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DeKalb’s Daniel Hein earns 2015 Daily Chronicle award / B1 HIGH
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District 427 board OKs job cuts Unanimous vote eliminates or reduces 11 employee positions By ADAM POULISSE apoulisse@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – The Sycamore School District 427 board Tuesday unanimously approved eliminating or reducing personnel across the district as part of their budget reduction plan. All board members were present to approve the motion, which eliminated four full-time employees including high school teachers and related services, three parttime employees including the
English Language Learners program, and reducing four positions including art and physical education. It’s a lower number than what was originally anticipated, Superintendent Kathy Countryman said. “Based on where we started we feel like we were able to look at schedules and do realignment,” she said. “We had some people who saw reduction in their position instead of not having a position at all.” The personnel action re-
garding support staff that could face layoffs or reductions will take place next month, Countryman said. On Feb. 24, the board approved $3.8 million in cuts phased in across three years – $1.6 million the first year, beginning in fiscal 2016, $1.5 the next year and $700,000 in the third year. On Tuesday, the board discussed personnel actions during an executive session, after a cheery board meeting involving student awards and accolades highlighting young
writers, athletes and musicians. The board returned from their approximately 45-minute executive session to vote on the layoffs. “It really did take time and effort to sort it out, and we tried to make as many accommodations as we possibly could,” board Chairman Jim Dombek said. “[We] tried to do it in a matter that was both effective fiscally but also effective in terms of dealing with the personnel that we have and the needs that the district
informed by Kathy all along the way as to what the needs of the district are.” The reduction plan does come with a contingency plan which would allow the staff that is honorably dismissed under the budget crunch to return to work if the enrollment demands it. “We want to be sure that we preserve all our programming to meet the students needs,” Countryman said, “and we’ll continue to look at enrollment and positions as we move forward.”
has in terms of personnel as well.” Sycamore union president Carol Meeks was at the meeting but left as the board went into executive session. She said the faculty has been well-informed during the budget process by Countryman. “We’re never happy when really great teachers are let go,” she said. “We understand the need of the district is to reduce cost, and while we don’t have any other ideas to make that happen other than what’s been done, we’ve been
Bills targeting unions multiply across country By JONATHAN MATTISE and NICHOLAS RICCARDI The Associated Press CHARLESTON, W.Va. – It’s not just Gov. Scott Walker. Republican lawmakers in statehouses nationwide are working to weaken organized labor, sometimes with efforts that directly shrink union membership. Walker’s signing of right-to-work legislation Monday in Wisconsin puts his defiance of organized labor even more at the center of his nascent presidential campaign. And the inability of unions to exact a price for the first round of legislation targeting them in 2011 is encouraging even more proposals to limit their power. The Republican wave in the November elections left many unions nationwide looking exceptionally vulnerable. In West Virginia, a union PAC spent $1.4 million trying to keep the statehouse in Democratic hands but couldn’t reverse the cultural trends turning the state red. Exit polls found that even union members were almost evenly split between the Republican and the Democrat in the major statewide race for U.S. Senate. Now Republicans, in control of the state legislature for the first time since 1931, are taking advantage of their opportunity, pushing measures to expand nonunion charter schools and scale back requirements that public projects pay higher, union-scale wages. In Wisconsin, Walker beat back attempts to recall him after he signed a law limiting collective bargaining by public sector workers in 2011. His
signature on the right-to-work law now makes Wisconsin the 25th state to ban contracts that force all workers to pay union dues. Both he and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, who signed a right-to-work law in 2012 and was also opposed by unions, won re-election in November. “Their examples were inspiring,” said Victor Joecks of the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank whose ideas for limiting labor power have been embraced by Republicans who have taken over that state’s legislature for the first time since 1929. The message, he said, was, “Hey, this is possible, and it’s better for the state, and the taxpayers appreciate it.” With many legislative sessions just beginning, nearly 800 union-related bills have been proposed in statehouses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. President Barack Obama expressed his concern about the latest Wisconsin move and the general assault on unions. “It’s inexcusable that, over the past several years, just when middle-class families and workers need that kind of security the most, there’s been a sustained, coordinated assault on unions, led by powerful interests and their allies in government,” Obama said in a statement Monday. “I’m deeply disappointed that a new anti-worker law in Wisconsin will weaken, rather than strengthen workers in the new economy.” A right-to-work bill passed the lower house of the Missouri
See LABOR, page A6
AP photo
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks Feb. 28 in Palm Beach, Fla.
Photos by Monica Synett – msynett@shawmedia.com
Funeral Director Deborah Gaines opens a display casket made of reclaimed barn wood Thursday at Olson Funeral and Cremation Services in Sycamore. About five percent of the business’s clients now choose a green option when it comes to funeral planning for loved ones, according to General Manager Scott Olson.
Burials going green Funeral homes offer environmentally conscious options By DARIA SOKOLOVA dsokolova@shawmedia.com SYCAMORE – In his 15 years providing funeral services, Scott Olson said he’s seen changes in some customers’ attitudes about their effect on their final resting place. “When my grandpa met families, everybody was pretty much the same,” said Olson, whose family has been in the funeral business for 125 years. “The service was the same for everybody.” New trends include “green” burials that forego embalming, metal caskets, vaults and headstones. The green movement helps reduce the industry’s effect on the environment, Olson said. “About 15 years ago, when I got involved, that’s when I think we started a lot of differences,” he said. Olson Funeral and Cremation Services runs businesses in Rockford, Sycamore, Genoa and Kirkland. Today, Olson said about 5 percent of his clients choose a green burial. “We have requests for it
Seagrass caskets, which are biodegradable, are offered by Olson Funeral and Cremation Services in Sycamore as a green option for clients. probably once a month, people ask about it,” he said. “I think there’s definitely more interest in it now than there was a few years ago.” Olson said cremation has given people more options when it comes to burial. One of them is a green funeral, where people put the ashes of their loved ones in a biodegradable urn or spread them through a biodegradable scattering tube.
Green funerals can include multiple environmental ly-conscious options that may also include embalming a body with formaldehyde-free products, and biodegradable urns, caskets, clothing and other eco-friendly products, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Olson’s business is part of agreenerfuneral.org, a group of providers that offer environmentally friendly funeral
products and cremation services. The website also lists four other Illinois funeral homes located in Itasca and Chicago. After hearing about the need for a greener cemetery, Brian Kenagy, the assistant manager at the Calvary Cemetery in Rockford, said the cemetery has recently started working on a 2-acre plot that won’t have tombstones, memorial walls or vaults. Grave markers will be minimal. “I think it’s a huge trend,” he said. “We are foreseeing people will do that, so we are trying to prepare.” More than a quarter of the project has been completed and Kenagy said the cemetery plot is scheduled to open in 2017-18. Apart from more environmentally conscious funerals, some are gravitating toward ceremonies that commemorate their loved ones, said Jon Kolssak, the director of Kolssak Funeral Home in Wheeling. “People are looking for
See FUNERAL, page A6
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