U-46 funding fix bill inches closer to passage

Elgin Area School District U-46 officials expressed hope this week that legislation that would provide a state funding fix is on its way to passage.

"We are seeing movement on the bill. I take it as a good sign," U-46 spokesman Tony Sanders said.

Just two weeks ago, board members feared the legislation was stalled indefinitely, after learning of a canceled meeting in late March between House leaders and district officials.

U-46 believes it is losing out on millions in state aid each year by being designated a predominately Kane County school district, though most of the district's taxable property has been in Cook County since 2004.

The more local resources available to a school district, the less state funding it receives.

The "limiting rate" - the maximum property tax rate allowed under the suburban property tax cap law - determines the amount of local funding a school district gets. If it is overestimated, it appears the district will receive more in local property taxes than it actually does, and the state delivers less funding.

This school year, district officials calculated they should have netted $69.7 million in general state aid. But with Kane County working as the dominant and estimating county, U-46 will get only $58.3 million.

The state board gave U-46 a $7.1 million "administrative fix" this year to help deal with the shortfall.

Along with requesting a permanent redesignation from the state board of education, U-46 has also thrown support behind legislation that would force the state board to adjust general state aid payments for multi-county districts.

Sponsored by Sen. Michael Noland, an Elgin Democrat, the legislation passed the Senate with a 40-15 vote late last month.

For weeks, it sat in a House rules committee.

But April 8, it moved to the executive committee, bypassing the elementary and secondary education committee. It will come up for a first reading Thursday.

State Rep. Keith Farnham said Tuesday that the movement was no coincidence.

After the canceled meeting, Farnham said he went to House leaders. Farnham said legislators have spent recent weeks "making sure that this was the way to go. ... That there wasn't some change to this that we needed to do."

Farnham said the bill will likely head to its first reading as it stands, without any amendments.

"I don't expect to have a problem getting it out of committee. We should be able to get it through. That's my goal. The only reason we held it a little bit, we wanted to make sure it was achieving what we wanted to achieve," Farnham said.

While the legislation does have the support of local legislators, the state board of education remains against its passage.

"The concern is the rates used (in the legislation) would not be accurate because they're based on estimated data," spokeswoman Mary Fergus said. "This bill does not address the 83 other districts with overlapping counties that are tax capped."

State board officials are in the process of looking at other solutions, Fergus said.