Collins on Quinn budget
Katharine Eastvold
Published: March 6, 2013
SPRINGFIELD – State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins (D-16th) issued the following statement on the governor’s budget proposal, which cuts more than $300 million in funding from primary and secondary education.
We must not allow our children to become sacrificial lambs on the altar of pension inaction. As a legislator, I must be their advocate and voice to fight for adequate and equitable school funding.
If Illinois approves these drastic cuts to education in order to pay our ever-increasing pension liability, we will have won a Pyrrhic victory. Without educated citizens and an educated workforce, we cannot move forward as a nation, and our children will not be able to compete in the global economy.
Further cuts to General State Aid – the mechanism the state uses to try to equalize opportunity for children in property-poor districts – will disproportionately punish Illinois’ most vulnerable children, the ones who most desperately need the promise of public education. For these children, education can mean the difference between a life of success and giving back, and a life of poverty and crime. Lives hang in the balance. Our children are waiting for us to act.
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