CPS Budget Disaster Management 101
CPS released its budgets yesterday, and the news was that "disaster had been averted." The Sun-Times and the Tribune reported that the cuts could have been much larger, which they could have been without the last-minute half-assed Illinois budget, but that was also Claypool's line. We are stuck in a never-ending cycle in which a legislature or governor prevents adequate funding, a fiscal crisis is projected, the public's expectations are ratcheted to the high pitch of hysteria, and then some last-minute measure is pushed through; in comparison with the dooms-day scenario we were previously led to imagine, the last-ditch budgets or cuts or whatever suddenly appear like a relief. Now that right there seems like a cycle. I don't know who the supreme puppet-master of such a cycle could be--the major players in the CPS fiscal catastrophe are no fewer than decades worth of mayors and state legislators, corrupt school CEOs and unelected business people running the school board. There's no ur-theory that even my paranoid mind can arrive at in regards to how this cycle continues, which leaves only the uniting force of ideology to blame. These various power-players may not be carefully orchestrating the chaos (like they are in, say, a "shock doctrine" scenario), but they do share a viewpoint, one that prioritizes short-term and short-sighted "fixes" (especially fiscal ones) to long-term policy that might actually benefit the school district and society. They're draining the life-blood of public institutions slowly, as opposed to cutting her throat in one go. But perhaps this cycle--of projected catastrophe that transform in the public imagination into minor victories--is merely politics as usual. I actually don’t know. A district-wide spreadsheet of the cuts at each school was not immediately available. Call it a "glitch." Cuts to my school initially are at 1.7 million, which is rather considerable--I think something like 12% of the budget? Cuts to special ed alone are calculated at 900,000, due to some new special ed funding gerrymandering that I am still trying to understand.Â
Whatever is happening with diverse learners, I can bet it ain't for the good of the children. Without macro-data, it's hard to know just yet, but I am betting CPS has in the works some major reshuffling of one of its largest expenditures, that is, special ed students. They hired a new guy to ODLSS who has no special education expertise, but he does have management expertise. Something is afoot. Hopefully people who understand what the different budget lines mean will explain it soon. In the mean time, cuts, cuts, cuts...drip, drip, drip. The Republican fat-cats over at the Tribune today wrote an editorial saying that the CTU members have to step up. Everyone else--Claypool, parents, whoever--did their part to get CPS some last-minute money, but the union is still outlandishly asking for pay raises and to continue getting their pension funded. (That's the "budget-bursting, perk-bloated" part.) The last line of the editorial was one of the most childish things I have ever read from the normally arch-nemesis-worthy newspaper: "Your move, Chicago teachers. Think of your students and how to help the system guarantee them the best education year after year. Or think only of ... yourselves." Who allowed that ellipsis? Did tronc let one of the robot interns take a stab at editorial writing? So the public debate continues: The tribune construes it as teachers versus students, our greed versus the good of the children. I have written much else on the topic of that false dichotomy, so if you’re actually interested, keep scrolling down. All I know is, for now, this budget is still a major net loss, no matter how low my expectations have been engineered to go. Â
