Education

  Augustana College has hired its next provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Once again Black Hawk College is trying to put together a new budget, not knowing how much it'll receive from the state. On Monday, the board of trustees discussed a preliminary budget with staff for the fiscal year beginning July lst.

Incoming freshmen at Augustana College will start their classwork before arriving on campus in August. That's because of an annual program called "Augie Reads," which requires new students to study a selected book before classes begin. 

Finalists for one of the top jobs at Augustana College will come to campus for interviews this week. The first finalist for provost, or chief academic officer, will be Dr. Gail Summer, who will visit Monday. 

Plans are progressing to replace an elementary school in Bettendorf. Monday night the school board approved basic design plans for the new Grant Wood school. 

Voters in Erie Community Unit School District #1 defeated a proposal to borrow nearly $14 mil. to switch from 4 buildings to 2. The total cost of renovations & expanding the middle school would have been $24.5 mil.

(Previous version, April 3rd, 2017)

Residents of the Erie School District will vote Tuesday on a bond referendum to consolidate buildings. Students attend four schools, but two of them are more than 60 years old. And enrollment has declined, so a lot of space is unused.

Residents of two western Illinois school districts will make an important decision next week - whether to combine the Alwood and Cambridge districts. The consolidation vote on Tuesday follows more than a year of study and meetings, and years of working together in sports and other areas.

An actress, producer, and philanthropist will give this year's commencement address at Knox College in Galesburg. 

Normally when I report on Illinois school funding, the story involves some task force or legislation trying to make our system more equitable. I always mention that's because Illinois relies on property taxes to fund schools, so schools in prosperous places have every amenity while schools in areas with low property values are out of luck. Today, though, I'm reporting on something entirely different — a whole separate method Illinois uses to make school funding inequitable.