Rotten to the CORE - “woke” teachers union of Chicago accelerates its plans to bankrupt the school district, the city and the entire state of Illinois.

I have posted a few articles recently about the insane pay awards to local authority bureaucrats in Manly, Australia, awarding its bureaucrats exorbitant salaries and imposing massive city taxes.

The UK is a socialist train wreck of incompetence and socialist lunacy. Its entire social fabric is being dismantled. More and more debt, and higher and higher taxes are being piled on to fund “wokery”.

The UK’s NHS is the world’s largest private sector employer and “provides” a pathetic service. It pays tens of millions for DEI hires and pays hundreds of bureaucrats 6-figure salaries rather than treat the sick. To cap it all, it deprives countries of nurses whilst ignoring the pool of available talent at home. There has been massive hiring of tens of thousands of nurses from India, the Philippines and Nigeria - along with 4 family members - to the UK’s national health service, rather than sponsoring 2–4 year recruitment and training campaigns for nursing staff within the UK.

This “wokery” extends to the US. Here is a piece on the “wokery” within Chicago’s school system.

Chicago Can't Afford to Dance to All That Lefty Teacher Union Jazz | RealClearInvestigations

Her’s a few snippets from the detailed and thorough analysis:

“After the pandemic hit, a windfall of $190 billion in federal emergency funding helped districts like Chicago paper over years of deficit spending and significantly expand the ranks of teachers, social workers, and counselors.

Now that the federal aid has ended, students have only partly recovered from their devastating learning loss while budget deficits have ballooned, prompting widespread education cuts in Houston and upcoming reductions in San Francisco, to name just a few districts facing fiscal woes.

So, going broke, but the scamdemic MORE than bailed them out - resulting in a splurge on woke hiring.

How broke? This is what “running out of other people’s money” looks like.

“In many ways, this is a story about the hazards of running a district deeply into debt. With a projected $500 million annual deficit and holding a whopping $9.3 billion in long-term debt, the district depends on the city of Chicago, which also runs in the red, to provide most of its $9.9 billion in funding. Making matters more precarious, the district has to rely on short-term loans at high interest rates to make payroll. It is also the largest issuer of junk bonds in the U.S. “

“Junk debt” is debt that cannot attract an investment grade credit rating - implying there is a low probability of investors getting their money back.

And now?

“The labor negotiations took an ugly turn in December over the matter of a loan. Martinez flatly refused Mayor Johnson’s request to take on more debt to fund CTU’s salary demands. The union protested with a vote of no confidence in the CEO, and then a school board appointed by Johnson fired him. “

Resistance is futile! How much are the bloated ranks of staff seeking via the CTU?

“The costly issues in the negotiations are compensation and staffing. The district says it offered a 16% cost of living pay hike over four years, on top of baked-in increases that bring the total to about 30% for most teachers with a master’s degree.

The average teacher salary would jump to $110,000, with the most experienced instructors earning $140,000 – compensation that’s competitive with other large urban districts.”

There are bright spots in educational attainment for white and Asian students, but then there’s headlines like this:

Trapped in Chicago’s worst schools: Education outcomes in Chicago’s lowest-performing public schools | Illinois Policy

“A majority of students attending the lowest 10 percent of elementary schools and high schools in Chicago don’t have basic competence in reading, science and math. They’re significantly behind their peers in almost every respect. And success in school is a direct link to success later in life with more steady employment, greater wages and higher self-confidence.”

A pay for performance seems to be in order. Spending on DEI and “net zero” policies by school, city and sate are not easily accessible.

The deficits in pensions funds for Illinois is mind-boggling - from Brave AI:

“As of the latest data, the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System (TRS) faces a substantial unfunded liability. In 2022, the total unfunded pension liability for the state's five pension funds reached $140 billion, with the Teachers' Retirement System being the largest fund.

The specific deficit for the Teachers' Retirement System has been reported as high as $71.4 billion in previous years, indicating a significant shortfall in funding.”

Illinois has already run out of other people’s money and remains in existence only if it can borrow to pay for past excesses. Hust like the UK and any number of other “woke” jurisdictions.

“Wokery”.