Chicago mayor proposes $838M fix
put everything on the line and fight with everything we’ve got to make sure every Chicagoan can thrive.”
Lightfoot didn’t make any explicit reference during her address to the ongoing teachers strike affecting more than 300,000 students. Chicago Public Schools later announced that classes would be canceled for a sixth day on Thursday.
The budgets for the city and the Chicago Public Schools are proposed and approved separately, but the same taxpayers fuel both.
Remaining conscious of that reality is a political necessity for any Chicago mayor, said Michael Belsky, executive director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago.
“(City taxpayers) don’t care if your tax revenue is going up for the city or the school,” Belsky said. “It’s still all going to be paid by them. The mayor in Chicago does have to be sensitive to that.”
Illinois law since 1995 ensured Chicago’s mayor has control over the schools via sole authority to appoint the district’s governing board — making it the only unelected school board in the state.
The board develops and approves its budget without input from the elected City Council, whose members do have a say in the city’s spending plan.
A 2016 study by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that more than 90 percent of school districts in the nation are run by elected boards; other large cities including Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and New York are not.
The appointment system means mayors often wind up facing off with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, whose 25,000 members went on strike Thursday.