Chicago Public Schools have been dominating local headlines for months now, and not always for positive news; whether it’s for a new funding formula, or changes for governing magnet and selective enrollment schools or transportation problems for the same, but headlining many stories was the need to fund a deficit, and how to get more money from the Illinois Governor J..B. Pritzker.
For many residents and observers, the nation’s third largest school system is on the financial precipice and has also faced a mountain of criticism for failing to meet student standardized goals for reading and math; and, the Chicago Teachers Union also faces formidable opposition for even asking for more money.
Adding to the issues faced is that one of their former organizers, Brandon Johnson, is now mayor, with a hide bound progressive agenda, but whose myriad of other problems: housing migrants, increasing homelessness and high crime threaten to overwhelm him.
The elephant in the room is the near $400 billion deficit, the result of CPS being helped by COVID-19 federal relief funds, which is about to end, but as most agree that budget hole is bound to grow, and especially without the inclusion of staff raises when it announced its projected deficit, not to mention a new CTU contract, upon the existing one ending June 20.
Problematically, according to local public radio station WBEZ, is “the school district has not publicly released school level budgets, a break with past practice; media outlets, including WBEZ, requested them under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The district denied the FOIA request, describing the budget as ‘preliminary factual information that is inextricably intertwined with ongoing deliberations and policy formulations,’ leaving many wondering what to expect.”
CPS primarily serves a Black and Brown population, and amidst the city’s historical patterns of segregation, the lack of political will by some white majority leaders has led to a juncture that often seems insurmountable.
Even the much lauded selective enrollment and magnet schools, “created under court ordered desegregation, many still lack the diversity of the city and are largely segregated by race and class. A couple dozen are integrated, but serve more white and Asian American students than the rest of the school district,” said Chalkbeat Chicago.
New funding formula is on the books, but faces opposition
One seemingly ray of hope has been a new funding formula that is individually school based, instead of per pupil. In March CPS announced the change, a campaign promise by Johnson to end the old plan of student based budgeting that gave schools a set amount for each child that was enrolled.
This new plan establishes a baseline level but this has brought backlash from some schools who have voted against the budgets they received, feeling that it is inadequate.
Chicago Public Radio station WBEZ reported that, “Several elected local school councils in Chicago are either refusing to approve budgets sent by the school district or are approving those budgets with a message to let the district leaders know they don’t think they are receiving enough resources for the coming year.”
“The budget that we have does not meet the need,” said Sequoiah Brown, a member of the local school council at Poe Classical School in Pullman on the Far South Side. “Our parents are adamant about the needs of our students. You should be trying to bring up the others to that standard, not taking from one to give to the other. That is not how equity works.”
“The school district has not publicly released school-level budgets, a break with past practice. Media outlets, including WBEZ, requested them under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The district denied the FOIA request, describing the budget information as ‘preliminary factual information that is inextricably intertwined with ongoing deliberations and policy formulations,”an assertion that the Illinois Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit parental advocacy organization, dismissed as “ridiculous.”
“As school communities discuss their budgets in a year of major budget changes leading to LSC’s holding budget votes, district-wide numbers to compare should be available to public reporters. These numbers ARE public at school level!” the group posted on X.”
Those Local School Councils are also fearful that they won’t have enough classroom aides, or may have to do without administrative staff.
In a recent interview with WTTW Chicago’s public television station, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez answered a question of why the Fall budget, scheduled to be released mid June is now to be released in July, by saying, “We need to really firm up our budget.”
“We want to really firm up our budget. One of the things that we said,is again, to protect the gains that we’re seeing. We wanted to protect the investments at our schools. We worked with our principals to make some tough decisions, and so we’re finding efficiencies and reductions in our central office.
We want to make sure that we firm those up. I will tell you that I feel confident that we’re going to have a balanced budget for the July board meeting. We are going to be able to stave off the cuts from the schools. It does mean though, that we’ll have some challenges centrally, plus, we’re still going to have some more challenges in the coming year.”
For the deficit he noted: “One of the things we did is we phased in the federal funding over three years, so year three is next year. We’ve had a structural deficit of $600-700 million a year. It’s about half of that — $400 million — for next year. That’s as we have the last tranche of federal funding that we’re going to have, so that’s why the deficit will be bigger in 2026. The main issue is that, and our state has done a great job in adding funding, but as I said publicly, our needs are outpacing the funding we’re getting from the state. I have more students than ever that need IEPs that require special services. We have more migrant students than ever. In fact, our enrollment is actually up — we’re almost at 329,000 students as we finished last year. That’s up from 323,000 from the year before. So for us, we’re seeing more students, more needs, and the funding just is not keeping up.
