Our Stories

Our Stories

Confused About the School Funding Trailer Bill?

Jan 12, 2018 0 6 min read
IL state capitol
Recently, the Governor issued an amendatory veto of the school funding trailer bill, which begs the question: what happens next so schools can finally start getting their new funding? But before we answer that, we’ll walk through a few other questions for background: What was the funding bill? What does “trailer bill” mean? What is […]

A Better Recipe

Sep 28, 2017 0 2 min read
A Better Recipe
One of my favorite desserts is a piece of good chocolate cake. Plenty of ingredients go into making a cake. And plenty of ingredients go into grading schools. As a new parent, it’s important to me that those ingredients make our schools better. But for too long, Illinois schools have basically been graded on a […]

Confused About the New School Funding Reform Law?

Sep 1, 2017 0 6 min read
Confused About the New School Funding Reform Law?
Yesterday was the historic bill signing for SB1947, which fixes the worst school funding system in the nation and puts all Illinois schools on the path to adequate and equitable funding. Its predecessor, SB1, had been called the most thoroughly vetted bill in recent Illinois history, given the sheer number of public task forces, working […]

Confused About the Winners and Losers in the Governor’s Amendatory Veto of SB1?

Aug 13, 2017 0 2 min read
Illinois state capitol
Yesterday, the State Board of Education released its model of how school districts fare in the first year of the school funding structure in the Governor’s veto of Senate Bill 1. (Recall that Senate Bill 1 is the funding reform bill that fixes our broken school funding system for the first time in two decades, […]

Still Confused About How SB1 Treats Teacher Pensions?

Aug 8, 2017 0 3 min read
Still Confused About How SB1 Treats Teacher Pensions?
It would still be hard not to be. After a press conference two weeks ago and major confusion in the air (to say nothing of last week’s amendatory veto issued by Governor Rauner, which highlighted pensions), there are two big misconceptions that we’ve been hearing quite a bit and we’ll address them both here. But first… A […]

Confused About the SB1 Veto?

Aug 2, 2017 0 3 min read
Confused About the SB1 Veto?
With school starting in just a few weeks, Governor Rauner shut the door on progress by issuing an amendatory veto (AV) of Senate Bill 1 (SB1), the education funding reform bill that provides more money to local schools without any school district losing a penny of state or local funding. The most concerning components of […]