* Champaign News-Gazette editorial…

The governor speaks of large increases in state aid to schools, and he’s right. The state’s current spending plan increases K-12 funding by nearly $379 million. But that money isn’t necessarily going to pay for education costs, including increased salaries.

Adam Schuster, director of budget research at the Illinois Policy Institute, reports that a large share is going for teacher pensions, not salaries.

He reports that “in the coming school year, 36 percent of the money the state allocates to education will” be used for “required pension payments for retirees.”

The K-12 increase mentioned above is going to schools as a direct result of the education funding reform law passed in 2017. It mandates at least a $350 million increase per year. The state exceeded that a bit this fiscal year.

That’s not to say the state won’t be paying more for teacher pensions next year. It will. My beef is not with Schuster or the Illinois Policy Institute here, it’s with an editorial board that mistakes need-based education funding for pension spending.

School districts in the suburbs and Downstate are only on the hook for pension contributions if their employees have negotiated it through their collective bargaining processes. Otherwise, the state itself picks up almost all of the employers’ costs, including legacy costs.

Oh, and by the way, the new K-12 funding will give lots of poorer schools more money, and those tend to be the ones which are having the most trouble paying their teachers a decent wage. The editorial was about the new state mandate for a $40,000 minimum teacher salary over time.