Illinois General Assembly reverses Quinn’s education budget cuts

Just a few months ago, the big education news in Illinois was Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed $400 million cut to the General State Aid for Education budget – the state’s single-largest education expenditure. This article in the Chicago Tribune captured the frantic pleas of school boards, administrators and teachers at the time: Roger Eddy, a former state...

Just a few months ago, the big education news in Illinois was Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed $400 million cut to the General State Aid for Education budget – the state’s single-largest education expenditure.

This article in the Chicago Tribune captured the frantic pleas of school boards, administrators and teachers at the time:

Roger Eddy, a former state lawmaker and school superintendent who now heads the Illinois Association of School Boards, said he’s not sure whether some districts will be able to collect enough local dollars to make up for the loss of state money [..] ‘It’s going to devastate school districts,’ Eddy said of Quinn’s proposal.

Instead the Illinois General Assembly – on the last day of session – passed a series of bills that keep the state’s fiscal year 2014 education funding level with the amount appropriated for the current fiscal year – right around $6.6 billion for K-12 education. So the General State Aid for Education budget isn’t being cut after all. This means that school districts will receive about 89 percent of the funding they normally receive from the state.

Legislators claimed they were able to do this because of unexpectedly higher revenue forecasts for the coming fiscal year. On paper this may seem like good news. But the reality is the planning around this education budget was a complete failure.

Lawmakers failed to address any of the major flaws in the way that Illinois funds education – including the fact a significant chunk of the budget supports special carve-outs to districts located in communities with economic development zones and property tax caps. And because lawmakers failed to reform pensions, Illinois’ quickly growing pension payments will continue to crowd out money meant for the classroom.

The bottom line is, lawmakers barely scraped together enough money to keep education funding flat this year, and they failed to make the reforms needed to avoid future spending cuts.

Unfortunately, all of the education funding discussions failed to address one key issue: Is this the best way to fund Illinois’ students?

Until that discussion takes place in a substantive way, we’ll keep having debates about this archaic and complex funding system, rather than talking about how we can create a system that encourages competition, incentivizes innovation and improves student outcomes. One that involves giving parents the resources to send their kids to the school of their choice.