Chicago Democrats Deny Scholarships to Students to Spite Trump

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has long suffered from abysmal test scores and plummeting enrollment. But instead of addressing those crises, the current top priority for school officials appears to be opposing President Donald Trump by denying students potential new education funding.

On April 8, in a 15-0 vote with several abstentions, the Chicago Board of Education approved a resolution “formally [urging] the Illinois General Assembly and the Governor of Illinois to reject any legislation… or federal incentive program” to “create, expand, subsidize, or otherwise reintroduce school voucher programs in the State of Illinois.”

While the vote was largely symbolic, it was yet another example of how the city’s education system is beholden to unions and leftist activists, to the detriment of the students it is supposed to serve. The board members specifically criticized “renewed efforts by the Trump administration at the federal level which see[k] to expand and incentivize voucher[s].”

As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker “is currently weighing whether to opt into a new federal program that will allow donors to certain scholarship organizations to reduce how much they owe in federal income tax by up to $1,700. States have until Jan. 1, 2027 to join.”

That new program, passed as part of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year, creates Education Freedom Tax Credits which will soon be available to states that opt into the program.

In a sane world, the program would be a policy that both Republicans and Democrats could get behind. It allows individual taxpayers to claim a nonrefundable, dollar-for-dollar federal income tax credit for donations to qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs).

The SGOs then distribute that money to students, who can use it for tuition, tutoring, educational therapies for students with disabilities, and other education-related services, as AMAC Newsline reported earlier this year. States must opt into the program.

As the Sun-Times also relayed, “Those scholarships could fund private school tuition, or unlike other similar programs, they can support activities that cost money at public schools like tutoring, after-school programs or school supplies.” Notably, only families earning up to 300 percent of their area’s median income – about $230,000 or less in Chicago – are eligible to receive the scholarships. This sort of targeted approach toward lower-income children should have Democrats clamoring to support the policy.

However, while 23 states have already signed up in advance of the official rollout of the initiative, Chicago school board members and union leaders do not want Illinois to become the 24th state to join.

The board members weren’t subtle about the reasons for their opposition. The resolution’s author, Debby Pope, told the media she wanted everyone to know that the board really just cares about opposing Trump.

Pope, according to WBEZ, “said it was important to take a stand against the program put forward by the Trump administration, given its moves to undermine public education and advance policies that have harmed CPS students, such as the president’s mass deportation campaign.”

“How can we even consider the idea of not being opposed to a program that is being proposed by this president with his intentions to destroy the Department of Education,” she said, ignoring that the program would provide more funding to students – who are supposed to be Pope’s first and only concern.

Chicago Teachers’ Union Vice President Jackson Potter, meanwhile, tacitly admitted that he fears parents would leave the failing public schools if given the choice. WBEZ reports that he noted that Florida “trimmed budgets due to low enrollment partly because of the growing popularity of school vouchers.”

Potter’s fears are understandable, given that the schools he is supposed to be running are failing on virtually every front. Due to declining population and demographic changes, hundreds of schools are underutilized, Fox News reports.

“At least 255 school buildings are underutilized, representing more than half of the district’s standalone public schools,” school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis recently wrote. “Among those, 145 are more than half empty, and 24 operate at over 75% vacancy.”

This low enrollment and a high teacher to student ratio have not translated into better results for kids. “In 2024 alone, 80 public schools in Chicago reported zero students proficient in math, and 24 had zero proficiency in reading,” DeAngelis continued.

Meanwhile, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools said parents are being held hostage by the board.

“The school board majority, the mayor, and other state and local leaders have sold their souls to the Chicago Teachers Union,” Paul Vallas, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2023, wrote on X.

A refusal to join the scholarships “will mark yet another surrender to teacher union interests at the expense of Chicago and Illinois middle- and lower-income families,” Vallas warned.

Pritzker for his part said he is waiting on more information from the federal government. He previously voiced public support for the state’s “Invest in Kids” program which operated similar to the Education Freedom Tax Credits. However, the initiative expired in 2023 after unions pushed legislators to not extend the privately-funded scholarship program after it passed in 2017.

Pritzker, widely rumored to be considering a presidential bid in 2028, has also made derogatory remarks about school choice, suggesting that private schools “teach values that are racist or antisemitic or Anti-American,” according to text messages obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

Pritzker made the comments while arguing with Democrat Comptroller Susan Mendoza, who supports the voucher program.

Mendoza sees an opportunity to help students, including public school students like her own child.

“I believe, and I certainly hope, that our parents and our children, most importantly, can benefit from their tax dollars staying in our schools and helping supplement, you know, the needs of our kids,” she said. “It really should be all about the kids and can we get more money to help them in areas where they need help, like tutoring and equipment, books, fees, you know, participation things.”

The Tribune notes that the split reflects a difference in approaches by the two leading Democrats. “Pritzker has made opposition to Trump-aligned policies central to his political identity as he campaigns for a third term and considers a potential 2028 presidential bid,” the newspaper reported.

But the split also reflects a national divide between parents who want what is best for their kids and political leaders who want to get re-elected and need the support of teachers’ unions for funding and foot soldiers to knock on doors.

Yet the cost of this political allegiance may be sacrificing millions of dollars in new aid to help kids with disabilities get extra tutoring or help a low-income family get their kids into a high-quality private school that better meets their needs. For parents and students trapped in failing schools, they can only hope that Democrat leaders are able to put aside politics and ideological purity and unlock the doors to educational success – or that voters finally make a change.

AMAC Newsline contributor Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.