Chicago public schools: “already the nation’s largest junk-bond issuer”
Johnson has demanded that CPS — already the nation’s largest junk-bond issuer, paying more than $800 million annually just to service its mountain of ongoing debt — add another $300 million in high-cost debt to cover teacher raises and to make a $175 million pension payment whose responsibility has ping-ponged in recent years between the city government and CPS. A new schools boss hired specifically to strike a deal with a militant and unreasonable union presumably would need to add far more than $300 million to the maxed-out CPS credit card in order to buy labor peace.
The strategy pursued by the unholy alliance of Johnson and CTU is becoming clearer by the day. Gov. JB Pritzker and state legislative leaders, all Democrats and supporters of organized labor, have refused the Johnson-CTU demands for hundreds of millions more in state funds to finance CTU’s membership growth. They’ve done so despite CTU president Stacy Davis Gates’ racially charged attacks on them when she didn’t get what she wanted from Springfield.
So now Johnson and Davis Gates’ seeming gambit is to deliberately sink CPS into insolvency so that the state has “no choice” but to bail out Chicago’s schools, nearly 40% of which are enrolled with half or fewer of the students they were designed to serve. That’s unconscionable, and is why this school board has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers to continue to display the courage it’s shown so far. A new CEO piling more debt on CPS only will make the inevitable job of right-sizing this district all the more painful.
Chicago Public Schools is in dire financial straits, yet Chicago Teachers Union blocks closing of near-empty, failing schools. – Wirepoints
More than two years ago, we sounded the alarm on this issue by highlighting CPS’ 20 most empty schools. Like Douglass High School, capacity 912, with just 35 students enrolled. Or Austin High School, capacity 1,776, with just 172 students enrolled. The kicker? Not a single kid in either of those schools could read at grade level based on 2023 testing.
The problem is far bigger than those 20 schools. CPS has more than 163 schools – about one-third of the district’s traditional schools – that are less than half full.
Below we lay out the 100 most empty traditional schools in Chicago. This is not Martinez’s list – that has not been released – but these schools certainly do deserve closure/consolidation.
