https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/10/21/chicago-schools-covid-money-crisis/
" Thousands of people have been hired at the Chicago Public Schools over the past few years, fueled by $2.8 billion in federal covid relief funding. Now the money is gone, but no one wants to reduce the workforce, and an ugly budget fight has plunged one of the nation's largest districts into a financial and leadership crisis.
The new teachers, aides and school nurses, officials say, were desperately needed even before the pandemic extracted a severe toll on the city's children. But no one in the district has a plan for how to keep paying them."
" The schools want more money from the city. The city wants more money from the state. And the governor says Chicago shouldn't expect a bailout."
" Other school districts around the country may soon face similar budget reckonings as the covid relief money runs out, experts say, though most would be challenged to match Chicago's level of chaos.
"This is what it looks like when you burn a district down," said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. "It is a level of dysfunction that feels beyond destabilizing, enough to make people lose confidence in the system."
" Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher who is closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, says he won't tolerate cuts to the schools staff, which he refers to as laying off "Brown and Black women." He also insists that the schools make the pension payment (which the district agreed to do a few years ago), even though the city is legally responsible for it."
" In another racially charged statement, Johnson dismissed the "so-called fiscally responsible stewards" who have criticized his loan plan, comparing them to supporters of the Confederacy.
"The argument was you can't free Black people because it would be too expensive," the mayor said this month. "They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people. And now, you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system."
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Pretty novel argument for total budgetary dysfunction:
Blame the Confederate States of America, the former members of which are dedicated to fiscal sanity.
" Thousands of people have been hired at the Chicago Public Schools over the past few years, fueled by $2.8 billion in federal covid relief funding. Now the money is gone, but no one wants to reduce the workforce, and an ugly budget fight has plunged one of the nation's largest districts into a financial and leadership crisis.
The new teachers, aides and school nurses, officials say, were desperately needed even before the pandemic extracted a severe toll on the city's children. But no one in the district has a plan for how to keep paying them."
" The schools want more money from the city. The city wants more money from the state. And the governor says Chicago shouldn't expect a bailout."
" Other school districts around the country may soon face similar budget reckonings as the covid relief money runs out, experts say, though most would be challenged to match Chicago's level of chaos.
"This is what it looks like when you burn a district down," said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. "It is a level of dysfunction that feels beyond destabilizing, enough to make people lose confidence in the system."
" Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher who is closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, says he won't tolerate cuts to the schools staff, which he refers to as laying off "Brown and Black women." He also insists that the schools make the pension payment (which the district agreed to do a few years ago), even though the city is legally responsible for it."
" In another racially charged statement, Johnson dismissed the "so-called fiscally responsible stewards" who have criticized his loan plan, comparing them to supporters of the Confederacy.
"The argument was you can't free Black people because it would be too expensive," the mayor said this month. "They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate Black people. And now, you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system."
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Pretty novel argument for total budgetary dysfunction:
Blame the Confederate States of America, the former members of which are dedicated to fiscal sanity.
“If you’re going to have crime it should at least be organized crime”
-Havelock Vetinari
-Havelock Vetinari
