DOWNTOWN — The majority of the Chicago Public Schools Latino Advisory Committee has resigned.
Fourteen people on the 18-person council resigned, saying they were doing so because of cuts to school budgets in Latino-majority neighborhoods, according to ABC7.
CPS announced it would cut school budgets across the district by $46 million earlier this month. Committee members said the cuts disproportionately affect schools that serve Latino communities.
The backlash comes after a Sun-Times story revealed that the cuts hit majority Hispanic schools twice as hard as schools with mostly white students.
Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration "strongly" condemned the cuts in a Wednesday statement, said spokeswoman Eleni Demertzis. Demertzis said the cuts disproportionately affected low-income students.
CPS, however, says Rauner's policies are to blame for any discrimination city students face.
Last week, five families sued the State of Illinois on behalf of Chicago Public Schools, claiming that the state has violated the civil rights of their children by giving Chicago schools less funding than other districts.
Illinois picks up a greater share of the bill for teacher pensions in school districts outside Chicago — where 58 percent of students are white — than for Chicago's teachers, where the district is 38 percent black, 47 percent Hispanic and 10 percent white.
In 2016, the lawsuit alleges, for every dollar the state spent on educating children outside the city, about 76 cents was spent on students in Chicago.
The Latino Advisory Committee was put together in 2014 to "increase engagement" with Chicago's Latino communities and help Latino students succeed, according to a CPS news release from the time.
