Chicago’s Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson nominated seven appointees to the city’s board of education early last week after the previous board collectively resigned in early October. The move stunned the city and the rest of the nation. The drama is the latest sad episode of Chicago’s downward spiral, thanks to its Democrat mayor and the teachers union.
The direct cause of the previous school board resignation was sparked by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) contract negotiation. With more than 30,000 members, the CTU is one of the nation’s most powerful teachers unions. The CTU’s current demands included “a 9% annual raise, 45 days off school each year, and a list of other benefits that could cost the city between $10.2 billion and $13.9 billion between 2025 and 2028.”
There are two significant problems with the CTU’s demands. First, how could the CTU demand a considerable pay raise when it has shown that it is neither capable nor cares about educating Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students? The CTU’s resistance to “reopen” schools after the Covid pandemic ensured the 355,000-student school district, the third largest in the nation, was one of the last to return to in-person classes, causing significant learning losses for its primarily black and Latino student body. Even the city’s then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, also a Democrat, became frustrated with the CTU and lamented in February 2021, “We’ve extended ourselves beyond measure. We need our kids back in school. We need our parents to have that option. It should not be that CPS parents are, of all the schools in our city, the only ones that don’t have the option for in-person learning.”
The academic performance of CPS is a string of shocking statistics: in the 2022-23 school year, nearly 75 percent of CPS students in grades 3-8 failed to meet reading standards on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness; more than 80 percent failed the math test; close to 40 percent of CPS students were chronically absent, or missing more than 10 days. Minority students have suffered the most. The Chicago Tribune reported, “Just 30% of Black students meet or exceed reading standards in the third grade, and the number falls to 14% for 11th graders.” This is a direct result of the CTU’s actions. For these kids who couldn’t read or do math at grade level, what’s waiting for them is “the bleak future of government dependency and violent crime. It is Chicago as a lawless dystopian hell,” according to John Kass, a Chicago-based columnist. How could the CTU ask for a raise when they have failed to prepare kids academically?
$30,000 per Student and a Budget Hole
The poor academic performance is not due to any funding shortages. The per pupil funding was close to $30,000 per student, more than double the national average. CPS’s academic performance has been so embarrassingly bad that the school board simply stopped grading schools by performance. Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the CTU who called school choice “a choice of racists,” sent one of her own kids to De La Salle, a private Catholic school that charges $14,750 tuition per year.
The second problem with the CTU’s outrageous financial demand is that Chicago can’t afford it. In July, the school board announced that it had to impose painful cuts, including a hiring freeze, to close a $500 million budget hole. The deficit was partly caused by the federal pandemic funds running out and partly due to shrinking tax revenue as people and businesses, including large companies such as Boeing and Tyson Foods, fled the city due to rising crime and property tax hikes under its Democrat mayors. Despite the budget shortfall, the board still offered a 5 percent raise to teachers during contract negotiation with the CTU, but it rejected the proposal.
A Loan for Raises
Mayor Johnson was a former CTU employee who owes his 2023 election victory to the CTU’s backing. Therefore, rather than accepting the financial reality, he pressured the CPS to take out a $300 million high-interest loan to give CTU a giant raise and fund its members’ pensions. According to The Wall Street Journal, the school district already “has a junk credit rating, so Mr. Johnson’s loan would end up costing the school district around $700 million,” a move that will likely push the school district over a fiscal cliff and further burden Chicago’s taxpayers. Yet, Johnson insisted such a financially irresponsible move is necessary to ensure “we don’t lay off Brown and Black women.”
The seven-member school board resigned last week rather than follow Johnson’s demand to force out CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. The resignation came just a few months before a half-elected and half-appointed new school board takes over in January next year. The resignation allowed Johnson to appoint a new board for the remainder of the year, and without doubt, this new board will rubber stamp his loan proposal to make his CTU boss happy.
Alders and Others Protest
The school board resignation sent shockwaves around the city and the state. About 41 alders and some members of the city’s progressive caucus jointly signed a letter calling for a city council hearing to vet prospective appointees. A concerned Chicago business community reminded Johnson that “the management stability, education quality, and the financial state of the Chicago Public Schools are critical to both the short-term and long-term perspective of the children and families of Chicago as well as the success of Chicago businesses of every size and the long-term economic future of our city.”
After Johnson quickly announced seven new school board appointees, he equated his critics who called for fiscal responsibility as “making the same argument” as those who supported slavery. He also made it clear he wouldn’t let the city council vet his appointees. Since Chicago has no charter (a city constitution), there is no balance of power between the mayor and the city council. Johnson gets to do whatever he wants with little constraints.
Recently, Johnson vetoed the city council’s ordinance to keep ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection and response system, because Johnson’s anti-police supporters deemed the system “expensive, ineffective at reducing crime, and racist for being overly deployed in minority neighborhoods.” Johnson and his supporters ignored the fact that there were nearly 1,200 gun shootings in the city so far this year. After the Chicago Police Department started to decommission ShotSpotter detection sensors in late September, at least three people were shot to death in neighborhoods where ShotSpotter sensors were turned off. Alderman Silvana Tabares said in a statement, “Every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda.”
Thanks to CTU and Democrat politicians, Chicago is the worst-run city in America. It has rising crime, a heavy tax burden, and an underperforming public school system that is knee-deep in debt. At some point, Chicago’s voters will have to ask themselves why they keep rewarding corruption and failure.