© 2024 NPR Illinois
The Capital's Community & News Service
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Dusty Rhodes headshot
Education Desk
The Education Desk is our education blog focusing on key areas of news coverage important to the state and its improvement. Evidence of public policy performance and impact will be reported and analyzed. We encourage you to engage in commenting and discussing the coverage of education from pre-natal to Higher Ed.Dusty Rhodes curates this blog that will provide follow-up to full-length stories, links to other reports of interest, statistics, and conversations with you about the issues and stories.About - Additional Education Coverage00000179-2419-d250-a579-e41d385d0000

Compromise School Funding Plan Passes House

Vote tabluation board in Illinois House.
Dusty Rhodes
/
NPR Illinois | 91.9 UIS
A new school funding plan won approval in the Illinois House.

It took three different votes, but Illinois may finally be getting the new school funding formula lawmakers have been working on for the past few years. The state House of Representatives yesterday approved a new evidence-based school funding plan. It's a compromise, containing most of the plan Democrats proposed months ago, plus a new $75 million program that would provide tax credits to organizations offering private school scholarships.

Teachers unions criticized that provision.

But Representative Bob Pritchard, a Republican from Hinckley, says this school funding reform measure is one of the best things the Illinois House has done.

"There's been a lot of successful bills that we've passed. We've helped veterans, we've dealt with the environment, with agriculture. But I think this will have the longest-lasting effect," he said.
Nobody got everything they wanted, but almost everybody seemed happy when this compromise legislation got a favorable vote. Besides the private-school provision, Republicans added cost-saving options for PE and drivers ed, plus some property tax relief.
Rep. Will Davis, the Homewood Democrat who carried the bill, was proud of the final product.

"Even with the tweaks of the compromise — the tax credit not withstanding — the rest of that bill represented things that we wanted to do, that we thought we should do, things that were important to do," he said.

Illinois' current school funding formula has some of the biggest gaps between its richest and poorest districts of any state in the nation.

The vote was followed by a flurry of statements from lawmakers and the governor, praising the agreement. In fact, Rauner expressed his gratitude to the man he has spent most of time in office demonizing: Speaker of the House Michael Madigan.

The Senate is expected to approve the compromise today, and Rauner has promised to sign it.??

 

NPR Illinois Education Desk logo

As someone who values being knowledgeable about Illinois, please support this public radio station by clicking on the, "Donate," button at the top of this page.  If you're already a supporter, thank you!

After a long career in newspapers (Dallas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Anchorage Daily News, Illinois Times), Dusty returned to school to get a master's degree in multimedia journalism. She began work as Education Desk reporter at NPR Illinois in September 2014.
Related Stories