We also know that the state, even from their own funding formula, they’re short about a billion dollars, with a “B,” just for Chicago alone. Again, this is not a problem that our leaders in the state created — they inherited (it), but I really want to work with them because we are seeing the evidence of what could happen when we invest in our district.”
Martinez’s statements may have been diplomatic to keep the tap open on future funding from the state, and there has been widespread opinion that the state is not mandated to help fund Chicago schools with so many other districts statewide needing money.
CPS faces gubernatorial hurdle
Pritzker and the mayor have been at odds over funding for Chicago and don’t seem to see agreement, and he said, to local media, “It ought to be our priority to put more money into education, but not just for the city of Chicago,” and even more pointedly, “The city of Chicago is 20 % of the population of the state. So we have a lot of other people, a lot of other kids across the state going to school. We need to fund their schools better, too.”
In mid May, the Chicago Teachers Union went to the state capitol of Springfield to ask for $1.1 billion in state funding, and also to protest against House Bill 303 designed to “protect selective enrollment schools in Chicago from closure, admission changes or disproportionate state cuts,” noted an editorial in Crain’s Chicago Business, waring that these schools, while part of a flawed school choice system, are “some of the best high schools in the country within Chicago city limits, and that changing the system, or dismantling it, would cause “families to pull ups stakes and move elsewhere.”
Critics have pointed out that it is unlikely that CPS would close selective schools, and State Rep. Margaret Coke, Democrat of Chicago, has said that she hopes no significant changes will be made to charter schools until Chicago has its fully elected school board in 2027.
The Chicago Sun Times reported that “The majority of Illinois’ public school districts, including CPS, have less than 90% of the money needed to adequately serve students, state data shows. That’s less money for everything from general and special education to art, music and after school programs.”
Opposition to increased monies has been on the agenda since April when Pritzker, facing opposition from liberal supporters gave the bare minimum of an increase to state school funding, and as the Chicago Tribune reported, “cutting back on state funded healthcare for immigrants who are in the country without legal permission,” which has a deleterious effect on migrant children in public schools.
Looking back on the funding formula by his predecessor, Bruce Rauner, a Republican, critics point out that Prtizker’s increases are not enough to meet the state’s goals of adequately funding public schools,” under Rauner’s 2017 formula, added the Tribune.
Rep. Will Davis, Democrat, from south suburban Homewood, who was one of the sponsors of the 2017 bill “has pushed for at least a $500 million increase annually.”
The funding for K through 12 was increased by $350 million, the minimum allowed by the law according to education supporters and advocates.
Test scores have improved, somewhat
In what can be widely touted as a huge improvement, test scores have risen for CPS students and in the WTTW interview Martinez said, “since the pandemic started, we’re now at exceeding pre-pandemic levels in reading, and we know that reading is foundational for all of our students . . [W]e have intervention teachers at our schools with the highest poverty rates; we have seen our Black students have the biggest gains in our district by six points.”
And, in a notable increase he added, “That’s 6% for black students. That is a large leap, 6%, which indicates to me that they had some room to grow, that there was a lot of room to grow.”
The interviewer questioned this, saying, “31% of students being proficient in English Language Arts, that still means that 69% are not proficient. What’s the plan to continue the progress, this growth that you’ve seen?”
Martinez replied, with some hesitation,”Yeah, no, absolutely. So I think one of the things I know is that this year’s gains build on last year’s gains, which also saw a six-point gain in reading and a two-point gain in math. And we know from a study from Harvard and Stanford that we are number one in the country in reading recovery, number one in reading recovery for Black students and number two for Latino students in the country, so this builds on these gains.”
Caught off guard the superintendent seems to have tried to place a spin on what are still weaker scores, and no doubt will be pounced upon by conservative and Republican lawmakers, when he said:”The other context I would give you is that our state proficiency rate, they were at 35% in reading and 27% in math. Our state overall also doesn’t have high ratings, but remember, we have a very rigorous assessment. More importantly, what I saw was students across every grade level growing. . . We also have to remind our community that our high schools right now couldn’t be stronger. We’re seeing record graduation rates, record scholarships, record number of college credits being earned.”
Selective and charter school dilemmas
We have previously reported on the fears that selective enrollment and charter schools faced in a recent post, on the vote to extend their contracts between one and four years and not the usual, and expected 10 years,” but parents of those schools are also frustrated by the lack of adequate transportation, in both directions for their children.
In late March, The Chicago Tribune reported that, “For months, students attending some of the city’s most selective schools have traversed Chicago, taking buses, trains and carpools sometimes as early as 5 a.m., to show up on time for school — and the district is telling parents they may have to continue to find their own transportation into next school year.”
