Education
CTU President Rejects Pritzker’s Assertion No More Money to Be Found in Springfield for Schools
Chicago Public Schools students are returning to the classroom this week, but a budget cloud is hovering over the district.
CPS is facing a $734 million shortfall with a deadline to pass a balanced budget coming next Friday, but the options facing CPS board members and the interim CEO appear to be narrowing.
On Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker reiterated to reporters that the district should not be relying on more money from Springfield, saying there wasn’t money “just lying around.”
“At the local level every school is going to have to do whatever is required in order to protect those students, and I will stand with them in that endeavor,” Pritzker said. “But there is not extra money lying around in Springfield. What CTU and the mayor are talking about — which is providing another $1 billion or $1.6 billion for Chicago Public Schools — that’s just not gonna happen. And it’s not because we shouldn’t. We should, we should try to find the money, but we don’t have those resources today.”
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates vehemently rejected that notion Wednesday in an interview on WTTW News’ “Chicago Tonight: Black Voices.”
“(President) Donald Trump gave billionaires in Illinois a $5 billion tax break,” Davis Gates said. “The governor, the supermajority in the House and the Senate can figure out how billionaires get to pay more. So there is money lying around.”
CPS leaders crafted a budget proposal to avoid classroom cuts, but it leans heavily on one-time funding, raising questions about long-term stability. But the most controversial part of the plan is the decision to defer a $175 million pension payment unless CPS gets TIF money or adequate state funding.
The Chicago Board of Education is split on whether to approve the plan.
Davis Gates said that board members “are trying their level best” to figure out how to fund our schools and that state lawmakers needed to step up.
“You have a CEO who is upside down with trying to figure the same thing out,” Davis Gates said. “The differences that both factions (on the school board) have are very small and are only differences brought on because of a $2 billion bill that is going unpaid by a billionaire governor and the Illinois General Assembly. We need to be very clear that these are the people doing difficult things and trying to figure it out and we also need to put pressure on our state government to give them some relief.”
The board will vote on the budget on Aug. 28. State law requires the district to have a balanced budget by Aug. 29.
