* From Gov. Rauner’s budget address…
We must fully fund this foundation level as a first step toward reforming our school funding formula. Our current formula doesn’t meet the needs of our children. Past attempts to fix the formula didn’t work because they pitted communities against each other.
This year, we are already seeing this cynical strategy being deployed. After years of financial mismanagement, our largest school system is threatening a lawsuit against the state. Such a course could set back funding formula reform for years to come, and ignores reality.
Not only did Chicago Public Schools ask for the current arrangement, they are benefiting from a special deal. CPS receives an extra $600 million more every year than school districts with similar student demographics. Any school funding reform proposal that involves taking money from one school district and giving it to another, is doomed to fail.
OK, first of all, if a federal lawsuit is filed and the plaintiffs win based on discriminatory school funding (and we’re worst in the nation, according to Senate President John Cullerton, which leads him to believe a suit could be successful), then that’ll radically change the playing field in favor of places like Chicago.
* Now, onto that $600 million figure. It was featured prominently in a recent Tribune op-ed by Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno…
• Chicago has 18 percent of the state’s special education student population, but it receives 30 percent of state special education block grant funding.
• Chicago has fewer than 19 percent of all students in the state, but it receives approximately 27 percent of the state’s personal property replacement tax paid by corporations.
• Chicago has 30 percent of all low-income students in the state, but it receives more than 50 percent of all free breakfast and lunch dollars, 42 percent of poverty-based education funding and 37 percent of early childhood funding for at-risk students.
• Chicago’s population accounts for 25 percent of communities that receive supplemental property tax funding, yet CPS receives 88 percent of Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL) adjustment dollars.
All told, sweetheart deals yield CPS an additional $600 million in state education funding.
* I asked the Senate Democrats for a response…
Rich,
Two docs attached.
1 – Staff memorandum walking through legislative history that got us to the current school funding formula, along with staff’s rebuttal to Leader Radogno’s Trib op-ed from early December, and a walk up to how the SGOP maybe got to their $600 million figure
2 – An ISBE report indicating that if CPS were treated like all other districts, they would’ve received an extra $219.3 million from the state (not $600 million)
Both are exciting reads for a Wednesday night.
Enjoy.
* According to the SDEM staff memorandum, Rauner and Radogno are counting personal property replacement tax money received by both the city of Chicago and CPS. So, an argument about school funding ought to stick to school funding and not include municipal funding.
The staff memo also points out that the PTELL adjustment formula for CPS is the same as for all other districts…
• The adjustment corrects the “double whammy” problem that existed in the GSA formula for tax capped districts:
o Districts subject to PTELL cannot collect as much revenue as they might if they were not capped.
o The General State Aid Foundation Grant formula assumes that they can access a certain percentage of local property wealth, which tax caps prevent, and so those districts would lose out on GSA Foundation funding.
• The adjustment has nothing to do with enrollment in a district but instead compares the current Equalized Assessed Valuation (EAV) of the district to the EAV at the time the district was subjected to tax caps.
The staff analysis claims that if the $58 million in PPRT was taken away from CPS, the district would get $50 million back from the foundation formula grant.
* You think pensions are hard to understand? Try school funding.
- Juvenal - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:11 am:
Provide full funding for schools, and then reform them….but we shouldn’t pass the rest of the state budget until we get reforms.
Makes. Perfect. Sense.
- jeffinginchicago - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:18 am:
https://illinoisreportcard.com/District.aspx?source=Environment&source2=RevenuePercentages&Districtid=15016299025
I am trying to understand how to reconcile what you have posted Rich with ISBE chart above. Statewide school districts get 26% of their funding from the state. CPS gets 34% + a higher percentage of federal dollars. That state percentage jumped from 29 to 34% in 2010,
CPS also spends more per student than the state average. I have a 7th grade CPS student this year. We moved from a parochial school. Vastly better facilities at CPS. IPads. online currriculum gym auditorium all much better. Still a neighborhood nothing special school. Not sure this is actually a funding issue.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:19 am:
–You think pensions are hard to understand? Try school funding.–
You’re not kidding.
I’d add, though, going forward, don’t accept at face value the poor-mouth from Emanuel and Claypool regarding the city’s ability to pay for its schools.
“Don’t wanna” and “can’t” aren’t the same things.
We all know Chicago has one of the lowest property tax rates in the state.
Add to that, Chicago is in the middle of a building boom.
