Today, a majority of the Board chose political fiction over financial responsibility. By adding state revenue that has not been appropriated, committed or guaranteed, CTU-aligned board members did not create a single new dollar for our classrooms. They simply wrote an imaginary number into a spreadsheet and called it a solution. That is not progressive budgeting. It is fiscal malpractice. CTU’s political leadership knows Springfield has not approved this money. They know CPS cannot spend campaign rhetoric. They also know exactly what happens when the promised money fails to arrive: drastic midyear cuts, disrupted classrooms, layoffs, emergency borrowing and further damage to the district’s credit. Instead of confronting the district’s financial reality, CTU and its allies are trying to conceal it with invented revenue. The education of the children of the city of Chicago is not a game.  I will not participate in that deception. Our families deserve honesty, not fantasy accounting. Our employees deserve a budget capable of actually paying them. Our students deserve better than discovering halfway through the school year that the money they were promised never existed. Those who voted for this amendment will own every cut, every downgrade and every disruption that follows.