$50 Million for What?______________________________

That’s how much the state will spend on “Property Tax Relief Grants” (PTRG) this year.

In my last email, I promised to let you in on how the school funding formula is worse than anyone in Springfield will tell you. Here are the dirty details on just one part of the funding formula:

As part of the 2017 school funding formula change, $50 million – of the annual targeted $350 million increase in state education funding – is designated to go to districts with high tax rates to help with property tax relief.

The first problem with is that it is not real property tax relief. $50 million may sound like a lot of money, but it is insufficient to provide real relief in Illinois – where we have the highest overall tax burden and the second highest property tax rates in the nation.

For example, in Park Forest – the municipality with the highest property tax rate in the state – their share of the grant gives the average homeowner back $125 on a median property tax bill of $4,938.

In Reavis 220 School District in Burbank, the average homeowner will receive back $0.59. Read more here from Prairie State Wire.

The second problem is that the PTRG is going to districts that – on average – spend $17,960 per student, 35% more that the state average of $13,337. 

This year, 373 school districts applied for a property tax relief grant. Only 28 schools were approved for a portion of the $50 million. You can click here to view a chart I made detailing the amount of the grant, spending per student and the percentage of students that are considered “At Grade Level” in English Language Arts and Math per ISBE data. Outputs and inputs should be considered in developing education funding models, but they rarely are.

Giving grants to district that spend way beyond the state average is neither fair nor equitable. 

Here are a couple of examples:

Ford Heights spends $26,226 per student. This elementary district spends $363,000 for its superintendent to oversee just 447 students. Only 21 percent of their students, however, read or perform math at grade level. Why should they get a nickel more from state taxpayers? But they received one of the state’s Property Tax Relief Grants.

Oak Park River Forest (OPRF) District 200 is a high school district with 3415 students according to Illinois State Board of Education data. OPRF is a wealthy district with a relatively low poverty count. They also got a Property Tax Relief Grant even though they spend $23,996 per student – or 80% more than the state average. That grant will amount to $38 million over the next 10 years because the PTRG amount becomes a permanent part of each district’s base funding minimum going forward. For this relief, OPRF only needs to remit back to their property taxpayers $5.8 million for one year.

And the insiders who wrote and advocated for the school funding formula live in the OPRF district. 

From the West Cook News: 

“OPRF also happens to be home to some of the key players responsible for the new school funding scheme, which appropriated $350 million to the schools with $ 50 million of it set aside for property tax relief. Tony Smith was the State Superintendent of Schools under former Governor Rauner; Michelle Turner Mangan, chairs the professional review panel in charge of recalibrating the school funding model; Ralph Martire, candidate for the OPRF school board, was one of the architects of the 2017 evidence-based bill. As taxpayers in the district, all will benefit from the property tax relief, which is funded by taxpayers statewide.” 

If it is important to these districts to give their property owners relief all they need to do is just spend less money. The West Cook News broke this story.

Where are your legislators on this? Most of them voted for the funding formula change. As a state legislator, I was one of the only Republicans who voted against it. Most of them bragged about the property tax relief grants – even touting that as being part of the reason they voted for the formula change. Most of them passed the legislation without even knowing what was in it. 

It is not responsible to give more state funds to districts spending $27,000 per student when 80% of them are failing. But legislators won’t do anything about it. And they’re hoping you won’t either. 

See how your State Representatives voted here. 

See how your State Senators voted here.

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