By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
What’s behind the latest Chicago Public Schools mess is simple, and not surprising. CPS spent its temporary covid money on permanent costs, namely salaries and benefits, and that covid money has finally run out. Now the district’s back to facing potential billion-dollar deficits, credit-rating concerns, and political chaos, largely due to an irresponsible covid-era hiring spree.
What began with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s demand that CPS CEO Pedro Martinez take out a $300 million payday loan to paper over deficits has morphed into a train wreck.
Johnson called for Martinez to resign after Martinez refused to borrow the money. Then the entire school board quit in protest of the mayor’s hardball efforts. Now the CTU is screaming at everyone involved to demand $1 billion from the state, while Martinez wants Johnson to raid the city’s TIFs funds to help bailout CPS. And Moody’s, watching this all play out, has warned that more cash flow problems would be a “credit negative” for the district.
What’s funny in all of this is that nobody is pointing out the root cause of this current chaos. The district went on a covid-era 25% hiring spree, adding more than 9,000 staff since 2019, even as enrollment dropped by 10% (a loss of more than 37,000 students).
The district has hired more than 2,500 teachers and 3,500 school support staff, pushing staff numbers up 13% and 34%, respectively. And the district’s admin and citywide student-support staff has ballooned by 3,000 people, or nearly 50%.
All that hiring has exploded personnel costs within the budget. CPS went from spending $3.96 billion on salaries and benefits, to more than $5.8 billion – a near 50% increase in just six years.
In all, 82% of the entire $2.3 billion increase in the district’s spending between 2019 and 2025 has been consumed by personnel costs.
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We’ve already documented in detail that CPS teachers are among the highest paid across the nation’s largest school districts. That the district spends more than $30,000 per student – up 74% compared to 2018’s $17,000. And we now know the CTU swelled its ranks during the pandemic.
Despite all that money and staffing, CPS kids still can’t read – only 20% of minority students could read at grade level in 2023. In math, only about 11% were at grade level.
It should be increasingly obvious to Chicagoans that the district is incapable of delivering an education to children. The district continues to grow and spend money even as enrollment shrinks.
The absurdity at CPS continues.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- It’s obvious why Chicago politicians hate what Donald Trump says about the city
- Suddenly the school board cares about Chicago Public School debts?
- Enough is enough. Create a new Chicago school district to entirely replace the old one.
- City of Chicago budget revenues have ballooned by $6 billion since 2019. Why the $1 billion deficit?
- Chicago Public Schools fails its Hispanic students: Only 17 of every 100 read at grade level. – Wirepoints Special Report
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Uh oh ….. somebody is confusing the CPS/CTU Democratic Party nexus with education again.
Are the added 3,563 “School Support Staff & 3,012 “Admin and City Wide Support Staff” CTU or SEIU members? How many of this increased staff are the “tutors” CPS is touting as reason for newly announced supposed test score gains?
Also, once again, nobody knows or reports on how many substitutes CPS employees or what % of classroom days they cover for teachers. Why does CPS keep this info top secret?
Why does no one discuss the fact that “school choice” has bled the money from public schools across the nation. No one wants to discuss that persons with means have on a large scale pulled their kids from CPS leaving the district with a higher percentage of kids who cost more to educate. I’m not saying mistakes were not made about where money was spent, but public school funding and education quality is a national issue, not just a Chicago issue. As a country we are failing.
Mistakes were made? It’s because people with means pulled out of CPS schools? How about- the education system completely failed at education, therefore people pulled their kids out to find schools that actually provide an education. There, fixed it for you.
PP: I’d revise to state that schools began to teach to the lowest common denominator of students and disregarded the students who were capable and eager/willing to learn. Whether slower learners were disruptive or disrespectful and demorallized teachers is difficult to establish and, further, the causes for student behavior are difficult to pinpoint or to prove. No doubt there are lawyers or other advocates who will make trouble if disruptive or disrespectful students are disciplined or expelled. Teachers/administrators on the receiving end of complaints can easily become even more discouraged. The problems are long-standing. Getting to the root of them… Read more »
The inmates are running the asylum
Once again, this publication puts on a clinic of how to use data and graphs that leave all context off the page. Does anyone remember the freaking pandemic? Notice how your kids were impacted? Think about what might help support them? Ya’ll must be a bunch of childless cat people.
