Mayor Brandon Johnson has tried — and so far failed — to sell his corporate head tax by rebranding it as a “community safety surcharge” with $100 million in annual revenue for crime fighting and prevention programs that include summer jobs and mentoring for Black and Hispanic youth.
And yet, in his proposed 2026 budget, the mayor wants to cut funding for one of Chicago’s most successful youth mentoring programs, and change city guidelines to disqualify school-based group counseling programs known as “Becoming a Man” (BAM) and “Working on Womanhood” (WOW).
“It’s devastating. We have 1,400 young people benefiting from programs they get so much out of. Most of them are in the program because they’ve already been exposed to trauma. And we’re risking traumatizing them again by ripping these supports out in the middle of the school year,” said Michelle Adler-Morrison, CEO of Youth Guidance, which oversees BAM and WOW.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services said the transition from group-based mentoring to an individualized, one-on-one model followed a “comprehensive review of program data and youth feedback.”
More than 67% of participants surveyed “requested more one-on-one time with mentors” while more than 60% reported “difficulty attending group sessions due to scheduling or discomfort,” the department said.
But Adler-Morrison said she has heard from youths, many of whom have either witnessed gun violence or been victims of it themselves, who say “how powerful it is to sit in a circle and learn from one another and learn they are not alone. Other people are going through similar things…The incredible trust and connection that gets built in this circle that is always there for you.
“I have no idea why you would defund those supports in the most under-resourced communities, when it’s clear to me that the mayor values that. I can’t imagine this is a knowing decision,” Adler-Morrison said.
BAM and WOW are school-based youth counseling programs operated by Youth Guidance. The programs have been benefiting Chicago Public Schools students for decades with proven results.
According to studies conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab, 95% of BAM participants said the program helped them make better personal decisions, while 94% said the group counseling helped them pinpoint ways to improve their school performance. Half of those surveyed were less likely to get involved in violent crime, and 19% were more likely to graduate from high school.
WOW participants reported reduced anxiety (59%), fewer depression symptoms and fewer signs of trauma (68% for both).
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel became a champion of BAM. He dramatically increased city funding for the program, and sold the concept to his former boss, then-President Barack Obama, who sat in on a BAM circle at Hyde Park Academy in February, 2013, and later launched his own version of it, called “My Brother’s Keeper.”
Johnson participated in a WOW circle at Chicago Vocational High School last spring and celebrated Youth Guidance programs on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2024. The mayor continued to fund the program in his first two budgets at the $3 million-a-year level provided by Emanuel and former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
That’s what makes the Johnson administration’s sudden about-face puzzling to leaders, counselors and participants.
The city pullback comes in two stages. First, the Department of Family and Support Services has released a new request for proposals (RFP) that essentially declares school-based group counseling models like BAM and WOW no longer eligible for city funding.
The new criteria limits city funding to one-on-one mentoring programs — not group counseling — and declares school-based programming during the school day ineligible.
Also, the line item for mentoring programs in the Family and Support Services budget has been reduced by nearly 52% — from $9.5 million to $4.6 million. Without city funding, group counseling programs now serving 1,400 Chicago Public School students in 33 schools will end on Dec. 31.
Those students, nearly all of them Black and Hispanic, will return from their holiday break in January without the group counseling programs that have sustained them and helped them endure the violence- and family-related emotional trauma that so many of them live with on a daily basis.
The DFSS statement blamed $700,000 of the reduction for mentoring programs on cuts required by the city’s $1.2 billion budget shortfall and the rest on exhausted federal pandemic relief funds.
Maniya Franklin, 19, said the four years she spent in a WOW group at Dunbar High School provided her with the therapy she needed but could not afford after her father’s sudden death.
“When I came into the program, I was lost. I was unsure of purpose in my life. I wanted to find that purpose. WOW gave me that purpose again… It held me together. There were mentors who helped me heal and stay focused and believe my life still had purpose,” Franklin, who will start National Louis University in January, told the Sun-Times.
“If I hadn’t had that support, I really feel like I would have fallen deep into depression… It carried me through grief, through trauma and pressure when no one at home helped me through it.”
Darshay Moore credited the support she got during three years of group counseling at Morgan Park High School with improving her self-esteem and her grades — ultimately leading to a scholarship to Illinois State University.
“It wasn’t just a program. It was more like a sisterhood. It was like a family and a sisterhood that we built,” she said.
Moore said her WOW counselor provided the support she needed after her nephew was hit by a car and required brain surgery followed by months in the hospital.
“It was really bad and I really didn’t have anybody to talk to because it was a whole family matter and I didn’t want to put my issues on my mom so she could have more things to worry about,” Moore recalled. “So, I talked to my WOW counselor about it and it just felt better to talk to somebody who was not involved in the situation. She definitely calmed me down. She understood how I was feeling. It was good to have somebody in my corner.”
A.J. Staten, a BAM counselor at the Curtis School of Excellence in Roseland, said he is “frustrated and confused” about what he called the mayor’s “mixed messaging about investing in youth and mentoring and meeting kids where they are.”
“My fear is that students who already feel CPS doesn’t hear them will feel more isolated, and feel like there’s no place for them to belong. Some may feel a sense of betrayal,” Staten said. “We’re fighting for a program that’s on the verge of being cut with no plan to replace those slots… If the head tax is truly meant for youth and mental health investment, that needs to be action not words.”