CHICAGO – Chicago residents already know that Karen Lewis fancies herself as a bit of a stand-up comedian.

Now the Chicago Teachers Union president is trying to pass herself off as an accounting expert, too.

Given the CTU’s total lack of financial responsibility, Lewis should stick to comedy.

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A new audit of Chicago Public Schools’ 2011-12 budget shows that the district had an additional $344 million on its books than previously believed.

On Monday, Lewis declared that the audit was definitive proof that the district’s perennial budget problems are “manufactured.”

“CPS understates and underprojects revenue, and overprojects spending every single year to raise this call about, ‘Oh, we have a billion dollar deficit. We have this, we have that,’” Lewis said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“It’s a manufactured crisis,” she continued. “It’s been a manufactured crisis.”

The only thing manufactured is Lewis’ outrage.

CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll explained that the “extra” $344 million is not extra revenue at all.

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Carroll said the new Aug. 1 due date for property taxes (instead of the usual October deadline) resulted in the district receiving the money in July – which put it on the CPS’ 2011-12 books.

The district is using the $344 million to pay this year’s bills.

Lewis is deliberately mischaracterizing the audit in order to confuse voters in the union’s never-ending battle with the school leaders.

Despite Lewis’ rhetoric, the district’s financial crisis is very real. School leaders say the district will spend about $1 billion more than it has in order to educate students during the current school year.

The deficit is being caused (at least in part) by the 137 half-filled schools within the district. CPS officials say they have 100,000 more classroom seats than they do students. They want to consolidate and close a number of schools, but the CTU refuses to cooperate because it would lead to job losses.

CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett “is making plans to shutter some of the district’s 681 schools, but won’t yet say how many,” the Sun-Times reports.

Lewis doesn’t want any school closed – that’s why she’s dishonestly representing the latest school audit. She wants to use it as a cudgel in her fight against the common sense reforms that are coming.