* 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.