POLITICS

Lawmakers still have time to make amends on school funding

by Charles N. Wheeler III

Folks in Taylorville are rightly proud these days of the athletic achievements of their Tornadoes. The high school football team in the Christian County farm community of 11,133 was co-champion of the tough Central State Eight conference, while the volleyball squad made it to the sectionals. Expectations are even higher for the basketball Lady Tornadoes, who finished second in the state last March.

Now, however, budget woes threaten to make such prep sports accomplishments as much history as the school's 1944 state basketball championship. Local voters last month rejected a proposed 64-cent tax increase needed to close a projected $867,000 deficit for the 1998-99 school year. Perhaps the referendum defeat should come as no surprise. Taylorville property owners already pay a higher tax rate for schools than the statewide average, the most recent figures show. Yet despite a higher-than-average tax burden, the school district's resources fall some $500 short of the $4,225 per-pupil level experts say is the minimum price tag to ensure a quality education.

Many school districts can't reach a $4,225 per-pupil spending level despite high tax rates because property values are low and the state hasn't stepped in.

The rate hike could be placed before voters again in March, but in the meantime, the local school board is drawing up plans to eliminate athletics and all other extracurricular activities to help close the gap. Could Taylorville youngsters get by without sports, art, music and classroom electives? Probably. Would the quality of their school experience suffer? Undoubtedly. Athletics — like music, art, speech, theater, yearbook and other "outside" activities — complement the core classroom curriculum and teach valuable life skills. But such enrichment programs must be deemed expendable when a school district's financial survival is at stake.

Unfortunately, Taylorville's plight is not unique. Other school districts face budget shortfalls while local voters refuse to tax themselves any higher. Many Illinois school districts can't reach the minimum funding level despite high tax rates because local property values are low and the state has not stepped in to make up the difference.

Those realities of education finance in Illinois make the General Assembly's latest failure on school funding even more inexcusable. In the closing moments of the fall session, the House turned back a proposal to pump more than $500 million into the state's poorest schools.

The measure, endorsed by Gov. Jim Edgar and the four legislative leaders, would have guaranteed every school district a minimum per-student funding level of $4,100 this year, with the found- ation jumping to $4,225 next year and increasing by $100 in each of the following two years. The proposal also included some $1.5 billion for local school construction projects and tougher certification requirements for teachers. The plan would have been bankrolled by higher cigarette, tele- phone and riverboat casino taxes, stiffer penalties for tardy income tax filers, and better-than-expected growth in state income and sales tax receipts. Significantly, the proposal contained a provision that would have locked in the funding levels through the 2000-2001 school year, whether or not lawmakers included them in future budgets.

Legislators who opposed the plan cited a litany of shortcomings. The proposal did little to shift the school funding burden from local taxpayers to the state. Property tax relief was absent. The measure relied too heavily on uncertain revenue sources, in particular "sin taxes" on cigarettes and gambling. The plan was a political Band-Aid designed to cover the exposed posteriors of Republicans who killed the governor's sweeping reform proposal last spring and felt the heat from the folks back home over the summer.

In fact, each criticism was on target. The November plan was a sorry alternative to the package that cleared the House in May and probably would have passed the Senate, too, had Senate President James "Pate" Philip, a Wood Dale Republican, put the measure to a vote.

Edgar's proposal would have cut school property taxes by $900 million while providing more than $600 million in new state money to bring the state's poorer school districts up to the $4,225

42/ December 1997 Illinois Issues

foundation level. But the plan relied on a 25 percent increase in the individual income tax rate, which Philip and most other GOP lawmakers found abhorrent.

Thus, holding out for revival of the spring plan was futile, as Edgar noted before the House vote. "This is not as good in my estimation as what I had in the spring session, but that wasn't going to pass," he said. "In this process you've got to take what you can get, and not hold out for perfection or you're never going to have anything."

However valid their criticisms, House opponents of the fall school funding plan were wrong to choose to go hungry rather than accept half a loaf.

Given the political realities, the November plan with all its warts was the best that could be expected to clear the Senate with its Republican majority. However valid their criticisms, House opponents were wrong in choosing to go hungry rather than accept half a loaf. Their paramount concern should have been the immediate help the plan offered for some 700,000 children in schools that fall below the $4,225 spending level. For Taylorville, for example, the proposal would have meant an additional $745,000 in state aid next year, probably enough to forestall the extreme austerity measures the school board is now considering. Moreover, the provision that guaranteed a steadily rising foundation level through the next three school years would assure school districts the money would be there, whatever the economic conditions.

Despite the November setback, lawmakers can make amends by passing the plan when they return in January. While the financial boost might make life more difficult for future foes of the Taylorville Tornadoes, the plan's enactment would afford hundreds of thousands of Illinois children a better chance at a quality education.

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

Illinois Issues December 1997 /43