Whoever becomes mayor will face enormous challenges and a daunting transition from an appointed to elected school board.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates joins faculty members at a strike rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago campus on Jan. 17, 2023. Cook County Commissioner, mayoral candidate and former CTU organizer Brandon Johnson stands behind her.
Conflict with the teachers union has been a hallmark of Lightfoot’s term, starting with a bitter teachers strike months after she took office. Since then, she’s repeatedly clashed with CTU over COVID-19 restrictions, spending priorities and an elected school board, which she supported as a candidate, then balked at.
“We’ve had declining enrollment for almost 20 years and there’s no sign of it really slowing, and the root causes of it are the Black exodus, a slowing of Latinx immigration into the city, and declining birthrates. There just aren’t enough kids for the schools,” Anello said. “You have school buildings that are massive with too few students in them to fill the whole building, and yet some of those schools are functional educationally.
“I truly understand how urgent it is to properly fund our schools,” García said at a recent forum. “We need to move away from our overreliance on property taxes, which is causing so much great harm, including in Chicago displacement of people who live in or near gentrifying areas. How do we do this? We can work with the General Assembly.”
Challenger Willie Wilson, a business owner, blamed crime and high taxes for enrollment decline and empty buildings, saying that reducing both would welcome back families. He’s said he would “close some of those schools down that have 10% or 25% capacity” and “sell them” or “open some up as trade schools.”
If he becomes mayor, Vallas said he would not hesitate to get involved in school board elections to support and oppose candidates. “Other than safety … I think education is our next top priority,” King said in response to a lightning-round question on her most important campaign issue outside of crime. “If we don’t have a safe city, and we don’t have schools that people can go to, our city is going to continue to decline.”
In a guest blog post on former Tribune columnist John Kass’ website, Vallas supported providing direct funding via vouchers “for parents to use at the school of their choice. It also means empowering the community to choose local school models that best suits their needs.” “I won’t do it by proxy, I won’t do it by tweet. I’ll do it myself if I have to from my kitchen table, because we have not provided any stability or any cadence that is helpful to teachers, parents and students in this district,” Buckner said.
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