Chalkbeat

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s 2025 budget plan continues to boost early childhood education in Illinois

2024-02-21T20:19:32+00:00

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is pushing for another boost in early childhood funding that would keep the state on track to have universal preschool for 3- and 4- year-olds by 2027.

In his sixth budget address to state lawmakers, Pritzker laid out his $52.7 billion spending plan, which includes increasing funding for early childhood education by $150 million. The move would fuel the second year of his Smart Start Illinois initiative, which seeks to expand preschool across Illinois.

The investment in public preschool programs has already helped families like Heather Andrade, a Rochester parent whose child, Natalia, had speech delays, the governor said Wednesday. Pritzker noted that Natalia was able to get into a full-day preschool program with early intervention services, including speech therapy. Smart Start funding, he said, helped the program expand to full-day.

“Since Natalia’s first day in the program, her progress has been nothing short of remarkable. She can spell and write her name,” said Pritzker. “Natalia is on track to thrive when she enters kindergarten and her path ahead couldn’t be brighter.”

Pritzker’s proposals include $75 million for the state board’s early childhood education block grant to add 5,000 more seats for preschool students. Under the state Department of Human Services, Pritzker recommended an additional $5 million to home visiting programs and $36.5 million more for the child care assistance program that helps low-income families access child care services.

Pritzker has been a proponent of early childhood education before becoming governor. When he entered office in 2019, he promised to create universal preschool within four years. However, his plans were thrown off track by the coronavirus pandemic. After he was re-elected in 2022 for a second term in office, Pritzker moved to get universal preschool back on track with his Smart Start Illinois Initiative.

Smart Start Illinois, which is currently entering its second year, seeks to provide public preschool to 20,000 more 3- and 4-year olds throughout the state. The state allocated $250 million for early childhood education for the first year of the program and added 5,800 more preschool seats for Illinois children.

Pritzker announced in October that he wants to house early childhood education and child care programs under one department. He asked the state’s general assembly on Wednesday to provide $13 million for the creation of the department, which would bring together programs from the state Department of Human Services, the state Department of Child and Family services, and the State Board of Education.

K-12 education sees smaller increase this year

Pritzker also asked the general assembly to increase the state’s K-12 education budget by $450 million to a total of $10.8 billion for the Illinois State Board of Education.

Pritzker plans to increase funding for K-12 schools by $350 million, which will be distributed through the evidence-based funding formula — continuing the state’s bipartisan promise to increase funding by at least that much annually.

Illinois education advocates have been pushing for a $550 million increase to the evidence-based funding formula. Advocates argue a larger increase is needed in order to “adequately fund” schools by 2027, a date set by the state’s general assembly in 2017 when the funding formula passed.

Pritzker’s proposal also included an additional $45 million for the second year of the Teacher Vacancy Grant Pilot Programs.

The K-12 education budget proposal is less than the State Board of Education requested earlier this year. At its monthly meeting in January, the state board proposed a $653 million increase, for an overall budget of $11 billion, to the state’s education budget for fiscal year 2025. The request from State Superintendent Tony Sanders included a $350 million increase to public schools through the state’s evidence-based funding formula.

Across the state, school districts will likely be hit hard by a funding cliff as federal COVID relief funding dries up at the end of September. The state received over $7 billion in funding to help schools deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Many schools spent money on facilities, salary, and benefits for school employees.

More scholarship funds to help students go to college

Pritzker’s proposal also includes more funding for the Illinois Student Assistance Commission’s Monetary Award Grant — a program to help support students from low-income families to attend college — by $10 million for a total of $711 million.

Pritzker also asked for an additional $8 million for the commission’s Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship, which provides scholarships to students of color and bilingual students who want to pursue a career in education.

State lawmakers will negotiate the budget until May, when the session is expected to end. Once approved, the new budget goes into effect on July 1.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s pre-K expansion fueled by federal COVID recovery money

2024-01-29T23:23:50+00:00

Public preschool has been a lifeline for Kristen Larson.

Larson and her husband couldn’t afford private day care for both their daughters, who are 4 and 1. So last fall, when Larson was able to get a preschool seat just four blocks from their Bridgeport home for her 4-year-old, she was relieved.

Without that, she said, “I probably would have had to quit my job.”

Thousands of Chicago parents like Larson depend on the district’s free public preschool program, which has been expanding over the past five years. This year, the district has 16,062 full-day seats for 4-year-olds and another 7,300 half-day seats for both 3- and 4-year-olds, a spokesperson said. That expansion was possible in part because of tens of millions of dollars in temporary federal COVID relief money, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request.

But the federal relief funds will run out next school year, raising a critical question: How will the district continue funding universal preschool?

Since July 1, 2020, Chicago Public Schools had spent close to $700 million on pre-K programs through the end of last school year, including new summer initiatives and programs for children under the age of 3, according to district budget records. It has budgeted another $262.7 million for this fiscal year, which covers the current school year. Of all of that funding, COVID relief dollars have so far covered about 14% of those costs, or $137 million, most of which went toward employee salaries, according to expense data obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request.

Chicago is slated to receive a total $2.8 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, dollars which districts could use broadly to help students and schools recover from the pandemic, and had spent $2.4 billion as of mid-November. The district has used the bulk of the money to fund existing costs, such as employee salaries. It has also launched new programs, such as TutorCorps, expanded summer school, and purchased new technology.

CPS officials said it used federal dollars to help expand pre-K — and sustain it — because it didn’t have enough state funding to do so, and creating more seats was a district priority.

Studies have found that kids who attended preschool are more likely to have higher test scores, were less likely to be disciplined, have better employment outcomes, and are less likely to be involved with crime.

CPS has steadily reduced its reliance on COVID relief dollars for pre-K over the past four years, increasing spending of district dollars on early childhood programs by $6 million this year, officials said. And observers are expecting the state to increase funding for early childhood education. Last week the Illinois State Board of Education proposed a budget that would increase the state’s Early Childhood Block Grant – which helps cover the district’s pre-K program – by $75 million.

But as federal funds dry up, the district is grappling with how to avoid cuts while also plugging a projected $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1. That includes figuring out how to cover the cost of pre-K with local or more state dollars.

Asked if the district is considering cutting pre-K seats or laying off teachers in order to save money, district officials said they were not ready to comment on that. But neither is their first choice; the district is pushing the state for more money.

“Chicago Public Schools is committed to ensuring that every 4-year-old in Chicago has the opportunity to attend free preschool to develop valuable academic and social-emotional skills and experiences,” said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for the district, in a statement.

Preschool expansion plan predates pandemic

In 2018, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to open a pre-K seat for every 4-year-old in Chicago before announcing he would not seek a third term. It would mean big shifts for the city’s preschool system, which included a mix of half- and full-day programs at public schools and in community-based programs that served 3- and 4-year-olds.

Emanuel’s promise was picked up by his successor, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who set a goal to make pre-K for 4-year-olds universal by this year.

Since 2019, CPS has added 1,950 new preschool spots, district officials said.

But even as the district has expanded pre-K, enrollment has been fluctuating amid the COVID pandemic and as Chicago continues to see birth rates decline.

Enrollment initially grew – from 12,900 4-year-olds in the 2018-19 school year to 14,300 the fall before the pandemic – and then plummeted by 34%, to about 9,500 students in the 2020-21 school year.

This school year, just over 13,000 4-year-olds were in pre-K at CPS schools.

The district has reached universal demand in nearly all Chicago communities, said Leslie McKinily, the district’s chief of early childhood education.

As of September, when the district officially counted enrollment, 75% of all pre-K seats were filled, according to the district. That has grown to 81% as of last week, McKinily said. The district’s goal is 85% because officials want to have spots available for new families throughout the year, McKinily said.

CPS does not have plans to open more pre-K spots, but McKinily’s team is looking to see where they need to “right-size.” For example, she said, the city has not met the demand for pre-K seats in the North Side neighborhood of West Ridge. But there are other parts of the city where pre-K seats are going unfilled.

“We’re really thinking about right now, do we have our programs in the right spaces? And how do we ensure that the programming meets the needs of the community?” McKinily said.

Chicago shrinks reliance on federal COVID dollars for pre-K

Over the past four years, pre-K instruction accounted for the third largest use of the district’s COVID relief dollars, behind reducing class sizes for grades K-3 and spending on administrative costs related to federal relief funding, according to the data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Nearly all of the spending of COVID relief dollars on pre-K – about $130 million – went towards employee salaries, pensions, and benefits, according to the data. When looking at all expenses related to pre-K, including separate line items for pre-K students with disabilities, the district spent a total $137 million in the relief funds.

Pre-K programs in Chicago are mostly funded through state dollars as part of Illinois’ Early Childhood Block Grant. The program is also funded by some local taxpayer dollars and other federal money unrelated to COVID relief funding.

District officials said a portion of the federal COVID recovery money went toward early childhood programs outside of the regular school day, including a new summer program called Preview to Pre-K.

A spokesperson provided an additional breakdown of budget figures to show how much was being spent directly on daily preschool instruction during the school year. It showed the district spent nearly $590 million from the fall of 2020 through the 2022-23 school year and about 13% came from ESSER dollars, according to CPS. In that time period, state funding grew by just $3 million.

The data show the district has cut down on its use of ESSER funding in that time period while boosting local dollars.

Theresa Hawley, executive director of the Center for Early Learning Funding Equity at Northern Illinois University who previously worked on early childhood education initiatives in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration, said Chicago officials assumed “with decent enough reason” before the pandemic that the state would pump more money into the block grant and allow them to continue opening more pre-K seats.

Pritzker is a longtime champion of early childhood education and has promised to make universal preschool more accessible across Illinois.

But in 2020, the pandemic put “a wrench in that plan” when Pritzker decided not to increase block grant funding, Hawley said. Illinois, as well as state governments across the country, worried about how the public health crisis would impact local resources as the economy slowed down.

When the federal government sent billions of COVID relief dollars to school districts, CPS decided to spend a chunk of its share to expand pre-K in absence of more state dollars, district officials said. Officials continued to invest in expansion efforts even after enrollment dropped in 2020.

“We did monitor and adjust our enrollment expansion throughout the pandemic,” McKinily said.

Still, district officials said that pre-K expansion was one of several priorities that “couldn’t wait.” The federal dollars have also helped CPS pay for existing pre-K costs, staving off budget deficits.

As the district used federal funds on pre-K in recent years, one Logan Square mother enrolled both of her sons in preschool at their neighborhood school. The program saved the family from shelling out tens of thousands of dollars in day care costs, said the mother, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding because of concerns over immigration status.

She’s currently seeing pre-K’s impact on her younger son, who is 4. For example, he used to try to snatch toys from his older brother because he couldn’t wait to play with them. But after learning how to take turns in pre-K, her son now says to his brother, “When you’re done, can I play with it?”

The mother was surprised to learn that the district used emergency funding toward pre-K. But she thinks it was the right decision.

“They have to allocate money to keep the program going,” she said, saying she is concerned about what will happen if the district can’t find extra money.

“Day care is very expensive in Chicago, and I see how important it is to have early childhood education,” she said. “And if it’s only available to people who can afford to send your child to fee-based preschool, then it’s not equitable to children.”

What lies ahead for pre-K?

Fiscal watchdogs have warned districts against using temporary federal dollars for a program they want to keep permanently, such as pre-K. Doing so can result in painful cuts that can affect children and families, so such spending decisions should come alongside lots of planning for the future, said Joe Ferguson, Chicago’s former inspector general who is now the executive director of Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.

“Obviously, no one’s going to say pre-K education [or] early childhood support is not an important priority,” Ferguson said. “But if it’s an important priority, then the work should have been done already – certainly needs to be done now – to identify where the revenue stream is going to come [from] to maintain it.”

Chicago isn’t alone. In New York City, former Mayor Bill de Blasio used COVID relief funds to expand his signature universal pre-K program for 3-year-olds without a plan for how to pay for those seats once the federal funds ran out. His successor, Mayor Eric Adams, halted the program’s expansion and recently proposed slashing $170 million in early childhood programming, which includes preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has signaled an opposite approach, saying on the campaign trail that he wanted “child care for all” and would lobby Pritzker to increase early childhood education funding.

Last year, Pritzker proposed a four-year plan that aims to expand early childhood.

The state increased the Early Childhood Block Grant this year by $75 million, of which nearly $28 million went straight to Chicago Public Schools, as required by state law. Pritzker has not yet proposed a budget for next fiscal year, but the Illinois State Board of Education is proposing another $75 million increase.

District officials have said that more state funding for K-12 would also help. CPS, like other districts, is on a ramp toward “adequate” state funding and is $1.4 billion short of that goal, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

Elliot Regenstein, partner at law firm Foresight Law and Policy and an advocate for early childhood education who helped launch the state’s Preschool for All program under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said maintaining pre-K funding in the future depends on leadership.

“To some degree, all of those sustainability plans are just a hope and a guess that when the one-time funding runs out, that whoever is in charge at that moment will make decisions that carry on the momentum of those one-time funds,” Regenstein said.

He said Chicago’s decision to invest in pre-K, even with temporary dollars, is backed by research that shows it’s beneficial for children.

“The pandemic has had an impact on all children,” Regenstein said. “I think it’s great that CPS looked at its data and said ….we can’t ignore the kids who haven’t even entered kindergarten yet and we believe that if we invest in those kids it will help set them on a positive trajectory.”

Larson, the mother from Bridgeport, agreed. She said much of her daughter’s first years were during the pandemic and in social isolation. Pre-K has helped her make new friends, on top of learning about letters and numbers.

“Sometimes you need to be investing in a program to make it a program that you want people to send their children to,” she said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois Board of Education asks for an additional $653 million for state education budget next year

2024-01-25T01:22:42+00:00

The Illinois State Board of Education is proposing a $653 million increase to the state’s education budget, bringing the overall budget for next school year to $11 billion. The proposal — less than what advocates pushed for during hearings in the fall — is ultimately voted on by state lawmakers.

The state board unanimously approved the budget proposal — Tony Sanders’ first as state superintendent — at its board meeting on Wednesday.

Sanders’ recommendation includes an increase of $350 million for the state’s evidence-based funding formula for K-12 public schools, which distributes state money to under-resourced schools that serve a majority of students from low-income households, English learners, and students with disabilities. His proposal also asks for an additional $75 million increase for the state’s early childhood block grant.

Illinois’ portion of federal pandemic funding, over $7 billion, is set to run out by the end of September 2024. Schools could see a cut in staff and programs, especially since it is unlikely that state dollars will make up the difference. State budget officials told the state board of education that they are seeing a drop in state revenue.

State education advocates have pushed the state to increase the evidence-based funding formula by $550 million annually to help the state fully fund schools by 2027. The state has approved an additional $350 million each year except for 2020, during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic — keeping in line with a bipartisan promise made by lawmakers in 2017.

Gerson Ramirez, senior government relations associate for Advance Illinois, a nonprofit organization that advocates for education, told the board Wednesday that the evidence-based funding formula has done a good job at directing more funds to school districts with high needs. However, he estimates that more than 1.5 million students in underfunded school districts are from low-income households and are students of color.

“We, and many others, believe we should put an additional $550 million into the formula to make up for the skip budget year, to address inflation, and to meet ongoing needs,” said Ramirez.

Other advocates asked for more funding to support students experiencing homelessness throughout the state. The federal government set aside $800 million in COVID relief funding for students experiencing homelessness. Illinois received $33 million to help families pay for clothing, temporary housing, and transportation, among other assistance.

Niya K. Kelly, director of state legislative policy, equity, and transformation at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, asked the state to increase funding for students experiencing homelessness. At a time when federal funds are set to expire and there isn’t a clear number on how many students are actually homeless, Kelly said, state funding is needed more than ever.

“It is imperative that the state step in. I know, oftentimes, people say that if we’ve made do with funding levels that we have then we should continue on that path,” said Kelly. “For homeless families and for the folks who are supporting them, it’s not enough at this moment.”

According to the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness has grown 12% nationwide since 2022. However, Kelly said HUD’s reported numbers might only be a fraction of what the actual numbers are.

Kelly also said she believes there could be an undercounting of students in Illinois. In the state’s report card, Illinois has identified over 42,000 students as experiencing homelessness during the 2022-23 school year.

State budget and financial officials signaled at the state board’s monthly meeting in December that Illinois’ education budget could see some belt-tightening in the future. The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget predicted that the state board could expect to receive an additional $425 million in state dollars for the next fiscal year.

The approved budget proposal will head to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office for consideration. Pritzker is set to announce his proposed budget to state lawmakers on Feb. 21.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois’ education budget might be tighter over the next several years, say officials

2023-12-14T00:23:17+00:00

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The budget for public schools in Illinois might see some belt-tightening, officials signaled at the Illinois State Board of Education’s meeting Wednesday.

That’s because local revenue projections are modest and federal COVID relief dollars are set to run out, state finance and budget officials told board members.

The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget has predicted the Illinois State Board of Education can expect to receive an additional $425 million in revenue next year.

With $350 million of that funding going toward the evidence-based funding formula, “that leaves very little meat on the bone left to appropriate to other areas,” said Matt Seaton, the state board’s chief financial officer. “As we think about our budget for the next several years, I think we’re going to be thinking in terms of a conservative budget.”

The state board will likely have less funding for items such as transportation, private school tuition for students with disabilities, and Illinois’ free breakfast and lunch program.

Officials said it is possible that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker or the state legislature could allocate more than the board asks for, as happened this past year. The board asked for $510 million for fiscal year 2024, but received $601 million from the state.

The State Board of Education is expected to vote on a budget recommendation to send to the governor during its Jan. 24, 2024 meeting.

Many school districts will face a new financial reality during fiscal year 2025, which begins July 1, 2024 and ends June 30, 2025. Since the start of the pandemic, school districts across the district were flush with federal COVID-19 relief funds to help schools recover. Illinois received over $7 billion in funding. The largest pot of money that came under the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan is set to expire Sept. 30, 2024.

A data dashboard from the state board says districts have spent 74.5% of their emergency federal dollars as of Dec. 7, 2023. A majority of funding went to after-school programs to help students recover learning loss, tutoring, transportation, and existing staff. Out of the $7 billion, the state board kept $440 million for statewide recovery efforts including the Illinois Tutoring Initiative and professional development for educators. According to the dashboard, the state has only spent 66.5% of the money so far.

Illinois school districts are already bracing themselves for budget cuts. Chicago Public Schools, the state’s largest district, says it is expecting a $391 million budget shortfall next year.

The budget outlook isn’t an encouraging sign for education advocates, educators, and families who want to see more money going to schools. Those who testified at the state board’s budget hearings in October want to see an increase in funding in early childhood education, K-12 public schools, and social-emotional learning hubs among other issues, according to state officials on Wednesday.

Pritzker kept the education budget flat during the first year of the pandemic. Afterwards, Pritzker approved an increase of $350 million toward the evidence-based funding formula to support K-12 public schools — keeping the bipartisan promise made in 2017 when the formula was created. However, advocates have been pushing the state to increase funding by $550 million a year to fully fund schools by 2027.

Pritzker is pushing to expand early childhood education across the state during his second term. Most recently, he announced an effort to create a new agency that would bring together several departments that currently provide services for families with young children. Last year, he increased early childhood spending by $250 million, including a $75 million increase toward that state board’s early childhood block grant. Advocates hope the state will again increase funding by $75 million in next year’s budget.

In previous years, Pritzker has given his State of the State address and budget proposal in February before Illinois lawmakers go into the spring legislative session to negotiate what the final budget will be. It must be approved before the start of the next fiscal year on July 1.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools could see a $391M budget deficit next school year, official says

2023-10-25T21:59:31+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is expecting a $391 million budget shortfall next year as federal COVID relief money runs out, officials said Wednesday.

The district has received $2.8 billion in COVID relief since the onset of the pandemic. The last $300 million of that will be spent in 2025, according to Mike Sitkowski, chief budget officer for CPS, who shared the figures during a Board of Education meeting. The current budget is $9.4 billion. Next year’s budget starts July 1, 2024 and will cover the 2024-25 school year.

By law, the school district must balance its budget, Sitkowski noted. That means district officials will either have to cut expenses or find a way to boost revenue. Board President Jianan Shi called for the latter.

“Our district needs more revenue, and this is a moment for all of us at every level to stand up and advocate for our teachers, our students, our families, for this board to advocate for more revenue at the state, local, and federal levels,” Shi said after the presentation.

The financial update comes as the City Council holds budget hearings for the city’s next budget, which is due by the end of the year but is typically finalized by Thanksgiving. The district’s budget operates on a different timeline, more closely matching the school year. The district will also hold budget community roundtables for the public throughout November. (Dates can be found here.)

Districts across the nation have been bracing for financial challenges as their pandemic relief dollars run out. Chicago officials have directed their relief dollars toward employee salaries, hiring more instructional staff and creating several new programs. About $670 million of federal relief was included in this year’s budget — representing about 7% of the current budget set to end June 30, 2024.

Asked on previous occasions about what CPS will do once the federal money runs out, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said district officials plan to ask the state for more support.

The $391 million deficit is the result of complicated collection of revenues and costs the district is projecting for next year: First, the district will have a $670 million hole in next year’s budget due to the loss of federal pandemic aid, according to Sitkowski’s presentation. That gap will be partially filled by the last bit of federal relief — about $300 million. However, the district is also expecting $123 million more in expenses it says it can’t control, including for teacher pension costs, debt service, health care costs, and inflation, Sitkowski said.

Those costs will be partially offset by rising revenues of $102 million, which include $23 million more from the state, as well as some rising tax collections, and more state support for pensions, according to Sitkowski.

The projections shared on Wednesday seem to outpace what a previous analysis warned of. A report issued under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned of a potential $628 million deficit by 2026 and predicted a neutral outlook for 2025. The report also noted that as the city has shifted more costs onto the district, it could shoulder more expenses as the board goes from mayoral control to an elected body.

District officials have been ratcheting up pressure for more money from state officials. This school year, CPS is projected to see a $23 million increase in state funding, for a total of about $1.77 billion this school year.

But on Wednesday, Sitkowski said that if the state fully funded districts under the Evidence-Based Funding Formula, CPS would have an additional $1.1 billion in funding.

Last month, the board highlighted the need for $3.1 billion to address critical repairs at school facilities over the next five years.

Sitkowski said direct funding at the school level has also increased by $1 billion since fiscal year 2019, even as enrollment dipped. More than 2,300 teachers were hired in that time, including classroom teachers, interventionists, and educators for the arts and physical education, he noted.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s first city budget plan includes $76 million for youth jobs

2023-10-11T18:15:18+00:00

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson put forward a $16.6 billion city budget proposal for 2024 that includes $76 million for youth jobs, the reopening of two public mental health clinics, and a push for a one-time tax on expensive homes to fund affordable housing.

The spending plan Johnson shared Wednesday is his first since taking office in May. The former organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union dashed former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s hope of a second term in February and defeated former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in an April runoff.

Johnson, a former middle school teacher, got elected on a progressive platform embraced by the CTU and other community activists over the past decade that aimed to improve education by tackling issues beyond the classroom, such as affordable housing, environmental justice, and alternatives to policing.

The budget blueprint provides the first glimpse at how he might deliver on those promises. In a speech inside City Hall, he emphasized that the 2024 spending proposal is meant to uplift families like those he served as a teacher in Cabrini Green and as an organizer fighting the closure of public schools and mental health clinics.

“As we begin this work, I’m thinking about my family — especially my father. He was a pastor and a union laborer, raising 10 children and taking in foster children, working multiple jobs to keep us fed and sheltered,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s city budget proposal does not undo a cost shift implemented by Lightfoot in 2020 to have CPS pay for crossing guards and the pensions of non-teaching staff — two things long paid for by the city. The move angered the CTU at the time. The district’s portion of that pension payment grew to $170 million in 2022. The school district’s most recent budget did not list an amount.

Though the city’s budget is separate from the school district’s budget, it’s possible that the school district could take on additional costs traditionally included in the city’s budget in future years as the school board moves to being elected, rather than appointed by the mayor.

The proposed $78 million for youth jobs is an $11 million increase from last year. The additional money comes after the Johnson administration worked to boost the city’s longstanding summer jobs program, One Summer Chicago. It also comes as Chicago grapples with how to re-engage an estimated 45,000 youth who are neither in school nor working.

“We know that unemployment among young Chicagoans, in particular young Black women, rose during the pandemic and is lagging behind in the pandemic rebound,” Johnson said.

Ald. Maria Hadden, who represents Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood along the north lakefront, said she was happy to see the expansion in youth employment.

“It’s a number one thing, year after year,” Hadden said. “Our high school age youth and those who are just out of high school are looking for entry to careers, they’re looking for employment, they’re looking for activities, and things to do.”

Hadden noted that many young people are working to help contribute to their household income.

The Chicago Teachers Union issued a statement applauding Johnson’s 2024 budget proposal and said it “starkly contrasts with other mayors who have utilized austerity and privatization to shape policy, limit democracy and balance budgets at the expense of our city’s most vulnerable residents.”

One win for Johnson’s progressive base in his first budget proposal is the plan to reopen two of the city’s public mental health clinics that were shuttered in 2012 by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The decision preceded Emanuel’s decision to close 50 public schools, but was met with similar outrage. Activists have been pushing to reopen the six facilities ever since.

The 2024 budget plan also re-establishes the city’s Department of Environment, which was closed early in Emanuel’s first term. On the campaign trail, Johnson talked about the need to create green school buildings and update schools so they’re accessible for people with physical disabilities according to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. But the city budget does not does not spell out specific funding for school construction and upgrades.

The $9.4 billion budget for CPS includes a pared-down $155 million capital budget for school repairs and construction. It doesn’t include a controversial plan to build a $120 million high school on the Near South Side.

But school district officials indicated over the summer that they would release a supplemental capital plan later this year. Late last month, CPS debuted a new Education Facilities Master Plan that said the district would need more than $3 billion in the next five years to address critical facility needs.

The mayor and City Council frequently allocate money from special taxing districts known as TIFs to help repair schools. The city will also declare a TIF surplus and return unallocated funds collected in those districts to the taxing bodies, including the school district. This year, CPS will get $226 million from the TIF surplus.

Johnson’s budget plan does not appear to include significant increases for child care, which Johnson argued for on the campaign trail. Advocates recently pushed for a dedicated revenue stream to help fund child care providers, which are regulated and supported by the city’s Department of Family and Support Services.

During the campaign, Johnson also promised to make bus and train rides on the Chicago Transit Authority free for students. (Like CPS, the CTA has a budget that’s separate from the city’s.) Amid a bus driver shortage and ongoing transportation troubles, the school district has offered CTA passes to roughly 5,500 students, mostly those attending magnet schools.

Only about 1,600 have taken advantage of the free transit passes, district officials said last month.

The City Council will hold budget hearings over the next month and is expected to vote on a final budget for 2024 before Thanksgiving. By law, it must approve a balanced budget by Dec. 31.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

With federal COVID money running out, advocates urge state education officials to boost 2025 budget

2023-10-06T01:22:00+00:00

The Illinois State Board of Education kicked off the process of crafting budget recommendations for the 2024-25 school year at the first of two virtual meetings Thursday night.

With the deadline to spend federal COVID relief money approaching, lobbyists, superintendents, school teachers, and advocates made the case for board members to ask Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the state legislature to beef up the education budget with at least a $550 million increase in what’s called “evidence-based funding” — a way of allocating additional state money that’s supposed to take into account student needs and lessen the disparity between districts that have affluent tax bases and those that don’t.

The state is supposed to increase evidence-based funding by $350 million each year with the goal of getting all school districts adequately funded by 2027. Lawmakers have done so every year since 2018, but the pandemic derailed one such increase in 2020. As a result, advocates argue that lawmakers need to boost that number to $550 million in order to meet the same funding level at a time of increasing costs for school districts and as federal pandemic relief dollars run out.

Chicago Public Schools already forecast a $628 million deficit by 2026, and district officials have called on the state to ramp up the amount of money it puts into K-12 education.

Vanessa Espinoza, a parent of three CPS students and a member of Kids First Chicago, a nonprofit advocacy group, argued that Illinois’ current education system shows deep disparities between affluent and low-income districts. But the quality of a public education “should not be determined by their zip code,” Espinoza said, advocating for the extra funding boost. “I have seen teachers struggling to make ends meet. You can make a profound difference in the lives of countless children and families across the state.”

The virtual meeting on Thursday evening was the second gathering this week, coming after ISBE held its first in-person meeting in Springfield. Christine Benson, chair of ISBE’s Finance and Audit Committee explained that testimony during the public hearings helps inform the budget recommendation it will make to the governor and state lawmakers in January 2024.

“We want to know what investments would make the biggest difference for the students and educators in each community,” said State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders in a statement last month. “Advocacy matters and truly makes a difference in how state funds are allocated.”

Advocates at the hearing also called for funding boosts to early child education, after school programs, career and technical education programs, and agricultural programs in K-12 schools. Last year, Pritzker added $75 million to early childhood education as part of a four-year plan called Smart Start Illinois to expand preschool and child care. Some who spoke Thursday supported the continued increases.

In May, state lawmakers passed a $50.6 billion state budget that allocated $10.3 billion to education. That included a $350 million increase to be distributed to K-12 school districts through evidence-based funding.

Chicago was expecting to get $27 million of that increase. But new calculations posted on the Illinois State Board of Education website show that the state is allocating $23.3 million of the increase to CPS. The drop in Chicago’s share of new state education money is partly due to a loss of low-income students and an increased property tax base.

Although state education funding has been increasing since 2017, many argue that Illinois still has a long way to go to make school funding more equitable.

Diana Zaleski, a lobbyist for the Illinois Education Association, lauded efforts so far to close the gap between the wealthiest and poorest districts in the state.

“We still have more work to do,” Zaleski said, as she urged board members to recommend a roughly $800 million increase per year in evidence-based funding to meet state goals of bringing all districts to a level of “adequacy” that would dispel an old image of Illinois ranking toward the bottom of public education funding.

Jill Griffin, superintendent of the Bethalto School District about an hour’s drive south of Springfield, said she remembers a time when the district was facing “catastrophic cuts” with only 28 days of cash on hand “in large part because of inadequate funding from our state.”

Since Illinois adopted the evidence-based formula in 2017, Bethalto is at 71% adequacy and “back on solid financial footing,” Griffin said. But with more money going to minimum wage increases for school staff, higher wages for teachers, and other state mandates, “this progress is inadequate.”

ISBE will hold another virtual public budget hearing on Oct. 30.

Michael Gerstein is a freelance writer based in Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools says $3.1 billion for ‘critical’ building repairs needed

2023-09-29T02:30:03+00:00

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years.

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction.

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan.

The district released the plan during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held in the auditorium of Austin Career and College Academy High School on the West Side and drew at least 200 observers. The changed location was the board’s attempt to address the longstanding criticism that the meetings, which are typically held during the day downtown, are inaccessible for many families and teachers who work during the day. (The last meeting held outside of district headquarters was in 2019, according to a district spokesperson.)

District officials said this summer that they had budgeted $155 million for facilities projects this fiscal year — roughly $600 million less than the previous year — and planned to ask for more capital funding this year.

Martinez used the plan to make another plea for more funding and “partnerships” from the city, state, and federal government. Martinez plans to press the state for more money as a way to address costs once COVID relief dollars run out in 2024.

“This plan will take coalitions and partnerships with our fellow officials at the city, state, and federal levels,” he wrote in his introduction to the plan. “It will take administrators, teachers, parents, students, and advocates pushing for the changes we need.”

Martinez said the facilities plan is a “critical” early part of its process to create a five-year strategic plan for CPS. That plan — which will build on Martinez’s three-year blueprint released last year to help the district recover from the pandemic — will be finalized next summer.

The district will also launch an advisory team that would make recommendations to Martinez on how to narrow academic disparities of Black students compared to their peers. Those recommendations would also inform a “Black Student Success Plan” and be part of the strategic plan, according to CPS.

