Education
CPS Board Approves Balanced Budget, But Concerns Remain About Future of District Funding
Chicago Public Schools said it presented a balanced budget for the coming school year Thursday, despite the expiration of federal COVID-19 dollars, but significant funding issues may lay ahead if the district is unable to identify new financial streams.
The seven-member Board of Education on Thursday unanimously approved the district’s $9.9 billion spending plan for the upcoming school year despite criticisms from educators who said the district is relying on staff vacancies to plug its $505 million funding gap.
CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the budget presented Thursday is balanced and will create a “new standard of equity for how we fund our schools.”
“I am proud that we are able to close this (funding) gap without significant impacts to school funding and will continue to protect those investments that have led to our students’ amazing gains,” he said.
CPS already faced a $391 million shortfall as federal COVID-19 funding was set to expire, but the district said additional “cost pressures” in health care and special education resources added more than $100 million to the deficit — bringing the final total to $505 million.
CPS officials said they worked to keep budgetary reductions out of the classroom and filled the district’s deficit through grant money, departmental cuts and central office reductions.
Those included $197 million in departmental cuts to central academic and operational department budgets and another $196 million in federal grant carryover funds, new grant funding and increased vacancy savings.
CPS said it was able to cut another $112 million in spending through debt restructuring as well as reductions in central office staffing, supplemental class size reduction funding and short-term borrowing costs.
The district this year has also done away with student-based budgeting and moved to a new funding model it says will guarantee a certain level of resources to all schools.
Despite Thursday’s vote, more adjustments to the budget will be necessary. The current plan doesn’t include pending salary increases for members of the Chicago Teachers Union, which is in the process of negotiating a new contract, and the district budget will need to be updated once that deal is finalized.
According to the district, 95% of its operating budget funds will go toward directly supporting schools.
CTU leaders, however, said the proposal is “an act of make-believe.”
Union Vice President Jackson Potter — who earlier this month said the district’s budget is “the product of a man driving with his hands over his eyes” — on Thursday accused CPS of relying on “tricks” to pass a budget “with a big hole in it” before they turn and criticize educators seeking additional resources and raises.
“We hope that whatever you do doesn’t set the stage for that kind of blame game,” he said, “and that it enables the increased bilingual supports, supports for our students with disabilities, the resources for homeless students — who have increased in number sizably over the last year — (and) ensures smaller class sizes.”
Michelle Ludwig, a CPS teacher whose position was cut last month, asked the board to reject the district’s budget, saying Chicago students “deserve more.”
“This budget has been balanced on the backs of staff whose positions have been cut,” she told the board. “This budget relies on staff vacancies. There should be vacancies based upon retirement and personal choice, but not because the district decided to devalue educators by cutting their positions.”
WBEZ this week reported that CPS is relying on staff vacancies to provide $220 million in savings to help fill the budget deficit.
The Civic Federation, which conducted an analysis of the district’s spending plan, was also critical. The organization said the CPS budget is “technically balanced,” but called it “incomplete” and noted that some of the measures the district relied on to fill its deficit are “one-time in nature, signaling the greater reality of a budget that remains in structural deficit.”
“We’re appreciative of the intention of CPS and the Board of Education to lean towards more fiscally responsible approaches that give greater emphasis to savings and efficiencies instead of deficit borrowing,” Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said in a statement. “However, at the end of the day, this is a moment-in-time budget that meets a technical legal requirement but utilizes fuzzy math to do so, cognizant of the fact that it does not account for the greater operating costs that will be embodied in the new collective bargaining agreement with CTU likely to be finalized in the weeks ahead.”
Mayor Brandon Johnson — a former CTU organizer who the union backed heavily during his successful 2023 campaign — floated a plan that would have seen CPS borrow up to $300 million to help pay for the pending salary increases and some pension costs next year, Chalkbeat Chicago reported earlier this month.
But the district pushed back, Chalkbeat reported, calling borrowed funds a “fictional or phantom revenue source.”
District officials have said CPS is owed $1.1 billion from the state in order for it to be fully-funded under Illinois’ funding formula. Martinez said CPS had advocated for an increase of $550 million to be distributed among schools statewide, but Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s state budget instead included a $350 million increase.
CPS leaders acknowledged it could face major difficulties moving forward.
“When we look out into the future, while we’ve taken significant steps to identify budget balancing strategies for this year, we are still facing significant challenges in future years,” CPS budget chief Mike Sitkowski said Thursday.
Next year’s budget could range from $500-750 million if new revenue streams aren’t identified, Sitkowski said, while deficits could top $1 billion between 2029 and 2030 if CPS fails to find structural solutions.
Potter on Thursday pointed to other school districts seeing cuts around Illinois, and highlighted a campaign started in New Haven, Conn. — where educators are seeking to tax the multi-billion endowment at Yale University — as a possible model to follow in Chicago.
He also said the state should cover CPS pension payments as it does for other school districts across Illinois.
“We have to make the case that critical investments are necessary,” Potter said, “we have to be honest about the cost. Otherwise it makes our effort to get state funding … much less persuasive and effective. It jeopardizes our growing campaign to win that very revenue.”
Contact Matt Masterson: @ByMattMasterson | [email protected] | (773) 509-5431
