Lori Lightfoot leaves City Hall as CPS athletes arrive to meet her

Khalyl Warren, a senior at Simeon Career Academy High School who plays football, speaks to reporters outside Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office at City Hall, Friday afternoon, Oct. 25, 2019. The students showed up at Lightfoot’s office to voice their frustration over the impact the Chicago Teachers Union strike is having on Chicago Public Schools students and athletes. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

A group of 30 Chicago Public Schools athletes and students arrived at City Hall to speak with Mayor Lori Lightfoot shortly after noon on Friday.

The group, led by Simeon football players, announced its intention to show up on Wednesday. They wanted to voice their frustration over the impact the Chicago Teachers Union strike is having on CPS students and athletes.

Lightfoot left City Hall just minutes before they arrived.

“I think she’s afraid,” Simeon senior Khalyl Warren said. “She is showing fear. But it is ok. We assumed she would be here to say a couple words, say something that we wanted to hear. Something for our teachers, something for us. But if she walked away, she walked away.”

Simeon senior Ronald Haggins initially said the group would stay until Lightfoot returned, but they decided to leave at around 1 p.m. after giving several interviews.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot walks out of City Hall with Corporation Counsel Mark Flessner (left) shortly before a group of Simeon Career Academy High School students were scheduled to arrive and request a meeting to voice their frustration over the impact the Chicago Teachers Union strike is having on Chicago Public Schools students and athletes, Friday afternoon, Oct. 25, 2019.

“We aren’t leaving until we see her,” Haggins said. “We have all day like she does. She will come back, it is her office, she has to come back.”

The group, which included students from Simeon, Bogan, Phillips, King and Phoenix, supports the CTU’s strike and believes the city should meet the union’s demands. Three students gave prepared statements in front of cameras, detailing why the strike needs to end now and why they need nurses in their schools.

“Basically we want to get our word across on how she took away our sport and how this is our chance out of Chicago,” Warren said on Wednesday. “I want to let her know how her keeping us out of school is making us targets for gun violence and gang-related things. There are homeless teens with nowhere to go.

“As a dedicated former high school athlete herself, Mayor Lightfoot is a strong supporter of all of the student athletes throughout Chicago,” a spokesperson for Lighfoot said. “She applauds their willingness to stand up for their rights as both students and athletes, and she is committed to doing all that she can to support their future success – in the classroom, on the field, and beyond.”