Some advocates, however, immediately rejected that idea Thursday night. They had previously pressed officials to create a Board of Education committee that focused on Black student achievement.

“To have a strategic plan is not enough to say, ‘Oh, we hear you,’” said Valerie Leonard, a longtime West Side education advocate and the co-founder of Illinois African Americans For Equitable Redistricting. “I want to know that you see me; I want to know there is some action. At what point will Black children be prioritized?”

District officials are asking for community feedback as they develop the strategic plan. The public meetings to gather that input will be on:

6-7:30 p.m. October 17 at Kelvyn Park High School, 4343 W. Wrightwood Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. October 18 at Westinghouse College Prep, 3223 W. Franklin Blvd.
10 a.m. - noon October 21, virtual meeting
6 - 7 p.m. October 23, Little Village high school campus, 3120 S. Kostner Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. Julian High School, 10330 S. Elizabeth St.

Those wishing to attend should register here.

The facilities plan includes information like enrollment trends to highlight the district’s needs. District officials offered more analysis Thursday of enrollment this year.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment grows by nearly 1,200

Preliminary data on the 20th day of school — when district officials tally up students for the year — indicated that enrollment, at just over 322,500 students, is essentially flat compared to last year, Chalkbeat reported last week. On Thursday, officials revealed that 323,291 students were enrolled, or nearly 1,200 more students than last year.

It’s the first time since 2011 that the district’s enrollment has not dipped. Since that year, enrollment declines were driven by several factors, including population changes and dipping birth rates. Last year’s decline cost CPS’ title as the nation’s third largest school district.

The small enrollment bump was due to fewer students leaving and more new students, including a 7% increase in preschool students, officials said. Additionally, the number of students living in temporary housing increased by 47%, which could be one sign of an increase in migrant students who are living in shelters or other temporary circumstances.

The district does not track students’ immigration status. But another sign that the population of newly enrolled migrant students is growing is the increasing number of English language learners. About 7,800 more English learners enrolled this year than last year, officials said. CPS typically enrolls an average of 3,000 new English learners a year.

English language learners now make up nearly a quarter of the district’s students, up from 22% last year, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for first time in more than a decade

2023-09-20T02:26:40+00:00

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Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data.

CPS enrollment has been in decline for 12 years, so this year’s shift is significant.

In the past decade, the district’s student body shrunk by 20%, with the district seeing multiple year-over-year declines of roughly 10,000 students. The dramatic contraction began after the 2011-12 school year, which was the last year CPS saw a bump in enrollment, from 402,681 to 404,151 students. Last year, Chicago lost its standing as the nation’s third largest district.

Enrollment now appears to be leveling off in Chicago. In the past year, the city has welcomed thousands of migrant families from the southern border and in July, a top mayoral aide suggested that newcomers were boosting enrollment in schools.

A district spokesperson, however, said enrollment changes are due to multiple reasons and cautioned against attributing the shifts to “any one group of students.”

“We will offer more analysis and context to our enrollment figures later this month,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement. “We are honored and privileged to serve each and every student.”

It’s too early to tell if this is the start of a new trend, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

“If it’s just a one-time pause in the trends of declining enrollment, it might not have a big overall long-term effect, but it’s really just hard to say right now since we don’t know what will happen in the future,” Allensworth said.

Thinning enrollment was driven by factors such as dipping birth rates and other population changes. With the onset of the pandemic, districts across the country enrolled fewer students, with more than 33,000 students falling off Chicago’s rolls since the fall of 2020.

Shrinking schools have left CPS officials and mayors to contend with how to best fund classrooms, especially as student needs grew during the pandemic. Enrollment has long been a determining factor for how much state and federal money a district gets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of tying enrollment to funding, but past mayors have funded schools within CPS based on how many kids they serve.

Even with fewer students, the district’s budget has grown to $9.4 billion. That’s roughly flat compared to last year’s budget, but up from a decade ago when it hovered around $6 billion. A new state funding formula and a wave of pandemic recovery money have helped offset enrollment declines. Though state money is increasing, the district has recently seen fewer dollars than expected due to lower enrollment and increased property wealth.

According to preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat, there are 5,767 more students learning English as a new language this school year than last year. That’s a sizable jump: CPS has historically enrolled an average of 3,000 new English learners annually, a district spokesperson said.

CPS officials said they do not track immigration status of students. They have pointed to the growth in English language learners as one sign of newcomers, but emphasized that not all English language learners are newcomers.

The district enrolls migrant students in three ways. First, like any student, migrant children can enroll directly at schools. They can also make an appointment at the city’s new welcome center housed inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School on the West Side.

Finally, enrollment teams are going to families’ homes, after receiving information from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services about those in need of help who can’t make it to the welcome center, said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

Schools across the district have historically struggled to meet state regulations for providing proper support for English learners. When finding a school with the right program for English learners, officials try to stay within a two-mile radius of the child’s home, Asaf said.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides extra support for kids and families at a handful of Southwest Side schools as part of the district’s sustainable community schools initiative, said they’ve noticed an increase in migrant families among the parents they serve who don’t have stable housing.

Last year, the organization placed a case manager part-time at a high school in Back of the Yards that needed extra help with parents as they enrolled more migrant students, said Sara Reschly, deputy director of the group’s community services division.

At Brighton Park Elementary School, case manager Lupe Fernandez said newcomer families currently have very basic needs, such as undergarments and help navigating the CTA. The school is planning to create a free “closet” where families can pick up things they need for free.

“If there are schools that have those strong community partnerships, you know, like that would be a place to start because then you can wrap services around the whole family,” Reschly said.

Asaf, with the district, said they are processing more school transfers among newcomers as those families find new homes or more permanent housing.

Preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat show this school year, nearly a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students are learning English as a new language — a figure that trumps other large districts. For example, 14% of students in New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, were English learners last school year.

The preliminary data signals the continuation of another trend over the past decade: a decline in the share of students from low-income households. Preliminary data indicate that number is 67%, down from 73% last school year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Free meals for all Illinois students won’t be a reality this school year. Here’s why.

2023-08-31T23:34:00+00:00

McHenry School District 15, a northwest suburb of Chicago located 50 miles away, is feeling the financial strain of feeding students throughout the school day.

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the school was able to provide thousands of school meals to its 4,000 students thanks to federal waivers. This year, students who are not eligible for free or reduced lunch have to pay full price for meals — $1.60 for breakfast and $2.95 for lunch.

Kevin Harris, McHenry’s director of food services, said the district has kept the meal price the same since last year because the school board did not want to charge families more. According to the Illinois State Board of Education’s 2022 report card, 38% of students in the district are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The district is subsidizing the cost of meals without federal waivers or an increase in state funding.

In early August, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law creating the “Healthy School Meals for All Program” to help local school districts pay for the cost of school meals to all students. State lawmakers and school officials say getting the bill signed into law was a step in the right direction, but the state did not allocate any additional money to make the program a reality for districts like McHenry.

Harris, a supporter of the bill, had hoped the law would help his school district receive more state funding for school meals, so it could feed more students.

But, Harris said, “without funding, it’s a worthless law.”

For some students, school is the only place where they can access breakfast or lunch throughout the day. The Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit that advocates for solutions to hunger, has pushed for free meals in schools because studies show it improves students’ overall health and increases their academic performance in class and on standardized tests.

When COVID-19 closed school buildings around the country, the federal government gave waivers to school districts that allowed them to feed students at their homes, provide school meals to all students for free, and have flexibility on what was served to students. Illinois school districts saw a bump in their reimbursement from the State Board of Education at the time.

But the federal school meal waivers lapsed at the end of June 2022. Now families have to prove that they need subsidized school meals by filling out paperwork regarding their income.

Illinois is one of the latest states to move toward universal free meals for all students. Eight other states, including California, Colorado, Michigan, and Massachusetts, have increased funding and passed into law free meals for all students plans.

State Rep. Maurice West II, who represents Rockford and was lead sponsor of the “Healthy School Meals for All Program” bill, said it was important to take on the issue because it will reduce stigma for students who need assistance to afford school meals.

Under the new law, West said, school districts must first seek money from the federal government’s Community Eligibility Program, a federal program that helps schools that serve a majority of students from low-income households offer free meals to all enrolled students. Then Illinois will help school districts make up the difference after federal funding.

But West says when it came time to increase the budget to do just that, lawmakers didn’t add any money. In fact, the reimbursement funding level has been flat since the 2008 recession, he said.

With just $9 million going towards school meals, West said, “we need more for this to be school meals for all.”

Michael Jacoby, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials, said his organization estimates the Illinois program could cost the state around $200 million a year to fill in the gap after federal funding, when compared to other states that have a similar program. But without data from other states, he said, it is hard to estimate the exact cost.

The state will need to do a study to see how much it needs, Jacoby said.

Emily Warnecke, director of public policy at the Illinois Association of School Administrators, hopes the federal government will increase what they give to states.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering changing its rules for the Community Eligibility Program. Currently, school districts are eligible for the program if 40% of the student population can receive subsidized meals. Now, the federal government is looking to decrease that threshold to 25%.

If that happens, more federal money will come in for the program, ”which would lessen the amount of money that the state would need to fully fund the program,” Warnecke said “That’s kind of an outstanding variable.”

Warnecke expects the federal government to act on that change in April 2024.

When it comes to the state’s “Healthy Meals for All Program,’’ Illinois lawmakers could allocate money for fiscal year 2025 during next spring’s legislative session. If that happens, school districts would be able to offer free meals next school year.

As for this year, students at school districts like McHenry will have to fork over almost $5 for breakfast and lunch every day.

Correction: Sept. 1, 2023: A previous version of this story identified Michael Jacoby as the executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards. Jacoby is the executive director of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials.

Chicago’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago will get smaller share of state’s increased K-12 education budget for second year in a row

2023-08-09T19:28:21+00:00

Chicago Public Schools will once again get less state education money than officials anticipated, according to new data released by the state on Tuesday.

Although Chicago will still see an increase in state education funding, a drop in the percentage of students considered low-income and a bump in property wealth in the city means the district is not getting the largest share of the new money.

The largest share of the state’s new K-12 funding – $35 million – will go to Elgin U-46, Illinois’ second largest district. Plainfield School District 202, the state’s fifth largest district, will receive $13.1 million of the increase.

In all, Chicago will get $1.77 billion in K-12 funding, up from $1.75 billion last year. The amount doesn’t include millions it gets for things such as pre-K and transportation. The new state data indicates CPS is now getting more than $17,000 per student from the state and is considered 80% of the way to “adequately funded.”

A district spokesperson did not say how the change might impact the already-approved $9.4 billion budget. In a statement, they said the district is “eager to work with the General Assembly toward increased and targeted State funding that more equitably supports the students most in need in Chicago and across Illinois.”

Last year, Chicago Public Schools planned on getting $50 million in new state money, but instead received a little more than $27 million after losing 10,000 students and seeing an increase in property wealth.

Funding for public education has been steadily increasing in Illinois since 2017, when state lawmakers overhauled the formula used to distribute tax dollars to school districts. The goal was to add more money over time to bring all districts to a level of “adequacy” and shed Illinois’ reputation as a state that ranked near the bottom when it came to support for public education.

“When you consider how much progress Illinois has made in the last five years, it’s nothing short of remarkable,” said Robin Steans, president of Advance Illinois, a nonprofit advocacy and policy organization based in Chicago that focuses on public school education. “But that does not mean our work is done.”

Steans said the latest calculations make her hopeful that the state can fully fund schools in the next five years, but there is still a need to increase state funding for schools by at least $550 million a year to reach that goal.

Lawmakers have increased education funding every year since 2018, with the exception of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

State education officials calculate how much each school district gets based on a number of factors, including the needs of the students enrolled and a local district’s ability to fund schools using local resources such as property taxes. For example, districts that serve more students from low-income families or English language learners get more state money.

Chicago Public Schools is facing a looming deficit when federal COVID recovery money runs out next fall. District officials and school board members have said they hope for more state funding to fill the gap.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Calling all youth: Chicago’s Mayor Johnson wants your ideas for his first city budget

2023-07-14T19:22:46+00:00

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is looking to the next generation for help on his first city budget proposal.

The former middle school teacher and union organizer is holding a budget roundtable discussion exclusively for Chicagoans ages 13 to 24. The July 25 event on the ninth floor of Harold Washington Library is an addition to the usual round of July budget engagement meetings.

The city is offering a perk: Five young people who participate, who are at least 16 years old, will be randomly chosen to win two four-day Lollapalooza passes.

In a statement, Johnson said the roundtable “allows our young people the opportunity to chart their own path in fulfilling that vision for hope, and become stewards for their own futures and eventual leadership of our city.”

The invitation comes as Johnson is stepping up efforts to get young people more involved in government decision making. His transition team recently recommended the creation of a paid youth council — which would resemble an existing youth commission created by his predecessor Lori Lightfoot.

City officials are inviting youth to share ideas directly with the mayor on various elements of the city’s budget, including affordable housing, homelessness, community development, arts and culture, mental health, safety, and infrastructure. But schools are not included on that list.

The Chicago Public Schools budget, which must be approved by July 1, already has been passed for the upcoming school year. The school board last month approved a flat $9.4 billion, with roughly half going directly to schools.

But financial challenges loom, with school district officials expecting a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year with the depletion of federal pandemic relief funds. As Chicago shifts to an elected school board, the district may also have to pick up more costs currently paid by the city.

The next city budget will cover the 2024 calendar year. The City Council is required to pass a budget by Dec. 31 — but historically does so before Thanksgiving, and planning starts in summer. From June to September, the city’s budget office reviews departmental expenses and solicits public feedback. Mayors submit their budget proposals to the City Council by Oct. 15, which also includes a public hearing.

Typically, the mayor’s office releases a budget forecast in August. But in a rare move before leaving office, Lightfoot and her financial team released a midyear budget forecast that projected a relatively small shortfall of $85 million.

Doors to the youth budget discussion will open around 4:45 p.m., and the event will start at 5:30 p.m. City officials said there will be limited seating for adult chaperones, who cannot participate in the discussion. Youth can register here.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board approves $9.4 billion budget as district officials warn of looming deficit

2023-06-28T22:05:00+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education approved a flat $9.4 billion spending plan for the next school year on Wednesday — and warned of looming deficits as federal COVID money runs out.

The 2024 budget is a fraction of a percent larger than last year’s, and allocates roughly half — or $4.8 billion — directly to schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on moving school funding away from being based on enrollment, a shift officials say is underway.

But the overall budget could grow later this year after the district does a comprehensive facilities review and puts forward a supplemental capital budget. On Wednesday, the school board approved a smaller $155 million capital plan. It did not include a hotly contested proposal to build a $120 million new high school on the Near South Side, though money for that project was included in the state’s 2024 budget signed earlier this month.

District officials and school board members said Wednesday they hope the state will provide Chicago Public Schools with additional funding in the future to avoid a fiscal cliff when COVID recovery money runs out next year.

“Many districts around the country right now are pressured to cut,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez. “We’re seeing layoffs. We’re seeing school closures. And so it is, it is a warning for us.”

Chicago Public Schools used much of its COVID recovery money to pay for existing and additional staff, such as academic interventionists and social workers. The district also boosted summer school programs and went on a technology spending spree.

Most schools will see flat or increased budgets under the approved 2024 budget. But a Chalkbeat analysis of school-level budget data released earlier this month shows that on a per pupil basis, 39 schools, or about 8% of campuses, will see budget cuts. Of those schools, 24 were predominantly Black, eight were majority Latino, and three were predominantly white. But schools serving predominantly Black students also saw the most substantial per pupil increases overall.

The district is forecasting a deficit of roughly $628 million by 2026. Next year, the district will spend the last of its $2.8 billion in federal COVID money, leaving it no financial cushion against declining student enrollment and rising pension and debt costs. Roughly 80,000 fewer students are enrolled in Chicago schools than there were a decade ago. The district has not released enrollment projections for next year.

School board president Miguel del Valle, who also announced Wednesday he would be stepping down as his term ends this month, said the district was facing a structural deficit during his first budget in 2019.

“If it hadn’t been for the federal dollars, that began to arrive … we’d be in even worse shape than we are,” Del Valle said. He noted that roughly a quarter of the district’s state funding goes toward paying down debt for both teacher pensions and past school construction. “Those two combined have us in a bind.”

The nonpartisan budget watchdog Civic Federation raised concerns about the “long-term viability” of Chicago Public Schools budget. The group’s annual analysis said it’s imperative the district work with the City of Chicago on a long-term financial plan that addresses several of the “financial entanglements” between the two before the school boards begins its shift to being elected, rather than appointed by the mayor.

Voters will elect 10 members in 2024, while the mayor will appoint 10 and a school board president. The 11 appointed seats will be elected in 2026 and by 2027, all 21 members will have been elected.

“Now is a critical time for Chicago Public Schools to plan for its financial future,” the watchdog group wrote.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

What education bills did Illinois lawmakers pass? Student mental health help, book ban prohibition, Native American history

2023-06-12T21:35:06+00:00

Illinois lawmakers passed a number of education bills at the end of the legislative session that will directly impact what children learn in classrooms across the state and what services they can access.

Lawmakers dedicated more state funding to early childhood education, pushed for a plan to change how reading is taught, and passed policy aimed at increasing access to mental health services for students. The general assembly also approved a $50.6 billion budget for 2024 that touted an additional $570 million for K-12 education and more funding to help students pay for higher education. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the budget into law last Wednesday.

Among the education bills passed this session are one that prevents libraries from banning books, which Pritzker signed Monday, and another that will require school districts to teach Native American History — a contrast to pushes in other states to restrict what books can be used in classrooms and to limit teaching about race.

Two other bills headed to the governor’s desk are one that will require the Illinois State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools and require districts to offer full-day kindergarten by 2027. Many other education-related bills didn’t make it to the finish line.

Here’s where some education-related bills landed at the end of the spring legislative session.

Bills improve access to dual credit, mental health services

Career and Technical Education and dual credit opportunities for students with disabilities: House Bill 3224 will require school districts to provide a student and parent with information about career and technical education opportunities and dual credit courses. If the student is enrolled in a dual credit course, it must be included as part of the student’s transition Individualized Education Program activities.

Task force on children’s mental health: Senate Bill 0724 will make it easier for families to access mental health services across several of the state departments, including the Illinois State Board of Education. This bill will create the Interagency Children’s Behavioral Health Services Act and require the state to establish a Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Officer who will lead the state’s effort to work across state agencies to help families get services. This bill unanimously passed both chambers of the general assembly with bipartisan support.

Establishing a home visiting program for families: Illinois has appropriated funding for the state Department of Human Services’ home visiting programs for over 30 years, but Senate Bill 1794 writes the program into law to protect it in the future. The goals of the program are to improve maternal and newborn health, prevent child abuse and neglect, promote children’s development and prepare them for school, and connect families to community resources.

Expanding dual language programs: House Bill 3822 will require the Advisory Council on Bilingual Education to create a report for the Illinois general assembly on how to incentivize dual language programs. The report will look at expanding dual language programs and instruction. It will also explore possible public-private partnerships, funding for programs, how to increase the number of qualified bilingual teachers for dual language programs, and standards for measuring student progress in programs.

Migrant youth, dyslexia screening proposals didn’t pass finish line

Supporting school-age migrant youth: Since the fall, Texas officials have bused thousands of people from the U.S.-Mexico border to Illinois — many are school-age children. Currently, many of recently arrived migrants are being sheltered at police stations across the state. The city of Chicago has committed $51 million to help migrants. House Bill 2822 would have required the Illinois State Board of Education to create a new grant program for public schools. This bill didn’t make it past committee.

Reporting informal removals of students with disabilities: House Bill 3600 would have required students’ schools to send a written notice to parents if students are sent home during the school day, given in-school suspension, or told not to come to school. Although this bill did not pass, Access Living, a nonprofit based in Chicago that advocates for people with disabilities and pushed for the bill, got a commitment from the Illinois State Board of Education to provide guidance to schools on documenting informal school removals.

Screening young children for dyslexia: House Bill 1124 would have required public schools to screen students for dyslexia in grade K-12 starting with the 2023-24 school year. The bill would have required the State Board of Education to require guidelines in the dyslexia handbook on how to screen children for dyslexia and other reading difficulties. The bill picked up steam earlier in session after passing a key committee in the House, but failed to get on the floor.

Illinois passes 2024 budget with increased funding for K-12, early childhood education

2023-05-27T15:52:57+00:00

Early Saturday morning, Illinois lawmakers passed the 2024 budget with increases in funding for K-12 public schools, early childhood education, and college-bound students. The House pass the budget with a vote of 73 to 38.

State legislators passed the $50.6 billion budget with a $570 million increase in K-12 spending, $250 million more for early childhood education, and over $100 million to support students heading to college and those who want to become teachers. The 2024 overall Illinois State Board of Education budget will be $10.3 billion, a 6.2% increase over last year’s $9.7 billion budget.

The budget looks similar to the proposal that Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced during his State of the State address in February. The budget leaves out the tax-credit scholarship known as Invest In Kids, which Pritzker supported during his re-election campaign, and trims back funding the governor requested for early education facilities.

Early childhood education gets a boost

Smart Start Illinois, announced by Pritzker in February, will invest $250 million in early childhood education in the 4-year initiative’s first year, and that funding was also approved by lawmakers.

Of that $250 million increase, the state’s Department of Human Services early intervention program, which supports young children with disabilities, will receive an increase of $40 million. The Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income families access child care and early childhood education, will get an additional $70 million, and the home-visiting program that supports pregnant people and families with children between birth and 5 years old, will receive an additional $5 million.

The state board’s early childhood block grant, which supports establishing early childhood education programs, gets an additional $75 million.

“This budget makes transformative investments in the children and families of Illinois while building on our record of fiscal responsibility,” Pritzker said Friday in a statement.

Latino Policy Forum senior education policy analyst Rosario Hernandez said in a statement that the group applauds the general assembly for creating a budget that adds more funding for early childhood programming.

“We are especially excited about the $75 million increase to the Early Childhood Block Grant that will expand preschool access throughout the state, which stands to benefit the fastest growing group of students in Illinois: English Learners,” said Hernandez. “Recent research from the University of Chicago demonstratively shows that when English Learners have access to full-day bilingual preschool beginning at age three it yields positive outcomes in third grade.”

K-12 gets $350 million for funding formula

The state board’s evidence-based funding formula, which distributes money to K-12 public schools, received an increase of $350 million.

Education advocates had wanted lawmakers to give an additional $550 million to school districts under the state’s evidence-based funding formula, but that didn’t happen this year. They say more money is needed to put the state on track to fully fund schools by 2027 — which was the targeted timeline when the formula was created in 2017.

Rep. William “Will” Davis, a Democrat who represents suburbs south of Chicago, filed a bill that would have required the state to increase the minimum for evidence-based funding from $350 million to $550 million. But Davis’s bill did not move out of the House rules committee.

The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a nonpartisan budget watchdog and one of the key architects of the formula, found in March that the evidence-based funding formula is working as intended. Over the past five years, funding for public schools has increased by $1.6 billion with 99% going to historically underfunded districts, closing the gap between wealthier and underfunded districts.

The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability also agrees with advocates that the formula is severely underfunded and needs more than $350 million added annually.

Center Executive Director Ralph Martire said that there should have been at least $550 million put towards the evidence-based funding after 2020, when nothing was added.

“It will take them until 2038 to fully fund the evidence-based model. So we lose another generation-and-a-half of kids to an underfunded system, which is really unfortunate,” Martire said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “It would have been nice if the state could have made an additional investment to shorten this period of time and get the educational system the resources it needs to educate students.”

The state board will also receive $45 million for the first year of a three-year pilot program to help school districts that have a large number of teacher vacancies.

Funding to support students in higher education

The Illinois Student Assistance Commission’s Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship, which provides scholarships to students of color and bilingual students who want to become educators, received an increase of $3.8 million instead of the $2.8 million increase proposed by Pritzker earlier this year. The program has grown to $8 million this year.

Funding for the commission’s Monetary Award Program, a grant program that provides funding to students from low-income families for college, received an increase of $100 million and the annual budget for the 2024 fiscal year will be $701 million.

Invest In Kids not in budget

Excluded from the budget this year is the controversial Invest In Kids program, a tax-credit scholarship that provides financial assistance to students from low-income households to attend a private school and makes available a tax credit for individuals who donate to the program. Public school advocates pushed lawmakers to not include it in the budget this year.

Illinois Families for Public Schools was a key opponent to the program and asked lawmakers to allow it to sunset. Cassie Creswell, the group’s director, said that the organization is happy to see the private school choice program is not in the budget and hopes that it will end soon.

“We shouldn’t be handing over public dollars to very weakly or completely unsupervised private schools that are discriminating and teaching low-quality curriculum,” said Creswell. “And there’s no evidence that they’re being helpful because there’s no data yet on the schools and we are finishing the fifth school year.”

While it is not included in this year’s budget, Invest in Kids could be considered later in the year. A spokesperson for Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch previously said that lawmakers could approve an extension during fall’s veto session.

Illinois has a budget deal. Here’s what we know about proposed education funding for 2024.

2023-05-24T22:37:19+00:00

With the Illinois legislature in overtime to pass the state’s fiscal year 2024 budget, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, along with leadership from the general assembly, announced Wednesday that a deal had been made.

Pritzker, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, and Senate President Don Harmon said a budget will be filed in the Senate Wednesday, and once voted on in that chamber, will be sent to the House with the hopes of passing by Friday. The state’s fiscal year starts July 1.

The proposed budget appears to be similar to the one Pritzker put forward during his budget address in February — and mostly maintains a key second term initiative aimed at early childhood education. According to a document released by Pritzker’s office, the deal includes the governor’s requests for bigger investments in K-12 schools and initiatives aimed at solving the state’s teacher shortage issue.

Pritzker’s Smart Start Illinois would add $250 million to the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant this year and the state’s Department of Human Services Early Intervention Program, Child Care Assistance Program, and Home Visiting Program.

In February, the governor proposed adding $100 million for early childhood education capital investment, but the document released by his office indicates that number has decreased to $50 million.

For K-12 public schools, the state board’s evidence-based funding formula would receive an increase of $350 million — keeping in line with the bipartisan promise that state lawmakers made in 2017 when the formula was created of adding a minimum of $350 million to the state’s budget each year .

The budget proposal also includes $45 million for the first year of a three-year pilot program to fill teacher vacancies in schools across the state. In February, Pritzker proposed giving $70 million per year to school districts that have a large number of teacher vacancies.

The Monetary Award Program, which provides funding for students from low-income families to get into colleges, could receive an increase of $100 million – what Pritzker asked for in February. The program’s overall budget would be $701 million.

Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

Will Illinois tax credit scholarship end? Four things you should know about Invest In Kids

2023-05-17T17:42:30+00:00

A controversial Illinois tax credit scholarship program could end if lawmakers don’t act to extend it.

Invest in Kids — which grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships that allow Illinois students from low-income families to attend private schools — is slated to sunset Dec. 31 unless state legislators approve an extension.

Jaclyn Driscoll, a spokeswoman for Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, said lawmakers still have time to extend Invest in Kids before the end of the year. The spring legislative session is scheduled to end Friday, but state lawmakers could approve an extension during a special session or the veto session in the fall.

The Invest In Kids Act became law in 2017, when Democrats and Republicans met during closed-door negotiations to overhaul how the state funded public education and ended a budget impasse that had lasted for two years. At the time, lawmakers agreed the program, which started in the 2018-19 school year, would sunset after five years. In 2022, the state extended the program by a year, with it now set to end January 2025 unless lawmakers agree to include it in the 2024 budget.

Several bills were introduced this session to extend the program, but none have been successful.

If Invest in Kids is allowed to end, Illinois will be bucking the trend of red states such as Indiana and South Carolina that plan to establish or extend their voucher programs.

Here are four things to know about Invest in Kids.

How many students currently benefit from the tax credit scholarships?

Over 9,000 Illinois students received the tax credit scholarship during the 2021-22 school year, according to a report from the state’s Department of Revenue obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago. In prior school years, enrollment numbers remained around 7,000 students.

Students who receive the scholarships come from low-income families. Under the tax credit scholarship law, students must come from households making less than 300% of the federal poverty level — which is about $90,000 for a family of four in 2023. Once the child receives a scholarship, the family income cannot exceed 400% of the federal poverty level, or about $120,000 for a family of four.

Of the students who received scholarships to attend private school in 2021-22, 57.6% were white, 29.7% were Latino, and 17.8 % were Black, according to the state’s report obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago.

Who donates and gets tax credits?

Illinois taxpayers can make a donation to one of the six grantee organizations that provide scholarships to students — also known as Scholarship Granting Organizations — and receive a tax credit of 75 cents for every dollar they donate. The amount donated is capped at $1 million per taxpayer per year. The state Department of Revenue says that taxpayers can donate their funds to a school that they would like their contribution to benefit.

Why do people want the program to end?

Public school advocates who are against the tax scholarship program argue that Invest In Kids diverts taxpayer dollars from public schools to private schools and lacks data or oversight. Some fear schools may discriminate against students with disabilities and LGBTQ students.

Illinois Families for Public Schools has been lobbying for the past few months to get state lawmakers to end the program. Cassie Creswell, director of the organization, says the state can’t afford a private school choice program because public schools are underfunded by billions of dollars.

“It should be deeply concerning to all public school supporters,” said Creswell. “Vouchers aren’t a evidenced-based policy that improve equity or education outcomes. We shouldn’t be funding them with scarce state dollars.”

What happens if Invest In Kids sunsets this year?

It’s unclear what will happen to the 9,000 students who receive scholarships to attend private schools if the tax credit scholarship program were to sunset. State law says the Invest In Kids Act will end Jan. 1, 2025, meaning students would at least have the chance to continue going to their schools through the 2023-24 school year.

School voucher advocates remain hopeful that the general assembly and Gov. J.B. Pritzker will continue to support the program — Pritzker said yes to supporting the tax credit scholarship program in a candidate survey for the Chicago Sun-Times in the fall.

Dan Vosnos, executive director of One Chance Illinois, an advocacy group involved in creating Invest In Kids, said the program has been helpful for families who cannot afford to go to a school of their choice.

“It allows families that don’t have the means to provide their child with their best fit education,” said Vosnos. “It gives families reassurance that their kids are in a loving, caring, nurturing, safe environment getting the education that they may not have received at their neighborhood school.”

Update May 17, 2023: After the initial publication of this article, a spokesperson from the Speaker of the House said the Illinois general assembly has until the end of the year to extend Invest in Kids.

Advocates call on Illinois lawmakers to fund after-school programs after state error

2023-05-03T20:17:52+00:00

After-school programs for 27,000 Illinois students may be in danger of running out of money after next year because of an accounting error made by the Illinois State Board of Education.

The error has caused a projected $12.4 million shortfall for 2024, according to a spokesperson with the state board. State Superintendent Tony Sanders says the state will use emergency COVID-19 funding to fill in the gap this year, but will not have new funding available in the future.

A coalition of community groups that provide after-school programming — who estimate the shortfall as much larger — are calling on Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois lawmakers to use state dollars to fill the gap to help programs survive in the future.

If that gap is not closed, they say, programs that provide students with a safe space after school to participate in extracurricular activities, tutoring, and mental health services may not have enough funding after next year.

Afterschool for Children and Teens Now (ACT Now), a group of Illinois after-school advocates, says these programs serve mostly Black and Latino students who attend high-poverty, low-performing schools. About 66% of students in the programs qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Marie Snyder, a site coordinator at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School — an alternative school in Humboldt Park — spoke about the importance of her school’s after-school programs for students during a press conference on Tuesday outside of the Pritzker’s office in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood.

Snyder’s school offers 12 after-school programs and five summer programs where students are able to take culinary arts, tutoring, basketball, and gardening.

