I must admit that few things please me more than press releases announcing that a government department is tightening its belt or the Governor has identified "waste" in a budget and used his Veto pen.

But this summer while parents, students, and teachers were rightly focused on the start of a successful new school year, the Illinois State Board of Education announced the elimination of $344,000 for the Accreditation and Recognition program of non-public schools.

While I trumpet appropriate budget cuts, the value of state recognition for all schools is well deserved and worth preserving. The ISBE says that "we no longer have the funding to perform the work." I disagree. As a member of the Appropriation Committees and Legislative Audit Commission for many years, I know that the ISBE does have the capacity within their budget allocation to grant this status.

In Illinois Catholic schools alone, the parents of these 195,000 students pay $1.5 Billion in taxes a year, and the parents of all 300,000 non-public school students currently save the state over $2 Billion. The ISBE should be grateful to these families who every school year pay into the public education pool and yet give up their child's seat in the classroom to another.

Anyone who's able to balance a checkbook can see that if only 20 families transfer two of their kids from private to public schools the amount incurred by the state will nullify any "savings" anticipated by this decision.

Repealing the State Recognition program puts the following benefits in jeopardy:

" Scholarships and financial aid opportunities.
" Participation in interscholastic activities, including athletics.
" Public, private and matching grants.
" Materials provided through the Textbook Loan Program.
" Credit for student teaching.
" Credit of teaching experience for salary and retirement benefits.
" The opportunity for the cancellation of student loans.
" Easy student transfer processing.
" Foreign exchange student program.

$344,000 is a lot of money to you and me--but after years of reviewing and de-coding the ISBE annual budget, taxpayers should know that $344,000 is a drop in the bucket to this agency. This agency's entire annual FY04 budget is about $8.6Billion, so this allocation represents just 4/1000th's of 1%-- but the accreditation support's absence will jeopardize all the benefits listed above.

Will the Illinois State Constitution now require amending to read "a fundamental goal of the People of the State is the (public) educational development of (some) persons to the limit of their capacities."? To strip our non-public schools of their accreditation appears to me to be the result of a particular unfriendliness toward them. Given the one-sided political philosophy currently ruling public policy in Springfield, the time must have seemed right for this punitive move and is entirely consistent with the aggression we've seen towards most sectors that are not government, such as business, transportation, health care and education.

The tuition tax credit repeal, the transportation reimbursement repeal, and the textbook loan program repeal were efforts this Session directed at non-public school parents. Those bills were swiftly stopped through the legislative process. Citizens, through their legislators had a "vote" on these bills and sent an important message...the people of Illinois support public and non-public education because they know that state funding really is about the individual child, not entrenched bureaucracy.

The ISBE realized their autonomy from the electorate in awarding school Recognition & Accreditation, and chose to eliminate it. They blame the Legislature and the Governor for the budget cuts that led to this decision, feign regret, and yet get a chance to further target those families who already sacrifice so much.

Legislation will be filed this fall session to rectify this affront. To date, I have not heard a word in response to my request for an explanation from the ISBE. Maybe you will have better luck.

Write: Illinois State Board of Education
Dr. Robert Schiller
100 N. 1st Street
Springfield, IL. 62777
--or--
100 W. Randolph, Suite 14-300
Chicago, IL. 60602

E-Mail: rschille@isbe.net

Phone: 866-262-6663 --or-- 312-814-2220