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Elgin Area School District U-46 CEO Tony Sanders stood with a few other suburban officials this week in Springfield to push for a school funding plan that would send more state money to less wealthy schools.

He said he was recently asked how much money would be enough.

“It’ll be enough whenever our statistics mirror that of the Department of Corrections,” Sanders said.

His district spends about $10,600 per student at a time when the state spends more than $22,000 per prisoner, he said.

posted by Rich Miller
Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:40 am

Comments

Truth. Sad truth.

Comment by LizPhairTax Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:45 am
and I’m SURE that money would be used to improve the quality of student’s education instead of just paying more for the same mediocre results, right? (heavy snark intended)

Ok, Mr Sanders, Tell us about how you’d spend those additional dollars, and what DRAMATIC improvement in student outcomes we could expect from it.

It’s pretty telling as well that this educrat equates warehousing criminals to protect the public with the services he is SUPPOSED to be providing to teach students to be globally competitive with the rest of the nation, let alone the world…

Comment by Illinois Bob Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:46 am
Good sound bite, but wrong attitude to have. Isn’t the better question, how much do you need to effectively educate a student? Also, how much doe s the state need to have safe prisons?

It is sad that an uneducated prison guard makes more money than a master teacher.

Comment by Ahoy! Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:46 am
It’s a great sound bite, but it’s apples and oranges. After all, we aren’t providing students with 3 meals a day - 365 days per year, overnight accommodations, and 24/7 security.

Comment by Downstate Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:46 am
=It is sad that an uneducated prison guard makes more money than a master teacher.=

The uneducated prison guard works in a dangerous environment all day.

Oh, wait…

Comment by MSIX Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:50 am
California spends about $9200 per student and New York $19,800. Enough is an interesting question. You can always spend more.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html

Also please note at the link that California spends 14% less on education since 2008. Illinois 10% more. Want to know how California turned around its economy? Start looking at that process

Comment by jeffinginchicago Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:50 am
Ahoy!==It’s sad that a master teacher makes less than a prison guard.

Comment by tobor Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:54 am
do we want to live in a society where we undereducate poor children, so that more of them grow up and go to prison, where they cost us twice as much to house as we spent on their education, all so that someone can profit off their cheap labor?

or do we want to invest heavily in public education so the next generation can actually contribute to society?

it’s a question of priorities.

Comment by Homer J. Quinn Friday, May 20, 16 @ 9:58 am
Tony is a decent guy but he is on the wrong side of this discussion. I understand his position but still think he is the wrong side.

U 46 is a high poverty district. Poverty has an enormous impact on achievement.

U 46 has a large non-English speaking population. Again significant impact on achievement.

U 46 is sitting on $500 million in reserves. Relative to their annual budget, that is still a significant amount of money.

The better question is what should it cost to educate their students based on expected outcomes with consideration given to needs (poverty, special ed, bilingual/esl etc.).

Figure that out, then determine the level at which you will fund it based on capacity (both state and local) and then you know what outcomes you can expect.

BTW- @Downstate- pretty close, often we are providing students two meals a day and a snack to take home. Seriously.

If you place the burden of solving the effects of poverty, found in communities, on schools then you have to fund it properly.

Comment by JS Mill Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:02 am
===teach students to be globally competitive with the rest of the nation, let alone the world…===

That’s a real zonker. You may want to keep things simple. More words dosen’t mean it’s smarter.

To the Post,

The cost of incarceration isn’t just a dollar and cents measurement. Once inmates become ex-inmates, they may now be undereducated and an ex-convict now reentering society.

Investing in education can help stop the cycle. Paying to lock up people to feel better for a lack of investing in education is lazy, at best.

Comment by Oswego Willy Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:03 am
@Ahoy no worries here mate. CPS starting wage is $56k a year average is $75k and my daughters 6th grade teacher made $93k last year. Salary.com says correctional officers make much less. $40-48K.

CPS teachers at least are not underpaid.

Comment by jeffinginchicago Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:06 am
It’s a clever quote. But schools by themselves cannot lift kids out of poverty. And kids from poor backgrounds will always drag down average test scores and other measures of achievement. It’s unfair to pin all of that on the schools.

Comment by Ray del Camino Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:07 am
You want better education, then you need to start paying teachers enough money that people with expensive higher educations choose to go into education instead of something else. I know how much college/engineering specialties/grad school/med school/law schools cost. If you want the young men and women who have those options to choose education, then you have to pay them.

