By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

Several area school superintendents are speaking up about the urgency of Illinois finally getting a state budget in place.

Pontiac District 429 Superintendent Brian Dukes explains the three points they are pushing.

“Pass a budget – a simple state budget, so that way, we know what we’re going to be able to get moving forward and funding the things we need to fund. We’ve about bled ourselves out at this point with not receiving these payments we were promised to get. The second point is changing the funding formula. We’ve been talking about that for the last two years and we’re starting to see some movement down in Springfield, thanks to Jason Barickman, our state senator, and Tom Bennett is also signed on on the House side of things on the same bill, and we hope they continue to work on getting that bill passed so we can change the formula. The last point is pay us the money that is due for reimbursement for special needs students and transportation. These services were provided for our special needs kids as well as transporting our kids to and from school every day and we’ve yet to see a payment that’s promised to us,” Dukes said.

They all urge residents to contact their local legislators.