CPS Attacks Continue

Today, CPS is expected to layoff over 2,000 school based employees. According to CTU, 1,074 teachers, 451 paraprofessionals and 550 other employees will receive pink slips from CPS. This in spite of all the rhetoric from CPS and Mayor Rahm Emanuel that budget cuts will be as far away from the classroom as possible. Since most of them have never been in a classroom since they were themselves students, perhaps they forgot that teachers and paraprofessional are in the classroom. They also seem to forget that they just instituted a longer school year and now can't fund it or staff it.

These cuts, along with close to 850 positions lost to the school closings/consolidations/turnarounds, will adversely affect our students in Chicago. A loss of teachers will definitely lead to higher class sizes. I predict, at the high school level, that principals will be asking teachers if they will teach a sixth class to help keep class size down. Guilt will be used as a tactic to get teachers to do this. Teachers would of course get paid for the sixth class because it is after all cheaper to pay for an extra class than an extra teacher. Teaching six classes is tough, though. Many teachers can do it but at some point it does wear on the teacher. Is that good for students? Planning time is also affected which is also a negative for students.

A couple of things really bother me about these budget cuts and school based personnel layoffs. With all of these teacher layoffs coming, CPS at last months board meeting gave Teach for America (TFA) an increase in the amount spent on hiring TFA teachers. This amount increased from $600,000 in 2012-13 to $1,587,500 for 2013-14. You can read about that here. 

If CPS knew the layoffs were coming, and they've known for awhile that they were, why would they increase the amount of money for hiring TFA? Because CPS and the mayor want a cheaper disposable workforce for the future. They want TFA personnel who will stay for two years and then move on and then CPS will hire more 2 year wonders and so on and so on. I don't know what is more insulting. That CPS and the mayor think the students of Chicago deserve a "peace corps" style teaching force or that CPS sees teachers in Chicago as a "peace corps" of sorts.

I also think it is shameful that CPS continues to blame their budget deficit, not that I believe they really have one, on teacher pensions. If CPS has anything wrong it's that they have a revenue problem. TIFs, toxic swaps with banks and corporate tax loopholes deprive our students and schools of billions of dollars every year. I and every teacher I know has never missed a pension payment. It comes straight out of our paychecks. CPS chose to take several pension holidays and now it has caught up with them. Don't cut resources, close schools, layoff staff and try to destroy our pensions for your mistakes. It's typical CPS though. They make a huge mess and then it's those of us in the schools that get stuck cleaning it up.