Chicago Public School Salary Issues

Welcome back! This week I am going to discuss a problem that hits home for me, because it has to do about the city I live in. I am from Chicago and live 20 minutes North of the city. The Chicago Public School District or CPS is very well known for the underpaying of their staff and faculty. To make matters worse, the total enrollment number has declined by 3,000 in the past year. The reason why this reduction is so detrimental is because CPS uses a per-pupil funding system which allocates the most funding to schools with the most students.

In total, the CPS holds around 400,000 students all across the Chicagoland area, all split up into different areas of the city. A recent problem that mayor Rahm Emanuel (pictured above) has dealt with is the gang violence he faced when he merged two schools in order to produce more funding. These schools each held students associated with rival gangs, and the backlash from the merge was fatal for many students and a couple of teachers.

The City of Chicago has fluctuated from bad to good to worse crime rates, in direct correlation with poverty rates. On average, a CPS teacher makes between $49,200-$65,071 a year not including bonuses and benefits. The ASPE or the Office of The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation has concluded that to be considered below the poverty line in a household of 4 (an average family size most teachers will fall into), the primary caregiver has to be making above $24,300. This might seem like a much smaller number compared to an average salary of a CPS teacher, but in reality it really isn't. This salary is essentially paying for the bare minimum, the necessities of life: food, water, shelter, and clothing. The salary for CPS teachers does make double that, but in in reality it isn’t really cutting it in this day in age.

CPS teachers last year went on strike in order to improve their salary for almost 2 weeks. Rahm Emanuel scrambled to find the funding and eventually brought school back in session. Almost a half a million students were out of school for 2 weeks, just because their teachers weren’t being compensated properly. Teachers are too taken for granted and CPS teachers finally got the courage to stand up for themselves to be recognized as important figures to the public eye.

-Jenna

Sources:

"Crime in Chicago." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 09 Oct. 2016.

By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Chicago Tribune Reporter. "CPS Releases Enrollment Numbers for Its Schools." Tribunedigital-chicagotribune. N.p., 24 Sept. 2013. Web. 09 Oct. 2016.

"Poverty Guidelines." ASPE. N.p., 22 July 2016. Web. 09 Oct. 2016.

Salary.com, Site Built By:. "Public School Teacher Salaries in Chicago, Illinois."Public School Teacher Salaries in Chicago, IL by Education, Experience, Location and More. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Oct. 2016.