* WCIA…

“[The] total investment going into K-12 Education is $3.7 billion less than what the evidence indicates is needed for every school district to have the resources it requires to educate the students it serves,” [Ralph Martire, the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability] said.

Martire co-wrote the evidence based funding model which is designed to use certain metrics to determine the amount of money schools need to give students a proper education. Those metrics include total enrollment, and the number of English learners, low income students and students with disabilities. It passed in 2018 under Republican Governor Bruce Rauner. […]

The model is supposed to be fully funded by 2028 but he said now, it won’t reach that until 2040.

“We’re very far away from fully funding the model, and you skip another year, skip another two, that means another generation of kids has to go through a K-12 education system that doesn’t have adequate resources to implement the evidence based practices that have been shown to allow every student to receive the kind of education they need to achieve academically,” Martire said.

* I asked Martire for an explanation of that evidence-based funding ramp…

The EBF establishes two ongoing funding metrics for state-level investments in K-12 Education. First, the EBF sets a target of having state-level formula funding for K-12 Education increase on a year-to-year basis by at least $300 million (the “Minimum Target Level”). Note that is $50 million less than the $350 million amount actually specified in Section (g) of the EBF. The reason for this is the Property Tax Relief Grant or “PTRG” established in paragraph 9.5 of Section (g) of the legislation. Under the statute, the dollar amount of any year-to-year increase in funding the state appropriates to the EBF in a given fiscal year that is in excess of $300 million, up to and including $350 million, is dedicated to the PTRG—not to formula funding.

In addition to creating the aforesaid target for increasing K-12 funding on a year-to-year basis, the EBF also committed the state to fund the formula fully within 10 years of its initial implementation, which would be June 30, 2027. According to ISBE, at the start of FY 2023, the EBF was underfunded statewide by some $3.68 billion. At its current rate of increasing EBF funding, the state is not close to being on track for satisfying the obligation to fund the EBF fully by 2027.

Figure 1 shows that if the state continues the practice of increasing year-to-year funding for the EBF at the Minimum Target Level, the legislation will not be fully funded in real, inflation adjusted terms, until FY 2038, which is 20 years after the EBF was first implemented—or double what is required in statute.

To meet the statutory deadline of fully funding the EBF in real, inflation adjusted terms by 2027, starting in the 2023-2024 school year and continuing thereafter, Illinois would have to increase K-12 funding by $912 million each year—or more than triple the current Minimum Target Level—as shown in Figure 2.

* Martire referenced this issue in a recent Daily Herald op-ed…

Unfortunately, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, the current amount of K-12 funding in Illinois is some $3.7 billion less than what the evidence indicates is needed for each school to have the resources to educate the children it serves. And Bailey wants to cut school funding?

Even more curious is Bailey’s head-scratcher of a rationale for reducing state spending on education. According to Bailey, the high-quality academic programming offered in excellent schools like New Trier — you know curriculum designed to ensure students who graduate high school are college and career ready — isn’t needed in downstate communities like Clay County, because “Most, many of our children, some of our children are going to the military. They’re going right into the workforce,” where they get employed as ‘pipe fitters,’ ‘welders,’ and ‘linemen.’”

Wait, what? There’s so much wrong with that thinking it’s impossible to unpack it all in one column.

And then he tries.