Comment by Delimma Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:12 am
I hope schools can start delivering services they should be providing now. My kid has special education needs, the kind charters often don’t want to mess with. The caseworkers are overloadee, it takes weeks to get a psych eval back, and the department director has to argue to maintain current funding. If more money for public school means better services for kids that need it, that’s great, even if the regular ed test scores don’t go up.

Comment by Anonymous Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:15 am
To be fair, that $22,000 per year per prisoner is for 24/7/365 custody.

The schools don’t have the students anywhere near that much - they’re what? 6/5/176 or so?

Comment by titan Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:22 am
This is difficult to compare. On the corrections side, there is little disagreement that some people should be locked up, and the benefit to society far outweighs the $22k it costs to keep them there…a small price to pay for unknowable robberies, rapes and murders that won’t be committed. There are arguably too many other people incarcerated who could benefit society out of prison rather than within its confines, with the right kind of programs. But the $22k per correctional resident is not likely to go down if we reform the system, infrastructure, services and labor being what they are. So this “per pupil” vs. “per inmate” cost discussion is really a moot one in my book.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:26 am
If we let half the inmates in corrections out, I doubt the $22k per cost would go down. So, as a basis for comparison, I don’t see the usefulness.

Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:28 am
@Titan. Custody vs. education. I can easily stick a dog in a locked room for a week, and at the end of that week, it might bite you. But, if you want me to take that same dog and teach it to sit, roll over, stay, and otherwise behave, it’s going to cost more.

Comment by Delimma Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:33 am
=@Ahoy no worries here mate. CPS starting wage is $56k a year average is $75k and my daughters 6th grade teacher made $93k last year. Salary.com says correctional officers make much less. $40-48K.

CPS teachers at least are not underpaid.=

The problem is that average includes administrators including people making well over six figures working downtown far from the classroom. As to the 6th grade teacher that made $93,000 last year, since the only way she made that is to have 15 graduate hours more than a masters and thirty years teaching experience in CPU or to have a doctorate and 25 years teaching experience in CPS, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Comment by Carhartt Representative Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:39 am
More and more there is agreement that Concentrated Poverty is a problem for which schools cannot generally remediate or compensate, except in rare cases.

We have repealed the totally unrealistic expectation of 100 percent proficiency in No Child Left Behind (as agreed to by George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy), but too many still think the goal should be college for all.

When will we accept different expectations for different students?

When will we truly value not only teachers but training for plumbers, welders, cashiers, etc?

Comment by winners and losers Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:41 am
Look at the tuition for top private schools, which is typically in the $6000 - $10,000 range in East Central Illinois. Why pay more than that per student?

Comment by OldIllini Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:48 am
@Delimma - my point was, at least in part, the apples to oranges nature of trying to compare the two.

The other part was that the Elgin guy probably wasn’t thinking that the schools appear to be spending considerably more on a per hour of services rendered basis, such that it was really a somewhat poor choice for a comparison..

Comment by titan Friday, May 20, 16 @ 10:54 am
The state cost of $22,000 per prisoner? I find that hard to believe. Where does that money go?

Comment by Mama Friday, May 20, 16 @ 11:29 am
Gee Tony. Thanks for your time.

Comment by A guy Friday, May 20, 16 @ 11:30 am
@Mama11:29 ==Where does the money go?==

Guards, cooks, nurses, trades, heating and cooling expenses, food, medicines, transportation to court hearings, and everything else involved.

Comment by DuPage Friday, May 20, 16 @ 11:44 am
Vigorous but misguided quote.

Schools do not house, bathe, feed and monitor their population twenty fours hours a day for every day.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Friday, May 20, 16 @ 12:52 pm
==“It’ll be enough whenever our statistics mirror that of the Department of Corrections”==

You want schools overcrowded to 150% of capacity as well? Or just the $? /s

Still, this was a + pick for quote of the day.

Comment by Formerly Known As... Friday, May 20, 16 @ 1:01 pm
@Carhartt. Those averages do not include administrator salaries. Teacher salaries are all that is in there.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/12/chicago-teachers-make-more-than-the-national-average/

Comment by jeffinginchicago Friday, May 20, 16 @ 1:21 pm
Delimma:
Won’t happen.
Where I live,there are people who think teachers that make $35,000-$40,000 a year are overpaid.
Seriously.

They want better teachers but don’t want to pay for them.

Comment by btowntruth Friday, May 20, 16 @ 1:32 pm
“They want better teachers but don’t want to pay for them.”

btowntruth, tell them you get what you pay for.

Comment by Mama Friday, May 20, 16 @ 3:00 pm
Unless he wants to imprison the kids, that comparison to Corrections is demented.

The two have nothing to do with each other.

Comment by Harry Friday, May 20, 16 @ 3:58 pm