Via the Cross Guys who won’t be happy with the analysis
Kristin McQueary runs down the conflict between The Blagorgeous and Tom Cross over school funding. Last year Cross worked to get a split between categorical assistance and the general formula fund. He wants the same for new funding, while the Governor wants to target new funding for the funding formula.
For the past two years ? and especially last year ? House Republican Leader Tom Cross (R-Oswego) negotiated a split of education funding to boost the state’s contribution to categorical programs. He is irked that under the governor’s current plan, he’ll have to fight for it again.
“I’m not yelling and screaming out it as much as it seems like a deliberate attempt to ignore the suburbs,” Cross said. “I’m not opposed to putting more money into the state aid formula, but I think we’ve shown the governor’s office before that (categoricals) are important, too, so why go down this road?”
This is even more complex in that the Governor is seeking to increase state mandates upon local districts to increase graduation requirements so there’s an argument for categorical assistance. After all, if the state is requiring new services, it should help pay for them, right?
Wrong, the important part of the article is here:
In a meeting with the Daily Southtown’s editorial board, Blagojevich’s director of education reform, Elliot Regenstein, said about 40 percent of school districts statewide will be impacted by the graduation requirement changes. Most of them are downstate.
Many districts, including Chicago Public Schools, already meet the math, science and English mandates under Blagojevich’s bill.
It’s a largely rural problem again. Rural districts don’t have the faculty or the money to increase their ability to meet these requirements easily and they are are poor in terms of taxing capacity in many cases.
Categorical assistance will divert the money to everyone and split it up, but the districts being hit here are the Districts most in need, most of whom don’t have th financial wherewithall to afford the new requirements plus others.
The entire idea behind the general formula is to provide a base level of assistance depending upon need–by not funding it well, districts with the most needs are hurt. Most of the suburban districts Cross is advocating for are not doing that poorly and have the ability to tax themselves.
The Governor is not making this case–and he should–it shores him up in areas he is weakest and it’s the right thing to do. Cross and he have had a reasonably good relationship, but friends can disagree and this is a the fight to have that disagreement. Don’t demagogue on him–Cross is just protecting his constituents, but fight for rural districts and some inner ring suburbs that face serious funding challenges while other districts have plenty of local funding.
Sending money into the general formula helps those districts most in need and by primarily putting new moneys into it, it creates every incentive for members of the Lege to focus on raising that pot of money instead of sending it to categorical assistance.