Number of half-empty Chicago public schools doubles, yet lawmakers want to extend school closing moratorium – Wirepoints
April 19, 2024
18 Comments
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
As they say about bankruptcy, at least in the private sector, is it comes slowly, slowly, slowly . . .
. . . then suddenly.
How come nobody in the media is asking Gov. Pritzker if any of the firms his family owns are taking federal bailout money? That very question was asked of Pres. Trump on Day One.
How dare you suggest asking our Democrat governor a question like that. Only pre approved questions allowed.
And that is the truth, doesn’t any wonder why he has a answer to everything.
The Illinois (and New York) dem leaders are too short sighted to see this as good news.
No they are not. They know that elimination of Pension debt by bankruptcy or insolvency will destroy their symbiotic relationship with Public Sector Unions. No Public Sector Union support, no campaign “contributions”, no votes and boots-on-the-ground at election time and their Democrat political oligarchy ends. Simple as that.
They want the multi-millions owed to every AFSCME, SEIU, CTU and IFT member to be paid in full. That’s what their 50 year criminal co-conspiracy is all about.
Jabba would tax you out of your home and have you living in a tent boiling grass for dinner before he would betray his beloved public servant unions overlords.
Someone once said, “Your children won’t remember what you bought for them, but they will remember what you did with them.” If you have young children, do something for them. Get them out of Illinois while the gettin’ is still good. Before there is an onerous exit tax. They will someday thank you for it. Their future is already hopelessly mortgaged thanks to the greedy firemen, cops, and teachers.
I agree that bankruptcy may be a viable solution but contingencies have already been put in place. Madigan put in the last minute of the Implementation Bill that in the event of municipal bankruptcy or even the implied threat that muni bond holders or some bondholders can get up to 90% of FUTURE sales tax revenues for up to forty years and this even trumps pensioners. This applies to home rule communities and a few years ago they wanted towns of 5,000 or more to qualify for home rule status not just 25,000+. Jeanne Ives brought up this sneaky provision… Read more »
Mark and Ted have referred to this as cutting off your body parts…. all in the same of getting subsidized rates. The question becomes in the event of BK, could the judge make changes to those secularized sales tax revenues or not? I believe Puerto Rico did something similar (someone correct me if I’m wrong) and the judge didn’t rule in favor of the bond holders. I believe Mark/Ted did an article or comment on it as the questions were asked if the bond holders for IL debt would be scared by that ruling.
Yeah we’ve been sold down the river, not just passively through mounting debt, but through explicit and intentional law making that basically sells our kids labor and wealth into serfdom. Bankruptcy court cannot be run by these people. It needs to be independent. And should include class action lawsuits against the actuaries and bond rating agencies that colluded, had lunches with politicians and and sold their fiduciary oaths all along. Pain needs to happen to these people so this shit can’t happen again and our kids can know government is being run as a fiduciary, not as a Ponzi.
Take a look at Mike Bost rant on youtube. Illinois Rep in 2012. There are a few different videos. We need more of that.
the democrat cabal who have ruled IL for 30 years and got us into this mess, will never let go of the machine they have owned and that is used to get them elected, year after year. they will not even let go when facing going over the financial cliff. the only thing that will stop them is people leaving, and the finances getting steadily worse. thats where we are at, they put their power at a higher priority over the state of IL and the people’s welfare and benefit. shameful !
“the only thing that will stop them is people leaving”
Nope, they don’t care about that either. The only thing that stops them is to stop reelecting them.
Detroit was allowed to go into bankruptcy by State of Michigan but it didn’t solve the fundamental problem: Public Sector Unions continued to exist. So Detroit has some of the worst schools in the country and still has the lowest rated bonds in the nation. And Detroit continues to languish.
For Chicago and Illinois, Bankruptcy PLUS Elimination of Public Sector Unions is the solution.
Wisconsin cut the head of f of the snake and eliminated Public Sector Unions. Wisconsin is thriving and their public education system is steadily improving.
Look at what Walker had to do to push back against the public union corruption in WI – and look at the thanks he got for it.
Economic collapse is the only way needed change will come to Illinois. Bankruptcy for Illinois would be a blessing, but won’t be allowed to happen.
Folks are right to just get clear of Illinois.
and pension reform, land tax reform, income tax rollback to 3%, and most importantly TERM LIMITS to get the cabal, ie JB, Madigan, and lightfoot, out of office !
I refuse the Tribunes pay wall. Not gonna give them a penny.
Even better, in the toolbar, use the ‘reader mode’. If it doesn’t load, then hit refresh, and the article comes up for free. I only read the Trib when absoluately necessary.
Congratulations to Wirepoints. Finally the rest of the world is waking up to the bankruptcy alternative you have been touting for years. There is no other way out for Illinois or Chicago.With Washington, the Tribune, Forbes and a host of other sources finally focused on the idea, perhaps the only two holdouts –Pritzker and Lightfoot– will start to listen. So far, the combined strategy of those two is–DO NOTHING.
I know a lot of people who’ve filed bankruptcy, and they deny, deny, and deny until the moment they actually file the paperwork. The timeline from acceptance of the inevitability to actually filing is just a few weeks, or less. So it’s understandable that they continue to deny bankruptcy, until that point that they meet with the bankruptcy lawyer to sign the paperwork. The more they deny bankruptcy is an option, the more likely they are to ultimately file.
Great call debtsor. I foresee if happening. For fun, let’s go prediction time my friend. Before or after Novermber 3rd? If after, before or after June 2021?
October 2022, maybe even longer than that. This is going to drag on for a long, long time. We can’t just tax or cut our spending out of this hole now. I think the trigger will be when the government can’t make payroll after skipping pension contribution payments and cutting services to the bare minimum (by government standards). When you can’t make payroll, you’re already at the end of the line, there’s no going back. Billions of dollars in tax revenue has been vaporized, and I expect that Jabba’s recent estimates are wildly understated. My income has dropped to zero… Read more »
From the State and Cook County side of this calamity expect JB (Madigan’s puppet) and Toni Taxwinkle to first make draconian cuts to services that are very public.Of course State Parks will close but expect massive State Police cutbacks too and elimination of funding to municipalities so that their Fire and Police Departments and hospitals shift to skeleton crews. Toni and JB (aka King Madigan) work for the Public Sector Unions and don’t give a damn about the taxpayers.They want dramatic TV footage of despair and chaos in order to con the US government into a Public Sector Union pension… Read more »
“They want dramatic TV footage of despair and chaos in order to con the US government into a Public Sector Union pension bailout. Breadlines, soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, burning buildings, street protests, deaths.” Loser Lori and Toni Taxwinkle are frauds but they’re not Stalin (although given unlimited power, they easily could be). They don’t want deaths, soup kitchens and breadlines, because it would decrease their reelection chances and makes their jobs hard, much harder than just virtue signaling their allegiance to child sacrifice. However, they will definitely take advantage of these situations. And use them for their own political benefit. No… Read more »