While our nation decides who will be our next president, Chicago gets to decide who should be the next elected leaders of our school board. From the federal to the local level, one thing is clear: The future of our economy is in the balance. Our public schools and our youth are fundamental to helping shape our economic futures in service of most of us across the diverse communities in our city.
According to a University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Institute report from a few years back there were an estimated 58,000 jobs going unfilled in the manufacturing sector paying more than $85,000 annually including benefits, and a large percentage of these jobs don’t require a four-year degree.
Meanwhile, over the last two decades, there has been a chronic jobless rate among Black and Latino young adults spanning 25% to 74%, depending on the neighborhood, and experts say this situation contributes to crime and violence among young people. These numbers have been trending upwards, with a bottom line of an economic situation getting worse for Chicagoans.
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With an elected school board, there is an opportunity to foster interest, exposure and readiness across a diversity of careers, including those in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing careers integrate every aspect of what we consider STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers or "STEM + M," in addition to exciting entrepreneurship and equity-building opportunities from start-ups in emerging categories like electric vehicles, employee ownership and/or buying a legacy company. These are the careers we should be introducing our public school students to across K-12 — and if they are employed in this sector, they are often able to get employers to pay for college.
Let’s embrace our heritage of making things in Chicago and center that excitement and pride in our schools as part of building towards a prosperous economic future.
Will our new elected school board leaders be up to the job?
Erica Staley, executive director, Manufacturing Renaissance
Sun-Times reader Mike Tafoya of Hegewisch, who complained about the piping plover stories, is a grump if I've ever heard one. Some Chicago citizens love to hear about a bird that is hopefully being brought back from extinction — especially one as cute as the piping plover. Articles about concern for our environment and wild animal population are as interesting to many of us as another sports story or political boondoggle. And I’m very sure they are not only written about in resort towns. I can’t believe that reader would waste his time writing a complaint like that. He would have to be pretty bored.
A. Heisler, Streeterville
Sun-Times reporter Lynn Sweet’s article on the presidential debate earlier this week claims Vice President Kamala Harris lives "in the real world without wealth."
Harris makes over $200,000 as vice president and had a starting salary of $140,000 when she became San Francisco’s district attorney. She took a pay cut when she was named attorney general of California but still made six figures. Today she and her husband have a combined net worth of roughly $8 million.
If this is Lynn Sweet’s idea of poor, count me in.
Joe Ferro, Garfield Ridge
What does make a gun lethal? Any type or kind? Without ammunition, a pistol can be thrown at someone or an automatic rifle can club someone within reach. All the noise about guns is just (respectfully sung by Bob Dylan) blowin' in the wind! And the gale continues without the discussion about the dangers of bullets.
Paul Raymond Orich, Lansing
