Pertinent facts on school funding reform

When it comes to the discussion about SB1, an Illinois Senate bill designed to revise the current school funding formula, those who advocate for its passage conveniently leave out some very pertinent facts. Simply put, Chicagoans are taxed at a far lower rate, spend more on education and obtain inferior results.

To back up that observation, let's compare Chicago Public School (CPS) to the combination of High School District 211 and Palatine District 15 since these two districts serve essentially the same communities and represent the Pre-K through the 12th grade and in this coverage, are identical to CPS, a unit district.

First, taxation: Those of us who live in the Northwest suburbs pay $2,380 in property taxes per $100,000 of market value of their residences while CPS residents are on the hook for $1,780 per $100,000. Are we in suburbs over-taxed or are Chicago residents under-taxed? What about state and federal assistance? CPS receives $6,500 per student from state and federal taxpayers while the District 211/15 combo receive $2,100 per student. And CPS wants more! The taxpayers of D211/15 directly fund, via property taxes, 83 percent of their school budgets while CPS residents provide only 47 percent of their costs.

Last, let's look at spending per student. CPS spends $15,328 per student while the D211/15 combination spends $15,013. The question for SB1 proponents is this: How much more do you propose non-Chicago taxpayers give to CPS to assure equality of outcome?

The spending data shown here was obtained from the Illinois Interactive Report Card, a database of education information maintained by Northern Illinois University and is for school year 2014-15, the latest year for which data is available.

Joe H. Heater

Palatine