Check out just these two recent articles from Crain’s.
–Chicago will add a record 4,000 apartments downtown this year, and then another 5,000 in 2017.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20160210/CRED03/160209797/will-apartment-developers-swamp-downtown-landlords
–Down on the Fulton Street market, some sharpies bought an old cold storage building in 2012 for $12 million. They put in some windows, and now are going to flip it for $300 million.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20160202/CRED03/160209968/googles-chicago-landlord-looks-to-sell-could-cash-in-for-300
Death spiral? Another Detroit? The smart money says that narrative is lunacy.
- Austin Blvd - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:20 am:
The political reality is that, in order for education funding reform to pass, there will need to be a funding increase. School districts that would lose funding will fight hard. So they will, at a minimum, need to be held harmless.
So…Rauner now suggests that school funding increase.
Cullerton wants education funding reform.
These two things are now on the table.
- Me too - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:22 am:
Yeah, I hate to say it again, but no hostages should be released until all are released. Trade K-12 for everything else. No clean bills. Make him veto every one and then try explaining why. Send him hundreds of approps, then in November say,”he vetoed school funding [X] times”. We wanted to fund schools but he said no. That’s why your kids aren’t in class.
- Team Sleep - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:23 am:
This should be a no-brainer. Austin - you and I are usually on opposite sides of the issue, but we agree on this. Compromise should happen.
Andy Manar just reiterated in his press conference a line he used during the old SB 16 debate and last year’s budget votes: money does not guarantee success.
Run with this. Work together to reform our schools in a smart way without just begging the feds for more cash or throwing money at the problem.
- Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:26 am:
The personal property tax explanation sounds logical, but what explains the discrepancy in special education funding and programs for low-income students?
Is CPS getting disproportionately more money for those students than those in other parts of the state?
- Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:32 am:
Holding the opening of K-12 hostage might not be the best idea come November. The backlash against Democrats at the ballot box would be legendary.
- nixit71 - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:36 am:
It’s good to finally see a rebuttal to the “free lunch” school funding analysis the GOP put out there awhile back:
http://www.senategop.state.il.us/Portals/0/Docs/Cost-Shift-FINAL.pdf?timestamp=1409174250732
What still goes unmentioned is that CPS gets about $2,500 per student from the Feds. And that CPS is the only school district in the state with sanctuary status, something that probably skews the education funding numbers as well.
- lake county democrat - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:40 am:
Wordslinger, you simply can’t conflate all of Chicago property owners like that. The question of “another Detroit” (a better comparison admittedly should be Cleveland) is whether increased taxes and some other factors might trigger middle class flight. Just because Chicago pays relatively low property taxes and the shinny downtown/Lincoln Park/gold coast areas are attractive and growing doesn’t mean that middle class families aren’t struggling with an increased tax load. The median counts as much as the mean. Another consideration: the majority of economists predict that the economic recovery is nearing an end and we’ll experience a recession in 1-2 years.
To those who disagree, I’d like to hear some specificity. The median household income in Chicago is about $50,000. http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Chicago-Illinois.html I’m sure that it’s higher for property owners, but a lot of the property tax increase would be passed to them through higher rents. So what are we talking about here? How much extra - in dollars per year - should each household pay for Chicago’s schools?
- RTR - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:52 am:
Yes, the funding formula is incredibly complicated. But one part of the funding disparity between Chicago and the rest of the state is very simple: the state pays the entire pension costs for suburban and downstate districts, but does not for Chicago.
That’s worth about $3.5 billion.
No doubt, Chicago benefits from the special block grants, but pension payments blow that advantage away.
- thechampaignlife - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:54 am:
===The General State Aid Foundation Grant formula assumes that they can access a certain percentage of local property wealth, which tax caps prevent===
If I’m following along here, the problem is that the locals don’t want to pay their fair share in property taxes to K-12 education so they cap the taxes. Then they want extra from the State because they didn’t collect enough in local dollars.
The current formula is a terrible way to fund K-12 education but, working with what we have, it seems it was unnecessary to “fix” the PTELL issue. Those communities should raise their PTELL cap if they want more State (and local) funding.
- Juice - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:55 am:
Anonymous, the way the poverty grant works is that the more concentrated poverty is in a district, the more a district receives per student in poverty based off of years of studies that show that the higher concentration of poverty, the more resources that are necessary.
