While all private schools recognized by Illinois are eligible to receive scholarship funding through a new state program, as of Monday, schools around Springfield have barely been awarded any scholarships.
The program, Invest in Kids, was rolled out in January. The scholarship tax-credit program was created by the state of Illinois.
"We definitely had high hopes for Invest in Kids," said Dr. Bill Moredock, principal at Little Flower Catholic School in Springfield.
But Moredock's high hopes have now turned to disappointment because he has yet to hear of any Little Flower families being granted Invest in Kids scholarships.
"It might have been due to the fact that Little Flower didn't get designated as a school by the big-time donors," Moredock said. "I want to know where the money went and I want to know where the scholarships went, so I'm going to be looking into that."
Erica Christell has two kids at Little Flower.
She applied for the state-funded scholarships back in January and as of Monday, she's still waiting for answers.
"It's been a struggle ever since we started to apply, from the website crashing all the way to the funding not being available here downstate," Christell said.
The Illinois Department of Revenue reported that as of Monday, more than $42 million donations have been authorized. Of that, $32 million has been tax money diverted from the state in the way of tax credits to pay for the program.
Illinois split the state into five regions, with each region getting a certain amount of the funding brought in:
- Region 1, Cook County, 51.22%
- Region 2, Northern Counties, 23.09%
- Region 3, North Central Counties, 9.97%
- Region 4, Central Counties, 7.50%
- Region 5, Southern Counties, 8.22%
For a listing of counties within each region, click here.
Region 1, which includes Chicago, brought in roughly $32 million in donations.
Central Illinois has only brought in $1 million in donations.
"When you find out that they're gearing it just towards a certain area and that the needs are everywhere around the state, it's frustrating," Christell said.
We've reached out to the nine organizations approved to award the scholarships.
As of Monday evening, only two responded.
SGO HighSight reports as of Monday, they've awarded 37 scholarships to four different Chicago schools totaling $371,474.
SGO The Children at the Crossroads Foundation reports as of Monday they've given out 6 scholarships to a Chicago school totaling a little over $58,000. They have a seventh pending receipt of a pledge payment.
"I didn't realize that most of that funding was going up north until I did a little bit of my own investigation and found out that a lot of the schools up there were getting most of the funding," Christell said.
As of Monday, Sacred Heart-Griffin High School had 107 students apply for the tax-credit scholarships with only one getting approval.