By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
Junk-rated and perennially mismanaged Chicago Public Schools is at it again. The district says it needs $14.4 billion to address emergency building repairs and to fully renovate all 522 of its public school buildings. That’s 50 percent more money than the $9.4 billion CPS will spend on its 2024 budget.
What Chicagoans should know is that much of that money would be wasted on hundreds of half-empty schools. Over one-third of the city’s 473 traditional schools are at less than 50 percent capacity.
$1 billion alone of that infrastructure spending is targeted for the district’s 20 most empty, failing schools – all of which are only 5 to 25 percent full and where, on average, just 8 percent of students could read at grade level in 2022.
Take Douglass High School. The school has capacity for 900 students, but just 34 kids are enrolled there, a utilization rate of just 4 percent. None of the students at Douglass could read at grade level last year.
The 2023 Chicago Public Schools Educational Facilities Master Plan calls for $35 million in spending on infrastructure and upgrades at Douglass. That’s more than $1 million per student.
It’s the same story at Manley High School, where just 70 of 1,300 available seats are filled and only 7 percent of students are proficient in reading. CPS says it wants to spend $82 million, nearly $1.2 million per student.
Collectively, CPS’ 20-emptiest schools are just 15 percent utilized – 3,100 students are enrolled in buildings that can house 21,000. With CPS asking for $1 billion in infrastructure and upgrades for those 20 schools, that’s an average of $330,000 in spending per student.
Expensive and Empty
The district’s $14 billion request, even if some argue it’s just a wish-list, shows just how divorced from reality the education system’s priorities are. Chicago student enrollment has dropped by 116,000, or about 27 percent, over the past 20 years, leaving 170 of the district’s 473 traditional schools half-empty or worse.
Only 122 of the 473 CPS schools are at 80 percent capacity or better.
Rather than spending billions on upgrades, many of these schools should be closed and sold off. A glance at CPS education outcomes, which we’ve compiled on a school by school level, shows most of these places don’t provide students with the education they need. Just a quarter of CPS students can read at grade level, with results even worse for math.
And with so few students, empty schools aren’t “community centers” any more, eliminating the oft-used rationale for saving them.
But Illinois lawmakers, at the behest of the Chicago Teachers Union, won’t let the district close a single school. Since Mayor Emanuel closed 49 schools in 2013, the district has been restricted by a series of school-closing moratoriums, the most-recent of which won’t expire until January 2025.
The absurdity at Chicago Public Schools continues.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Chicago Public Schools fails its Hispanic students: Only 17 of every 100 read at grade level. – Wirepoints Special Report
- Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system – Wirepoints Special Report
- How many grades behind are Chicago Public Schools’ students?
- Covering up Chicago’s literacy problem
- Chicago Public Schools doesn’t deserve another penny
Appendix
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.
Illinois lost another 54,000 tax filers and dependents, net, according to the IRS. Since 2000, fleeing taxpayers have taken $94 billion of annual adjusted gross income with them.
Thank you so much for this report. Without your coverage, the official release of CPS Master Facility Plan would have advanced without civic and elected officials reviews. We do hope CPS would fully disclose it’s approach to select Green School sites. There is a number of school sites within the Englewood Neighborhood TIF district we would agree to support as Green Schools and Yes Facility Improvements beginning with the Earle School addition building.
Closed schools should be remodeled, updated and reopened. The schools are overcrowded and they don’t have enough recourse teachers and staff.
Great! Where are you getting the money?
But this article is missing the point. Think of how many useless CTU vermin leeches you can employ in these empty schools. 34 students, 88 students. Puh. The number of students isn’t the point. The number of CTU slime that is employed is the point. That’s the goal. Youze just shut up and pay your taxes. The vile scum that are CTU rules you.
They also rule the principals and district administrators who are nothing more than CTU lap dogs. The district will continue to fail without accountability and effective talent.
No business would survive without top talent and accountability, so why do we continue to run public schools this way?
