Another school funding reform group meets 

By most accounts, Aug. 3 was an auspicious day for school funding reform in Illinois. It marked the first meeting of the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission, a bipartisan group which aims to devise a more equitable and effective formula to distribute state education dollars among Illinois school districts.

However, the new group is likely to tread the same waters as a previous bipartisan education funding reform group which studied the issue in 2013 and gave rise to several reform attempts.

Schools in Illinois are funded by a combination of local property taxes, state funding and federal funding. Districts with a strong property tax base – like those with many expensive houses or lucrative businesses – tend to have wealthier schools because property taxes account for the bulk of school funding.

Illinois’ school funding formula hasn’t been revised since 1997, and it leaves a wide chasm in resources between the state’s wealthiest districts and the most impoverished ones. The formula attempts to account for local wealth and low-income students, and each district is supposed to receive the “foundation level” of $6,119 per student from the combination of local and state funding.

That hasn’t happened for several years, however, because the Illinois General Assembly hasn’t appropriated enough money to meet the foundation level. Instead, schools get a lower, “prorated” amount that has averaged about 90 percent of the foundation level since the 2011-2012 school year.

The controversy surrounding the funding reform effort isn’t over whether reform is needed; it’s mainly about whether to “hold harmless” wealthier school districts which could lose some state funding if the existing pool of money is reallocated. The hold-harmless concept means protecting school districts from losing any state funding, but that requires increasing the total amount of money available for education at a time when Illinois faces financial crisis.

Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, was a freshman senator when he was appointed co-chairman of the Illinois Senate Education Funding Advisory Committee (EFAC) in 2013. That group was comprised of eight Illinois senators – four each from both political parties. Testimony from several experts, advocates, teachers, school board members, superintendents, principals and members of the Illinois House went into the committee’s final report issued in January 2014.

Since then, Manar has been one of the most vocal advocates of education funding reform, sponsoring several consecutive versions of a proposal based on the EFAC report. Among other things, the report called for holding districts harmless for a period of time after a new funding system is adopted, although not indefinitely.

Gov. Bruce Rauner made clear earlier this year that he would veto any plan under which some school districts lose a portion of their state funding. Rauner created the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission last month, acknowledging that “these discussions have been going on for many, many years.”

Rauner’s reform panel has 30 members – including many people who either were part of the previous Senate panel or testified before it. The new group’s first meeting on Aug. 3 lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, including a presentation from Michael Griffith, a school finance strategist with the nonpartisan Education Commission of the States, based in Denver. Griffith said the benchmarks of a successful school funding system are adequacy, equity, flexibility and adaptability – and that Illinois probably fails on adequacy and equity.

Griffith noted that including a holdharmless provision would alleviate concerns.

“The response (to reforms) always is, ‘I’m afraid of that new idea because it could result in less money for my schools,’ ” Griffith said.

Beth Purvis, Illinois Secretary of Education appointed by Rauner, said it hasn’t been established yet that there will be a holdharmless provision in whatever reforms the group recommends.

“I didn’t want to start off with anyone thinking that’s an assumption,” Purvis said. “I think that is one of the things we would need to talk about.”

Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].