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Chicago Public Schools officials are moving ahead with plans to add hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to the district’s books, setting up a blitz of construction projects.

The Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday is expected to approve borrowing as much as $840 million. But CPS won’t tell the public what it plans to spend the money on until after the district goes to market for the new bonds.

I doubt an elected school board could get away with doing that. Just sayin…

posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:00 am

Comments

Yep

Comment by Honeybear Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:03 am
What the what is spot on. There should be no new construction at this time, unless absolutely necessary for health and safety. Period.

Comment by Keyser Soze Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:04 am
when you have a photo of Ayn Rand on your wall, expect this.

Comment by Amalia Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:06 am
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/how-chicago-school-construction-furthers-race-and-class-segregation/92305e1d-2888-46e3-9e6c-de3a3a7f01de

Comment by NoGifts Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:15 am
Seems very strange unless the construction is for the renovation of terrible buidlings. CPS lost 11,000 students from last year. We need to close schools in Chicago. A lot of them.

Comment by Ron Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:18 am
Here’s the 10-year master facilities plan…I hope that the projects they are funding are included here. http://cps.edu/About_CPS/Policies_and_guidelines/Documents/CPSEducationalFacilitiesMasterPlan.pdf

Comment by NoGifts Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:18 am
===There should be no new construction at this time, unless absolutely necessary for health and safety. Period.===

Agreed.

Comment by PublicServant Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:19 am
Less children in the district: let’s build new schools. You should be banned from civil society for questioning the logic.

Comment by Steve Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:21 am
The facilities say there are fewer children in some areas but in other areas the number is rising.

Comment by NoGifts Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:26 am
“facilities plan”

Comment by NoGifts Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:26 am
I will favor an elected school board only when I can vote in the CTU elections.

Comment by Groucho Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:34 am
Steve touches on part of the problem, CPS is having great difficulty with demographic projections. The other problem is that there are numerous CPS general high schools sitting more than half empty, but closing them and merging student bodies from different neighborhoods could create gang wars in the merged schools.

Charter schools are now also losing students, according to the Sun Times in total CPS is down 11,000 students year to year (Sun Times October 21, 2016). Probably most amazing of all is that some of the better schools in the City did not fill all of their slots, apparently because parents bailed out of CPS at the start of the school year.

The big winner in Chicago are private schools, this Crain’s article began discussing this several years ago http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130928/ISSUE01/309289971/private-schools-are-popping-up-around-town

While many poorer families have gotten out of the City, higher income families have many options. Of the families that have bought in Chicago’s Andersonville community in the last 5 years where I have lived for well over 30 years not one that I have met is sending their children to a CPS school. When you are dropping a half million plus for a home the additional costs for private education are not a great concern. These families have deep pockets and are not going to put up with the hassle of trying to play the game of getting their child into a better CPS school.

Comment by Rod Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:45 am
I’m guessing the big secret is new charter construction.

Having said that, don’t you have to disclose a little more than just “construction” and “equipment purchases” to qualify for tax-exemption on the bonds? The juice between tax-exempt and taxable is significant.

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 11:49 am
–I will favor an elected school board only when I can vote in the CTU elections.–

How does that make any sense? ]Should that standard regarding unions be applied to every school district with elected boards?

Or is representative democracy only a good thing when it goes your way?

Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 12:15 pm
As a suburban school board member I can verify this would not pass without a referendum vote. And there is no way it would pass when people found out how much more debt it would add to their tax bill. Only in Chicago. It’s a rigged system to quote Mr. T.

Comment by NeverPoliticallyCorrect Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 12:19 pm
Champaign-Urbana has a $180+ million sales tax proposal for school construction and improvements on the ballot for November 8th. LaSalle-Peru has a nearly $40 million school construction property tax hike on the ballot for November 8th. Crystal Lake is looking to build a $30 million library, and Rock Island County leaders claim that not passing a sales tax referendum will create a public safety vacuum. Regardless of how we feel about these issues and proposals the local government leaders in each area are doing it right and putting the matters up to a public vote and putting them up for a vote when they know turnout will be higher. This is ridiculous.

Comment by Team Sleep Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 1:19 pm
From their web site: “The FY17 budget for Chicago Public Schools includes a capital plan totaling $338 million for school repair, improvement, modernization, and overcrowding relief.”

$840 million is 2 1/2 times the current year’s capital plan. I don’t know what previous years’ capital plans have been, but $840 million over a couple of years does not seem out of line for a system that has some significant & clearly documented infrastructure problems.

http://cps.edu/fy17budget/Pages/capital.aspx

Comment by Pot calling kettle Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 1:46 pm
New construction requires a referendum with a few exceptions. CPS is a different animal all together and there may be something in statute that does not require them to go to referendum (simply issuing school construction bonds requires a referendum) but I could not find it.

If it is maintenance, additions, or repairs then no referendum is needed.

Comment by JS Mill Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 1:55 pm
CPS construction hasn’t been about serving the kids and community for a long time now. When I managed work for them a decade ago, they’d only allow three politically connected contractors bid on the work, and only let “favored” subcontractors and vendors participate in them. Most of the work budget went to the subs, who came from an CPS “approved” list. It’s no surprise that strangely enough, the work wound up being equally spit up between the three general contractors…..

Comment by Illinois Bob Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 2:36 pm
If you look at some of the stories in the neighborhood news outlets (if that is what DNA is) it seems a lot of the aldermen have been talking up additions and reconfiguring of the schools in their wards. My guess is no new schools though.

Comment by Been There Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 3:34 pm
“When you are dropping a half million plus for a home the additional costs for private education are not a great concern.”

The monthly payment for the mortgage (before taxes) on a $500,000 loan is about $2,000. The monthly bill for these non-Catholic private schools popping up is about the same (or higher) PER KID.

I think that 2x one’s mortgage payment (assuming 2 kids) IS a great concern.

Comment by Chris Tuesday, Oct 25, 16 @ 4:45 pm
“The juice between tax-exempt and taxable is significant.”

No, it isn’t. not broadly in the current market and especially not for a deep below investment grade borrower as in this case.

Comment by Anon Wednesday, Oct 26, 16 @ 9:57 am