Balanced Columns & Footnotes in Word 97

One of my students has a document with 2 equal balanced columns (continuous section break at the end of the text). As soon as she inserts a footnote, the columns aren’t balanced anymore and all the text slides back into the first column (it’s stillformatted to 2 columns). Somehow the footnotes seem to override the continuous section break. Has anyone come across this before and knows a solution to this?

Thanks for your help.