Uphold constitution on school support

Our state constitution in Article X, Section 1 says that the state has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education. This is the law. This is what the people want done for many reasons.

If you look at the financial reports of the school districts outside of Chicago, this is the type of information that you will find.

I live in Crystal Lake District 47. The 2016 Financial Report shows that the district spent about $70 million on 7,035 students. The Constitution says that the state should have given the district about $35 million. The district received about $9 million from the state. The state should have given the district about $ 26 million more. If the district received the $26 million, local property taxes could be decreased from about $56 million to $30 million. This would be a property tax decrease to the schools of about 45 percent.

If you look at your property tax bill, schools take up about 66 percent of the total bill. So the reduction to your total property tax bill would be about 30 percent. I have seen some of the latest so called educational funding reforms saying the district would get another $100,000 to $600,000. This is a far cry from the $26 million that is due District 47 as per our Constitution. We should demand that the people representing us uphold the Constitution.

Jim Yaworski

Crystal Lake