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In 2025, a projected $628 million structural deficit is expected when federal pandemic relief funding runs out. A school closing moratorium also expires that year. Then, Chicago’s fully elected school board will be seated in January 2027, stripping the mayor of full control of schools decisions. That’s aside from the challenges that have already piled up. In the decade since the city closed a record 50 schools, Chicago Public Schools’s enrollment has dropped by another 81,500 students. CPS projects it would cost at least $10 billion to repair and modernize its schools.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Chicago Public Schools are gone. The middle class has deserted them. The more affluent have one or two places where the lower class BS of disruption and truancy is not welcome. The CPS in general is just another government job program for otherwise unemployable people. It joins the TSA door watchers and the Air Team auto emission test program keeping potential problems off the streets.
1.) once again, CTU/Brandon equity talks a lot about sustainable community/neighborhood schools but those schools aren’t good enough for his kids. And I’m 100% sure gates, sharkey, and the rest of the ctu crew don’t have their kids in neighborhoods school either. I believe the CPS school in Portage Park CTU/Brandon sends his kids to is 6 to 7% black. What a joke—“Sustainable community schools are part of the Johnson administration’s vision of steering away from a system of choice back to an emphasis on neighborhood schools. Most children do not attend their local school.” 2.) I don’t believe article… Read more »
If this is true as article states–“Most children do not attend their local school”, than this is obviously a gigantic part of CPS empty neighborhood school problem. And the question is, what % of CPS students that attend local neighborhood school vrs magnate/selective enrollment schools? And then further, if CTU is so adamant about saving empty neighborhood schools why aren’t they advocating to end magnate/selective enrollment CPS schools, (where CTU/Brandon has his kids)?
Here’s some new info for parental leave in CPS
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mayor-johnson-extends-parental-leave-182800835.html
If enrollment is dropping schools should be closed. What is so hard to understand?
If more students and whoever-it-is who’s the adult responsible for them cared about grade-level achievement in CPD schools, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. We’d have schools that were mostly graduating educated students. We’d have teachers who got that done working in buildings that allowed this to happen, supervised by administrators-n-unions-n-elected officials that were all on board with grade-level success. CPD schools have been failing Black and Hispanic students badly and trending worse as regards grade-level performance for a long, long time now. Decades. Why would parents/guardians/whoever who care so little about what CPD schools accomplish be upset about… Read more »
GO to school, and get a free lunch and breakfast, that is all folks; the end.
Are we to believe that enrollment would have increased if the schools remained open? Because it’s not like these kids had to travel an extra 10 miles to attend their new school. And it’s not like there’s a housing shortage where the new schools are located.
CPS simply cannot afford to keep under-utilized schools open in the off chance that the neighborhood recovers in the next 10-20 years. Pulling limiting resources from other schools to prop up failing schools is just a dumb way to manage assets.
With Johnson as mayor, I can’t imagine any school closings, no matter how underutilized. Could be wrong,
I sure a soon to be 100% controlled CTU elected school board & mayor CTU/Brandon are going to change things around in a jiffy!!
When all the free money is spent or stolen the city will collapse on itself . Everyone willl develop memory problems.!
Wow, could there be layoffs of CTU employees followed by a property tax decrease?