“Not only do our students get to build relationships with each other, but with us. We all know that our city and our young people are in the midst of a mental health crisis,” said Snyder. “Our time invested enables us to observe our students for signs of trauma and stress and through our relationships we are able to encourage them to connect with mental health practitioners.”

In the past two years alone, Snyder said she’s been able to help 50 students access mental health services based on needs they’ve expressed.

The programs at risk are funded through a federal grant called Nita M. Lowey’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. The state board says the error stems from the early days of the pandemic. In a normal year, grantees would have to give unspent money back to the state board at the end of the year so the state could fund next year’s programs. In 2020, the state allowed programs to carry over unspent funding.

Sanders wrote in a weekly message on Tuesday that the state board did not account for how the carryover funds would impact funding for 2024 until this year when it found a shortfall of $12.4 million for next year. State officials notified grantees of the error in April.

The 2019 grantees affected by the error are in 68 locations across the state, Sanders said in his weekly message, noting that 42 school districts have committed to using other funds to support after-school programming and another 13 are looking for alternative funding sources.

Chicago Public Schools, one of the grantees from 2019, said it will use other funds to continue growing after-school programs.

Susan Stanton, network lead for ACT Now, said at Tuesday’s press conference that after-school programs are vital to students and families. She called on the state legislature to put additional money toward after-school programs in the final state budget, which must be passed by the end of the session this month.

“There is no other option,” Stanton said. “We can’t let families and children pay the price for the mistake that was made by the government.”

Illinois school funding formula is closing funding gaps for students of color, says report

2023-03-09T23:34:30+00:00

Six years after Illinois overhauled how the state funds K-12 public schools, a new report has found that the evidence-based funding formula is working as intended to reduce funding gaps.

The formula has increased funding to public schools over the last five years by $1.6 billion, with 99% going to historically underfunded districts, found a report by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability — one of the key architects of the formula. The additional money is helping close funding gaps between wealthier districts and underfunded districts and increase funding for districts serving more students of color and students from low-income families, which was the goal of the law passed in 2017 that created the new formula.

That formula calculates a target funding level for every district based on the characteristics of the students they serve. For example, districts get additional money for English language learners, which can be used to hire bilingual teachers. The goal was to get each district “adequately funded” by 2027.

The evidence-funding formula distributes funding based on tiers, which determine the level of need for state funding. Tiers one and two receive a larger share of state funding, while tiers three and four receive a smaller amount of state funding, Local property tax revenue and the number of students from low-income families attending the district can impact the tier a district is in and the amount of funding it will receive in the next fiscal year.

Every year, a complex calculation is run to determine how much state money a school district will get. Last year, Chicago Public Schools unexpectedly got less state money than it anticipated under the evidence-based formula. That was partly due to an increase in local property tax revenue, a drop in enrollment, and a dip in low-income students.

When the evidence-based funding formula started in fiscal year 2018, 657 of the state’s 852 districts, or 77%, were underfunded. In six years since, the number of underfunded districts has declined to 597, or 70%, according to the report.

The report found that when the formula overhauled the state’s education funds in 2018, Black students and Latino students received more funding per pupil — decreasing the racial funding gap between white students and students of color.

The change in the state’s funding formula has improved funding for schools across the state. The average annual per pupil distribution of new funding made to districts located in Downstate Illinois was $183, the highest for any region across the state.

Despite gains from evidence-based funding, the formula is still underfunded, said report author Allison Flanagan.

“The next step for the state is to increase the amount of new funding that goes into the formula,” Flanagan told Chalkbeat. “It’s unlikely that they’re going to get full funding by the statute limit at the end of fiscal year 2027. Increasing funding to $550 million each year is going to help get us there sooner.”

The report does not include an analysis of student academic achievements based on state funding because it takes about 10 years to see the impact of long-term policy changes, Flanagan said. However, she noted that if the state fully funds the formula faster, the impact on students may become clearer.

Since 2018, the state has added new funding into the formula every year, except in 2021 when the coronavirus pandemic rattled the state’s economy and Gov, J.B. Pritzker decided to keep the education budget flat. At the current rate of funding, it could take until fiscal year 2038 before the formula is fully funded, according to the Center on Tax and Budget Accountability’s press release.

A House bill currently in committee in the Illinois general assembly would require the minimum funding to be $550 million instead of $350 million.

Gov. Pritzker wants to increase Illinois education funding by 6.2% in 2024

2023-02-15T21:47:11+00:00

This story has been updated with reactions to Pritzker’s speech.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday revealed his 2024 budget proposal — laying out a vision for a second term in office that includes ambitious funding plans for early childhood education and higher education.

Pritzker wants to increase the state’s funding for pre-K-12 education by 6.2% next year. His overall 2024 proposal would boost the state’s operating budget to $49.6 billion, an 11% increase over last year.

Throughout his first term in office, Pritzker said, he worked to balance the state’s budget and increase the state revenue — even when COVID-19 shook the state’s economy. With the state in a better financial position, Pritzker is recommending an increase in funding for early childhood education and child care programs.

His proposal still needs the approval of state lawmakers.

“I ask you to partner with me once again,” Pritzker said to the general assembly Wednesday in his annual State of the State address. “This time on the long-term investment that has the greatest return for taxpayers with the most positive social and economic impact that I have ever come to you with.”

Pritzker was referring to his four-year plan called Smart Start Illinois for early childhood education and child care that will create 20,000 seats for young learners. In the first year, the governor plans to increase funding to the state’s child care programs by $250 million and create 5,000 seats in preschool classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds.

For K-12 education, the State Board of Education’s general funding would increase by $571.5 million, a 6.2% increase, for a total budget of $10.3 billion. That includes a $75 million increase to the Early Childhood Block Grant and a $350 million increase to state’s funding for K-12 schools — keeping in line with the state’s bipartisan promise in 2017 to add at least $350 million a year to the evidence-based formula.

The State Board of Education would also receive an additional $86.4 million for special education and transportation grants, and money for two new initiatives that will support computer science and ease the teacher workforce shortage. The latter would fund the first year of a three-year pilot program that would give $70 million per year to school districts that have a large number of teacher vacancies.

To help more students from low-income families access higher education, Pritzker wants to add $100 million to the Monetary Award Program, increasing the program’s overall budget to $701 million.

Funding for the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship would go from $4.2 million to $7 million for the program that aims to bring more teachers of color — especially men of color and those in bilingual education — into the educator pipeline.

Pritzker’s plan falls in line with the recommendation the State Board of Education made in January during its monthly meeting. Former State Superintendent Carmen Ayala requested $516 million, with $350 million for K-12 schools and a $60 million increase to early childhood education. The rest of the funding would go to transportation, special education, and free school meals.

However, education advocates are pushing the state to add at least $550 million to the evidence-based funding formula to support K-12 schools and get the state back on track to fully funding schools by 2027.

Advocates also wanted an increase of 20% across all early childhood education programs through the State Board of Education and the state’s Department of Human Services to make early education affordable for low-income families and increase pay for early childhood educators, who are often women of color and work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

The general assembly will debate the 2024 budget before voting on it at the end of the spring legislative session in May.

The Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the state, said it shares Pritzker’s concerns about staffing shortages from preschool to higher education and will work with the governor to implement his $70 million pilot program.

“The teacher and school staff shortage is having a dramatic impact on states across the nation and Illinois is no exception,” said Dan Montgomery, president of IFT, which also supported Pritzker’s proposal to increase higher education funding.

Start Early, a nonprofit organization that focuses on early childhood education throughout Illinois, commended Pritzker’s Smart Start Illinois Initiative.

“This is a banner day for early childhood in Illinois, and Start Early looks forward to working with the Illinois General Assembly to enact a budget that does right by infants and toddlers across the state,” said Ireta Gasner, Start Early vice president of Illinois policy.

PEER Illinois, a statewide advocacy group, applauded Pritzker’s proposal to expand child care and urged the state to put more than $350 million toward the evidence-based funding formula.

“To do less diminishes one of the state’s most highly regarded tools for advancing equity while reducing Illinois’ stated commitment to equity in funding K-12 education to rhetoric,” PEER Illinois said in a statement. “At its current rate of EBF funding, nearly two more generations of Illinois children will receive an inadequately funded education.”

Illinois superintendent proposes $516 million education budget increase; advocates want more

2023-01-17T22:18:39+00:00

State Superintendent Carmen Ayala is proposing a $516 million, or 5.3%, increase to the state’s education budget next year, a request that education advocates say falls short of what Illinois school districts need.

Ayala’s budget proposal calls for a $350 million boost for K-12 schools, or about 4%, plus a $60 million increase to early childhood education. The rest of the requested increase relates to transportation, special education, and free meals.

The proposal, which surfaced on the board’s monthly meeting agenda Friday evening, drew pushback from some education advocates who say a $550 million increase in K-12 funding is needed to fully fund all districts under the state’s evidence-based funding formula.

Getting a budget request approved by the Illinois State Board of Education is Ayala’s final order of business before she retires from education. If her request is approved by the Legislature later this year, the state’s total education budget will grow from $9.8 billion to $10.3 billion.

The board discussed in December how much money to recommend for the state’s education budget. While Illinois’ finances have improved since taking a hit in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, there are still concerns about an economic slowdown or recession in 2023, Ayala noted in her proposal.

The state approved $350 million increases for K-12 public schools in 2021 and 2022, the minimum promised by lawmakers in 2017 when the evidence-based funding formula was created. Advocates are concerned that continued funding increases at the minimum level will not be enough to adequately fund schools by 2027.

Funding for IL’s Future, an organization representing districts, school leaders, and community and faith-based organizations, said on Twitter that “too many students, disproportionately those from urban and rural communities, are still in districts below 75% of full funding.”

Aimee Galvin, government affairs director for Stand for Children Illinois, said in a statement that “the current pace of funding is far too slow.”

“By adding $550 million to the formula, we can close that gap in less than 10 years,” Galvin said. “A generation of Illinois children looks for leadership to support the school funding they need to get the education they deserve.”

Robin Steans, president of Advance Illinois, said in a statement that the state should not only include $550 million more in the evidence-based funding formula, but also increase early childhood education funding by 20%, rather than the 10% Ayala proposed.

“The 10% incremental increase in early childhood is simply not enough to address the gaps in access to high-quality learning programs that persist in communities across Illinois, or to provide needed increases to compensation for early childhood educators,” Steans said, adding that “parents, educators and community members were loud and clear during the ISBE budget hearings — more resources are needed now.”

The board will vote on Ayala’s proposal during its monthly meeting on Wednesday. If approved by the board, it will head to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office for consideration as he develops a budget to present to legislators for their approval.

Gov. J. B. Pritzker vows to prioritize access to child care for Illinois families in second term

2023-01-04T20:51:46+00:00

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday he hopes to make Illinois “number one” for child care access during his next term.

After winning a second term in November and heading into a spring legislative session that will determine the state’s early childhood education and child care budget, Pritzker said he intends to prioritize child care to support families throughout the state and provide more funding for child care centers and their workforce.

“There is so much more that we can do to make it easier for young families to access quality child care, and early childhood education,” Pritzker said at a press conference Wednesday at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning’s site in Little Village. “But already our improvements have made a profound change.”

According to Pritzker, prioritizing child care is fiscally responsible and will result in positive outcomes throughout a child’s lifetime.

“It yields a higher high school graduation rate, a higher college attendance rate, greater lifetime earnings, lower health care costs, lower crime rates, and an overall reduction in the need for human services spending throughout the lives of these young children,” Pritzker said on Wednesday.

Access to early childhood education and child care provides children with cognitive and emotional development, improved self-regulation, and improved academic achievement, according to reports cited on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Later in life children who have had access to early childhood education also show improved health outcomes and reductions in crime rates, welfare dependency, and child abuse and neglect, the CDC notes.

Illinois has a number of ways of funding child care and early education across multiple government agencies. One of the largest is through the Illinois State Board of Education’s early childhood block grant.

The state was unable to put additional money into that block grant in the 2020, 2021, or 2022 budgets, primarily due to the economic slowdown spurred by the coronavirus pandemic However, the state was able to increase that budget line by 10% for the state’s 2023 budget.

In addition to the state board of education’s block grant, the state funds early childhood education and child care programs throughout the state’s department of human services. The department of human services supports the state’s youngest learners through its Early Intervention Program, which supports children with disabilities from birth to 3 years old and the Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income working families with child care costs.

Early intervention had $7 million in funding restored in the 2023 budget after a cut last year. However, the Child Care Assistance Program, which helps low-income working families with child care costs, did not receive an increase.

During the pandemic, the governor’s administration made it easier for parents who lost their jobs to receive three months of child care while searching for work or in a skills training program. Over the summer, the state increased eligibility for the Child Care Assistance Program by lowering the income limit and expanding benefits, increasing the number of families. Also, child care centers received more funding to retain staff.

Grace Hou, secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services, said Wednesday at the press conference that the state has invested over $1 billion in child care that has reached more than 12,000 child care providers across the state and over 50,000 child care workers.

Pritzker said the state’s investments have funded programs such as the Carole Robertson Center’s Grow Your Own Program Workforce Initiative, which trains community members to be educators. At the press conference, Bela Moté, CEO of the Carole Robertson Center, said the center has hired more than 30 people through the program over the last 15 months.

Pritzker is preparing his budget proposal for the 2023 fiscal year where he will make funding requests to the legislature for everything from education to public safety. Lawmakers will ultimately approve a budget in late May or June. However, the state’s budget is uncertain as the economy could be hit by a recession or another economic slowdown.

New tool allows people to see how much federal COVID money Illinois schools have spent

2022-12-15T21:45:00+00:00

Illinois school districts have spent less than half of the roughly $7.8 billion the state got in federal COVID recovery money, according to a new spending dashboard launched today.

The Illinois State Board of Education published the data Thursday and said it would provide “real-time updates” on how districts have reported spending the money aimed at helping students recover from the pandemic.

“These funds are providing an unparalleled opportunity to transform systems of learning in Illinois that are more equitable, more inclusive, and more responsive to student needs,” State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said in a press release.

So far, federal COVID recovery money has been spent on existing staff, technology, tutoring, and transportation. Some districts in Illinois and around the country are using the influx of cash to fix aging buildings. Others are using the money to expand pre-school and give high school students jobs.

A recent Chalkbeat and Better Government Association investigation found low-income districts, which got the most federal COVID money, have been slower to spend their allocations. Data obtained at that time showed about 40% of the money had been reported as spent. The new dashboard indicates about 47% has been spent. There may still be lags in when districts report spending the money.

Earlier this year, Chicago school board members raised concerns about how little COVID recovery money had been spent, particularly on student mental health. The new data indicates Chicago Public Schools has spent 52% of its federal COVID money.

The federal government approved three separate rounds of stimulus funding for schools as part of sweeping government aid doled out across the country in 2020 and 2021. The first wave of $569.5 million came one month into the pandemic under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act. The new dashboard shows nearly all of that money has been spent.

Congress authorized another massive infusion of money in 2021 to help districts recover from the academic and mental health setbacks spurred by the pandemic. Illinois received about $7 billion in these subsequent rounds. States and school districts must allocate the money by fall 2024.

According to the state’s press release, school districts are also required to “solicit local stakeholder input” and “make spending plans publicly available” for the most recent round of stimulus.

The state is also allowed to spend 10% of the money flowing to Illinois school districts. A large portion of that will go toward a high-impact tutoring program that hopes to reach more than 3,200 students.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois education budget might boost career, early childhood programs – but recession worries loom

2022-12-15T17:13:07+00:00

The Illinois State Board of Education is hoping to increase funding for career and technical education and early childhood programs — but an uncertain economy could hinder those plans.

State board members are considering how much money to give K-12 schools, early childhood education, career and technical education, and other programs as they work on a budget recommendation for the 2024 fiscal year. On Wednesday, state finance officials from the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability said that Illinois’s economy is in a good place, but there are still concerns about an economic slowdown or recession in 2023.

School districts must decide how to spend emergency COVID funds by a federally-imposed fall 2024 deadline. After federal funds run out, some districts may be scrambling to pay for programs created during the pandemic and increased staffing. However, according to a newly published spending dashboard, districts still have more than half of the pandemic relief money to spend.

The state’s K-12 education budget remained flat during the first year of the pandemic. In 2021 and 2022, the state increased funding by $350 million, the minimum amount required under the evidence-based funding formula. Though advocates have praised the state for increasing funding, they also have said it won’t be enough to adequately fund all public schools by 2027.

A statewide coalition of education advocates called The Partnership for Equity and Education Rights Illinois, or PEER IL, said in September that the state would have to increase funding by about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years to fully fund schools. If that doesn’t happen, the group said, the next generation of students will continue to go to under-resourced schools.

Money for the early childhood block grant, which pays for preschool programs across the state, did not increase in 2020, 2021, or 2022. But it received a 10% boost in the state’s 2023 budget. Early childhood education advocates hope the state puts more money into early education to help provide low-income families access to child care and increase wages for preschool teachers and caregivers.

The Chicago Early Childhood Workforce Partnership Employer Council found that early childhood educators are paid $18,000 less on average than elementary school teachers, despite having the same degrees. The wage gap is even larger for educators of color, almost 4% when compared to white educators.

Robert Wolfe, the state board of education’s chief financial officer, said at Wednesday’s board meeting that there is a need to increase state funding for career and technical education as the program has not seen a significant increase for almost two decades. During the budget hearings in October, school advocates asked for a $40 million increase.

Wolfe said he doesn’t know if a $40 million increase is possible, but thinks an increase in funding is important. Board members agreed with him, but asked for data to prove to state lawmakers that the program will need more funding.

State Superintendent Carmen Ayala, who is set to retire at the end of January, is expected to provide a budget recommendation to the board on Jan. 18. If approved, it will be sent to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose administration is working on a full state budget proposal to present to the state legislature on Feb. 15. The state legislature must pass a budget by late May.

Illinois educators ask for $700 million more across early ed and K-12

2022-10-05T18:25:43+00:00

Treasa Howard-Collins loves her job at Joliet Township High School’s Child Care Center, but despite having 12 years experience and a master’s degree, she says she’s “earning an unlivable wage.”

“Not only am I working a second job, but I’m also doing gig work to supplement the income for the job that I love,” Howard-Collins told state officials during a budget hearing Tuesday.

Howard-Collins and several other speakers want the Illinois State Board of Education to increase funding for early childhood education by 20% – or $120 million – to increase wages for early childhood educators.

Throughout the hearing, school leaders, educators, parents, and advocates pushed for an increase of about $700 million — $120 million for early education and $550 million toward K-12 schools — to the state’s overall education budget for fiscal year 2024, which starts in June 2023. The state education budget supports early education, K-12 public schools, after-school programs, and agricultural education.

Lawmakers approved $9.7 billion for the state’s education budget in the spring with $350 million more dollars heading toward K-12 public schools and $54.4 million dollars toward the state’s early childhood block grant.

State law calls on the legislature to increase K-12 funding by $350 million annually by 2027 to get every school district to “adequacy,” or ensure that schools have enough funding to provide resources to students. Since the funding formula was created in 2017, it has resulted in an increase of $1.5 billion overall.

And while advocates applauded new funding in education, many said the state’s funding formula should increase by at least $550 million dollars this year in order to correct funding gaps more quickly.

Summer Butler, an elementary school teacher at Bellwood School District 88, said that her school is considered 70% “adequately funded,” according to state data. But her school is understaffed and overflowing with students.

Butler said that her students aren’t excelling in core subjects like math and reading, with about 14% meeting math and reading proficiency standards.

Butler noted that astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of the Apollo 17 that went to the moon in 1972, attended her school in the 1940s.

“At this rate, we might not ever have another Eugene Cernan among us any day soon, because we don’t have all of the necessary resources to make that possible,” she said.

Bob Chikos, an educator at Crystal Lake Central High School in District 135, also asked for an increase of $550 million in K-12 funding because he wants to end funding disparities between school districts. He pointed to differences in funding between his district, which is 77% funded, nearby Elgin’s U-46, which is 63% funded and below adequacy, and Libertyville High School in District 128, which is 171% funded — far above adequacy.

“Disparities, such as this, have exacerbated educational, racial and wealth gaps. We live in a state in which there’s a resource race amongst adequately funded districts to offer the best education possible,” said Chikos. “While not adequately funded, districts try to hold on to the minimal resources they have to meet their students’ needs.”

Last week, Partnership for Equity and Education Rights, PEER IL, and the Education Law Center asked the state to increase funding for the evidence-based funding formula by $1.5 billion a year to hit the 2027 goal written into law.

While a majority of speakers asked the state to increase funding for early childhood education and K-12 public schools, a few speakers asked the state to boost funding to after-school programs and community schools.

Susan Staton of Afterschool for Children and Teen, ACT Now, and other advocates requested $20 million dollars for after-school programming and $15 million to go toward community schools.

“These programs all throughout Illinois are improving attendance, improving grades and helping to teach social-emotional learning skills,” said Stanton.

The state board of education is planning to host two more budget hearings. One will be held in person at 4 p.m. Thursday at the state board’s office in Springfield, Illinois, and the other will be virtual at 4 p.m. Oct. 24.

In previous years, the state board of education announced its recommendations for the education budget during its December board meeting. The board then sent its proposal to the governor and legislature in January. The governor then made a budget proposal in early February and the legislature approved the budget by the end of spring legislative session in April.

Will Illinois have fully funded schools by 2027? Not without ramping up funding, advocates say

2022-09-28T20:50:36+00:00

Illinois education advocates say that the next generations of public school students will continue to attend under-resourced schools if the state doesn’t increase funding by about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years to fully fund schools by 2027.

The Partnership for Equity and Education Rights Illinois — a new coalition of several education advocacy programs — and the Education Law Center said in a press release that they found that 1.7 million students from 83% of Illinois school districts still attend an underfunded school. By only placing $350 million into the state’s evidence-based funding formula – the minimum amount recommended by law – the state will not be able to fully fund school districts by 2027, a new report from the advocacy groups found.

At a press conference on Tuesday, ahead of budget hearings the Illinois Board of Education is set to start holding next week, the advocates urged state officials to increase funding for the next school year.

Naoma Nagahawatte, advocacy director for Raise Your Hand Illinois and a Chicago parent, said time is running out to fully fund schools to ensure that students who go to schools with a higher concentration of poverty can receive the same education as students in wealthier districts.

“Generations of future Illinois students in low-wealth districts will continue to seek significantly less funding and resources for their education,” said Nagahawatte, “while districts like Dolton-Riverdale will continue to unfairly more in local property taxes to make up the money that the state of Illinois is obligated to put into their school districts.”

When the state legislature created the evidence-based funding formula in 2017, it intended for schools to be fully funded by 2027, with at least $350 million added to the formula every year. However, there was no new funding for 2021 – a fallout from the financial hit the pandemic delivered to the state. The state board of education recommended adding more than $350 million into the evidence-based funding formula for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, but legislators stuck with the $350 million minimum outlined in the law.

At the end of the legislative session in April, state lawmakers approved $350 million more for the funding formula, which is now at $7.9 billion. The state’s overall education budget is about $9.7 billion. Under the increase sought by the advocates, the evidence-based funding formula would be over $15 billion by 2027.

Sincereuray Gordon, whose children attend Zion District 6 in a North Chicago suburb, said children with disabilities are also impacted by inadequate funding. In Zion, students often have to be relocated or bused to another school to be provided services, but spots are limited.

“I think every child has the right to proper resources and services in the school building that they are in as opposed to having to relocate,” Gordon said at the press conference.

In Chicago, where schools are funded based on enrollment, programs have been cut despite getting additional state money, said Brenda Delgado, a member of the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and a Chicago parent. Chicago lost about 25,000 students during the height of the pandemic.

“My children are students at a school that received a lot of cuts due to student-based budgeting. That’s not fair,” said Delgado. “Our kids deserve to have a library in their schools. They deserve counselors and nurses. They deserve programs.”

Partnership for Equity and Education Rights Illinois wants state legislators to be required to put more than $350 million additional money into the state’s funding formula and to ensure that school districts steer the money directly to public school classrooms and students, Nagahawatte said.

Education advocates throughout the state have raised concerns that the minimum will not be enough with rising costs and a 40-year high inflation rate. However, even as Illinois’ finances are starting to rebound, neither the governor or legislature have indicated they will add more to the funding formula.

The state’s professional review board released a report last year noting that full funding would not happen until 2042 if the state continues to increase the funding by the $350 million minimum.

A spokesperson for Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the governor understands more work needs to be done to increase funding for schools around the state.

“The administration remains committed to working with our partners in the legislature to expand evidence-based funding levels and provide schools throughout the state with the resources necessary to thrive,” Pritzker’s office said in a statement.

The state board of education will hold virtual and in person hearings throughout the month of October. Virtual hearings will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 4 and Monday, Oct. 24 at 4 p.m. An in-person hearing will take place in Springfield on Thursday, Oct. 6 at 4 p.m.

Chicago schools get smaller share of state money after enrollment drop, property wealth bump

2022-08-05T22:04:07+00:00

Chicago is getting a smaller share of new state education funding this year, in part due to a loss of low-income students and an increased property tax base.

New calculations released by the Illinois Board of Education this morning give Chicago Public Schools $1.75 billion in state money, an overall increase of roughly 1.5% over last year.

But the state’s complex formula for determining how to fund public school districts recategorized Chicago in a way that could mean less state money in the future and a longer road to be considered fully funded.

“They’re still getting money from the state, it’s just less money than they would have,” said Ralph Martire, executive director with the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and one of the architects of the state law that created the so-called evidence-based funding formula in 2017.

The state is adding $350 million to the billions it is distributing to districts this year. Of that new money, Chicago will get a little more than $27 million of the additional dollars. But district officials say they expected to get around $50 million.

In a statement, a CPS spokesperson said the shift puts more pressure on the district at a time “when our needs have never been greater.”

“Public schools are serving a wider scope of needs than ever before as we emerge from the pandemic and we need all the resources we can get,” the statement said.

The state’s formula for determining how to fund schools looks at a variety of factors, including the percentage of low-income students and wealth of the property surrounding schools. Chicago saw a 4% loss of low-income students and a 3% increase in the city’s property tax base, according to state data.

Chicago lost 10,000 students last school year, continuing a decade-long trend of shrinking enrollment. While nearly 70% of Chicago students are low-income, those numbers have also dipped as parts of the city have grown wealthier.

“They’re sitting on a lot of property wealth and they don’t necessarily tap that property wealth to the level they could,” Martire said of Chicago. He also noted that districts, including Chicago, are getting a windfall this year from a tax on corporate profits, which affects the formula but is not as reliable as a source of revenue.

The state legislature overhauled how it funds public schools in 2017 and promised to equitably fund the state’s 852 school districts by 2027. To get there, the formula prioritizes every district into four tiers. Tier 1 districts get the most help from the state to fund their schools and Tier 4 districts get the least. For the coming fiscal year, Chicago moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2, which effectively puts it further back in line for new money.

Jessica Handy, director of government affairs at Stand for Children, said she didn’t anticipate Chicago Public Schools would be recategorized this year because the district still serves a large population of students from low-income families.

Handy said the evidence-based funding formula is better than the system it replaced, but the state needs to increase its contribution to get all districts to adequate funding.

“Illinois was a deeply inequitable school funding system,” Handy said. “Evidence-based funding made it better because we’ve set up a framework to get ourselves to adequacy. But at a rate of $350 million per year, it’s not enough to fully fund the many needs of our school districts, especially our neediest school districts.”

Robin Steans, president of Advance Illinois, said the formula is designed to provide a base amount that districts can count on year after year. Any new evidence-based funding a district receives becomes part of its base funding in the future year.

“This predictability can be quite helpful to districts for planning purposes,” said Steans. “For many districts, including CPS, their base funding minimums have grown over the past five years as they have received new evidence-based funding.”

Nearly 60 school districts, including many surrounding Chicago, will get a larger share of the $350 million in new money after being reclassified due to enrollment shifts and property wealth adjustments.

Among them is Lincoln Way Community High School District 210, which saw a 131% increase in the number of students identified as English Language Learners. Similarly, Warren Township High School District 121 saw a 20% increase in students learning English.

Another district getting a larger share of the new state education money is Homewood Flossmoor District 233, which saw declining enrollment but also had a drop in property wealth, according to the formula.

Last year, an analysis released by a group of legislators, superintendents, and experts tasked with overseeing the new funding model estimated that it would take until 2042 to fully fund schools if the state continues to invest $350 million — considered the base amount.

Pritzker and the general assembly hoped that the more than $7 billion in emergency COVID federal funding the state received will make up for not being able to add more than $350 million toward the state funding formula.

State education advocates have warned that without an increase in state funding schools will be seeing a cut in services because districts base long-term staffing positions on state funding, not short-term federal funding.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org. Becky Vevea is Chalkbeat Chicago’s Bureau Chief. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkeat.org.

Chicago delays plan for new Near South Side high school amid mounting concerns

2022-06-22T23:59:48+00:00

Amid mounting concerns, Chicago Public Schools is postponing plans to build a new $120 million high school on the Near South Side to give district officials time to resolve community questions.

The unexpected delay comes after years of pressure from leaders in Chinatown and some surrounding communities, who want the school district to build a new high school for students in the area because they say current options are too far away and low-performing.

The proposed project unveiled earlier this month would construct a high school on Chicago Housing Authority land where the Harold Ickes Homes once stood near 24th and State streets.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez made the unexpected announcement early during Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting where members were set to vote on the proposed high school as part of its $9.5 billion budget for the upcoming school year. The district had budgeted $70 million for the high school, and is expected to get $50 million from the state.

Martinez said the high school would be removed from the budget for now so district officials could do its “due diligence” to answer questions from the community.

“I want to take a little bit more time to answer questions that exist in the community about this proposal and our partnership with the CHA,” Martinez said.

The project faced criticism from board members and community members who said the community was left out of the planning process and raised concerns about enrollment losses at nearby schools.

District officials last week acknowledged that while CPS was seeing declining enrollment overall, neighborhoods like the Near South Side were seeing growth. They said enrollment impacts to nearby high schools, such as Benito Juarez Academy and Kelly High School would be minimal.

But member Elizabeth Todd-Breland pushed back saying, “every decision that we make around one school in this district impacts other schools.”

The idea of a high school for the Near South Side has been floated around for years. A previous plan would have converted National Teachers Academy – which is a block away from the proposed site – from an elementary school to a high school. But in 2018, a judge stopped the school district from doing so after NTA parents filed a lawsuit. Board members have urged the district to do community outreach early but that had not been done, Todd-Breland said.

“It feels disrespectful to us as board members that that feedback is never acted upon,” Todd-Breland said, “If we feel disrespected as board members, how does the community feel?”

Board President Miguel del Valle acknowledged the concerns of other members including issues around engagement but said the district “can’t walk away” from $50 million from the state.

“When I hear about an opportunity for a new building for a modern facility, I have to jump at the opportunity,” del Valle said.

During Wednesday’s board meeting, Sendhil Revuluri echoed fellow board members saying he wasn’t sure why a new school was on the table, especially in the face of persistent enrollment declines. After building a school, the district would need to think about the budget to operate a new school in the face of already constrained budgets, Revuluri said.

The district would need to confront the reality of enrollment, decades of racism, and a CPS budget that is inadequate by the state’s calculations, he added.

For years, the Chinatown neighborhood has been advocating for a new high school in the area to serve the community and nearby neighborhoods, such as Bridgeport and South Loop.

During public comment at Wednesday’s meeting, community members from Chinatown and Bridgeport lobbied in support for the high school. They included Chris Kanich, a community member who urged the board to move forward with the vote.

The delay comes as two board members – Luisiana Melendez and Lucino Sotelo – step down from the board. Two board members will be appointed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Following the announcement, Todd-Breland asked Martinez what had changed in the last few days. Martinez said the district needed more time to address questions from the community.

