Which La Grange 102 Schools Get Most Money?

LA GRANGE, IL — La Grange School District 102 spends more money per student at schools with greater percentages of low-income students, state figures show.

Congress Park has the greatest share of low-income students among the four elementary schools — 37 percent. It received $13,799 per student last school year, the most of any school.

According to the Illinois Report Card website, here's how the schools fare:

That Congress Park gets the most money is no accident, said Kyle Schumacher, District 102's superintendent.

"This was done by design," he said in an email. "Through both local and (federal) Title funds, we utilize additional resources at Congress Park and Forest Road to support our students where they are. This is both a philosophical and intentional effort to provide resources to where they are needed most."

Hinsdale High School District 86 apparently has a similar philosophy. It spends $21,010 per student at Hinsdale Central, with 5 percent of students who are low-income, and $27,496 at Hinsdale South, with 24 percent low-income.

Elmhurst School District 205, however, appears to short Conrad Fischer Elementary, where 58 percent of students come from low-income families, by far the most of the city's eight elementary schools. It gets the third least amount per student among the schools. The other schools' share of low-income students range from 2 percent to 9 percent.

The Daily Herald recently looked at school districts in Algonquin and Elgin, where schools with bigger shares of low-income students got the short end of the stick financially. The newspaper interviewed Marguerite Roza, an economist at Georgetown University and the director of its Economics Lab, who has studied school districts' spending choices.

"Those are very much district choices, but districts would say, 'What? We never made an intentional decision to give more money to the wealthier schools,'" Roza told the Daily Herald.

Rucker Johnson, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, said his team has connected per-student spending to better outcomes in standardized test scores and graduation rates, according to the Daily Herald.

"At every stage, higher spending led to significant increases in student outcomes and narrowing of achievement gaps by race and poverty status," Johnson told the newspaper.