As Mayor Emanuel took another bold step toward spending $55 million for a DePaul basketball arena and a hotel, public school principals throughout the system were telling their staff what to expect in next year’s budgets.

As in—cuts, cuts, and more cuts.

I like to joke that we must be a really rich city if we can afford to continually waste so many property-tax dollars on things like basketball arenas for private universities that charge around $30,000 a year in tuition.

But apparently we’re not that wealthy after all. At least, we’re being asked to choose one thing over another.

Guess which option heads the list?