example of Peoria.

Peoria is more profound in the fact that the poverty rates are extremely high.

We do have some districts that do have, you know, over 50, 60% poverty rates.

However, their budgets aren't nearly a size of Peoria school district.

So the numbers that we get are not gonna be as extraordinarily greater.

But she says it well in the fact that there are kids with needs.

There are definite needs.

And these districts do rely on some of these funds.

So yeah, would it be a hit if they all disappear?

Oh, there's no doubt.

There is no doubt.

Everything from nutrition to Title, to special ed monies, there's no doubt it would be a hit.

Now, exactly how much, the 18 districts we have in here, it ranges quite significantly.

So I think Beth has a good example of Peoria, - John, if, and that's a big, those funds disappeared, how would school districts get them back?

I mean, are we talking about potentially having to raise property taxes?

What would that scenario be?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

Obviously, in Illinois, we rely heavily on our school districts or local property taxes.

And it would be a large hit.

Now, one or two years maybe, a school district may be able to withstand some of this.

But after a while, it will definitely be a hit.

And there would have to be some reaction from the state.

I mean, there would... And we just don't know how that's gonna look yet.

So a lot of this stuff, like I said earlier, it's just, we just don't know what we don't know yet.

- Beth, when Linda McMahon, the new education secretary, was asked about, you know, what's gonna happen with this money and especially special needs kids, as of now anyway, and things are changing, the administration said, well, maybe another department will take over, like the Department of Health and Human Services.

If something like that happens, I mean, yeah, I guess they may know a little bit about education, but do they know enough to oversee this money that's going to these kids?

- And I'm sorry, but that answer is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable that we do not know where those funding streams will be relocated.

It would be catastrophic to remove funding for kids that have special needs, the free and reduced lunch program that so many kids rely on for their only meals of the day, the money that flows to support students in poverty.

And so to say, well, maybe it will go to another department, these are children, these are families that need these structures in place.

If you're going to move it, I understand that, but you need to have the plan first.

Not the concepts of a plan, you need a plan.

Where's it going to go?

How's it going to roll out?

How's it going to flow?

You don't say, well, we're just gonna move it, maybe, one day.

What happens in the gap?

These are real children leading real lives.

- [John] Yeah, God, I couldn't agree more, Beth.

It's 100%.

- And about almost a million students rely on the Title I funding here in Illinois.

So that is a significant, significant amount of kids.

Now, Beth, you mentioned that, you know, we shouldn't see a change in the curriculum and how schools teach.

But the Trump administration also wants to end DEI, the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

And the administration, as of now, has threatened to withhold federal funds from public schools that have those DEI programs.

So that's kind of another wrinkle in this.

- Oh, it most certainly is.

And in our office, we have someone that focuses on diversity, equity, inclusion, and we had a B, B for belonging.

It's about making sure that all students have access to opportunity, no matter where they're coming from, no matter what their sexual orientation is, no matter what socioeconomic status they come from, no matter the color of their skin.

It's about access to opportunity is why we focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

And so we are embracing that.

We are continuing to support our teachers as they try to make sure that everyone feels they belong in a public school classroom.

So we will continue those efforts.

- And John, what are your thoughts?

- So, yeah, I mean, what I've been telling people about this, the DEI issue, is like, what's opposite of this?

I mean, what's diversity?

Opposite is, you know, non-diverse.

What's equity?

Unequitable.

Inclusion, I mean, I choose the DEI.

That's the stuff that I can't understand is that there is no doubt that we choose diversity, equity, and inclusion for our schools.

And I think that it makes us much more stronger, you know, as a school, as a community, when we accept those principles.

- You two have both been in your positions more than 10 years, almost 20 for you, John.

Have you ever come across something like this where a federal administration says, hey, if you don't do this or get rid of this, you're not getting any money?

- Yeah, nope.

- There are definitely... Every time you have a change in federal administration, you get executive orders, or you get letters that come from different departments, and there might be a change to, for example, Title IX and how you investigate a Title IX allegation, but never at this scale.

And so part of my concern is that when you have teachers, educators, administrators waking up every morning and having to focus on, what are we doing today, and the concern and the challenge, they need to be focused on what's most important.

And that is delivering a high-quality public education to our students.

And if we're distracted, and we have anxiety, that trickles down to our students.

