North Cook News

Private school alum State Rep. Michelle Mussman (D-Schaumburg) voted for a budget that allows the sunsetting of the Invest In Kids Tax Credit Scholarship program. 

Mussman, who previously campaigned on the importance of good education and a graduate of Cincinati’s Purcell Marian Catholic, is just one of several Illinois legislators who have attended a private school yet have blocked that opportunity for qualified students who don't have the financial capacity to benefit from the same education. Purcell Marian Catholic costs  $11,000 plus a student fee of $1,300 per year. According to Niche, 84% of the school's graduates go on to a four-year institution.

"Access to quality education will give people the resources they need to attain better paying jobs and more self-sufficiency," she said during her campaign.

Mussman is one of 35 of Illinois' 177 state legislators who attended private high schools. The private high school graduates include 10 Republicans and 25 Democrats, 15 of whom were raised in the City of Chicago, a Prairie State Wire survey showed.

Missing from the budget's 3,500 pages is funding needed for the continuation of the Invest In Kids Tax Credit Scholarship Program. The program allows donors to receive a tax benefit for donating to a state-maintained scholarship program for private schools for low-income families. It serves more than 9,000 K-12 students who are the beneficiaries of the Invest in Kids Tax Credit. 

“This is not something that’s been covered by the budget agreement. It’s something that still has time, potentially, but it’s not something that’s in the budget agreement,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at a press conference announcing a budget deal had been struck. 

Proponents of the program accuse legislators who favored eliminating the program of hypocrisy. Pritzker and other politicians had sent or were sending their own children to expensive private schools while denying the same opportunity to students who need the scholarship. 

A Wall Street Journal editorial underscored the power dynamics between teachers' unions, Democratic lawmakers, and what it sees as the failure of the public education system. The decision to sunset the scholarship program disregarded the needs of low-income students but prioritized the interests of unions over educational reform, the editorial said. The editorial also said the main reason behind the opposition to the program was the influence of teachers' unions, with the agenda to terminate it because its popularity underlined the failures of public schools. 

Notably, the Invest in Kids program received more than 31,000 applications in 2022, indicating a high demand for alternatives to underperforming public schools. The editorial said many low-income families, particularly Black and Hispanic, supported the scholarship program because their assigned Illinois schools had low proficiency rates in reading and math. The shortcomings of the public education system was evident from the fourth to eighth grades, leading to a high demand to seek options. However, the editorial said unions prioritized their power over student learning and pointed fingers at the schools' failures on lack of funding rather than addressing systemic issues. WSJ reports union leaders hold significant influence over Illinois lawmakers, who have received substantial campaign contributions from teachers' unions. 

Chicago’s Morning Answer host Dan Proft called out Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) and other legislative leaders for sending their own kids to Catholic schools but eliminating funding for low-income students.

“Senate President Don Harmon's kids: St. Giles, St. Ignatius,” Proft said on Twitter. “House Speaker Chris Welch's kids: Timothy Christian. Why not OPRF or Proviso?”