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Conference says state should pay for unfunded mandates By Michelle Martin One out of 10 children in Illinois is in a Catholic school. In Chicago, it’s one out of seven children. And those Catholic schools spend lots of money every year complying with the requirements to be registered with the Illinois State Board of Education. It’s only fair that the state help pay for that, said Doug Delaney, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois. The conference, the public policy arm of the church in Illinois, is working to get a $200-per-student allocation for non-public schools included in the 2001 state budget. The state legislature is expected to vote on the budget for the 2001 fiscal year before they adjourn April 15. On April 11, Delaney said there seemed to be enough support to make it possible for some money to be included in the budget, even if it is only a fraction of the $200 per student the conference originally proposed. But he acknowledged that if it is, the issue might have to be decided in the courts before schools see any of the money. Because of that, legislators were trying to decide whether to simply include the money in the state budget or to introduce a separate bill allowing for the allocation. “Obviously, we don’t want to hold up the whole state budget,” Delaney said. A $200-per-student allocation adds up to approximately $40 million for Catholic schools (or up to $60 million for all non-public schools). That amount pales in comparison to the money parochial schools save state taxpayers, Delaney said. There are 212,285 Catholic school students in Illinois. At the average cost of $6,400 a year for each public school student, taxpayers would have to pay an extra $1.4 billion a year to educate those children in public schools, he said. Many Catholic schools are living on the financial edge, Delaney said, and if they were closed, thousands of students would be added to the public school rolls. For many of them, $200 per student could mean the difference between surviving and closing their doors. Critics have questioned whether the plan would violate the separation of church and state. Delaney maintained it would not, since the money would come as a reimbursement for expenses required by government agencies, like keeping enrollment, staff and immunization records, testing and maintaining health records. A survey of three Chicago Catholic schools—St. Benedict the African Academy, Immaculate Conception School on Talcott Avenue and Brother Rice High School—found that Catholic elementary schools spend $224 per student and high schools spend $300 per student on such expenses. Those numbers might not include all the hidden costs involved with complying with state requirements, Delaney said. “We don’t think they do,” he said. Others have questioned whether the expenses are truly state mandates, since the state of Illinois places very few legal requirements on private schools. But schools that want to be recognized by the state must comply with the mandates, Delaney said. “We certainly want our schools to be recognized,” he said.
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