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Chicago Public Schools officials can breathe easier now that Illinois lawmakers have lavished hundreds of millions more dollars on the district.
But the district’s enrollment loss is relentless: CPS officials project another drop of at least 8,000 this year, to around 370,000 students. That comes after a plunge of 11,000 last year. Enrollment has been sliding for years as age cohorts shrink and neighborhoods empty out.
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Audio and summary Illinois bill would override local law to allow homeless living in all public parks – Wirepoints
April 14, 2026
27 Comments
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.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago Fiscal Crisis Worse Than Pre-Bankruptcy Detroit, HIV Surge and Public Health Threat From Open Borders Goes Unreported
April 10, 2026
2 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
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.
WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times falsely blame Texas Gov. Abbott for 2020 to 2024 surge in Chicago Latino HIV, AIDS infections – Wirepoints Quickpoint
March 31, 2026
11 Comments
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
This is what was so disingenuous about the ed funding bill. Everyone knew CPS was due to report a huge enrollment drop this year, but supporters were insistent that we “hold harmless” school districts based on LAST year’s enrollment numbers.
The high-seniority teacher burn-outs and high-paid make-work administrators are like looters following a hurricane or flood. They see the damage and understand the difficulty of recovery but they are single-minded upon getting “theirs” from the common leaky bucket before it’s totally empty.
The demographics of CPS enrollment decline are interesting. The students leaving CPS tend to be poor minorities that receive more federal and state grants than the average student. Unfortunately, CPS gets 45% from the same federal and state sources. So when a poor student leaves the system, Rahm and Claypool have to scrounge up more property tax dollars to make up the difference. It’s quite a dichotomy. Poor people leaving Chicago means opportunity for gentrification and importing more wealth in general. But poor people leaving should mean you need less social services and financial support from outside resources. Rahm wants… Read more »