The Illinois Valley Central Grey Ghosts Marching band in 2013. (Photo courtesy of IVC HS Facebook Page)

It’s been 15 years since the students at Cahokia CUSD 187 had band or orchestra classes, due to cost-cutting at the district, said Superintendent Art Ryan.

“We’ve got one choir at the high school, that’s it. One of our elementary schools has an art teacher and there’s one music teacher for elementary. We’ve eliminated sports and there are 30 kids in every classroom.”

Cahokia 187 has joined with 16 other Illinois districts to file a lawsuit April 19 to address the wretched Illinois school funding imbalance between rich and poor districts. The suit, filed in St. Clair County Circuit Court, names as defendants the state of Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Illinois State Board of Education.

The suit says that the state is required by Article X of the Illinois State Constitution to provide a high-quality education for Illinois students, but the state’s funding does not make that possible. The suit asks the court to make the General Assembly “adopt and use an evidence-based or other recognized methodology to calculate the per-pupil resources necessary for … districts to meet or exceed the Illinois Learning Standards adopted by the Illinois State Board of Education.”

The suit also alleges that the state is “arbitrary and capricious” by unequally funding districts resulting in students are less-eligible for admission into state universities, denying them “equal protection of the laws” of the Illinois Constitution, Article 1.

Cahokia serves 3,490 K-12 students from the towns of Cahokia, Centreville, Sauget, and part of Alorton. The district’s racial makeup is more than 90 percent African-American and economically more than 70 percent low income, according to the Illinois Report Card.

Thirty-one percent of the high school students don’t graduate, and only 6 percent are ready for college material, according to the PARCC tests.

In spite of falling property values and foreclosures, the Cahokia CUSD 187’s property tax rate has increased to more than 13 percent, Ryan said. “It’s a downward spiral.”

High taxes are driving businesses and homeowners out of the town. Meanwhile, through a process called “pro-ration” the state has paid only a percentage of the money owed the district.

“The state has shorted us around $14 million,” Ryan said. “Our teachers are doing a thankless job. They’re doing the best they can with what little they have. It’s so heartbreaking that we have to keep cutting.”

Parents watch Cahokia High School Advanced Choir perform at the school. (Photo courtesy of Cahokia CUSD 187)

The lawsuit, filed by a team of Chicago and Alton lawyers, is based on an earlier suit in the 1990s against Gov. Jim Edgar and the state board. In 1996, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that even though the state constitution guaranteed students a “high quality education,” what that entailed was never spelled out.

Now the state board of education has enacted nine clusters of specific learning standards, from math and reading to science, PE and early education. The ISBE has also mandated the high-stakes tests that go with them. So, the suit says, the state must develop a way to fairly give students an equal education, and put it into place within 90 days of a ruling, the suit requests.

“We’re not saying it’s going to necessarily be the same amount,” Ryan said. “We’re asking what would it cost to properly educate a child to meet these standards in St. Claire County? If it costs $15,000 to educate a kid, you should fund at that level.”

Ryan said a group of superintendents have kept in touch about school funding efforts.

“With all of these money issues, there’s a network of superintendents who communicate with each other and so on,” he said.

The school districts named as plaintiffs in the suit are located in St. Clair, Bond, Christian, Fayette, Jersey, Macoupin, Madison, Montgomery, and Peoria counties.

In the northeast corner of Peoria County, Superintendent Chad Allison at Illinois Valley Central USD No. 321 says the district doesn’t face the same problems as the rural and urban districts in central and southern Illinois. The district has a year’s cash in reserve and the property values and Equalized Assessed Values are rising. But Allison spent his first eight years as a superintendent in southern Illinois and moved to central Illinois because he didn’t want his own children to get a bare-bones education.

“As of today, our district is $1 million in the hole that the state owes us for transportation and special education,” Allison, said. “We’ve provided a zero-interest loan to the state for services we provided for last year,” he said. “We had to cut transportation because we just haven’t been paid for last year.”

Rauner’s bi-partisan School Funding Reform Commission delivered their report in February with 26 recommendations on how each district could develop a financial “adequacy target.” But the costs needed to meet those targets are estimated between $3.5 billion and $6 billion in the classroom. Right now, the state spends about $11 billion on education, but only about $7 billion ends up in the classroom with $4 billion going to fund the Teachers Retirement System.

The state provides a minimum of about $6,000 per student, with the rest funded by local property taxes and federal funds. While some of Chicago’s collar county school districts can spend up to $15,000 per student for instructional spending, Cahokia students received $7,653 in FY 2015, according to the school state report card.

“The commission, well it’s all great, and we have found we need to provide more state funding for our kids and make a more equitable system for our kids,” Allison said. “But until the governor and legislature are willing to make education, our future, our children, a priority, until they put their money where their mouths are it doesn’t do us any good.”
 

— Central, southern Illinois school districts sue for fair funding —