“I don’t want to bring in an item with such complexity to the board unless I’m answering key questions in the community,” Martinez said. “I still saw a lot of questions coming in today.”

“We are trying to address a need, and frankly, we need to make sure the community sees it that way,” Martinez added.

The proposed high school will return before the board in the “near future,” Martinez said.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools unveils $9.5 billion budget for upcoming school year

2022-06-07T22:12:20+00:00

Chicago Public Schools unveiled a 2022-23 district budget Tuesday totaling $9.5 billion, up roughly $200 million, or about 2%, from this school year.

Under its proposed plan, the district is gearing up to spend more on about 1,600 added teaching and other staff positions, expanded professional development, and facility projects — and on servicing its significant debt. Next year’s budget is the first for CEO Pedro Martinez, a one-time finance chief at the district, who inherited this school year’s spending plan when he took over at the helm last September.

Notably absent was any reference to former CEO Janice Jackson’s signature Moving Forward Together pandemic recovery initiative, which was supposed to be in its second year in 2022-23 — though the district will stick with some investments under that framework, such as an in-house tutoring program that was off to a slower-than-planned start this school year. The district, which owes some $8.6 billion, will spend $769 million on debt service payments, slightly more than last year.

Overall, $4.6 billion will go directly into school budgets, representing about 48% of the overall budget, a slightly larger portion compared with this school year. Amid declining student enrollment that accelerated during the pandemic, that campus funding adds up to an 8% increase per pupil. The district will spend $765 million for facilities, a roughly 14% increase over this year.

District officials said the focus will be on the academic and mental health recovery that remained elusive this year, as well as social and emotional learning and professional growth for educators. The district, which said it has spent about 45% of $2.8 billion in federal emergency COVID relief funds, is budgeting another $730 million of those dollars.

Some of the money will buttress pre-pandemic initiatives and programs, such as a pre-kindergarten expansion, grants for schools dealing with steep enrollment declines, and the rollout of the district’s universal Skyline curriculum.

“We’re investing these funds strategically, setting a new foundation for success to ensure schools have the resources and capacity to move every student forward,” Martinez said in a statement.

The school board will vote on the budget at its June 22 meeting. District leaders set the stage for the budget unveiling at their meeting in May, when they spoke at length about what they described as a murky long-term financial outlook for the country’s third-largest district, with a historic infusion of federal COVID relief dollars only a temporary salve.

Martinez and some school board members voiced frustration that the district does not have the ability to ask the city’s taxpayers to raise their taxes to chip in more for operating and facility expenses.

This year’s $9.3 billion budget grew by about 10% from the previous year, thanks to roughly $1 billion federal COVID relief dollars. It featured more modest spending on facilities projects, a tab that had shrunk in recent years before this coming year’s proposed hike.

The district first announced its campus budgets in April, drawing criticism because budgets would shrink on 40% of campuses amid significant pandemic-era enrollment losses, even though the district was allocating more dollars to schools overall.

Critics including the district’s principal association, teachers union, and parent advocacy groups called for holding school budgets harmless for the third year in a row as the city’s schools make a plodding pandemic recovery.

Through an annual process in which school leaders appeal the size of their budgets, the district has since restored about $24 million in funding, including $14 million for special education. The district also distributed professional development and other centrally budgeted dollars among campuses, boosting overall school budget amounts and shrinking the amount of the cuts to a total of $18.6 million, with about 23% of campuses now seeing lower budgets.

Principals, parents, and others are urging the district to step up spending its federal pandemic relief dollars to address pressing student academic and mental health needs. District leaders have pushed back in recent weeks, arguing that deploying the extra money gradually over three years will make for more sustainable expenses.

Next year’s investments with that funding include $100 million for early childhood programs, $72 million for centrally funded teaching positions, $45 million for professional development, and $30 million in summer school programming.

The district said next year’s budget includes 43,376 full-time employee positions, an increase of 1,620, including 524 teachers, 112 nurses, and 53 counselors, among others. The new educator positions include 100 additional art teachers as the district said it put a premium on expanding arts instruction along with reducing class sizes and boosting professional development. Special education funding is up $68 million.

The budget will also pay for a new initiative to reengage 1,000 young people who have disconnected from school for a year or longer during the pandemic.

Officials noted the district remains funded at just 68% of what the state estimates would represent “adequate” funding — and vowed to continue pushing for more resources.

Last month, the Chicago Board of Education narrowly approved increasing a pension payment to a city employee pension fund from $100 million to $170 million. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, one of the no votes, argued the district needs every dollar it can steer toward student needs as it tries to bounce back from the pandemic.

In response to Tuesday’s budget update, the Chicago Teachers Union argued the mayor was balancing city hall’s budget on the backs of students.

“Chicago Public Schools students and families have dealt with two years of trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the trauma many of them face from gun violence, discrimination, regressive fines and fees, and neglect of their communities,” the union said in a statement. “They’ve had enough of ‘tough.’ What they need is recovery, with compassionate, competent leadership that is leading that recovery — not cuts to their schools and classrooms.”

The district will host public hearings on the budget ahead of the board vote, from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. June 13 and from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. June 15 at its headquarters, at 42 W. Madison St. Hearings on the capital budgets will be held virtually at: noon June 15, 4 p.m. June 16, and 11:30 a.m. June 17.

Correction: This story was updated to reflect that $4.6 billion will go directly into school budgets.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board approves $170 million pension payment

2022-05-25T22:36:33+00:00

Chicago Public Schools leaders raised alarms about long-term financial pressures looming for the country’s third-largest district, arguing that like others in the state, it should have the ability to ask its residents to raise their own taxes to pay for operating and building project expenses.

The wide-ranging discussion came Wednesday as a divided board voted to significantly increase the district’s contribution to a city employee pension fund. The board also faced ongoing criticism over trimming some campus budgets next year, though officials recently reversed some of those cuts.

At the board’s regular monthly meeting, the district administration reiterated that it’s investing more in schools next year amid steep pandemic enrollment declines and is putting a premium on ensuring “reasonable” class sizes, arts programming, and academic interventions across the board. And officials gave a broad breakdown of how they have spent about $1 billion in federal COVID relief dollars so far, along with a more detailed outline of $600 million in additional spending planned for 2022-23.

But those dollars will be gone in two years, officials stressed, and the district’s prospects for additional revenue are murky at best — as Chicago gears up for a transition to an elected school board.

“This elected school board should have some of the same authority every other district in the state has to go to the voters for both operating and capital expenses,” said board president Miguel del Valle.

CEO Pedro Martinez similarly expressed frustration that the district is currently limited in asking Chicago’s taxpayers for help in chipping in for building improvements — an option he says was available at districts where he worked in Nevada and Texas.

CPS, which is gearing up to release its complete budget later this summer, announced its campus budgets in April. The district is allocating more dollars to schools overall, but critics pounced on proposed budget cuts at 40% of campuses amid significant pandemic-era enrollment losses.

The district’s principal association, teachers union, and some parent advocacy groups have argued that the district should hold school budgets harmless for the third year in a row to account for heightened student academic and mental health needs.

The district has since restored about $24 million in cuts, including $14 million for special education, following appeals from school leaders. The district also divvied up educator professional development and other dollars that had previously been centrally budgeted among school campuses, boosting overall school budget amounts. With these revisions, the overall amount of the cuts decreased to $18.6 million, with about 23% of campuses now seeing lower budgets.

But advocates and outgoing Chicago Teachers Union president Jesse Sharkey continued to make a case against any cuts to the board Wednesday.

“As long as staff is being cut from schools that are already short-staffed, you’ll hear me speak out against these cuts,” Sharkey said.

Sharkey also decried a ballooning payment to a city employee pension fund at a time when Illinois, by its own calculation, found Chicago receives about 63% of the money it needs to be fully funded.

The district is on the hook for $170 million to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, a pension fund that covers its support staff — up from $100 million last year. This will be the third year the district will contribute for its employees’ pensions, an expense the city has previously handled.

“If the money isn’t there, let’s say we cannot afford to give $170 million to the city,” Sharkey said.

But del Valle said stepping in to cover pension expenditures for the district’s own employees is a key step in “disentangling” the district from the city as Chicago Public Schools transitions to an elected school board from one historically appointed by the mayor.

He called on the teachers union to join the district in advocating for more money from the state to help meet these pension obligations, which he said threaten to open up a “humongous structural deficit.”

Still, he stressed, “These pension payments are CPS employees. They are our responsibility.”

Board vice president Sendhil Revuluri said that over the years the city put “wildly inadequate” contributions into the fund, and Chicago now faces growing payments to catch up on increasing obligations. The $170 million represents about 65% of this year’s tab, with the city picking up the rest.

The board backed the increased payment on a 3-to-2 vote. Member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, one of the no votes, argued the district really needs every dollar it can steer toward student needs as it tries to bounce back from the pandemic.

“I’m not comfortable with having City Hall balance any more of their budget on CPS’ budget,” said Todd-Breland, who added “This is one of those times where we’re being asked to do this on a timeline that does not work for CPS.”

Correction: The article’s headline has been updated to reflect the total pension payment approved by the board.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago teachers union, parents blast steep budget cuts to Little Village school: ‘We cannot take another cut’

2022-04-26T19:11:49+00:00

Nearly 50 parents, students, teachers, community groups, and union leaders stood outside Zapata Academy Tuesday morning to condemn budget cuts proposed by the district, which the group says would harm students still reeling from the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

More resources – not fewer – are needed to help in students’ recovery on the Southwest Side, said the speakers, who included teachers union president Jesse Sharkey, Ald. Michael Rodriguez, and State Rep. Celina Villanueva, adding to the chorus urging Chicago Public Schools to rescind its proposed cuts.

The district has said the massive cuts are driven by a drop in enrollment. CPS has experienced a net loss of about 25,000 students during the pandemic, with current enrollment at 330,400 students. An unprecedented number of students — more than 53,000 — left for other districts, private schools, and homeschooling.

Juan Sanchez, a local school council teacher representative and Zapata parent, said the high quality education offered at the elementary school was “under threat” by the district’s proposed budget.

Nearly 50 Chicago Teachers Union members, parents, elected officials, and community groups decry budget cuts at Zapata Academy.

Zapata Academy, which has seen a 10% drop in students from fall 2020 to fall 2021, was slated to lose more than $894,000, or about 13% of its budget, next fall — a cut that could claim eight teaching positions and a preschool classroom. The district has since said it will reverse a portion of this cut.

The cuts would “negatively impact students, our families, and community” by increasing class sizes and reducing resources for “our most struggling students.”

“CPS has chosen —it’s a choice— to undercut, underfund and undermine schools like Zapata’s ability to adequately educate our children,” Sanchez added.

Last month, the district unveiled the proposed 2022-23 budget, which would cut budgets at 40% of CPS schools amid enrollment declines.

Since the budget was unveiled in March, groups including the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and Raise Your Hand have criticized the district’s decision to cut school budgets when it has received $2.8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds. Last month, Chicago Board members expressed concern that the district wasn’t using these federal funds fast enough to meet the needs of students now.

The district’s principals association has also been a vocal critic, urging board members to talk to principals and refrain from supporting the district’s final budget without more dollars for schools. Two more press conferences and rallies are scheduled ahead of the Board of Education’s monthly meeting.

Asked about the concerns raised, the district said it was committed to providing “a high-quality, equitable and inclusive education for all Pre-K-12 students.”

“CPS has spent millions of federal COVID-19 relief dollars on everything from additional teachers and staff to air filtration systems for every classroom and will continue to thoughtfully invest in the education of our students, including more than $290 million of new investments, funded centrally and at the school-level, in the 2022-23 school year,” CPS spokeswoman Mary Fergus said in an email statement.

The school-level budget adjustments are “only in relation to enrollment declines,” Fergus said.

Class sizes at the school were expected to remain in the 20s, while providing resources for arts instruction and intervention teachers, Fergus said.

Additional resources for professional development and summer programming would be funded through the central office, according to the district.

Outside a mayoral event at a North Side restaurant last week, about 50 parents and organizers denounced budget cuts and called for Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools to use more of its COVID relief funds to aid neighborhood schools hardest hit by COVID-19.

The budget cuts would be hardest felt on the South and West Side schools, said Jitu Brown, parent and national director of Journey 4 Justice.

“Those budget cuts are not equitable across the city of Chicago,” Brown said. “But with $2.8 billion in the coffers, the choice is to continue to slash the budgets in schools that are already suffering from deep systematic racial inequities.”

Black and brown schools are being “starved” and “sabotaged” of essential resources, he said.

The school-based budgeting approach to funding schools will ultimately result in declining enrollment and the closing of more schools, Brown added.

“Stop talking about racial justice if you don’t mean it,” Brown said, calling on the mayor to make schools “whole” with federal relief funds.

“Why is underfunding our schools negotiable?” Brown asked. “Why is that even on the table?”

Little Village, North Lawndale, and Avondale schools are among the neighborhoods facing steep cuts, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

Pilsen parent Glenda Campoverde, who has been on the Benito Juarez local school council, said city leaders and the district officials need to invest in “our youth” and “not take money away” from Black and Latino schools.

Parent Rousemary Vega called the proposed budget a “sneak attack against parents, students and teachers.” The $60 million budget cuts will harm neighborhood schools and eventually lead to school closures especially in Black and Latino schools, the Raise Your Hand parent organizer said.

“We cannot take another cut,” Vega said. “Invest in our children now.”

Outside Zapata elementary school Tuesday, Jaquelina Salgado, a fourth grade bilingual education teacher, called the budget cuts a “distressing situation” that could eliminate at least eight teachers in the coming school year and increase class sizes.

“There is no good reason why my future students should be crammed into a classroom where I will have great difficulty meeting their academic, their social, their emotional needs,” Salgado said. “They deserve so much more.”

Ald. Michael Rodriguez, who represents a majority of the Little Village community, called on the district to restore funds to the schools, especially as they are trying to provide support to students in a community that has been among the city’s hardest hit by COVID..

“The school and community is faced with massive budget cuts that puts our children’s future at risk,” Rodriguez said. “Yes, we have enrollment decreases, driven by population loss but we also have equity needs.”

The community needed “equitable distribution of resources and investments in our kids, not cuts” to their education, he added.

Jesse Sharkey, president of the teachers union, said the union committed to fighting the cuts and restoring neighborhood schools’ budgets.

“This is a fight which we are not going to turn our backs on,” Sharkey said. “We have utmost determination that we will defend this school and other schools like it. We will not accept budget cuts to our schools in a pandemic when the money is there specifically to help our schools during a pandemic.”

Marta Lopez, a Zapata school counselor, said the cuts and elimination of paraprofessionals would also undermine the special education support.

“These cuts make It so much difficult to support the kids and their needs,” Lopez said. “The community already suffered the stress of the impact of COVID and making these cuts adds more stress to students, families, and teachers because we have to deal with supporting more kids with less people.”

During morning dropoff at Zapata, parent Enedina Anguiano said she learned about the proposed cuts a week ago and worried how the cuts to school staff would change the services the school provides to her three students, two of whom receive special education and extra support.

With less staff, Anguiano doesn’t think her daughter and son would have as much one-on-one time with teachers and paraprofessionals who have been so helpful for her children.

“I don’t think it’s fair, she said. “There’s a lot of kids depending on those extra teachers that help kids learn.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois lawmakers pass budget with more money for schools, tax relief for families

2022-04-13T17:24:09+00:00

Illinois legislators approved a budget plan over the weekend that includes more funding for K-12 public schools, a modest increase for early childhood education, and tax relief for families.

The spring legislative session was expected to end at midnight Friday, but lawmakers blew past the deadline to vote on a $46 billion budget proposal early Saturday morning. With the state starting to rebound from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, the 2023 fiscal year budget includes $350 million toward the evidence-based funding formula for K-12 public schools and $1.8 billion in tax relief for working families hit hardest by rising costs of food, utilities, and gasoline.

Gov. J.B Pritzker praised the passage of the budget and the tax relief bill at a press conference on Saturday morning, saying, “We’ve achieved our state’s strongest fiscal position in generations, and we prioritized the education, public safety, health, and welfare of the residents of Illinois.”

The general assembly voted to increase the state’s K-12 education budget to $9.7 billion. The budget plan includes $350 million toward the evidence-based formula that will disperse funding through a tier system and property tax relief grants to the state’s K-12 school districts. For early education, the legislature’s plan increased the state board of education’s Early Childhood block grant to $598.1 million, a 10% increase from last year.

The state department of human services’ Early Intervention program— which supports children with disabilities from birth to 3 years old — had funding restored after a $7 million cut last year. The Child Care Assistance Program, which subsidizes the cost of child care for low-income working families, did not receive an increase this year.

The Monetary Award Program, otherwise known as MAP, provides scholarships to students who demonstrate financial need. The fund has grown to $601 million in the latest budget plan and would give an additional 24,000 students funding for tuition and fees as they pursue an undergraduate degree. The maximum award for students increased from $6,438 last year to $8,508 this year.

In addition to the money going to education, the proposal includes tax breaks and direct checks for families. Individuals earning less than $200,000 or families making less than than $400,000 can receive a one-time payment of $50 per adult and $100 per child, up to three children. The package also includes a “Back to School” tax relief for families and teachers for school supplies and clothing items.

The Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the state’s largest teachers unions, praised the passing of the budget on Saturday because of the increased funding for K-12 schools.

“Budgeting for the annual $350 million increase to the evidence-based funding model puts our state one year closer to achieving equitable funding and eliminating disparities in districts statewide,” said union president Dan Montgomery.

Sen. Cristina Pacione-Zayas, (D-Chicago), a former state board of education member, said “there’s a lot to celebrate.”

Pacione-Zayas, along with early education advocates, pushed for a 10% increase across the board for early childhood education funding. In the plan approved by the legislature, only the Early Childhood block grant got a 10% boost. But Pacione-Zayas said she was happy to see funds restored to Early Intervention.

The general assembly’s budget plan is in line with what Pritzker proposed during his budget address in February. In a press conference last week announcing the budget deal with Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Chris Welch, Pritzker said that he would sign the budget into law because it is a “responsible, balanced budget” that puts working families first.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that the state’s department of human services received an additional $41 million for the Child Care Assistance Program in the budget. This story has been updated to reflect that program did not receive an increase.

Pritzker proposes 5.4% increase to education funding in 2023 budget

2022-02-02T18:47:15+00:00

In the first reveal of his election year budget proposal Wednesday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker outlined a modest increase to the state school funding formula and more money for bus service, special education, college scholarships for low-income students, and the state’s youngest learners.

Pritzker laid out plans on Wednesday for a smaller 2023 state operating budget of $45.4 billion compared to the previous year’s. But it includes more investments in education as schools continue to confront the academic and emotional impact of the pandemic on children.

This is the first year since the start of the pandemic that the governor has proposed an increase in education spending during his State of the State and Budget Address. Detailing his plans Wednesday, he said those investments “will go a long way toward meeting our goal of making Illinois the best state in the nation to raise young children.”

He touted in particular his administration’s efforts to prioritize grants for child care programs as part of the state’s economic recovery.

This year, the governor plans to increase the state’s education general fund by $498.1 million — a 5.4% increase — for an overall budget of $9.7 billion. This will add $350.2 million to the formula that disperses funding through a tier system and property tax relief grants to the state’s K-12 school districts. Illinois lawmakers will make the final call on the state’s budget at the end of the session.

This year’s budget proposal is mostly in line with a state board of education proposal from December. The board recommended an increase of $475 million with $350 million going towards the evidence-based funding — a bipartisan effort to fully fund all schools and close funding gaps between wealthy school districts and under-resourced districts. The board also said it needed more money to increase spending on transportation, agricultural education, and truancy officers to combat chronic absenteeism.

“Our students and educators are facing the challenge of a lifetime teaching and learning as we emerge from the pandemic,” said state school superintendent Carmen Ayala in a statement, adding that the investments will mean more teachers, wraparound supports, and early childhood programs.

Lawmakers pledged to add a minimum of $350 million to the funding formula each year — with a goal of more — but Pritzker kept the funding formula flat in 2020, which meant no new state dollars flowing to districts.

Last year’s budget proposal also recommended flat funding, but was reversed during the spring legislative session and $350 million was put into the formula, which was later approved by the general assembly.

Some advocates were hoping the Pritzker administration would put in even more money to the funding formula to make up for missed payments and to help keep the pace of rising costs.

Dan Montgomery, the president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday in a statement that the union saw the increase as “a step” toward adequately funding schools but would like to see the governor and General Assembly work together to do more.

Districts have reported rising costs on everything from salaries, amid a crippling staffing shortage, to building upkeep and maintenance. Illinois school districts are receiving more than $7 billion across three federal emergency stimulus packages to help with pandemic-related costs.

Robin Steans, president of the nonprofit Advance Illinois, called the budget proposal good news and said she feels hopeful after hearing the governor’s speech on Wednesday.

“This is one of those rare budgets where we have a fiscally responsible budget,” Steans said, “but it’s one that is proposing needed investments and it’s doing it across the entirety of the educational continuum, which is just wonderful to see and good for kids.”

Pritzker, who is running for re-election, said Wednesday that the 2023 fiscal year budget indicates the state is in a better position than it has been in previous years. His administration has boasted of a balanced budget, an improved credit rating, and rising revenues from state and federal sources.

Pritzker is proposing a $1 billion tax cut, with the state suspending 1% sales tax on grocery purchases, postponing a scheduled hike in the gasoline tax, and a one-time property tax rebate that will give homeowners about $300.

The proposed boost in education funding in Illinois is in line with what has happened in other states. New York announced plans to increase its education budget by $2.1 billion in January, for a total of $31.3 billion. The state’s equivalent of Illinois’ evidence-based funding formula, known as Foundation Aid, will see an increase of $1.6 billion. Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, proposed historic increases to the 2022-2023 education budget in November. The state would increase its K-12 education spending to $6.6.billion, a 3% increase.

Some early education budget lines flat

This year, the governor is proposing a 12% increase for the Early Childhood Block Grant, which insiders say could foot the bill for expanding many of the state’s half-day preschool programs to full-day and to raise salaries of a mostly-female workforce that earns a median $13 per hour.

Pritzker, a billionaire philanthropist who donated generously to early education efforts before taking office, kept spending on the state’s youngest learners mostly flat in the previous budget — a disappointing outcome for policymakers who spent the better part of 2020 studying ways to expand services for children under 5.

This year’s proposal keeps flat some other critical areas of early childhood spending, including an Early Intervention program for young children with developmental delays and other disabilities and the Child Care Assistance Program, a key reimbursement program for child care providers who offer low- or no-cost child care to low-income families and parents attending school.

Ireta Gasner, the vice president of Illinois policy for the national non-profit Start Early, said she appreciated the proposed increase in the education grant. However, she warned of level support for critical efforts such as Early Intervention, particularly when referrals and evaluations for young children are on the rise.

“The proposal doesn’t make significant progress toward the badly-needed transformation of our system,” Gasner said.

Throughout the pandemic, the Pritzker administration nudged up reimbursement rates and issued business recovery grants to stave off closures that have decimated the industry in other states. Advocates had urged the governor’s office to put more money toward child care reimbursements and continue to assist providers, who have struggled with thin margins during the pandemic.

The proposed early education budget increase comes on the heels of a stalled federal investment for universal preschool through President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. In all, Illinois spends a little under $2 billion its young learners — a fraction of what it spends on K-12.

A boost for scholarships and higher ed

Pritzker campaigned on a promise to increase the number of low-income students who receive college scholarships, and his proposal delivers the most substantial boost to that effort of his term. The state’s Monetary Assistance Program, or MAP, would grow to $601 million, a 25% increase that would mean about 24,000 additional high school seniors receive funding, the state projected.

Illinois also plans to boost the maximum award, from $6,438 per student to $8,508, which is roughly half the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Overall, Illinois only spends about 5% of its overall budget on its higher education system. An increase from the previous year, Pritzker’s $2.2 billion proposal includes $68 million more to help stabilize community colleges and public universities and additional monies for career and technical education certification programs and scholarships for minority teachers.

The proposal also includes $230 million to help rescue the state’s prepaid college tuition program, which has been headed for insolvency.

Illinois state board of education wants budget boost of $475 million for next school year

2021-12-15T23:55:16+00:00

Illinois’ top educator, Carmen Ayala, wants $475 million more next school year to hire truancy officers, cover additional transportation and early childhood costs, and put more money in the state’s school funding formula.

The state school board on Wednesday approved her recommendation, which would bring the total Illinois education budget to $9.7 billion. The request now goes to the governor, before heading to the general assembly for the final approval.

Robert Wolfe, financial officer for the state board of education, told the state school board Wednesday that the proposal includes an increase of $350 million into the evidence funding formula. If passed, this would be the third year that the state puts in the agreed-upon minimum but nothing more, even as advocates and superintendents push for a greater contribution to plug gaps for districts serving low-income students.

Education advocates raised alarms about this issue when Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the 2022 education budget. They argued that without more state funding going into the formula to keep up with the cost of inflation, school districts will see a cut that could impact permanent funding for staffing and long-term programs. Even though the state now has over $7 billion in COVID relief funding from the federal government, those funds will dry up by 2024.

While the state’s funding formula won’t see a major increase, there would be a significant investment in transportation and special education if the budget boost is approved. Under the proposal, the state would increase the general education transportation budget to $305 million and transportation for students with disabilities would increase to over $415 million.

Wolfe said during the board meeting that it was hard to predict the cost of transportation next school year because of the bus driver shortage, inflation, and rising fuel prices.

“What we put into place is an appropriation level based upon our best projection,” Wolfe said.

Ayala’s recommendations include $54.4 million more for early childhood education, increasing the state education department’s contribution from $543 million to $598 million, with 37% going to Chicago Public Schools. The bulk of Illinois’ spending on children under 5 flows through other state agencies.

Agricultural education would receive an increase of $2 million in 2023 for a total funding recommendation of $7 million.

The budget recommendation includes a line item for an additional $12 million that would go to state Regional Education Offices to hire at least four more truancy officers each who can address truancy and chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism increased from 16.5% in 2019 to 21.2% in 2021 during the 2020-2021 school year.

In Illinois, students who are chronically absent have missed 18-20 days of the school year whether they have an excused or unexcused absence, while students who are truant are absent without a valid reason.

Pritzker is expected to give his budget address on Feb. 2, 2022.

Some Chicago schools in high-poverty areas lost 1 in 7 teachers to layoffs

2021-09-27T11:00:00+00:00

Laila McKinney was dreading senior year at Chicago’s King College Prep. Not just because of COVID-19. Not just because last year was disrupted by remote learning.

But because the 18-year-old’s long-term dance teacher, someone she considers a cherished mentor, and her journalism teacher wouldn’t be there. The two were among the 562 educators — 272 teachers and 290 non-teacher employees — laid off by Chicago Public Schools at the end of last school year.

The number of layoffs this past spring was the lowest in several years. Still, a Chalkbeat analysis found the layoffs hit small schools in high-poverty areas disproportionately hard. Most schools with clusters of three or more teacher layoffs were shrinking campuses, with at least seven of the 22 schools considered “underutilized” by the district, meaning their enrollment falls significantly short of the building capacity.

At least two schools, King and Christian Fenger Academy, laid off 15% of their staff, though Fenger was among the few schools on the list that has gained enrollment over the past two years and planned to add staff this year, according to budget documents. Representatives from King and Fenger did not respond to requests for comment before publication time.

Every spring brings a cycle of layoffs in Chicago in response to factors such as budget, enrollment, and programmatic changes. The district rehires the vast majority of laid-off staff each fall, usually at different campuses. When asked to provide the number of teachers rehired this fall, the district could not provide an updated tally by publication time, and instructed Chalkbeat to file a public records request.

Chicago’s teacher layoff numbers are under particular scrutiny this fall for two reasons. Advocates and the Chicago Teachers Union say the district should have used federal pandemic relief money to prevent the layoffs. They asserted the layoffs take a toll on school programming, resources, and communities, making it difficult to recruit new students when enrollment starts to fall.

The other reason is enrollment, and how continued enrollment declines could put pressure on some schools to retain staff. Last fall, after the pandemic’s onset, Chicago Public Schools reported its sharpest enrollment drop in two decades. If the decline continues, some schools likely will lose more students than others, potentially putting them in the position of losing funding to hire teachers and facing more layoffs.

Asked about this year’s numbers, a district spokesman, James Gherardi, said 59 teachers who were laid off had one-year positions related to the pandemic and that this fall, the district planned to hire for 2,000 open teaching and staffing positions. Gherardi said he expected many laid-off teachers to be rehired for other positions in the district. Last school year, the district laid off nearly 290 teachers and rehired 72% in full-time positions.

However, advocates say the cycle of layoffs and rehires causes uncertainty and upheaval for the schools that chart the highest layoff numbers. A 2013 study found New York City students in grade levels with higher teacher turnover scored lower in English and math, and that these effects were amplified in schools with more low-performing and Black students.

For students such as Laila, the layoffs strike a personal chord.

“I remember crying,” Laila said, recalling when she heard her dance teacher was laid off. “It broke my heart. You develop relationships with these teachers. Ms. Kahphira isn’t just my dance teacher. She helped me a lot through the pandemic, as well.”

Returning to an unfamiliar place

District officials argue that layoffs are a regular part of the business operations for a big district and that despite the pandemic’s impact, teacher staffing has been relatively stable (the district has, however, struggled to fill bus driver and substitute positions) Chicago touted a start to the school year with 97% of its teaching positions filled, and data obtained by Chalkbeat showed that resignations in the spring declined, following a trend of steady decreases.

Still, the pattern of layoffs troubles students and teachers at the schools most affected. They say the process is demoralizing and amplifies disruption in an already tumultuous year.

Christian Fenger Academy laid off five of its 29 teachers in spring. Among those laid off was Xochitl Infante, who taught social studies and other subjects at the school for more than a decade.

With clusters of layoffs, Infante said, “You’re fracturing what little community has been built.”

Infante started teaching in 2009, the year Fenger student Derrion Albert was killed on his way to a bus stop. Fights broke out in the school often in the months and years that followed; parents protested for days outside Fenger, and enrollment continued to drop.

“Every year that they see you come back, those kids gain a little bit more trust. You’ve got to earn those kids’ trust,” Infante said. “Those kids were responding to the city taking their community from them. That’s why we have so many discipline issues.”

It took years for the school to build back its community. Recently, Infante recalls going all-out to compete against Fenger’s music teacher in door-decorating contests, and battling students and teachers in the “Cupcake Wars” led by Fenger’s culinary teacher. Both of those teachers lost their jobs at Fenger this June, too.

Infante was not rehired for another full-time teaching job before the fall started but will stay with the district this year and is currently categorized as a reassigned teacher.

At Fenger, she was the school’s only Embarc teacher. Embarc is a district-wide three-year program that connects high schoolers from low-income families to community-based opportunities and provides college and career readiness training. Until school reopened in August, this year’s cohort had only experienced the program remotely.

After Infante left Fenger, a new teacher took her place to close out the sequence. But the program is not supposed to be implemented that way, Infante said, noting that long-term teacher-student relationships are Embarc’s foundation.

The cut has happened before: Her first Embarc group saw the school discontinue the program for their junior year. (It was later reinstated amid popular student demand.)

Senior Taqueria Halsey credits the program — specifically, Infante’s teaching — for strengthening her personal relationships and for teaching her how to assert herself. She used those skills this summer to connect with students at her dream college and navigate the application process.

“With her not being here, my senior year is going to be hard,” Taqueria said. “She was almost the only one that followed us. It’s going to be hard going back to new teachers … [and to] brand new classes that I’ve never seen before.”

Declining enrollment spurs tough decisions

Chicago Public Schools operates according to a student-based budgeting system, meaning funding ties largely to enrollment, and schools with declining enrollment can feel budget pressures. Since 2019, the district has given equity grants to schools with consistently declining enrollment to try to bolster program offerings for students.

