APPELLATE COURT IN ILLINOIS REJECTS SUITS ON SCHOOL FINANCING

CHICAGO -- An Illinois Appellate Court on Thursday rejected a plea that some Illinois students are being shortchanged because of the way their education is funded.

Lawsuit supporters said they would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

"Kids in Illinois will continue to be losers until someone steps up to the plate and takes responsibility for them," said Randy Tinder, chairman of the Committee for Educational Rights.

Thirty-seven school districts, parents, students and the committee sued the state in 1990, arguing that school funding based on local property taxes is unfair because of the great differences in property wealth among school districts.

The appellate panel on Thursday upheld a lower court's dismissal of the lawsuit, saying that the state's school financing formula adheres to the Illinois Constitution.

Further, the justices wrote, the school funding issue is better resolved in the General Assembly than in the courts.

The lawsuit contended that because current funding is increasingly dependent on local property taxes, substantial disparities exist in the quality of education children receive.

"What we're saying is every kid has a right to equal educational opportunities," Tinder said. "When our school funding is predicated on the wealth of property in school districts in which you live, that's not possible."

Under Illinois' school funding formula, when local resources fail to generate enough funds, the state adds education dollars based on a complex formula adjusted at each session of the General Assembly.

The plaintiffs had argued that the state's school code requirement for "an efficient system" of high quality education meant that the system must be "fiscally neutral."

But the appellate court said there is no "fiscal neutrality mandate, and we are reluctant to read one" into the code.

Although one school may offer resources such as computer sciences and another doesn't, that does not mean the state financing system is "insufficient to provide an adequate education," the panel wrote.

The lawsuit "assumes that the amount of money spent equals a better education but offers no empirical evidence for this assumption," the justices wrote.

Tinder said cost per pupil in Illinois can range from a low of about $2,300 to about $14,000 per student in a high-spending district. "These are extremes, but it wouldn't be unusual to have a $3,000 to $9,000 spread," said Tinder, who also serves as superintendent of Carlinville School District 1.

"Everybody seems to agree that the funding system we have is not fair or equitable," Tinder said. "The bottom line is no one is willing to step forward to make a change - from the governor to the Legislature. There are no efforts to change the way school is funded. Every year that goes by, we shortchange another group of kids."

Illinois is not unique in its battle over inequities in school funding. Nationally, such lawsuits have had mixed results.