Districts across Illinois are still making sense of the Illinois General Assembly’s K-12 education budget passed in late June.
For Knoxville District 202, it seems to mean slightly more state aid but still less than what they should have gotten last year.
They’ll get about $43,000 more than last year, but it’s $250,000 less than what they would’ve received in FY16 without proration.
Wilder expects that the General Assembly will take up overhauls to the school funding formula sometime after the November elections.
The superintendent tells WGIL the formula is less than ideal but finding the right one can be difficult.
“That one funding formula works for the state’s 860 school districts all across the state of Illinois, all of which are located in very different circumstances and have a lot of different variables that they’re dealing with,” Wilder says. “I certainly get that, understand how complicated it is. I’m not sure there really is one single formula that would be good for everybody.”
A part of 202’s anxiety about operating without an education budget was not being reimbursed about $2.1 million from the state’s Capital Review Board.
The district took money out of their reserves to pay for construction on their high school with the understanding they would be paid back.
Now that a budget is passed, Wilder says he expects to get that money in the next few months.
