Chicago Tribune Edtiorial: Public Education Failure - $688 Million Hole in Chicago Public School System Budget

The Chicago Tribune has an editorial on the disaster in the making:

Last week, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett told the Chicago Board of Education that she and her team have run out of budget gimmicks to stave off financial disaster in the system's fiscal 2016 budget. A reckoning approaches.

But let's not talk about deficits as if they were mere numbers. This crisis is about the futures of nearly 400,000 Chicago students. And the future of the city's public schools.

The school system owes $688 million in pension payments in fiscal 2016, and even more annually in years to come. That's one big reason CPS faces not just one massive budget deficit, but a parade of them.

Isn't it time to admit public education doesn't work in big cities? Big school districts are a failure.