No Real Impact to District 200 From State of State Proposals

Governor Quinn delivered his State of the State speech on February 1; the speech was long on generalities and short on any specifics affecting public education.  The District may be relieved that no threat of cost shifting for teacher pensions was included.  Some had feared that the Governor would call for local school districts to shoulder more of the unfunded pension liabilities owed by the state.  However, the speech suggested that more detailed proposals may be forthcoming during the year.

Although the governor advocated more "investment" in a variety of areas, the only item with a potential cost to local districts that can be quantified was his call to increase the mandatory school attendance age to 18.  In theory, this could have some financial impact on District 200, but probably not much.  The high school dropout rate is only 1.3% at Wheaton-Warrenville South and 1.5% at Wheaton North, so even if all these students were compelled to remain in school, there would only be about 30 more students at each high school.  I was not yet 18 when I graduated high school and entered college, so I am not sure that forcing students to stay enrolled in high school until age 18 would be a good idea, but it will not have any immediate impact on the District budget even if enacted by the General Assembly.