From Jill Underly, Ph.D.

District Administrator, Pecatonica Area School District

To the editor:

I think it will depend on your opinion of historic to determine whether the $500 million that the JFC and Sen. Howard Marklein are proposing is actually historic or not.

Since special education reimbursement costs are about 25% presently and used to be as high as 67% over 20 years ago, I suppose a 1% increase next year could be considered “historic.”

And a $200 per pupil amount next year, when an inflationary increase would be at $214 considering that just 10 years ago, the same group of individuals, including Marklein, enacted a $600 per student decrease, would be considered “historic.” 

As someone who has to balance the school district budget, I’m not ungrateful for the funds that the current Republican-led JFC is promising schools. I’m tired of the scraps though and I’m tired of being told that we should be “grateful” that we got that at all. I’m tired of our children being devalued. I think that all readers and constituents need to understand that this investment by the JFC isn’t historic. It’s just barely keeping up. What would be historic would be reimbursing public schools for the true costs of educating a child, or providing a revenue limit increase, or providing funding for underserved populations of students.

However, I will continue to wish that in the future, politicians keep their campaign promises. But then again, if promises were kept, that would truly be “historic.”