Thanks to the Chicago Teachers Union, academic achievement has collapsed, even as school spending per student has doubled. Newsweek reports that “Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has almost doubled its spending per student over the past decade, but test scores are dropping. The district is spending $29,028 per student in the current school year—a 97% increase since 2012.” Student “proficiency in math has dropped by 78 percent since then, while proficiency in reading has declined by 63 percent.” Meanwhile, Chicago’s left-wing mayor is planning to make the city go into high-interest debt to give the teachers union an even bigger, disproportionate share of the city’s money.
“On Friday, all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education resigned amid a pressure campaign from City Hall,” notes the Wall Street Journal (The mayor then named new school board members who are closely aligned with the teacher’s union):
Chicago is in the middle of negotiating what is likely to be a costly new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, Mayor Johnson’s largest campaign contributor. Since the Chicago school district can’t afford the hefty raises and benefits CTU is demanding, the mayor has suggested that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) take out a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan to cover the shortfall.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez rejected this as irresponsible and unsustainable. In a column in the Chicago Tribune in September, he wrote that he is against “exorbitant, short-term borrowing, a past practice that generated negative bond ratings for CPS and that would likely lead to additional bond rating cuts and higher borrowing interest rates.”
For that display of sanity, Mr. Martinez has become persona non grata at City Hall. Local press reports say Mr. Johnson asked for the school’s chief’s resignation, which Mr. Martinez declined. Mr. Johnson then began pressuring the school board to fire him for causing a roadblock to CTU’s contract demands. Thus the school board’s resignation in refusal to be window dressing for the CTU agenda.
Mr. Johnson now says he’ll appoint a new slate of school board members on Monday, and no points for guessing they’ll be allies of Mr. Johnson and the CTU. The seven new members will have the authority to approve the loan Mr. Johnson wants, and fire Mr. Martinez if they can invent a reason. The power play has outraged even the progressive Chicago City Council. In a blistering letter on Saturday, 41 of the City Council’s 50 members called the mass resignation “unprecedented” and noted it “brings further instability to our school district.” The letter noted that Mr. Johnson’s emergency financing demands are especially rich since the city has spent more effort lobbying Springfield for $2 billion for a new stadium for the Chicago Bears than it has trying to shore up CPS finances. In other countries, this would be a crisis of corrupt governance. In Chicago it’s the CTU monopoly at work.
Due to unnecessary spending, “Chicago Public Schools is in dire financial straits, yet Chicago Teachers Union blocks” the “closing of near-empty, failing schools,” reports WirePoints.
Indeed, the union wants more staff to be hired for schools that are almost entirely empty and have hardly any students. “Illinois Policy Institute Policy Analyst Hannah Schmid said the Chicago Teachers Union is emboldened with Johnson in the mayor’s office.” “We’re seeing these extreme demands” like the demands for “nine new staff members at every school, even those schools with 4% of their building filled with students,’ Schmid told Center Square.
Breaking campaign promises, Chicago’s left-wing mayor, Brandon Johnson, has sought to get rid of high-achieving high-schools in the name of “equity.”
Violent crime is rising in Chicago, as the city wastes money on soft-on-crime policies rather than investing in more and better policing.
Chicago’s mayor has proposed reparations to reduce Chicago’s high crime rate, but reparations would do nothing to cut crime, and would have more negative than positive impacts.
Chicago’s mayor has proposed left-wing policies that would shrink the quantity and quality of housing in the city.
