Education officials in Illinois say they need to come up with a new way of counting low-income students.
Capitol News Illinois reports the Illinois State Board of Education is asking for $200,000 in its budget for next year to develop a new system.
Under the state’s Evidence-Based Funding formula, the number of low-income students enrolled in a district helps determine how much state aid that district gets.
Currently, the state bases that on the number of students enrolled in federal aid programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. But enrollment in that program is expected to decline due to new restrictions that were included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress passed last year.
Currently, nearly half of the state’s 1.8 million public school students are classified as low-income.
