Rahm The Un-Reformer: Board of Education postpones vote on budget until teacher contract pact

The Chicago Tribune reports on Rahm's handpicked board of education:

CPS officials say they’ve exhausted their resources just to close the budget gap and can’t afford to pay teachers more than the 2 percent they’ve offered. The standoff has pushed the two sides to the brink of a teachers’ strike that could delay the start of the school year. An independent arbitrator recently recommended that CPS teachers should see their salaries increase between 15 and 20 percent next year for working a 20 percent longer day. Both CPS and the union rejected that recommendation.Whether teachers ultimately get the raises they say they are owed, CPS’ financial picture is dire. The district in recent years has gutted after-school programs, closed schools, slashed central office payroll, laid off hundreds of teachers and raised taxes to the cap limit, all in an effort to get its finances in order.

It has made little difference. In a scathing rebuke of the district’s proposed budget for 2012-13, The Civic Federation put CPS’ long-term debt at $1.1 billion and said it faces a $1 billion deficit in 2014, no matter what officials do this year to close the current shortfall.

That future debt is largely due to the expiration of a three-year partial pension holiday, in which CPS was able to reduce its teacher pension contributions by about one-third. Beginning next year, that bill comes due and CPS’ pension obligations jump from $196 million to more than $530 million.

Great moments of public education .