Governor Rauner in Paxton, Illinois earlier this year
CHICAGO – Governor Bruce Rauner wrote an op-ed about the urgent need for an education funding bill that appeared in the Daily Herald Wednesday. An excerpt:
Since taking office, I've made educating all children in Illinois my top priority. Since February, I've called on the General Assembly to pass a clean education funding bill to ensure our schools open on time this fall with full funding for the first time in seven years.
Unfortunately, Democratic leaders adjourned on May 31st without enacting a balanced budget, leaving children, parents and teachers across the state wondering if schools will open on time.
The good news is that reasonable, fair solutions are being offered. GOP Leaders introduced a clean, stand-alone education bill that puts our children first by increasing school funding by $240 million. […] It ensures the vast majority of schools in Illinois get more money this year than they did last year while no school district receives less.
So why would anyone delay passing such a reasonable bill into law? As the Senate president told us months ago, Democrats want to hold up funding for schools to change the school funding formula they created.
Democrats want to force suburban and downstate taxpayers to bailout CPS from years of financial mismanagement and declining student enrollment — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. […]
The school funding formula needs reform, but there is a lack of consensus within the General Assembly and across school districts on how to do this. This also comes after the Democrats reduced overall state support for schools four times in the last 10 years.
To hold districts hostage in an attempt to sneak in a new school funding formula that will disproportionately send more money to CPS will not solve our inequitable funding formula for the long term.
The rest is HERE.
Gov Rauner, thanks for being the grown up in the room
I second
In last night’s TV news, Sharkey, head of the Chicago Teachers Union, was whining. He fears reduction of the teachers’ pension fund. This is, in a way, the chickens coming home to roost in the Democrat hen coop.
Members of the Chicago School Board are appointed by Chicago’s Democrat mayor. The laws of this state are written by the Chicago Democrat majorities in the Illinois House and Senate, which always EXEMPTS Chicago and its peculiar institutions from laws they inflict on the rest of us.
So, WHO is really responsible for the shortcomings in the CTU Pension Plan? The very Democrats they continually support, elect, and re-elect.
It is not the responsibility of the rest of Illinois to re-finance the incompetence and corruption caused by THEIR elected officials for whom WE cannot vote.