Chicago Schools Demand $500 Million Bailout From State

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Chicago’s public schools have released a budget that relies on nearly $500 million in funding the state has not yet voted to provide. The official budget essentially demands that the state hand over money or risk throwing the school district into chaos. Even Chicago’s teacher union is critical of the move.

With a total budget of $5.7 billion, the $480 million Chicago Public Schools (CPS) expects the state to provide is more than 8 percent of their budget. The money is needed to fulfill pension obligations the city has to current and retired teachers. If the money isn’t forthcoming by the end of the year, the district says it will have to lay off thousands of current teachers to meet those pension obligations. (RELATED: Chicago Fires 1400 Teachers To Fund Extravagant Pensions)

The district is already preparing itself for the blow, as Monday’s budget also came with an announcement of over 400 layoffs. Chicago’s schools have repeatedly had to shed jobs the last few years as they descend further and further into a pension-induced budget crisis.

While CPS is looking to the state government to bail it out, it may not want to hold its breath. Illinois’ Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, says that Chicago’s pension crisis is the fault of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the “dictatorial” power they wield. Rauner said CTU needs to bear the burden of a fiscal crunch they created and that it isn’t the government’s job to swoop in to the rescue.

"The power of the Chicago Teachers Union is overwhelming,” Rauner said in a press conference Monday. “Chicago has given and given and given. It’s created the financial crisis that the Chicago schools face now.”

Rauner wants to alter Illinois state law to give cities most power to determine what is collectively bargained and what isn’t, with an eye towards rolling back the generous benefits Chicago teachers have that have helped create the crisis. Rauner says that providing a financial bailout to CPS would be contingent on making such long-term reforms, but the Democrat-controlled legislature has refused to budge on the issue.

CPS leaders, meanwhile, have proposed reducing their budget gap by making teachers finance their own pension contributions. Currently, the government puts an equivalent of 7 percent of teachers’ salary into pension plans; CPS head Forrest Claypool has proposed taking some or all of this 7 percent out of teachers’ current salaries instead.

Teachers, led by CTU president Karen Lewis, have blasted this proposal as a massive pay cut and on Monday warned they would likely strike if the city tried to implement it.

“If they insist on a 7 percent all at once like a pay cut — a 7 percent pay cut — I don’t have to call for a strike,” Lewis said in a press conference Monday. “I think our members will do that themselves.”

Lewis was also critical of CPS for its budgetary jujitsu, saying it was relying on funds that “aren’t really there.”

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Via: Daily Caller

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Chicago Fires 1400 Teachers To Fund Extravagant Pensions

About 1,400 Chicago public school teachers and staff are expected to lose their jobs in order to finance a pension debt of $634 million, the city announced Wednesday.

The layoffs are part of an aggressive $200 million budget cut to help finance the pension payment, which is required of Chicago Public Schools by Illinois law. The rest of the pension payment is coming from heavy borrowing, as the district already has a massive $1.1 billion budget deficit.

In announcing the layoffs, Mayor Rahm Emanuel blamed the rest of the state for not picking up the slack, saying the rest of Illinois doesn’t pay its fair share for pensions.

“You negotiate with your teachers in Aurora… Then we get to pay for it,”Emanuel said at a press conference. He said the state should change its funding formula so “You… come to the table and start paying your share for what you negotiated.”

But lawmakers in Springfield failed to act, leaving “unconscionable” cuts as the only option, he said.

Chicago’s public schools have seen repeated mass layoffs in recent years thanks to a budget situation that is in perpetual crisis. In 2014, about 1,100 employees were laid off, and over 3,000 lost their jobs in 2013. (RELATED: Chicago Public Schools Whack 1000 Employees)

Still, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released a statement saying it was totally “blindsided” by the mass firing, and accusing city officials of trying to “retaliate” against them for a recent breakdown in contract negotiations.

“These layoffs prove that the Board never intended to make the pension payment in good faith and that they are using this to justify more attacks on our classrooms,” said CTU president Karen Lewis. “Putting 1,400 people out of work is no way to balance a budget and resource our schools. This is going to hurt our students and the most vulnerable children in our district.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama: Sex Ed for Kindergartners ‘Is the Right Thing to Do’

(CNSNews.com) - The Chicago Public Schools this year are mandating that the district’s kindergarten classes include sex education, fulfilling a proposal President Barack Obama supported in 2003 when he served in the Illinois state senate and later defended when he ran for president in the 2008 election cycle.

At a Planned Parenthood convention at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 17, 2007, a teenage girl who said she worked as a sex-education “peer educator” in the D.C. public schools asked then-U.S. Sen. Obama what he would do to encourage the teaching of “medically accurate, age-appropriate, and responsible sex education.”

Obama first noted that he had worked with Planned Parenthood to push a sex education bill when he served in the Illinois state legislature.

Via: CNS News

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