And so I think, at this point, that is my biggest concern.

Because right now, nothing has changed.

We just have high levels of anxiety.

- Yeah, that's so true.

Yeah, I think the chaos is what has got everybody kind of up arms is we just don't know.

We simply have no idea how this is all gonna play out.

Like Beth says, nothing has changed 100% now, but we just don't know.

And that anxiety levels, it does trickle down.

There's no doubt it trickles down.

- I would like to follow up with one thing.

I have a Department of Education grant.

I host it in conjunction with the Illinois Central College.

And we have been told, well, you're not going to get your promised year two and year three funding.

Well, will we have it the rest of this year?

Well, and then our grant manager was replaced, and then that person was replaced.

And so we keep trying to make contact.

We keep trying to draw down funds.

That's the anxiety that I'm talking about.

That's someone's job to implement that grant, who's been working at that.

That is people we've hired for the grant.

Do they have jobs?

Do they not have jobs?

Can I fund that?

Those are some of the real life implications.

- And I understand- - Yeah, and the grant that she's speaking of is an incredibly important one.

I mean, it's a school safety.

You can't get something more important than that right now.

You know, and our office was one of the few offices that didn't get affected by it.

We did have a grant that was supposed to end, or some funds that were gonna end here at the end of the fiscal year, 30 June.

We did find out from the State Board of Education told us that that grant is no longer available.

And we lost like the last few months of funding.

Now, I mean, it was a very small amount.

It was like a few thousand dollars that we were gonna pay some curriculum subscriptions and some things like that.

So we didn't really lose as much as we are afraid of.

But there were some others in the state that did lose some money more significantly than ours.

- And just to get back to DEI, the diversity, equity and inclusion, real quick, Linda McMahon, again, the secretary of education, that agency issued a letter in February notifying educational institutions that they must, quote, "Cease using race preferences and stereotypes as a factor in their admissions, hiring, promotion, and scholarship."

So their argument, it seems like, is that a program that is trying to include diversity and equity in the schools is doing just the opposite.

- I would argue that's a false narrative to say that you would need to end race promotion.

If a curriculum such as US History only focuses on the history of what white men did, that is the opposite of what she's promoting.

I think we need to have a more inclusive look at history as to, what did African Americans contribute?

What did women contribute?

What did Asian Americans contribute?

Because history is not just one stream.

And so opening that up, I think, is what they want us to promote.

And to say that we need to end...

The thought that she would exclude a book about Harriet Tubman from the curriculum seems absurd to me.

Her contribution to US history is extraordinary, and our students need to know about that.

- Yeah, I agree that they're creating a problem that doesn't exist.

- [Beth] Agreed.

- They're just saying a narrative out there that we just falsely agree with.

We just simply don't agree with it.

And I mean, simple as that.

I just do not agree what their base narrative is based on.

- Well, one problem that does exist, and this has existed for a while now, is a teacher shortage in Illinois.

I wanna talk to you both about your districts.

And Beth, we'll start with you.

What kind of shortage are we looking at here?

- Well, we had 750 schools throughout the state of Illinois that reported and their data.

And when you look at Peoria County, we have 95% of our districts reporting a teacher shortage problem.

We have 53% of the districts here in Peoria County saying that 1/2 or fewer of the applicants have even the correct credentials to apply for that position.

And 89% of my districts have less than five openings.

What it comes down to is we're still looking for those key positions in special education, foreign languages at the high school, math and science at the high school and middle school levels, and early childhood.

And when you don't have that fully qualified person in the classroom, you use band-aid approaches.

And that is finding someone that's close to being certified or working on that, and you help support them in the classroom.

But we need fully qualified teachers in front of our students.

- John, what's it looking like in your western districts?

- Well, the statewide survey that we put together obviously shows that it is over crisis levels, there's no doubt, and where it is affected most is the rural areas.

I think one of the...

If you do a little statewide heat map of it, you look at like kind of the west central, central area, and then the southeast side of the state are your more profound shortage areas that we've discovered.

The rural areas, I mean, it's changed so significantly since I started my career in education.

I mean, when I first applied for a job, there may have been 30 or 40 other teachers that would apply for, in a rural area, would apply for a position.

Now they're lucky to get an applicant.

I mean, the districts are out hunting for people to try to fill these positions.

