By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was recently pressed on whether it makes sense to keep almost empty schools open, his response was: “So this is not about how many students should be in a school to determine how much we are going to invest in that school.”
He won’t consider the number of students in a school, even if it’s nearly empty, when deciding how much to spend there? Like on Douglass High School, which can hold 900 students but has just 35?
Wirepoints began writing about the city’s empty public schools back in 2018, on the back of a strong Chicago Tribune piece. Not only were there dozens of near-empty schools, but the overwhelming number of kids in those schools couldn’t read or do math at grade level.
The very worst are schools like Manley HS, which has the capacity for nearly 1,200 kids but has just 78 students enrolled. The cost to keep the doors open is more than $44,000 per student, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.
Austin CCA, a high school with capacity of nearly 1,800, has just 172 enrolled. Annual operating cost: $26,600 per student. Not a single child there is proficient in reading, based on the school’s report card.
Douglass High School, mentioned above, is the worst of all with a utilization rate of 3.8%. Not only can none of the school’s children read at grade level, but it costs the district $68,000 per student to keep them there.
In all, CPS spends over $100 million annually to keep its 20 most-empty schools open.
All those facts have come to the forefront given the mess that’s now at CPS, revolving around upcoming billion dollar deficits, the resignation of the entire school board, and a superintendent that refuses to resign after rejecting a payday loan to cover the district’s deficits.
The issue of empty schools matters for all kinds of reasons. First and foremost, empty schools mean those children have little access to special classes or extracurricular activities that students at bigger schools have. But it’s even worse than that. Despite having an average of just four students for every employee across the 20 schools, just 1 in 10 kids can read at grade level, and in several, it’s zero students.
Second, keeping these schools open is a big waste of money. As mentioned above, it costs $100 million a year just to keep these schools operating. On top of that, CPS says the 20 schools are in need of over $1 billion in repairs and upgrades.
For the empty Douglass high school, CPS last year said it wanted $35 million in capital spending. That’s a whopping $1 million per student at Douglass.
Overall, the district claims it needs $14.4 billion to address emergency building repairs and to fully renovate all 522 of its public school buildings, according to its 2023 facilities master plan. That’s 45% more money than the entire $9.9 billion CPS will spend on its 2025 budget alone.
Third, Mayor Johnson is most likely to resort to property tax hikes on Chicagoans to cover CPS and the city’s deficits – breaking his previous campaign promises. Johnson’s attempt to borrow $300 million is only a delay, but Chicago’s dire finances and his unwillingness to spend less means he’ll have to hike taxes sooner or later.
Finally, there’s the city’s reputation. Johnson’s failures on crime and Shotspotter. His unwillingness to prioritize Chicago residents over illegal immigrants. And his inclination to racialize all conflicts. All that and more is ruining the reputation of the city across the board. Add a complete mess at CPS to the mix and Johnson is stressing the city’s very foundation.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- One big reason Chicago Public Schools is facing a billion-dollar deficit
- 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.
- Update: Chicago school board resignation is giant distraction from the fact that kids at CPS can’t read
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.
For the school with 35 students, how many teachers are at that school? Administrators? Support staff like nurses, librarians, teachers aides? How many different subjects are taught there, especially when none can read?
People seem to forget that with socialists it is about the money and the teachers, and they simply do not care about the students or taxpayers. Why are you outraged?
Move out and let the state implode. Then we will come back and fix it.
”The strong give up and move, while the weak give up and stay”
A friend of mine moved to Vienna, Austria, and I just got back from a visit. 60% of the apartments in the City are owned by the City. The rents are subsidized, and the buildings are well maintained and safe. This is socialism by any definition, yet it works. It works because in Vienna there is a culture of social responsibility, not private enrichment. The Wiener Linien (the public transportation system) is one of the best systems on the planet. It’s on the honor system. No need to walk through a turnstile, stand in line to scan a ticket in… Read more »
Seeing the downvote(s) on every critical post here, I wonder if Johnson or one of his staff reads Wirepoints. 🙂
Socialism is great until you run out of other people’s money.
Hey look…Pin Head got a new hair cut. Looks as stupid as the last one. The spending is obscene and makes absolutely no sense. There is NO WAY to defend such spending. There is no excuse. There is no rational. Huge buildings with full staff for 10% or less of the building capacity. What a waste. Pathetic. At some point this has become criminal.
Make it $2 Billion. It’s only monopoly money to them. You slaves won’t object.
And I’m sure the vast majority of the $100 mil ends up in the pockets of majority WHITE guaranteed upper-income (soon to be highest paid in nation) CTU members who live far-far away from those “systemically dis-invested” BLACK communities.
Well it seems the strategy today in Chicago is “stupid is as stupid does” and there is a whole lot of stupid floating around!
Mayor Johnson and CTU: “We will never let reality infect our ideas or our demands”.
How many fat chickens can sit on the fence before it collapses? We are going to find out sooner rather than later in Chicago I thinks.
Why wouldn’t CTU and Mayor advocate for additional schools and therefore additional teachers and staff? His goal was to get elected mostly via the CTU, so the more teachers and staff, the more dues, and therefore more political spending for the mayor.
Have to protect the unions 899 positions that’s the only point!
That’s SO IRRESPONSIBLE as to be #1 reason for recall of Mayor Johnson. Pandering to his constituency? Who actually protests the closing of an absurdly non-performing school – except for CTU? Seems Mayor Johnson wants to drive Chicago into foreclosure-like financial ruin, for fear of upsetting Stacy Gates and her CTU union members.
This is obviously not the way to prudent govern a city, to provide adequate stewardship to all Chicago residents.