By Sally Pyne
It’s back to school time.
It’s the season of autumn, sales on school supplies, school speed zones, an influx of Generation Z’ers to Normal, football on Friday nights and many Saturdays and transitions for the young and older alike. Both of our daughters are currently in graduate school, and our oldest granddaughter has started first grade, so feeling the cyclical seasonal change is affecting the Pyne family once again.
Even if you are decades away from attending or having children start school you no doubt are aware of the new school funding bill recently-and finally-passed in illinois. If you are a property owner you should probably be paying attention. If you are a voter – and i hope that you are – you should be aware of how we pay for public education. I believe that quality education should be assessable, is very important and benefits us all. Therefore, when i heard a supporter of the privatization of education exclaim that public education will never be able to improve enough, I was dismayed that they would so easily give up, and would leave behind people, and their children, other than themselves.
I find irony in the 1907 “School Days” song: “School days, school days, dear old golden rule days…” when such disparity exists for schools across our state. honestly folks, educating the children in chicago is only good for us downstate as well. Let’s treat all school children the way we’d like our children to be treated.
The Illinois program includes a tax credit plan. Contributions are made for private school scholarships and the donor gets a 75-percent state tax credit. How does that effect public schools? State income taxes in large part are used for public education in Illinois. When a donor gets a tax credit that reduces their state income taxes, a portion of which would otherwise go to the state and ultimately public schools. After a while that can add up. compromise has its price I guess, but I plan to keep an eye on this “choice” program that I feel may have its roots in racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia and homophobia.
The good news is that no school will lose any of the money they get from the state, but new money will get allocated through a new formula that gets more money to the property-poor communities. As much as schools and curriculums may have changed, learning-and practicing “the golden rule” still applies in my opinion.
Dr. Sally Pyne is a lifelong resident of Normal. She is a retired educator and served both Illinois State University and Lincoln College Normal. Her husband Ed owns the Normalite newspaper as well as seven other weeklies in McLean County.
The opinions expressed within WJBC’s Voices are solely those of the Voices’ author, and are not necessarily those of WJBC or Cumulus Media, Inc.