But enrollment can fluctuate, and those equity funds are not a guarantee. When schools receiving equity grants see student count rebound, however, they can lose some or all of those additional funds. That could explain layoffs at some schools that have gained enrollment and even positions.

Little Village’s Multicultural Arts School and West Town’s Mancel Talcott School were also among schools with the highest layoff rates, with about 12% and 10% of teachers laid off, respectively.

These schools are small to mid-size: Multicultural Arts had an enrollment of 225 last fall, while Talcott served 425 students.

Politically, the district has faced considerable pressure to keep smaller schools open, and moving forward, a new law makes any sort of consolidation or closure in the next few years unlikely. The law that establishes school board elections for Chicago for the first time also contains a provision that, from 2022 on, blocks CPS officials from closing or consolidating schools until elected board members take their seats in 2025.

As federal pandemic relief dollars hit the district this fall, some education finance researchers say they’re wary that school districts could spread resources too thin across schools that are losing students. Marguerite Roza, who runs Edunomics Lab, a school finance think tank at Georgetown University, says declining enrollment trends are first triggered by demographic changes or competing school choices, not by cuts to staff.

“A case could be made that there’s a lot going on right now and losing staff in the middle of this jumble — especially if we think enrollment will return — may not be the greatest idea,” Roza said. “At the same time, if you’re going to use one-time federal money for staffing and the kids aren’t going to return, you just push out that pain.”

“It’s not going to be there.”

At King, six teachers were laid off in June — about 15% of the school’s teaching roster at the time. Students there said returning to a new slate of educators shook their sense of stability and made them feel less connected to their classrooms.

Laila, the King senior, has taken classes with former King dance teacher Kahphira Palmer for three years. She calls dancing with Palmer “a lunch break, but not a lunch break.” It was a space where she could express herself and process life: Palmer led Laila and her classmates to choreograph pieces that affirmed their identities and reckoned with ongoing injustices, such as police brutality.

“I wanted to go out big this year — like, with a bang,” Laila said. “I wanted Ms. Kahphira to teach me all she knew this year, and choreograph my senior piece.”

Over the course of the pandemic, Laila also found herself going to Palmer for support in other courses.

Laila started her junior year with D’s and F’s and ended it with A’s, B’s, and C’s. She said she owes much of her success to Palmer’s mentorship. Palmer sharpened her own math skills to help Laila pass algebra, and connected the student with resources online so she could pass the class.

“One thing people need to understand about students and their dance teachers is that it’s like having another parent,” Palmer, who was hired this summer to teach at Carver Military Academy this year, said. “When you’re a dance teacher, you’re molding your students into something.”

In the last week of summer, Laila didn’t even know what would happen in her classes this fall. Less than a week before the start of school, her schedule still hadn’t been posted.

“I signed up for Dance 4. It’s not going to be there. I signed up for Journalism 2. It’s not going to be there,” Laila said before the year started. “I didn’t even go to registration. I didn’t know how things were going to go down.”

Soon, it will be time for Laila to start sending in college applications. But with both her dance teacher and her journalism teacher gone, Laila is no longer sure where to turn for teacher letters of recommendation.

Chicago’s charters enroll more students with disabilities than traditional schools, but funding unclear

2021-07-27T20:12:04+00:00

Chicago’s charter schools enroll a higher percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, but there is no way to track how much funding goes to those students’ education, according to a new report.

Of 18 cities studied by a University of Arkansas research team, Chicago was the only one where charter schools enrolled a larger percentage of students with disabilities than traditional public schools, 15% compared to 14.1%. On average, the study reported that the 18 cities charter schools enrolled 9.5% of students with disabilities, while traditional public schools enrolled 13.1%.

The report, published last week, used data from 2018 to analyze per-pupil spending on students with disabilities at public charter schools.

During the 2017-2018 school year, 372,432 students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools while almost 60,000 students attended charter schools in the city.

Researchers found that charter schools authorized by Chicago Public Schools receive $1,086.77 per pupil in special education funding, but without more detailed centralized accounting for how charters spend that money, researchers were not able to assess whether there is a funding gap between district-run schools and charters.

Chicago Public Schools says that the district allocates funding up front on a per-pupil basis to charter schools based on the number of students requiring special education services at each school as part of regular tuition payment.

According to the district, charters are audited each year and provide an accounting of how their funding was spent but those documents are not readily accessible to the public. Chicago has an appeals process for allocating additional funding to schools if their needs change or if the per-pupil amount is not enough.

While financial documents were available in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and Oakland, CA, school finance experts at the University of Arkansas found that they lacked specificity around special education funding. Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor and co-author of the report, suggested that policymakers in those cities step up and develop clear documentation of all charters revenues and spending.

Corrected: This article has been updated to reflect that there were financial documents in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and Oakland but they lacked specificity in funding for special education.

Citing student trauma from violence and pandemic, Chicago educators call for school budget redo

2021-07-27T11:00:00+00:00

Mike Smith’s classroom was nearly empty when he returned to in-person teaching last spring at Englewood STEM High School. Of the 200 or so students who opted to learn inside the building, only about 25 were showing up each week.

Among them was a young man who was there one day, then gone the next — the victim of six gunshot wounds. The young man survived and came back to campus by the end of the year on crutches.

Smith said that student was on his mind last week when he testified at a series of school board hearings for a $9.3 billion budget for schools. The school board will vote on the budget Wednesday, but Smith and some other educators aren’t satisfied with the proposed amount. After subtracting the costs of long-term debt payments, teachers’ pensions, building maintenance and repairs, centrally managed staff and programs, and districtwide COVID response, schools will see $4.4 billion of this amount next year — which amounts to about $1,370 more per student compared with the previous year.

In public hearings last week, educators argued that the district should spend more on student support personnel, such as counselors. They’d like to see the board delay a vote and revise the budget to route more money to staff and to provide schools with more building-level support for students dealing with trauma.

Smith lost four students to gun violence in 2020 alone. According to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis, children in Chicago are dying from gun violence at a rate three times higher this year than last year. The twin traumas of the COVID-19 pandemic and the city’s escalating gun violence make learning an uphill battle for students at Smith’s school.

The student who was shot is recovering and taking summer classes to make up for lost learning time. But some days, he still finds it hard to engage. He’s not alone — Smith said when teachers ask students how they’re doing, they’ll often respond, “Not today. I’m not in the mood.”

“How can a kid like this learn when there are so many outside things going on?” Smith said.

To make schools safer, Smith and other educators say they don’t want funding for police in schools. Instead, they want more nurses, counselors, librarians, books, housing support, teacher assistants, restorative justice coordinators, and other staff and programs that support student health in a holistic way.

“If we don’t address those needs that go beyond the classroom, classrooms are going to remain empty,” Smith said. “[Bringing students back to school] goes beyond hand sanitizer.”

School board members have said that pandemic recovery will span more than one year — the district’s Moving Forward Together plan is projected to cost more than $525 million across this school year and the next — and that some emergency spending will spill into the 2022-23 school year. What’s more, the district is limited in how much it can spend on long-term personnel and their benefits. So Chicago Public Schools can’t easily use it for long-term solutions, such as hiring staff, board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said at the hearings.

“I hope that this can also be a moment where we come together as a community to galvanize and push for those structural solutions that are really going to be long-term,” Todd-Breland said. Among the solutions she listed was more sustained state funding through the evidence-based funding formula; currently, Chicago is only funded at 66% of the target amount set by the formula.

Meanwhile, the school board is slated to vote Wednesday to once again give district leaders the authority to take pandemic-related actions and spend up to $150 million without board preapproval. The board first took a similar step as the pandemic hit in March 2020, allowing the district to spend up to $75 million without prior board vetting. Officials had argued that amid the crisis, they needed the flexibility to act fast to buy anything from protective equipment to computers and other technology for remote learning.

Across three federal emergency spending packages, Chicago Public Schools will receive about $2.6 billion. It has accounted for $1.8 billion of that, with $800 million spent on remote learning and reopening schools last school year, and another $1 billion factored into this upcoming school year’s budget. That money will go to address:

Learning loss, social emotional supports, and flexible funds for schools to use for academy recovery ($267 million)
The costs of reopening, including personal protective equipment and vaccination efforts for students and teachers ($132 million)
Air quality improvements ($100 million)
Investments in expanded programs, including grants to prop up shrinking schools ($288 million)
Additional counselors and other salaried positions ($178 million)
Money for charters and contract schools ($95 million)

In public testimony last week, educators and some parents argued for more spending on facilities improvements, from air quality upgrades to accessibility measures. They also pressed the district for more details. According to the union, 300 schools need air quality upgrades; district officials say that while work to improve air quality will touch every campus, only 17 schools are specifically scheduled to receive major upgrades this year.

“In some schools, the windows still don’t open,” Chicago Teachers’ Union member Dulce Arroyo said. “[Board members] had the nerve to make it sound like, ‘Well, you know, only 17 schools that are receiving air quality repairs because those are really expensive repairs.’ It’s like, well yeah, they’re expensive because you continue to sweep it under the rug.”

Some parents have taken the opportunity to lobby for improvements to their own campuses or to revive the long-running question about how the district decides how much money to send to each school. That process, known as student-based budgeting, has long been criticized as inequitable, and while the district has moved away from strictly adhering to that process in recent years with such programs as its “equity grants” for shrinking schools, enrollment still largely determines funding.

That bothers Chicago parent Angel Alvarez, who works as a researcher at Northwestern University and has conducted his own analysis of how the district makes budget decisions.

Giving schools a set amount of money per student, he argues, is ineffective: “That’s like saying, ‘I’m going to solve hunger in Chicago by giving everyone a sandwich.’ It’s a stupid idea. Not everyone needs a sandwich … and those who need it should get more than one.”

Alvarez says, as the district seeks to reduce its achievement gap, it should institute a system that more effectively rewards schools that demonstrate academic gains and establishes more productive accountability measures for schools that don’t — measures that help students and aren’t bound up in central administration.

“Making the principal and the teachers do more paperwork might be okay,” Alvarez said. “But that’s not really accountability, if a child still isn’t getting the resources they need.”

Students would be better served with investments in libraries, counselors, and teachers, Alvarez said. They need more direct support.

Cassie Walker Burke contributed to this report.

Gov. Pritzker reverses course on flat Illinois school budget with pledge for $350M

2021-05-06T21:47:33+00:00

The Illinois education budget could increase by $350 million next year — almost 4% — as the state’s economy begins to recover from losses incurred during the coronavirus pandemic.

Thursday’s announcement represents a reversal for Gov. J. B. Pritzker, who said earlier in the year that school funding likely would be flat. Education advocates warned that another year of flat funding would set back the state’s efforts to make up for years of underfunding its neediest districts.

“Parents, students and educators can breathe a sigh of relief. As an education advocate myself, I am all too happy that our improved economic and fiscal condition allows us to increase educational funding,” said Pritzker at a press conference.

The governor’s proposed increase in the state’s almost $9 billion education budget will keep the bipartisan promise the state made in 2017. The state revamped how it funds school districts, earmarking more money each year to systems with the highest needs. Key to that effort was a bipartisan promise to grow the state’s education budget by at least $350 million a year.

Although the state’s economy is starting to improve, the governor warned that Illinois’ budget problems have not gone away. The General Assembly will have to approve the budget proposal by the end of the current legislative session this spring.

The state faced a $3 billion budget deficit last year as revenue decreased. When Pritzker introduced the budget proposal for 2022 in February, he proposed keeping the state’s education budget flat for a second year. At the time, he hoped the $2.8 billion that the state would receive in the second round of federal emergency funding would be enough to help schools.

Education advocates throughout the state warned that federal funding will not be controlled by the state, which uses an evidence based funding formula for distributing money. Instead, the funds go directly to local districts. Also, because federal dollars expire in 2024, any jobs created with that money will be eliminated.

How should Illinois spend its share of another $5.1 billion in federal stimulus funding for schools? Tell us.

2021-03-18T15:15:34+00:00

Illinois is set to receive more than $5 billion in federal stimulus funding for schools, and most of that will go directly to districts. Chicago, the state’s largest district, will receive about $1.8 billion of that — money leaders have said will go toward mounting costs of reopening campuses and addressing learning disruptions from the pandemic.

Superintendents and school boards will have a lot of flexibility to determine where to direct the money, though the federal government has said they must use at least 20% to address learning gaps.

How would you like to see your district spend the money? What priorities should superintendents and school boards keep in mind? Tell us in the survey below.

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Illinois schools could receive $5.2 billion — with $1.8 billion for Chicago — in latest federal stimulus effort

2021-03-10T21:16:34+00:00

Updated at 3:16 p.m.: This story was updated to reflect Chicago Public Schools’ own estimate for how much it will receive from the third stimulus effort.

Illinois is expected to receive $5.2 billion for schools in the third round of emergency federal funding, bringing its total haul of COVID-19 stimulus funding to more than $8 billion since last spring.

That amount of new funding would be welcome news for Illinois schools, which are trying to reopen and recover from a year of disruption but saw their budgets kept flat by the state this year.

Congress approved a $1.9 trillion stimulus package Wednesday that will provide $128.6 billion in funding to K-12 education. President Biden, who proposed and championed the legislation, has promised to quickly sign it into law.

The package is likely the biggest single federal outlay on K-12 education in U.S. history.

Nearly all of the funds for schools have to be distributed through the Title I formula, which means local school districts that serve lots of students from low-income families will get the biggest share. In Illinois, that means about $4.7 billion of the latest round of funding will flow directly to districts.

Chicago Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, said Wednesday afternoon that it expects to receive nearly $1.8 billion from the package. That would amount to about $5,200 additional per student, according to preliminary estimates, and bring Chicago’s total from a combined three stimulus packages to roughly $3 billion across the past year of the pandemic.

Chicago officials said that they planned to use additional money to address “unfinished learning” — the district’s No. 2, LaTanya McDade told Chalkbeat last week that a plan by that name will be made public soon — and to address the social-emotional impact and lingering trauma on students from the pandemic. The district also will use the money toward the mounting costs of reopening schools, such as student and staff testing and cleaning expenses.

“It’s never been more essential to ensure public schools — particularly those that serve high numbers of Black and Latinx students from low-income households — are equitably funded and have the resources necessary to address the unprecedented needs brought on by the pandemic,” said schools chief Janice Jackson. “These funds will ensure we can make the investments needed to address unfinished learning and mounting social and emotional needs.”

The statewide outlook

This third round of federal funding is significantly larger than the previous rounds of emergency funding that the state received — more than $569 million in the spring and almost $2.3 billion in December.

The news comes as the state education department has been lobbying legislators to put more than $350 million more into a spending formula that determines how much school districts receive each year, with another $50 million requested for early childhood education. Gov. J.B. Pritzker kept state education spending flat for a second year straight, saying he anticipated federal funding would be enough to keep districts afloat and that the state’s budget gap has forced hard choices.

Education advocates and superintendents have worried that, even with a windfall of federal emergency funding, not meeting recommended minimums in state education spending will create longer-term budget crunches for districts.

Earlier this week, state education officials testified in front of a House legislative committee that 168 school districts in Illinois are still below 60% adequate funding — and that the state would need to commit closer to $800 million additional dollars per year to meet a bipartisan goal of adequately funding every district in the state by 2027.

State Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said that school districts will have to use at least 20% of the latest federal emergency funds on addressing learning loss. Besides that, schools have the ability to use the money for anything from buying personal protective equipment to setting up after-school programs and tutoring interventions.

As for the share of money that the state will receive for broad spending, technology is still a priority, she said.

“There are no requirements to set aside funds for technology; however, there remains a lot of flexibility and we are really trying to close technology gaps across the state,” she said.

Illinois also plans to petition the federal government to use some of its share of its federal stimulus dollars to help fund a new statewide “Student Care” department tasked with discipline reduction, bullying prevention, and expanding trauma-informed training for educators, and it hopes to invest in teacher mentoring programs aimed at keeping more recruits in classrooms.

More money, more open classrooms?

During her testimony in front of a House committee, Ayala was asked if she would consider using some of the state’s portion of the stimulus money to incentivize more Illinois school districts to reopen classrooms and offer families full-time options for in-person schooling. Currently, more than 1.7 million students, or 89%, attend school in a district where they have the option of some in-person learning, but the state COVID-19 dashboard does not track how many students have a full-time option or have taken it.

“Are you open to tying some level of funding to requiring some … full-time education given that it is safe and in students’ best interest?” asked Rep. Blaine Wilhour, a Republican from Southern Illinois.

Ayala’s response suggested the state will leave such decisions up to superintendents: “We have really worked at encouraging in-person (learning) as much as possible, but we need to recognize that every community has their uniqueness.”

In Washington, D.C., Congressional Republicans voted against the deal en masse and criticized it for funneling money to schools that haven’t offered in-person instruction despite earlier rounds of pandemic relief.

Nationally, the stimulus package, in addition to the relief efforts passed last year, staves off concern that schools would face imminent budget cuts, which were a distinct possibility when the pandemic hit and the economy cratered. The package sets aside another $800 million to be used by the U.S. Department of Education to identify and support students who are homeless. Separately, nearly $3 billion is earmarked to support students with disabilities.

Another $2.75 billion will go to governors to distribute to private schools that serve a “significant” share of low-income students.

Another provision will temporarily expand the child tax credit, which will provide at least $3,000 per child to low- and middle-income families. Overall, the package is projected to reduce the country’s child poverty rate from 13.7% to 6.5%, with particularly large declines for Black and Latino children.

Pritzker’s proposed budget keeps Illinois school funding flat for a second year

2021-02-17T18:21:15+00:00

Illinois will not increase its budget for education for a second year despite advocates’ concerns that a stagnant budget could make it difficult to address lost learning due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Facing down a $3 billion budget deficit, Gov. J.B. Pritzker laid out plans Wednesday for a 2022 state operating budget of $41.7 billion that does not increase taxes for residents but relies on hiring freezes and the closure of a series of corporate tax loopholes. The state’s education budget for kindergarten to 12th grade will remain stagnant at almost $9 billion with no increase to the evidence-based funding formula.

The budget plan keeps funding for early learning and higher education mostly flat, too, but the governor outlined Wednesday some modest increases to the Monetary Award Program, or MAP, that provides grants for low-income college students.

Pritzker said that in drafting his budget proposal he prioritized agencies on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response that are addressing public health and unemployment. Ultimately, schools will see a boost of funding, he said, due to $2.8 billion in emergency federal dollars for education.

“In March of 2020, I promised schools that they wouldn’t lose funding because of the pandemic, and this budget keeps that promise. The federal government has made extraordinary efforts to support schools during this time, with $2.8 billion allocated to schools thus far – and more is expected,” Pritzker said.

“No schools will have to reduce spending,” he promised, “and they can instead focus on meeting the needs of students who have tried to learn in a chaotic and trying time.”

Pritzker also said Wednesday he hoped that schools would use some federal emergency dollars to “follow the Biden plan for restoring safe in-person learning.”

The proposed budget will head to the state’s general assembly to be approved in the March legislative session.

Pritzker’s proposal to keep the state education budget flat comes at a critical time for schools. Last month, the Illinois State Board of Education recommended that the state increase the almost $9 billion budget by $412 million for the next school year to adequately fund schools statewide and help districts deal with potential learning loss from school shutdowns and uneven remote learning experiences.

With no new money for the funding formula, some advocates are worried about longer-term disruption to a bipartisan effort to direct more money toward public education after years of chronic underfunding. In 2017, the state revamped the way it funds school districts, earmarking additional money each year to systems with the highest need. Key to that effort was a bipartisan promise to grow the state’s education budget by at least $350 million a year. This is the second straight year that no more new money will be added to the formula.

Whether the state could see a third round of federal funding for schools, and end up meeting that pledge, remains unclear.

Public education advocates warn that plugging gaps with federal funding shortchanges an underfunded system at a time when costs are rising due to the coronavirus response. Superintendents have said they must spend more on smaller class sizes, cleaning and sanitizing schools, hiring contact tracers, and other health and safety protocols related to the pandemic.

“It is true that there are federal funds coming to help schools reopen,” said Robin Steans, President of Advance Illinois, a nonprofit policy and advocacy organization. But, she adds, “we have got to get state dollars to do the deeper structural work. What you can’t do with federal funds is make long-term staffing changes and programmatic changes that school districts need in order to truly serve children well and close equity gaps.”

Steans acknowledged Pritzker’s record as an advocate for public education and the extent of the financial challenges facing the state. The governor pledged to invest more money in public schools last year — but that pledge hinged on voters approving a graduated income tax that would have raised income taxes on the wealthiest residents. It was expected to bring an additional $1.4 billion in revenue annually. Voters did not pass the amendment.

Mimi Rodman, executive director for Stand for Children, said that not increasing the budget is actually a budget cut because it does not account for inflation and, with two years of cuts, it will limit the kinds of resources available to students.

“The extent of learning loss for students in Illinois is going to continue to be revealed over the next few months. We don’t even know about the impacts on social emotional learning, reading and math across the state and across different demographics,” said Rodman.

She continued, “If we can, right now, renew our commitment to stay with the promise of the evidence-based funding formula, we are also investing and addressing those future disparities before they start revealing themselves.”

Public education advocates throughout the country have warned that the coronavirus pandemic will have major consequences on states’ education budgets. However, those dire warnings have yet to materialize as the federal government so far has passed two stimulus efforts that included emergency money for schools.

Governors in some other states have also proposed flat education budgets or spending plans that similarly rely on federal emergency money to help make up for budget shortfalls. Tennessee’s budget largely remains flat, but the budget includes modest raises for teachers. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo cut state contributions for schools but said additional federal dollars would actually yield budget increases.

State budget forecast uncertain, Illinois education leaders weigh $412 million increase for schools

2020-12-17T00:33:05+00:00

Although schools will largely be spared from $711 million in 2021 state spending cuts Gov. JB Pritzker announced on Tuesday, the Illinois Board of Education argued Wednesday that it will need more money for 2022 to address the pandemic’s impact and years of inadequate funding.

The board is considering asking the state to increase its $8.8 billion education budget by $412 million for the next school year to adequately fund schools statewide. The board will decide in January whether or not to make the request.

The board’s proposal for 2021-22 includes a $362.1 million increase to keep the state on track to fund school districts equitably by 2027 based on the evidence-based funding formula. Out of 852 school districts across the state, 635 school districts are not funded adequately, according to funding targets that assess how much it will cost to educate students in a particular district and what local resources are available. In Illinois, 74% of districts are underfunded and inadequate funding impacts 80% of students, Robert Wolfe, financial officer, said Wednesday.

The board proposed an additional $50 million for early childhood education, with $18.5 million going to Chicago Public Schools.

It also seeks $6.5 million in 2022 to provide mentoring to 5,000 new teachers. Budget officials said Wednesday that they hoped to use federal CARES Act dollars for this expenditure but were seeking guidance on whether they could.

The board also wants an additional $1.2 million to go toward mentoring principals and $1.8 million to recruit principals.

Each year, the state school board hosts a series of public budget hearings about education needs around the state and then makes a budget recommendation to the governor. Last year, the board asked for an additional $500 million, but after the COVID-19 pandemic caused a plunge in revenues and a graduated income tax measure was voted down, its budget ended up largely flat.

According to a presentation Wednesday given by Jim Muschinske of the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, the state’s economic outlook is better than some might have predicted, but state revenues are expected to be sluggish in the coming year.

Schools largely appear to have avoided reductions in Pritzker’s $711 million in budget cuts, with two exceptions: cuts to maintenance grants that districts use for keeping up school facilities and possible personnel furloughs at the state agency level.

Illinois Report Card: State reports 88% graduation rate, but some other accountability measures blank

2020-10-30T17:01:00+00:00

The four-year graduation rate in Illinois held steady at about 88%, according to the 2020 report card released Friday.

State officials cautioned against comparing this year’s rate to the previous year, however, because some requirements were relaxed amid the pandemic. In May, Gov. J.B. Pritzker waived the constitution exam and physical fitness test for eighth graders and high school students.

The annual report card is the most detailed look at how the state’s nearly 2 million students are faring in public schools. But this year, the report is missing data on a slate of closely monitored assessments — requirements temporarily waived by the U.S. Department of Education after school buildings abruptly closed in March. It’s also missing culture and climate surveys and new state school ratings (schools kept ratings from the previous year).

Since local school districts were not able to administer state assessments in the spring, there is not enough data to determine learning achievement gaps, which is a serious concern after months of remote learning. Brenda Dixon, research and evaluation officer at the state board of education, said the state will conduct a learning loss survey to get a sense of how students are doing.

She said the survey will at least provide a “snapshot” of how much the pandemic has affected students, with a sample of school districts voluntarily submitting several years of data.

This year’s report card does include data on student attendance and whether ninth graders are on track to graduate. Two other areas included in the report that weren’t affected by the pandemic include teacher workforce and advanced coursework.

Here’s a closer look at a few key metrics:

Teacher workforce

Illinois saw its teacher workforce grow by more than 2,000 teachers this year, but the percentage of white teachers barely budged. The state has slightly increased the number of Hispanic and Asian American teachers, but the workforce is still majority white, at almost 83%.

The three-year average teacher retention rate remained the same at almost 86%.

State superintendent Carmen Ayala said the state will be introducing culturally responsive teaching and learning standards to be implemented at teacher preparation programs in Illinois. The state also will start requiring teacher prep programs to create and implement recruitment plans for educators of color.

“We don’t know yet how the pandemic has impacted the current future workforce,” Ayala said. But she added that the state is surveying districts about unfilled positions to try to understand where there are talent gaps.

Advanced coursework

Illinois has been pushing districts to offer students more opportunities to earn college credit while in high school. According to one metric, that push has been paying off: High school students across the state took about 70,000 dual credit courses, up from 64,000 courses last year.

But despite efforts to encourage more students to take Advanced Placement courses, Illinois high schoolers took around the same number of AP classes in 2019-20 compared with the previous year, about 142,400.

There was an increase in the number of exams taken by high school seniors, even with the pandemic. Last school year, seniors took 278,000 exams, compared to 261,000 exams the previous year, a difference of about 14,500. Pritzker committed $2 million to cover exam fees last school year and has said that support will continue, despite flat education spending overall.

However, the number of seniors who took exams dropped by almost 3,300 students this year in comparison to last year. The number of seniors who passed at least one exam decreased by a little over 700.

International Baccalaureate, a rigorous academic program, had a modest increase of about 400 more students taking courses statewide. About 6,000 students took the courses in 2020.

Career and Technical Education programming

This year, about 1,500 more students took career and technical education courses, for a total of 286,237 students. State officials said they need to do more work to diversify the group of students who take the courses — 58% of white students were enrolled in courses, while the state’s overall white student population is 48%.

“For the first time, Illinois will now require CTE programs to analyze disaggregated data on students’ participation and performance. Programs must identify gaps and create strategies to recruit and support special student populations, such as students who are parenting, military connected or in temporary housing,” said Ayala.

New financial data included

This is the second year that the state has included site-based expenditure reporting. Last year the state only reported on expenditures at the district level, but this year it showed information at the school level.

Ayala said: “This data will indicate how well funded the district is, the school summative designation indicating school performance and the school’s percentages of low-income students, English learners, and students with IEP who all require greater investment to meet their learning needs.”

The board said they hope the information will aid conversations about funding equity at schools and within districts.

Illinois school budget hearings open with tales of inequities from COVID-19

2020-10-08T16:25:52+00:00

At a state school board budget hearing Wednesday, Alex Parker, a fourth-grade teacher at Cossitt Avenue Elementary School in suburban LaGrange, told the story of a new teacher getting thrown into virtual learning this fall without proper training after her prep program was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.

“She’s learned to be a classroom teacher with an incomplete foundation from a teacher preparation program,” said Parker, who met the educator through a Teach Plus Illinois mentor program. “The story of this educator is not idiosyncratic. In fact, there are 4,000 newly licensed teachers in the state facing similar challenges.”

Parker recommended to the board that $8 million be put toward supporting new teachers. He was one of about 20 educators, advocates, and district leaders who testified at a virtual state board of education hearing Wednesday that the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated some of the inequities felt by school administrators, teachers, and students.

Dan Cox, superintendent of Rochester CUSD 3A in central Illinois, prefaced his remarks by saying he has attended the Illinois board of education’s budget hearings for the past several years. This year, he asked the board to invest $450 million more in local school districts around the state.

“We know that funding matters by looking at evidence. Students in the top 20 funded school districts are two times more likely to meet state standards of math and one-and-a-half times more likely to meet state standards in reading than students in the bottom 20 of the adequately funded districts,” Cox said.

It’s unlikely, however, that school districts’ leaders and advocates will see an increase in state funding anytime soon. The pandemic has made Illinois’ shaky financial position worse. The governor has said he plans to hold school funding flat this year, but there are mounting concerns about the toll of plunging revenues on future budgets.

Jason Powell of ReadyNation, a workforce advocacy group that has begun lobbying around early childhood education, requested that the board invest $50 million in education for young learners. Noting that COVID-19 has impacted teachers and children, early childhood education had significant challenges prior to the pandemic that impacted education outcomes for students.

“Only three out of 10 kindergartners were considered fully ready for school last fall, according to a recent report from the state board. These figures improved slightly over the past couple of years, but they still lag far behind where we need them to be. Particularly in the case of low-income kids or children of color,” said Powell.

Lexi Mueller, a student who is invested in agricultural education, serves as state president of the Illinois Agricultural Education and FFA, where she represents the Valmeyer chapter. She recommended that the board continue to support agriculture education, specifically programs that prepare educators to teach the subject.

“By funding agriculture education, colleges and universities are able to increase enrollment of pre-service teachers, and our state in turn sees more graduates enter the workforce as agriculture educators,” said Mueller.

She added, “The cycle of teaching, inspiring, recruiting, and placing in schools will be continuous. But, if one of those elements (is not supported), the whole cycle suffers.”

Mueller told the board that she wanted to attend Southern Illinois University to be a high school agricultural teacher.

School administrators, educators, advocates and students will have more opportunities to suggest to the board what priorities they’d like to see supported in future spending plans. Illinois will hold two more virtual budget hearings on Oct. 14 at 1 p.m. and Oct. 16 at 1 p.m.

As Illinois school districts reimagine education, the wealthier could have yet another advantage

2020-08-07T20:44:10+00:00

Outdoor tents. Plexiglass barriers. Bus aides to supervise social distancing. Voice amplification systems to counter the muffling effect of face masks. Hands-free bathroom fixtures.

These are among the blueprints for in-person classes at wealthier school districts in Illinois this fall.

But they’re hardly the norm.

As school districts release reopening plans, stark differences are starting to emerge — differences that could affect the quality of education students receive and the conditions in which they learn. A Chalkbeat analysis of more than 70 reopening plans showed that while some wealthier districts are bankrolling expensive changes to their buildings and staff to safeguard against the coronavirus, financially strapped districts are planning to make the most of low-budget precautions such as hand sanitizer and anti-bacterial wipes.

When those plans can be executed is still up in the air. With COVID-19 cases resurging in many parts of the state, some districts are scrambling to revise their plans and delaying in-person instruction. But the preparations could be critical for when students do return to school buildings, and budgets are playing a big part in how comprehensive the preparations are.

Before the pandemic, Illinois consistently reported among states with the largest school funding gaps between wealthier and poorer districts, an issue a 2017 revamp of the state funding law started to address. But with the coronavirus pandemic cutting state budgets, experts expect little headway to be made in closing those gaps in the coming year.

“Districts that don’t have enough money are continuing to scrape by the best they can. And they just won’t be able to offer their students the same curricular variety, that same class size, the same support system, that those wealthier districts can,” Jessica Handy, the government affairs director at Stand for Children, an education advocacy group, said.

For this year’s reopening, the state Board of Education said that schools can hold in-person classes with restrictions, but it has left most of the details up to local school districts. Districts across income levels will tentatively implement the same baseline safety precautions: distance between desks, pre-packed lunches, limited use of lockers, and masks for all.

