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It won’t be an easy ride. Chicago Public Schools has a nearly $400 million structural deficit. There’s opposition from those who support Chicago’s system of school choice, where 70% of kids go to a high school other than the one in their neighborhood. And come January the city’s first elected school board — which Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union lobbied to create — will take control of the public schools, distancing the mayor from influence. Johnson has already faced difficulty pursuing other progressive priorities given Chicago’s migrant crisis and its costs — leaving schools as a key area where he can build his legacy.
Summary and audio linked here.
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.
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.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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You have to know when to hold them and know when to fold them
. Mayor Johnson has screwed up the Chicago school system so badly, he needs to just fold. Get an entirely different party and group of people in place to fix it. Chicagoans are tired of throwing good money after bad.
A real solution would include consolidating schools. All the charts you publish show the great majority of them under used and over staffed. Set a few simple goals like reading, writing, science and math. Weed out the dead wood and invasive species ideas from the faculties much like the occasional environmental burns done now in the CC Forest Preserve District. Keep accurate inventory of supplies. Then there will be money to finance transportation needs and shore up the dying pensions. In other words, Manage with a plan and purpose. Alas, CPS is too far gone!
The only thing mayor Raggedy sprints for is his anxiety meds and chance to hang out with rappers at the Grammys.
There’s nothing wrong with CPS that a few thousand nuns couldn’t fix.
and some common sense!!!!!
With yardsticks in hand!
Wrong generation, Old Joe. Today, in Chicago public schools, nuns or instructors with similar ideas of disciplining children the old-fashioned way would be shot or knifed by the students.
BJ is simply a puppet to his masters at Chicago Teachers Union. The scum of CTU are dreaming of all pay and no work. And no education. Right now only 4 in 10 CPS kids functions at grade level. In CTU’s dream 0 in 10 kids function at grade level. CTU are very worst ultimate result of Public Sector unions. Bust this union now and school choice for all parents.
The Chicago Teachers Union has shown it has considerable clout that obviously has considerable parental support within its fold. My thoughts are that the unions will run, support and elect a slate of candidates that support the teacher’s financial dreams and will have little to do with the educational quality within the Chicago school system. New faces but the same old results will once again is all.
Without weigh-ins from Pritzkers “-1” group, these conversations wouldn’t be any fun.