Progress Illinois

A group of Chicago aldermen proposed a package of ordinances Wednesday to generate revenue for the city’s cash-strapped public schools.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district has a $300 million budget gap, and schools are reportedly facing a 7 percent funding cut in the upcoming academic year.

“We’ve received some money from the state, but it’s just not enough,” Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said at a press conference before the council meeting with fellow aldermen, the Chicago Teachers Union and other education advocates.

“We need to find more progressive and more viable solutions to increase revenue so that all of our schools can be adequately financed, so that we can give quality teachers an opportunity to teach in our schools,” he continued. “When I had a conversation with a principal yesterday, she was perplexed that she could not hire a 20-plus year veteran school teacher because she could not afford it. That’s not right.”

A coalition of early childhood education advocates spoke out Thursday morning against plans at the City Colleges of Chicago to consolidate child development programs to a single location at Harry Truman College in the North Side Uptown neighborhood.

Four Chicago aldermen joined the advocates at a morning press conference before the City Colleges Board of Trustees meeting. Coalition members, including representatives from the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU* Healthcare Illinois, said consolidating the educational programs could adversely affect early childhood education students living on the city’s South and West Sides, where several programs are closing.

“This will have an enormous hardship on students trying to get to the North Side. It will devastate these programs, and it will take needed support services out of these communities,” said Tony Johnston, president of the Cook County College Teachers Union, which represents full-time faculty and other City Colleges staffers.