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Local Superintendent Says Latest Funding Proposal Won't Work

A local Superintendent says a recent school funding reform proposal that has passed the Senate, and now heads to the House, is not going to work.

 

Mike Williams is the Superintendent of Maroa-Forsyth Schools and says the latest funding proposal that has passed the Illinois Senate is essentially a redistribution of wealth among Illinois schools. He says the bill doesn't really address the underlying issue.

 

 

Under the proposal, the Maroa-Forsyth district would stand to lose almost a third of their state funding. Williams feels the state is not considering the local tax rates and revenues district to district.

 

 

Williams says the proposal isn't going to work and doesn't see how it will pass in it's current form.

 

 

For local superintendents, the frustration of all the reform proposals boils down to the fact the current formula hasn't been fully funded in almost 10 years, and Williams says before all the prorations started, no one was complaining about the funding formula.

 

 

Williams says Maroa-Forsyth spends just short of $10-thousand for each student in the district, however, he says schools in the Chicago suburbs are spending twice that much, and some more.

 

He doesn't have a perfect answer and feels the way the current proposal plays out, it stacks districts against each other and doesn't put the students first.  

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