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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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There use to be two tracks for CPS burnt out teachers to escape the classroom, get a union position or become a quasi-administrator. The schools were too heavy with attendance officers, book room coordinators, human relations coordinators, community liaisons, counselors and assistant principals and they all counted to lower class size ratios. Fenger High School now has less than 300 students. How many admin. positions are still in use there?
I am for consolidating the school districts but what will happen is the school district they will consolidate into will absorb the “excess” administrators/teacher and staff. Instead of have two assistant supers they will have 4 or 5 thus the smaller school will become much larger and who will pick up the extra costs involved? The taxpayers of course. Now there is no reason to have so many supers. Some districts with 100-150 student have a high paid super but Chicago with 300K students has a super with similar pay. Winnebago county has 11 school dist with 11 supers-McHenry county… Read more »
School consolidation would seem to bring significant cost savings but often doen’t. What transpires instead is that the employees in the former districts having lower pay scales generally take on the pay scale of the former highest paying district, and many or most administrators still have a retitled position with pay equal or exceeding what they were paid previously.