State Moves To Oust East St. Louis School Board

By Lonnie Harp

State managers of the troubled East St. Louis, Ill., schools moved last week to remove the district's entire local school board after reaching an impasse over cuts in its budget.

The state took control of the impoverished 12,000-student district in October 1994, hiring a financial-oversight panel to guide the school board in budget decisions.

But tension between the local and state managers of the district reached a boiling point late last month. The seven-member local board balked at the oversight panel's directives that it give layoff notices to more than 100 nontenured employees and let Superintendent...