In August, the Illinois Policy Institute issued a damning report on the state of Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Only 30 percent can read on grade level, and just 20 percent can do math at grade level. Additionally, more than 40 percent of students are chronically absent, significantly higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 19 percent.
Despite all that, CPS continues to spend more and more money. The Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU) said in December that the city isn't broke, it just needs to tax the wealthy more. Mayor Brandon Johnson is pushing for a head-tax on employees, one that would cost Chicago-based businesses $21 per employee per month. Here's what just some Chicago-based businesses would be facing:
- Amazon -- 33,000 employees = $693,000
- Advocate Health -- 30,700 employees = $644,700
- Northwestern Memorial Healthcare -- 29,400 employees = $617,400
- United Airlines -- 14,000 employees = $294,000
But it turns out CPS had a lot of money to waste on things wholly unrelated to education, including expensive luxury travel.
CORRUPTION: Chicago schools blew $7.7M on luxury travel, Egypt, Finland, Vegas, while running a $734M deficit. 40% of trips were unauthorized. No comment from Mayor Johnson. pic.twitter.com/gCBEtQfZd5
— @amuse (@amuse) November 14, 2025
In a scathing report dropped overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, the inspector general for the Chicago Public Schools called the district's spending on travel "questionable" and "exorbitant."
The report, "Examination of CPS Overnight Travel Spending," detailed trips that investigators said taxpayers would find "excessive." It contains numerous eye-popping examples of what it calls "travel abuses" and "broken travel expense promises."
"By our judgement, the costs were frequently excessive, and in fact they frequently exceeded CPS's spending limit," CPS Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht said. "We saw time and time again staff members were able to go on these trips without getting approval at all, without seeking approval, at times even after they sought approval and it was rejected."
Last-minute flights and limo rides all charged to taxpayers were documented.
Despite the district's $734 million deficit and the city's $1.2 billion deficit, Mayor Brandon Johnson believes fiscal responsibility is akin to slavery. "The so-called fiscally responsible stewards are making the same argument when our people wanted to be liberated and emancipated in this country," Johnson said. "The argument was you can't free black people because it would be too expensive."
CTU alderman Sigcho Lopez, who is also aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, also attacked progressives who used terms like "fiscally responsible."
"We hear some of these elected officials, and so-called progressives...when they are using very corporate language. They are using, for instance...that we have to be fiscally responsible."
Never in my life have I seen a better encapsulation of the Left's mentality and blatant greed. The job of CPS, and the responsibility of Mayor Johnson and Alderman Lopez, is to ensure that Chicago's children receive a decent education with the money taxpayers provide.
Instead, CPS spent millions on luxury travel, almost half of it unauthorized. There is zero — zero — reason anyone from CPS needs to travel to Europe, Egypt, or Vegas. And that would apply even if math and reading test scores were north of 75 percent. It's appalling and abusive for employees of CPS to be traveling when the vast majority of CPS students, many of them minorities, can't read or do basic math.
The worst part of it all is that Chicago will expect the rest of Illinois, and possibly federal taxpayers, to bail them out of their fiscal responsibility.
I don't know if what they did was criminal. I'm not a lawyer and I won't pretend to be one. But I do know it's wrong, and until CPS can get its act together, it shouldn't get another dime. If it collapses under the weight of fiscal reality, so be it.
