CHICAGO – Howard Bookins, a Chicago City Alderman and chairman of the city council’s Education Committee, is playing the race card.

The South Side alderman issued a press release Thursday centered on the Chicago Public Schools’ never-ending budget problems that attacks Gov. Bruce Rauner for “racially tinged attacks on Chicago’s public schools,” the Chicago Sun Times reports.

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In the release, which Bookins posted to his Facebook page, he first quoted Rauner’s comments at a downstate event the day prior in which the governor said “the Senate and the House were competing with each other – who can spend more to bail out Chicago with your tax dollars from southern Illinois and central Illinois and Moline and Rockford and Danville, the communities of this state who are hardworking families who pay the taxes.

“The taxes should go into our communities, not into the Chicago political machine,” Rauner said. “That’s where Speaker Madigan and his allies want the money to go.”

Bookins then unloaded on Rauner in a rant that accused the Republican governor of disregarding Chicago students because they’re predominantly black and Hispanic, along with other illogical deductions.

“I’m appalled that Governor Rauner would say that Chicago families are not hardworking and don’t contribute to the tax base of Illinois. In fact, we pay a larger percentage of our incomes in taxes than the Governor or his billionaire friends, who he continues to protect from paying their fair share while ordinary people suffer,” Bookins wrote.

“Perhaps Governor Rauner believes there’s something about the 84% of Chicago Public School students who are African American and Hispanic that makes them undeserving of the full funding provided to other communities in Illinois,” he continued. “Or, perhaps he is trying to stoke racial sentiment with these divisive and misleading attacks.”

Bookins’ comments come about three months after he was crushed during the primary in his attempt to unseat long-serving Congressman Bobby Rush for Illinois’ First Congressional District seat, and about two months after Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called Rauner to an “ISIS recruit” for “acts of terror on poor and working class people,” EAGnews reports.

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Bookins’ race-baiting is the latest in the long-running saga surrounding Chicago Public Schools’ budget that’s plagued with overbearing pension costs, and complicated by ongoing employment contract negotiations with the CTU. The union staged a self-serving one-day teachers strike April 1 to pressure district officials into accepting its financial demands, but the district has not budged and continues to look to Springfield for a massive half-billion bailout to fix its financial fiasco.

Rauner countered some of Bookins’ comments as he continued a tour of the state this week to promote an education funding bill that’s despised by Democrats and their union sponsors.

“I’m a property owner in Chicago and a big taxpayer in Chicago,” Rauner said, according to the Sun-Times. “I care very much about Chicago. And let me be clear, I care very much about Chicago Public Schools.”

But Rauner said he refuses to give in to Democratic policies that will funnel funds to Chicago “to the detriment of other communities.”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “And I am standing up for not to hurt Chicago but to be fair and equitable to all the families in the rest of the state.”

Regardless, local education officials have latched on to Bookins’ focus on race, and are echoing his implications that Rauner and others opposed to a massive CPS bailout are racists.

“At the end of the day, this isn’t a popular opinion, but it’s my honest to God truth: This would not be allowed to happen if CPS was not a predominantly African-American and Latino district. I’m just sorry,” CPS Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson told juniors and seniors attending forum at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School Thursday, according to the news site.

“The reason I say that is because nowhere else would there be a question as to whether or not schools deserve money to have a quality education,” she said. “We’re not asking for extras. We’re asking for basic financing to run our programs, and I think if we take the issue of race and poverty out of it, we’re fooling ourselves.”