Today, Governor Rauner vetoed part of Senate Bill 1 (SB1), which would have fixed Illinois’s inequitable school funding formula. Key elements of Illinois PTA’s support of SB1 are that no school district receives less funding and that all school districts are treated in the same manner regarding current (but not legacy) pension costs. The governor’s veto breaks both of those requirements, puts education funding at risk, and means that some schools may not be able to open for the start of school or remain open for long.

The governor’s veto ends the district hold harmless provisions in the 2020-2021 school year, removes the minimum funding requirement, continues to treat Chicago Public Schools’ pensions differently than those of every other district, and eliminates the CPS block grant used to pay for special education, English language learners, and other “categorical” spending. The veto also eliminates the inflation indexing of formula values in the bill, meaning that districts will effective see funding cuts over time as inflation reduces the value of that funding.

The governor has called SB1 a “bailout” for Chicago Public Schools. It is not. 268 school districts, over 30%, will receive more funds per student than CPS. Downstate students make up about 34% of all Illinois students, and about 34% of the SB1 funding goes to downstate districts. CPS accounts for 19% of Illinois students, one-third of our low-income students, and receives about 20% of the SB1 funding.

SB1 now goes back to General Assembly for an override vote to restore SB1 to its original language or a concurrence vote to accept the governor’s changes. Either vote requires the support a supermajority (60%) of legislators in both houses. If neither the override or concurrence vote receives that supermajority, the bill is completely vetoed and schools will not receive funding until a new evidence-based funding model is passed by both houses and signed into law.

We have seen the damage done over the past two years without a state budget to our community colleges, our universities, and our social services. Let’s not cut off funding from our schools by playing students from one zip code against another to score political points. Let’s put SB1 into law.

Illinois PTA is issuing a call to action, requesting its members to contact their legislators to override the governor’s veto. Following this link will take you to a prewritten letter that you can edit or send as is to your state representative and state senator. It takes just a couple of minutes. Speak up for your child and every child in Illinois so we can fix our funding formula and keep our schools open.