SPRINGFIELD – Governor Bruce Rauner today signed into law SB 1947, a new funding formula for Illinois public schools. State Superintendent of Education Tony Smith, Ph.D., issued the following statement: 

“The Illinois State Board of Education is proud to have supported the historic work of the General Assembly and the Governor’s funding reform commission. Our Board Chairman, James Meeks, deserves special recognition for his years of relentless leadership and advocacy that set the foundation for this new agreement. I would like to thank my staff for working through the multiple proposed models to produce the numbers that made approving a more equitable funding formula possible.

“Illinois’ educators and local educational leaders have shown remarkable resourcefulness and dedication to their students and communities throughout this process. We are celebrating progress today. The evidence-based funding formula takes a historic step toward equity and ensuring every student gets the resources they need for academic excellence and postsecondary success. When the students in the greatest need receive the most support, the entire state benefits. I believe equity in education funding in Illinois is an important step to ensuring our long-term economic and civic success.” 

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is moving forward with preparations to implement the evidence-based funding (EBF) formula, including verifying the necessary data elements with school districts. 

ISBE will work as quickly as possible to issue vouchers to the Illinois State Comptroller so that her office can make payments. The estimated timeline for school districts to receive payments is about one week from today. 

ISBE will not have final EBF calculations for a few months. Therefore, initial payments to school districts will be the preliminary base-funding minimum amounts based on final fiscal year 2017 distributions. This means districts will receive hold harmless payments until ISBE completes the EBF calculations. Each district’s preliminary base-funding minimum amounts can be viewed at www.isbe.net/ebf2018.

Districts will receive payments on the 10th and 20th of each month from September through June in FY 2018 In future years, the schedule will remain the same as General State Aid was previously distributed – 22 payments in total distributed August through June. 

The EBF formula requires ISBE to go through a data-verification process with school districts to ensure all of the data incorporated into the formula is accurate. ISBE will post a final database of all school districts’ data elements and EBF allocations on the ISBE website.