Time to payback the construction workers unions for votes.
Just a waste of money.
Mayor Johnson is modernizing schools for all the illegal immigrants
The number of high school age students truant and roaming the streets in Chicago on a daily basis outnumber the paltry attendance in all Chicago public high schools.
The ONLY thing government is good at, is spending our money foolishly …
I was told a long time ago by a very wise woman, “When you point a finger at someone three other fingers are pointing back at you.” That’s the Chicago Public School system, blaming everyone but themselves. This is NOT a problem that can be fixed with more money. They just won’t admit it.
Well, duh! They’re modernizing schools to attract more migrant! It’s the best, and only, growth strategy they have: IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY [illegal immigrants] WILL COME!!
If u really think they are going to fix anything you are really stupid or part of the scam to rake in some $
They will fix it for the gimmigrants and destroy it for citizens. Any questions?
$90 million to fix Fenger? Fenger?! And when you’re done, you’re left with…Fenger?!
Same thing happened in Detroit as the population declined dramatically.
Teacher unions fought school consolidation even after Detroit went bankrupt.
And Detroit still performs dead last on the NAEP tests, which assess both math and read proficiency levels.
PPF makes valid point: voters are getting what they want.
This is the sociopathic predatory mantra.
Therefore, any voters/non-voters NOT getting what they want have choices:
This money will not be wasted on half empty (or more) schools. It will be used to reward the politically connected that donate to socialist’s favorite causes, themselves.
This very thing is significant factor in sustained
Woodstock Illinois 3.6% property tax rate.
Empty schools are manageable. Empty schools are quiet. Empty schools translate to an easy paycheck for those that work in them. Lazy, overpaid teachers such as Brandon was ,like empty schools. As the constant putting off of returning to the classroom showed us, CTU likes empty schools too.
Same list of empty schools should become list of 2023 – 2025 migrant shelters. Reuse of existing facilities is a far more cost-efficient method of housing migrants. Far better approach than “tent city”.
CPS could agree to operate adult-education TESL programs at occupied schools, and after-school TESL programs for migrant-students at CPS schools, all staffed by CTU TESL-accredited teachers. WIn-win-win for our most-favored constituents, CTU union-members.
I appreciate the creative alternative suggestion
to what they are proposing; however,
I still say, “Send them home”.
Chicago is broke. And shut down CPS. It’s
broken and can’t be fixed.
Agreed … spend the money to send ‘em packing.
Bend over Chicago taxpayers. Also, no fair complaining. You either voted for this or chose to live there (or both).
Consolidate and close any building with utilization under 25%
That’s a good start! After that maybe shut down the
whole failing thing.
The irony is any of the zillions of Venezuelan migrants would be happy to move into any empty CPS schools as is in a heart beat but the lib pols & CTU are so vested in peddling the “black community dis-investment” shtick it will never happen.
Can’t wait to see the CTU fight the installation of non-friendly members for the upcoming School Board. How many of the names being put forth for seats are family or friendly to the CTU? Thanks, Chicago voters for Amendment 1, it wouldn’t have passed without you. You fell for government lies again and now we all pay for it.
I don’t think a single non union friendly member will get elected. They will all be tagged as MAGA extremists and the low IQ Chicago voter will believe it.
Then those voters will get exactly what they want. All is good.
@CityBureaucrat
You can’t vote out political machines. You can only infiltrate them or set up rival political machines.
https://twitter.com/CityBureaucrat/status/1708101279174561930
Better set that up then.
I’ll let Dave Hardy do the organizing!
lol. Fair enough.
Absolutely, Dave is Illinois’ biggest cheerleader! As the state circles the drain Dave is out there in his fast boat with the 4 Mercury outboards going full blast until he is out of fuel! I can pick up some pom poms!
Hey, I believe you are right!
Grifters like BLM BJ don’t have to make sense. They just say what sounds nice to the people that vote for them, because those voters have room temperature IQs from going to Chicago government schools.