Cut the real waste in Chicago schools

Cut the real waste in Chicago schools

What’s both astounding and ludicrous about the Chicago Public Schools contingency plan for the strike is that it claims to offer more support for children than normal circumstances. For example, CPS wants parents to believe that they will have 144 nurses, one for every building open during the strike. This never occurs during the normal school year.

CPS stretches nurses over 4 to 5 schools. Students as a result don’t get the medical attention they require, not because of the nurses, but because of the mayor’s misguided “lean ‘n’ mean” budgetary policies. At least he has the “mean” part right. Do you really expect parents to drop their kids off at schools with adults who they don’t know, who may have criminal records?

Make no mistake about it. This is all about child care. Teachers for years have been treated as “care-providers” for children from the city’s dysfunctional/broken homes. CPS teachers punch a clock, yet must have college degrees. Administrators come and go as they please. But now, during the strike, the caregivers will be assistant/Principals who make in the six-digits.

Why not cut their pay, remove all the waste within CPS and use the saved money to pay the people who really do the work in a school — the classroom teachers.

Paul O. Bischoff

Wheaton