Financial analysts at one Wall Street rating agency last week dropped the Chicago school district’s credit rating again, less than a week before the district was expected to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in long-term bonds.
Standard & Poor’s pushed the school system’s bond rating one notch deeper into junk territory—to the agency’s B grade—and said the decision was based on what are by now familiar financial concerns.
Those include the district’s reliance on short-term borrowing to cover daily expenses, plus $55 million in costs added to this year’s budget by the recent Chicago Teachers Union pact.