The block grants are based off of what the claims data were for CPS back in 1995 when the block grants were created. Daley asked for more funding for CPS, and more flexibility in how dollars could be spent, so the GOP gave him the more flexibility, including the block grants and allowing the district to stop making pension payments. So now CPS gets a stable portion of special ed dollars, but they can spend it any way they want.
- burbanite - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 10:56 am:
Holding higher ed hostage might not be the best idea come November. The backlash against Republicans at the ballot box would be legendary. There fixed it. As a parent of college age children, I assure you that my concerns for their education do not stop upon their graduation from high school. All or nothing. Your kids can’t go to school and its a problem, but my kids can’t and it isn’t? It doesn’t work that way.
- Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:00 am:
Higher Ed has access to revenue sources that K-12 does not, as do their students.
- DuPage Saint - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:01 am:
Figures don’t lie but liers figure
- RNUG - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:09 am:
== You think pensions are hard to understand? Try school funding. ==
I don’t even try to understand the details of school funding. It gives me a headache.
- thechampaignlife - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:10 am:
Austin:
===School districts that would lose funding will fight hard. So they will, at a minimum, need to be held harmless.===
I agree, although they could be held harmless by locking in funding at FY16 levels. The new formula would then apply any new/inflationary funding to the underfunded districts first.
- Me too - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:18 am:
Like everyone in your bubble blames them for the current mess? That’s why I said send him the bill with poison pills in it, just like the bills he demands. Turnabout is fair play, but it doesn’t bode well for our collective future. You must be on the payroll, I can’t figure out any other reason why you fail to grasp the fact that the governor, alone, could have forstalled this whole disaster by line item reductions in the budget the democrats sent him. He just didn’t have the courage to take the heat for the cuts. Now he doesn’t have the courage to take the heat for a tax increase and on top of that can’t seem to grasp that his demands won’t be met. You cannot negotiate with hostage takers. It just encourages more hostage taking. It is the same policy we have with demands of terrorists. If your guy gets his demands now, he’ll just have more next year, and more after that. It only stops when he understands his actions are doomed to be not only fruitless, but damaging to his overall goals of achieving electoral advantage for raunerites. Oh, and they are damaging, he just doesn’t realize it yet. People have woken up. In 2014 there were 529,462 students enrolled at public universities. Those students can vote and so can their parents/families. Think about that. Then add in the folks directly hurt by the social services disasters and cuts, along with state and university employees (Now I think only Allen D among them will vote for raunerites), and you have electoral disaster already for your guy.
I’m sorry to break it to you. Bullying my way or the highway types aren’t popular even if their ideas are liked, when the intransigence leads to a societal breakdown, and Rauner’s ideas aren’t even well liked.
- Me too - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:30 am:
Sorry, I meant public colleges. All of which have had funding zeroed out from the State. If even one university shuts down, the others will start to fail from falling enrollment as well as students transferring out of state. This is what you support anon, all so you can stick it to some government employee types so you can pay a few bucks less each month. The tax reduction saves me 52 bucks a month, which I’m not turning my nose up at, but banned wording over union members so that I can fill up my gas tank once more each month is a bit selfish not to mention myopic, and fails to grasp the reason for the banned wording, to destroy the unions, which give contributions to democrats. If the democrats have less campaign money, and the gov has seemingly limitless amounts he’ll be able to guarantee he can buy elections and more Dunkins. That’s not a bug, it is a feature, the only feature of his anti-union agenda, or the republican party’s for that matter.
- burbanite - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:30 am:
=Higher Ed has access to revenue sources that K-12 does not, as do their students.= Like MAP grants? If Illinois schools have to increase their tuition to make up for -0- funding for 2016 and 25% reduction for 2017 no one will go there. Again the affluent won’t be hurt, the marginalized will. Not only is this making out of state schools more appealing, it is making out of state living more appealing.
- Anonymous - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:48 am:
“Like MAP grants?” MAP grants, but also student loans, scholarships, work-study programs, outside employment, tutition payments to the university, federal funding, alumni donors, an endowment over $1Billion in the case of U of I, and more.
In a perfect world, or at least one in which Illinois was not so far in debt, in-state tuition to public universities would be free.
- Me too - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:55 am:
So you’re a Sanders fan then? I’m kidding obviously.
- wordslinger - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 11:59 am:
–Higher Ed has access to revenue sources that K-12 does not, as do their students.–
Like property taxes?
