Education advocates warned Wednesday that Gov. George Ryan’s plan to slash funding for 22 programs and shift the money to general state aid to schools could harm Illinois’ most vulnerable children.
Although Ryan touted his plan as helping “have-nots,” Chicago Public Schools would get less state money than they are receiving now, according to a preliminary estimate by the Illinois State Board of Education.
“This is really bad news for the kids most at risk,” said Michael Burke, spokesman for Ounce of Prevention, a Chicago non-profit agency that advocates for early childhood education, one of the grant programs to be cut under Ryan’s proposal. “This is not the way the state should be moving, if we really care about education.”
Several suburban superintendents who were getting their first look at the list of proposed cuts said they would be hard-pressed to continue offering the programs started with state grants.
In his budget address Wednesday, Ryan proposed taking $500 million currently distributed through the 22 grant programs and delivering it instead as general state aid, which is divided up under a formula that favors poor districts and has fewer strings attached.
Bilingual education, early childhood education, truant and dropout assistance, reading improvement, substance abuse prevention, and math and science literacy are among the grant programs being targeted for extinction.
No one knows for sure how Ryan’s plan would affect individual districts. But because poor districts receive more general state aid than do wealthy ones, they would generally fare better under Ryan’s proposal, said Kim Knauer, spokeswoman with the state board.
Chicago receives millions of dollars through the grant programs. If that money is diverted to state aid, even an increase in general funds would not replace everything the state’s largest system would lose, Knauer said. She said the exact figures were not available Wednesday but the estimate is based on budgets from the 2000-2001 school year.
Special-interest groups said they have fought to get millions of dollars set aside for targeted initiatives. Cutting those programs and allowing local school officials to use the money for any purpose will hurt students, they say.
Else Hamayan of the Illinois Advisory Council on Bilingual Education predicted that Ryan’s plan to slash the $62 million bilingual education program will leave many non-English speaking students behind and could lead to lawsuits.
“This plan will put us back 20 years, to a time when bilingual students were being ignored and left to fend for themselves,” Hamayan said. “If you just send this money out, without targeting it to bilingual students, I can guarantee they will get the short end of the stick.”
Burke agrees.
“This turns back the clock on five years of progress for low-income families and kids who desperately need early childhood education programs,” he said.
Burke applauded Ryan for setting aside $6 million to launch a universal preschool program. “But, with the other hand, he has decimated” the foundation for preschool programs, he said, taking away far more than his new program would add.
Ryan’s plan has particularly upset suburban school officials, whose districts receive little state aid other than through the grant programs.
Ric King, controller for Schaumburg District 54, said cutting funding for the reading program could spell trouble. The district receives about $700,000 through the grant to help students who are struggling to read.
“We’d have to probably consider getting rid of all of our reading improvement aides,” he said.
Supt. Gail McKinzie of Indian Prairie School District 204 said the district could lose more than $2 million. Indian Prairie gets grants for early childhood, gifted and reading improvement programs.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers also announced its opposition to the plan Wednesday, saying Ryan’s proposal would pit suburban, urban and rural districts against one another.
