Chicago State Representative Christian Mitchell.
Ben Joravsky called me The Hammer when I publicly scolded Chicago Representative Christian Mitchell for his vote for pension theft.
Mitchell has just been re-elected for another term in the Illinois General Assembly
At some recent Hyde Park community meetings Mitchell as been strongly advocating for Senate Bill 16.
Mitchell said with S.B. 16, “For the first time in nearly 20 years, we have an opportunity to level the playing field and create a system that invests in all of our young people, regardless of where they live.”
I know that there have been meetings about SB16 among state House leaders. But unless something has radically changed about the bill since it passed the Senate, it does no such thing.
In order to truly level any education playing field in Illinois we would have to end the reliance on local property taxes to fund our schools.
School funding based on local property taxes ensures that poor kids get less.
What SB16 does is re-slices a cup cake of funding when what we need is a seven-layer cake.
Unless MItchell knows something he isn’t telling, we are not talking about new additional revenue for schools.
And some struggling districts will get less under the SB16 formula.
Skokie District 65 is an example. It is a district with 40% low-income enrollment and 5% of its students are homeless. They will lose a huge amount of state funds under this formula.
As will Special Needs students. SB16 caps the amount of state funds for special education. It hurts the most vulnerable.
There Mitchell goes again.
Requiring another scolding.
Fred Klonsky 
When our office holders do not care about equitable funding and equal protection of real human beings it doesn’t really matter where the money comes from, it will still be distributed to those who have the power to take the “choice” cuts.
We have a ton of public servants who look out for themselves first and their constituency second. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.
It’s beginning to look as if it will be a little more difficult than anticipated to dispossess the teachers and government workers of their retirement savings. Last summer Ralph Martire predicted the pols would go after schoolchildren and people with disabilities next.
SB16 will also end up pitting wealthy parents against less well to do districts to the detriment of public schooling throughout the state. If SB16 becomes law, New Trier, Highland Park HS, Deerfield HS and their grade school districts will lose millions of dollars per year, which will necessitate staff layoffs and cuts in services. Because of PTELL, the property tax caps, these communities won’t be able to self-tax their way back to the normal they’ve come to expect, even if the will was there. The new normal becomes contentious labor relations and teacher bashing. Frankly, probably some bashing of communities of color too as part of a misplaced backlash.
I attended a meeting hosted by Rep. Scot Drury (D-Highwood) where the superintendent from Deerfield elementary schools, two ISBE reps and one jerk from Advance Illinois explained the intention and impact of SB16. Fred is right, whatever equity smokescreen Robin Steans and Christian Mitchell wish to give it, this is about creating more educational losers, destabilizing more districts, and forcing more fights for crumbs instead of raising adequate revenue to properly fund school districts across the state.
Maybe I should take off my tin-foil hat, but I can’t help imagine that there is a long game at play here: What profits can be made, what privatization can be inflicted upon us, by destabilizing even more school districts?
Advance Illinois is behind this bill. Robin Steans (yes, Sen. Heather Steans–IL-Charter Schools-Commission–sister) is the Director. The wealthy financier Steans is their father. I attended a meeting sponsored by Rep. Scott Drury (who is, BTW, OPPOSED to SB 16) at Deerfield H.S. a few weeks ago. There was no time for public comment–in part, because the Advance IL rep. (Steans was listed as coming, but sent another guy to do A.I.’s bidding)
talked for at least THIRTY FIVE MINUTES at what was supposed to be (& kept at) a 1 1/2 hour meeting. He had all kinds of “impressive” power point charts, showing exactly how much poorer districts in Illinois would be helped were SB 16 passed (& do NOT forget that it was ALREADY PASSED in the Senate). There were 3 other panelists besides Rep. Drury who also spoke. White cards were passed to audience members. As I’d sent in a card asking about sp.ed. funding (& Rep. Drury purposely picked it, as I’d spoken to him at an earlier meeting), Robert Wolfe, the IL State Board of Ed, rep.stated that “Special education funding will not change.” There is no nice way to say it–he was, of course, lying, & I went up afterward & told him so (he turned away from me &, unfortunately, not many of the 50 or so (pathetic attendance!) audience members stuck around–or even came up to the stage–to hear this.
Fortunately, Rep. Drury was re-elected, so that’s ONE no vote in the House–even if it comes up for a vote after January. Please e-mail and call your current reps. and tell them to vote NO on SB 16. Good sources tell me they may vote on it in November…just slipping it past us. Call those newly elected, as well, if you can reach them.
Illinois public schools have just about all the grief they can handle without the passage of this Advance Illinois bill.