Page most recently updated May, 2007
Better Funding for Better Schools Coalition

School Funding Doomsday Clock

Illinois State Representatives Dr. David Miller (Right) of the 29th District and Will Davis (Left) of the 30th District, members of the Coalition, are holding the School Funding Doomsday Clock.  (Photo by Chris Slowik)

(Clock was posted in 2003 to show how close we were to school funding "Doomsday," dead last in the nation. In 2007, we are there.)

Every year that the Governor and the General Assembly fail to adequately and equitably fund the public schools of Illinois, more children fall off the clock, having lost their opportunity for a fairly funded education. Every tick of the clock forces another school board to make a terrible choice. They can either cut programs, further eroding the quality of their children's education, or they can go further into debt, betraying their duty to current and future taxpayers.

Usually they compromise and do some of both , risking placement on state financial watch and warning lists, while also depriving children of vocational programs, music, art, extracurricular and athletic programs, eroding teacher quality for lack of continuing education and professional development programs, overcrowding classrooms, using out-dated textbooks and maps, and lacking access to technology.

Illinois now ranks last among the 50 states in school funding and in school funding equity. Our least affluent districts spend less than $4,500 per student - $2,000 below the level the state's agency created to advise on school funding has determined as "adequate" - while other districts are able to devote more than $20,000 annually to each student's education.

Is it because we are a poor state? Far from it. Illinois consistently ranks among the top eight states in average personal income. But the wealthy now segregate themselves from the less affluent. So property values, the current source of school funding, are segregated as well, creating the disparity of resources, the link between a child's educational opportunity and his zip code.

While the property taxpayers foot the bill, Illinois income taxpayers enjoy the nation's lowest rate. We are 41st among the 41 states that have an income tax. If our rate was boosted from today's 3% to a new rate of 5% (a "whopping 66% increase," according to words of those who defend this deplorable situation), we would still rank 37th in our income tax rate, tied with Mississippi.

Our School Funding Doomsday Clock was posted on this site in 2003. It was intended to show how close we were to "midnight," to the moment when Illinois would be dead last in the United States in providing educational opportunity to its' children.

Well, midnight has arrived. Illinois is now the most miserly state in the nation.

At this writing, Governor Blagojevich and the General Assembly still have time to turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock. Pending proposals would raise state funding to recommended levels of adequacy and restore our schools' ability to provide Illinois children with the education they need, no matter what their zip code, to prepare for lives of adult productivity.

Will our policymakers turn back the hands of the Doomsday Clock? Will they shrug off their fear and do the right thing? Or will they leave our children in the midnight darkness?

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