Springfield School District 186 board members voted on a budget Monday night, but the district is still facing a multi-million-dollar deficit and searching for solutions ahead of next school year.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND) - Springfield School District 186 is experiencing some challenges with the budget. On Monday night, board members voted on a budget, but the district is still facing a multi-million-dollar deficit, and district leaders are trying to find solutions for the next school year. 

"The cuts that we made last spring for this current budget, which was to the tune of about $3 million, were things that we could do without touching the classroom at this point in time," said Superintendent Jennifer Gill.  

Gill said the district will unfortunately have to make even deeper cuts ahead of the next school year. The district will use money from its fund balance to make up the shortfall, but that fund has already seen a decrease in more than $40 million since 2023. The district has not had a budget surplus since 2022. Their hope is a deficit reduction plan will help balance the budget. 

"We've come together and we've made a three-year plan on how after three years, actually, after two years, we can be back down to a zero deficit, knowing what cuts we need to make to our expenditures and, hopefully, being conservative with our estimates, our revenues will come in play," said Steve Miller, Director of Finance. 

In October, the board will release a community outreach survey asking for community input regarding the budget. To stay up up to date with board of education meetings, you can visit the District 186 YouTube channel. 

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