Every single district in our region is not, does not have a fully credentialed staff on board.

There are some that only have a few that they need to fill.

And there are some that have a few dozen that are not.

I can't even imagine the size of a district like Peoria, how many unproperly credentialed people they don't have.

And it has, and where we've noticed it, and we haven't seen it specifically directly yet, but you'll see performance levels drop of students.

You know, our test scores are not as good, should be rising as they should.

And we're also noticing some of the behavior issues, that we don't have properly trained teachers in the districts to really manage a classroom properly.

And then which rolls into behavior problems with kids.

And then, of course, that really affects your administration, and it does trickle down and trip up in so many different ways.

- You mentioned behavioral issues.

And John, what are some of the other issues?

Why do you think people aren't getting into the profession or staying in the profession?

- Well, yeah, there's the issue.

It's the working conditions.

And there's no magic bullet to this.

There's no magic pill that's gonna solve this.

It goes on a whole range of issues.

I mean, it's, how do you develop working conditions that, you know, is acceptable for people to come into a profession?

Teaching is not easy.

I mean, you tell a lot of people, just come on in and follow my footsteps, you know, for a day or two, and they realize, I can't handle this.

I mean, I can't, 20 kids in a classroom, multiply that times whatever, six, seven hours a day you do that.

That can be very exhausting for a lot of people.

So, I mean, there's all kinds of, you know, in Illinois, you know, there's compensation issues.

You know, there's the pension issues.

There's so many different areas.

And it's just trying to address it wholeheartedly.

I think right now, a lot of our leaders at districts are just trying to build, you know, these really proper cultures in our district to make it acceptable for people to be employed at.

And it's not easy, but I mean, we are trying best practice strategies to try to get teachers to come to our areas.

- I hear it every night.

I live with a teacher, married to one.

So I know just how hard it is, and I sympathize with everybody out there.

Beth, do you have anything to add to what John said?

- I have a second year teacher in my family.

My daughter joined the profession last year following in her mother and her grandfather's footsteps.

And to see her struggles made it so very real.

It's the need for mentorship and support of our newest teachers so they don't leave.

Yes, we have a teacher shortage problem, but we also have a teacher leavage problem.

They're looking at other professions, other jobs, where they can get paid more with less stress and better working conditions.

So we have to figure out how to support these new teachers that are coming into the profession as well.

- Well, that brings up an interesting question.

Since you have all this experience, and your daughter wants to be a teacher, how do you, you know, after what you've told her, stories she hears, and then you say, but honey, go ahead and be a teacher, I mean, that would be- - For me- - an interesting conversation.

- That's an anomaly.

- For me, one of the narratives that we've lost, teaching is the greatest profession in the world.

You get to impact students on a daily basis.

I have students that I taught in the 1900s that come back to me all the time and tell me these exciting things that they're doing.

It is so rewarding.

It's such a way to serve your community, and we have to be putting that out there.

Because it's truly a fulfilling, and it's a passion.

And so bringing that back and encouraging our students to embrace that would definitely be a step in the right direction.

- That's so true, Beth.

We, as educators, do not do ourselves much help.

(chuckles) We don't really tell us, we don't tell people how immense, you know, rewarding this profession is.

As I say, this is the profession that begins all professions.

And just to try to push that out is... We haven't really been doing much justice to ourselves.

I mean, there's all kinds of teachers and administrators I know that would, like, tell their kids, don't bother to get into this type of field.

It's too much for 'em.

But, you know, and kudos to Beth for having her child get into it, because it is something that we need to change as ourselves.

We have to promote our profession and such the good intrinsic value that goes along with it.

- And John, you're in Macomb, where, of course, Western Illinois University is.

And I'm wondering if the regional superintendents or the state superintendent is doing anything to, you know, maybe encourage college students to get into the profession or give them incentives.

Is anything like that going on?

- Well, yeah, there's all kinds of state programs.

I mean, you have, well, the school does... Well, the governor did create a grant last year for a lot of schools that had a high shortage issue.

And it was that Teacher Pipeline Grant, and that really assisted a lot of districts in trying to find ways to attract people and retain teachers in their districts.

The state has tried some changes on licensure aspect to try to help fill these things.

There are all type of scholarship programs.

There's Grow Your Own programs.

There's the Great River Teacher Corps program.

And there's a whole slew of programs that are out there to really assist in it.

