Democrats want to abolish Invest in Kids because it embarrasses the teachers unions. The wait list for scholarships runs to more than 20,000 children. Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates sends her son to a private school. She can afford it, but two-thirds of Invest in Kids scholarships go to families with incomes below 185% of the federal poverty level.
This is the kind of hypocrisy that normally Democrats would love to call out, except that their party is fueled by the teachers unions. Ms. Schakowsky also has more personal ties. Her husband, Robert Creamer, runs the Strategic Consulting Group, which gets business from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the national affiliate of the Chicago Teachers Union. According to the Illinois Policy Institute and the union’s financial filings, called LM-2s, AFT has paid Strategic Consulting more than $90,000 since 2020.
Invest in Kids is at risk of sunsetting at the end of 2023, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker has made clear he won’t spend political capital to save it, so Ms. Schakowsky’s intervention is a gift to the teachers unions.
The other Democrats who joined her statement were Illinois Reps. Nikki Budzinski, Sean Casten, Danny Davis, Jonathan Jackson, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Delia Ramirez. Yet a recent public survey says 59% of the state’s Democrats support Invest in Kids, so let’s hope voters remember those names.