Funding crisis. Rally in Springfield or send an email.
Thousands are expected to rally at the Illinois Capitol today. One more time. Are the legislator’s deaf? Or do they have their ring-clad pinkies in their ears. The state’s financial crisis hasn’t gotten better since the last rally in Springfield. It has gotten worse. Much worse.
School districts that are depending on state payments aren’t receiving them. The state university systems may not make payroll. Safety net social agencies are closing their doors. Rome burns.
WBEZ:
Tom Bouman is with the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. He helped organize the rally and he’s calling for the support of a bill to raise the income tax this year.
BOUMAN: The conventional wisdom is that it’s hard to raise taxes in an election year, but this is not a conventional-type crisis.
Some of the state’s largest labor and education groups are expected to attend the rally. Governor Pat Quinn was originally scheduled to present his annual budget by today, but that was recently pushed back to next month.
If you can’t get to Springfield today, contact your legislator.
Funny you should mention Rome burning…Just yesterday, sitting in one of our beloved Institute Days, I couldn’t help but thinking that we accomplish little of importance, but we do fiddle around at it all day. Like Nero, we are relatively untouched by the fires of poverty and underfunding in this district. Like Nero, our indifference to making a difference can be iconized-we’d just have to replace the fiddle with a copy of a formatted meeting summary sheet.
Unlike Nero, though, people have higher expectations for teachers.
I feel dirty at the end of days like these. Instead of speaking up for practices that will help kids throughout the state, we spend time diluting curricular plans so that they can fit into a grid.
fine