And it's starting to get some traction.

I mean, I know that Western Illinois University has a master's Arts in Teaching program that has just been wildly successful out there.

I think that's one of the fastest growing masters programs they have at Western Illinois University.

And it really helps the school districts out tremendously to put people into the classrooms immediately with good supports.

And I mean, there's just a lot of different programs out there.

I don't even have a list of 'em, but there is, there's a ton of them.

- And Beth, let's talk a little bit about here in Peoria County.

We've got obviously a ton of kids coming outta high school.

They may choose to go to college at ISU, which, of course, is a big university for getting your teaching degrees.

Is the county specifically doing anything to try and get those kids to come in and take some of these open jobs?

- Oh, absolutely, any way that we can promote recruitment.

We are at all the job fairs, career fairs.

We are promoting alternative licensure.

But I want to offer that we have to be very careful here.

Because the profession of teaching is just that.

It's a professional career, and you really probably don't want a doctor with an alternative license.

So you don't want a teacher that doesn't have that solid background, that can walk into that classroom, that is armed with what they need to teach our students.

So we have to be very careful with that.

And we have to be careful with incentives.

When you only have a few districts that get a pipeline grant to be able to recruit teachers and pay incentives, a lot of times that causes what in our area we call poaching.

So I'll take a teacher from one district and pull them into my district because I have an incentive to offer.

So we have to be careful of that.

So sometimes the tool is hurting more than it's helping.

So we have to make sure that we are keeping our eye on the prize, which is highly qualified teachers in front of all of our students.

- And John, talking about those incentives, you know, if a big, big city like Peoria can offer those incentives, does that make it even harder for some of those rural areas to get teachers?

- Yeah, we're seeing it out here in the rural area as well.

I mean, you have a school district that may have a higher compensation, you know, rate, and you get districts that are jumping, I mean, these teachers that are just jumping from district to district, year to year.

What we've noticed over here in the border, Hancock County, which is, you know, borders Iowa and Missouri, there is so many teachers that have jumped across the river.

And, you know, they still live in Illinois, and they just drive an extra 10, 20 miles to teach over in Iowa, and which pays a considerable bit more.

And it doesn't have, like, a tier two pension system like ours.

So we've lost and the border counties around the state have lost a lot of people to some of our neighboring states as well.

But, again, it's just trying to, you know, better your working conditions in the area.

And that means different for different people and different districts.

So it's hard to kinda narrow down what all that directly means.

- Sure.

Well, we wanna let people know, again, going back to our original topic about the Trump administration wanting to make cuts to the Department of Education, they want to eliminate it, which is gonna be a lot harder than just making cuts.

The Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker, is in your corner, as is Kwame Raoul, the attorney general.

Illinois has joined 20 other states in suing the Trump administration to stop these education cuts.

So, again, this is changing.

It's a very fluid situation.

I'll ask both of you, Beth, you first, how do you keep your head up in days like this?

- What keeps my head up is our purpose and what I call our why, teaching the future, making sure that kids have what they need, we keep our eye on that, and then the rest we will figure out as it comes.

I'm trying not to panic ahead of time.

What I do know for sure is that there could be serious budget implications if some of the federal funding streams dry up.

Medicare, Medicaid, which hasn't entered the conversation yet, could drastically impact what happens in the state of Illinois.

And if we're having to reshuffle the deck of the budget of our state, then we will see drastic impact at the local level.

But we will always have to come back to our core mission, which is having high-quality staff in front of our students so that they're prepared for what they want to do in the future.

- Yeah.

Yeah, we're very similar.

What I've been telling my staff is that, you know, we as leaders, we have to pay more attention to the staff than we do ourselves to some degree, but it's just focusing on what our purpose is.

And we say we change lives every day.

And that's what we try to keep the focus on that.

And I think you'll get people to really understand the true mission behind what we are.

And it kind of squashes some of the other noise that we hear out on the side with DC and Springfield, whatnot.

But focus on your purpose.

- Well, there's a lot of noise out there, not just on this subject but a lot.

So we encourage people to pay attention to the news and pay attention to what's going on with our schools.

Beth Crider, Peoria County Regional superintendent, and John Meixner, Region 26 superintendent of schools, we appreciate your time today.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

You can catch us anytime at wtvp.org and on social media.

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