Forrest Claypool Says Rauner Administration Treatment To CPS Is Discriminatory
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chicago Public Schools Chief Forrest Claypool said he is not holding his breath for help from Springfield to keep city schools open, but he is confident they will keep going.
Forest Claypool sought to reassure parents and students worried about how the schools would fare without state money. WBBM's Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports.
"We will open the schools in the fall and we do whatever is necessary to do that, and the mayor is committed to that as well," he said.
But in a speech to the City Club of Chicago he still portrayed the Rauner Administration's treatment to Chicago Public Schools as more than discriminatory; he likens it to segregation.
"There is no way to sugarcoat this," Claypool said. "As the lawyers representing CPS and five parent plaintiffs in the ongoing civil rights lawsuit against Governor Rauner, and the state of Illinois have written, although the state has not installed signs on schoolhouse doors that say 'whites only' and 'colored,' the state has used its check book to accomplish exactly that."
The Rauner Administration has said CPS' financial woes are the result of years of mismanagement. A spokeswoman for the Governor said, while Claypool gives speeches, the Governor and his team are in Springfield working to find a solution to our state's budget crisis.
