Chicago Public School employees are unexpectedly being forced to take four unpaid furlough days over the next five months due to a funding shortfall that the school district’s top official blames on Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner.  The school district did not receive an anticipated $215 million payment from the state to help fund pensions.

CPS staff was notified of the furlough days on Jan. 13 in a letter from Chief Executive Officer Forrest Claypool, who wrote that the unpaid work days would save the district $35 million.  Claypool called it “a first step in addressing the Governor’s misguided cuts,” according to his letter.

“We didn’t get any say-so in this,” Schubert Elementary School counselor Pam Cahill said. “I honestly don’t see how these four furlough days are going to help CPS get out of the hole that they are in.”

The first furlough day took place on Feb. 3 and the others will be held on April 7, June 21, and June 22, Cahill said.  The dates were specifically chosen because they are school improvement days, which are non-attendance days for students.

“I think [teachers] are annoyed that they are losing these professional development days and that they are losing pay,” Cahill said. “You can’t get work done even if you want to go in to work unpaid. We are locked out of the building.”

At Lane Tech High School on Chicago’s North Side, teachers have been openly sharing their feelings about the furlough days and how it is affecting them, sophomore Madison Murphy said. Several teachers have posters on their doors with phrases like “Teachers Are People, Too” and “Teachers Don’t Deserve This.”

“I think it negatively impacts them,” Murphy said. “One of my teachers was saying they needed the money to send their kids to school. I thought that was really terrible that they weren’t getting paid.”

The district is working to lessen the effects of the budget cuts on classroom instruction, Claypool wrote in his letter. Further measures may be taken to reduce spending if the city cannot work out its funding disputes with the state.

According to WTTW, “Rauner said the agreement to pay CPS was made on the condition that sweeping pension reforms would be made at the state level. But as that has not yet happened, he said tax dollars cannot continue to be ‘wasted on bailout after bailout.’”