Gaye Michael has provided us with a new 10 menu rotation and three substitutes.  Below is new schedule!

• Baked herb Chick with a vegetable - rice primontese
• Pork Chops with au gratin potatoes and a vegetable
• Beef Stew wtih noodles
• Pasta with vegetable
• Grilled Chicken Breast with a vegetable and new potatoes
• Pork Loin with mashed potatoes & gravy, vegetable
• Mini meatloaves with mashed potatoes, vegetable
• Soup with assorted sandwiches, cheese tray (warmer months)
• BBQ Prok with Potato Chips & Soup
• Turkey with mashed potatoes & gravy and vegetable
• All dinners served with a salad bow, dessert, coffeee & tea
• Alternatives meals offerend every week:
  • Grilled Chicken sandwich with potato chips
  • Michael's special salad
  • Hamburger with potato chips

Terry opened the meeting with the pledge of alligence followed in prayer by Ron. 

• Terry thanked everyone for helping with the GSE team. 
• Mark your calendar for the Progressive Dinner on May 13th. Sullivan's will host cocktails, Kim's appetizers, Lammers main dish, and Whitten's dessert.  Final RSVP will be on April 19th.
• District Assembly is on April 16th in Jacksonville.
• Chamber BAH is on April 21st at the Highland Communications Services.
• April 30, Troxler Clean-up @ 8am.

Kevin stated that they had another furniture pick up this afternoon for HACSM.  He stated that if anyone would like to be put on this list to let him know.

Troxler Clean-up day is on April 30th at 8am. 

The Library work day will be in April - TBD.

UPCOMING PROGRAMS -  Holli Martin

Guests: Mitch from ITC

Birthdays:  Franzi on the 16th, Kim on the 16th

Anniversaries:  Jennifer & Tim Whitten on the 16th, Eunice & Floyd Rogier

 MakeUps: NONE  

Please let the following know that they were missed this week!  Jan Brinker, David Daiber, Len Daiber, Larry Deiters, Larry Essenpries, Ed Ferguson, Dan Fieker, Mike Gould, Jeff Guillot, Robert Hellige, Wil Holzinger, Lisa Hunsche, Linda Jakel, James Kemper, Brian Knobloch, Terry Leitschuh, Holli Martin, Glenn Meffert, David Peters, Mark Reaka, Traci Riechmann, Randy Schorfheide, Ron Schneider, Eric Schmidt, Art Schuetz, Peggy Sebastian, Gordon Smith, Michael Sutton, Buzz Widmer

The allusive Ace of spades stays just out of reach for one more week.  There was $1764 in the 50/50 with 5 cards remaining.  THe GSE table drew the 8 of diamonds.

Fines for anyone who is not attending the Progressive Dinner.

Happy Bucks

• Rogiers celebrating their 55 years on April 14th.
• Bob was happy to have celebrated his anniversary last week on 4/6/11 with 32 years. 

Dr. Daiber shared that he was here to bring some good news and to inform about the state of our school systems.  He reported that his first piece of good news was that we had Michael Sutton as our Superintendent and that he is doing a great job.

The second piece of news was that out of his 13 school districts (SD) that 14 schools out of the 107 schools in Madison County were recognized for excelling in their ISAT scores.  Marine has had the highest scores for the last 5 years.  New Douglas was also recognized. 

In Illinois there are 865 school districts.  The Governor recently submitted a proposal to consolidate school districts down to about 300 districts.  His goal is to save money (100m annually) by eliminating duplicated services for small populated areas.  The proposed population for each school district would be a minimum of 30-35k.  This would mean that both Highland and Troy would not be big enough even though they are good stand alone districts.  Another facet of this proposal would be the abolishment of all school boards and replacing them with one county wide board.  This would be a complete turnover of local assets and liabilities to the county board. Regional Office of Education (ROE) will also me eliminated by 2012 with a goal to save 13m annually (our ROE makes 92k/yr and his assistant makes 82K).The Governor would like to see a complete dissolution of the school districts by 2012.  Dr. Daiber stated that in order for this proposal to take action a legislative bill would have to be introduced a vote taken in Congress.  Currently there is support from Chicago Senators.

Dr. Daiber stated that there are three ways that a district can be consolidated: 1)As stated above with a piece of legislation, 2)cohabitating districts deciding to locally and 3)petition by the people.  He shared that there is currently another Senate Bill, SB 626 that also has a goal of consolidation without removing the local school boards.  The basis of this bill will be to have only 1 elementary district to one high school district.  This will not effect school districts like Highland that are Unit districts.

Dr. Daiber stated that the education budget is 11.5 million which makes up 20% of the whole budget.  The estimated cost to education students in Illinois is 6119 for general state aid.  There is an equalized assessment formula that determines what each district actually receives in aid and how much that community should supply (generated in property taxes).  Highland receives $2469/student, Edwardsvlle (largest in district) receives $1085/student), Madison receives the most at $4000/student, and Venice receives the less at $250/student (due to their local industry they receive a flat rate like some Chicago districts).

A question was posed as to how US schools are doing in comparison to the rest of the world.  Dr. Daiber shared that locally our schools are bar to none; recently had a Triad alumn that had a perfect score on the ACT score.  He shared that one of the biggest differences in American education and the rest of the world is that we educate everyone despite if they want to be or their economic class.  In other countries if they live in the country sides they may never receive education but we take our

buses and go find the children.  Dr. Daiber stated that after attending a robotics challenge recently he would state that he feels we are still at the top in education around the world.

Another question was asked about pensions.  He stated that there is new law going into effect that a teacher has to work in Illinois for 45 years to be fully vested.  Currently 80% of the pension is paid by membership dues, 8% by investment return, and 12% by the state.  It is known that this is highly underfunded.

Dr. Daiber thanked the Rotarians for their support of the school districts and that he would work to do what is best for the schools.