Rep. Jeanne Ives (R- Wheaton) warned her fellow representatives that the state's school funding bill that went to a vote on Monday is fundamentally flawed because it does not tie funding to student outcomes.
“There’s nothing in this bill that talks about measuring student growth in order to receive more money, nor does it talk about funding the right items and showing that the outcomes actually came out of funding those right items,” Ives said, as shown in a video posted on her website. “This is all an input-based model… .It’s not about the money. It’s about how is that money being used, and nothing in this formula says that you have to use the money in a particular way.”
Senate Bill 1947, which passed on Monday despite Ives's objections, was also approved by the Senate a day later and is expected to be signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who helped work on the compromise legislation.
Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton)
On the House floor, Ives pointed to several school districts with high levels of per-student spending that do not have strong student performance and also cautioned that the state does not have the projected revenue to cover the costs of the bill.
“You cannot afford this,” Ives said. “In the next three years we don’t have another billion dollars to spend on education, and districts are going to be held harmless. Please vote 'no'; we can do better work, and we can fund students, not an educational monopoly controlled by lobbyists and bureaucrats.”
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