UPDATED: The dollars-and-cents details of a new school funding plan were revealed yesterday. Some districts would gain just a few cents per pupil; others would gain more than a thousand dollars per child.
Only a few schools would lose money under the new plan proposed by Sen. Jason Barickman, a Republican from Bloomington. But lawmakers will still have plenty to fight about when they see how few cents some districts gain compared to others.
Barickman is pushing one of the two legislative efforts to fix the state's infamously inequitable school funding formula, and so far the only one to reveal how all 852 districts would fare if his idea becomes law.
The spreadsheet posted on his website shows, for example, that suburban Hinsdale would gain a $1.50 per child while East St. Louis, where 99 percent of the students are low-income, would gain about $260 per pupil. Limestone, near Peoria, would be the biggest winner, gaining almost $1,400 per child.
UPDATE: That spreadsheet has an apparent error in the column titled "FY17 Disbursements." According to some school officials, the numbers don't reflect the true amount their districts received, because stopgap funds are omitted.
The spreadsheet also shows that Chicago Public Schools would lose $67 per child, but a companion bill could restore that amount by paying for Chicago teachers' pensions.
