CPS To Lay Off More Than 2,100 Employees
By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 19, 2013 1:45PM
Chicago Public Schools announced over 2,100 layoffs late Thursday. 1,036 of them are teachers; nearly half of them tenured. Another 1,077 paraprofessional and support staff will also receive pink slips.
This latest round of layoffs comes a month after CPS let go of 850 employees from schools scheduled for closure. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the layoffs were necessary because the school district is facing a $1 billion deficit (although they haven’t provided actual numbers to back that up), $400 million of that in pension obligations, and a lack of pension reform in the Illinois Legislature. “Absent pension reform in Springfield, we have very few options available to us to close that gap, and that has resulted in bringing this crisis to the doorsteps of our schools.”
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis called the cuts a “bloodbath” and that CPS isn’t willing to look at other means of funding for the school system, such as Mayor Rahm Emanuel declaring a TIF surplus.
“Once again, CPS has lied to parents, employees and the public about keeping the new school-based budget cuts away from the classroom,” Lewis said. “On Friday, CPS will reportedly lay off 1,074 teachers, 451 paraprofessionals and 550 other employees, on top of the nearly 850 professionals who lost their positions in June and the 550 probationary appointed teachers (PATs) and 22 Title I teachers who were laid off in May. The loss of these workers will have a direct impact on the quality of instruction offered in our schools under the imposed ‘longer school day.’ These cuts are unnecessary and shameful for a system that prides itself on providing a high-quality education for our students.“It is equally shameful that as CPS slashes school budgets, they have not offered one sound recommendation to resolve their “budget crisis” other than attacking teachers, closing schools, disrupting communities and vilifying parents. CPS can generate new revenue by closing corporate loopholes, engaging the banks about toxic swaps, re-examining the city’s TIF program, and supporting a financial transaction tax which could put billions of dollars back into our schools. Once, again the most vulnerable children are going to receive the least. This will impact every single student in our district.
“This also says much about the district’s much-touted, but poorly executed, “Longer School Day,” program which they have recently branded as a “fuller day.” How can a “full day” function without the appropriate staffing and funding levels and when schools that lack books, toilet paper and other necessities? These cuts will surely increase class sizes. What we have now is the ‘empty day.’
“While the mayor is busy making multi-million dollar stadium deals and the Illinois General Assembly is playing volleyball with workers’ lives, our students are the ones suffering.
Lewis added that CPS knew the pension mess was coming and took no initiative of their own to head it off. The district received three years of pension relief from Springfield in 2010, but payments ballooned from $196 million to $600 million. “They have known about this for three years, since they got pension relief from Springfield in 2010, and we came to them with a plan to make it so they don’t have to deal with this and they would not even consider the use of bonds or a variety of other ways to take the pension obligation off the books,” said Lewis.
In a conference call, Carroll said CPS simply can’t “cut our way out of this crisis.”