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“The City of Chicago faces significant budget difficulties due to revenue losses from the pandemic and pension funding pressures, and can ill-afford any benefit enhancements to its severely underfunded pensions.”
Thapedi, who has served as representative for the 32nd District since 2009, said he wants to take an active role in searching for a replacement for his seat.
While it is easy for state politicians to blame Illinois’ fiscal struggles on the global pandemic, Illinois’ economy has persistently underperformed the rest of the country for the past two decades. That left the state with tiny reserves, massive debts and a near-junk credit rating even before the pandemic.
But the Chicago Teachers Union is telling teachers to stay remote. Thus, the Chicago Public Schools said adequate staffing cannot be assured, so students will still be learning remotely on Monday — with the expectation that students should be returning to in-person learning on Tuesday.
Illinois’ “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards” are up for ratification in the General Assembly on Feb. 16.
It would turn the entire K-12 system into a leftist indoctrination camp by mandating every teacher adopt and teach progressive political orthodoxy to student; whoever doesn’t will lose their license.
The men and women recently nominated to the Department of Education are activists who will look for any opportunity to impose these standards on the entire country.
Parents don’t have their kids for long. If they’re indoctrinated like this, parents are probably not going to have them at all.
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“We are all anxious to return to ‘normal,’ but maintaining the status quo relative to remote learning while teachers are vaccinated hardly seems an exigent circumstance requiring injunctive relief,” Cook County Circuit Judge Raymond Mitchell said.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, traces the surge in sales to the Black Lives Matter protests last summer and other civil unrest. “People are worried about it. And so, they are beginning to wonder if the police can protect them. And many of us finally realized that the police have no obligation to protect any individual person. So, they’re looking to protect themselves.”
John Jackson, a visiting professor at the Paul Simon Institute at SIU, says budgets for higher education are already tight and the state cannot recover its deficit off of cuts to them alone. “If you took back, say 10-percent of what we have, it would be somewhere along about $150 million. We need $3.9 billion; so, this can’t be done with these small cuts to the small parts of the budget.”
Comment: Inexcusable, and Illlinois is among the states where this is happening, as we wrote here.
Host Chuck Todd noted that Kinzinger was originally meant to appear on the show along with other House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump but appeared alone.
“But there is so much rotten about Illinois politics that it’s easy to overlook this distasteful political game that insiders play. After all, it’s not like they’re selling their votes for cash. But they are ignoring the public’s votes when they opt to come and go on terms that serves the narrow interests of themselves and their political associates.”
The landmark designation comes 15 years after Chicago gave landmark status to the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ building, where the visitation and funeral for the boy was held.
The encouraging infection and death numbers in Illinois nursing homes come despite a vaccination pace widely panned as too slow, especially as more dangerous COVID-19 variants circulate throughout the country.
Under normal circumstances the move to Phase 4 would bump up capacity limits in indoor dining establishments, but city officials say that restaurants and bars will be required to adhere to Tier 1 limits on those numbers
The mayor speaks passionately about giving parents the option to send their kids to school after three weeks of successful classroom learning, in contrast to months of remote learning failures.
This representative explains her frustration trying to get a vaccine independently, while suburban districts support their teachers’ efforts to be vaccinated.
Gary Chen says Pfizer’s two-dose requirement is delaying the rollout, and the need for sub-zero storage for the vaccine may be a problem for rural areas in Illinois.
Teachers’ unions represent teachers – not students. And it’s becoming clear that students’ wellbeing is not figuring into their calculations.
“We have a solid plan in place that goes above and beyond the guidance that we’ve heard from city as well as CDC officials. And we believe that we can safely reopen. And we’ve been open for three weeks or we have been open for three weeks with a great degree of success. So, the time is now for students to return to the classroom.”
Chicago’s finances are the second worst in the nation, with a taxpayer burden of $41,100 for each taxpayer, a new report published by the nonprofit Truth in Accounting (TIA) concludes.
The state says Chicago has seen enough consecutive days where the positivity rate was at or below 6.5%, but city health leaders say that’s still not enough. “I think we’re all wondering how much more time do we need,” restaurant general manager Wesley Conger said.
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