From the Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education Coalition…
Thanks to all of you who helped to send over 5,500 emails via our “No Taxation Without Education” campaign. Unfortunately, we got taxation without education and just a “promise” from our Governor to include $250 million for education in this year’s budget. Of course, we won’t believe that until it’s in writing. There was some support for increased money for education in the state senate, led by the Black Caucus, but we were told in Springfield that Mike Madigan and the House were not supporting additional money for education or anything else and wanted new revenue to go towards paying off our roughly $15 billion in debt and $8 billion in late bills, and that’s what we got. There was another opportunity for education money through the cigarette tax which would have generated $377 million for education but this was voted down in the House as well with only 51 legislators in support, and 60 votes needed to pass. While this isn’t the outcome we wanted, this $6 billion in new revenue to pay down our debt will likely result in fewer cuts to CPS next year. Clearly, we can’t be content with this and we need to continue to do everything we can to advocate for improved and sustainable funding for education in Illinois.
As you all know, we are currently 49th in the nation in terms of state spending on education. Our state covers roughly 30% of the cost of educating a child, as compared to about 50% on average. Local municipalities are left to fund the rest through property taxes, resulting in unsustainable and inequitable funding.
There are many layers and many avenues which lead to quality education. State funding is just one. We are moving forward to the next task at hand, meeting with the leading candidate for mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. You may recall Rahm declined our invitation to the mayoral forum. Since he was not there, we are meeting with him to discuss his ideas for education in person. As you know, together we helped to get $90 million in TIF monies returned to CPS this year. We plan to continue to advocate for more TIF money to be returned to our schools and this is one of many topics we plan to discuss with him. We will let you know the outcome of that meeting.
We are also participating in an event, “The ABCs of School Funding” on February 8th at 7pm at Lakeview High School with guest speaker Ralph Martire of the Responsible Budget Coalition. This will be an excellent opportunity to get questions answered about how schools are funded in Illinois, how property taxes effect education, etc. For more information, you can go to our website – www.ilraiseyourhand.org. Thanks again for your continued participation. Almost to a person, the people we spoke with in Springfield said that a group of vocal, organized, motivated parents is one of the best ways to create change.