Treivon Stevenson
“I would like to see it go for education. As a student we have books that are ripped, and they blame the students for that. I believe if they put more money into it we would have new books; kids won’t write on them and they might respect property more. I hope I can attend Christ the King Prep in the future.”
Noelle Nicosia
“I would certainly love to see the money go toward job training, community development and to better the streets. Education would be first and foremost¡ªafter school education programs [and] enrichment programs that help the children get exposed to different cultures around the city of Chicago. Chicago is such a diverse city. The children need to be exposed to that. If they don’t get exposed, they won’t understand what else is outside of their community. So, education, roads, job training and development, and also, more outreach to let the community know services are available to them. There needs to be some type of outlet where all the communities can post their information so the community is aware of what is out there. “
Sharon Morgan
“I say education. As an employee with a charter school, I know everyone does not want to go to a charter school. So they need a choice for public education. We need more public schools. Of course we need more public high schools. Everyone can’t go to a selective-enrollment school, and even though we have Westinghouse we need a big public school in Austin. Austin is still the Mecca and we need money for that. We need most of the money for education¡ªwe can’t do anything without education.”
Roosevelt Moneyham
“I work at Christ the King so I am adamant about the tax increase that would obviously help anybody in the Austin community. I grew up in the Austin community but I was not able to go to a high school in the community. So I’m more inclined to see our tax dollars go to anything that will help anybody who is in need. It cost more to put a man in prison than it does to put a man through college. So I’m all for the tax increase, and more importantly, I’m all for anything that helps our community.”
Mark Carter
“I feel that the resources should go back into the community where they were meant to be spent, as opposed to making sure you expand the correctional system. You think we have a murder problem? You eliminate these programs and crime is going to go through the roof. The reason why the ex-FBI agent, now the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department (Joey Weiss) has put more police on the street; they know the irreparable damage that we’ll have in response to taking these resources from our community.”