More McHenry County Blog

Let’s deal with the first half of the question first.

School funding has been stuck on “tax swap” since 1994 when Republican Jim Edgar denounced Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Dawn Clark Netsch for proposing it. (That was about two years before he slightly re-worked the plan and proposed it unsuccessfully himself.)

The school funding question is really two questions involving

· Equity and
· MORE,

That is, how can we get more money.

The equity question is a serious one and probably could be solved, if the “MORE” people would allow it.

It is quite clear that some school districts have much more money to spend on a per pupil basis than do others. One of the major reasons is that industrial and commercial property is unevenly spread around Illinois. Nuclear power plant school disilarly, regional shopping school districts are big winners, while the district next door may seem to want for basic needs.

One of the suggestions that it seems to me to be worth considering is to take all of the commercial and industrial real estate and throw it into one big state pot. All the real estate taxes coming from this real estate could then be used to equalize as best as would be possible the amount of money that each school district had to spend on each child.

A more revolutionary approach has been advance by Extreme Wisdom blog’s author Bruno Behrend. Take all of the money spent operating schools and put in one pot. Divide that number by the number of students. Earmark that amount for each child’s education. Do not send it to the local public school. The parent gets to decide which school will get each of their children’s school funding check.

Either approach would improve the situation. With both proposals, however, expect screams from the property-rich districts. By districts, I mean citizens of such districts. Of course, the school employees would object.

Now, let’s tackle the MORE part of the question.

There’s no way to provide enough money to satisfy the MORE people.

I could add to that statement, but I cannot improve upon it.

Included in the question is one that helps the growing areas of the state more than any other state subsidy—school construction subsidies.

This grant program has encouraged school re-building Downstate that was not necessary. The best analyzed instance is in Jersey County, where a taxpayer has done an extensive and intensive investigation and come up with quite disturbing. If you want to be put in contact with the man, let me know.

The short of it is that “free money” encourages waste and that is certainly showing up.

But, there should be help from the state, in my opinion. Residents of fast growing areas did not cause the growth. (Well, maybe the folks moving in did, but the pre-growth residents didn’t.) Since these high growth areas are literally the growth tips of the state, I think a subsidy is deserved.

How to finance it?

I don’t have a clue. A revenue flow of about $100 million a year is needed to borrow $1 billion. There was a long time in the 1980’s when there just wasn’t money to provide help. Maybe we are entering another such period.

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