Several school board members, Chicago Public Schools officials and the powerful president of the Chicago Teachers Union agree – they believe the cause of and solution to CPS’ money woes lie three hours south of the city in the state capital.
They say lawmakers have taken the eyes off of education in their focus on a new Chicago Bears stadium. Their criticisms come one day after CPS revealed its preliminary budget for the coming school year, a spending plan that includes a $732.5 million deficit.
“This budget as presented yesterday is unsatisfactory and dead-on arrival,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates told the board of education.
Davis Gates successfully led the charge for a new labor agreement last year that gives teachers a 4-to-5% average raise for each of the next three years. She says teachers’ jobs better not be on the chopping block with the new budget.
“How do you have school without teachers? How do you have clean schools without custodial staff? How do you have classrooms that work without assistance? How do you have school without the necessary supervisory staff in the building? How do you have it without recess monitors? How do you have school? That’s what you have to ask Springfield,” she said.
And some CTU-aligned board members say the focus has to be about getting more money from Springfield. They echo Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s claim that the state is shorting CPS nearly $2 billion – and say the focus on a Bears megaprojects bill will cost education.
“We cannot allow mega-projects to destroy public education,” said board member Debby Pope. “We cannot tell our children, ‘no, we do not have enough for you because we are building a beautiful new stadium.’”
But does the state really owe CPS billions inf unding? The answer is complicated, Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson. He said a state-backed funding formula says CPS and all districts should get more, but the goal is to get there in future years as it would be too costly right away.
“So the price tag is actually upwards of $4-to-5 billion that is needed like that,” Ferguson said. “That is not politically feasible. It’s not legally enforceable. And so this is really pipe dream stuff and that has to be placed in the context of the larger challenges both the state has and that CPS has.”
Ferguson says he believes CPS can close the gap without teacher layoffs, but says the district cannot put off the issue of declining student enrollment for much longer.
“It’s a simple demographic fact. There are less children to be served. And yet, our footprints, and therefore the cost of running CPS, has not been calibrated to that ever-shrinking enrollment size,” he said.
