The Bottom Line Is the Bottom Line

The Chicago Public Schools is laying off more than 2,000 people including more than 500 tenured teachers:

Citing a $1 billion budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools will lay off more than 2,000 employees, more than 1,000 of them teachers, the district said Thursday night.

About half of the 1,036 teachers being let go are tenured. The latest layoffs, which also include 1,077 school staff members, are in addition to 855 employees — including 420 teachers — who were laid off last month as a result of the district’s decision to close 49 elementary schools and a high school program.

This is exactly what I predicted when the strike was settled. It was baked into the settlement that included substantial pay increases. I can’t believe that the CTU could possibly have believed anything else. The situation was summarized succintly by the representative from the CPS:

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the district was “scraping the bottom” of reserves to provide financial relief and had made cuts in other spending before making layoffs.

“We’re not going to be able to cut our way out of this crisis,” Carroll said. “Our revenues are simply not keeping in line with our spending increases.”

That’s the modern day equivalent of Mr. Micawber’s famous lament:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.

The situation in Chicago is manifestly unjust. Illinois’s contribution to public education, despite the mandate in the state’s constitution, is far too low. Illinois is 50th among the 50 states in the proportion of its contribution to education. Its contribution is about 20%—half that in most states. Chicagoans not only pay for the educations of Chicago’s children, the rest of the state’s children, and the pensions of retired Chicago public school teachers but the pensions of Illinois teachers outside of Chicago as well. People living in Barrington just pay for their own kids’ educations and part of the retirements of their kids’ teachers.

1 comment… add one
  • jimbino Link

    “People living in Barrington just pay for their own kids’ educations…” is demonstrably WRONG.

    The non-breeder Illinoisan pays through the nose for the mis-education of all of Illinois’ kids of the others and NOTHING for the education of his own non-existent kids, whether he live in Chicago or Barrington.

Leave a Comment