Poor performance not due to money

To the editor: The Rev. Bill Hybels is mistaken in saying that children in Barrington and Roseland get equal funding from the state for their education (Daily Herald, Jan. 21) and that disparities in local property tax revenues then produce unequal funding and thus unequal educational achievement in the two communities.

As the Daily Herald's series, "School Finance 101" pointed out, there are wide disparities in state, local, and federal funding per child -- and in the results achieved for the dollars spent.

According to the State Report Card, Barrington Unit District 220 received just $990 per pupil from the state for the 2005-06 school year and just $330 per pupil from the federal government. Barrington taxpayers shouldered almost 90 percent of the cost of funding the $11,142 per pupil that District 220 spent in operating dollars in 2005-06.

By contrast, Roseland students, part of the Chicago Public Schools, each received $3,910 from the state and $1,850 from the federal government in 2005-06, a total of $5,760 per pupil. Chicago taxpayers shouldered less than half of the cost of funding the $10,409 per pupil that the Chicago Public Schools spent in operating dollars in 2005-06 -- almost as much as Barrington.

If children in Roseland aren't getting a good education, it's not because taxpayers in Barrington and the rest of Illinois aren't sending them enough money, it's because parents in Roseland aren't yelling and screaming enough about the lousy education their children are getting for the $10,000-plus that taxpayers are spending on them each year. If they had a $10,000 voucher to choose a different school, they'd soon see better alternatives than their local public schools.

It's not who provides the money that matters, it's who controls the money. And right now, it's not the parents.

George A. Clowes

Mount Prospect