State Board of Education seeks $11.4 billion for PreK-12 spending

[January 16, 2025]  By Peter Hancock

SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois State Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve a budget request for the upcoming fiscal year of nearly $11.4 billion, a 4.6% increase over this year’s budget, despite projections that the state will face a substantial revenue shortfall next year.

The request includes a $350 million increase in “Evidence-Based Funding,” the minimum annual increase called for under the 2017 law that focuses new education spending on the neediest districts.

It also includes a $142 million increase in what’s called “mandatory categorical” aid for expenses such as transportation and special education, and $75 million in new funding for early childhood education.

“This year’s budget recommendation recognizes the tight fiscal projections faced by the state of Illinois, while continuing to invest in things that we know that are critical for school districts and that have a direct impact on student learning,” State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders told the board.

Funding for PreK-12 education is one of the largest categories of spending in the entire state budget, accounting for about one-fifth of all General Revenue Fund spending. That money is used to help fund the budgets of more than 850 school districts, which serve an estimated 1.9 million students.

State funding, however, makes up only part of the total amount spent on public education. In 2021, the most recent year for which complete numbers are available, state funding made up only about 26% of total school spending while about 65% came from local sources such as property taxes and the rest came from federal sources.

Over the years, the state’s heavy reliance on local property taxes to fund public schools produced vast inequities among districts. The Evidence-Based Funding formula was intended to address that over time by establishing a “hold-harmless” mechanism by which no district would ever see its funding reduced, then directing new funding to the districts most in need.

The law created a formula for estimating the cost of providing an adequate education in each district based on certain factors such as total student enrollment, the number of students from low-income families and the number of students from non-English speaking backgrounds. The goal of the law is to bring all districts up to at least 90% of their adequacy target.

Members of the Illinois State Board of Education are pictured at the board’s December meeting. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock)

Since the law went into effect, according to ISBE, nearly $2.2 billion has been distributed to districts through the Evidence-Based Funding system and overall funding for the neediest districts – known as Tier 1 districts – has grown from 59.2% of their adequacy target to 73.4%.

Still, however, seven out of 10 students in Illinois attend a school in a district that is funded at less than 90% of its adequacy target. According to ISBE, bringing all districts up to 90% of adequacy would cost an additional $2.6 billion.

In November, the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget reported that the annual increases in education funding called for under the Evidence-Based Funding law, combined with other rising costs and overall flat growth in revenue, would lead to a projected $3.2 billion budget shortfall in the fiscal year ahead.

Gov. JB Pritzker will outline his plan for plugging that hole when he delivers his budget address to the General Assembly Feb. 19.

Sanders, however, said he remains confident Pritzker and lawmakers will find a way to balance the budget and still fund the agency’s budget request.

“While most of state government’s going to be looking at potential freezes, we are really pleased to see a governor and legislature that is committed to public education funding, even in tight fiscal times,” he said.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.