The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Last chance for Chicago public school teachers, administrators.

If the new, bloated $9.3 billion budget, fortified by federal inflation dollars doesn’t significantly improve performance, then they should be fired.

Tracy Swartz explains where all this largesse will go:

Catching up on capital improvements for physical plant.

334 more teachers, 400 more custodians, 78 more nurse, 44 more social workers and more.
After-school and summer programming.
STEM, STEAM and other new programs.

Paying down billions of debts.

You’ve got to read the full details in the story to get the feel for the magnitude of the increased spending. For years, nay for decades, all we’ve heard is the bellyaching from teachers, their union, school administrators and liberal do-gooders that the Chicago Public Schools are a mess because it is so grossly and unfairly underfunded. (Of course, some of that money will go for free condoms for elementary students, as you as 10 year old.)

That’s $21,000 to spend per child, including other things besides instruction, such as teacher pensions and debt payments.

Obviously, Chicago school need to thank taxpayers from around the country for the largesse to fill the budget hole left by the Covid-19 pandemic. And to the inflation tax that every consumer will pay because so much of the need money came off the busy printing press.

There’s truth to the argument that performance is correlated to some degree with money spent (see north suburban school districts). But how much is enough? Here’s betting that the whining will continue about Chicago schools not getting enough money–because whatever they’re getting will never be enough.

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