Blazing New Trails - Connexions

274 CRITICAL ISSUES IN SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Change (liberalize) the manner in which the child poverty count was to be calculated
in the general state aid formula;
Encourage, through fiscal incentives, the consolidation of small school districts and
mandate that K-12 districts should have no high school smaller than 250 students; and
Reduce the reliance upon local property taxes in the state aid formula by seeking other
revenues sources, such as increasing the level of the state income tax. (Education
Funding Advisory Board, 2002)
Although the EFAB report had recommended a foundation state aid level of $5665 per
student for fiscal year 2003 (FY03), the legislature voted for a funding level of $4810, which
constituted an increase of $250 per student over the previous year (Fritts, 2008). While very
minor adjustments were made in the child poverty calculation and consolidation incentives,
nothing major was done regarding a change in funding mechanisms. In April of 2005, a
second EFAB report recommended a foundation level of $6405 for FY06 (Education Funding
Advisory Board, Illinois Education Funding, 2005). The actual allocation was $5164 per
student (Fritts, 2008). Over the subsequent years since FY06, the foundation level of the
Illinois general state aid formula has crept up to a level of $6119 for FY10 (ISBE. Funding:
General State Aid, 2010). The General Assembly had not sent a final budget for FY11 to
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn by the time this article was completed, but school districts have
been told to expect a foundation level of less than $5000 for FY 11.
The purpose of this chapter was to show that not only is there a disparity of funding
between and among states, but also within school districts in individual states. Illinois and
Colorado funding levels were examined to show that those school districts with the highest
concentrations of minority and low income students are the most likely to be inadequately
funded by the state. This leads to fewer resources to employ the most qualified teachers and
administrators. The social justice implications of this situation are addressed later in the paper.
Illinois School District Structure
One of the recommendations of the previously cited original EFAB report was to
encourage the consolidation of school districts. Illinois is a populous state with a public
school enrollment of 2,035,211 students in the 2008–2009 school year (Illinois State Board of
Education, 2009). These students were educated in 869 school districts utilizing a triad of
organizational structures. Some school districts in Illinois are K-12 unit districts. These tend
to predominate in rural and downstate Illinois. Another type of district is the K-8 elementary
district. Finally, there are also grades 9–12 high school districts in Illinois. The reason that
Illinois has so many school districts dates back to the Land Ordinance of 1785. It had several
key purposes, but “one of its key provisions was to divide the land acquired from Great
Britain following the Revolutionary War, primarily in the Midwest, into six mile square
townships, each composed of 36 one square mile blocks”(Kersten, 2009, p. 6). At one time in
the mid-twentieth century, Illinois had over 10,000 school districts. Virtually every school
was a separate school district. While many school district consolidations occurred in the last
century, and even periodically occur today, Illinois residents are protective of their local
schools. In the words of Kersten (2009),