SPRINGFIELD, IL – (Cole Latterbach, Illinois News Network. Please click on the link for the full story. Here is an excerpt below.)
At the center of the school funding argument is the preferential treatment that Gov. Bruce Rauner and Republican lawmakers say Chicago Public Schools would receive under the Democrats’ plan.
When Rauner filed his amendatory veto of the school funding formula, he said it removed much of that preferential treatment CPS would have otherwise received. He objected to suburban and downstate taxpayers bailing out Chicago’s underfunded teachers’ pension.
When asked Tuesday, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, said Chicago has long been shortchanged by the state because the city is double-billed for pensions.
“Chicago taxpayers pay for our teacher pensions but we also get to pay for the downstate teachers,” Currie said. “The downstate school districts don’t pay for their teachers.”
But suburban state Rep. Steven Reick, R-Woodstock, said the original language in Senate Bill 1 not only made the state’s annual payment to Chicago Public Schools’ pensions part of normal funding, it also allowed only Chicago to add its legacy pension debt in the formula for determining a district’s ability to fund its own schools. This made the district appear much worse off than it otherwise would, qualifying it for more state aid.
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