SPRINGFIELD — Patti Serpa is a single mother of five who relies on a state-sponsored tax credit to send her youngest, 12-year-old Santos, to St. Pius V School, a Catholic grade school in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood that she feels provides him with a better education than his former public school. “Being at St. Pius, it’s a family,” Serpa said in Springfield last week, where she and dozens of others gathered to demand lawmakers keep the tax credit scholarship program alive.
While it has traditionally supported Republican candidates in Chicago’s suburbs, the Illinois Education Association saw the legislature’s decision to not extend Invest in Kids as a major victory. “The voucher system was intentionally created with a lack of oversight and accountability, leaving us with no data to measure its effectiveness,” the IEA said in a statement.