In Illinois, increasing pension obligations are consuming more of its taxpayers’ dollars, pushing cities and towns to cut core services and raise property taxes just to keep up with the payments, policy experts say.
The Chicago Board of Education has asked a Cook County judge to block a state commission’s move to up-end the city schools board’s decision to close three purportedly under-performing charter schools.
The Chicago Public Schools have filed suit against CPS’ former CEO, who pleaded guilty to charges she accepted bribes and kickbacks in return for steering contracts to a group of consultants and others, and her alleged co-conspirators, saying Barbara Byrd-Bennett and the others associated with The SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates conspired to defraud taxpayers and “the schoolchildren of Chicago.” CPS has demanded at least $65 million, combined, from all of the defendants named in the action
Two Mississippi and Alabama hospitals and the county that includes the cities of Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., have squared off in Chicago federal court with many of the country’s biggest financial institutions over so-called interest rate swaps — an issue now impacting governments and other public bodies throughout the country, including Chicago’s public schools system.
A man who formerly helped manage the Chicago Public Schools’ busing contracts has sued CPS, alleging the city’s public schools system fired him for “political and financial reasons” after he attempted to end practices which he claimed allowed the busing vendors to work together to allegedly bilk CPS and taxpayers who support it out of untold millions of dollars and costing CPS students millions of hours of lost classroom time in the process.
The Chicago Teachers Union and one of its lawyers have been served with a $5 million legal malpractice lawsuit brought by a Chicago Public Schools teacher who alleged the lawyer didn’t properly represent her in hearings surrounding CPS’ efforts to fire her.
Saying to rule otherwise would illegally limit the ability of the Chicago Public Schools and other school districts to choose to hire or not hire teachers, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled 6-1 to reject the Chicago Teachers’ Union’s attempt to force the Chicago Board of Education to arbitrate grievances over how CPS designates probationary teachers it ultimately opts not to hire.
A charter school in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side has asked a court to intervene to prevent the Chicago Public Schools from acting to close its doors at the end of this school year. On Nov. 18, the Chicago Lighthouse Charter School sued the CPS Board of Education, asking a Cook County judge to overrule CPS’ decision to close the school.
Four members of a Chicago prep school’s local school council have filed suit against the other council members and have asked the court to nullify every vote the board has taken since April, claiming they illegally installed a council member to fill a vacancy and have since used that action to ram through a number of spending actions by the slimmest of margins.
A Cook County man is suing a former Chicago school teacher and the city's board of education alleging negligence in a child molestation case dating to the 1970s.
A former Chicago Public Schools building engineer who claims a CPS principal repeatedly targeted her with false accusations of criminal activity and other misdeeds will be allowed to continue with her retaliation lawsuit against the Chicago Board of Education.
The Better Goverment Association and a Chicago TV station are suing the city school district for allegedly not providing employment documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The former principal of a Chicago public elementary school has sued the Chicago Public Schools and a CPS spokesman, alleging the spokesman and CPS defamed her and violated her privacy rights when they indicated to Chicago news organizations last year that the principal had been removed from her position over a potential investigation into her conduct, prompting reports to surface allegedly linking her to falsified enrollment and reimbursement reports.
A family member of the Chicago Public Schools teacher who died last month shortly after collapsing in class wants more information about the defibrillator used in order determine whether legal action should be taken and if so, against who.
The race for mayor in Chicago is heating up, and at the center of the debate is the City’s dire financial situation. The Chicago Public Schools alone are staring at a $1.14 billion budget deficit.
