Scholarships for early childhood educators deserve more state funding

Cristiana Cocos is the parent of two children and a full-time student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from National Louis University. She is also a recipient of a scholarship through the Early Childhood Access Consortium for Equity, a statewide program established in 2021 to support Illinois’ early childhood educators to complete higher education degrees to remain in or return to the child care sector.

Since 2021, ECACE has awarded over 4,000 scholarships to students like Cristiana in 95% of Illinois counties. However, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget puts this life-changing program at serious risk.

ECACE has brought thousands of students much closer to attaining their early childhood education degrees. These degrees not only help ensure our state has a well-prepared workforce for our youngest learners, but they also position these educators to earn a living wage.

The Illinois early childhood workforce, 96% of whom are women, frequently must balance competing priorities and requires greater flexibility to pursue their degrees while balancing familial responsibilities and sustaining their employment. So ECACE pairs robust scholarships with coaches and mentors to help students complete credentials and degrees.

Pritzker’s proposed FY25 budget includes significant investments in young learners and early childhood, but not nearly enough for ECACE. As Illinois works to expand access to preschool and child care, there is an urgent need to ensure enough qualified educators. The governor’s proposed budget of $5 million puts thousands of students at risk of losing their scholarship and pathway to a degree.

Cristiana emphasized, “I am worried that this scholarship will end in 2024 and I pray that students like me will not be abandoned but instead another scholarship will lift us up and support us until the day we graduate.” Early childhood advocates share this concern and urge the General Assembly to invest $60 million in ECACE in 2025 so that students like Cristiana can complete their degrees or credentials.

Maya Portillo, senior early childhood policy advisor, Advance Illinois; Catherine Main, senior lecturer and director of early childhood education, University of Illinois Chicago; Angela Farwig, vice president, public policy, research and advocacy, Illinois Action for Children

Let Cook County handle vote-counting

Watching the daily close election tally for Cook County state’s attorney leaves me with a basic question: Why do two separate bodies count the vote for one county election? Seems like that’s ripe for problems. Specifically, the Chicago Board of Elections counts the votes in the city while the Cook County Clerk counts them for elsewhere in the county. Why? It’s not as if Rolling Meadows, Evanston, Flossmoor, and other towns count their votes separately, so why does Chicago? One body, the county, should count votes.

Shawn Jenkins, Hyde Park

Medical aid in dying offers options for terminally ill people

I appreciated reading State Sen. Linda Holmes’s op-ed on the bill she recently introduced: SB 3499, the End-of-Life Options for Terminally Ill Patients Act. I went to the Illinois Legislature’s website to learn more about it. I am not terminally ill, but I have been a caregiver and a friend to people who received this prognosis. One of them would have chosen this path; the other would not. If this bill passes, it will be possible for people to make either of those decisions.

That’s why I find the use of the word “options” compelling. People’s values surrounding medical care may differ, but terminally ill adults should be allowed to initiate discussions about this most personal of decisions with their loved ones, their doctor, and their faith or spiritual leader, if they have one.

This isn’t a bill that will only require patients to learn about medical aid in dying. The text of the bill states that doctors will provide information about “comfort care, hospice care, and pain control as well as the foreseeable risks and benefits of each, so that the patient can make a voluntary and affirmative decision about the patient’s end-of-life care.”

I am impressed with the number of safeguards against misuse included. Among them is the need for two medical doctors to agree that a patient has less than 6 months to live, is not under duress, is mentally competent, and is able to self-administer the medication. Doctors can decline to participate and they can also require a separate evaluation by a mental health professional.

SB 3499 makes it possible for terminally ill people to advocate for their own desires at this critical time in their lives. I hope that anyone who agrees that end of life options are an important aspect of medical treatment will take a moment to let their representatives know.

Meg Miner, Mansfield

Stop privatizing Chicago’s public space

Thank you for your editorial of March 28 about the Bears stadium. What I most appreciate about it is your putting the issue in the broader context of the use of public space for private profit and development. As you point out, Chicago’s expansive parks and open spaces were intended and designed as refuges from the urban world. They are places to play and breathe freely, and are necessary for the physical and mental health of the population.

In recent decades, some of our grandest parks are being looked at as a source of money (and not even terribly much money at that), rented out to giant festivals that fence them off from the public, damage the parks and disrupt the wildlife. Whether it’s the Bears along the lakefront or Riot Fest in Douglass Park, it’s the same issue of privatization of the public space. I hope your voice will be heard.

Rebeca Wolfram, Lawndale

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Public money for sports stadiums is all risk, no benefit

With the rare exception of Wrigley Field, one would be hard-pressed to find a major renovation, whether it be a stadium, casino, etc., that delivered on the promise of a great economic boon or great tax revenue for the city. That is why there should not be public funds for either the Bears or the Sox. If their wild projections for how great the area will benefit from publicly funded stadiums were even remotely possible, these businesses would get loans or private investors to pay for 100% of their projects 100%. Then they would reap the profits for decades to come, while regular taxation would benefit the area without the risking of public funds. Look no further than the current deals for these two teams and their current bad stadium deals. These owners know better and want the public to take all of the risks.

The Bears did their part to ruin one of, if not the premier, race course in all of America. To be fair, they are not fully to blame. Churchill Downs and their greed in not wanting competition for their Rivers Casino would have destroyed it anyway, but now the Bears are tied to it if they don’t build a stadium there. An on-site casino would have saved Arlington Park even if it was only open on race days. That likely would not have hurt Rivers because the people who were at Arlington Park could not be two places at once. I for one will never go the Rivers Casino again.

John Farrell, DeKalb