Gov. Bruce Rauner today (Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017)  issued an amendatory veto to Senate Bill 1, the school funding bill. The matter now heads to the Illinois General Assembly, where the governor has requested that lawmakers uphold his changes.

If these changes are upheld, Rauner said Illinois will achieve historic education funding reform.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from or who your family is. With a great education, you can go anywhere in life and be whomever you want to be. You can grow up, get a good job and provide for your family. That’s why the changes I have made to the education funding bill are so important,” Rauner said in an afternoon news release. “With my changes, our state ensures that enough resources flow to children in the poorest and most disadvantaged school districts across the entire state.”

At this time, it is not certain what effects the bill would have on taxpayers in Kane County. However, a report in June estimated that East Aurora School District 131 stands to be the second-biggest winner in the state in terms of funding per pupil under Senate Bill 1. Geneva and St. Charles school districts would be least affected, according to the Reboot Illinois report.

More than a year ago, the Illinois School Funding Reform Commission studied the way Illinois funds its public schools and charted a path to a fairer and more equitable system.

“These changes included in my amendatory veto reflect years of hard work by our education reform commission and our ability to overcome our political differences for the good of our young people’s futures,” Rauner said.

The amendatory veto makes the following changes to the school funding formula:

• Maintains a per-district hold harmless until the 2020-2021 school year, and then moves to a per-pupil hold harmless based on a three-year rolling average of enrollment.
• Removes the minimum funding requirement.
• Removes the Chicago block grant from the funding formula.
• Removes both Chicago Public Schools pension considerations from the formula: the normal cost pick-up and the unfunded liability deduction.
• Reintegrates the normal cost pick-up for Chicago Public Schools into the Pension Code.
• Eliminates the PTELL and TIF equalized assessed value subsidies that allow districts to continue under-reporting property wealth.
• Removes the escalators throughout the bill that automatically increase costs.
• Retains the floor for the regionalization factor, for the purposes of equity, and adds a cap, for the purposes of adequacy.

The amendatory veto also removes the accounting for future pension cost shifts to districts in the Adequacy Target

SOURCE: Illinois e-News Release

Attachments

• SB1 AVeto Letter

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