Governor Bruce Rauner's budget address at noon Wednesday is expected to be a plan that would leave the state with a small surplus. But that doesn't mean he's going to get a good grade from math teachers. Or any other teachers.
Rauner listed school funding reform as his top accomplishment of 2017. But today, he will ask the General Assembly to shoot a sizeable hole in that plan.
According to a brief obtained by Illinois public radio, Rauner's budget proposal will ask school districts to shoulder an additional 25 percent of teachers' normal pension costs, potentially saving state government more than $260 million. Chicago Public Schools have already been paying their own pension costs.
Last year, Rauner's bipartisan school funding reform commission briefly discussed a similar concept, but the idea was quickly nixed by the governor's education czar, Beth Purvis.
The reform law contains a clause that anticipates a pension cost-shift and builds it into each district's funding formula. So the main effect of the shift could just be to further delay bringing poor districts up to adequacy.
