POP GOES THE PIGGY BANK: HOW BILLIONAIRES ARE WINNING THE WAR ON PUBLIC SCHOOLS — AND WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
Somewhere in a mahogany-paneled boardroom, a top hat just sailed ceiling-ward. The champagne is flowing. The kids? Not so much.
The Party Nobody Invited You To
Picture this: it's late September 2026, and somewhere between a hedge fund quarterly report and a yacht maintenance invoice, a small but extraordinarily well-funded group of Americans is having the best week of their lives.
Champagne corks are ricocheting off vaulted ceilings. Top hats — yes, actual top hats — are airborne. The toast? "To defunding public education: the long game that just keeps giving."
Meanwhile, in Chicago, a third-grade teacher is photocopying worksheets on a machine held together by prayer and a rubber band. In San Francisco, a school board is deciding which half-empty building to shutter next. In Sacramento, district administrators are drafting layoff notices with one hand and lawsuit briefs with the other.
This is not a coincidence. This is a strategy — thirty years in the making — and it is working better than Daddy Warbucks ever dreamed.
The Slow Bleed: Thirty Years of "Reform"
Here's how you quietly dismantle one of democracy's most essential institutions without anyone noticing until it's almost too late.
Step 1: Call it "reform." Privatization sounds predatory. "School choice," "accountability," and "innovation" sound visionary. Rebranding is everything.
Step 2: Starve the beast — slowly. Don't slash funding overnight. That causes riots. Instead, tie funding to enrollment headcounts, let demographics shift, encourage families toward charter alternatives, and watch the formula do the dirty work for you.
Step 3: Let a pandemic do the heavy lifting. Flood districts with one-time federal ESSER emergency dollars. Let them hire staff, build programs, and make promises. Then let the money expire — and watch the cliff arrive right on schedule.
Step 4: Sit back and call it "fiscal mismanagement." When the inevitable crisis hits, shake your head gravely and suggest that perhaps private operators could run things more efficiently.
It's elegant, really. Diabolically, infuriatingly elegant.
The Urban Battlefield: Chicago & California
The two richest states in the union — Illinois and California — are home to some of the most spectacular examples of manufactured crisis in modern American governance.
Chicago Public Schools: The $700 Million Hole
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is staring down a $700 million+ structural deficit — not because Chicago is poor, but because the system has been architecturally designed to fail.
- Pension obligations balloon regardless of how many students sit in classrooms.
- Enrollment drops trigger funding cuts under Illinois's Evidence-Based Funding formula — even as buildings, staff, and fixed costs remain stubbornly, expensively fixed.
- The "Hold Harmless" provision sounds protective, but when inflation runs hot and nominal funding stays flat, districts lose real purchasing power every single year — like being handed the same $20 bill while the grocery store quietly doubles its prices.
CPS has responded by raiding Tax Increment Financing surpluses, furloughing non-instructional staff, and reshuffling budget models. It's the municipal equivalent of rearranging deck chairs — with significantly higher stakes.
San Francisco & Sacramento: California Dreamin' of Solvency
California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) ties revenue directly to Average Daily Attendance (ADA) — meaning every absent student is a line item loss. In a post-pandemic world of elevated chronic absenteeism, this formula punishes the districts that need help most.
- San Francisco Unified (SFUSD) proposed closing 13 schools to address structural deficits. The community erupted. The superintendent departed. The buildings remain open. The deficit remains too.
- Sacramento City Unified (SCUSD) teetered on the edge of state receivership, forced to adopt a Fiscal Solvency Plan targeting $150 million in cuts — in a district already stretched thin.
The cruel geometry here is unmistakable: revenue drops per student lost, but costs don't.
Losing 20 students scattered across an elementary school doesn't eliminate a single teacher position, utility bill, or roof repair. The math is merciless.
The Lawsuit Heard 'Round the Classroom
On September 22, 2026 — just four days ago — the California School Boards Association (CSBA) filed suit against the State of California, challenging the withholding of $3.9 billion in Proposition 98 constitutionally guaranteed school funding.
This follows a nearly identical suit filed by the California Teachers Association (CTA) on September 15.
The state's defense? Economic uncertainty. Capital gains volatility. Fiscal prudence.
CSBA CEO Vernon M. Billy was considerably less diplomatic: "Proposition 98 is not a credit card or piggy bank that can be raided gratuitously by the state."
Let that sentence land for a moment.
California — the world's fourth-largest economy, home to more billionaires per square mile than most nations have total — looked at its constitutional obligation to fund children's education and said: "We'll get to it."
