Chicago's Grand School Closing Cost Scandal
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| Movers haul books from closed schools to shuttered Von Humboldt Elementary for storage. The amount the district is paying to empty the closed schools is poised to triple. WBEZ Linda Lutton |
Board will vote today to triple its payments to GWS
Back in November of 2012, our CReATE research group began warning that the planned closing of more than 50 Chicago schools would not only fail to produce promised academic gains, but would not achieve the anticipated savings being touted by CPS. Then again in March of this year, we warned that district estimates of savings coming directly from school closings were largely overblown. At the time, these warnings wer ignored by the school board and downplayed in the local media.But I must admit, we never anticipated the extent to which Rahm, Byrd-Bennett and CPS Liar-In-Chief Becky Carroll would go to mislead the public about the massive costs involved in closing those schools. Thanks to WBEZ's Linda Lutton (apparently the only reporter who will touch this story), we now learn that pretty much any of this year's costs savings associated with the largest district school closings in history will be erased when the Board votes today to triple its payments to logistics firm Global Workplace Solutions.
This according to WBEZ:
Back in April—even before the vote to close 50 schools—the district signed a