Education Funding Reform Act of 2015

Last year, the State of Illinois proposed changing how it would fund public education.  The initial proposal (SB16) passed the Senate last year, but was not voted on by the House.  SB16 would have resulted in a significant loss of State education funding for our area and most suburban School Districts.  A new bill (SB1) was introduced earlier this year with changes based on feedback received from last year’s proposal. 

School Districts and Communities throughout the State have been waiting on the Illinois State Board of Education to release projections on how the new proposal will impact each School District.  We need ISBE to release their projections or at least commit to a date for releasing them. 

If we really want to turn our State around, we need this type of commitment from the leaders in our State.  The Illinois State Board of Education is the “parent” Board of Education for our ENTIRE State and we need them to help LEAD and ensure that if there are any changes made to how public education is funded in Illinois that ALL of their School Districts have the information they need to understand local impacts.

The governor’s office should also be working to ensure that the projections are released by ISBE.  As Rauner knows from his corporate experience, the first step to ensuring success is eliminating ”TBD” as an acceptable answer for when a task will be done.