Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner announced Monday that he would veto a bill to give Chicago Public Schools an additional $300 million in annual funding the same day the city unveiled its 2017-18 budgets.
Rauner has been grappling with ways to shore up the Chicago Public Schools several million dollar funding gap since taking office in January 2015 and it appears despite being called out by Chance The Rapper and dragged in the media, he’s still not budging. Complicating matters further is the fact that the CPS spending plan of $2.89 billion is dependent on the very funds that Rauner has promised to shoot down.
The back and forth appears to be over where the $300 million comes from. A measure that passed the state House and Senate “diverts money from classrooms” to help close the massive gap in paying for teacher’s pensions which have been pushed to the side for decades. Rauner has called the decision a “bailout of Chicago’s broken teacher pension system” that he said would take “away critical resources from school districts across the state.”
The governor has urged lawmakers to make a decision before the end of the week, scheduling a special session this Wednesday with a deadline of July 31 to pass a new bill to avoid the delayed start of Fall classes across the state. For his part, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stated that classes there will start September 5 regardless of what happens in Springfield.