'He's got nothing to brag about': Illinois governor swipes at Ron DeSantis over education

Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzger ridiculed Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis' approach to education hours after DeSantis visited the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge Seven on Monday.
"The reason you why you have crime that has spiraled out of control in so many of these different areas is because you have politicians putting woke ideology ahead of public safety," DeSantis opined during his widely protested stop in The Prairie State.
In response, Pritzger tore into DeSantis at a Tuesday press conference.
"I think teachers are worthy of investing in and by the way, we shouldn't be banning books from our libraries. Teachers shouldn't be forced to, you know, toss books away or put them in a drawer. And the truth is that we, we actually have a much better education system in Illinois than they have in Florida," Pritzger said at a press conference.
"We're ranked higher than they are," Pritzger stated of The Sunshine State's national standing. "US News and World Report ranks K-12 education in Illinois sixth in the country and number one among the largest states in the country."
Notably, that same US News and World Report analysis placed Florida at number one for higher education. But Pritzger's broader point was to underscore DeSantis' controversial policies, which include banning educators from teaching topics that highlight racial disparities in American history and enacting discriminatory laws targeting LGBTQ+ students and faculty.
"So he's got nothing to brag about when it comes to education. So, so he moves on and tries to use this word 'woke' to describe everything. He doesn't even know what the word means, and he has no definition of it. It's just anything he doesn't like is 'wokism.' And all I can tell you is that, I dunno what that means," Pritzger said.
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"And frankly," Pritzger added, "what I can say about Illinois is that we're a state that cares about equity, we're a state that cares about our families, we're making the investments that are required so that our youngest children will do better and better, and I'm really excited about the direction of our state as opposed to a state where they don't make the investments that are necessary to lift up their education system or their healthcare system."
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\u201cGov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) slams Ron DeSantis after the Florida governor visited Chicagoland Monday: "We have a much better system than they do... He's got nothing to brag about when it comes to education. So he uses this word 'woke' to try to describe everything [he doesn't like]."\u201d— Heartland Signal (@Heartland Signal) 1677009968
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