The Illinois Board of Education on Thursday approved a budget seeking a $410 million increase in state funds for elementary and high schools.
The $3.45 billion spending plan for 1993-94 would be 13.9 percent more than the current $3.04 billion for the state’s public schools.
Robert Leininger, state superintendent of education, said the budget would help make up for state funding deficiencies, but still falls far short of the needs for Illinois public education.
“This is a temporary cure for a chronic disease,” Leininger said. “This state needs a long-range funding plan, one that reverses the trends of declining state share of costs and massive underfunding of mandated programs.”
State school officials were unable to estimate how much more money Chicago or any other individual school district would receive under the proposal.
The budget goes to Gov. Jim Edgar for his consideration. The governor will include school spending as part of his state budget proposal on March 3.
Edgar has said he is sympathetic to the needs of education, but will not be recommending a $400 million-plus increase in state funds. That level of spending increase likely would require a boost in the state income tax rate, and the governor has said he has found no sentiment among state legislators to do that.
The goal of Illinois educators is to raise the state’s share of total elementary and high school funds to at least 50 percent.
Even with a $410 million increase, the state’s share of school funds would go to 36.7 percent from 33.6 percent.
The percentage of state funding for the schools has declined from a high of 48 percent in 1976 to 33 percent in the current year.
Local property taxes make up 58 percent of the budget of an average Illinois school district, though in some Du Page County and north suburban districts the figure is 90 percent and higher because of high property tax bases.
Last November, a proposal for an amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would have required at least half of school funding to come from the state failed by 3 percent to get the necessary 60 percent vote for approval.