My high school district, OPRF 200, gets 6.2% of its revenue from state sources, 89.5% from property taxes and student fees.
Hostage taking is illegitimate, whether it’s Cullerton or Rauner.
The difference is, up to now, Cullerton has been blowing smoke, while Rauner has actually zeroed out higher ed and made it central to his governing strategy.
Even living under a bridge, you must be able to see the practical difference.
- burbanite - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 12:26 pm:
If a college student’s parents claim them as a dependent those students get taxed on every dollar they make by the State of Illinois. One of the “perks” of living in a State where your child goes to college is “in state tuition”, however, if the “in state tuition” equals out of state tuition in other states, what is the point? U of I’s endowment is the exception, not the rule when it comes to Illinois colleges. Academic scholarships the schools offer to entice quality students are not free either. I saw someone post on another forum that the kids from CSU could go to U of I instead. Seriously? That just shows the lack of understanding those coming from a lower socioeconomic background. And as of right now Anon, the Gov. has vowed to veto MAP grants. Bet you would support privatizing the State University System, since they can be self sufficient. It has been a long time since I have had to worry about money, but I haven’t forgotten how hard it was and what it was like. Any one who has ever been there knows, it just ain’t as easy you would like to think. My kid’s dorm room for 8 months was more than a years worth of mortgage payments. Imagine a family of four with an income of 60,000 a year with two kids in college. Easy peasy huh? Oh wait, Dad works for the state, lets freeze his pay and increase his health care costs too. He makes too much.
- JS Mill - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 12:35 pm:
As someone who deals with the funding formula on a daily basis I agree with what many have stated- try understanding it, only in my case try explaining it to your community or school board without them all falling asleep or have a mental breakdown.
Poverty Funding- CPS gets much more in the poverty grant, per pupil than most )not nearly all) due to poverty concentration. The poverty concentration is funded buy a sliding scale which creates a factor which determines a dollar amount per pupil for those identified as living in poverty (identified by DHS count) and then that is funded in addition (actually it is embedded) to the GSA formula. If a district is “1″ they get roughly $3,600 per pupil for all students. All of their students are eligible for free lunch as well.
As an example, we have about 40% free and reduced lunch, but our poverty number from DHS is much lower. Therefor, we get about $700 per student identified as living in poverty. The difference between us and a district with a “1″ factor is roughly $2,900 per pupil, except that they get it for every student.
Trying to explain why our DHS number is different than our free/reduced count (it is part of the equation) is tough since the ISBE and DHS do not have an answer that makes any sense.
And that is just poverty funding.
PTELL offset is, in my opinion, wrong. The areas that voted in PTELL should not receive an offset. It is exactly what the voters wanted.
- Austin Blvd - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 12:51 pm:
Thechampaignlife-
It seems to me that keeping the rich school districts at this year’s levels would be the definition of being held harmless.
In order to create the equity that reformers demand, funding would need to increase.
Thus, a net funding increase is needed for education reform to ever pass.
- Juice - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 1:54 pm:
JS Mill, are you against all districts getting the PTELL adjustment, or just those in counties who voted to be PTELL?
- JS Mill - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 2:08 pm:
Juice- Schools that are not under PTELL (not in PTELL counties) do not get the PTELL adjustment. Only schools under PTELL get it, hence “PTELL adjustment” and, to answer your question, yes I do not think they should get it since PTELL was approved by their voters. The funds should go back into GSA. If that happens they would get some I suppose.
Not sure but are you confusing PTELL (also called tax caps) with CPPRT? Two different funds.
- JS Mill - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 2:10 pm:
@Juice- Cook County EAV should also be based on 33 1/3% of fair market value (versus current 10% plus multiplier). That alone would get CPS pretty close to balanced.
- Ghost - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 2:39 pm:
so why not just say a school district, anywhere, gets X dollars per student from the state. special needs would be funded based on actual cost reimbursement for services.
statatorily asses either an income tax amount for school funding and roll back property taxes.
Fixed it
- thechampaignlife - Thursday, Feb 18, 16 @ 3:02 pm:
Austin-
Ideally, funding would increase immediately by a substantial amount. Given conditions, however, I think this is unlikely. That is why I propose to leverage inflation to phase in the “creation of equity that reformers demand”. The equity will come, just slowly over maybe a decade rather than immediately. Still better than the current situation. And that rich school that gets $300M today will still get $300M next year, the year after, etc.