As a student, I am constantly told that public schools lack the resources to help students succeed. District leaders say budgets are stretched, classrooms are underfunded, and students need “more investment.”
But the latest revelation from Chicago Public Schools tells a completely different story. CPS has a responsibility to educate students, protect taxpayer money, and provide real opportunities for families. Instead, it has become a national example of how a school system falls apart when political interests and mismanagement overpower basic accountability.
According to the CPS Office of Inspector General, district employees spent $23.6 million on travel over six years, much of it without required approval. The report documented hotel rooms approaching $1,000 per night, limousine airport transfers, luxury suites, and “professional development” conferences that doubled as vacations.
One teacher turned a four-day seminar into a week-long stay at a Hawaiian resort costing $4,700. A principal booked a Las Vegas Strip suite for an anniversary celebration and added an unauthorized extra day. Twenty-four employees from one school spent $50,000 to attend a single Las Vegas conference. More than $142,000 funded overseas trips to South Africa, Finland, Estonia, and Egypt — trips that included hot-air balloon rides and game-park safaris.
When a vendor offered the same conference locally in Chicago, the report noted that “few attended.”
These abuses surged once federal pandemic funds loosened the district’s financial constraints. Of the full $23.6 million, $14.5 million was spent in just 2023 and 2024. These dollars were meant to help students recover from severe learning loss after the Chicago Teachers Union kept schools closed for 78 weeks, one of the longest shutdowns in America. Instead of supporting academic recovery, millions of federal dollars turned into travel budgets for district employees.
While the spending increased, student outcomes continued to deteriorate. Only two out of five CPS students read at grade level, and barely one out of four meets math expectations. In some neighborhoods, proficiency falls into the single digits. Nearly 45% of CPS students — and more than half of high schoolers — are chronically absent.
These numbers represent more than poor performance; they show a system that is failing at its most basic responsibility: keeping students in school and providing a path toward the future.
Data consistently show that chronic absenteeism and low achievement correlate closely with youth crime. Chicago’s public-safety issues cannot be separated from the fact that tens of thousands of teenagers are disengaged from school. When students lose access to strong teachers, stable environments, and consistent expectations, communities suffer long-term consequences.
Chicago is not the only place where priorities are misaligned. In New York, lawmakers continue steering resources toward political initiatives rather than academics. The 2025 “People’s Budget” includes an $8 million plan to “increase teacher diversity,” even though New York City’s teaching workforce is already 42% black, nearly double the city’s 22% black population.
The same proposal sets aside $250,000 for “racial and cultural inclusivity” in classrooms and $3 million for an exhibit in the Adirondacks. Meanwhile, nearly half of New York students cannot meet basic reading benchmarks, despite the state spending more than $39,000 per student, the highest rate in the country.
Students deserve better, and charter schools show what is possible when academics — not politics — come first. Charter schools provide 30-50% more instructional time, equivalent to up to four additional months of learning each year. A landmark Harvard-Princeton study found that winning a lottery to attend a New York City charter school nearly eliminated the likelihood of incarceration for male students and reduced teen pregnancy among female students by 59%.
Chicago’s waste and New York’s misplaced priorities lead to one conclusion: students like me need an exit ramp. School choice is the most effective, evidence-based way to protect students from systems that no longer put children first.
