Education
CPS Schools Facing School Staffing Cuts as District’s Budget Deficit Tops $730M
(WTTW News)
Chicago Public Schools is planning to cut staff positions at schools across the city this summer as it seeks to close a budget deficit that tops $730 million.
District officials acknowledged they’re facing a “challenging” budget cycle as they unveiled their initial school-level budgets to principals throughout Chicago on Tuesday.
“Despite these challenges, I believe that the school budgets largely protect resources and supports that have the most direct impact on our students’ daily learning experience,” CPS CEO Macquline King said during a press call Tuesday morning. “As in years past, we will prioritize the resources closest to students and work to find savings in areas of the budget that are more removed from students.”
According to CPS leaders, the district currently faces a budget deficit of $732.5 million, which they said is driven by a lack of state and federal funding, decreasing student enrollment and an increased need to provide for those students with the greatest needs.
This total accounts for an estimated Tax Increment Financing surplus from the city of $100 million — a fraction of what it received last year — and does not include the cost of reimbursing the city for a municipal pension payment.
Funding from Springfield has regularly been an issue for CPS, which says it is only getting 73% of what is considered “adequate” under the state’s evidence-based funding formula.
The Chicago Teachers Union has been highly critical of Gov. JB Pritzker and state leadership, whom they say do not prioritize school funding. CTU Vice President Jackson Potter this week said that if Springfield politicians complied with the funding formula, CPS wouldn’t be facing any deficit and would instead have a billion-dollar surplus.
“Instead of students seeing themselves prioritized, they are reading headlines about how they will lose beloved staff at their schools,” he said in a statement, “while owners of car factories, stadiums, and sports teams will gain billions in tax giveaways in the name of mega projects that rewrite our tax code in the wrong direction.”
Pritzker has previously said the state should work to find more money for schools, but there is not currently more money available to direct toward CPS.
Potter and CTU officials have repeatedly called on state leaders to make “the ultra-rich and large corporations pay their fair share.”
CPS officials said the district will be adjusting its school-based staff allocation formulas for core teachers, intervention teachers and lead coaches to account for declining enrollment, while continuing to prioritize support for high-need schools.
The district didn’t provide specific numbers on its expected number of staffing cuts but said it will cap the number of teacher losses at four for elementary schools and at six for high schools. Class size limits will not change, district officials said.
CPS will also be reducing funding for assistant principals in its smallest schools and is planning to make significant reductions to its citywide expenditures and staffing at its central and network offices.
According to King, CPS added nearly 10,000 staff positions since 2019. Most of those positions were school-based or worked directly in schools, King said. Over that same time, enrollment has dropped by 45,000 students as the district’s budget grew by $2.6 billion.
After federal COVID relief funding expired, King said it became far more difficult to maintain that same level of staffing.
And despite the drop in enrollment, CPS said it faces a higher financial burden to maintain services and supports for its highest need students, including students with disabilities and multi-language learners.
That means opening more cluster classrooms and hiring more special education teachers and classroom assistants, as well as physical and occupational therapists and speech and language pathologists
“These budgets reflect the reality, our financial reality, and our full responsibilities to our highest need learners,” King said.
King reiterated that Tuesday’s budget proposals mark only the beginning of the district’s budgeting process. Finalized school budgets are due back to CPS by June 9, and the district will be presenting its annual budget later this summer.
The Chicago Board of Education then has until Aug. 29 to finalize that district-wide budget.
WTTW News education reporting is supported, in part, by Press Forward Chicago.
