UPDATE
From the AP:
Now that state Senator James Meeks has called off his Chicago school boycott, he and Governor Rod Blagojevich are working out a meeting date to discuss plans to help underfunded schools.
Meeks says the governor's office has suggested Monday or Tuesday as possible dates.
Meeks wants the governor and legislative leaders to agree to a short-term funding plan and to discuss a long-term overhaul of Illinois' education funding system. He wants a special legislative session to pass the short-term plan immediately into law.
Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero says the governor is happy to talk with Meeks but it's up to the legislature to approve funding.
Meeks staged a school boycott earlier this week, and hundreds of Chicago public school students skipped classes for two days to protest poor funding.
UPDATE
Around 9 p.m. Wednesday, the rev. and state Sen. James Meeks ended the two-day Chicago Public Schools boycott he organized to protest inequitable education funding. The move is a response to Gov. Blagojevich, who refused to discuss school funding with Meeks while students were held out of class.
"We've decided to call the boycott off, to call the governor's bluff and to seek a meeting with him (Thursday) so that our kids can return to school," Meeks said at a late evening news conference at King High School on the South Side, flanked by Chicago ministers.
UPDATE
The boycotting students have made their way to City Hall, Fran Spielman reports in the Sun-Times Wednesday afternoon:
Two circles of Chicago Public School students -- one with 15 students, the other with 10 -- are sitting on the floor outside the mayor's office trying to pay attention to two teachers and ignore the news media around them. [...] Meeks said he took the protest to the mayor's office, and the lobbies of Chicago's most prominent downtown businesses, because Daley has paid only lip service to school funding reform.
Meeks faults Daley for not using his considerable leverage to force the state legislature to alter the method of school funding:
"Concepts don't pass Springfield. Bills do. You can't support the concept of a bill. You have to support the actual bill. You have . . . to pick up the phone and call [House Speaker] Mike Madigan and say, 'I support this bill.' You have to call [Senate President] Emil Jones and Gov. Blagojevich. . . .You have to call other legislators and say, 'Get behind this bill,' "Meeks said.
"Mayor Daley doesn't support the concept of an Olympics. He supports the Olympics. And we need him to support an actual school funding bill, which he has not in six years.
The mayor is a very influential person. But the mayor can't keep supporting just the concept of school funding [reform]. He has to get behind a particular bill . . . then use all of his authority to make it pass."
UPDATE
The Chicago Public School boycott continues Wednesday, shifting its focus from the well-appointed classrooms of suburban New Trier to a "teach-in" in the downtown offices of Chicago corporations.
From the Tribune:
Some of the same students who traveled to New Trier High School's Northfield campus on Tuesday are expected to sit in the lobbies of buildings including the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, City Hall, Boeing Corp. and Aon Insurance, according to a Meeks spokeswoman. Forty educators will deliver four hours of daily instruction during the boycott that's expected to last through Friday.
But unlike the well-prepared New Trier administrators, Meeks told Chicago Public Radio that he only has permission from one of the organizations the group plans to visit.
Listen to Meeks' interview with WBEZ here.
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"Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools students skipped the first day of classes Tuesday and attempted to enroll at two North Shore schools in a symbolic move to protest the financial divide in Illinois public education," The Chicago Tribune reports.
Shortly after 11 a.m., buses from Chicago began pulling in to New Trier Township High School's Northfield campus as teachers, administrators and community members were waiting to welcome the 30 buses.
Protesters wearing bright orange T-shirts, saying, "Save Our Schools NOW" were greeted by welcome signs held by New Trier school officials and parents.
Megan Davy, a New Trier parent from Kenilworth, talked to children as they waited to cross the street and walk into New Trier's Northfield campus. When protest organizer state Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) stepped off the bus, surrounded by ministers who supported his cause, Davy stepped forward to personally welcome him.
"This is civil disobedience at its finest," Davy said. "I may disagree with some of the methods, but it's so important to open dialogue."
Similarly upbeat takes on the boycott, organized by the Rev. and state Sen. James Meeks, were peppered throughout the Sun-Times' account:
As four buses pulled into New Trier's Northfield campus parking lot, half a dozen parents of former and current New Trier students waved signs. One sign read: "We can all learn something today." Another read: "All kids need good schools."
Students from one arriving bus shouted out of the windows: "We love you, New Trier!"
Though the paper did find one unmoved New Trier student:
One New Trier student, who attends the school's Winnetka campus, described the boycott as "a big publicity stunt."
"They are trying to make it racial," said New Trier senior, Andrew Scherer, 17. "It's a better media story."
The turnout, which was expected to be near 2,000, is a matter of debate. Meeks refused to estimate a total:
When Pioneer Press asked him how many student boycotters there were today he avoided the question saying "you have cameras" and gestured behind him to his crowd of selected supporters.
When Pioneer Press asked him to estimate and asked him where it fell on a scale of 100-500, he would not answer. "You print 100 and I will say 3,000 and we will see who is right," he said. One woman in his crowd yelled, "One hundred thousand!"
CBS 2's Dorothy Tucker pegged the total around 700 students and 300 parents:
Mayor Daley blasted Meeks as "selfish" for staging the protest on the first day of school:
"Why don't you do it in June? Why don't you do it in July when they're out? Why do you tell them not to go to school today? It's very selfish," Daley told reporters after ringing the ceremonial bell at the new Sir Miles Davis Academy, 6740 S. Paulina."You can get frustrated. But you cannot use children in any capacity to get some political decision made."
But Meeks countered that he was "following in the mayor's footsteps" after Daley, Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and School Board President Rufus Williams sanctioned the absence of 30,000 CPS students for a school day rally at Soldier Field on June 10.
Read New Trier Supt. Linda Yonke's email to parents in advance of the protest here.