Charter schools push false claims for more money while CPS quietly provides staff paid for by CPS budget
One of the more serious legislative challenges to Chicago's remaining real public schools during the current session of the Illinois General Assembly is the attempt by the city's charter schools to increase the amount of money they are getting from the public education budget while continuing to avoid even the most modest forms of financial and pedagogical accountability in Chicago. But one of the secrets back home as the charter schools go before members of the Illinois General Assembly and claim they are poor is that fact that every month the Chicago Board of Education quietly gives the charter schools of Chicago fully-paid workers who come out of the city's real public schools budget.
While hypocrisy and even outright lies are nothing new in the second largest school system in Illinois (Chicago's charter schools are now larger than any public school system except Chicago), the brazenness with which the charters claim, on the one hand, that they are "underfunded" and at the same time accept, on the other hand, workers in their schools that are paid by the CPS general operating fund remains a wonder to behold.
