“The action is taken in anticipation of the state’s resolution of the budget crisis and restoration of the MAP grant funding to all institutions”.
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That’s because the steady flow of state tax dollars to schools has been a key driver in the eight-month budget stalemate.
CPS officials say they are happy to provide the Rauner administration with any financial information it wants but they say the governor should start with his own budget, which treats poor minority students in Chicago and around the state like second class citizens.
“But if we can’t find a long-term solution right now, then let’s find a short-term solution right now while we work on the long-term solution”, he told the Lee News Service.
The Blackburn College board of trustees approved plans for the college to cover MAP grants already approved for current students this year and to cover equivalent funding for all new and existing students who are eligible for the 2016-17 school year. “There’s no reason we can’t do that”, he said.
While the emergency funding measure appears bipartisan on the surface, it’s complicated by election-year politics.
Steve Brown, a spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said the speaker is reviewing the proposal, but he added that it “raises an bad lot of questions”. I urge that we all come together and support this plan as the best option to get MAP grants into the hands of students and restore operational funding to our community colleges and state universities. There’s also the belief that while the money would help higher education to make due during the impasse, it would lessen their chances of ever getting full funding this year.
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“I did not create the school funding formula, I just got here”, Rauner said.
