Everybody lies about Illinois school funding
Everything you need to know about politics in Illinois you can learn from the history of public education. You might want to keep that in mind when listening to any conversation about the political battles in Springfield.
Gov. Bruce Rauner, the wealthy businessman elected as a reformer, the guy who boasted he would be different than all the career politicians who had come before him, has said that improving education for the children of this state would be his top priority.
To prove his point, Rauner this summer announced the formation of an Illinois School Funding Reform Commission.
I believe this is the fifth or sixth such panel charged with this task over the past 30 years.
There have been blue ribbon panels composed of elected officials, task force groups comprising business leaders, and special panels that included academics and civic leaders.
They all returned with the same verdict after months of study: Our system of funding public schools in Illinois is terrible, unsustainable and unfair to children who live in poor and lower middle class communities.
There have been several national surveys that reached the same conclusion over the years. Illinois is among the worst of the worst when it comes to funding public education.
Rauner, to his credit, actually said as much in announcing the formation of the bipartisan Illinois School Funding Reform Commission.
Explaining that he ran for governor to make the schools “the best in America,” Rauner said that education funding had been cut four times in the previous 10 years. He said he was “outraged” that public education had been treated as a political football.
Then he was elected and punted. Instead of doing something, he announced the formation of his education commission, which would come up with a reform recommendation in February 2017.
“Illinois is dead last, number 50 out of 50, of all of the states, in the percentage of education funding that comes from the state,” Rauner said in the summer. “We are the worst state in America for funding the schools.”
He went on to say that Illinois relies more heavily on property taxes to fund the schools than any other state in the nation. Rauner noted this means that children in poorer communities, those with lower property values, tend to get less money spent on their schools than those from the wealthiest areas.
That means the American dream is denied to thousands of low- income families in Illinois, the governor said.
Finally, Rauner noted that national studies have revealed that Illinois has the largest funding gap in spending between low income schools and high income schools.
None of this is news to anyone who has been part of the government in this state. Democrats and Republicans have been aware of these basic facts for decades.
Yet, nothing has changed. Why? Because the current system works politically for governors and state lawmakers of both political parties. Although local property taxes skyrocket to pay for the public schools, state officials don’t get blamed, nor do they have to raise state taxes to adequately fund the schools.
Yet state legislators and governors get elected and re- elected by promising to fix the broken system. They are cheered by parents when they claim they will be the champions of children who deserve better.
And then they do nothing other than appoint commissions to study the same topic over and over again, or propose legislation that is destined to fail.
Rauner campaigned on the promise to freeze property taxes. He still claims that’s one of his top priorities, and it would sure make voters happy.
But local property taxes, as the governor noted in his speech about school funding, are the primary means of financing public schools in this state.
Does that sound hypocritical? Well, Rauner is no different than any other politician. Shame on those who believed him.
The fact is, everyone lies about school funding in Illinois. That’s why your property taxes remain high. That’s why school funding is inadequate and unfair.
Legislators and governors get elected and re- elected by promising to fix the broken system.