CHAMPAIGN — The Champaign Unit 4 school district will be added to the state’s list of districts exceeding state-mandated spending increases, after the school board failed to pass a cost cap waiver at its meeting Monday night.
The Illinois State Board of Education caps yearly increases on administrative spending at 5%.
But in FY2026, district officials say that category of spending — which includes administrators’ salaries, employee benefits, the cost of purchasing school supplies and other internal operations — exceeded the cap on spending increases by about $138,000.
District officials say they overspent because they paid both outgoing superintendent Sheila Boozer and interim superintendent Dan Casillas in the same fiscal year. They requested a waiver on the cost cap, but the board voted 4-to-2 — falling short of the five votes needed for approval.
The resolution would have retroactively waived the spending limitation for FY2026, which ended on June 30.
Unit 4 Board President Tony Bruno described the need for the waiver as mostly a procedural matter, saying the district needed to approve it to remain in compliance with state requirements.
“The Illinois State Board of Education has confirmed that this action that the staff is liking us to [vote] on tonight is, in their words, ‘proper and required,'” he said. “Sometimes a governing body is asked to take an action to be in compliance.”
But some board members questioned whether the spending decisions behind the request should be treated as simply a procedural issue.
Board member Grace Kang, who voted against the waiver, says the district should take responsibility for the decisions that contributed to the overspending.
“I do think that this matters because we should have thought of these things two years ago when this had happened and we voted on this as a board,” Kang said. “These are decisions that we made and we need to be accountable for.”
Some community members also expressed their disapproval of the waiver, including Champaign resident Charlisa Hart. She says she wants more accountability for tax dollars.
“We don’t want that to be just a protocol to use when we overexert our fundamental responsibilities to the taxpayers,” she said.
Bruno says since the waiver did not pass, Unit 4 is expected to face “further remedial action later.”