$1.3 billion dollars in cuts. It's a bit startling to some school districts already handling bare budgets. This amount means they will get 450 dollars less per student. It may force district 205 to dip into reserves of about $30 million to fund programs like early childhood and special education.

"No school district of our size can cut 30 million dollars and sustain instructional programs in one year," District 205's Cedric Lewis said.

Governor Quinn said the cuts are needed to plug the deficit and stay in line with a realistic budget of $55 billion dollars.

"These cuts are unavoidable. They are the consequence of a bi-partisan refusal year after year to confront fiscal reality," Governor Quinn said.

Many districts like Rockford, Freeport, and Belvidere planned for cuts.

"We've been preparing some worst case scenarios and some possiblities over the next year or two," Peter Flynn, Freeport Superintendent said.

But not as high as 17 to 30 percent as the Governor outlined.

"This year we're looking at a 4 million dollar deficit. We will have a very hard time moving forward making steeper deeper cuts than that without radical change in the delivery of our programs."

Quinn's solution requires lawmakers to approve an income tax increase from 3% to 4% because federal dollars that are currently supporting education funding will run out on July 1.

"This is urgent. We don't have six months, we don't have six weeks. I challenge the general assembly to take immediate action to enact the percent for education initiative."

This proposal is not included in his budget, but if passed, Governor Quinn said it will restore education funding and allow the state to pay back several million it owes to school districts and save 17,000 teachers jobs.

In Byron, Superintendent Margaret Fostiak said her "worst-case scenario" budget would leave about $2.2 million total. That includes various state grants, $700,000 from a co-op dispute, several thousand in per-pupil funds, and about $1 million in special education and transportation funds (if categorical funding is eliminated).

By her estimate, this would impact about 10 percent of her budget. Fostiak said she's presenting a "worst-case-scenario" budget to the school board during a routine meeting Thursday.

In Rochelle, Superintendent Todd Prusator said it would impact about $450 per pupil, leaving the district down about $800,000 in state funds. Prusator said they're also moving on staff cuts, but at this point it's too early to panic because he hasn't yet seen concrete details.