As can be expected the news was met with an uproar of disapproval:
At that time, “For more than seven months, the district has not provided busing services for roughly 5,500 general education students across the magnet and selective enrollment schools. Some of their parents have repeatedly told the district they are commuting for up to four hours a day to get children to their classrooms, risking their jobs and tiring out their kids in the process.”
General education students are also competing with the needs of other students, those with disabilities and special education; and, Chalkbeat reported, also in March, “For general education students, the district is offering prepaid Ventra cards, a move that has drawn criticism from families who don’t have the flexibility to accompany young children on public transportation. Additionally, about 3,700 students with disabilities have opted for stipends of up to $500 to cover their transportation needs on their own, down from 4,000 students at the start of the year, according to the district.”
In a hoped for menu, Johnson also wants “free public transit for students, housing for the district’s 20,000 homeless students,” they added and a partnership with the CTU for the so-called wraparound services, long on the wish list.
“Currently, about 130 students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, according to CPS. That’s significantly down from the 3,000 such students on long routes last year, but it is up from 47 students at the start of the school year.
Many families with general education students at magnet and selective enrollment schools have protested the district’s decision and have demanded a stipend to cover their transportation costs. Some families who have struggled to juggle transportation have pulled their children out of magnet schools and enrolled them somewhere closer to home.”
Just before the announcement of the finding issue, and an earlier extension for parents to enroll their children, creating yet another problem, there was a protest in Daley Plaza, and outraged parents demonstrated, loud and clear, for a change, or a stipend to help them.
“The district is providing stipends to more than 3,700 families with students with disabilities but has said providing stipends to general education families is not sustainable, citing a projected $391 million budget shortfall,” noted the Tribune.
Parent Marissa Lichwick-Glesne told ABC 7 News that, “"I believe this is indefensible, inexcusable, and unconscionable," and, "We know what needs to be done, and we know what these kids are going through and what these parents are going through every day to get their kids to school, and we need help. We need relief."
“The district is providing stipends to more than 3,700 families with students with disabilities but has said providing stipends to general education families is not sustainable, citing a projected $391 million budget shortfall.”
A parental suggestion for transportation hubs to alleviate the problem has been rejected as not being feasible for all students: “Hubs would work for some but not all routes, thus not serving all families and schools in an equitable manner, but, again, we will continue to explore all options for the coming school year,” district spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus said in a statement.
"Students and parents are now facing commutes up to five hours per day. Some have resorted to unreliable and potentially unsafe third-party transportation services costing families hundreds of dollars each month," said Hal Woods with Kids First Chicago.
Increased student migration population
One factor causing greater budgetary concern is the arrival of migrant children, mostly from Venezuela, who have stretched the budget, as well as class size, and Martinez plans to cut the central office to staff in an attempt to cut the deficit.
Exact counts of migrant children in CPS schools vary depending on who is doing the counting, for the District, the count is 9,000, but using the criteria of the Illinois State Board of Education the number ratchets up to 17,000, and is based on if the student is born in the U.S. or Puerto Rico, and has less than three years in an Illinois school.
Beyond these methodologies lie a myriad of problems, mostly related to bilingual instruction, and despite mandates from the state, many schools in Chicago do not meet the criteria of properly staffed teachers, who have received certification.
Chalkbeat recently reported that families who move to find affordable housing are often not told that their children can stay in schools that offer bilingual education and can help them advance in their studies.
In that search many of the families end up in racially segregated neighborhoods with under-resourced schools, and can fall behind, and cited that one school on the city’s West Side, Laura S. Ward has depended on a kindergarten teacher and a custodian who speak Spanish for classroom assistants.
The New Arrivals Grant was recently defeated in the state legislature and Pritzker’s office has told schools in need to use the McKinney Vento Subgrants from the federal government, or the $350 million awarded to state schools.
What the future holds for Chicago Public Schools remains a question mark for many, with its myriad of challenges and problems, but a lot of hope is vested in the November school board elections, a first for the city.
Hopes for a more democratic process and community input are high and despite that the board will only be partially elected, with a full election slated for 2027.
There are concerns, among them that the positions are not paid, shutting out many low income voices dealing with an already bureaucratic laden process.
The historical significance cannot be underestimated, as it is a first for Chicago, while the rest of Illinois does have elected school boards.
The new board will have 10 of 21 school board seats, but the rest including the prescient, will be elected by the mayor, giving him a majority control for the length of his term, and the newly formed board will begin meeting in January of 2025, and as we have seen there will be a full agenda.
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