Southwest Area Educators to Head to Springfield in Veto Session Push for Promised but Undelivered Funds for Public Education and State Services

IFT Members Urge Governor Pritzker and the General Assembly to Respond to Trump Cuts with State Investment as Schools Go Underfunded, Food Stamps Set to Go Unpaid

What: IFT members to load onto buses en route to Springfield for veto session push for

school funding

When: 8:00 am, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025

Where: Drury Inn and Suites, 12 Ludwig Dr., Fairview Heights, IL 62208

Who: Cyndi Oberle-Dahm, newly elected Executive Vice President of the Illinois

Federation of Teachers and President of the Southwest Area Council (SWAC), will

join educators and staff from Belleville Township High School District 201, Cahokia

Unit School District 187, O’Fallon Township High School District 203, Granite City

Community Unit School District 9, and other Southern Illinois districts at Lobby Day.

Educators and state workers from the Southwest Area Council (SWAC), representing more than 5,000 members throughout the Southern and Western portion of the state, will join hundreds of their colleagues from across Illinois at the Capitol in Springfield during the fall veto session on Wednesday, Oct. 29. They will be led by newly elected IFT Executive Vice President Cyndi Oberle-Dahm, who also serves as SWAC President.

Together with the new IFT leadership, they will call on Gov. JB Pritzker and lawmakers to counter Trump's devastating cuts by closing the state's own tax breaks for tech companies and the ultra-rich and investing in state services that finally deliver promised but not provided funds to public education and pull the state’s higher education system away from the fiscal cliff it is teetering on.

SWAC members from Southern and Western Illinois include educators in West Frankfort, who recently reached a tentative contract agreement with the school district after threatening to strike.

In Southern Illinois, schools continue to operate far below adequate funding levels. In Metro East's Belleville Township High School District 201, where about 60% of students are of color in a community where 18% of children live below the poverty line, the state provides only about 69% of adequate funding. Frankfort Community Unit School District 168 receives just 74% of adequate funding under the Evidence-Based Funding formula.

At the grade school and high school level, nearly a third of districts are operating at 76% or less of adequate funding. As a result, local districts across Illinois are facing the challenge of meeting legal requirements for special education students and those with disabilities, providing hot meals to students, and maintaining workable class sizes and well-kept facilities.

Additionally, Gov. JB Pritzker is currently holding back 2%, or about $25 million, in discretionary funds from colleges and universities that were passed in this year’s state budget. Illinois State University alone would receive an additional $1.6 million from these withheld funds.

Lobby day attendees will meet with their representatives to highlight how families and communities are unfairly bearing the brunt of a broken system and argue that all students, especially Black, Latine, and working-class students, need state action to be protected from federal education cuts. The best way to resist Trump’s harmful agenda is by making Illinois a leader in fair funding.

States like Massachusetts have shown what’s possible when they tax the millionaires and revenue is reinvested in schools, hospitals, and communities. Illinois taking up a similar policy will be necessary to meet the governor’s stated goal of making the state No. 1 in education nationwide.

This lobby day marks one of the first major actions by IFT's newly elected leadership slate, which took office on Oct. 18, 2025. The new officers collectively hold more than 157 years of teaching and union leadership experience and campaigned on launching a robust statewide effort to deliver promised but never realized funds to schools across Illinois.

Educators and state workers from Chicago, the Northern suburbs, Southern Illinois, and Western Illinois are expected to attend.

Statewide lobby day attendees will hold a press conference at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday that will be live streamed via the Illinois Federation of Teachers’ Facebook page.

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The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) represents 103,000 teachers and paraprofessionals in PreK-12 school districts throughout Illinois, faculty and staff at Illinois’ community colleges and universities, public employees under every statewide elected constitutional officer, and retirees.