CPS Financial Problems Causes School To End Early

By: Joshlynn Murphy

On January 25 of 2017, there was a discussion brought up by the Board of Education that they plan on shortening the city’s school year to save money, though officials held off on publicly outlining steps being weighed to fill a budget gap. According the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Public Schools has ordered four furlough days for its employees while looking at layoffs and other spending reductions to cover for $215 million of state aid still in limbo after a veto by Gov. Bruce Rauner last December.

Ending the school year can be rough for not only the mayor, Rahm Emanuel, but also to students who tried their best to bring their grades up. Students feel as if they are being rushed with a lot of things. Students deal with their own issues outside of school and still have to come to school and try their best to bring their grades up.

“I believe it is all a political game to pit Rauner against Rahm and use CPS students and teachers as pawns in their ploy to destroy public education in IL and privatize all schools into Charters that all the millionaires in IL will profit off of,” said Ms.Urquhart, a Spanish teacher at Phoenix Military Academy.

There are different opinions about how the mayor is running this situation and how there will be so many consequences after this. A lot of teachers are getting laid of their jobs, not getting paid their full amount of pay, and have to go days without teaching students and preparing them for the future. But some of the teachers are thinking of ways we can prevent school from ending early.

“Use TIF money.  Institute a progressive tax structure too. Rauner won’t do that because that means he and his millionaire buddies will pay more percentage of income tax than they currently are,” said Ms. Urquhart.

In this case, she means that rich people should pay more percentage of their income then the middle class and poor. We are in so much debt because middle and poor class aren’t able to give money like the rich with no problem. We aren’t making that much money with these 9-5 jobs.

There are some good rich folks out there, that actually care about schools and have no problem donating millions of dollars to the CPS foundation. For example, Chance the Rapper, donated $1 million to the CPS foundation helping the schools to not close early and ruin students education. Another famous person, Derrick Rose, also donated $1 million to CPS after school programs.

We don’t know for sure if these payments will help the debt, but at least it’s a start.  Maybe others will start giving back to their community and start doing better.