Article Summary
- The Illinois State Board of Education presented its budget request for $10.9 billion to fund public schools in the upcoming fiscal year.
- The request includes $300 million in new spending for schools, plus $50 million for property tax relief grants.
- Next year will mark the 10th year of funding under the Evidence-Based Funding system that lawmakers approved in 2017. ISBE says that system has helped improve student outcomes in Illinois.
- JB Pritzker did not include the property tax relief grant funding in the budget plan he submitted to lawmakers in February.
This summary was written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
SPRINGFIELD — State education officials presented their case this week for a $10.9 billion budget to fund preK-12 public schools for the next fiscal year, saying the Evidence-Based Funding formula that has been in place for nearly a decade is now paying dividends.
“Graduation rates are at a 15-year high,” Steven Isoye, chair of the Illinois State Board of Education, told a House budget committee Tuesday. “Achievement gaps are narrowing. Student growth exceeds pre-pandemic levels and Illinois eighth graders now outperform national averages in reading and math.”
Funding for public schools is one of the largest single categories in the state’s annual budget, accounting for nearly one-fifth of all state general revenue fund spending.
State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said ISBE’s request for FY 2027, at $10.9 billion, represents a reduction of $278.5 million from this year, due mainly to the transfer of early childhood block grants to the new Department of Early Childhood. After accounting for that shift, he said, the request represents a net $469.7 million increase for other areas of preK-12 education.
“We are very conscious of the state’s tight fiscal environment, and so we prioritized the most crucial funding streams and those investments that will have the most direct impact on student success,” Sanders said.
The upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, will mark the 10th year of funding under the Evidence-Based Funding formula that lawmakers approved in 2017. That formula is intended to shift a greater share of the cost of funding public schools onto the state, and away from local property taxes.
The plan called for adding at least $300 million in new state funding to public schools each year, plus an additional $50 million in property tax relief grants for certain high-tax districts.
It was also intended to achieve greater equity in school funding by establishing an “adequacy target” for each school district — an estimate of how much it should cost to operate the district, based on cost-related factors like student enrollment, poverty rates and the percentage of English language learners in the district — and giving the bulk of the new funding to districts with the greatest financial need.
Since enactment of that law, general revenue fund spending for public schools has grown from $8.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2018 to nearly $11.2 billion this year. Also during that time, Isoye said, out of 851 school districts in the state, the number that are funded at or above 90% of their adequacy target has grown from 194 to 313.
ISBE’s request includes the full $350 million for Evidence-Based Funding and property tax relief grants as well as increases in transportation and other mandated categories of spending that are not covered by the EBF formula.
That request is higher than Gov. JB Pritzker’s proposed budget which, for the second straight year, did not include funding for the property tax relief grants.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference in March, Pritzker said he was committed to addressing the inequities in the property tax rates people pay to fund their local schools, but he did not believe the relief grants called for in the EBF law were addressing the issue.
“We’ve got to figure out, how do we do that better, and I don’t think we have the answer quite yet,” Pritzker said. “But it didn’t seem appropriate for us to just throw the money into the program without having a better potential outcome.”
Republicans on the appropriations panel questioned why the increased spending under the EBF system hasn’t resulted in lower property taxes throughout the state.
“I’m just wondering, if they’re 90% adequate, and we’ve got probably 25% of the schools in the state of Illinois that are at full financial adequacy, why aren’t we seeing property taxes come down?” asked Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City.
“I know that Evidence-Based Funding has been a great boon for school districts across the state,” Sanders replied. “We still do not have all school districts to 90% or greater. We still have a lot of districts that are far away from 90% adequacy.”
Sanders also pointed to the other mandated categories of spending such as transportation, for which the state only pays prorated portion of the total cost.
“So as costs increase for fuel, bus driver salaries, special education salaries — when the state’s share is not made up, then it has to go someplace,” he said. “You don’t pick that up through your Evidence-Based Funding formula, so you turn to your local property taxpayers.”
The committee took no action on the budget request. The panel’s ultimate recommendation for preK-12 school funding will be included in the final budget bill that lawmakers will vote on at the end of the legislative session, which is scheduled to conclude May 31.
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