The districts that depend on those dollars aren't waiting on a philosophy seminar. They're issuing layoff notices today.
| Legal Action | Filed By | Date | Amount Challenged | Core Argument |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prop 98 Funding Suit | California Teachers Association (CTA) | Sept 15, 2026 | $3.9 Billion | State violated constitutional minimum funding floor |
| Prop 98 Funding Suit | CA School Boards Association (CSBA) | Sept 22, 2026 | $3.9 Billion | Recognizing obligation ≠ fulfilling constitutional mandate |
Two separate suits. Same $3.9 billion. Same constitutional violation. Same children waiting.
The Vicious Cycle, Illustrated
The machinery of decline is not mysterious. It runs like clockwork:
- Underfund → families lose confidence → enrollment drops
- Enrollment drops → formula-based revenue falls → deficits grow
- Deficits grow → programs cut, schools close → more families leave
- Repeat — until the district is declared "failed" and a private operator steps in
Every turn of this wheel is a win for those who profit from privatization. Every child who transfers to a charter, every family priced out of a neighborhood by school closures, every teacher laid off — these aren't tragedies to the defunding class. They're metrics.
Kids Over Profits: The November Mandate
Here's the part where this stops being a dark comedy and starts being an action plan.
The billionaires funding school board campaigns, bankrolling "reform" think tanks, and lobbying for charter expansion are not shy about their strategy. They shouldn't get to be the only ones playing the long game.
Public schools are the single greatest equalizer in American democracy. They are neighborhood anchors, community hubs, and the place where a kid from a working-class family gets the same shot at calculus, music, and a future as anyone else — if we fund them properly.
The path forward is straightforward, even if it isn't easy:
- ✅ Vote for candidates who support full, constitutional, inflation-adjusted funding for public schools
- ✅ Support school board members who resist privatization pressure and fight for community schools
- ✅ Hold state legislators accountable when they treat Proposition 98 like a suggestion rather than a constitutional mandate
- ✅ Show up — to board meetings, to the ballot box, to the rallies where communities fight to keep their schools open
The top hats will keep flying as long as we let them. The champagne will keep flowing as long as the defunding keeps working.
The billionaires have a thirty-year head start. But they don't have thirty million voters who understand what's at stake.
Remember in November. Kids over profits. Always.
Current as of September 26, 2026 — the day the CSBA lawsuit is four days old, the $3.9 billion is still withheld, and somewhere in California, a school librarian is deciding which books she can afford to keep.
Sources & References
⚖️ The Proposition 98 Lawsuits
1. California Teachers Association (CTA) Lawsuit — $3.9 Billion Withheld The CTA filed suit September 15, 2026, charging Gov. Newsom and the Legislature with illegally withholding Proposition 98 guaranteed school funding.
2. California School Boards Association (CSBA) Lawsuit — September 22, 2026 CSBA filed an independent complementary suit four days after CTA, targeting the same $3.9 billion constitutional violation.
3. CSBA CEO Vernon M. Billy — Direct Statement "Proposition 98 is not a credit card or piggy bank that can be raided gratuitously by the state."
🏫 Chicago Public Schools & Illinois
4. Chicago Public Schools — Official District Site CPS budget updates, community briefings, and fiscal planning resources are published directly by the district.
🏛️ California Funding Formula & State Policy
5. California Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) — State Policy Overview The LCFF calculates district revenue using Average Daily Attendance (ADA), base grants, supplemental grants, and concentration grants for high-need student populations.
6. Illinois Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) Formula Illinois's EBF sets adequacy targets using 34 educational resource benchmarks, with tier-based state distributions and hold-harmless protections.
📹 Video Documentation
7. San Francisco Unified School Closure Controversy — Video Report Details the intense political friction when SFUSD abruptly halted school closure proposals amid heavy community pushback and Superintendent Matt Wayne's departure.
🏛️ Federal Relief Funding Context
8. U.S. Department of Education — ESSER Fund Overview Documents the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, its expiration timeline, and district obligations.
9. Renew America's Schools — Federal Investment Context Federal school infrastructure investment data providing context for the gap between one-time federal relief and structural district needs.
⚠️ Note: Some sources from the September 22–26, 2026 CSBA filing are still propagating across news outlets as of this morning. The ArcaMax and CSBA social media links above are the earliest confirmed published references. Checking *EdSource.org and *CalMatters.org directly is strongly recommended for the most current legal filings and district-level reporting, as both outlets provide the most rigorous ongoing California education coverage.
*Irony alert: Edsource and Calmatters are funded by you guessed it: Billionaires.