Did you read the article or did you learn to read at CPS?
Hey Mark, it looks like your article touched a nerve with Billy PP. Don’t you know that it requires a lot more resources to educate non-existent children, because they start out with such a learning deficit. This guy likes being somebody’s B, so much they he feels the need to defend it. This is your voter base in Illinois. Enslaved defending the people enslaving them.
Pilgrim – so you have an issue with data and graphs? No matter the reasons behind them, the numbers matter. As hominem attacks don’t persuade. Query your level of education.
Found your song online:
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?q=pilgrim%27s+pride+or+pilgrims%27+pride+song#id=1&vid=9ebec65e6ff827e5ca04325a3db4cc11&action=view
I do remember the pandemic, since I am a CPS teacher who was forced to „teach” my students virtually for a full year, and then masked for another. The biggest impact of the pandemic was not Covid, it was CTU’s hysteria and fear-mongering, which furthered and accelerated the downward spiral CPS students (and elsewhere) were already on. I say that because armchair „experts” like to opine on the impact of the lockdowns without understanding that the kids were already not alright. Zoom school just opened more eyes to how bad it was. The downturn really began around 2013, once we… Read more »
Defund CPS. End the child abuse.
Pretty sure defunding CPS would lead directly to an increase in child abuse. Perhaps you are waiting to get your taste.
Spoken like a true out of touch enabler to a failing school system that is robbing children of their right to have a good education that gives them the tools to a successful future.
Fantastic job WP!!!!. An absolute pathetic joke the main stream press(Trib, ST/WBEZ, Crains) would never report any of this analysis. Especially education writers– Chalkbeat (CTU-beat), S Karp, N Issa, etc…The dopey taxpayers are being scammed plain and simple.
The legacy media believes it’s their primary mission to provide cover for Leftist Democrats.
Well, this isn’t “reporting” for one thing.
Smash & grab looters, pronouns me/mine/all mine.
That kind of economic management makes perfect sense to the abject diseased pond scum known as democrats.
Tough talk, jackass
LOL
Do you object to being called diseased or pond scum? Just asking for future reference.
Increase in staffing and a significant management increase…but a decrease in students. Gosh, what’s wrong with THAT picture. Don’t need a million dollar PhD principal or superintendent to figure this one out. This is simple miss management and abuse. 100’s of Millions of tax dollars….just wasted. Illustrates that there is NO management with any business sense, only greed.
Close it. Fire them all. Start over or don’t….
Simpleton
Somebody’s been drinking tonight
Uh oh, someone is confusing a Democratic Party jobs program with education again.
Uh oh, Old Joe don’t give a fuck about kids.
Your concern for kids shines through in every comment you make. No wonder the kids can’t read or do math.
Actually Bill, I do care and often reflect on my primary school years as the the foundation to my current affluence. If I could wave a magic wand I’d have every kid attend a 1960s era Catholic school. Of course the CTU and Democratic Party hacks would be left at the curb but at least they would no longer be doing any harm and the taxpayers would keep more of their earnings.
When I read the headline my thoughts were no matter how it was described the simple answer was that it was a spending problem and there it is right in the opening paragraph as it describes the spending of covid generated spending and how now the covid money well has run dry. The CPS has acted like little children turned loose in a candy store grabbing everything and anything with no conception regarding that things have to be paid for and there we have it. Until the CPS et al starts acting like responsible adults nothing will change and the… Read more »
Perhaps that’s where their underserved students learned the fine art of funnin’ 7-11’s out of business.
The fact that they didn’t use the Covid money to draw down pension obligations reflects their priorities. A lost opportunity.