By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Wirepoints recently released a piece on Chicago Public School’s near-empty, failing schools. Nearly a third of CPS’ 478 traditional schools are less than 50 percent full and its 20 most empty schools are struggling with deserted hallways and terrible student results. Manley High School, for example, has a capacity of nearly 1,300 students, but just 64 kids attend the school and only 2 percent of the kids can read at grade level.
We were asked by several readers for more information about those 20 schools. What was each school’s per student spend? How many employees were there? How much did school administrators make?
What we found made already-disturbing facts even worse.
In those 20 schools there are, on average, just four students for every school employee.
At Crown Elementary for example, there are 131 students and 30 FTE employees – a four-to-one ratio – all in a school that’s only at 19 percent capacity. At Raby High School the ratio is three-to-one – 163 students versus 52 teachers and staff.
Manley HS, meanwhile, spends $33,000 per student and has a ratio of two-to-one: 64 students and 34 employees.
And Uplift High School – where operational spending is about $30,400 per student – has just as many employees, 54, as there are students, 55. Despite that 1v1 ratio, only 3 percent of students are proficient in reading.
Wirepoints also found that more than half of the 20 schools had both a principal and an assistant principal – each with a salary above $110,000 a year.
For example, Courtenay Elementary with its 151 students has a principal with a $163,000 salary and an assistant principal with a $137,000 salary.
And Douglass High School has both a principal making $147,000 an assistant principal making $122,000 – all for managing just 44 students.
All this is just more evidence supporting an inconvenient truth for both the CTU and the administrators at CPS – keeping these schools open isn’t about supporting kids or neighborhoods. It’s about running a jobs program for their members.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Chicago Public Schools’ radical agenda gets uglier: ‘Equity’ video promotes looting and burning
- ‘F*** Wirepoints’ Says Chicago Teachers Union When Confronted With Facts From The School District Itself
- More failure at Chicago Public Schools: About one-third of traditional schools are half empty or worse
- The opportunity that Chicago – and Illinois – kids need is real school choice
- Chicago schools poised to end rankings in latest blow to accountability
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.
Find the teacher who is teaching carjacking. Give him more money to teach English. Carjacking is the only thing the students are at or above grade level at
Note:
The Civic Federation of Chicago complained (Jun 21, 2022) that CPS was seeking the highest permissible increase (5%) in their property tax levy.
The Civic Fed writes:
“Over the past five years, [CPS] personnel has increased by 17%, or 6,269 positions [while] Student enrollment has declined by 18.1%, or 73,050 over the past ten years.”
https://www.civicfed.org/sites/default/files/compressed_civicfederationanalysis_cpsfy2023proposedbudget.pdf
Convert empty schools to SRO’s. Addresses housing issue and attracts population w/o children, hence no need for a neighborhood school. Better yet, it puts annoying housing advocates at odds with the teachers union. Win-win.
Spot on Nixit,
Lori could repurpose them to house undocumented persons! That would be Democratic Party leftist 2fer.
Excellent! …but what about their “pensions” (on top of their salaries) and when can they “retire”?
It is truly tragic that the table of information in the article is not widely known. If the local media was worth a damn they’d verify it and run with it. A better example of government malfeasance, incompetence and negligence you will not find. You couple the utter failure, and greed, of the CPS system and the breakdown of the family unit in areas across Chicago and you have a pretty good start to understanding the drivers behind the deterioration of the city. No one in power is interested in the truth, and they aren’t interested or intelligent enough to… Read more »
Here is a Statute describing Illinois State Board of Education responsibilities (what say you, ISBE? Have you made any efforts to help the children trapped in these schools?) : (105 ILCS 5/2-3.25) (from Ch. 122, par. 2-3.25) Sec. 2-3.25. Standards for schools. (a) To determine for all types of schools conducted under this Act efficient and adequate standards for the physical plant, heating, lighting, ventilation, sanitation, safety, equipment and supplies, instruction and teaching, curriculum, library, operation, maintenance, administration and supervision, and to issue, refuse to issue or revoke certificates of recognition for schools or school districts pursuant to standards established… Read more »
Right on, Susan. CPS and so many other local failures ultimately land in Springfield. The state government is guilty of massive nonfeasance. We have been trying to emphasize that but will do so again.
Thank you. It seems to do no good, but you are creating an essential record of the arrogant indifference of individuals in Illinois government toward matters which determine the fates of many children’s lives.
This record that you are creating will be the only one for future scholars to see evidence of this nonfeasance.
Unfortunately, the paragraph you quoted would be used by progressives to find that these schools have not implemented enough DEI programs to meet the educational needs of students, and that they must be given far more money to do so.
