* Illinois State Board of Education Chairman Gery Chico has been working editorial boards across the state lately, decrying a possible cut to education funding. The work has paid off. Here’s the Southern Illinoisan…

It’s the wrong time to be looking at cuts in education. Illinois State Board of Education Chairman Gery Chico said $650 million in funding already has been cut from school districts since 2009. Chico said plans that would seek another $250 million to $750 million in cuts could be devastating in a state that already ranks near the bottom nationally in funding public education.

In just one example, looking at the potentially deepest cut of $750 million from education, funding for Murphysboro Community School District 186 would be cut from a projected $8.26 million to $6.75 million. Chico said such cuts would force local schools to cut programs, eliminate teaching jobs or raise taxes.

This is no idle threat. The Illinois House of Representatives has approved spending caps for the coming fiscal year that would cut education by nearly $260 million — even if the state successfully cuts $2.7 billion from Medicaid. The other, more-dire possibilities could see education cut by $500 million or $750 million in a state already ranked near the bottom for funding education.

“If that happens, I just think it’s devastating to school systems,” Chico said. “This is going to mean that if we continue to cut education in the state of Illinois, it’s going to reach laughable levels.”

* SJ-R…

But we believe every citizen in the state should be concerned at the damage that could be inflicted on public schools statewide under a 2013 budget plan backed by the Illinois House that strips from Quinn’s plan some $258 million from education spending. We admire the goal, which is to use $800 million in 2013 tax receipts to pay off some of the state’s bill backlog, which stands at $5 billion. We question whether jeopardizing public education and endangering celebrated reforms is a worthy trade-off.

“We have to have sanity in the way we look at affecting the finances of our school system,” Illinois State Board of Education Chairman Gery Chico told The State Journal-Register editorial board last week. “That ($258 million) is real money. That means you’re either letting go teachers, cutting back programs or you’re raising taxes. Those are all the options. So it’s dramatic, it’s drastic.”

For the Springfield School District, it would mean a loss of $5.7 million. School districts simply can’t absorb cuts that size without effects that are felt in classrooms.

And all that teacher accountability? It can’t happen without an assessment program in place, and that doesn’t happen without funding.

“We had a few million dollars put in there (for assessments) and some people in the House now are talking about striking that line item,” Chico said. “I don’t know why we’re getting applause for passing one thing and then the resources for getting it done are taken out.”

The state has a huge mountain of overdue, unpaid bills to schools. The school funding cuts are supposed to be used to pare down that and other debts.

…Adding… The comptroller’s office says that the current bill backlog to schools is $561 million.

* Despite Chairman Chico’s strong opposition, some are defending the cuts…

If the cuts go through, almost every district in the Stateline would feel the effects. Belvidere could lose 300-thousand dollars for the year, Winnebago over 600-thousand dollars, and Rockford would lose close to 8-millon dollars for fiscal year 2012.

“It’s not going to be pretty, but there’s really no other way,” said state senator Dave Syverson.

Syverson says out of control spending has left lawmakers will little options.

“We can’t do that anymore,” said Syverson. “You need to be honest with schools, with healthcare providers.”

And while lawmakers are still looking at other options to fill a near 3.5 billion dollar hole, Syverson says the education system in the state will likely take a hit.

“You have to cut into both when you have this big of a debt,” said Syverson.

* But the Senate Democrats’ budget plan contains no education cuts, which they believe is the right way to go. Even so, things got a bit testy in the approp committee yesterday…

But Senate Republicans said Democrats should be considering cuts instead of tapping into other funds. They said they could not support the proposal because it does not put the state on a path to security after the recent income tax increase begins to roll back in 2015. “I believed that we shared brief, shining moment of optimism in the beginning of our talks,” said Sen. Pamela Althoff, a McHenry Republican. “Unfortunately as we tried to progress, we really broke down. Our conversations, they stalled over one basic staunch principle, and that was a promise of the Republican caucus to always craft a spending plan that put the state of Illinois on a trajectory to eliminate the tax increase on schedule. And what we see before us now makes [our] support of this proposal impossible, as we cannot meet that principle.” […]

Democrats said Republicans are stalling and being obstructive. Steans said that any time an agreement seemed close in negotiations, Republicans “moved the goalpost.”

Another potential sticking point is facility closures. The proposal calls for the closure of the Dwight Correctional Center, the Murray Developmental Center in Centralia, the Jacksonville Developmental Center and the Tinley Park Mental Health Center. While no Republicans spoke out adamantly against the closures at today’s hearings, Republicans on the Commission for Government Forecasting and Accountability, which takes advisory votes on facility closures, have general opposed closing downstate facilities.