The battle against truancy in Rockford schools gets a new general, as board members hire an attendance director. But it's not all good news for the district as administrators look to tough budget times ahead.

Rockford school board members are straying from an anti-truancy partnership with the city and county, because parts of the process violated federal privacy laws.
Now they're focusing their efforts around a 2001 task force report on truancy and Monday night they approved adding the position of attendance director to orchestrate the program.

"It needs to be a K-12 approach, so now there's someone in the district that that's their job is to look at this in the whole package, how we're approaching it internally and with the community," says Board President Nancy Kalchbrenner.

The new director Jon Malone is a former District 205 special education teacher. Along with supervising truancy staff, he'll develop new intiatives to improve attendance and work with community agencies and the city.
Malone's 78-thousand dollar salary will be paid for through the district's general budget.

But it's a tough time to add to the payroll, as board members look to a gloomy forecast for upcoming budget years.
"The impact of the economy, both nationally and locally are showing that our revenue streams are going to slow down," says District 205's Chief Operating Officer Tom Hoffman.

From 2009 to 2010, revenues are only expected to increase about a half million dollars. Compare that to a twelve million dollar jump from 08 to 09 and a 17 million dollar leap between 07 and 08 and while revenues are slowing, expenses won't.

"We will eventually maybe at some point have to have some cuts," says Rockford Schools Superintendent Linda Hernandez.

While cuts are unsure, it's clear nothing major can be added for some time, including a hoped-for seventh class period.
"I wish I could say we could restore that but we're going to have to keep costs under control," says school board member David Kelley.

The district's education fund does have an accumulated surplus of more than forty million dollars, but board members want to save that as a safety net in tough times. And one member tells us that surplus equates to just ten percent of one year's budget.

Board members and administrators will spend the next two months refining next year's budget, then decide if they have to cut.

Returning to the new attendance director, Jon Malone has been with the district since 2000. He won a 2004 "Those Who Excel" teacher of the year award.