Community education leaders meet to promote funding reform

Excerpts:

MARION — Community education leaders on Tuesday held a town hall meeting at Crab Orchard High School to drum up support for a school funding reform campaign called “Fix the Formula.”

“Fix the Formula,” according to information presented at the town hall, is being promoted by Funding Illinois’ Future, a coalition of more than 200 school districts, school superintendents, and community- and faith-based organizations backed by Advance Illinois. The coalition is working toward fixing Illinois’ school funding formula with the goal of giving every student in Illinois the education they deserve.

According to the presentation, the EBM determines per-pupil expenditures by identifying how much “best practices” cost per pupil, given a state’s overall and regional labor market and other cost factors. Additionally, the EMB identifies and assigns a dollar amount to educational practices, which supporters say boost student achievement.

The formula also takes into account individual student needs and ensures that there are enough resources for each and every student, supporters say.

Additionally, it distributes new state dollars to school districts to help reach that target, takes local ability to pay into consideration, and directs new dollars to the neediest districts first.

“Right now, for every dollar spent on a non-low-income student in Illinois, 81 cents is spent on a low-income student," he said. "This funding model changes that. The goal, by the year 2020, is to have adopted this funding model, have tiered the additional funding dollars to close that gap between the wealthier and lower-income districts.”

According to the presentation, that gap is closed by additional monies allocated to education — current budgets remain intact.

Cheryl Graff, regional superintendent of schools at Regional Office of Education No. 30, which serves Alexander, Jackson, Perry, Pulaski and Union counties, noted that in high-income school districts, teachers are often offered between 30 and 100 hours of continuing education.

“Very seldom do we provide that to our educators,” she said. “This funding model would allow us to provide that component so we can begin to provide support to our teachers to help them become higher-quality educators.”

“Our present superintendent understands what we are trying to do and the work that needs to be done,” Kelly said. "We need to continue to try to communicate this issue throughout the state and to our legislators. If we want to promote a first-class education in Illinois we have to put the dollars behind it. Springfield knows the problem, they just don’t know how to fix it. We just showed them how to fix it.”