Mayor Lightpaw has gotten herself in some hot water... Chicago Mayor Offers School Credit for Students Who Help Her Campaign Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (D.) is encouraging public school teachers to offer credit to students who volunteer for her reelection campaign. In an email sent to Chicago public school teachers, Lightfoot deputy campaign manager Megan Crane asked teachers to encourage students to volunteer "to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring," offering "class credit" for those who participate, WTTW News reports. "We're simply looking for enthusiastic, curious, and hard-working young people eager to help Mayor Lightfoot win this spring," Crane wrote in the email sent to teachers' official work accounts. The program sparked immediate backlash and could spell trouble for Lightfoot, who in her 2019 bid for mayor promised to fight the "Chicago machine," a patronage system that has dominated city politics for years, with tougher ethics regulations. "This is unethical and wrong on so many levels," the Chicago Teachers Union said in a statement. The union tweeted that the scheme "feels strangely like it's straight out of the machine politics the current incumbent ran against—yet continues to use herself." Attorneys for the union believe the email "not only violates the city's government ethics ordinance but also the ethics policy imposed by Lightfoot when she took office in 2019," according to WTTW News. Political campaigns cannot use the Chicago Public Schools email system to "solicit volunteers and donations," the district's ethics guidelines state.