American cities are in decline. New York comes to mind — and Los Angeles, St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, and most certainly Chicago.

In the rest of America, people wonder why big-city residents keep electing politicians who embrace policies that don’t help the people they’ve promised to help. When offered a clear contrast between two candidates, they always seem to go for the status quo.

Take Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. His Democrat opponent last year was Paul Vallas, a businessman voted one of America’s best leaders by U.S. News and World Report and with nearly two decades of experience leading large school districts around the nation, including as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. After the three-ring circus of the Lori Lightfoot administration, electing Vallas should have been a no-brainer.

The voters, though, chose an even bigger political clown than Lightfoot — someone who would sink the city into the Chicago River if it meant pleasing the Chicago Teachers Union. And now, that radical, self-interested union is seeking a new contract with the city, demanding $175 million in pension benefits for non-teachers during a time when Chicago schools are already drowning in more than $500 million in pension obligations.

No need to worry.

In addition to $800 million in new taxes, Mayor Johnson has a plan to pay for it: by taking out a high-interest loan of $300 million. The problem? It would only fund the obligations for one year, and there’s no way to fund the pensions after the loan proceeds are paid out.

Mayor Johnson is so emphatic about his plan that he claims opponents stressing the need for fiscal responsibility are acting like slaveholders who once claimed that ending slavery would be too expensive.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez didn’t embrace the mayor’s plan, so Johnson pressured school board members to fire him. Instead, all seven members of the board resigned. As a result, “Mr. Martinez has become persona non grata at City Hall,” reports The Wall Street Journal, adding, “Local press reports say Mr. Johnson asked for the school’s chief’s resignation, which Mr. Martinez declined. Mr. Johnson then began pressuring the school board to fire him for causing a roadblock to CTU’s contract demands. Thus the school board’s resignation in refusal to be window dressing for the CTU agenda.”

Credit to the board members for stepping down, but it’s not going to stop Johnson and the union from getting their way and inflicting long-term damage on the students in Chicago public schools. Then again, student success has never been a priority for big-city Democrats like Johnson.

The editors at National Review write: “Educational outcomes and test scores will not increase, but then that is not the point: Johnson has explicitly argued that school success should be measured by money spent per student rather than crude metrics such as literacy. By that measure, or any other than that of actually teaching students, the Chicago Teachers Union has won. Pity the residents of Chicago, who were never even offered a seat at the table in what is shaping up to be an act of corrupt self-dealing notable even in the history of a city famous for it.”

Paul Vallas, the man who should be running the city, also weighed in at Illinois Policy that the aim of the union “is not to better educate students, but to get more money and more CTU members while blocking changes to workload, job security and accountability.” In fact, he said, “CTU is trying to skirt accountability by claiming a lack of funding.”

Vallas added, “Let’s be clear: funding has never been the issue at Chicago Public Schools. The district spends the equivalent to $30,000 per student based on total operational budget and receives over $12,000 in property taxes per student.”

The result of all that investment? Students cannot read, write, or solve basic math problems. And incompetent teachers are protected from losing their jobs. Some of the commonsense solutions proposed by Vallas include thinning out the education bureaucracy, offering parents the opportunity to send their kids to the best schools, and giving communities more say over the education of their children.

It’s hard to believe anyone voted against these ideas. In the end, borrowing millions of dollars to appease the Chicago Teachers Union is a big mistake, and it’ll have broader consequences across the city.

Just this week, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago released a joint statement expressing serious concerns over Johnson’s plan and its impact on communities.

Meanwhile, Chicago’s kids fear for their safety and are unable to learn. They’re the victims of union mobsters and corrupt Democrat politics. Let’s hope one day the people of Chicago will catch on and realize changing the clown in a three-ring circus doesn’t really change anything at all.