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Testimony on the General State Aid Formula Presented to THE EDUCATION FUNDING ADVISORY BOARD Thursday, Sept. 28, 2000 John H. Moss, Director of Special Services Glenbard District #87, Glen Ellyn Glenbard is a four high school district of approximately 8,500 students in the middle of DuPage County, including all or parts of Glen Ellyn, Lombard, Carol Stream, Glendale Heights, Wheaton, Bloomingdale and Hanover Park. The total budget for last year was about $80 million with an operating expenditure per student of about $9,500. We support the work of the Advisory Board, as it reviews the present General State Aid formula, in particular in relation to the Foundation Level, the Hold Harmless provision and the use of Categorical Funds for special state purposes, such, as programs for special populations that we serve such as Special Ed or ESL/Bilingual. We would like to present some information on these topics from the perspective of one suburban school district. General State Aid The operations of this district relies heavily on local property tax revenues. For our last year, Glenbard's Education Fund, which is about $70 million, received 83% from local property taxes, 16% from the state, and about 1% from federal sources. If we are looking at General State Aid, we received about $3.5 million. With the equalizing effects of the current state aid formula, and an equalized assessed valuation of about $3 billion, most of our local property taxes, up to the qualifying tax rate of $1.37 per thousand, are re-distributed to other districts across the state. We do not object to the redistributional effect, as citizens of this state with common interests in the educational success of students everywhere. One way to provide more resources to districts "in the bottom half" is to increase significantly the Foundation Level in the formula, presently at $4,425 per student. Hold Harmless The amount of state aid that Glenbard receives, $3.5 million, is very significant to this district. Changes made in the formula in HB 45 would have reduced the amount of General State Aid to high school districts even more. As part of the General State Aid of $3.5 million, about $1 million of it comes from the Hold Harmless provisions. It is very important to this district to maintain the Hold Harmless provisions of the General State Aid formula. State Categorical Grants In addition to General State Aid, Glenbard receives about $2.6 million in state categorical programs. The largest state categorical programs for this district were:
Categorical Grants are very important to this district in both supporting new initiatives from the state and providing for students with an increasing range of educational difficulties, especially special ed and non-English speaking. It is important that categorical funds be directed to where the students In need are. This requires keeping the categorical programs separate from the general state aid program. In recent years, we have been very pleased that the appropriations process has led to "full funding" of categorical program costs. In some cases however, the reimbursement level that was to "fully fund" a program was set 20 or more years ago. We need to legislatively re- visit what is an appropriate reimbursement level for addressing the needs of an increasing number of students with special needs. CONCLUSION:
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