In a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, Sarah Karp tries to understand the claim by the Chicago Public Schools that it cut $600 million from central office when the entire budget for central office is $233 million.
Furthermore, the budget for central went up, not down.
By now, there must be no one still employed at central offices of CPS.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I suppose that the employees no longer working at CPS central office must be paying CPS. That IS some amazing math!
Very creative financial thinking on the part of CPS. The only problem is that it is fantasy. All you have to do is download their budget and look at it and then look back a bit in time. I think they go back in some place 2-3 years with comparative numbers.
When Duncan was CEO he wrote the California Legislature to be in favor of the California unconstitutional mayoral control he wrote that before the wonderful Mayor Daley and Vallas took over in 1995 Chicago schools were left with $1.8 billion in debt which Daley, Vallas and Duncan had to clean up and therefore you need mayoral control for mayor Villaraigosa. Myself and a friend were the only ones to supply every member of both houses with 165 pages of documentation that what they were presented with were lies and here is the documented proof of such. I just happened to have an original copy from Chicago of the 1994 budget. It had a surplus not a $1.8 billion deficit. How about that? I still have those letters and the financial pages for the proof of the lie. If he would do that then why wouldn’t they do the same now to their own people? Just lie and see if you can get away with it. Good reporting. I congratulate the reporter for their work.