Eye On Illinois: All-day K effort might still need a longer leash

Government progress is rarely fast. But there can be wisdom in deliberation.

State Rep. Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, filed House Bill 2396 four years ago today. Known as the “Full-Day Kindergarten” law, the bill passed the House 87-23 and the Senate 52-1. Gov. JB Pritzker signed it on Aug. 2, 2023, codifying the dictate that every public school district must offer full-day kindergarten when the academic year begins in the fall of 2027.

At the time, 80% of Illinois districts already met that goal. The other 20% likely would have but for two major concerns: money for teachers and physical space for extra classrooms. The 2023 law built in a plan for districts to apply for waivers extending their deadlines to 2029 while also creating a task force to complete a statewide audit.

That task force issued its final report late last month (read it at tinyurl.com/AllDayKTF). That came with the possibility that the group may recommend expanding the qualifications to apply for the waiver. Right now, the only districts that can apply are those that, as of fiscal 2023, were funded at less than 76% of the adequacy threshold as defined under the evidence-based funding formula that helps channel public resources based on need.

Surveys from the spring of last academic year and fall of the current cycle indicated five districts whose resources exceed the funding threshold still won’t be able to implement all-day kindergarten by August 2027. As predicted, the main issues are space and staffing, as well as concerns about transportation, financial capacity and scheduling implications. The State Board of Education is requesting additional feedback on this specific issue no later than March 13.

Task force members recommended against penalizing districts “by having their reserves captured to fulfill a valuable unfunded mandate” and called for separate state allocations, perhaps through a “three-to-five-year needs-based grant for new adopters or those districts that are currently newly offering full-day kindergarten programming.”

Those and other suggestions in the report make quite a bit of sense in service of the primary goal, but they must be balanced against an ongoing teacher shortage – improving, but still thousands each year, per the Illinois Association of School Administrators – along with persistent requests to pour extra cash into K-12 statewide and projections of a $3 billion deficit next year.

In other words, now might not exactly be the time for growth. But surely there are arguments the state can’t afford to not invest in all its children, and those 2023 General Assembly votes indicate strong bipartisan support for that position.

Hence the wisdom of deliberation. From Canty’s bill four years ago looking ahead to August 2029, perhaps that’s long enough to solve all these problems.

Progress takes time.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.