I believe this malfeasance could be monetized (just not in Illinois) through litigation (whistleblowers could earn life-changing money). Also, National political opposition could highlight these corrupt practices in competing for office. Other States could point out, when competing for productive Illinoisan skilled labor, that their populations of minors are not left to rot for the benefits of a few highly paid admins and union execs. Remember, these are political appointees at ISBE shirking their duties: here is a repeat of the Statutory language: “(b)Whenever it appears that a secondary or unit school district may be unable to offer courses enabling… Read more »
Clearly the mid-level admin gang in charge is above the law, so FOIA requests should be directed to upper management. Executive level refusal or inability to produce evidence of communications related to the desperate conditions of these schools would speak to their negligence or willful indifference toward these conditions. Regional Superintendent responsibilities are described in ILCS. Chicago has a special exception so Regional Superintendent duties fall to CPS executive management: https://www.cps.edu/about/leadership/executive-leadership/ Statutes describe duties such as: ” (105 ILCS 5/3-14.9) (from Ch. 122, par. 3-14.9) Sec. 3-14.9. Elevation of standard of teaching – Improvement of schools. To labor in every… Read more »
Valuable tax dollars have been flushed down the toliet at CPS for years. Now the numbers are catastrophic and show exactly who is in control, the Teachers Union. What a waste of money!!!!!
Wirepoints:
In your research, are the actual schoolwork teaching plans available per grade?
It would be interesting to see what is being taught to kids that results in zero reading or math proficiency in later grades.
To the downvoter:
If your child attending CPS can’t read or do math, thank a CPS teacher!
If they took all the students from those 20 schools and divided them in half, then sent them to two different buildings they might have two efficient sized to operate high schools. However, there would still be very few who could read, write or do math. These numbers and the disastrous percentage of kids who can’t read make me wonder if any of the employees are even coming in to work. I suspect if every CTU emplyee in these schools were fired and not replaced , the academic achievement wouldn’t change a bit.
Does the Illinois Association of School Boards influence this or is the Illinois Association of School Boards influenced by this?
Our local HS board member is a board member on the IASB.
Keep complaining Chicagoans. It’s what you do best, …well that and selecting great mayors.
Why do you (and others here) characterize countering the progressive narratives about the great job they are doing as “whining and complaining”?
Sorry, all the comments about “vote them out” or “throw them out” seem pointless, and therefore of no value. Value comes from action, and the only action of consequence is to leave Chicago/Illinois. Until then, you’re just making noise.
Because sadly (although this might not be you) these are self inflicted wounds. Illinois voters continue to vote for absolute idiots who are ideologues first and don’t even care to the job they were elected to do. This is from Pritzker on down. This is why elections have consequences. Illinois and especially Chicago is really being led to destruction by these people. You would have to have blinders on to not see it. There really is no recall process so everyone is stuck with these incompetent boobs. All self inflicted at the ballot box.
What are the teachers and administrtors who show up doing all day? Is this crew expected to come to work, or can a couple of them call in sick? How many sick days can faculty and staff accrue? So many questions. So few answers.
I had to look up Raby High School to see if it is named after my old college classmate Al Raby, and it is. It is the old Westinghouse High originally named after George Westinghouse a pioneer of electrifying the country. Al Raby became a community organizer. Both men had a lot of ideas that were shocking to others.
Hmm, his surname pluralized (and life’s accomplishments) are the word Rabies!
That’s a real Democratic Party intersection!
Reading farther down the list I find John Marshall High School. When I was employed at near by Collins HS, we had a local presence of a national metal company as a “community partner”. Some of their employees were offered time off if they would pull the home coming floats through the neighborhood for an hour. The employees fled and floats were abandoned when gunfire erupted as the passed Marshall High. This was 1984.
I’ve stopped reading the list! Too many bad memories, sad memories of adults letting the students run the show. Animal farm in non-fiction!
If there was ever any more obvious evidence of the lunacy of unions and the liberal/prog/Dem madness, it would be stunning.
But, hey, LL and JB are doing such a great job…
Wow. Simply, wow.
These numbers are terrible.
But I must ask if you included the people that are paid to stand around at the beginning and end of the school day?
You know, the ones that were paid to stand around when the schools were closed and there were no students…
With staff ratios like these, the students and their text scores should be out of the park!
Exactly right. My wife, who just retired as a teacher downstate, has told me many times that fewer students allows her to be a more effective teacher. She would have thought she died and went to heaven if she had a class the size of these classes. She was ecstatic if her class was in the low 20’s. There is NO excuse for this type of non-performance.
Those are just staggering stats. We all know the union problems, well-documented by Wirepoints over the years, but this is monumental waste and corruption. Even though nothing will change, I appreciate you guys for exposing it!
Little wonder the CTU responds to wirepoints with vulgar expletives. How can this be justified?
Featherbedding is a time-honored union tradition, in particular in a Democrat controlled city and state. It’s part of the cost of having a union.
Public sector unions are leeches on the public bodies that have to deal with them.
Chicago parents are voting with their feet