Tryon Reports on Dems’ State Aid to Education Bill

A message from State Rep. Mike Tryon:

For the third year in a row, a bill that threatens to take valuable state funding away from our local schools is making its way through the legislative process in Springfield.

On Tuesday, Senator Andy Manar’s SB 231 was approved in the Senate by a narrow margin.

Yesterday it arrived in the House for our consideration.

Manar’s SB 231 is similar to his SB 1 from last year and to his SB 16 from the year before that.

In this newest version of his bill, 2/3 of Illinois’ school districts will lose state funding.

Nearly every suburban school district will lose valuable state funding dollars if this bill is approved in the House.

As you can see from the chart below, the schools that comprise about 95% of District 66 lose money.

To be fair, I do represent a sliver of the U-46 school district, which would be a winner under the Manar bill.

The second yellow column is the most telling, as it takes the funding loss down to the per-student level.

My greatest concern about this redistribution of funding is the fact that here in the suburbs we already pay approximately 90% of the costs associated with educating kids through our property taxes, which are extremely high.

Through this bill and those that have preceded it, what little state funding we do receive would be channeled away from us, forcing additional tax increases on an already taxed-to-the-max public.

Manar_Bill_Impact.png

There are some shocking components to this new bill, especially as they relate to the Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

This bill includes a massive CPS bailout to the tune of $175 million in additional funding and $205 million to rescue a failing pension system for CPS teachers.

This new $380 million is on top of the $367 million in CPS-specific grants that CPS already receives.

Worst of all, the bill gives this new money to CPS with no reform measures built in that would force CPS to be more efficient and to produce better results for students.

SB 231 includes a four year phase-down of funds that suburban schools would forfeit.

Done in 25% increments, this “hold-harmless” clause is supposed to make us feel better about sending our money to Chicago and downstate.

The bill also includes adequacy grants that would be distributed to school districts that are highly taxed but are still funded below where they should be according to Manar. The problem is, no revenue source has been identified for the grants.

Because it is “phantom” money, we cannot count on it to actually materialize.

I will keep you informed about this bill and will fight hard against it.

Once it has been assigned to a committee for a hearing, I will share information with you about how you can voice your opposition to this detrimental bill.


Comments

Tryon Reports on Dems’ State Aid to Education Bill — 12 Comments

  1. Senate Bill 231 in the 99th General Assembly should be vetoed.

    School funding is a disaster in Illinois but this bill does not address the core issues.

    ——-

    Too much money is going to hiked pension benefits (outside of Chicago that is the Teachers Retirement System of the State of Illinois, aka TRS).

    Too much money is going to hiked retiree healthcare benefits (outside of Chicago that is the Teachers Retirement Insurance Program, aka TRIP).

    The first step to fix both is to remove the pension sentence from the Illinois State Constitution.

    The pension sentence was added to the constitution on December 15, 1970, as the result of the constitutional convention which re-wrote the state constitution.

    The pension sentence has major flaws which were never explained to the voters or adequately debated at the convention.

    The pension sentence is actually the retiree benefit sentence and thus includes retiree healthcare as well as pensions for state and local government workers.

    The retiree benefit sentence states that unlimited unfunded or underfunded benefit hikes to already unfunded or underfunded pensions and retiree healthcare systems are possible.

    Plus, unlimited pay hikes (which hikes pensions) for workers participating in unfunded or underfunded pension and retiree healthcare systems.

    And guess what happened.

    Hundreds of legislative pension and retiree healthcare benefit hikes.

    Millions of state and local pay hikes which hikes pensions.

    —–

    Too much money in the suburbs is going to current pay and benefits on average, there are exceptions.

    There are many reasons for this.

    The number one reason is taxpayers have no control over collective bargaining agreements and administrator contracts.

    Thus we need collective bargaining and administrator contract reform.

    ———-

    Collective bargaining and administrator contract reform:

    Taxpayers need a change document for proposed and approved contracts.

    A change document indicates changes, typically underlined text for additions and strikethrough text for deletions, which is the methodology used to indicate changes in the Illinois General Assembly.

    —–

    The primary purported reason for all this money is to improve the academic performance of children.

    Thanks to some caring teachers and administrators that does happen for some children in some subjects in some years in some classes.

    But there are all sorts of children being lost in the shuffle for all sorts of reasons, including, all the assessments and testings don’t get passed on to and appropriately explained to parents and children, with a plan for each kid to improve in each subject.

    One of the biggest travesties is all the kids in remedial level college classes, typically English and Math, which is knowledge the college deemed the child should have learned by they time the child graduated high school.

    ——–

    The Federal, state, and local taxpayer money goes to monopoly public education.

    In Illinois, if a teacher or maintenance or bus or food service or whatever union is present, the union has a monopoly on labor for that job.

    In Illinois and some other states, the worker is forced to pay the union fees, known as forced fees (aka agency fees aka fair share fees), as a mandatory condition of employment.

    There is one exception, which does not save the employee any money, but instead of the money going to the union, the money goes to a selected charity.

    That is known as a religious objector.

    Read about how to become a religious objector here:

    http://www.employeefreedomweek.com/state/illinois

    Many union employees don’t know they can become a religious objector because the unions and employers don’t do a good job publicizing the option.

    ———-

    There is way too little taxpayer control over education.

