Lake County Gazette

Moody’s Investors Service recently lowered the credit rating of the Chicago Board of Education deeper into junk-level status, to B3 from B2, with a negative outlook.

  

Moody’s cited the district's "increasingly precarious liquidity position and acute need for cash-flow borrowing to support ongoing operations" as its reason for the reduction.

Benjamin Salzberg | Contributed photo

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third-largest school system in the nation, has been continuously afflicted with outstanding debt, much of it from a swelling pension liability. It is once again depending on Chicago taxpayers for help.

Benjamin Salzberg, the Republican candidate for the District 29 state Senate seat, said the state needs to stop throwing money at the district and focus on the root issues.

“Before you throw money into a school district to improve them, you have to first understand the root cause of why they are inefficient,” Salzberg told the Lake County Gazette. “These are the focuses which need to be looked into. If you are inefficient, have students not learning properly in the district, and are not solving the root cause, I don’t care how much money you are throwing at it, you are not going to solve the problem.”

Salzberg said the problems persist because people only look at the symptoms, not the root causes. Salzberg said his background as a Lean Six Sigma efficiency consultant and a mechanical engineer provides him with the ability to solve the problems consuming the state.

One such problem is unabated bonuses received by education administrators, such as the $600,000 severance pay received by the former president of Chicago State University, Thomas Calhoun Jr., when he resigned after working for only nine months.

This is an example of money going to waste, Salzberg said.

“This is taking advantage,” Salzberg said. “This is what I am talking about. How does this help the people out in this state? It doesn’t. The problem we are having is (House Speaker Mike) Madigan (D-Chicago) throwing money toward problems, but it doesn’t fix anything. It’s like a hose that has holes in it. You’re just leaking out money, and you are not fixing the problem. This election, I hope people understand this. It is just so pivotal. It’s so near a (point of) no return that we are going to have to do something.”

Other educators are also receiving bonuses after they retire, some in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Salzberg is disheartened that the money, which could have gone toward creating programs for students or services that help people find jobs and careers, is thrown away this way.

“Instead, we are using the money for administrators and various high-cost expenses,” Salzberg said. “The amount of money they are getting and the amount of return we are getting from them – as far as their knowledge and talent -- it doesn’t correlate. The leadership is getting all this money, and you look at their output, and they are not making the school more efficient or effective.”

Salzberg said that while he admired the hard work of various administrators, he questions whether these bonuses benefit the schools in any way.

“Did they save the school money in some way?” Salzberg said. “Did they introduce programs that foster a 100 percent employment rate in their school districts? What kind of outcome are they producing from these high salaries that they are getting from taxpayers? That money should be used in a way to benefit society.”