{"id":461954,"date":"2010-03-22T20:34:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T00:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef0120a96647ee970b"},"modified":"2010-03-22T20:34:50","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T00:34:50","slug":"house-approves-bill-for-four-day-school-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/461954","title":{"rendered":"House approves bill for four-day school weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Michelle Manchir <\/em>at 7:33 p.m.<\/p>\n

SPRINGFIELD — In an effort to help strapped school districts save money, the House today approved a bill that would let local school boards set four-day weeks for students.<\/p>\n

Students would still be required to go to school the same amount of hours every year. That would mean school days could be longer or summer vacation would be shorter. <\/p>\n

The bill passed the House on an 81-21 vote and goes to the Senate for consideration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Lawmakers said the move could save schools districts money on fuel for buses and could scale back their electric bills for school buildings. <\/p>\n

Rep. Bill Black, a Danville Republican who sponsored the bill, said he took up the issue when a school superintendent in Vermilion County approached him about ever-increasing fuel costs. Black said many smaller, rural districts have long bus routes with students who live in farms several miles away from their schools. <\/p>\n

"All he wanted to do is try and keep their school district operating," Black said.<\/p>\n

Schools statewide are struggling due to delayed payments from the state for items like transportation and special education. <\/p>\n

But the legislation is opposed by some major education groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of Teachers.\u00a0Lawmakers opposed to the bill said denying kids a day of school is the wrong way to address the state’s enormous backlog of bills.<\/p>\n

"It is tragic when we try to balance the budget of the state of Illinois on the backs of our babies," said Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago.
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Posted by Michelle Manchir at 7:33 p.m. SPRINGFIELD — In an effort to help strapped school districts save money, the House today approved a bill that would let local school boards set four-day weeks for students. Students would still be required to go to school the same amount of hours every year. That would mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}