Chicago sues Illinois, governor over school funding formula

CHICAGO — The city’s school system on Tuesday filed suit against Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Illinois Board of Education, alleging that the way the state funds schools violates the civil rights of minority children.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Cook County Circuit Court, comes as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has been pressing the Republican governor and state Legislature for months to change how the state distributes tax dollars to Illinois’ schools.

Chicago Public Schools, which have about 380,000 students, received about 15% of the state’s $10.6 billion in education funding, despite enrolling nearly 20% of Illinois' public students in 2016.

About 90% of Chicago Public Schools students are children of color, while the aggregate population of the rest of Illinois public schools are predominantly white. The state’s civil rights law stipulates that “if the burdens of a state policy fall disproportionately on members of particular racial groups, the state must advance a weighty justification.”

The suit calls on the court to force Rauner to retool school funding and declare the state’s teacher pension funding systems unlawful under the Civil Rights Act. Five African-American and Hispanic families who have children currently in the school system joined the Chicago Public Schools as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“Chicago students, who are overwhelmingly students of color, are learning in a separate but unequal system,” CPS CEO Forrest Claypool said. “The message from the State is that their educations matter less than children in the rest of Illinois, and that is both morally and legally indefensible.”

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The school system also alleges that the state practice of maintaining two different teacher pension system — one for Chicago and one for the rest of the state— is in violation of the Illinois Civil Rights Act. The state requires CPS to spend nearly $1,900 per student on Chicago pensions. Over the same period, non-Chicago school districts spend only $86 per student on pensions, according to CPS.

Aides to the governor noted that the lawsuit comes just two weeks after a commission impaneled by Rauner recommended that the state adopt a new funding formula that would account for the fact that it takes more to educate a child in more impoverished parts of the state to reach the same learning outcomes than for children who do not live in poverty.

“The governor remains focused on moving forward these recommendations and hopes that CPS will be a partner in that endeavor,” Illinois Secretary of Education Beth Purvis said in a statement.

The school system is drowning in $10 billion in pension liabilities. Last year, the city approved a $250 million property tax hike to help bolster the underfunded teachers’ retirement plan. That tax hike came after the city began phasing in a property tax hike to help shore up Chicago’s police and fire department pension funds.

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The Chicago schools cash crunch comes as Rauner and state Democrats have been at odds over the Republican’s push since he was elected in 2014 for vast reforms in the state, which has been weighed down by billions of dollars of debt. Illinois has been without a full-year budget since July 2015 as Rauner and the Democratic-controlled Legislature have bickered over how to close budget shortfalls.

In December, Rauner vetoed a bill that would have sent $215 million to CPS for pension payments because it didn’t include pension reforms. Earlier this month, Claypool was forced to announce that the school system would have to freeze $69 million in spending to deal with the shortfall. Claypool accused Rauner of “adopting Donald Trump’s tactics of attacking vulnerable citizens in order to score political points.”

Rauner, a former venture capitalist, is up for re-election next year. Last week, Chicago-area businessman Chris Kennedy, the son of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, announced he was running for governor and would seek the Democratic nomination.

Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad