Rahm blames pension drama for school budget cuts
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday blamed the Legislature’s failure to grant pension relief to the Chicago Public Schools and resolve the pension crisis for devastating school budget cuts that threaten the enrichment programs he touted as cornerstones of his longer school day.
“Your own paper and you have written about the fact that we have deferred choices for years and that this day of reckoning would come to our classrooms, which is why I pushed so hard for pension reform,” said Emanuel, who was in Israel when 48 schools closed and surviving schools got wind of their bottom lines.
“I went to Springfield [in May, 2012] and I said, ‘If we don’t reform our pension, there are gonna be some very difficult choices to be made. I warned everybody. . . . I said, ‘This is a critical decision.’ [Lawmakers said], ‘Not now. We won’t deal with this,’” Emanuel said.
The mayor noted that nearly 45 percent of the $1 billion shortfall at the Chicago Public Schools is tied to pension payments.
Emanuel refused to comment on the proposal by Whitney Young high school principal Joyce Kenner to begin charging parents for an optional seventh period for their kids.
“I’m not gonna [zero in on] one school — because there are 600-plus schools — and talk about each of the choices,” he said.
The mayor bristled when asked how he feels about some schools cutting art, music, gym and other enrichment programs touted as cornerstones of his longer school day.
“What I touted was using the time for academics and education and enrichment, and a lot of schools will continue to do that,” he said.
Some 855 CPS staffers at closing or turnaround schools were pinkslipped late last week, most of them teachers who didn’t have the tenure or performance ratings to merit following their students to new schools. The teachers who do have the years and scores to be considered won’t find out until mid-July if there are available jobs for them.
The Chicago Teachers Union blasted the cuts, saying they “shift blame to our local schools and principals are forced to choose between keeping teachers and educating our students.”