Redistributing Income from Americans to Chicago
On Tuesday, Terence Jeffrey reported at the CNS News website that American taxpayers have provided $4 billion in federal subsidies to the Chicago public schools over four years. Putting it in another way, he said:
“Over the past four years, the Chicago public schools have churned through total revenues of approximately $20.27 billion and about $4.26 billion of that revenue—or almost 21 percent of it—has come from the federal government.”
Jeffrey also wrote, “In fiscal 2013, the Chicago Public Schools are budgeted to receive another $937.7 million in revenue from the federal government. At an enrollment of 403,770, that would equal another $2,322 per student in federal subsidies.”
Let’s take a look at how much the member school districts of the Washington Area Boards of Education (WABE) get from the federal government, i.e., American taxpayers. The FY 2013 numbers aren’t posted yet, but the revenue sources for FY 2012 are (page 25 of the 2012 WABE posted at the APS website).
- Alexandria -- 6.7%
- Arlington -- 2.4%
- Fairfax -- 4.1%
- Falls Church -- 3.0%
- Loudoun -- 1.8%
- Manassas -- 6.0%
- Manassas Park -- 6.6%
- Montgomery -- 3.5%
- Prince George’s -- 6.9%
- Prince William -- 4.1%
Let’s see. The Chicago public schools with 403,770 students will spend $13,199 per student, and received about 21% inf federal subsidies over the past four years. It will receive $937.7 million in FY 2013. On the other hand, the 10 school districts in WABE have 644,115 students, but received $$353.2 million in federal subsidies from the federal government in FY 2012 (4.3% of total revenues of $8.3 billion, or a cost per student of $12,854.
I recognize that I’ve mixed fiscal years, but I think I’ve made the point that there is a great deal of income redistribution being engineered by the U.S. Department of Education.
References: For more information about the Chicago teachers strike, here's a Reuters report posted today. Here's the Associated Press take in the Washington Post updated today. Arnold Ahlert has this report at FrontPage Magazine. Finally, here's the September 10, 2012 report from the Education Intelligence Agency.