(The Center Square) – Instructional and operational spending per Chicago Public School student spiked to an average of nearly $20,000 in fiscal year 2022, representing a jump of almost 50% over the past six years.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski argues the time has come for a complete overhaul after data also shows academic performance slowed to the point where less than one out of every four 11th graders were achieving or exceeding proficiency in reading and math.
“It tells me that the place is a fiscal mess, is an educational mess and I think it’s a moral mess,” Dabrowski told The Center Square. “The educational system of Chicago Public Schools doesn’t work at all and it hasn’t worked for a long time and needs to be broken up.”
Dabrowski said he sees just one way for the changes he’s convinced are needed to truly come about.
“If you want to try to fix things, you have to totally take away the powers of the labor unions,” he said. “Lawmakers would have to change laws and strip the Chicago Teachers Union of all its powers because right now they’re running things and they don’t care about education. After that, you have to get back into a situation where the school district thinks about teaching, thinks about reading and literacy and math.”
Chicago voters will have their first chance ever to elect members to the Chicago Board of Education Tuesday. Ten seats are up for election. The other 10 will be appointed by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Dabrowski said no one wins with the system being as flawed as it is where unions maintain political power.
“The kids are losing because they’re not learning and they’re going to be trapped in a lifetime of difficulty if they don’t learn how to read and do math,” he said. “I think the city is going to lose because you’re talking about the future of the city, your job creator is going to lose because it makes it difficult to hire people in Chicago if the kids aren’t educated and that just creates a negative cycle that we’ll be trapped in. It’s a big risk for the city.”
Dabrowski placed much of the blame for the city’s current struggles in the area squarely at the feet of Johnson.
“I’m highly critical of pretty much everything he’s done,” he said. “He’s a Chicago Teachers Union member; he’s an organizer and I don’t think he has at this point any idea of what he’s doing as a leader of the city and as a leader of Chicago Public Schools. He’s got his Chicago Teachers Union lens on and not a leader of the city’s lens. It’s hard to see anything but a long, continuous path towards bankruptcy if we don’t change things.”
Of Chicago’s 622 schools, the most recent 2024 Illinois Report Card has the range of spending for individual schools between $2,000 to $130,000 per student. CPS cost taxpayers $9.2 billion.
