Legislative candidates talk education

Three dozen Elgin Area School District U-46 community members turned out at South Elgin High School Thursday to hear local legislative candidates' takes on issues.

Republican 43rd District State Rep. Ruth Munson, challengers Keith Farnham and Daniel Kairis; Democratic 44th District Rep. Fred Crespo and challenger Peggy Brockman; Republican 55th Dist. State Rep. Randy Ramey and 49th district challenger Rachel Shattuck served as panelists at the candidates forum, hosted by the district's Citizens Advisory Council.

Because each candidate's district encompasses a portion of U-46, the focus was kept on education, council co-chair Corey Graves told the audience.

Responding to a question about the state of public education in Illinois and U-46, Kairis urged politicians to face reality. "We have failed an entire generation of students," he said. The foundation itself, he said, is broken.

As a father of two college-aged children, Crespo stressed the importance of both college readiness and making college affordable for all.

Brockman noted that more is expected out of today's school children than those of her generation.

"I don't think there has been this great deterioration," she said. "We haven't kept up with where we need to be."

While Ramey supported vouchers for school choice, Crespo, Shattuck, Farnham and Brockman did not. "Everyone deserves the same education and the same opportunities," Shattuck said. "When you introduce competition, that's when things break down."

Brockman, a member of the Schaumburg District 54 school board, said she supported school choice within the district, "so the money stays within the district."

All candidates agreed that there was an inequity of funding among school districts in the state, but were divided as to how to fix it.

Munson called the solution a balance between local control of spending and the responsibility of the state to "step up" when districts are struggling.

Shattuck, the youngest of the group by nearly two decades, said inequity "is not just between school districts, its within school districts. As a H.D. Jacobs High School alum, I can look at both sides of the (Fox) River, and see the difference," she said. A progressive income tax that reduces property taxes, she said, is something that needs to be looked at.

In the face of increasingly hard economic times, Farnham urged his peers to look at every possibility out there. "People are under a lot of strain right now ... If our schools are doing what they're doing in the best of times, what's going to happen when we're going forward in the worst of times?" he asked.

Toward the end of the forum, candidates sounded off on the responsibility of U-46 spending nearly $6 million in tax dollars on the racial bias suit pending against it.

"Six million has already been spent," Crespo said. "That's a moot point. When all is said and done, we have to look back at why this happened."

Kairis pointed a finger at the district's internal structure, suggesting the investigation start there.

Bursts of applause from the audience followed.