* Bears…

Q: And what are those [Bears] conversations looking like? Are they happening with your staff, with lead leaders, or are the Bears kind of putting together a proposal?

Pritzker: They’ve asked for advice, and so our staff, as well as legislators, have offered them that. I think they’re looking at both of the bills that passed, the one in the House, the one in the Senate, hoping to put the the provisions of each of those together in a form that they think will pass. And then, of course, they need to begin conversations with members of the legislature that they weren’t able to win over before, and again, we’ve been advising and trying to help out wherever we could.

Q: Is there any sense of urgency to all this?

Pritzker: Of course, of course. Are you kidding? We want to get it done as soon as possible, and if they’re able to put everything together as we hope they will, you know, I’m, as I’ve said, I’m willing to call a special session, so that we can get a vote on it long before the veto session, if that’s possible. And so we’re, we’re working and helping them in every way we can.

Please pardon any transcription errors.

* School funding…

Q: Do you have any sense of whether, anything, any kind of special session? CTU is holding a rally tonight calling on special session to truly fund schools.

Pritzker: Yeah, I agree with everyone who says that schools are not as well funded as they should be. Indeed, every year I have increased funding for our K-12 education. It’s almost $3 billion in total, in addition to the EBF, the base increase in funding. I’ve added on top of that things like the teacher vacancy program, which helps schools in the toughest districts hire teachers that they’ve had a harder time hiring. We now have, I think, more teachers employed in the state of Illinois than we’ve ever had before, and we now rank in the top 10 among 50 states for our K-12 education, pre-K to 12. So I’m proud of the direction things have gone, but I couldn’t agree more that we need more funding for our public schools. That’s why I’m continuing every year, even with tough budgets, even with Donald Trump attacking education and attacking state budgets. We have found enough money to increase funding for public schools.

[Cross-talk]

If there’s an opportunity for us to improve funding for schools, and there’s somebody who’s come up with an idea about how you might get it done. Remember, an amendment to the Constitution does not require the governor; it actually requires a super majority of the House and the Senate to pass it. And so, I, as you know, I’ve been in favor of a more graduated income tax system, and I’ll continue to be in favor of that, but it’s something that the legislature needs to take up.

* IFT…

President Davis Gates last week also called on Gov. Pritzker to convene a special session of the General Assembly to address our state’s public education funding crisis and raise revenue from the ultra-wealthy to help close the $6.4 billion funding gap facing Illinois public schools from pre-K to Ph.D.

If Gov. Pritzker can call a special session to discuss data centers and a stadium proposal for billionaires, he can surely call one to address the educational needs of Illinois students.

He hasn’t talked about a data center special session.