But that’s where many of the similarities end.

Wealthier districts refit campuses

District leaders are tasked with building a plan that both hedges the risk of infections and facilitates high-quality education. For the wealthier districts, that means developing creative strategies, even if it means an expensive overhaul of facilities.

In Highland Park, North Shore School District 112 will use outdoor tents as learning spaces. The district is assigned a Tier 4 status, a state classification awarded to the wealthiest districts that are at least at 100% financial capacity to meet student needs.

District 112, which serves fewer than 3,900 students across 12 schools, is arranging for at least two large tents per campus. Only a handful of districts in the state have even considered outdoor tents yet, but Superintendent Michael Lubelfeld said students’ needs justify the extra costs.

“With millions of dollars, we are to go beyond what is required … because it’s the right thing to do,” Lubelfeld said at a July board meeting. North Shore has allocated $1.2 million for COVID-19 related expenses, and is still expecting a balanced budget for fiscal year 2020.

Arlington Heights Township High School District 214, which is at a 94% financial capacity to meet student needs, has installed a voice amplification system in classrooms, in part so that teachers wearing masks can be heard clearly. “We did not want to put any student who may be further from their teacher at a disadvantage,” Superintendent David R. Schuler wrote to families last month.

District 214 will start the school year with all-remote learning, but students and staff can also expect video cameras when they return to school buildings. The cameras allow students who choose to continue with remote learning classes to participate in classes live. Live instruction offers learners advantages like frequent interaction with teachers and immediate feedback.

At the affluent Glenbrook School District 225, where students could return to school buildings as soon as Sept. 8., district leaders plan to overhaul bathroom fixtures and equipment to minimize contact. Manual toilet flush handles, soap dispensers, and faucets will all be replaced with automatic mechanisms.

And while many districts have canceled in-person music classes for safety, Glenbrook plans to install customized plexiglass sheets between the music director and students.

Most reopening plans aim to mitigate hallway congestion through staggered bell schedules and assigned exits and entrances. But the wealthier Lisle Community Unit School District tentatively plans to retrofit two old facilities.

Conservative precautions for cash-strapped districts

For financially strapped districts, returning to school amid the pandemic could mean giving up in-person music classes, buying low-cost cleaning supplies in bulk, and settling for limited real-time instruction.

Chicago Public Schools said it plans to hire 400 additional custodians, though the district has more than 600 schools. The district has also bought 40,000 containers of disinfectant wipes for classrooms. But with about 22,500 teachers, that amounts to less than 2 containers of wipes per educator.

Chicago will start the school year with remote education only, it said this week, but district officials will aim to start the second quarter with some in-person learning if COVID-19 cases go back down. One question weighing on families and educators has been how the district can boost sanitation and safety protocols in buildings with aging ventilation systems.

“There are no clean HVAC systems in every single school,” Maximilian Cole, a special education teacher, said in a call to move to remote learning early this week. “Cleanliness is not in every single school.”

In Waukegan Public Schools, students will also start the school year with remote instruction and tentatively plan to return to in-person instruction later in the fall. As in Chicago, enhanced sanitation measures focus on making hand sanitizer dispensers and disinfectant bottles more readily available, as well as increased cleaning of doorknobs, staircases, and railings.

The district, one of the less affluent in the state, has also been hit particularly hard by COVID-19. The city of Waukegan makes up 31% of coronavirus cases in Lake County, but only 12% of the county’s population.

At Rockford Public Schools, when in-person classes resume in early September, teachers will not be able to livestream classes and all-remote students will have to rely mostly on audio or video recordings. Rockford is also among districts with the lowest financial capacity, according to the state’s tier system. Live instruction will be mostly limited to small group meetings and one-on-one conferences for feedback.

How will districts pay for new health and safety expenses?

As district leaders reimagine learning for the fall, they also face the daunting challenge of fitting unexpected costs into their budgets.

The federal government set aside some emergency aid for schools in its first stimulus package this past spring — Illinois schools were set to receive nearly $700 million — but district leaders have consistently said that their costs will exceed the rescue funds they receive.

The state will hold education funding mostly flat this year, adding to the financial squeeze.

At Evanston/Skokie School District 65, a more affluent district that serves nearly 7,000 students, administrators are projecting nearly $3.4 million in COVID-19 related expenses this school year. The district is also projecting its revenues will be about $3.5 million lower due to the pandemic, according to a June finance committee meeting.

Glenbrook School District 225, where the new hands-free bathroom fixtures and plexiglass barriers are going in, is still expecting a balanced budget. The district has tentatively budgeted an additional $500,000 on coronavirus-related expenses in the 2020-21 fiscal year, but remains in a “financially strong” position, according to a tentative budget report. The school district is 94.6% locally funded, primarily through property taxes.

Public school revenue is tied to property wealth, which means wealthier districts have more to spend.

Questions about finances weigh heavier for administrators at lower-income and already underfunded districts like Chicago Public Schools, said Handy, at Stand for Children.

CPS chief Janice Jackson told Chalkbeat in a July interview that the district will not skimp on safety because of budget pressures. “Like everyone, I worry about the financial implications of COVID, not just on the school system, but on our economy. But I want to be clear that our planning is not focused on that. We will do whatever it takes in order to educate our students and do this safely,” she said.

In Waukegan, the district has already started to look into different means of financial support, through a relief grant and lines of credit.

“It’s definitely going to be a challenge for districts that were already cash strapped, who are now having to think about retrofitting their classrooms and managing social distancing,” Handy said. “There’s that sort of thing that we don’t like to think about, which is how are we going to pay for this.”

Chicago says it will reform school budgeting. Can efforts survive a pandemic?

2020-06-19T11:00:00+00:00

This story is part of the Lens on Lightfoot series, a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining the first year of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are Chalkbeat Chicago, the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE. It is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office pledging to reexamine the way Chicago pays for schools. She held a series of public meetings, convened a working group of experts, and invited the public to weigh in on the much-reviled and impossibly complicated school budget system.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit, state and city revenues dried up, and students were scattered to the winds to learn in their homes, an event that deepened existing learning gaps among students.

Advocates insist that budget reform efforts could still lead to important changes, and that the need for equitable funding is all the more urgent. But, in a moment of historical financial uncertainty, how that will be done — and what cuts it could mean in other places — only underscores how difficult it is to revisit school funding in a city that has faced chronic school budget deficits.

“Taking money from an underfunded school to give money to another underfunded school — that is not equity,” Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability and an architect of the state’s education formula, said.

Students and families have long said there are have and have-not campuses. The reasons for the disparities are complicated: Many schools say they don’t have enough money to pay for the necessary staff positions to help high-need students, while some schools have parent groups who can raise large sums to supplement existing staff and supplies.

At the school level, the budget picture gets even more complex. The district spends the most per pupil to maintain its most severely under-enrolled schools, such as Tilden High School on the city’s South Side and Manley Career Academy High School on the Far West Side. Some, such as the city’s teachers union, have argued that those schools have the greatest needs — and should get more. While others have wondered if the city should reckon with its shrinking enrollment by redistributing money across fewer campuses, which could mean merging or closing schools, a controversial option in Chicago.

These are the kinds of tough questions facing budget reform efforts, and members of the working group said their efforts are just getting started.

For the last six years, the basis of Chicago’s funding formula has been to give the same per-pupil amount to individual schools, with small variations to address students’ needs and backgrounds. Last year the district made a few changes, protecting schools from a one-year drop in enrollment, targeting resources to high-need schools through “equity grants,” and creating a “poverty metric” to focus investment in schools with large numbers of low-income students.

Some schools, like Roosevelt High School in Albany Park, credited the boosts with helping spur its first enrollment increase in a decade. Others, passed over for the investments despite taking part in the competitive application process for new programs, said the process was unfair.

The changes highlighted a question that has dogged Chicago budget reform for years: In a school district where money is often tight, does more money for one school equal less for another?

On the campaign trail in 2019, then-mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding, and to do so in a way that engaged a broad array of community voices.

Once in office, Lightfoot moved quickly to form the budget committee, bringing in some heavy-hitter school policy experts. The 19-member committee spent the first months of this year learning about how Chicago’s schools are funded, hearing community input at six public meetings held in January and February, and then drawing up a series of recommendations. Members held their last meeting in February, just weeks before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools. About 500 people participated in the public meetings.

The group, which released its recommendations in April, proposed determining an “ideal” level of funding for individual schools and encouraging district officials to lobby for more state and local funding.

The approach was broadly modeled on the so-called “evidence-based” formula used by the state to fund school districts. State leaders adopted the method in 2017, with the goal of determining the amount of money it would take to provide a quality education for students, including those with greater needs, such as English Language learners and special education students.

The plan also had a key political component: It was a tacit acknowledgement that the state wasn’t giving enough money to school districts to meet student needs. With the new approach, school districts learned how much state funding they will get each year, with the highest-need districts, such as Chicago, set to receive boosts in future years.

Marguerite Roza, a school finance expert and the director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said the changes created a more equitable system because the new formula took into account how much school districts were getting in local property taxes and then tried to cover the gap between that amount and what they actually need.

“What changes was the relationship between state and local money,” Roza, who noted that the trend for many districts nationwide was to move toward student-based budgeting, said.

But advocates say the conversation about how much money Chicago schools receive —and where the district and city could find more — is as much a political calculation as it is about the nitty-gritty of recalculating the funding formula.

Martire, a member of the budget committee, echoed a call raised by parents in some of the public meetings: a new funding formula can only be fully effective if there’s more money to spend.

For years, district officials have blamed the state for not giving Chicago Public Schools enough money. The district also has continued to pay for the upkeep of schools closed during the mass closures in 2013, including outside cleaning services for now empty buildings. The Chicago Teachers Union used its strike in the fall, in part, to push the city to dip into non-school funds for the education budget. The district recently signed a new teachers union contract that promised $1.5 billion in new spending over the next five years.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has thrown school districts across the country into an uncertain budgetary future, with many warning the federal government that they’re facing dire cuts. With uncertainty over what school will look like in the fall, the costs of running a socially distanced school system are still up in the air.

The district’s total operating budget for this year was $6.18 billion. More than half of the money comes from local revenue, with the remaining 32% coming from state money and 11% from federal dollars.

The city budget has a $700 million hole caused by dropping tax revenues after the coronavirus shut downs. The state has managed to hold school funding steady this year. And while the federal government has given districts some relief funding, education associations say they need still more to head off dire layoffs and cuts.

Martire says Chicago Public Schools should be able to get a steady stream of funding from city property tax revenues - even if some mortgage holders default, banks will still shore up those taxes, he said. He also hopes a referendum on a progressive tax revenue system in Illinois will pass this fall, which could bring in billions in new revenue.

That will solve some of the concerns about trying to do more with the same amount of money or even less, says Martire.

Some members of the committee, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, say they want the district to look for other sources of revenue.

The bigger question might be how much of an appetite the district will have to revamp its funding formula amidst an uncertain budget year. At a board meeting earlier this year, schools chief Janice Jackson said it’s unlikely the district will move away from a student-based budgeting formula for the fall.

District officials said they already use an approach that helps the poorest schools. This year, they will provide $100,000 in equity grants at more than 100 of the city’s highest-need schools, which were pinpointed using the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Economic Hardship Index. The index uses factors like housing density and poverty level to decide which city areas most need support. The district also tweaked the special education formula to give more money to schools with larger numbers of students with special needs.

Pavlyn Jankov, a researcher with the Chicago Teachers Union, said the union wants a promise from the district not to cut school budgets because of enrollment numbers. “We want student-based budgeting to be tossed out,” said Jankov. “We think, in light of the pandemic, it’s crazy to expect schools to cut staff.”

The budget review process will cover multiple budget cycles, according to the district, and the working group will be reconvened later this year.

Martire applauded the district’s efforts so far. The group “has really done a nice job of having very frank conversations about the different challenges” of reforming the budget formula.

Andrew Askuvich, whose two children attend Jamieson Elementary School in North Park, said at one of the public meetings earlier this year that he knows there are schools with greater needs. Jamieson’s parent group raises money each year to provide each teacher with $300 for school supplies. If the district gets more money, he said it should go first to schools with the highest needs.

“In the end, there’s the understanding that there is just not enough right now,” he said. “For a lot of people [here] it was really about equity, about making sure the schools that have been neglected for decades, that more is done for these schools.”

No cuts to Illinois education, but schools warn COVID will push up costs

2020-05-27T22:13:31+00:00

While other states are drastically cutting budgets for 2020-21 in anticipation of plunging revenues, Illinois’ newly passed budget will keep school funding flat.

Still, that worries school leaders who say that they face higher expenses for smaller classes, additional buses, deep cleanings, and stiffer health and safety measures.

Districts are pricing out the costs of education in the era of COVID-19, and they say it will cost more no matter the scenario in the fall. But after spending a first round of federal stimulus dollars — mostly on tech devices and broadband access in districts with concentrations of low-income students — Illinois schools will have to confront additional costs using the same amount of money as last year.

The $40 billion Illinois budget, which passed both houses of the legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature, draws on promised short-term loans of up to $5 billion from the Federal Reserve that legislators say they hope to repay with additional federal stimulus monies.

If additional stimulus funds don’t come through, legislators may have to revisit the budget.

Democratic legislators, who hope for more federal aid, said they prioritized holding funding steady for schools. School districts will get the same amount as they did this school year — $7.2 billion — distributed per a formula passed in 2017. In all, Illinois will spend just under $9 billion in state funds on education.

“There is a lot of learning loss and challenges for kids happening right now,” said State Sen. Heather Steans, who represents the Far North Side of Chicago. “Further hampering student experiences is not something we wanted to do unless absolutely necessary.”

Republicans, who voted against the measure in the Senate and the House, said they doubted what they called the plan’s shaky assumption.

“The budget relies heavily on massive borrowing and hope that the federal government will bail the state out with another stimulus package, which is no guarantee,” said a statement from Sue Rezin, a state senator from Morris, who voted against the measure.

As states face an economic downturn and declining revenues, they are making painful cuts to core services, including schools. Pritzker has pegged Illinois’ potential shortfall across the next 13 months at around $7 billion.

Whether some of the state’s coronavirus stimulus monies for schools will be used to make the math work isn’t clear. Illinois school districts are set to receive $512 million to use for coronavirus-related spending through the federal CARES Act, but several report spending their dollars immediately to ramp up remote learning. The state school board and the governor are each expected to receive discretionary monies, totaling $162 million more, to spend on students. The state has detailed how it plans to use those dollars, while the governor’s office has so far been mum.

“There are a lot of unknowns,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. Holding budgets flat this year means the state will probably take longer to make up for its chronic underfunding of schools, he said.

District leaders discussed the costs of reopening schools in a virtual town hall last week convened by the group Illinois for Educational Equity. Sharon Desmoulin-Kherat, the superintendent of Peoria Public Schools, said her district was using its $6.3 million in CARES Act funding to build a digital infrastructure including devices for students and teachers and Wi-Fi access.

That doesn’t include personal protective equipment, thermometers or other items she’d require for students to return to school buildings or more frequent deep cleanings.

“It’s going to cost a lot more money,” she said.

The Monmouth-Roseville District in western Illinois projects spending up to $425,000 more than in the current year, depending on requirements for class sizes and social distancing. Superintendent Edward Fletcher is scaling back summer school and math and reading coaches.

“I do not like slowing down the progress we’ve made,” he said at the funding panel. “It’s hard to put on brakes but unfortunately that’s what we’re going to have to do.”

School leaders also worry that property tax payments — a critical source of funding for schools — will come later in many jurisdictions.

“That is where the vast majority of our funding comes from,” said Nick Polyak, superintendent of Leyden High School District located in a northwest suburb near O’Hare Airport.

How schools reopen will affect spending. If fewer children can ride a bus or sit in classrooms, to abide by social distancing guidelines, schools will have to spend more to increase buses or staff, said Michael Jacoby, the executive director of the Illinois Association of School Business Officials.

The budget pressure will continue. “A second budget year flat would be very, very devastating,” he said. Jacoby said his organization is recommending that districts run several multiyear budget scenarios based on different assumptions, from budget further cuts down the road to deferrals in property tax receipts.

“Never tell your board you’re sure what you are going to see over the next three years,” Jacoby said.

That uncertainty has education advocates worried, even while they expressed relief that state schools wouldn’t face immediate budget cuts. Illinois previously committed to increase school funding by at least $350 million per year. That won’t happen this year.

The state’s persistent lack of financial reserves, its pattern of letting pension debt pile up and borrowing to meet short-term needs, and the prospect of higher interest rates for Illinois compound education advocates’ fears.

“There are still districts that are underfunded below 60% of what they need,” said Jessica Handy, the director of government affairs for Stand for Children Illinois. “As this pandemic hits, and children need more and more supports, these districts are still severely underfunded, and they will be asked to do more with what’s clearly an inadequate amount of funding.”

“It’s not what anybody hoped for,” said Robin Steans, the president of Advance Illinois. She acknowledged that the budget could have been worse. “Given how battered the budget is, getting level funding for education is a good first step.”

Samantha Smylie contributed reporting.

How much is your Illinois school district slated to get from the federal stimulus bill? Find out here.

2020-04-01T18:24:32+00:00

Illinois is expected to receive $569.5 million in emergency school funds from the federal government to spend on its coronavirus response, the state’s top educator has told district leaders.

Now that it has become clear that school closures could span weeks, even months, the state “strongly” encouraged district leaders to use the money to “strengthen your infrastructure for remote learning,” Superintendent Carmen Ayala said in a message to districts Tuesday night. Earlier Tuesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker extended school closures to April 30.

The money is part of the federal government’s coronavirus stimulus bill. In all, the Trump administration has said it is sending $13.5 billion to schools for meal programs, technology purchases, remote learning infrastructure, distance mental health programs and counseling for students, sanitization and deep cleaning, and summer programs to help address the learning gaps.

Chicago, which is the state’s largest district with 355,100 students, is slated to receive $205.7 million, according to preliminary figures. Rockford School District 205, which has 28,700 students, will receive $11.7 million. Springfield School District 186 and Elgin U-46 will each receive about $7.8 million, and Peoria School District 150 will receive $6.3 million.

According to federal guidelines, the money is distributed by the number of low-income students in each district. The grants will increase by 75% the amount of federal money districts usually receive each year to serve poor children. The money can be used for any school within a district, the feds have said, and public school districts must allocate some of their share to students and teachers in private schools and charters.

Ayala told leaders that it’s not clear when the money would be available. She plans to apply for the funds as soon as the application is available, expected to be within 27 days.

Chicago has already estimated it will spend at least $75 million on its response to the shutdown, including major device purchases and bonuses for frontline cafeteria and security workers and school administrators who are distributing food at campuses. Last week, Chicago’s Board of Education granted district leaders spending authority for the emergency fund, to respond to unexpected needs that have cropped up during the district’s emergency coronavirus response.

Illinois will distribute 90% of the funds to individual districts; the remaining 10% will be spent at the state school board’s discretion, Ayala said Tuesday. She said the discretionary funds will benefit districts whose students have the greatest need for technology and internet access.

Two-thirds of Illinois school district leaders have said they cannot roll out e-learning plans because of lack of access to the internet and technological devices and lack of teacher training.

Chicago school board approves $75 million to tackle COVID-19-related school needs

2020-03-26T01:11:37+00:00

To give the school district financial flexibility to respond to unexpected needs that have cropped up since the coronavirus response shut down schools, the Chicago Board of Education approved up to $75 million for emergency response services.

Those funds, approved unanimously by the board at its monthly meeting on Wednesday, would cover relief such as food aid the district already has been providing, but could also cover future needs like computers and iPads for students who need them to engage in remote learning during an extended school closure.

“We won’t know the full cost of this until this pandemic is over,” schools chief Janice Jackson said at Wednesday’s fully digital meeting, broadcast live on the district’s YouTube channel. “Much of this is to give us the flexibility to respond quickly.”

Even before fears of the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across the city, the financial reality of Chicago Public Schools was both precarious and political.

The district has long argued it is cash-strapped, and most recently has been juggling the costs of a new teachers union contract with ballooning pension payments and a need for more funding from the state.

But critics, chief among them the Chicago Teachers Union, have said the district could find funding if needed and pushed for a promise for nurses and social workers in most Chicago schools as part of its recent strike demands.

Board members said they were expecting the district to get funds from a federal coronavirus relief package, or from the state, which declared a state of emergency in part to release new streams of funding.

But board member Lucino Sotelo warned against assuming that the school district has been hiding a pile of cash.

“It’s not like we had this $75 million slush fund sitting there,” Sotelo said Wednesday. “We still have to find a way to make this work, which will force us to make some hard decisions later on.”

The first formal report on how the district uses the $75 million will be due at the July board meeting, but Jackson promised to provide updates before then. “We have been making a lot of decisions since this crisis first hit, including … keeping a tally of the cost of COVID-19,” Jackson said. “We know there is a need to keep people abreast of this in the coming months and we fully intend to do that.”

In a statement, the Chicago Teachers Union asked that the funds, which it called a “blank check,” be used to make sure all students had digital devices so none would be cut out of e-learning, but also to ensure that students had strong learning and social supports when they returned to the classroom.

“We’ll never get the days back that we’ve lost with our students because of this pandemic, but we can leverage additional funds to ensure that students who confront gross inequities have that much more support when they return to school,” union President Jesse Sharkey said in the statement.

Youth organizing group Voices of Youth in Chicago Education said they wanted to see funding for mental health support for young people who were dealing with the difficulty of being at home with little personal space, as well as the difficulty of understanding the larger changes and uncertainty around the coronavirus epidemic.

Jackson echoed that uncertainty, and the district’s willingness to meet school needs as they arose, in her response to a board question about how the $75 million could be used.

“The cost will be far more than any dollar amount we can put out there,” Jackson said. “And we won’t know the full cost of this until this is over.”

Chicago to buy more computers and ramp up virtual learning, with details coming this week

2020-03-26T00:50:05+00:00

Denver Public Schools is gearing up to launch virtual training for teachers to help shift instruction online. New York is handing out 300,000 computers, with about 175,000 distributed so far.

Until now, Chicago Public Schools has been largely mum about the district’s plans to ramp up remote learning — though officials promised more details later this week.

The district’s governing board on Wednesday unanimously approved $75 million for the coronavirus response, allowing leaders to sign contracts and make purchases without prior board approval through June. District officials said they need the flexibility to spend on cleaning schools, providing school meals, paying frontline staff — and filling gaps in student access to computers and the internet.

“We are committed to doing whatever we can to bridge the digital divide,” said the district’s Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “Our teams have been working day and night to develop new strategies for our students to continue their education.”

District CEO Janice Jackson said the district needs to move quickly because of a significant backlog as districts and other groups across the country have rushed to order digital devices.

Profound income disparities among its students and the size of the district pose a challenge as Chicago seeks to roll out an effective and equitable e-learning strategy, which requires educator training, added tech support, resources for diverse and English learners and more. With the possibility that schools could remain shuttered through June, it is also increasingly a necessary effort to keep learning on track for roughly 300,000 students.

Some educators told Chalkbeat this week that they are eager to help their students keep up their academic momentum remotely but need more guidance and support. The Chicago Teachers Union has called on the district to prioritize addressing disparities in student access to technology.

Wednesday’s regular monthly board meeting heralded an unprecedented shift to technology: It was the first held solely via videoconference, with as many as 1,200 viewers tuning in at times.

There were small connectivity glitches, and board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri’s young daughter made a short unscheduled appearance, but the meeting otherwise ran smoothly. The board did significantly restrict the time allowed for public comment.

School board members pressed district leaders for details about remote learning. Top officials largely demurred, saying that they are awaiting state guidance, but promised to share more later.

Jackson said the district has been working to survey families and identify areas with the highest technology needs. She said the district has started ordering additional devices and will soon release the criteria for distributing them to families to ensure those who need them most get them first.

She acknowledged the district is facing a device backlog.

“We are getting in line as quickly as possible,” she said. “Our ability to move quickly and nimbly is critically important.”

Jackson said the district plans to leverage contributions from donors and businesses, and suggested some have already stepped up but did not provide details.

Officials said they hope federal aid will offset at least some of the technology costs and stressed that the district might not spend the entire $75 million the board authorized.

Before the meeting, Jennifer Johnson, the Chicago Teachers Union’s chief of staff, said union leaders have tried to engage the district on addressing prolonged closures.

“I can’t say that I feel there is a comprehensive plan that’s going to get us equity,” Johnson said. “That’s going to be incredibly challenging.”

The state Board of Education has been seeking input from educators as it works on crafting guidelines for the district. Johnson said the need for training has come up repeatedly. She believes Chicago and the state should tap the expertise and ideas of some of their educators rather than leaning on commercial vendors for training.

“This is not going to be the same as school in person and we shouldn’t pretend it could be,” Johnson said.

Some Chicago educators said they are hungry for direction to continue teaching and helping students long distance. They said they are impatient to see students get their hands on devices.

“Whatever conversations are happening are happening on the administrative end,” said A. Jene Young, a special education classroom assistant at Sherman School of Excellence.

She said her small school could provide a device to each of its students, but it grapples with concerns about the possibility of damaged and lost devices.

District spokeswoman Emily Bolton said the new guidelines the district is working on will clarify strategies for remote learning as well as different platforms and resources for engaging students.

“Many schools are currently engaging students in coursework,” she said. “The updated guidance will seek to provide clear information on structure and expectations for student engagement.”

Unwelcome surprise: Illinois governor proposes holding back some school funds unless tax passes

2020-02-19T21:45:55+00:00

Saying he had to make hard choices in a hard budget year, Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Wednesday disappointed education leaders and advocates by proposing the state hold back part of an expected bump in education spending beginning in July — potentially upending a milestone agreement to reform Illinois school finance.

The governor would deliver the reserved funds later — but only if Illinois voters approve restructuring the state income tax in November.

A proposed graduated income tax would raise taxes on the wealthiest Illinois residents and lower taxes for low-income families, and is expected to generate $1.4 billion annually. But even if passed, the tax’s added revenues wouldn’t materialize until next year. As for the reserved funds, school districts would not be able to count on them to hire teachers or invest in new programs.

Pritzker’s $42 billion budget proposal would deliver a $350 million increase for K-12 schools only if voters pass the amendment. If not, he proposes boosting the amount divvied up among districts through the state’s evidence-based funding formula by $200 million. Proposed increases for public universities and community colleges would similarly be held back.

The state legislature will take up the governor’s proposals, and may modify them before passing a budget.

The news was a one-two punch for education advocates, who said they’d hoped the governor would add upward of $600 million or more to the education budget. Illinois has historically underfunded public education, spending a smaller percentage of its gross domestic product on schools than the national average, and it passed a new education funding formula in 2017 that set specific targets for increases to attempt to close spending gaps and improve student outcomes. The gap between current education spending and the state’s goal is estimated at $7 billion.

The Illinois State Board of Education asked for a $510 million increase for schools this year.

Districts have come to count on the annual boosts. That includes Chicago, which must figure out how to pay for a new five-year labor contract that will add an estimated $1.5 billion to its budget.

Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, a group that helped lobby for a revamp of the state’s school formula in 2017, called the proposal “devastating.”

“This two-tiered budget — with some dollars immediately available and authorized, and some dollars held in reserve pending passage of a constitutional amendment enabling a progressive income tax — is a significant blow to our children and the adults who are committed to shaping their futures,” she said.

Mark Klaisner, president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents, said that, because the formula prioritizes districts that struggle most with local property revenues, schools that need it most would still see an increase. The tricky part is the timing.

“Some people will say, How do we handle staffing? Or, will we have to let people go in November,” Klaisner said. “It’s a matter of planning.”

Pritzker campaigned on a pragmatic approach to digging the state out of a fiscal hole, the result of mounting pension debt, a massive bill backlog, battles with labor unions, and the two years his predecessor steered the state without a budget agreement.

Although Pritzker pledged to invest in all levels of education, he quickly ran into the state’s stark fiscal realities. In addition to its bill backlog, worker pensions will consume 20% of the annual general fund through 2045, the governor’s team said Wednesday.

“To address the uncertainty in our revenues, this budget responsibly holds roughly $1.4 billion in reserve until we know the outcome in November. Because this reserve is so large, it inevitably cuts into some of the things that we all hold most dear: increased funding for K-12 education, universities and community colleges, public safety and other key investments,” Pritzker said Wednesday in front of the General Assembly in Springfield.

“As important as these investments are,” he continued, “we cannot responsibly spend for these priorities until we know with certainty what the state’s revenue picture will be.”

Earlier in the day, the governor’s budget team laid out two spending plans — one for if the tax amendment passes and one for it if doesn’t.

“We agree wholeheartedly with the governor’s approach — that we have to be fiscally responsible,” said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in Chicago. “But where we disagree is with putting only $200 million more in funding into the (state education funding) formula. This would be the first time this has happened since we passed it. It is counterproductive in the short and long term, and not the right decision.”

If the graduated income tax amendment doesn’t pass, the governor has warned the state would have to cut from 10% and 15% in spending on vital services.

Representative Will Davis, a Democrat who represents south suburban towns including Harvey and Riverdale, said he was happy to see the governor emphasize education but disagreed with the decision to withhold $150 million from schools unless a tax amendment is passed. “That additional money [in the state’s funding formula] is truly a game changer for the districts I represent,” Davis said.

Instead of holding back K-12 funding, Davis suggested that the budget should withhold a portion of the $500 million earmarked for research facility investments for the University of Illinois.

He said he would lobby for the General Assembly to prioritize more K-12 funding.

Education advocates found one bright spot in Wednesday’s address. Pritzker announced a $50 million increase to the state early childhood block grant, less than the $150 million bump that advocates sought, but a sign of his intention to rebuild the state’s early education system.

“In a tough budget year, to have increases (in early childhood spending) is terrific, and it continues to be a statement of the governor’s commitment to this area,” said Ireta Gasner, vice president of Illinois policy for the Ounce of Prevention.

Both the Illinois Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 200 local teachers unions, and the Chicago Teachers Union took the long view, saying the passage of the tax measure would free up more money for future students.

“Passage of the Fair Tax is imperative to the fiscal health of this state,” the federation’s president, Dan Montgomery, said in a statement. “The Fair Tax will ensure our state has the revenue it needs to improve public services and give our students the future they deserve.”

Federation spokeswoman Monica Trevino said that even if the amendment doesn’t pass, schools would still see at least a $200 million budget boost to the state funding formula. “Schools aren’t getting less money in the meantime, they are still getting the amount of funding they had in years prior plus,” Trevino said.

Among the other education investments that the governor proposed:

$16.5 million to train new teachers to combat Illinois’ historic teacher shortage. That’s significantly less than the state Board of Education’s request for $44 million for teacher recruitment and retention.
$2.2 million to create a “student care department” under the Illinois Board of Education, which would help schools end practices of restraint and seclusion of students with disabilities
An increase to $51.3 million for transportation and special education grants
$2 million for a new program offering districts grants to address student health and well-being
$43 million in career and technical education programs
An increase to $50 million in grants to low-income college students; 15% would be earmarked for community college students
$5 million to create a community college apprenticeship grant program

Here’s what to watch in Chicago’s school budget revamp

2020-02-14T01:05:12+00:00

Special education teachers want more aides. Parents want more music teachers and librarians, while alumni are asking for a more diverse teacher workforce.

And if a specific request can’t be funded, they want the district to tell them why.

At Chicago’s first-ever round of public feedback meetings in recent memory on the school budgeting system, parents and educators turned out in droves to explain and demand what the school district should fund.

Now, a working group of educators and administrators, brought together by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, will consider the suggestions and recommend how Chicago should change its complicated school budgeting system, and what schools should offer.

They face a challenging mandate: how to meet needs and desires and fix school funding without getting more money for an underfunded system?