    Shifting how state money is distributed to local school districts might help some rural districts, but it would likely raise local property taxes because no reforms are attached to the redistribution of state wealth, and in the case of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools is a dysfunctional money pit.

  2. Public education has been unglued and is not entering a world the majority of Americans do not believe should happen.

    At least a majority of voting Americans, as those in many public schools have been hearing a one sided story on how to deal with gender identity.

    For example one McHenry County blog commenter mentioning Genderbread being taught.

    New York Times
    U.S. Directs Public Schools to Allow Transgender Access to Restrooms
    By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Matt Apuzzo
    May 12, 2016
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/us/politics/obama-administration-to-issue-decree-on-transgender-access-to-school-restrooms.html

    The issue is should a boy who identifies himself as a girl be allowed to use girls restrooms.

    And vice versa.

    The majority of people believe a boy who identifies himself as a girl should use the boys restoom and boys locker room.

    The majority should not be subjected to opposite sex organs based on a super minority.

    There is no perfect answer.

    We live in an imperfect world.

    But unless the majority exerts its will and fights the Obama Administration, the mixing and matching of sex organs in restrooms will occur.

    Target now allows mixing and matching of sex organs in restrooms.

  3. **The first step to fix both is to remove the pension sentence from the Illinois State Constitution.**

    Changing the constitution will have ZERO impact on current employees, and, frankly, it will have little/no impact moving forward even with future employees.

    Future employees are already in Tier 2, which is a pretty lousy plan.

    If there were to be a lesser version of Tier 2, it would likely cost MORE because the state would have to pay in to social security.

    But lets not let facts get in the way again.

  4. If the state constitution is changed, it’s then possible to legislatively scale back unfunded and underfunded legislative benefit hikes to pension systems which were at the time unfunded and underfunded.

    Ditto retiree healthcare.

  5. **If the state constitution is changed, it’s then possible to legislatively scale back unfunded and underfunded legislative benefit hikes to pension systems which were at the time unfunded and underfunded.**

    No, you cannot take a right away retroactively.

    Changing the constitution now would not mean that you could cut benefits of folks that were promised benefits under the current pension clause.

  6. Sure you can.

    The pension sentence and the pensions are a scam with Jack Franks part of the scam.

    It’s a disgrace and a fraud.

    Underfunded and unfunded pensions and retiree healthcare legislative benefit hikes to pensions and retiree healthcare that were already unfunded and underfunded.

    And the clown claims he never voted for a tax hike.

    What a joke.

  7. alabamashake either says we can’t do something or doing something would be futile.

    Any ideas on what we *should* do?

    Or is that alabamashake’s modus operandi?

    To make everybody want to bury their head in the sand.

    Beware of people who tell you no to any and every suggestion while providing no alternatives of their own — they are usually cheerleaders for the status quo and if not they are merely useful idiots (same end).

    They are not nitpicking for truth’s sake.

    They are trying to keep you out of the ring.

    Of course, I could be wrong.

  8. The status quo is unsustainable.

    And unfair to the younger generation especially.

    The pension benefits, retiree healthcare benefits, current benefits, and salaries have been hiked to unsustainable levels.

    Hiking the pension benefits and retiree healthcare benefits was done in a deceptive fashion, not clearly explained to taxpayers, and this was done year after year for decades, over 45 years, after the pension sentence was added to the state constitution.

    The collective bargaining contracts and administrator contracts were not approved in a transparent fashion to taxpayers.

    To this day it’s not transparent what happened because change documents are not mandated or commonly available without FOIA.

    Without a change document it’s next to impossible to track all the changes in a collective bargaining agreement.

    Add to that add ons to the collective bargaining agreement, after the collective bargaining agreement has been approved, are often not provided to the public, even with a FOIA, unless specified.

    Those add ons coming in various forms such as, but not limited to memorandums of understanding, memorandums of agreement, letters of agreement, side letters, riders, etc.

    Hide and seek, kick the can, catch me if you can.

    Calling deception a promise is deceptive.

  9. **Of course, I could be wrong.**

    Yup – you are wrong.

    Its pretty simply – the IL Supreme Court has very clearly said that you can’t cut retirements benefits promised to public employees, because of the very clear pension clause in the State constitution. But you can’t change the constitution and then say promises made, under the previous constitutional language, are no longer valid. The law doesn’t work that way.

    **Any ideas on what we *should* do?**

    Sure.

    First, I’d acknowledge that we can’t cut benefits, and that changing the pension clause in the constitution won’t help.

    Second, I’d acknowledge that lowering pension benefits below what exists for Tier 2 would actually COST the state money, not save the state money, because the state/local governments would have to pay into social security.

    Third, If it were up to me, I would pass a “cost shift” forcing public school districts to pick of the costs of their pensions, so that they then have to factor that into salary increases.

    Fourth, I would change the current payment schedule for pension payments, which was and is based on an arbitrary number.

    Fifth, we should also raise revenue and stop pretending that it isn’t necessary. I would completely rewrite the tax code, making it working for a 21st century economy, including broadening the sales tax base, shifting the primary responsibility of education funding to the state, implementing a graduated rate income tax structure, etc.

    I’ve got plenty of other ideas.

    But what I can’t stand is when people like Mark make statements of fact that actually don’t align with the facts at all.

  10. Thank you Mike!

    Keep up the good work in fighting for McHenry County Taxpayers.

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