Chicago school district announces layoffs in central office

“Republicans’ ultimate plans include allowing cities throughout the state to file for bankruptcy protection, which they admitted today would permit cities and school districts to end their contracts with teachers and workers – stripping thousands of their hard-earned retirement security and the middle-class living they have worked years to achieve”.

“We don’t come to this position lightly”, Radogno said. Now he and his legislative leaders propose a takeover of CPS by the State Board of Education, an agency already struggling to fulfill its current mission without a budget and ill-equipped to manage the nation’s third largest school district.

The head of the Chicago Public Schools says the district will lay off some of its central office staff on Friday.

The GOP’s plan would replace the Chicago Public Schools board with an “independent authority” appointed by the IL state superintendent of schools.

Democrat Sen. Bill Cunningham, whose 18th District represents the southwest suburbs and the city neighborhoods of Mt. Greenwood, Beverly, Morgan Park and Auburn-Gresham, issued a statement that saying that a state takeover and forced bankruptcy “won’t help our teachers”. That may be true, but what’s not stated is that compared to property taxes paid in other school districts, Chicago taxpayers have been shielded from the true costs of running their schools.

Chicago Teachers Union spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin said she didn’t expect any union members to lose their jobs.

The Democratic leader of the Illinois Senate says a GOP plan for the state to take over Chicago Public Schools “is not going to happen”.

“It’s not a bailout … to restructure debt to look at contracts and renegotiate them to make them more favorable to taxpayers”, the Downers Grove Republican said.

Claypool says district officials will continue to work with the Chicago Teachers Union and the state to find a solution to the budget crisis. The mayor wants the state to pick up the cost of CPS teacher pensions, as it does for school districts outside of Chicago.

Rauner, in his own Chicago press appearance on Wednesday, argued Chicago Democrats are bucking calls for reform and simply asking the state to cover part of the city’s tab, which he and other Republicans say has been inflated by more than a decade of bad decisions on Chicago’s part.

Though the Republican-backed legislation is unlikely to pass in a Democrat-controlled legislature, if it succeeded it would not be the first time CPS’s finances were handed to an oversight board.