Illinois State Schools Superintendent Christopher Koch is asking for $7.5 billion in funding for the next fiscal year. (WJBC file photo)
By Illinois News Network
SPRINGFIELD – The state’s board of education is asking for nearly half a billion more than what the governor proposed in his budget for the coming fiscal year.
During a House Appropriations hearing on education funding Tuesday, the state’s Schools Superintendent Christopher Koch said the Illinois State Board of Education is asking for a budget of over $7.5 billion from general funds, an increase of ten percent from the previous year.
"We are trying to balance with the best information we have about the financial condition of our schools and what's necessary to go forward this year," Koch said.
State Rep. David McSweeney (R-Cary) said ISBE would get a fairer hearing in the future if they came to the table with a budget that deals with the current fiscal realities.
"How do you propose we pay for it," McSweeney asked Koch. "You know we are in a fiscal crisis. Everybody who's sitting here knows that. It's the elephant in the room."
Rauner’s proposed budget increases general funds for education from the previous year, including an increase in primary and secondary education funding by over $320 million.
Senate Bill 1
A state senator who is proposing a revamped formula for state funding of education said increasing funding won’t fix the system.
State Sen. Andy Manar (D-Bunker Hill) said the changes to his proposal from last year includes a regionalization cost factor considering differences on a wage index of particular areas, a change to the low income calculation, and an adequacy grant that would hold districts harmless if they tax above the state average but spend below the state average per pupil, among other changes. But Manar said simply spending more on public education won’t solve the problem.
Manar said the two steps he believes can help improve education are updating the formula to make it more modern and increase funding overtime.
"To truly get to the root of the problem will take two steps and the two steps are difficult undoubtedly," Manar said.