Chicago receives more than $7 billion for education but steers only about half that to the campuses it runs. The rest goes to pensions, capital expenses, citywide and network level support, charter schools, and central office administration.

And while some advocates hope the state will tax the rich more to boost revenue, it’s not certain that will happen, or how much would trickle down to schools.

Here is what to watch as it moves forward:

The proposed changes could be implemented as soon as the next budget cycle.

The working committee will recommend how to make next school year’s budget more equitable.

Among the ideas on the table: funding that works more like the state’s model, which gives schools more money based on student need; a continuation of the targeted pots of money awarded to some schools; and a new timeline for releasing budgets, to help principals plan.

This is only the first round of public feedback meetings.

This process is likely going to be a model for other efforts to solicit and incorporate public response. The district will seek community input into its long-term budget process, according to a recent district presentation. The district promised that anyone who participated in one of the public meetings will receive a follow-up survey.

The district will hold similar public feedback meetings about the upcoming capital budget discussions on campus improvements. Parents and activist groups, along with some board members, have criticized the previous process for being opaque and difficult to understand.

Parents and educators were specific in what they wanted to see in their schools.

In the budget hearings parents and educators talked less about process and more about what they’d like to see on their campuses. In interviews with Chalkbeat, they mentioned smaller class sizes for special education students, more librarians and music teachers, parent mentoring programs, and extracurricular activities, among others.

Even if the budget formula shifts, Chicago faces tough decisions to deliver money more equitably to schools — the stated goal.

In Chicago a gap yawns between have and have-not campuses, separating schools where veteran teachers tend to flock with their higher salaries or parents can raise funds to supplement staff and supplies, from campuses with younger, inexperienced teachers or no parent fundraising groups.

There’s also another critical factor that determines how much money a school gets: its enrollment. In Chicago, which is steadily leaking population, the district has lost 54,100 children in a decade. That has left 145 district-run schools less than half-full, according to the latest round of capacity data.

Chicago must decide how enrollment should count toward a school’s budget, with the district propping up dozens of small schools with additional funds. It will have to determine how to factor in the distribution of experienced — and more expensive — teachers.

Some advocates, including the Chicago Teachers Union, seek an influx of new funds. Gov. J. B. Pritzker has pinned his hopes on passing a graduated income tax to provide more revenue for schools. That move would need a constitutional amendment to proceed.

The committee will release its first report in March.

The budget working group is supposed to issue its first report next month, using information gathered from the public meetings as well as informational sessions organized by the district. Overhauling the budgeting process could take years.

Carlos Azcoitia, a former district principal in Little Village and a member of the committee, said the group was considering school funding scenarios based on how many students are in a school, as well as need. Azcoitia said he would draw on his personal experiences to help shape his input.

“As a principal for 10 years … I served a population that had the greatest aspirations but also a greater need,” he said, noting the large number of immigrant and homeless students at his school.

Chicago is revisiting school funding. Here’s what 7 parents and educators would prioritize if they were in charge

2020-02-10T21:25:49+00:00

Arnette McKinney arrived at a recent Chicago Public Schools budget workshop armed with a written list of items she wanted to be funded in public schools across the city: a gym, better arts programs, and a more robust library, to name a few.

“Where’s the librarian, where’s the music teacher?” asked McKinney, a parent at Lenart Elementary Regional Gifted Center School and a teacher at Fiske Elementary in Woodlawn, echoing a frequent question that has surfaced at hearings about how Chicago funds its schools.

At Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s urging, Chicago Public Schools held six workshops to solicit public feedback on school funding, a complicated topic in a city that spends more than $7 billion on education but steers about half that to its individual campuses (the rest goes to charters, pensions, capital expenses, citywide and network level support, and central office administration).

Meetings were wide-ranging, with educators, parents, and community members offering up suggestions in front of district officials. But the district has provided little clarity about promised changes and how public comment to influence them.

“We actually want to earn public trust in a very honest way,” said Maurice Swinney, chief equity officer for Chicago public schools, at a hearing at Corliss High School. “How do we keep these movements and conversations going? … What are the definitions and formulas we need to put out so people can see how we’re making decisions?”

A 29-member funding commission will recommend how the Chicago school board could change its school funding formula.

But what if parents and teachers had the pursestrings? Chalkbeat spoke to several at the Corliss hearing in the city’s Pullman neighborhood, to find out what they’d prioritize.

McKinney (pictured above) said her school, Fiske Elementary, has an art program that it funded by a foundation run by the Chicago hip-hop artist Chance the Rapper. But the school has no music program.

“I believe our schools should have the same funding, it shouldn’t be more on the North or more on the South, it should be equal,” McKinney said. “Those that are underserved should be brought up to the standard of everyone else.”

McKinney also said she’d like to see funding for a parent mentoring program at Fiske. Parents may qualify for a stipend only after they’ve volunteered 100 hours for the program, she said.

Pearlena Mitchell, also a teacher at Fiske, said that schools should be funded based on individual needs of students, rather than all schools getting a flat rate, and parents should be able to see where the funding goes.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” Mitchell said.

Chicago Public School moms Alexis Mimms and Rodneyka Armstrong attended a public forum on school-based budgeting.

CPS parents Rodneyka Armstrong, left, and Alexis Mimms, whose children also attend Fiske Elementary, want more resources for extracurricular activities to keep students engaged during and after school.

“Extracurricular activities for the kids, football, basketball and after-school programming, like tutoring,” she said, “it’s important because it gives children things to look forward to and things to keep them out of trouble. Children at the school are always saying how they wished they had football, basketball, things like that and tutoring for them.”

“My son gets bored very quickly, he just sits in his seat and does work all day,” Armstrong said. “They need to get out, stretch their arms. I think a science lab would be good.”

Brent Hamlet attended Chicago Public Schools growing up and now works at CICS Bucktown, a charter school.

Brent Hamlet, a paraprofessional at CICS Bucktown, attended Chicago Public Schools and now works at a charter school managed by Distinctive Schools. A fellow with the education policy group Educators for Excellence, he said he attended the workshop to learn more about how funding is allocated and to share his insight from working in schools on both the South and North sides.

One of the issues he noticed at some schools was that the cadre of teachers did not reflect the diverse student body. He would like to see resources directed toward recruiting more teachers of color.

“How does staff reflect the community’s vision of the school and how does the staff reflect the student body?” he asked.

Deborah Riddel is a special education teacher at Charles W. Earle Stem Academy.

Deborah Riddel is a special education teacher at Charles W. Earle Stem Academy, where she said last year she had a packed classroom of 22 diverse learners. In some cases, her classroom is larger than the classrooms the students were pulled from, she said.

“I’m a special ed teacher and our students are not receiving what they need in resources,” Riddel said. “With special education, they need something extra or different and they don’t receive it … there should never have been 22 students in my classroom at one time, but my principal said there’s nothing we can do.”

Riddel said that many parents aren’t aware of their children’s rights. She suggested that the district provide an advocate to help bilingual students and students with disabilities at each school.

Additionally, the school system should fund additional social workers, case workers, advocates, and resources in schools in areas with high crime rates, she said.

“Some of these students are experiencing things like PTSD, depression — the things that they share with me you would not believe,” she said. “The area where I teach has the highest crime in the city. That means that those students are either related to the perpetrators or the victims in higher numbers than anybody else in Chicago. So we should be getting more [resources to help them], right?”

Tamara Helse is on the board of governors at Airforce Academy High School and the Local School Council at Harold Washington Elementary School.

Tamara Helse is a parent who serves on the board of governors at Air Force Academy High School and the Local School Council at Harold Washington Elementary School in Burnside, where her children attend school. She said despite its designation as an arts school, Harold Washington doesn’t have a robust art program and she’d like to see more of the budget dedicated to that.

Chicago mulls how to reslice the school budget pie — but what about a bigger pie?

2020-01-30T05:59:00+00:00

While few communities would say their public school is adequately funded, in Chicago a gap yawns between have and have-not campuses, separating schools where parents can raise funds to supplement staff and supplies, and those where teachers struggle to meet students’ complicated needs.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot pledged to revamp how the district doles out funds. On Wednesday, the first public meeting called by a committee overseeing the overhaul attracted about 140 people brimming with ideas and questions on how to redo school budgeting.

But even as participants agreed on the need for change, few had ideas on how to address the elephant in the room — how to fix school funding without more money?

Spurred by the possibility that the district might at long last heed the public’s complaints about insufficient funding, parents and teachers shared ideas on how to better serve students’ needs and spread out opportunity.

Chicago differentiates somewhat in how much it allocates schools serving middle-class students and those serving needier ones. Campuses get more funds for students living in poverty and those requiring special education. But educators and parents have said that’s not enough, and that schools serving students who face learning challenges, language barriers, and other difficulties need more resources.

As a candidate, Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding and to consult the public about it, and last month the city created a working group to lead the charge.

Wednesday’s meeting was the first of six to be held in the next two weeks. School board members Sendhil Revuluri and Elizabeth Todd-Breland also attended the gathering.

“How do we best support and align the work and the resource and the talent of our district to ensure that young people get what they need?” asked Maurice Swinney, who leads the district’s equity work.

In small groups, the participants brainstormed ideas and the budget work itself.

Among the suggestions: pattern school funding after Illinois’ system, which weights according to student need; educate parents on how money is spent so they can better advocate for school needs; eliminate money for special programs like International Baccalaureate or science-technology (STEM) schools; and hold a storytelling event between schools with resource disparities.

People acknowledged that the room had a significantly larger proportion of white people than the district itself. They also noted that students, principals, and support staff were largely missing.

After the public meetings, the school budget committee will recommend how to make next school year’s budget more equitable. It will hold more public meetings next school year.

Of the district’s budget, 57% comes from local funds, 32% from the state, and 11% from the federal government. But Chicago Public Schools falls about $1.9 billion short of what the state considers adequate funding. That means it needs about $5,000 more per student to properly serve student needs.

Participants wondered, how effective could a new formula be if the district didn’t have more money to spend?

Andrew Askuvich, whose two children attend Jamieson Elementary School in North Park, said the meeting underscored how Chicago schools are underfunded.

At Jamieson, the parent organization raises enough to offer each teacher about $300 for school supplies every year. That’s less than schools that fund teacher positions, Askuvich said, but it’s more than what many schools raise.

“In the end, there’s the understanding that there is just not enough right now,” he said. And if the district does get more money, he said it should go to schools with the highest needs first. “For a lot of people [here] it was really about equity, about making sure the schools that have been neglected for decades, that more is done for these schools.”

Schools get only brief spotlight in Illinois governor’s State of the State speech

2020-01-29T20:40:23+00:00

In a State of the State speech Wednesday focused on rooting out corruption and rebuilding a tattered state government, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker underscored his promise to make Illinois “the best state in the nation to raise a young family” but offered few hints about how much he would invest to help do that.

“Putting our state back on the side of working families is important,” said the first-term governor, who touted what he accomplished in his first year but not what he planned to do going forward. He called out the expansion of a child care assistance program for working families and investments in college scholarships and other efforts to boost enrollment in state universities.

The governor delivers his budget address in three weeks and that’s when more specifics about his spending plans will materialize. Wednesday’s remarks did not offer any hints of whether he will commit significantly more in the way of K-12 dollars, increases that public education advocates are eager to see happen.

Illinois still falls among the middle of the pack in public school spending for its 2 million K-12 students, and less than 40% of elementary schoolers meet state reading and math testing standards. The state school board has asked the governor for 8.6% more in K-12 spending this year, including $510 million more for the state’s funding formula that largely funds school districts. But the governor has told state agency heads to pare down spending, given Illinois’ bill backlogs and massive pension debt.

“It’s a tough spot,” said Robin Steans, president of the policy organization Advance Illinois. “The governor, like most of us, recognizes there are much more significant investments needed if we really want to be the best state in the nation for young families, but at the same time there are budget realities that make that difficult.”

Dan Montgomery, who heads the statewide Illinois Federation of Teachers union, said he expects full funding to come through for the K-12 formula and for the state-funded teachers pension system, even if it didn’t surface in Wednesday’s speech. “Making the full funding payment will be important to us,” he said.

One mention Wednesday that gave Montgomery and others reason for optimism: Pritzker’s recognition that the state must do more to alleviate a painful teacher shortage.

“It’s inspiring to have a governor who has faith in the people of the state,” said Montgomery, who sees a progressive income tax proposal as a critical way to boost long-term funding.

Last year Illinois passed a minimum wage requirement for teachers and eased rules on licensing for out-of-state teachers — something Pritzker mentioned in his speech. He didn’t bring up the state’s decision to eliminate the basic skills test for teachers — a controversial move welcomed by some educators and panned by others — and legislation to tackle a shortage of bilingual and special education teachers, including raising the wage floor for student teachers.

Pritzker’s address Wednesday was more evidence that early education will be a key item in his first-term agenda. His speech singled out a child care provider in downstate Marion whose top-rated center had suffered years of funding instability and staff cuts and was on the brink of closure, a familiar reality in several counties. Through boosts in state reimbursements, the center can now rebuild enrollment and invest in hiring and training, he said. “Thanks to our bipartisan investments, dozens more parents in Marion can go to work.”

As a candidate, Pritzker said he hoped to pave a path to universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, an endeavor gaining steam in other states. But he has acknowledged some substantial roadblocks, namely a budget shortfall.

That helps explain why he has prioritized foundation building and convened a new early education finance commission. He announced last week expanded home visiting programs for families with infants and said his administration will work toward improving pay for early childhood workers.

One month after contract went into effect, Chicago teachers still haven’t gotten promised raises

2019-12-18T19:16:00+00:00

Chicago educators and most support staff have not received the retroactive pay and full raises they agreed upon after a bitter 11-day strike that ended Oct. 31, causing a fresh round of agitation from some rank-and-file members just before winter break.

Also unresolved, three days before winter break, is the issue of veteran teacher pay and how the district plans to parcel out $5 million in additional annual pay raises to teachers with 14 years of experience or more, as agreed to in the contract.

“We have repeatedly asked for meetings to hash out final resolution,” said a union spokesman, Eric Ruder. He said a meeting with district officials was scheduled for later this week, before schools close for a winter break.

Teachers represented by the Chicago Teachers Union are unlikely to see increases in their Friday paychecks.

The district said that implementing the pay changes for tens of thousands of teachers requires complicated changes to its data systems, and expected to have a timeline for implementing the raises before the new year. The district “is working diligently to build and test new salary tables in our data systems to ensure accuracy,” said Emily Bolton, a Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman.

The school board approved the contract on Nov. 20.

Members of Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents support staff such as bus aides and special education classroom assistants who also went on strike this fall, will see retroactive pay raises of 3%, going back a calendar year, in their Friday paychecks, Bolton said. However, while the SEIU’s new contract is retroactive to July 1, 2018, raises for its members only apply to the previous calendar year and not the current school year, and district still owes the workers another 3% from July 2019 on, said Science Meles, executive Vice President of SEIU Local 73.

Bus aides — who are among the lowest paid school workers in the system, with an average annual salary of $15,600 before the strike — already received in November an additional $250 bonus they were promised in the deal.

That union expected delays, particularly around some changes in pay structure involving special education classroom assistants, but leadership expected resolution by now, Meles said. The holiday season, and missed paychecks due to the strike days, mean frustrations are running high, she added. “We’re pissed.”

Roxana Gonzalez, an eighth-grade teacher at Dr. Jorge Prieto Math and Science Academy in Belmont-Cragin, said the issue has taken on urgency among educators in her building. They already took unpaid days off during the strike, so several had counted on the raises and retroactive pay increases dating back to September to help soften that blow.

“People are counting on this money to make Christmas happen for their families,” she said. “On Friday, it will be the 50th calendar day since we came back from strike. It feels like it should have been a priority for the district to make that happen.”

CTU President Jesse Sharkey raised the issue of pay delays last week in front of Chicago’s Board of Education. While the union was satisfied with its new contract, he was dismayed to see there were difficulties in implementation on pay raises and asked the board to “look into what is holding up … getting those contract provisions implemented,” Sharkey said.

Here’s who will be leading Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s charge to reexamine Chicago school budgeting

2019-12-12T19:00:54+00:00

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is making moves to reexamine the way Chicago budgets its billions for schools, starting with a new working group tasked with leading the charge.

The working group, which will gather information from the community engagement sessions and then propose recommendations, includes several formidable players in Chicago education policy, though in some cases the members are rarely on the same side of the table.

Members of the city’s appointed school board and its teachers union are on the committee. Find the full membership below.

The plan, announced by Chicago Public Schools on Thursday, builds on a key promise from candidate Lori Lightfoot to revisit school funding and consult the public about how to do that.

Chicago’s weighted school funding formula has come under fire for unequally distributing resources between schools that advocates argue need more resources, as well as pushing schools who are losing students into a funding loss spiral that makes it difficult to recover.

Any proposed changes yielded from the working group proposals and community engagement process wouldn’t come in all at once, the district said. Potential changes would be implemented over a multi-part timeline.

In a shift in recent practice, the school board is also leading committees around critical issues of diversifying the teacher pipeline and early childhood education. The first meeting about workforce diversity is next week.

Along with district network chiefs, board members and members of mayoral committees, the group includes leadership of local charter networks and teachers union researchers.

Here is who’s on the list:

Sendhil Revuluri, vice president, Chicago Board of Education
Elizabeth Todd-Breland, member, Chicago Board of Education
Carlos Azcoitia, former CPS principal and board member, and professor emeritus National Lewis University
Krystal Burns, parent representative and member of the Harold Washington Elementary School Local School Council
Bogdana Chkoumbova, chief schools officer, Chicago Public Schools
Maureen Delgado, principal, Clinton Elementary School
Vanessa Espinoza, parent representative and member of the Gunsaulus Elementary School LSC
Rachel Garza Resnick, retired CPS administrator
Kurt Hilgendorf, Chicago Teachers Union
Pavlyn Jankov, Chicago Teachers Union
Josh Long, principal, Southside Occupational High School
Sybil Madison, deputy mayor for education, City of Chicago
Matt McCabe, chief of staff and public affairs, Noble Network of Charter Schools
Cameron Mock, chief of staff and senior fiscal adviser to the deputy governor
Candace Moore, chief equity officer, City of Chicago
Robin Steans, president, Advance Illinois
Maurice Swinney, chief equity officer, Chicago Public Schools
Ricardo Trujillo, deputy chief of Network 5, Chicago Public Schools
Two students from the CPS Student Voice and Activism Council
One teacher representative from the Teacher Advisory Council

The district plans to get feedback from the public through a series of meetings starting in late January. Here’s the full list of community meetings, which kick off Jan. 29, 2020:

Wednesday, Jan. 29, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Amundsen High School, 5110 N. Damen Ave.
Thursday, Jan. 30, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Michele Clark High School, 5101 W. Harrison St.
Saturday, Feb. 1, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. at Corliss High School, 821 E. 103rd St.
Wednesday, Feb. 5, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Hammond Elementary, 2819 W. 21st Pl.
Thursday, Feb. 6, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. at Dyett High School, 555 E. 51st St.
Saturday, Feb. 8, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. at Roberto Clemente High School, 1147 N. Western Ave.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to spend more money on students in need. Could change be imminent?

2019-12-11T12:00:46+00:00

This is the third story in the Lens on Lightfoot series, a collaboration of seven Chicago newsrooms examining the first year of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Partners are Chalkbeat Chicago, the Better Government Association, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, The Daily Line, La Raza and The TRiiBE. It is managed by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Sullivan High School in Rogers Park has been nicknamed “Refugee High” for its student body. Often students come in speaking little English and sometimes far below grade level, while many students, both newcomers and others, suffer from the mental and emotional wounds of violence, perilous journeys, and family separation.

But with a budget that gives Sullivan roughly the same amount per student as it does for a student at Whitney Young Magnet High, a large selective-enrollment high school where fewer students live below the poverty level and parents are more involved in school fundraising, Principal Chad Adams has found himself facing what feels like an impossible choice: pay for a trauma counselor or a literacy coach, but not both.

This year, Adams chose a counselor. “I think about all the trauma my kids see,” Adams said. “Their trauma may be more impactful to their learning. But it’s a complex jigsaw puzzle.”

Schools with more students who face learning challenges, language barriers, or other difficulties need more resources to educate them. But for six years Chicago Public Schools has budgeted the same per-pupil amount for schools, regardless of students’ needs and background.

Granted, the district does give additional sums to campuses based on their count of students living in poverty or requiring special education. But the dollars often fail to cover the cost of hiring counselors and specialists.

Advocates with differing politics have assailed that budget uniformity.

As a candidate, Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to revisit school funding and to consult the public about how to do that. Now she appears ready to fulfill her promise.

After bringing increased transparency to school board meetings and boosting staffing for high-needs schools when pressed by teachers contract negotiations, Lightfoot will start the long and complicated process of tackling one of the most technical items on her education agenda.

According to her office, by the 2021-22 school year, Chicago could shift how it hands out funds to schools. But the mayor hasn’t provided details on when, how, or who will lead the charge, which promises to be a Herculean undertaking. School officials have said an announcement is imminent. They also promised an “engagement process” related to next school year’s budget, and details on soliciting public opinion.

As to whether an initiative would be led by City Hall or the school district, a city spokeswoman said in a statement that “Mayor Lightfoot and CEO [Janice] Jackson have both made it clear that promoting greater equity in our schools is a top priority, and both the City Hall and CPS teams are focused on this effort.”

How school budgets work is wonky, but they get at the heart of questions about priorities, values and investments. In a recent poll of 2,500 Chicagoans developed by a coalition of community organizations including Grassroots Collaborative and Chicago United for Equity, the second most-suggested need was to adopt a more equitable school funding formula, after increased staffing of nurses and social workers.

State funding and local property tax proceeds, along with some federal funding targeted at poor students and special education students, provide the core base for public education. The state doles out money based on some student needs, but for the most part doesn’t dictate how school districts spend the bulk of the dollars.

Chicago then distributes operating funds to the 632 district-run and charter schools it funds. This year, the total operating budget is $6.32 billion, with just over half going to individual schools.

Under a five-year-old formula, about 60% of a typical school’s district grant is based on how many students it has. In fiscal year 2020, that was an average of nearly $4,500 per student. Those funds pay for a school’s core instructional needs.

The district also pays additional sums for special education students and for programs like after-school activities. Schools also receive additional dollars for low-income students and for English language learners.

Sometimes the district will award supplemental grants. Last school year it held an application process that granted $32 million to neighborhood schools for popular academic programs, in order to help recruit more students. A similar competition has been announced for this school year.

How Chicago funds schools is in line with many other urban districts around the country, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab research center at Georgetown University.

And while Roza said she understands community interest in considering different funding models, she warns that without additional funding into a new system, a new model may not make huge changes. “The district doesn’t get any more money if it moves to another budgeting model,” she said, adding that, at the same funding level, directing more money to schools with higher needs would mean less for others.

Critics say Chicago’s current way of budgeting locks schools into a downward spiral. As schools lose enrollment, they get less money, which then dooms non-core classes and extracurricular programs, which further erodes enrollment, in turn shrinking the budget even more. A September report from Roosevelt University found that the schools with the smallest budgets were concentrated in black neighborhoods that had seen precipitous population declines, contributing to racial inequality across the district.

Chicago last overhauled its funding structure in 2013, moving from a budget that allocated teacher positions at each school based on enrollment quotas, to student-based budgeting. That move gave principals more autonomy to decide how to use the per-pupil funding they received, calculated according to the number of students they had during the 20th school day of the year.

But critics said budgeting by student count doesn’t address schools’ reality.

The district has promised to consider school funding as a key part of the mayor’s five-year investment in schools, announced this summer. And the district’s new equity framework, released last month, names “resource equity” as one of its four pillars. The teachers union contract, approved in November, also includes a side letter promising the district will review school funding.

Since Lightfoot took office, a band of unlikely allies, including education reform organizations, parent groups, and the teachers union, have pressed her to overhaul school funding, to promote educational equity and bring more dollars into schools.

Some groups have been sharing ideas.

Ralph Martire from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a policy research group, suggests the district scrap its current budgeting formula and instead follow the state’s “evidence-based” approach, which allocates more money to certain needy populations like homeless students, refugees, and students facing other challenging life circumstances affecting learning.

The education reform group Kids First has developed an “equity index” budgeting tool, which weighs the incidence of trauma and violence and the concentration of single-parent households in communities.

The Chicago Teachers Union has also been pushing for a more nuanced funding formula that considers student and community need. The union won a side letter in its recent contract agreement that promised the district would review school funding.

Chicagoans may get a sense of what’s on the table from the equity framework published in November by Chicago Public Schools’ year-old Office of Equity.

The framework, drafted by the district’s equity chief, Maurice Swinney, says it’s unfair to assume students from different backgrounds and facing a variety of challenges have the same needs. That will “maintain the status quo of unequal achievement,” it says, and it suggests progressive spending patterns and schools sharing resources as possible solutions.

“Tools coming soon in 2020,” the framework says.

Will Chicago redistribute current dollars or seek new funds to distribute based on student need?

That may depend on whether the district can find more dollars. During her campaign, the mayor promoted such lifelines as redistributing tax-increment financing (tax proceeds intended to finance city development projects) and boosting the district’s credit rating to secure better rates on borrowing — but in her first budget as mayor, she directed tax surplus funds only to plug spending holes in the new contract with the union. If Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax rate passes, it could produce more revenue and offer more financial stability for Chicago schools.

Alternately, the district could divvy up its financial pie differently — but that could drain funds from schools with fewer high-need students, a move that could set off a political firestorm at schools with more politically savvy parents, whose influence makes this option unlikely.

Effective reform requires deft political maneuvering. School funding may be an important need, but the topic is complicated and dry, even for people in the know. Lightfoot will face a challenge in both laying out the rationale and logic of a new way of budgeting and, from groups long pushing for a change, the blowback if they feel it doesn’t impact their school communities.

How the district handles budget talks with residents could affect plans.

Jianan Shi, executive director of parent group Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, said, “that conversation should be centered around communities most affected: underenrolled schools, schools with a history of change, and not just a closing but any kind of school action,” such as merging campuses or redrawing attendance boundaries.

At least another full school year likely remains before a new budget system is fully in place.

At Sullivan High School, that means another year of struggling to balance the needs of a diverse student body within the school budget. Adams, the principal, is hopeful for a change.

“This is where equity could come in — you are going to have to really listen to the community needs.”

This is the third installment of the Lens on Lightfoot series. Click here to read about the first story, on aldermanic prerogative, from The Daily Line. Find the second story, a Better Government Association analysis about the mayor’s slow start on her environmental promises, here.

After prolonged labor battle, Chicago school board approves union deals in closed session

2019-11-21T00:35:14+00:00

In the final step needed to set in stone new labor contracts, the Board of Education in closed session Wednesday unanimously approved 5-year deals with its teachers union and the union representing support staff. Together the contracts will add $137 million this school year, and more in subsequent years, to the cost of running the district.

Earlier in the meeting, board members acknowledged that the ambitious goals in the teachers agreement, such as hiring hundreds of new staff members, would require the union and the school district to work toward bridging rifts that widened during contentious contract negotiations.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union previously ratified their contract, as did members of Service Employees International Union. Now, Chicago’s 25,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, along with support staff workers, officially have new contracts, marking the end of a labor dispute that included a bitter 11-day strike. The contract for the teachers expires in 2024, and for support staff in 2023.

Board members called the teachers agreement a win for public education in Chicago. Board President Miguel del Valle lauded the deal and praised schools chief Janice Jackson for her leadership.

Sendhil Revuluri, the board vice president, said the contract “align(s) our shared belief that public schools are essential, and that the money we put into public schools is essential.”

Both district and union officials echoed that largely positive tone Wednesday. Jackson called the contract a “strong compromise” that included “important benefits.” Union President Jesse Sharkey said the agreement included a “number of transformative changes,” though he pointed out the contract failed to include an agreement on school closings. Whether Chicago will close schools as enrollment continues to dwindle is an open question.

The board also approved the district’s amended budget and a plan for five strike makeup days. However, the conversation on the contract itself will continue.

The day-to-day job of enforcing the contract now falls to leaders at the Chicago Board of Education, Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union — and to teachers themselves.

For the board, that work includes finding skilled staff to fill the jobs added in the contract, making sure the cost of the agreement is sustainable, and, Revuluri said, ensuring that the district dispenses new resources with equity in mind.

Immediately, that will mean making good on the board’s promise to take on teacher recruitment and development through a committee that will aim to hire 3,000 additional black and Latinx teachers. That goal was stated as part of schools chief Janice Jackson’s five-year vision announced earlier this year.

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, chair of the board’s workforce development and equity committee, said there would be a hearing on the initiative in December.

Correction: An original version of this story said the SEIU Local 73 contracted expired in 2024. It expires in 2023.

Veteran teacher pay still up in the air with 24 hours to Chicago’s teachers union contract vote

2019-11-13T19:46:49+00:00

Twenty-four hours before Chicago teachers will be asked to vote on a five-year contract deal, there is still no resolution between the district and the union’s bargaining team over a core issue: how to parcel out $5 million in annual raises for veteran teachers.

The union wants the money paid out according to “steps” — that is, automatic raises that teachers earn with years of service — rather than by bonuses. The city has not committed to doing so, according to Chicago Teachers Union officials.

Chicago Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The veteran pay issue was discussed at length among union delegates and leaders at a meeting Tuesday night, according to Eric Ruder, a spokesman for the union.

If it is not resolved before Thursday, teachers will have to vote on a contract with some open questions. “It’s not unusual,” Ruder said, for some aspects of an agreement to be settled after ratification.

“We know that we will get the money for the pay tables, but we just don’t know exactly how it gets in there — for example, how big the steps are,” Ruder said.

The lingering issue could sway some union members’ votes. Veteran pay is a sticking point for some teachers in advance of the ratification vote, according to a Chalkbeat survey of dozens of teachers last week.

How the money is distributed makes a big difference for the teachers who get it. Pay resulting from steps factors into teachers’ pension; bonuses do not.

The union is encouraging its members to ask delegates or field representatives if they have questions.

Chicago teachers will vote Thursday and Friday by secret ballot on the tentative agreement that ended an 11-day strike. The agreement, which the union’s 700-member House of Delegates authorized with 60% of the vote, has critics among the rank-and-file. (In contrast, the House of Delegates voted almost unanimously to endorse the deal that ended the city’s 2012 teachers strike.)

In Chalkbeat’s survey, 58% of teachers said they did not feel positive about the outcome of the strike and said the agreement would not improve their jobs.

Only a simple majority of union members voting on the contract needs to endorse it for it to be ratified. If the vote fails, negotiations would continue. The House of Delegates would have to meet again within the span of five days to authorize another strike.

A key union demand, the raises surfaced publicly in the last few days of negotiations between the union and Chicago Public Schools. The sides eventually settled on tacking on $5 million annually for pay raises for veteran teachers with 14 years or more experience, to total $25 million over the five-year contract.

The previous contract’s pay schedule provided regular pay bumps for the first 12 years of experience, but increases are sporadic until teachers reach major benchmarks every five years or so. For example, a teacher with 15 years experience sees less than $200 added onto her base salary the following year before cost-of-living raises, according to analysis from the National Center on Teacher Quality.

The conversations were ongoing on Wednesday and resolution could still be reached in advance of the vote, Ruder said.

Here’s how much Chicago’s tentative deals with CTU, SEIU will cost taxpayers

2019-11-13T04:22:11+00:00

The final numbers are in, and Chicago Public Schools laid out its plans Tuesday on how it will cover the first year of generous deals it struck with the unions representing its 32,500 teachers and support staff.

For the current school year, it will cover the costs — pegged at $137 million additional this year for the contracts with the Chicago Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union Local 73 — in part with $68 million it saved in salaries not paid for six days educators were on strike. The district also received $66 million more than it originally budgeted from a tax surplus fund managed by the city.

