Wirepoints recently released a piece on Chicago Public School’s near-empty, failing schools. Nearly a third of CPS’ 478 traditional schools are less than 50 percent full and its 20 most empty schools are struggling with deserted hallways and terrible student results. Manley High School, for example, has a capacity of nearly 1,300 students, but just 64 kids attend the school and only 2 percent of the kids can read at grade level.
We were asked by several readers for more information about those 20 schools. What was each school’s per student spend? How many employees were there? How much did school administrators make?
What we found made already-disturbing facts even worse.
In those 20 schools there are, on average, just four students for every school employee.
At Crown Elementary for example, there are 131 students and 30 FTE employees – a four-to-one ratio – all in a school that’s only at 19 percent capacity. At Raby High School the ratio is three-to-one – 163 students versus 52 teachers and staff.
Manley HS, meanwhile, spends $33,000 per student and has a ratio of two-to-one: 64 students and 34 employees.
And Uplift High School – where operational spending is about $30,400 per student – has just as many employees, 54, as there are students, 55. Despite that 1v1 ratio, only 3 percent of students are proficient in reading.
Government schools sure are expensive and inefficient . It would be way cheaper just to hire private tutors !
