* It looks like the state’s progress has stalled out on its equity based funding level goals. From Capitol News Illinois…

The chart shows the state hit a high of 327 schools at 90 percent adequacy in 2024, and then dropped to 313 in 2026. That’s not a huge drop, but it’s most definitely not an increase.

One reason is that the state’s annual $300 million payments have not kept up with inflation. $300 million in July of 2017, when the program started would be $410.7 million today.

It would be more interesting to see how, exactly, we went from 226 schools at 90 percent adequacy in 2022 to 327 in 2024.

CNI…

537 districts, 63% of the total, [are] funded at less than 90% of adequacy. ISBE reported during this year’s budgeting process that it would take an additional $3 billion to get all districts up to at least 90% of adequacy.

Illinois was supposed to reach 90 percent adequacy by Fiscal Year 2027, which is the current fiscal year. The problem is the annual “ramp” of $300 million was not enough to accomplish that and nobody really pushed to change it.

* Moving along to property taxes…

According to the data [from Fiscal Year 2017], people in the poorest 10% of districts in the state paid an average tax rate of $5.39 per $100 of EAV. That was more than double the average tax rate in the wealthiest 10% of districts, which was $2.50 per $100 of EAV. […]

From 2017 through 2025, the average tax rate among the poorest 10% of districts fell considerably, to $4.81 per $100 of EAV. But that was still more than twice as high as the average tax rate among the wealthiest 10%, which was $2.40 per $100.

The tax rate dropped by 10 percent. Something, but not much. Again, inflation contributed to this not only with the state EBF money, but also the annual $50 million designated for property tax relief, which has been paused at least a couple of time. $50 million in July of 2017 would be $68.5 million today.

* OK, let’s switch up a bit. This is from a recent Chicago Public Schools report…

● Since 2019, CPS has added 9,790 staff positions, mostly working directly in schools, while enrollment has declined by 45,000 students.

● In the same period, our budget has grown by over $2.6B. Between FY21 and FY25, the operating budget was supplemented by nearly $3B of COVID federal relief funding. […]

CPS has faced a major budget deficit each year since FY25, when the district used the last of its remaining COVID federal relief funding.

Post-COVID, the pressures impacting districts nationwide — increasing costs, declining enrollment, stagnant revenue — are in plain view.

According to the report, the district “has more than $9 billion of existing long-term debt that requires $900-plus million in annual debt service payments.”

Instead of using the COVID money to pay down its debt, which the state did for itself, CPS put that money into increasing its permanent spending base.

And this is from my newspaper column published almost exactly two years ago…

I told Pritzker I assumed other school districts also put temporary federal money into their permanent spending bases and would also be demanding more state aid.

“I don’t think that that’s the job of Springfield, to rescue the school districts that might have been irresponsible with the one-time money they received,” said Pritzker. “Poor fiscal management on the part of a local government is not necessarily the responsibility of Springfield.”

Is CPS poorly fiscally managed? Pritzker at first hedged, then, when pressed, said he’d like to answer the question his own way.

“One-time money shouldn’t be spent for ongoing operations.”

Discuss.