Chicago is now into Week 3 of a teachers strike, but the Chicago Teachers Union just won’t accept the reality of basic numbers.
Using fuzzy math, the CTU claimed on Monday that the negotiating gap on a new contract stands at $38 million.
Using real-world math, that gap is about 2 1⁄2 times bigger — $98 million.
Chicago just doesn’t have that kind of money. Really and truly.
The city’s municipal finances are in dire straits, with Mayor Lori Lightfoot banking on help from Springfield to fill a $838 million hole in her proposed 2020 city budget. And the finances of the city and Chicago Public Schools are fully intertwined, a point driven home Monday in a report by Sun-Times City Hall Reporter Fran Spielman about a little noticed provision in Lightfoot’s city budget.
Lightfoot’s proposed budget would require CPS to reimburse the city for $60 million in pension contribution costs that, for years, the city paid on the school district’s behalf. The mayor now wants to hang on to those millions to help balance the city’s books.
As Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett told Spielman, “CPS is the only sister agency that the city subsidizes by way of pension contributions. Every other sister agency pays its own fair share.”
We should note two things here:
• We wish Lightfoot would have talked openly about the pension-reimbursement issue last week, when she unveiled her spending plan. By not disclosing the issue at the outset, the mayor has given CTU a platform to criticize her at a time when contract talks are at the most critical of phases. And, remember, aldermen still need to vote on her budget.
• That said, CPS teachers have been offered a generous deal, especially in light of the city’s dire financial picture. They pay just 2% of their pension costs, and the city has not asked teachers to pay a larger percentage. The district — or rather, the city — pays the remaining 7%, to meet the state-mandated 9%.
So let’s sum it up:
No increase in pension contributions or health care costs; double-digit raises that will put many teachers on track to earn almost six figures a year; and an agreement, in writing, to lower class sizes and hire more social workers and other support staff.
Yes, Lightfoot stumbled here. But the union should have said “yes” days ago.
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