Statement from Illinois Federation of Teachers in Response to Governor Pritzker’s Answer to Potential Progressive Revenue Bills This Session

“At a moment when the Trump administration has ended SNAP benefits for an estimated two million Illinoisans, cut healthcare benefits, and dismantled the department of education, it’s hard to understand how any leader’s response would be to cut even more and fail to seriously consider asking those who can pay more to do it.

The choice before our Governor and legislators is simple: Either we continue forcing students, working people, and our communities to shoulder the burden while wealthy real estate investors get richer and school board members wrangle budgets that lay off valuable school workers, or we finally demand that the ultra-wealthy pay their share so Illinois can fully fund the public schools, universities, and essential services our communities deserve.

Illinois’ children deserve a tax system that invests in students and working people instead of protecting billionaire fortunes and corporate interests.

Because these cuts are not abstract. They have real consequences for real people.

In Cicero, schools laid off more than 50 teachers after students and families were already traumatized by ICE raids last fall.

In East St. Louis, dozens of school positions were eliminated in a district serving an almost entirely Black student body that has endured generations of disinvestment.

In Naperville, schools are facing a $4 million deficit and have already left 60 positions unfilled.

In Chicago Public Schools, leaders are staring down a nearly $1 billion deficit next year that could lead to thousands of layoffs of teachers, paraprofessionals, nurses, and clinicians in a district that is only 73 percent funded.

In Macomb and Charleston, devastating staff reductions, program eliminations, and economic instability have significantly impacted student enrollment, directly harming Western and Eastern Illinois Universities and the communities that rely on them.

And in Harlem, Rochester, Evanston, and Harvard, school districts have already closed schools for next year because they simply do not have the resources to keep them open.

These are not isolated problems. They are the direct result of political choices.

Meanwhile, lawmakers continue to consider massive tax breaks for billionaires and developers in the form of HB 910, the Megaprojects bill, which will make Illinois’ school funding situation even worse. Let’s be clear: This bill is not about the Chicago Bears or a football stadium. It is about priorities.

Governor Pritzker says big change takes time. The evidence-based formula passed in 2017 gave lawmakers a decade to pay what they owe our students. And if the Governor and General Assembly were in compliance with that almost decade-old mandate, most of our schools would be fully funded by now.

Working people in Illinois are tired of hearing that there is never enough money for classrooms, higher education, or essential services. At the same time, lawmakers are looking for ways to provide corporate subsidies and tax breaks for billionaires.

When the state makes cuts and gives away the farm to mega developers, the needs of students and the cost of schools don’t go away. They get put onto the shoulders of individual taxpayers and property owners.

Our members and the people of Illinois would rather see the richest in our state be finally made to pay what they owe instead of seeing their property taxes go up or the services and schools they rely on go down. After the decade Springfield gave itself to prioritize Illinois’ school communities, we’d hope the Governor and lawmakers would agree the time is now to come into compliance and pay students what is owed.”

The Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) represents 105,000 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.