Progress Illinois

The Chicago Tea Party may not like many things – taxes, Mitt Romney, even the Republican Party. But the Tea Party did like a video made by Andrew Marcus, which champions Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s education policies.

Marcus, director of the video, “A Tale of Two Missions,” produced by the Michigan-based Education Action Group, was the featured speaker at a Chicago Tea Party event downtown tonight.

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The state's budget problems may soon affect when Illinois children go back to school, according to reports.

Illinois school regional superintendents have been working without pay since the beginning of the month and say they can only guarantee one more week of work under the current conditions. 

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The following is an op-ed by Jerry Wyant, an Iowa resident and founder of Make Education Work, a grassroots push to improve education that he started because he "was tired of hearing teachers being blamed for many things that they have no control over."

Instead of taking corporate money in exchange for letting corporations dictate education policy based on their bottom line concerns, why not try this:

Make sure these corporations are paying their fair share of taxes at both the federal and state levels. Then, use a portion of that money to fund education.

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The education proposal that passed out of the state Senate yesterday is the very definition of a consensus bill, despite the changes it will mean for the state's educational workforce and teachers' collective bargaining rights. Illinois' three largest education unions are on board with it; so is Stand For Children, the non-profit and PAC that raised millions last year from Ilinois' wealthiest political donors and is aligned with business interests; so is Advance Illinois; so is Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel; so are all 59 members of Springfield's upper chamber. SB 7 now heads over to the House, where it could see additional changes and tweaks.

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The way the federal government measures unemployment means that when jobless people stop looking for work they are no longer counted as unemployed, sending the official unemployment rate artificially lower at times.

A situation the Sun-Times highlights today is sort of like that. The paper reports that while the number of school districts on the Illinois State Board of Education's "financial watchlist" dropped from 39 to 32 between the previous school year and the current one, the decline came at a steep cost. In all, more than 2,600 teaching jobs in Illinois were cut as of last September, an increase over the 1,438 slashed by September 2009. Programs that parents demand went on the chopping block too. "There’s been a lot of reductions in force across the state. Districts have cut programs, They’ve cut music and art and lots of extras, like reading coaches," an education board spokeswoman told the paper. A full 66 percent of school districts reported teacher layoffs at the start of the current school year, the state education board says.

The Reader's Ben Joravsky, meanwhile, notes in a new piece that under ex-CEO Ron Huberman, Chicago Public Schools sent 1,289 teachers packing last summer, a move the Chicago Teachers Union is battling in federal court. The district has hired all but 554 of the teachers back, a group that includes instructors who had "national board certification, one of the most prestigious designations in education, and had been honored by Mayor Daley and the [education board]." Of the nearly 1,300 teachers Huberman fired, "only 40 of the 1,300 or so teachers fired in the purge had less than a satisfactory rating, according to CPS records," Joravsky writes.

Despite January's tax deal, the State of Illinois is still behind on its bills and has a difficult budget year ahead. Like other vendors, this reality is putting pressure on the state's public universities. The schools are getting restless as they evaluate their own budgets and tuition plans for the upcoming year. Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard recently told lawmakers that tuition at his institution could jump by 9 percent this coming fall and warned that schools may have to take additional measures to accommodate flat or reduced funding from the state. Poshard also said the school has cut salaries, looked for new revenue sources and is having problems negotiating contracts with two employee unions because of late payments.

Meanwhile, Eastern Illinois University (EIU) is awaiting $35 million in general revenue funds from the state for the current year. William Perry, EIU's president, told the committee that the school has done its part to pare down costs -- from cutting $1.6 million in the operations budget to saving more than $3 million courtesy of a hiring freeze that facilitated the loss of about 60 jobs. Perry warned that EIU may have to hike its tuition rates if the state fails to increase funding for the school in the next fiscal year, although he says such a move would be a last resort.

The state's budget woes are also felt at Northern Illinois University (NIU). A spokesperson for the university told WBEZ that some members of the faculty are ready to quit because of funding issues; the state owes NIU $65 million. NIU president John Peters said even though the university would run out of money by April 15 if the state does not pay up, his school could no longer consider raising tuition costs without potentially pricing itself out of the market. Testimonies like those of the university presidents' provides ammunition to the arguments of SB 3 supporters, who are calling for the passage of the debt restructuring bill. 

If the state continues to lean on public universities to make up for its inability to provide financial support to the schools, then the cost of higher education will become a serious deterrent for lower- and middle-class students. Public institutions of higher learning were intended to even the playing field and allow people from all economic backgrounds the opportunity to get a quality, college education. But if legislators continue to let the state get severely behind in payments and fail to provide adequate financial support to Illinois' public universities, a college education will not only become less accessible, but the Prairie State could also face a future with a less-educated populace and bankrupt universities. How economically sound is that?