It’s no secret that Chicago is a city with an abundance of woes. For example, Chicago has a massive pension debt and a forecasted $538 million budget shortfall for 2024. The cost of living in Chicago is 14% higher than the national average. Worse, violent crime, including assault, battery, violent robbery, and sexual assault, collectively rose in Chicago by 11.5% in 2023, making it the city’s most violent year in a decade, with an 18% increase since 2013.
The leadership in Chicago is clueless. While the city hasn’t done much to lower the murder rate, a task force was formed by Mayor Brandon Johnson to determine whether and how the city should pay reparations to Chicagoans who are the descendants of enslaved African Americans.
Perhaps Chicago’s most scandalous problem is the abject failure of its public schools. According to the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 15% of Chicago’s 8th-grade students are proficient in math, and 21% are proficient in reading. Also, data show that 22 Chicago schools had zero students who could read at grade level, while 33 reported the same for math.
Public schools are so bad in Chicago that parents are abandoning them at very high rates. As of October 2023, one-third of Chicago’s 473 public schools were at less than 50% capacity.
Lack of funding is hardly the problem, as Chicago Public Schools (CPS) spends about $29,000 per student. A recent analysis by the Illinois Policy Institute found that CPS has doubled its per-student spending since 2012, while reading and math scores have dropped by 63% and 78% respectively.
Additionally, Chi-town teachers aren’t suffering; a rookie teacher makes $64,000 a year and eventually can earn up to $122,000 per year—not including generous pension and healthcare perks.
Many of the city’s dismal education issues can be laid at the feet of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which literally runs the city. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is a former labor organizer and member of the CTU. Current CTU boss Stacy Davis Gates has laughably asserted that conservatives who criticize the union “don’t want Black children to be able to read,” and “that is literally a part of the oath that they take to be right wing.”
In reality, it is the “right wing” that wants black children to be able to escape failing schools via privatization measures so that they learn to read and do basic math. It is worth noting that the hypocritical Ms. Gates doesn’t send her own son to a CPS school but rather to a private school.
In June, the school district’s collective bargaining agreement was up, and the CTU laid out its new demands, none of which have anything to do with improving student outcomes. The union asked for 9% annual raises, 10,000 new affordable housing units, and extensive rental assistance for teachers, totaling up to $4.7 billion. The union is also insisting on full funding for infertility and abortion care, weight-loss treatments including Ozempic, and other extensive health services. Electric school buses and proposals for carbon neutrality by 2035 are also on the list.
In Chicago, teachers pay $1,403 yearly to be a union member. However, the Illinois Policy Institute reports that just 17% of Chicago Teachers Union spending is dedicated to representing its members, with most of the dues money going to support candidates and causes that are in line with the union’s radical political agenda.
But exactly where are the union dues being spent?
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