From Cindy Richards:

However, if Blagojevich insists on trying to squeeze school funding out of the already dry well of the state’s general fund, he may be remembered not as a fiscal conservative, but as a man who lacked the political will to finally fix things for kids.

So, no mention of Jim Edgar’s lie about doing the tax swap during the 1994 campaign and then turning around and attempting exactly that?

I’m happy to slag on the Governor, but let’s not forget the garbage that got us into this place. Edgar is one of the most popular public officials in the State of Illinois to this day, but he lied about school funding and then failed to pass it. It’s hard to say that such a stance is going to hurt a Governor’s legacy.

That said, the rest of the column lays out a clear and coherent argument about the problem with the current system, but it doesn’t go far enough.

Over reliance on property taxes hurts rural schools and inner ring suburbs (AKA Daily Southtown areas) harder than areas that are relatively property rich. That is where the school are hit the hardest.

Ideally, a system should be set up where the State provides a minimum amount a community needs to run a school system and then it can tax itself if it wants to improve that level of education. With the state of the rural economy, the capacity to tax many rural districts is very, very small.

The problem is that we also simply have too many school districts. Many of the rural districts need to be forced to consolidate and when they do that, they need to be assured the consolidation assistance is there for them.