* From today’s Q and A with Gov. JB Pritzker…

Q: So you were in Japan when Mayor Brandon Johnson made his decision to get rid of his school board members, and you were with the Senate President and the Illinois House Speaker. Did you have discussions with them about whether there should be legislative action to try to prevent this from happening in the future?

Pritzker: We did not.

Q: Would you like to see some legislative action to kind of take away some of that control that the mayor has to do that?

Pritzker: That’s not something we’re currently discussing. I think there’s a lot to be worked out still, as you know, by the mayor with CPS and the CEO of CPS.

Q: What was your reaction when you saw that happen?

Pritzker: I mean, I think my first reaction was, boy, the time difference is pretty big. It’s hard to get ahold of anybody you know to get kind of on the ground reaction as it was happening. But I, yeah, I think, look, it’s a challenging environment. I think when there are shortfalls in a budget for schools, and you know, where I think some of the one-time money that came into schools was spent in an operating budget. It’s going to be almost impossible to overcome without finding efficiencies within the budget. And we’re, of course, going to continue to increase funding from the state level, as we have every year. And so I hope that CPS will be able to find its level as a result of the work that we’ll do, but, you know, very importantly, the work that they’ll do on the ground in Chicago.