Illinois education scored a small gain when the General Assembly finished up last week. Legislators acknowledged the priority that education deserves and the imperative that schools have a dependable income source when they voted to make permanent the half of the income-tax surcharge that goes to schools.
Even so, that move only secured existing funding. Other legislative action, and inaction, left many school districts more concerned than ever about their long-term financial prospects.
In the northeastern Illinois collar counties, school officials are necessarily worried about the impact of the newly imposed 5 percent cap on local property taxes. And in Chicago, the legislature left little cause for optimism by anyone who cares what happens next to the city`s public schools.
Legislators loosely stitched together the Chicago school reform law, approving a contrived process for electing Local School Councils that dilutes parental power. They continued to give preference to the interests of union employees over the needs of children, protecting teachers` ability to choose their own school council representatives and ceding to Chicago principals only the barest modicum of authority over custodians and lunchroom workers.
Community groups involved in the school reform movement counted as a victory the legislature`s refusal to postpone the transfer of more state poverty aid from the schools` overall operating budget to supplemental local programs. This could turn out to be a short-lived triumph, however, if schools don`t open in September or shut down next spring.
Chicago Schools Supt. Ted Kimbrough learned the hard way how little most Illinois legislators care about Chicago schools. He`s now about to learn-probably in an equally hard way-just how tough Jacqueline Vaughn and the Chicago Teachers Union can be when staff pay and prerogatives are at stake.
To erase the Chicago Board of Education`s mammoth deficit, all parties in the school system will have to accept cuts that affect them. The central administration will have to take more than the $13 million reduction Kimbrough has offered. The unions will have to budge, not only on their scheduled 7 percent pay raises but also on the many contract clauses and work rules that push up costs.
One particularly appealing idea put forth by the administration has the astonishing feature of furthering education while saving money. The plan is to have high school instructors teach an additional 50 minutes each day, up from 200 minutes. This proposal, which Vaughn indicated some willingness to entertain, would save $17 million if begun in September. Just as important, it would significantly increase the amount of actual instructional time provided to students and put an overdue halt to the phony practice of counting study-hall periods-which huge numbers of students skip anyway-as classroom time.
Other union-contract rules, such as the number of maintenance workers each school must employ, are wastefully out-of-date and need to be slashed.
Even if such contract concessions can be obtained from the unions, some cuts will still have to be made that dismay parents, children and communities. Unpopular as they may be, selective school closings and consolidations are justifiable in a system that expanded the number of schools while student enrollment was falling sharply.
And then, once all those steps have been taken and, as is likely, more cuts are still needed, let school councils decide what else will be cut in each of their own local schools to reach the final, bottom line.
The exact amount of the schools` deficit can be quibbled over forever, if no one cares whether schools open. If schools don`t open, because of a strike or for any reason, that would be the most horrible cut of all.
Kimbrough, school board members, union leaders, school council members and civic groups all have to recognize this and get to work-now-to develop a livable budget plan.
