By Ray Hanania
The worst thing Chicago has done was create another government, this time to run its schools.
Money drives government, and politics drives money. When you create a new government, you create a new revenue stream for bureaucrats that overburdens taxpayers. Services get pushed aside.
Chicago’s mayor used to control the Chicago school board when we had more than 450,000 students and school properties that were crowded with students. Now there are about 300,000 students, with a reported drop of 11,500 students this year.
That limited the bureaucratic costs of school “administrators” and forced them to answer to the city’s elected representatives.
That has changed dramatically. This November, Chicago voters will vote on political candidates to fill 21 school district seats and select a board president.
It’s a huge mistake. Illinois taxpayers had better be ready for the reality. As the new Chicago School Board operates, with fewer and fewer students and more and more empty school properties, taxpayers will be told to cover more costs by the new school bureaucracy.
If you think that creating an independent school board will improve education for Chicago’s children, you are dead wrong. All it will do is obfuscate the failed education system that exists and fuel a spending burst that will force Chicago taxpayers to seek outside money (State and suburbs) to pay for this mistake.
Even when the schools were controlled by the city, the education system needed money from the state. Now it will need even more.
In the 2017 school-funding legislation, state taxpayers assumed roughly $221 million in CPS teacher pension costs.
School administrators defended this Chicago “bailout” by asserting that the state has done this for downstate school districts.
There is no doubt that the school system in Illinois is a mess. But Chicago is the biggest single financial mess in the state, and it represents the base where all political power emanates.
Chicago entered FY2026 with an approximately $1.15 billion projected gap, and the city’s September 2026 forecast projects an approximately $882.4 million gap for FY2027.
It’s a political move, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Chicago’s education system is leading the political transformation in the state.
The best way to confuse taxpayers and deflect them from bloated budgets spent more on administrators than on services is to politicize something.
That’s what the school elections in Chicago are all about.
Look at the big-buck-donors who are rushing to pour money into this race: private equity partner Paul Finnegan donated to several of the school candidates; investment billionaire Michael Sacks donated to his favored candidates directly and through a PAC; the CTU has spent thousands on eight favored candidates; Charter Schools Network PAC is helping candidates; and the SEIU union, the CTU rival, is pouring money into the race, too.
Each one wants to have a voice in the school system. This new school board will become more powerful than City Hall!
Where were all of them when the schools needed better education policies and leadership that focused on students, not the bloated administration?
The fact is Chicago’s schools do less “educating” and more “administering,” with money headed in the direction of the latter.
Chicago school kids are “passing” not because they excel overall, but because the system continues to lower the bar to make it look like students are doing well.
Last August, 2025, the Illinois State Board of Education approved a plan to lower proficiency (or cut scores) for standardized testing in reading and math. Instead of teaching students to do better, the system lowered itself to allow more unproficient students to appear proficient.
I am a product of the Chicago Public Schools, from kindergarten to sophomore year at Bowen High School, and a few summars at Moraine Valley Community College. The Chicago system pushed the needy students into a corner where they were basically abandoned and forced to fend for themselves. Sadly, needy students did not “fend” at all.
Teachers focused on the students who excelled. If you did well, they loved you. I struggled to be a D student. (Under the state’s new proficiency rankings, my D would be considered a B.)
I attended, in Chicago, Bennet Elementary School, Hoyne Elementary School, Warren Elementary School, Bowen High School, and Bogan High School. I made great friends, but I learned very little. I was brushed aside.
Today, the school system has failed to improve education but has increased its spending, increasing taxes and increasing its wages, salaries and administration speending. Your property taxes go up automatically when your assessments increase, and the schools, which take more than 60 percent of all your property taxes, continue to increase.
It wasn’t until I entered the military during the Vietnam War that my mind opened and I was able to discover my successful career path.
This new “independent” school board will push ahead for increased spending and require increased taxes to fund its political power base and administration, while most students will continue to get dragged through to a symbolic graduation with lower and lower average proficiency.
Put your kids in a private school and avoid this worthless education system, which funds big salaries and pensions for administrators while dragging most kids to “graduation.”
What Chicago students need is more education, more teachers, and less politics, bureaucracy, and big salaried administrators.
Don’t hold your breath.