CHICAGO – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to impose another tobacco tax on residents to fund orientation programs for Chicago Public Schools students transitioning to new schools.

To pay for expanding a one-week orientation program for the city’s 20,000 incoming high school freshmen, Emanuel plans to propose new taxes on tobacco products like cigars, chew and roll-your-own cigarette tobacco next week, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

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The estimated $6 million in proposed new taxes is in addition to $755 million in new taxes and fees the city imposed on residents in the latest budget.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

It calls for a 15-cent tax per “little cigar,” which would raise the cost of a 20-pack of the cigars, like some varieties of Swisher Sweets, from $5.79 to $8.79, according to the Emanuel administration. It would impose a 90-cent tax on larger cigars.

The mayor wants a tax of $1.80 per ounce on smokeless tobacco, to bump the price of a 1.2-ounce can from $4.19 to $6.35; and a $6.60-per-ounce tax on roll-your-own tobacco, to raise the average price of a “small pouch” from $7.25 to $11.54.

The news site points out Emanuel has a habit of taxing tobacco when financial times are tough, which is pretty much all the time in the Windy City.

For the 2016 budget, the mayor taxed electronic cigarettes. In 2014, it was an increase of 50 cents per pack on regular cigarettes, which brought federal, state and local taxes on cigarette packs to the highest in the nation at $7.17 in taxes per pack, the Tribune reports.

Emanuel’s proposal seeks to raise revenues for a school districts that’s chronically besieged with money problems, most tied to retirement costs for Chicago Teachers Union members. The current school budget, of example, relies heavily on hundreds of millions in dollars from state lawmakers, which have not approved the spending.

The district is also facing the potential of a teachers strike over stalled union contract negotiations, as Chicago Teachers Union officials recently announced their members voted overwhelmingly to walk out on students.

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The money from the mayor’s new proposal would fund the one-week summer transition program for high school freshman, as well as two weeks of summer remedial support for eighth-graders at risk of dropping out, the Sun-Times reports.

CPS Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson told the Sun-Times the freshman orientation program is modeled after Walton Payton College Prep, the top high school in the state. Students would learn things like where their classes will be and school resources, “but the majority of the time will be spent on reinforcing academic values of the school and some social-emotional supports that students will need to make the transition” to high school, Jackson said.

“What’s critical is that the teachers managing the program have to be teachers within the school and should be the freshman teachers that those the students themselves will see in the fall,” she said. “That’s when it works best.”

University of Chicago’s Urban Labs identified about 3,000 eighth-graders in the city at risk of dropping out before they make it to high school, and Urban Labs Director Tim Knowles believes it’s critically important to intervene before it’s too late.

The goal, he said, is to “design interventions that would support kids moving forward at a faster rate.”

“That’s smart,” Knowles said. “If you’re going to move to a 90 percent graduation rate over the next several years, you can’t wait until ninth grade.”

Both the Sun-Times and the Tribune pointed out that Emanuel’s proposal is his latest effort to repair relations with the city’s minorities after accusations he kept a police shooting video from the public until after his re-election. Protestors have gone as far as to call for his resignation at staged rallies outside his home.

Ironically, President Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday that the president thinks his hometown “looks great,” according to the Tribune.

McDonough said Obama sees a Chicago “and a people of Chicago and a mayor of Chicago that continue to do very good work.”