Chicago’s school board and “CEO” recently proposed to raise class sizes to 35 (article) but then backed down to union pressure (article).

What’s lost in the discussion of this victory is that the old class sizes are already too high.

According to the Sun-Times, “K to third-grade class sizes will remain at 28; fourth- through eighth-grade classes will stay at 31, and high school classes will rise from 28 to 33.”

Talk of acute budget shortages obscures the fact that class sizes have always constituted a budget shortage.