The Illinois State Board of Education announced Thursday it has issued vouchers to the Illinois State Comptroller, paving the way for the new tier funding portion of fiscal year 2018 Evidence-Based Funding to be distributed to the most under-resourced districts.

 

The Illinois Association of School Administrators, along with other education stakeholders, have advocated for the new tier funding to be released for months and are thrilled for this announcement.

 

Many of you have been asking how much new tier funding your district will receive. ISBE has released a spreadsheet detailing the new funding. You can access that spreadsheet here.

 

I have been in contact with the Illinois Comptroller's Office and have been told they are ready to release the new funds to school districts once the money is vouchered.

 

This year's delivery of new tier funding will occur over the course of six payments - two each month from April to June. The first payment totals $60 million in new tier funding.

 

Overall, new tier funding totals approximately $395 million statewide, including $29 million specifically for English learners in the highest need districts.

 

This is a substantial investment in K-12 public education, but we still have a long way to go for each school district to reach its adequacy target, as identified in the new evidence-base model.

 

The goal of IASA and Vision 20/20 public policy platform is for each school district to reach 90 percent of their adequacy target in 10 years - an investment that will require at least $5 billion. To get to that level, it would take $500 million in additional new tier funding each year to reach that goal. As of now, the state is already behind, but at least it's on the right path.

 

Looking forward into this legislative session, our goal for the 2018-19 budget is for at least $350 million in additional new tier funding for K-12 education. Both the House and Senate return next week, and we expect an interesting stretch over the next seven weeks.

 

Our focus will be to continue to advocate for additional funds, as well as solutions to address the teacher shortage problem in Illinois. The Illinois Statewide School Management Alliance (IASA, IASBO, IASB and IPA) has identified a list of general ideas it supports, as well as specific legislation that has been filed. Learn more about our positions here.

 

In addition, IASA also continues to monitor, and advocate against, proposals by the governor to shift costs of pensions from the state to local school districts and freeze property taxes. At this time, I don't expect any of these two issues to gain much traction this session due to it being an election year. However, as we've seen before, twists and turns can happen at the statehouse, so nothing can be ruled out.

 

As the legislative session gears up there are some important dates to be aware of. Those are:

 

 

Finally, I also want to remind everyone to continue to reach out to your local legislators and share with them why additional funding is critical for your district. It is going to take a collective effort for districts to continue to move closer to their adequacy targets.

 

You can find contact information for each legislator at ilga.gov.

 

Diane Hendren

Director of Governmental Relations

Illinois Association of School Administrators