Playing games with school children seems to have become a full-time occupation for this state’s political leaders, who can’t get along with each other.
More Top Picks Best Acoustic Panels
On Monday, Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed yet another plan to freeze property taxes, which has become so popular that Democrats in the state Senate passed a bill very much like it themselves a couple of weeks ago.
You see, freezing property taxes means no loss of revenue for the state. In fact, property taxes, levied by municipalities, school districts, park districts, etc, have nothing at all to do with state government.
However, property taxes have skyrocketed because the state has inadequately funded public education (in fact this state pays a smaller percentage of the overall cost for public schools than any other in the nation). So the reason people are unhappy with their property taxes is because the state, which has also failed to make payments to pension funds, has forced their property tax bills to spiral out of control to keep classroom doors open.
So governors and legislators behaved irresponsibly, but railing to fund public education. And now they want everyone to see them as heroes for freezing property taxes.
On top of all that, Democratic legislators and the Republican governor, in separate proposals, have now called for major changes in the state’s school funding formula, claiming they want to help poorer children in economically challenged areas of the state.
About 20 years ago, when that idea first surfaced, people of good will who actually cared about the children of this state suggested it would take about $2 billion or more to create a school funding system that was fairer to all, while not penalizing school districts in middle and upper-income areas. That was back when the state was considered financially solvent.
Today, the state’s budget, which actually doesn’t exist, is about $4 billion short of the money needed to subsidize existing government services.
Illinois also has a pension debt of about $110 billion that is going up every day.
But the governor’s new property tax freeze bill also includes $74 million in state funding for high-poverty school districts and about $200 million a year for two years to pay the pension debt and health care costs for the Chicago Public Schools. The money does not actually exist. But since when has that mattered in Illinois?
The measure also includes a provision to create a state commission to come up with a new way of distributing funding to public schools in Illinois. Did I mention that the state has no way of doing that without taking money from other school districts unless someone finds a giant pot of money?
Thankfully, none of this really matters because Rauner’s plan is going to be dead on arrival in the state Legislature. That’s because it also would give local governments the power to change collective bargaining rules for government unions, eliminate prevailing wage laws and change the ways workman’s compensation claims are awarded. Almost all of these items have been opposed by Democrats in Springfield.
Now, I understand that everyone is fed up with corruption in this state. And I think I can safely say all of us are opposed to any more property tax increases.
But I want to remind you that Republicans and Democrats in Illinois have been lying to residents of this state for 30 years about public school funding. Just about everyone elected to office during that time has vowed they care about the school children of this state. Many have promised to change the system of public school funding because they knew it was unfair, punishing areas that had low property values and rewarding school districts that were already wealthy. This also meant that children in the greatest need of help often got less of it, while children starting out with huge advantages at home ended up attending schools that spent the most of them.
A recent national study said Illinois had the greatest funding disparity between poor and wealthy communities in the entire nation.
The fact is that legislators not only failed to fulfill the promises they made, they have made things worse.
School districts no longer know how much the state is going to send them or when the money will arrive (usually very late).
Things have gotten so much worse that school board members in places such as Lincoln-Way High School District 210 (Frankfort, Mokena, New Lenox), who used to laugh at poorer school districts who begged for more state funding, are now accusing state lawmakers of neglect when it comes to public education. I should mention that Lincoln-Way has recently been placed on the state board of education’s financial watch list.
No one is sure what impact a property tax freeze would have on such school districts, but Lincoln-Way officials, who voted to close one of their four high schools last week, predicted they would have to close another if such a freeze were passed by the state and signed into law by the governor.
The idea of a property tax freeze, by the way, is not a matter of conflict down in Springfield. Republicans and Democrats like the idea because, as I said, it has no impact on state government at all. It hurts local units of government. And that’s how we ended up with out-of-control property taxes in Illinois.
You see, by shifting the responsibility for public school funding onto local school districts, governors and state legislators for decades were able to spend billions of dollars on other things. You, the homeowner and business owner, were handed the tab, without so much as a “Thank you.”
In the meantime, thousands of students received a second-rate education in public schools throughout this state because their schools were under-funded.
I have pointed out in previous articles that some of the municipalities with the highest tax rates in the state are located in some of the poorest suburbs of Cook County. So they are paying a larger percentage of the household incomes for public schools, but getting less than most for their money.
All of this is known by our elected leaders. And now they agree, at least, that the state’s school funding system is fatally flawed, although Republicans defended it for decades.
More Top Picks Best Progressive Reading Glasses
Yet, instead of simply doing what is right, it’s back to the old political games. Rauner wants a change in collective bargaining rules. Democrats want the state to bail out the Chicago Public School system. Everybody seems prepared to stick it to the middle-class downstate and suburban communities who have been trying to cope with both high property taxes and low reimbursement rates from the state.
And the new conservative governor seems prepared, in theory, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than the state doesn’t have, to win collective bargaining changes. Of course, he knows the Democrats won’t agree, so it’s all merely another political ploy, using property taxpayers and children as pawns.
No one ever fears a public backlash down in Springfield because voters simply refuse to embrace the truth of what’s been happening. They may blame the other political party, or teachers unions, or school boards or, in an amazing miscarriage of justice, municipalities, for higher property taxes, but never the state lawmakers.
Those fellows, after all, are for a property tax freeze. They all love our school children. They want to fix the unfair, inadequate school funding system. They simply lie, and lie, and lie and are never held accountable.
The recommendations of three blue ribbon panels appointed to study school funding have been ignored. Two state school boards were replaced by governors because they said this state has failed to adequately fund education. Independent national studies have all reached the same conclusion.
As our elected leaders have played childlike games with public education, far too many of our children have become adults. That they lack the ability to understand what has been happening to them may be the logical result of an educational system that has failed them.