Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn
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Edgardo Ramirez, the father of two students at Chicago’s Saucedo STEAM Magnet Academy, is bracing for the release of the school’s budget in the shadow of a massive districtwide budget gap.
The school, which has largely bucked the enrollment declines plaguing the district, serves about 920 mostly low-income Latino students in the Little Village neighborhood. After years of relative budget and staffing stability, Ramirez, the head of Saucedo’s Local School Council, worries the campus could take a painful hit.
He dwells on what the school might lose: One of the two bilingual coordinators who have guided his English learner children? Or one of the two counselors who helped his older daughter earn a seat at the competitive Jones College Prep High School?
Chicago Public Schools is gearing up to unveil school budgets as early as next week amid deep financial uncertainty. After roughly a decade of largely holding the line or even boosting school budgets with now-expired federal COVID aid, the district could be forced to send less directly to its roughly 500 campuses.
In recent weeks, CEO Macquline King has floated a worst case budget deficit of up to $1 billion. A source with knowledge of the situation told Chalkbeat the district is planning with a gap of about $700 million in mind. Unlike the worst case scenario, that number assumes an influx of some revenue from a special city taxing program meant to spur development — and no CPS contribution to a city pension fund that covers CPS support staff and city employees. Even so, school level cuts, that source said, are “inevitable.”
CPS and teachers union leaders are still lobbying state lawmakers for more funding, noting the district remains about $1.6 billion shy of what Illinois considers “adequate” funding and, unlike other Illinois districts, shoulders the bulk of its teacher pension costs. But extra help might not be on the way from Springfield. There, some lawmakers have questioned thousands of new hires CPS made as enrollment continued to dip in recent years — positions district leaders have argued helped propel academic recovery post-COVID and fill longstanding staffing gaps.
“It’s a really anxious time,” said Kia Banks, the head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. “We are bracing ourselves this time for impact that might hit closer to the classroom.”
The moment is putting to the test a school budgeting approach the district introduced a couple of years ago while it was still relatively flush with federal pandemic relief. It was meant to deemphasize student counts and help higher-need schools by guaranteeing minimum staffing numbers regardless of school size and allocating additional dollars based on an Opportunity Index that factors in student demographics and other metrics.
But in a district with both enormous schools and a growing number of tiny campuses, CPS is now forced to figure out how to make its need-based formula work in much leaner times. CPS high schools with 500 students or more — many of them in better-to-do communities though often serving diverse students from multiple ZIP codes — now get well less than half of the almost $35,000 per pupil that smaller high schools receive on average.
It’s a gap that has widened markedly since the new formula’s 2023 introduction, a Chalkbeat analysis showed. And with numerous small schools that already get the minimum staffing CPS set, some at larger schools such as Saucedo worry their campuses might absorb more of the pain.
CPS presents a districtwide budget after the school budget release, likely sometime in June, that its school board must approve. In a statement, the district said it has worked closely with city and state leaders to get a clearer picture of the CPS’ financial outlook.
“As we have in recent prior years, we will look to prioritize students and in-classroom learning experiences,” the district said.
School budget cuts loom in CPS
The district had aimed to get budget amounts to school leaders earlier this spring, and to some principals, the release in mid-May is cutting it too close to the end of the school year in early June.
“The anxiety doubles when you have to wait so long, especially when the school year ends so early,” said one elementary principal, who like other school leaders who spoke with Chalkbeat requested anonymity to discuss budgets candidly.
The delay stung in part because earlier this spring, CPS moved up the deadline for most end-of-year school spending by almost a month. That forced some school leaders to scramble to dedicate remaining dollars — or return them to the district. Principals at the time told Chalkbeat the district appeared bent on sweeping back more unspent school dollars to help with its budget woes. The district has since said that it’s on track to end this school year about $45 million in the red.
The district said the earlier deadline, which also applied to central office and departments, gave CPS more fiscal clarity and helped encourage school leaders to focus any remaining spending on “critical needs.” The message to schools and departments: “Every dollar counts.”
Banks said the earlier deadline was challenging, but at the same time, the district under King has collaborated with the union and sought more input on budgets than ever before.
Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund said additional cuts to central office and districtwide departments will be harder following the reductions of about $270 million that CPS made last summer. Even if the district cuts central costs aggressively, that still leaves more than $200 million in cuts that likely need to come from school budgets, he said.
He said some school-based positions the district created with COVID aid to power its post-pandemic academic recovery, such as interventionists and academic coaches, might be especially vulnerable.
Financial pressures test the district’s budget approach
At Saucedo, Ramirez, the LSC chair, says he is grateful that the school gets two counselors, two bilingual coordinators, and two security guards. But in a school with more than 900 students and high needs, these key staff members are already stretched thin. Still, he worries that as a larger school with more than one of each position, Saucedo could be a budget cut target.
“One of my big worries is that we could lose positions, which would affect the quality of education here,” he said.
He is also concerned the campus might have to cut its free after-school programs, including academic ones focused on reading and math recovery.
Over the years, school leaders have noted that large schools with opportunity indexes that suggest lower needs face special budget pressures: In a large school, low-income students might represent a smaller portion of all students but still be a sizable group. Under the formula, these schools tend to get relatively lean administrative and support staffing.
Now, some principals at larger schools, especially selective enrollment and magnet campuses, worry the cuts might affect them disproportionately.
“All of us are bracing for cuts,” said another elementary principal. “How could there not be? The money has to come from somewhere. Robbing Paul to pay Peter is what it feels like at this point.”
Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund noted that about a fifth of elementary schools are at the district’s minimal staffing floor, meaning there’s little or no room in their budgets for cuts.
“The district is almost certainly committed to retaining the foundational level of support for small schools,” he said. “Thus, if savings have to be made, they have to come from larger schools.”
Banks, of the district’s principals union, countered that small schools have their own struggles with lean staffing, and they usually can’t count on parent fundraising in the way larger schools in wealthier communities can.
The needs-based district budgeting approach was designed to buoy schools that have lost enrollment in part because they were underfunded in previous years.
At Manierre Elementary on Chicago’s North Side, Mykela Collins, a Local School Council member and mother of a third grader, said smaller schools don’t feel immune amid the budget uncertainty. The school serves about 260 mostly low-income Black students, a number that has remained stable in recent years. Collins worries about cuts to after-school programs and possible layoffs after years with no staff losses.
“It’s scary,” said Collins, who traveled to Springfield earlier this spring to lobby for more school funding with the advocacy group Kids First Chicago. “We really don’t know what to expect.”
Charter school officials are feeling the anxiety too, said Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. The state is poised to increase its calculation for the per-pupil funding charters receive, based on CPS per student spending in district-run schools two years ago. But the district withholds money from charters to help cover pension and debt costs — contributions charter advocates have decried but that the district says are a part of sharing districtwide expenses.
“If these contributions are increased, it could be a net loss for charters,” Broy said.
Hal Woods of Kids First said an added wrinkle to the budget complexity is that all seats on the school board are up for grabs in November, and many current board members will run. He wonders if that might make them more averse to signing off on school budget cuts and perhaps even push them to revisit high-interest borrowing — an idea a majority on the board rejected last summer because it would swell the district’s already massive debt burden and drive up costs in the longer run.
“I wonder whether with CPS classroom cuts on the table, people start having a different take on borrowing,” Woods said. “But you have to give people the full picture. If you take out a loan to stave off classroom cuts, what does that mean for future fiscal years?”
Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed to this report.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
