Education

The Chicago school district also is paying out more than $100,000 to a special education teacher who says he lost his job after raising concerns about special ed staffing issues at the same Southwest Side high school.

Documents released after a judge lifts a publication ban against the BGA offer new details about failed oversight, warnings that were ignored and “mayhem” at high school pool on the Southwest Side in 2017.

After CPS lawyer provides BGA with internal records about drowning death of teen with autism, a Cook County judge issues order temporarily prohibiting publication. School district lawyers say they released the documents by mistake.

Following BGA/Sun-Times investigation into special ed care at pools, Chicago’s school board is set to take up policy changes that would limit pool activities and focus lifeguard staffing.

An Emanuel administration drive to project an image of rapid improvement at City Colleges led to a national award for Kennedy-King College in Englewood. But the BGA found the improvement that led to the award was measured using data from an international pastry program located in the Loop.

The college system also improperly sought state taxpayer tuition reimbursements for courses offered for free.

A top teacher union official at the City Colleges of Chicago chastised Chancellor Juan Salgado for his “dismissive” response to a BGA investigation that found lowered standards and manipulated data created a misleading record of success.

Early estimates show the new tax scholarship program, while limited, could cost the state two to five times more a student than what it now spends on general aid for the state’s public schools students.

Fourteen-year-old Rosario Gomez didn’t know how to swim, wasn’t wearing a lifejacket and had significant problems communicating. His drowning in a high school pool last winter fuels doubts about Chicago Public Schools’ ability to care for its special needs students.

By design, Illinois places an outsized reliance on revenue from local property taxes to fund schools. That has led to dramatic increases in property taxes across the state while also creating a worst in the nation gap in funding between rich and poor districts.