It’s another year, another massive deficit for Chicago Public Schools after they unveiled a $10 billion budget for the coming year.
The budget is once again loaded with red ink, as it includes a projected $735 million deficit. The increase is partly driven by teacher raises of between 4-to-5%, a result of a newly reached collective bargaining agreement with the Chicago Teachers Union.
That new budget comes as CPS officials claim their system only gets 73% of what it considers “adequate” funding from the state and federal governments.
“Like many public school districts, CPS is now faced with difficult decisions about how to allocate limited resources.” Chief Education Officer Dr. Karime Asaf in a news release Tuesday evening.
The new proposed budget comes months after CPS closed a $500 million deficit with a record infusion of TIF surplus money from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
With the release of the new budget, Johnson is again calling on Springfield to help.
“I did release a record number last year and TIF surplus,” Johnson said Tuesday afternoon at an unrelated news conference. “No other administration has made those type of investments. And in order for us to repair the structural damage, the state of Illinois has to contribute more. And I believe there’s no disagreement around that. It’s just a matter of the political will to ensure that we’re taxing the ultra-wealthy and big corporations so that the largest school district in Illinois is not left with this degree of uncertainty year after year.”
The budget presents a hard-to-solve math problem: how to right-size a school district that has seen a net decrease of 45,000 students over the last seven years while adding nearly 10,000 positions during that time.
CPS officials acknowledge that difficult choices lie ahead.
“(Current circumstances have) made it increasingly difficult to sustain pandemic-era staffing levels and interventions.” Asaf said.
