Education gets short shrift again

Here we go again. The state says that there is no additional new money for educating our kids — again.

Illinois is now $3.3 billion behind in fully funding our schools by 2027. The deficit grew by $528 million last year. The state's Evidence-Based Funding plan of giving $350 million of new money needs to be increased and indexed for inflation. If the $350 million had been indexed for inflation starting in 2018, the EBF plan would have our schools almost fully funded at 86% adequacy. 90% is considered fully funded. EBF assumes school districts will get about 10% from the federal government.

The state found $1.5 billion for public transportation. The state's plan did this without the CTA raising the prices of the riders using the CTA. Prices have not been raised in nine years.

There are a lot of people looking for handouts. The state gave free money to over 3,000 grants totaling over $1 billion. If the state cut back grants by 10%, almost $100 million could be given to school districts. It doesn't look good when a $40 million grant was given to Proviso High School District 209 to build a sports complex. D209 is at 66% adequacy. EBF says that D209 needs $20.6 million to be considered fully funded. D209 received only $3.3 million of new money for education this year. You think that somebody's priorities are out of wack?

The state's rainy day fund has $2.4 billion and the road fund has a $3.3 billion surplus. The state's revenues are up $1.2 billion for the first six months.

I can't believe that the state cannot find an additional $200 million and increase the new money from $350 million to $550 million for education. Evidence-based funding gets a D.

Jim Yaworski

Crystal Lake