According to a recent press release from Parents Defending Education, a parental rights group, an ethics complaint was filed against Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot after a report became public which detailed her reelection campaign encouraging teachers of the Chicago Public School (CPS) system to give class credit to any students that would volunteer and help the campaign.
The complaint was filed with the City of Chicago’s Board of Ethics by the education group on Thursday and would like them to conduct an investigation into the campaign. The report alleges Lightfoot’s deputy campaign manager, Megan Crane, communicated with Chicago Public School teachers through official government email accounts and asked them to promote a “externship program” where students were volunteers.
According to a report from the New York Post, Mayor Lightfoot directly blamed her deputy campaign manager for sending the emails and called it a “mistake.”
In a statement recently released by the President of Parents Defending Education, Nicole Neily said, “Tragically, far too many students in Chicago Public Schools are unable to read or write at grade level – even prior to the Chicago Teachers Union-led school closures, which disproportionately impacted the city’s disadvantaged children. Chicago students should be sitting in classrooms and focused on making up this learning loss so that they have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves – not being conscripted as foot soldiers in Mayor Lightfoot’s re-election campaign.”
In an interview with WTTW News, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois claimed that the email sent by the campaign “may have violated federal law.”
As of Thursday, the Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Will Fletcher opened an investigation to determine if any policies or laws were broken by the campaign.