Human services agencies across Illinois are waiting anxiously for word from Gov. Quinn's office regarding how the recently passed borrow-now/pay-later budget will affect their funding over the coming year. But as we noted yesterday afternoon, the cuts to the education budget -- $389 million in total -- are already a reality.

Many line-items avoided the knife at yesterday's Board of Education meeting; for instance. As Catalyst notes, the state's career and technical education programs were entirely spared to preserve federal matching funds. But the cuts have to come from somewhere and, in the end, the budget was balanced on the back of the state's flagship early childhood education program, which took the biggest hit -- a 32 percent reduction, totaling $123 million. Illinois Issues' Bethany Jaeger has more:

If the board decreased funding for certain programs, it would fail to satisfy federal requirements to maintain past funding levels, added Linda Mitchell, the board’s chief financial officer.

“The budget passed by the General Assembly gave the board a lot of discretion, and that means gave the board a lot of difficult choices — a lot of ‘Sophie’s Choices’ of which children and which programs,” Mitchell said.

In this case, the end result is that 30,000 fewer children, many from low-income families, won't find preschool slots this fall. And in the big picture, the Ounce of Prevention Fund points out that five years of progress in expanding the program will be lost just as the state's already pervasive achievement gap widens.

Yesterday, we posted a line-by-line list of what was on the chopping block, which is available for download here (PDF). For districts across the state, the document is a blueprint for gutting struggling programs.  The Daily Herald reports on how some suburban school districts will be affected:

Community Unit District 300 foresees the specter of even deeper cuts in programs and personnel than have already been made.

The school board has laid off teachers and will vote next week on cutting bus aides for the deLacey Family Education Center, a school for at-risk preschoolers in Carpentersville. The state cuts to early education could force the district to make further reductions to keep the deLacey program while maintaining a balanced budget.

The Tribune put a curiously positive spin on the situation, reporting that only $180 million was pared from the budget when the $160 per-pupil increase in state aid is factored in. The Trib left out some crucial context, though; that foundation-level increase is actually the smallest in more than a decade.

To make matters worse, scores of school districts are hobbled by the inability to raise local property-tax levies by more than 0.1 percent.  This is the result of a historically small increase in the consumer price index, the measure used to cap property tax increases under state law.

In the meantime, the cost of running schools -- energy bills, health insurance premiums, teacher contracts -- is rising at a much higher rate, typically around 4 percent. Wheeling Township Elementary District 21 board member Arlen Gould told the Herald that the situation amounts to "a double whammy."

Meanwhile, if lawmakers don't go out on a political limb and pass a plan to generate new revenue, the situation will become more bleak next year. Then, $2 billion worth of stimulus money will dry up, which State Board Chairman Jesse Ruiz tells the Sun-Times will create a "catastrophic'' budgeting year requiring $1 billion more in cuts just to cover legally-mandated programs.

Hopefully, before that happens, the General Assembly will show some political courage and rally behind Sen. James Meeks' HB 174, which would raise an additional $4 billion for education by 2011 while lessening school districts' reliance on property taxes. The longer they delay this type of funding reform, the deeper a hole they'll dig.