There’s a statewide framework designed to help educators and communities advocate for future-focused learning and predictable state funding.
It’s called Vision 2030, and school board members in Indian Prairie School District 204 voiced unanimous support for the plan during Monday’s meeting.
Vision 2030 aims to enhance public education by taking a forward-looking stance and preparing students for the future. It centers on four key ideas and lists three priorities, all as a blueprint for advocates and a call to action for legislators.
Vision 2030: Key ideas and priorities
Key ideas include keeping students safe, ensuring high-quality educators, enhancing student success after high school, and improving measurement of what is working well for schools and students.
Priorities of the plan include future-focused learning, adequate and equitable state funding for schools, and “shared accountability,” which is shorthand for things like improving the fairness and efficacy of standardized testing or reforming the procedures of state mandates to ensure local decision-making.
AI task force? Sales tax for school facility improvements?
Administrators noted that Vision 2030 includes the suggested creation of a statewide task force to study the effects of generative AI on education. It also suggests expanding a sales tax currently charged in 55 downstate counties to statewide so it can provide a funding source for school facility improvements.
A few school board members expressed interest in the expansion of the sales tax for school capital improvements. Matt Shipley, chief school business official, said this is especially pertinent, as the district last fall went to referendum for permission to fund $420 million in facility improvements through borrowing — precisely because it lacks a consistent funding source for building needs.
“The plan and the vision seems to align with many of the discussions we’ve been having at the local level here … so I was really pleased to hear that,” board member Supna Jain said about Vision 2030. “I’m also pleased with the idea of the sales tax. That’s a really interesting means to address some of these capital funds issues that districts are facing.”
Next step: Engaging with legislators
The ideas in Vision 2030 would require approval and action at the state level before becoming reality. Officials said many of the ideas included in this document’s predecessor — aptly named Vision 2020 — have come to fruition and influenced policy decisions during the past several years.
As they passed a resolution in support of Vision 2030, school board members called for the district to engage with state legislators to also seek their support. A coalition of educators who developed the Vision 2030 framework is asking districts across the state to do the same.
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