Illinois legislators return to Springfield Wednesday with a last ditch effort to reach a bipartisan compromise before a new fiscal year begins Friday.
Students from a small school district in western Illinois are lobbying legislators to keep their school open via atwo and a half minute video on YouTube.
ROWVA High School is responsible for the video. It opens with a short introduction and a voice over explains what school administrators are considering cutting if state funding does not come through for next fiscal year.
The video then shows high school students from a variety of clubs posing for a group photo. The voice over explains the positive impact the student organizations have in the district.
After the club's introduction, a door slams shut on the students to symbolize the end of opportunity if the state doesn't provide funding for schools. The end of the video said that lawmakers do not understand the impact that a lack of a budget has on lives, and told them to do their jobs.
Students from Chris Johnson's American Problems class made the video. They were inspired after Superintendent Joe Sornberger talked to them about how the lack of a state budget was impacting the school.
"The superintendent had talked a lot about having to shut our doors if the budget wasn't passed, and if we didn't come up with funding. And so they really latched onto that phrase, 'close our doors', shut our doors'," Johnson said.
Sornberger said ata joint meeting of schools in Regional Office of Education District 33last month that ROWVA would only be able to stay open until January with the amount of funds it currently has. And while the district plans on starting the new school year on August 16th, it may be pushed back.
Johnson said the students in the class could have done traditional methods to make their case to lawmakers, but wanted to take a 21st Century approach to lobbying.
"They would have called, they would have written letters, sure," Johnson said. "But that's not this generation of kids. They want short, they want simple, they want right to the point to kind of grab your attention."
Johnson said it took students between 2-3 weeks to make the video. He said it was completed by the end of the school year last month, but was held and intentionally released this week to coincide with the last minuted budget talks in Springfield ahead of the new fiscal years start on Friday.
