Politics

Lawmakers play hooky on school finance
by Charles N. Wheeler III

Moreover, the school aid agreement enacted by the Republican majority could present a stumbling block.

That time-worn lament of generations of Chicago Cubs fans now seems a fitting rallying cry for Illinois residents concerned about the way the state pays for its public schools.

Their hope for the future rests largely on pledges from Senate President James "Pate" Philip of Wood Dale and House Speaker Lee A. Daniels of Elmhurst to make school funding a top priority in 1997. The GOP leaders made the assurances after a bad case of election-year jitters caused them to strike the issue from the legislature's spring agenda, despite widespread belief the state's current system of financing elementary and secondary education does not provide sufficient resources to offer an adequate education for all children.

Failure to tackle the vexing problem was the most glaring omission of the session. Moreover, the school aid agreement enacted by the legislature's Republican majorities could become a stumbling block for attempts next year to remedy the shortcomings in the state's current system of school funding.

The problems are well-known. Because school districts get most of their dollars from property taxes, the resources available to a given district depend heavily on local real estate values. "Rich" districts in which power plants, shopping malls or similar property provide a strong tax base can spend $12,000 or more a year on each student. "Poor" districts without such megabuck developments, or with depressed farmland and few toney neighborhoods, struggle to find a quarter as much, despite in some cases imposing tax rates higher than those of wealthier neighbors.

Worse than the huge funding gap between the haves and the have-nots is the fact that many poor districts can't raise enough money to cover what many who have studied school funding believe to be the cost of an adequate education. Indeed, almost 40 percent of public school kids are in districts that can't reach the $4,225 per-pupil funding level needed for an adequate education, according to a report from the commission headed by former University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry.

Given the current situation, and realizing that lawmakers had no desire to tackle overall school funding before the November election, one still might have expected the legislature to direct whatever minimal effort it made on schools toward easing the funding gap, perhaps laying the groundwork for comprehensive reforms next year.

Instead, in perhaps the session's most significant policy decision, legislators provided that $52.5 million in state school aid should be allocated on a straight per-pupil basis, regardless of a district's relative wealth. Moreover, lawmakers set aside $23.2 million to guarantee that no school district would get less state aid in the coming school year than it did in 1995-96.

In contrast, the legislature added only $51.3 million to the general state aid appropriation, which is funneled through a complex "resource equalizer" formula intended to provide more help to less wealthy districts.

While the amounts involved in the per-pupil and hold-harmless provisions represent only a tiny fraction of the almost $2.4 billion earmarked for general state aid, the precedent set by the new outlays could be enormous, particularly in the case of the per-pupil grant. For the first time in memory, a sizeable portion — indeed, almost a quarter — of new dollars to local districts will be linked neither to specific programs nor to need. From richest to poorest, all districts will get roughly $30 per student under the grant program.

Historically, suburban lawmakers have been the champions of per-capita grants, because high suburban property values limited the state aid going to their local school districts. Downstate legislators, on the other hand, traditionally have favored formula-based allocations, which benefitted school districts in areas with stagnant property values and depressed economies, familiar conditions in much of rural Illinois.

Legislators from both regions were forced to revise their customary positions this spring, however, after computer projections showed the formula would give suburban schools a larger

piece of the general state aid pie — and downstate schools a smaller slice — in the coming school year. The turnabout was the result of changing circumstances in both areas. Real estate values have stabilized over much of suburbia, while enrollments continue to grow. In much of downstate, however, property values, particularly for farmland, are recovering, while school enrollments slip. So suburban schools would do better than usual under the formula, while many downstate districts would be in line for less state aid next year than they received this year.

That some schools would lose is more a commentary on the level of state aid than an indictment of the formula.

Faced with those prospects for next year, downstate lawmakers embraced the "hold harmless" provision, which will pump some $20 million to school districts outside the six-county metropolitan area. Like the per-capita grant, however, the "hold harmless" does nothing for equity; instead, the plan is designed to negate the effects produced by the formula as it works to allocate dollars according to relative need. That some school districts would lose is more a commentary on the overall level of state education funding than it is an indictment of the formula.

Will current conditions endure, so that suburbanites will come to love the much-maligned formula, while downstaters favor flat grants? Or do current projections reflect a temporary anomaly? Whatever answer the future may hold, the choices the legislature made this spring have moved the state away from what should be its goal — providing an adequate education for all children.

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield.