District 50 Seeking to Change How Charter Schools are Funded

Woodland District 50 is asking the community to reach out to Illinois legislators and ask them to support a bill that would change the way state-chartered schools are funded.

House Bill 2660 "requires Illinois to pay the full funding of its state-chartered schools," district officials said in a press release. The two state-chartered schools in Illinois are Prairie Crossing Charter School and Southland Prep Charter High School in Rich Township District 227.

"House Bill 2660 is a fair solution because it requires the full funding of the state-chartered schools at the same level, calculated the same way as it is now, but provides equal access to General State Aid (GSA) for the 'host districts' instead of requiring them to foot the entire bill at the expense of education for the district’s public school students," District 50 officials added.

State-chartered schools "rely almost entirely on state money and do not receive local property taxes," district officials said.

In a story on Grayslake Patch in July 2012, district officials revealed that of the $3.4 million in general state aid allotted for District 50 in the 2011-12 school year, just under $3 million went to Prairie Crossing.

"We have more than 6,500 kids in our school district and we have to pay that much money for the 324 that are going to Prairie Crossing," Robert Leonard, Associate Superintendent for District 50, told Patch at the time. "We have overhead expenses that we'll have no matter how many students we have in each class."