Jan. 15--Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Teachers Union leaders finally agreed on something in recent days: If they can't reach a deal on a new contract by Feb 1, the strike countdown starts. Teachers could walk out of classrooms by late May, just weeks before the scheduled end of classes on June 21.
But the crisis at CPS is already starting to hit home. Schools CEO Forrest Claypool warns that teacher layoffs could come by the start of the next semester, Feb. 8, unless a new contract is hammered out or lawmakers come through with $480 million in help that was baked into the CPS budget this year.
Pink slips for CPS central office workers are expected to start going out as soon as the coming week.
On Friday, Standard Poors slashed CPS' credit rating deeper into junk. The district plans to borrow another $875 million, mostly for ongoing infrastructure projects, at interest rates that will be staggeringly high. In a recent short-term deal, CPS agreed to fork over 10 times the interest rate that a healthy district would typically pay its lenders.
You might think an impending schools disaster would concentrate minds in Springfield and drive a sense of urgency. Nah. House lawmakers just took a week off. House Speaker Michael Madigan canceled two scheduled session days.
Madigan and Gov. Bruce Rauner have been staring each other down on the state budget for months, each hoping the other blinks. The CPS crisis may finally cause that to happen.
"I would be extraordinarily upset if any teacher lost his or her job because of a budget problem," Rauner said last November. "However, I want to make crystal clear that we at the state level are not going to take action to help Chicago if Chicago refuses to help the state."
Once again: Rauner wants to give local governments more flexibility on what issues are subject to collective bargaining. He wants House and Senate votes to put term limits and redistricting on the ballot as constitutional amendments. He wants changes to the state's workers' compensation law to make it more affordable to do business in Illinois.
It's time to work with him, Democrats.
