Time to get serious on school funding

By this time, no one can be too surprised to hear that another school district is facing painful staffing cuts in order to address a budget disaster. It's a theme that has been repeated in suburban school districts from Mundelein to Naperville, from Maine Township to Carpentersville. This week it emerged with a vengeance in Elgin Area Unit District 46, which slashed more than 1,000 jobs - 25 percent of its work force.

Numbers like that can't help but get your attention. But they also demand more than shock and awe. They demand more than simple calls for the state to come through with the money it owes - though those calls are valid - and they demand more than the hope that heavily burdened property owners will pony up more money.

They demand the kind of fundamental re-examination of the schools that many people have been urging for years, but no one has shown the determination or will to seriously undertake.

Let's be clear. Even a funding overhaul likely wouldn't prevent schools, or local governments for that matter, from unforeseeable combinations of pressures like those that have struck in recent years. But certainly, faults in the current system are painfully evident.

Perhaps topping the list is the unreliability of state aid. A sizable factor in the revenue gap facing every suburban district has been the question of when, or whether, the state will come through with money it owes. Of U-46's $29 million shortfall, that uncertainty amounts to $12 million.

Weakness has also been exposed in the heavy reliance of suburban schools on the property tax. Districts that have maintained some contingency funds have been able to spread out some of the pain of the present conditions, but this crisis has clearly demonstrated the importance of contingency budgets. Nor can we overlook a relationship between labor and the community that has left schools with mounting financial expectations and strict layoff rules.

There are key structural questions as well. Can we afford as many districts as we have? Would it make sense to combine more high school and elementary districts? Can we create a consistent standard for teacher-student or administrator-student ratios? Is the step-increase model appropriate for determining pay? If staffing cuts are necessary, where do seniority and teacher-quality fit into the decision making?

If addressing these issues were easy, it would surely have been done long ago. But it's not. Now, it cannot be put off any longer. In an emotional statement Monday night about the evolution of school funding, U-46 school board President Ken Kaczynski stated, "Next year, our district won't look like it did today." That's true for every school system in the suburbs. The question is, what should our districts look like - and, will we let circumstances determine that or, as legislators, administrators, teachers, parents and taxpayers, will we reach a reasoned plan together?