Hat tip to Portage Mom at CPS Obsessed for pointing out this really excellent 7 1/2 minute Khan Academy video re: the Illinois Pension dilemma. Explained more clearly than I’ve ever seen it, with real numbers and data visualization. (And the questions and answers below the video are also extremely helpful as well.)
Why does it matter to the Apples 2 Apples team?
The current significant cuts to individual CPS school budgets as well as some major cost shifting of expenses to individual schools, and our curiosity about those changes to budgets. But more about that financial data later.
For now, this video is a very good staring point regarding the pension problem when it comes to looking at the numbers. There are three questions implied by the video, and I’ve not yet figured out the answers to them:
- Which politicians made the decision to underfund our pension system so badly?
- Where DID they spend the tax revenues that should have funded the pensions all along?
- How do we prevent this generation of students from needing to pay for the poor decisions of past and current politicians?
Apples 2 Apples in Chicago Public Schools 