There’s an idea being floated that needs to be immediately put to rest: reinstituting the School Finance Authority.
As a Chicago Public Schools board member, I can tell you that what we need from the state is the funding owed to our district, not a takeover as our district implements democracy.
Any look at the first School Finance Authority shows how devastating it was and why it shouldn’t be repeated.
Historically, CPS has been the district in Illinois with the most Black students and also the most underfunded. Denied the funding it needs and prohibited from generating its own revenue, it has regularly been in crisis.
In 1980, that crisis blew up when the banks refused to buy CPS bonds. The state created the School Finance Authority and corporate and financial executives were appointed. None were involved in education, and their priority was not to ensure high quality education for all children.
The School Finance Authority sold $500 million in bonds at high interest rates, while demanding $900 million worth of cuts in today’s dollars.
Thousands of teachers were laid off, and class sizes skyrocketed. Of the students who entered high school in 1980 as freshmen, only 47% graduated. In the 1984-1985 school year, reading scores dropped in every single grade level.
Chicagoans had no say. Banks benefited, and in both the short and the long run, schools did not.
By 1995 the School Finance Authority had reduced its oversight role. Control of CPS was given to the mayor and School Finance Authority head Martin Koldyke referred to Mayor Richard M. Daley’s handpicked CEO Paul Vallas as a competent manager. But under Vallas, CPS deployed budget tricks such as using educators’ pension funds to make operating payments and negotiating extremely risky and costly interest rate swaps, leading to the high amount of debt service we pay today.
It’s time to stop hiding an unwillingness to prioritize the education of Chicago schoolchildren behind arguments about fiduciary responsibility.
In the state that has the fifth-largest gross domestic product in the U.S., it is past time for officials to fund education at a level befitting that wealth and generate the revenue to ensure our children’s future.
We have a responsibility to ensure our students have what they need, not to cut back when they already don’t have enough. That is true fiduciary responsibility: investing in a future for the next generation. That should be the priority, not a takeover that only benefits banks and financial interests.
Karen Zaccor, retired CPS educator and Chicago Board of Education member, District 4A
‘Sensible middle’ can be antidote to hate
Elana Kahn, executive director, Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes, wrote an excellent letter that reminds me of Richard Hofstadter. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who wrote about the “sensible middle” being an antidote to the political paranoia and anti-intellectualism that was present in the U.S. during his lifetime.
The “sensible middle” has been sorely needed throughout American history due to hatred toward others. Unfortunately, some would have us forget those dreadful times evidenced by initiatives promoted by the Trump administration and some states that favor a rosier narrative that plays down, negates or eliminates ugly aspects of our history.
A true and accurate picture of American history details the genocide of Native Americans, anti-Catholicism, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the anti-immigration acts of the 1920s; the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the victimization of Black Americans and Hispanics; antisemitism via “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and “The Turner Diaries,” and finally, today’s Great Replacement theory where it is alleged that whites are being replaced and threatened by people of different origin or color.
Given our history and our current state, we need more individuals like Elana Kahn, who are actively fighting against this sad reality. Hopefully, the “sensible middle” overwhelmingly joins her and her colleagues at the Illinois Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes who are standing up against extremism, dehumanization, discrimination and hate.
Larry Vigon, Jefferson Park
Lending a hand to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Now that Congress has defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it is time for all of us to step up to the plate and meet the challenge.
This country has 347 million people. If every man, woman and child gave $3 before Sept. 30, CPB would have its funding for the next two budget years.
William Dodd Brown, Lincoln Square
Making sports all white again
I’ve heard that besides demanding Washington’s football franchise and Cleveland’s baseball team revert back to their old names, Donald Trump’s next sports suggestion is to order that baseball teams return to being all white and that “diversity, equity and inclusion” players like Jackie Robinson, Bob Gibson, Hank Aaron and others be removed from the Hall of Fame.
So I’ve heard.
Art Kazar, Forest Park
What real Cubs fans want
As Charles Dickens once said, “”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I am, of course, referring to the announcement last week that Wrigley Field would be hosting the 2027 All-Star Game. Even Gov. JB Pritzker was there to share in all the fanfare. But it seems all the hoopla escaped a majority of the team’s many loyal supporters who would have been much happier to hear that Ricketts and Co. had acquired another starting pitcher or even a reliable relief pitcher at the recent trading deadline. As we’ve all heard before, timing is everything, and that includes overhyping an event that is still years away from ever happening.
Bob Ory, Elgin