But those are both one-time solutions, members of the city’s Board of Education acknowledged Tuesday. They reviewed the numbers and raised questions about how much of the city fund, known as tax increment financing dollars, to expect in future years (the answer: no guarantees).

“In the end, we still have a balanced budget,” board President Miguel del Valle said of the district’s revised 2019-20 plan, which the school board weighed Tuesday in advance of votes to finalize the union contracts.

But it was not entirely clear how the district plans to pay for the contracts in the next four years.

At least one ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, has warned in its recent analysis of the deal that the anticipated costs exceed anticipated revenue growth.

“The settlement has increased expenditures beyond anticipated revenue growth and without corrective measures, could potentially slow or reverse the board’s recent financial progress,” the ratings agency wrote.

Two other ratings agencies used the same word to describe the new costs — “manageable” — and determined that the district’s bond ratings, which affect its expenses, would hold steady.

The Chicago Teachers Union contract is estimated to cost an additional $1.5 billion over the next five years as staffing costs ramp up each year, and as the district hires more teachers, social workers, and nurses.

The board is required by law to review the budgetary revisions publicly before it votes on the tentative agreements next week. Teachers will vote on the agreement this week by secret ballot on Thursday and Friday.

The school district’s final budget was revised to $7.84 billion, up from $7.7 billion. Before teachers had even gone on strike, the school district had factored in the cost of additional nurses and social workers, according to the presentation. New annual costs incurred by the deal include:

$15 million in increased wages and benefits to reflect 3% cost-of-living raises for teachers, or 0.5% more than raises in the budget the school board approved in August
$11 million for wage increases for teaching assistants, nurses, clerks, and other support staff represented by the teachers union
$15 million for support staff represented by SEIU, including special education classroom assistants, security guards, custodians and bus aides
$5 million in substitute teacher incentives for hard-to-staff schools, plus support for schools with high populations of students who are homeless or in temporary living situations
$35 million to relieve overcrowded classes
$5 million in raises for veteran teachers
$5 million in stipends for coaches and improvement of sports equipment and facilities
Amounts, unspecified to the board, to lower staffing ratios in classes for English language learners and in other support positions for high-need schools.

The biggest single budget revision the board reviewed on Tuesday was unrelated to the union contract. This year’s revised budget includes $60 million more that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in her October budget address that Chicago Public Schools must pay back to the municipal pension fund.

That amount covers pension contributions for about 15,000 non-union employees who work in the central office and elsewhere.

Board members asked about the cost shift and wondered if it will be a recurring cost.

“We expect it to be an ongoing change,” said Heather Wendell, the district’s budget director. “It puts us in line with other city agencies” that she said also have to pay their share of pension contributions.

After years of financial turmoil, Chicago Public Schools has been on firmer financial footing in the past few years, due largely to increased money from the state. But the district still faces a structural deficit, warned Standard & Poor’s in an analysis it released Friday.

However, the district has a potential tool at its disposal, the report said. “The CTU contract does not contain a moratorium on school closings and teaching positions can still be reduced given declining enrollment — both providing budgetary flexibility, if used,” the analysis said.

The latest enrollment figures, released last week, show Chicago Public Schools continues to lose students, though the rate of loss has slowed compared with the previous three years.

Did your school grow or shrink this year? Find new enrollment numbers here.

2019-11-08T17:56:13+00:00

Chicago released new data Friday showing that the district continued to lose students, but the rates of decline have slowed this fall compared to last.

But on the ground, numbers look different school by school, with elementary schools tending to see more growth as the number of 4-year-old preschoolers and kindergarteners inched up slightly. Overall, Chicago counted 1,421 more 4-year-olds and about 110 more kindergarteners compared to last fall, while other grades tended to see drops.

Some 22 high schools, meanwhile, now have enrollments that have fallen below 270, though whether a school is considered “underenrolled” varies widely by building capacity. (Chalkbeat excluded alternative schools and high schools exclusively for students with disabilities from that count, since they tend to be smaller by design.)

To dive deeper into other district-wide numbers, such as charters and preschool enrollment, click here.

At the school level, per-student funding determines how many teachers a principal can hire, whether or not there are librarians and arts teachers, and how many programs are offered.

Last spring, district leaders announced a $31 million round of grants for a total of 219 underenrolled schools. These schools received additional funding — schools that saw enrollment declines of 10% or more received a minimum of $100,000. And an additional $100,000 went to nine high schools with enrollment declines of 20% or greater.

Use our searchable database to see whether your school gained students, lost them, or stayed about the same.

Chicago also released school ratings Friday. Click here to see how your school fared.

Even after tentative agreement, union contract hits snag on details over veteran teachers pay

2019-11-07T22:58:56+00:00

One week after Chicago’s teachers union agreed on a tentative contract and suspended an 11-day strike, a threat to finalizing that agreement has cropped up: disagreement over how to parcel out raises for veteran teachers.

A key union demand, the raises surfaced in the last few days of negotiations between the union and Chicago Public Schools. The sides eventually settled on tacking on $5 million annually for pay raises for veteran teachers with 14 years or more experience, to total $25 million over the five-year contract.

But the tentative agreement does not spell out how those raises would be distributed, and there’s no resolution yet.

“The full pay schedule will be completed and communicated prior to the ratification of the contract,” reads the tentative agreement approved by the union’s House of Delegates last week.

The union wants the school district to divvy up the raises according to years of experience and put the contract’s salary schedule as “steps,” or set stages when the pay raises would kick in.

A spokeswoman for Chicago Public Schools declined to comment.

“We have every expectation that Chicago Public Schools will uphold their agreement to add the $25 million of veteran teachers’ pay through years of experience,” union President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement Thursday that was squarely aimed at Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

“This is an agreement that was made with Mayor Lightfoot in her office in the waning days of the strike in an effort to settle the strike. I think it’s impossible to believe that she’d be willing to look like a perjurer, blow up this agreement, and risk forcing our members to reject the contract or even return to striking over something that costs less than a fraction of one percent of the entire agreement.”

Last Thursday, the union’s 700-member House of Delegates voted 60% in favor of the tentative agreement, effectively ending the strike. Members will vote on ratifying the contract on Nov. 14 and 15.The union’s 25,000 teacher, clinician, and paraprofessional members will cast secret ballots at their schools or at the union’s headquarters.

A Chalkbeat Chicago survey that asked teachers to weigh in drew mixed responses. Veteran pay was among the issues that survey respondents questioned.

Even though the issue of veteran pay did not factor as prominently in the union’s daily strike updates, teachers on picket lines said it was a galvanizing factor among the more experienced — and respected — of their colleagues.

“Your pay is frozen for a lot of that time,” said Meia Freidheim, a middle school science and math teacher at Orozco Elementary in Pilsen and a 23-year veteran of Chicago schools, on the second day of picketing. “In most professions as you get more experienced, you get more money. In teaching, that is only happening early in your career.”

Even with less frequent raises, several veteran teachers reported another problem: their higher pay limited their options to change campuses because schools regard them as more expensive hires.

“If a veteran wants to move schools, they have to move to a school that’s further south or has a higher poverty level,” since those schools tend to get more money and thus can hire teachers higher on the pay scale, said Brian Grauer, a first-grade teacher at Carnegie Elementary in the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood.

Are you a Chicago teacher who wants to weigh in on the tentative agreement? Take a brief survey here. Your comments could be included in a story.

Chicago teachers: What’s your take on the tentative contract?

2019-11-01T20:58:03+00:00

Chicago teachers, we want to hear from you.

There’s a tentative contract agreement, and educators and students are back at schools. But we know the conversations about the strike, and the contract, will continue. Help inform our reporting by taking this brief survey. Your responses could be considered for publication.

Wins, losses, and painful compromises: How 5 major issues in Chicago’s teacher strike were resolved

2019-10-31T22:16:02+00:00

Chicago’s teachers union contract still needs to be ratified, but now that an agreement exists, it’s fair to start assessing what teachers gained during their 11-day strike.

Chicago Teachers Union officials were somber Thursday as they announced an agreement for teachers to return to work. President Jesse Sharkey acknowledged that teachers didn’t get everything they had hoped for, even as he called the tentative agreement “a contract we can believe in.”

It’s clear that Chicago teachers are walking away with more than they had before the strike. But the city also ended the impasse having met its goal of limiting new spending to $500 million or less each year. Here’s what happened to the five big issues that the union said were the biggest sticking points in negotiations.

Support staffing: Union win

The city and union always agreed in principle that the city’s schools should have more nurses and social workers — but differed about how many details should be written into the contract. (That’s why the union’s hashtag the first week of the strike was #PutItInWriting.)

The tentative agreement spells out explicitly how many new support staffers will be hired each year and includes a city commitment to have one full-time nurse and social worker in each school by 2023. It’s unlikely that those commitments would have ended up in the contract without the strike.

The union scored additional staffing concessions after teachers walked out: agreements to at least try to hire staff members to support homeless students, restorative justice coordinators, and other specialists at the highest-need schools. That’s on top of other staffing wins that came well before the strike, including a promise from the city to employ school nurses directly, rather than hire them through contracts.

Class size: Compromise

One important union ask is in the contract: for the city to put resources behind reducing class size. The contract deal hands a significant pot of money to a joint union-district class size committee that has existed to review oversized classes and suggest remedies — from adding teachers aides to splitting classrooms where there is space. Now for the first time, the committee will be able to dole out city funds to make those changes happen: $35 million a year — $25 million more than the city had offered up before the strike.

What’s not in the deal: Lower class sizes. The union had pushed for lower class size caps, but it didn’t get them.

Prep time: Stalemate at best

The city and union started out far apart on the issue of teacher prep time, with the union proposing more time for elementary school educators to prepare each day and the city saying it actually wanted to reduce the amount of time those teachers had full autonomy to fill. The city dropped its request early on, but the union said this week that its prep time demand was one reason teachers were continuing their strike.

In the end, the only new prep time in the tentative agreement is for kindergarten teachers who have to administer a specific kind of assessment — and they are getting just two additional hours in the quarter when they have to give that test.

Some teachers aren’t happy that the union backed down, saying that the issue is core to communicating to teachers that their work is respected. “So many high school teachers are willing to stay out for elementary school prep time,” one member of the union’s bargaining team tweeted Wednesday night.

Contract length: City win

There’s no question here: The city got what it wanted. The union had been pressing for a three-year contract term, which is in line with the average contract length nationally. But the deal is for a five-year contract, which will give the city more time to fulfill its promises and, crucially, prevent another clash with the teachers union before Lightfoot is up for reelection.

Pay and benefits: Union win

The city had already put a lot on the table before the walkout — including a 16% raise over five years for teachers — and the union didn’t make pay and benefits a centerpiece of its public demands during it, either. But union negotiators extracted some further sweeteners while teachers were on strike, including an additional $5 million a year in pay for veteran teachers.

Many teachers wanted more for veterans, but there’s no question that the new contract includes across-the-board compensation boosts. (The city also agreed to bear most of rising health insurance costs and to increase sixfold the number of sick days that members can bank and use to extend leaves.)

It’s important to note that unions benefit from strikes in ways that go beyond the written pages of their contracts. Strikes allow them to galvanize members, draw public attention to their agenda, and demonstrate the power of organized labor.

That certainly happened this month in Chicago, where the families of 300,000 children were disrupted by the strike and rallies blocked traffic downtown on multiple occasions.

But there could also be downsides that aren’t captured in the agreement itself. Katharine Strunk, a Michigan State University professor who studies unions, pointed to what happened in Los Angeles after the teacher strike there early this year. A planned ballot measure to increase school funding was polling well before the strike, but when the vote took place in May, just 45% of voters supported it, not the two-thirds needed to force changes to local taxes.

Many factors likely contributed to the ballot measure’s failure, but Strunk said she suspects an important one is that voters heard striking teachers’ message loud and clear: The city did have enough money but had just allocated it to the wrong things.

Chicago’s strike could backfire in the same way, Strunk said. “I think there’s a real risk — not just for the short-term public sentiment for support of the union or city today, but for the long-term ability to raise public funding for a system that people believe is broken.”

Chicago union representing school support staff accepts 5-year deal with raises and other gains

2019-10-30T23:03:02+00:00

SEIU Local 73, the union backing Chicago Public Schools support staff, on Wednesday ratified a five-year contract that includes raises ranging from 17% to 40% over time, in what its president calls a “victory for working people in Chicago.”

While the Chicago Teachers Union continues to strike, however, SEIU is asking its members to honor the picket line “in solidarity” and not return to work until teachers agree to a contract as well. But recognizing the economic pinch some members are feeling, the union pledged it won’t consider workers who do cross the picket line to be scabs, chief negotiator Larry Alcoff said.

After the vote, members expressed enthusiasm for the deal.

“I was elated, because I know for the bus aides who work 30-plus years, this puts them on a path to make more for their families and help themselves progress,” said Jonathan Williams, a special education aide at Wilma Rudolph Learning Center on the Near West Side. “It’s all about progression and empowerment.”

In its ratification announcement Wednesday afternoon, the union credited its negotiators and its partnership with the teachers union as major factors in winning better working conditions and wages for its 7,500 members who work for schools, including bus aides, custodians, special education classroom assistants, and security workers.

Negotiators had reached a tentative deal Sunday.

“The lowest-paid support workers who are the backbone of our schools are going to see raises that mean their families won’t have to struggle as hard living in an expensive city where costs keep going up,” said Dian Palmer, president of SEIU Local 73.

The union contract addresses concerns that led to SEIU’s seven-day strike, which launched alongside the teachers strike now in its 10th day. Besides pay raises, gains include earned sick time, paid vacation, as well as prep time for special education classroom assistants.

Support staff will see wage increases ranging from 17% to nearly 40% by the end of the 2022-23 school year. As the contract is being applied retroactive to July 1, 2018, workers will also receive back pay in line with those raises, the union said.

The contract allows members to accrue up to 40 days of earned sick time and elect to receive some holiday pay. Custodians will receive two weeks of paid vacation, and bus aides will receive six days, both of which were removed during 2015 negotiations. Bus aides will also receive assignments based on seniority and performance evaluations, which the union deemed “equitable and fair.”

Special education classroom assistants, a major focus of negotiations, will have self-directed prep and planning time, and the union also won its fight to better define their job descriptions after members charged they were being used as utility workers for lunchroom and recess monitoring and other duties that took them away from their assigned students.

While the union did not manage to end district custodial contracts with Sodexo and Aramark as its members had hoped, it did get the ability to inspect schools that are reported as being unclean and ensure corrective action is taken.

Althea McCaskill, a Chicago school bus aide, rode a bus to a citywide rally Oct. 23, 2019.

Over the course of the strike, the low wages of bus aides and other support staff struck a chord. Bus aides like Althea McCaskill earn around $16,000 a year and said they often worked far more hours than they were paid for, because their jobs are paid by the route, not the actual hours worked.

“They tell you to just suffer through it,” McCaskill said last week. “But if anything happens, they throw you under the bus.

“I’ve done this every day, faithfully, for 10 years,” she added. “Why can’t I get paid what I’m worth?”

Makeup days appear to be the last issue in Chicago’s strike. Will teachers recoup their lost wages?

2019-10-30T21:48:22+00:00

The very last item on the table in the Chicago teachers strike, union officials said late Wednesday, was whether classes would be rescheduled — and teachers given an opportunity to make up the work time, and wages, they lost during their walkout.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed not to make up strike time before the walkout started and again several times this week.

State law dictates that at least some time will need to be made up. Illinois requires all public schools to have 180 days on the calendar, plus five days set aside for emergencies. But districts are only required to give students 176 days of instruction.

Chicago Public Schools built an eight-day cushion in the school year beyond the state’s requirements. But the strike ran through that time this week.

“After the eighth day of the work stoppage, statute requires CPS to use emergency days, which must be made up during or at the end of the school year,” State Board of Education spokesperson Jackie Matthews said in a statement.

Chicago Public Schools officials indicated on Tuesday that the district’s position was more flexible than Lightfoot’s — and noted that the city’s Board of Education would have to vote on any schedule changes.

“The district is in the process of gathering a full understanding of potential outcomes and next steps regarding whether or not the district will make up school days missed beyond eight,” Emily Bolton, a district spokesperson, said in a statement. “The district hopes to have additional information and a decision prior to the November board meeting.”

Union officials argue that the days need to be made up to benefit students and point out that Lightfoot has otherwise held firm on preserving instructional time throughout negotiations.

But makeup days also matter to union members’ wallets, because teachers are not paid for days when they are on strike. Two weeks’ missed pay would undercut the gains that many teachers expect under the new contract. (For the city, recouping two weeks of teachers’ salaries would free up money in this year’s budget to pay for the contract it has offered.)

It’s common for makeup time to be negotiated in contract deals that end teacher strikes, according to Kency Nittler, director of teacher policy for the National Council on Teacher Quality.

That has been the case previously in Illinois, said Kathy Shaeval, director of collective bargaining for the Illinois Federation of Teachers. The number of days of permanently lost salary for educators who have gone on strike in the state over the past 30 years is “minuscule,” she said.

It’s not clear how Chicago teachers would make up pay given Lightfoot’s parameters. But after the seven-day strike in 2012, teachers and students went to school during their winter break and on President’s Day, and the school year was extended in June. More time would be needed now.

Typically, how missed days are made up is part of the final leg of contract negotiations, Shaevel said.

“It could just be, ‘We will make up the days and we’ll figure out a schedule later,’” Shaevel said. “But it’s an important final decision.”

Live updates from the Chicago teachers strike Day 10: a pivotal 24 hours

2019-10-31T01:45:00+00:00

Wednesday started with teachers on picket lines facing a snowy, rainy mix and is ending with a dramatic split vote by the teachers union representative body to accept a tentative agreement. Read on for details.

Scroll down for today’s recap.

9:30 p.m. No school

Chicago Public Schools cancels classes for an 11th day. Mayor Lori Lightfoot holds a briefing minutes later at City Hall, where she says she is “gravely disappointed” in the union’s decision to insert a late-in-the-game demand to make up missed days. Here’s what she said.

8:30 p.m. Union body accepts tentative pact

The Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates, in a split vote, agreed Wednesday night on a tentative contract hammered out by city and union negotiators. But they placed one condition on their vote – that the mayor agree to let the members make up their missed days and earn back pay.

If Mayor Lori Lightfoot agrees, the deal potentially ends a 10-day strike and sends the district’s 25,000 teachers back to work.

It is not clear whether the district’s more than 300,000 students will return to school Thursday. We will keep updating our story.

7:05 p.m. The full offer

Here’s the first full look we’ve seen of the tentative offer that the union’s 700 or so delegates are weighing tonight, plus some changes we didn’t know before. Click here for the story.

6:00 p.m. Gaming out the scenario

We’ve been gaming out the possible scenarios with sources behind the scenes of possible outcomes of the House of Delegates meeting scheduled to start about now.

Here are four we are hearing, with the obvious caveat that this strike has been full of twists and turns that make a finale hard to predict:

1. The 700-person body approves the tentative agreement, votes to end the strike, and 300,000 students return to school Thursday after missing 10 days of instruction.
2. The delegates approves the deal, but vote to continue the strike and hold out for makeup days, a demand the union leadership surfaced today for leverage. Strike continues an 11th day.
3. The delegates say no deal. Strike continues an 11th day.
4. The delegate meeting goes too late for Chicago Public Schools to notify parents or another issue drags the matter on, and, well, the strike continues for an 11th day.

5:45 p.m. The “other strike” is official over, sort of

Support staff in Chicago schools agreed to a five-year deal, but their strike is not totally over. Members of SEIU Local 73 Wednesday afternoon overwhelmingly ratified a contract with raises ranging from 17% to 40% over time. But its leaders asked them to honor picket lines until the teachers union settles its fight with Chicago Public Schools.

Still, recognizing the economic pinch of the district’s lowest-paid workers, the union pledged that its members who do return to work won’t be considered scabs.

5:35 p.m. Tallying it up

While we’re waiting, we looked at the city’s latest offer and see that the promises made Tuesday to increase class size by $10 million and veteran pay by $5 million have been factored into the math.

That makes the set of proposals, by the last year of the contract, add up to a full $500 million more each year than the union’s previous $2.6 billion contract.

5:15 p.m. Waiting, waiting

No word yet on makeup days, but a meeting of the union’s House of Delegates is on. Chicago Public Schools said it will inform families of the outcome — and whether there will be school — as soon as it is aware by email, social media, and its website. Also this: “Please be aware that we will not send robocalls after 8 p.m.”

The CTU has scheduled a House of Delegates meeting tonight at 6 p.m. Depending upon the outcome of their meeting, we will know if classes can resume tomorrow.
— ChicagoPublicSchools (@ChiPubSchools) October 30, 2019

3:48 p.m. A big update

We just got this announcement from the Chicago Teachers Union: “The CTU may have reached a monumental agreement and wants to convene its HoD to suspend the strike.”

But the message says the makeup days issue still stands in the way.

Members of the House of Delegates were told there is definitely a meeting tonight.

3:20 p.m. #AlmostThere

No House of Delegates meeting has been called, but the Chicago Teachers Union’s second-in-command just said the union and city “may have reached a monumental agreement.” Except … she suggests that whether and how to make up the school days missed because of the strike could be holding up a deal.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has previously vowed not to make up the time, and according to Stacy Davis Gates, that hasn’t changed today.

However, our mayor has informed us that she will not make up student instructional time due to the strike. #AlmostThere
— #CTUINC (@stacydavisgates) October 30, 2019

3:15 p.m. In other news

Chicago’s schools may be in disarray at the moment but the rest of the education apparatus is still ticking away. We just published three stories about newly released data about how well the city’s and state’s schools are doing: about state report card scores, why fewer schools in Chicago and statewide are getting the lowest state rating, and Chicago’s scores on an exam known as “the nation’s report card.”

1 p.m. “You’ve already won,” AFT chief says

As rank-and-file Chicago teachers began deciding what they think about the city’s latest contract offer, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten offered her take during visits to picket lines this morning. According to tweets from the national union, she told striking teachers that their passion reminds her of her mother, who went on strike for six weeks as a New York City teacher in 1968, but also that they have changed the conversation nationally.

“I know you will win because you’ve already won,” she said, according to an AFT tweet.

“I know you will win because you’ve already won.” @CTULocal1 has changed the conversation in a generation-long struggle for resources and put the focus back on student needs. @rweingarten #StandWithCTU pic.twitter.com/cVdZP8jfdk
— AFT (@AFTunion) October 30, 2019

12:45 p.m. A social worker weighs in

In this first-person view, school social worker Elizabeth Weiss writes about the intricacies of job — one that, even before the strike, was in big demand and short supply. She’ll likely be joined soon by new colleagues, since the latest round of proposals would put a social worker at every school by 2023.

But challenges will remain, despite what’s settled in an eventual contract. “Now that I am on the ground, working in two schools, I can see that the challenges are very real,” Weiss writes. “I can also see that investments by the city are beginning to pay off. And I can see that more will need to change if Chicago Public Schools is to become a desirable employer for social workers.”

11:45 a.m. An informal poll of informal polls

Teachers in at least some union meetings this morning were asked to cast advisory votes on the offer. We’ve heard about one school where teachers endorsed the current round of contract proposals from the city — and three where the majority wanted to keep striking. At Lane Technical High School, we’re told, teachers were divided.

What issues are arising? We’ve heard that prep time, pay for veteran teachers, and class size are still weighing heavily on teachers.

A teacher at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy declined to say whether his school’s teachers had taken an advisory vote. But he said they remained “deeply concerned” with some elements of the city’s offer.

Gwendolyn Brooks CP teachers are deeply concerned about the respect (or lack thereof) afforded to our elementary school teacher colleagues’ professionalism and their students’ (who are eventually our students) learning conditions
— William Reed (@WmGReed) October 30, 2019

10 a.m. Where are the teachers?

In churches, public buildings, private homes, and coffee shops, groups of teachers are meeting this morning to talk through the city’s latest contract offer to their union. In small-scale versions of what happened at Tuesday’s House of Delegates meeting, the teachers are not actually discussing a tentative agreement — there isn’t one — but are walking through what’s on the table to give the union’s 700 delegates information about whether members are satisfied or prefer to continue their strike.

During the 2012 strike, the union gave members a full day after reaching a tentative agreement to review it before the vote to return to work.

Today’s meetings could reflect an effort to speed up that timeline now. The union has said it will hold another House of Delegates meeting today if a tentative agreement is reached today. If there is an agreement, and if the deal closely reflects what is in the offer members are reviewing, and if members understand it and are satisfied, there could in theory be a vote to end the strike. But that’s a lot of ifs.

9:30 a.m. Lori Lightfoot’s morning

Mayor Lori Lightfoot read a book about a girl who wants to become a teacher to children on the 10th day of Chicago’s teacher strike.

As the 10th day of the teachers strike began, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she wasn’t surprised by the length of the strike — and remains hopeful that it could end soon.

“There’s a lot of work that we could have done sooner, but we didn’t start to do really until the strike,” Lightfoot said. “I believe that our team has negotiated in good faith from day one, and day one started back this summer, after I came into office.”

The mayor spent some time with children at Kennicott Park in the Kenwood neighborhood Wednesday morning reading “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse,” a story about a young girl who wants to become a teacher.

Lightfoot said she was hopeful that the union’s House of Delegates would meet later in the day to vote on the city’s offer, although she acknowledged there had been no commitment from the union to do so.

“This has been a long journey, and unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of harm that’s been done to our young people,” Lightfoot said.

7:30 a.m. Nation’s report card

Some picket line reading from our Chalkbeat colleagues Kalyn Belsha and Philissa Cramer: National scores are in from the test known as the nation’s report card, and there are drops across the board in reading. The test, formally known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, is administered by the federal government to a nationally representative sample of students in every state and many major cities.

The declines prompt the Council of Chief State School Officers to say it would convene a conference of state schools chiefs and literacy experts on the topic.

In Chicago, scores are largely flat.

6:30 a.m. Snow? Snow!

The season’s first signs of snow, mixed with rain, fall as teachers trudge back to picket lines. Wednesday’s actions include picket lines at schools and a noon rally at the corner of Clark and Roosevelt near a real estate development known as “The 78.”

Nine teachers were arrested Tuesday during a protest a West Loop real estate developer and released in the evening, raising possibility of similar actions Wednesday.

Wednesday is the release of the state’s report card, which shows district- and school-level data on a battery of assessments, from the state standardized Illinois Assessment of Readiness (formerly the PARCC) to the SAT to the ACCESS test for English language learners.

There has been some discussion at the bargaining table about school-level decision making around standardized tests, but there doesn’t appear to be much movement on the issue in negotiations.

Other outstanding issues include the issue of teacher prep time — here’s how Chicago stacks up to other cities on how much time teachers get — plus changes to teacher evaluations and how many sick days teachers can bank. There’s also the thorny issue of legislative support for the union’s agenda in Springfield. Lightfoot said Tuesday politics don’t belong in the contract.

Teachers face another deadline: The potential of losing health insurance if the week ends without a deal.

The next 24 hours are pivotal. Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson said Tuesday evening they had sweetened the city’s offer again with additional money for class size reductions (going from $25 million to $35 million annually) and more pay for veteran teachers. “This is a message to the CTU leadership: You can end the strike,” the mayor said.

Union leaders said they would spend Wednesday morning looking over the city’s latest offers, as 300,000 children remain out of school for a 10th day.

Prep time, fresh issues stymie a deal to end Chicago teacher strike

2019-10-30T05:15:20+00:00

The Chicago teachers strike will enter its tenth day Wednesday, with negotiations still tripping over the big issue of teacher prep time, plus newly surfaced issues — and no tentative agreement.

School could reopen Thursday only if bargaining suddenly accelerates toward agreement, so that the union can convene its 700-member House of Delegates Wednesday evening to approve a draft deal.

So far, that appears unlikely, given the union’s sharp criticism of city offers and its tendency to downplay gains it has won on class size reductions, staffing increases, and pay raises.

Attendees described Tuesday’s meeting of the House of Delegates, called to review the union’s analysis of the offers on the table, as positive despite the palpable exhaustion in the room after nine days on strike, Chicago’s longest in the last three decades.

“It was kind of like a strike rally,” said Ed Hershey, a science teacher at Lindblom Math and Science Academy. However, the mood turned serious when delegates began paging through the union’s analysis of the city’s latest offer.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot remained adamant that the city already has presented the union a generous offer and is unlikely to enhance it. “This is a message to the CTU leadership: You can end the strike,” Lightfoot said Tuesday evening after meeting 3½ hours with union leaders Jesse Sharkey and Stacy Davis Gates and failing to close a deal.

Lightfoot said the city had offered an additional $10 million to further reduce class size and $5 million more to boost pay for veteran educators — but she said the city would hold the line on starting the school day later or allowing more instructional days off so that teachers can have more prep time.

Still, the union’s ask for 30 additional minutes of prep time daily for elementary teachers remains popular among members. The initial ask has been whittled down to options such as using teacher-training days for prep time instead of cutting into instruction time. But union bargaining team members say they still have seen no interest from the city.

In the meeting with delegates, the union described a longer list of unresolved issues, including teacher evaluations and the option to bank sick days.

It is not clear how much of the back-and-forth is posturing in the final hours and how much are union must-haves that could prolong the walkout.

Union leaders said Tuesday that they felt they were close on some issues, but are still waiting to see detailed proposals on the city’s latest offer on class size.

Teachers could lose their health insurance on Friday if a deal is not reached.

Lightfoot said on Tuesday that the union kept “moving the goalposts” by bringing up new issues “in the 11th hour,” including insisting she support two legislative priorities — a specific bill setting up a large elected school board and another broadening the list of issues over which the union could strike.

Responding to that statement, Davis Gates said, “when you are bogged down by negotiating clean bathrooms, when you are bogged down by negotiating a 10-to-1 pre-K student-to-adult ratio, those are things that get in the way a lot. They said no a lot. No, no, no.”

She said members were committed to securing a contract that promised real change. “You don’t go on strike for this many days to say, ‘I wish I would have.’”

But now that 300,000 students are entering a 10th day of no school, and as the accounts of missed state tournaments, delayed college applications, and stymied opportunities for learning proliferate, many ask whether holding out will secure more gains or diminishing returns.

“Something that is always interesting to look at after a deal is reached is how much did things change,” said Kency Nittler, the director of teacher policy for the National Council on Teacher Quality. “Sometimes you look at it and what they won going on strike was so little you wonder whether it was worthwhile given the cost to students.”

One sticking point in the Chicago strike: teacher prep time. Here’s how the city stacks up.

2019-10-29T22:13:05+00:00

The Chicago Teachers Union’s push for smaller class sizes and more nurses, social workers, and librarians would bring conditions in Chicago’s schools closer in line with those in other cities nationwide.

But when it comes to how much time teachers get during the school day to prep, or do work that does not involve teaching students, the union is seeking a change that would set the city apart — and potentially add to its ranks.

The current union contract gives Chicago elementary school teachers an hour of uninterrupted prep time every day. The union wants its new contract to add 30 additional minutes of prep time for all elementary school teachers at the start of every school day.

No other elementary school teachers in big-city districts are guaranteed 90 minutes a day of prep time, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, which maintains a database of teachers union contract terms. In a 2017 analysis, the group found that the district with the most prep time was Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland, where teachers get an hour and 22 minutes of prep time daily, half to be spent in collaboration with their colleagues.

More commonly, teachers across the country are assured an average of 45 minutes a day of prep time, but many contracts don’t provide even for that.

Falling in line with other districts, of course, is not the Chicago Teachers Union’s goal. The union enjoys a reputation as one of the most progressive in the country, and negotiating a contract that makes Chicago teachers the vanguard on a core classroom issue would be a win.

“Any time teachers in these large districts go on strike and win concessions they can inspire other people,” said Kency Nittler, NCTQ’s director of teacher quality. “Around prep time, it would certainly give other unions the opportunity to point to Chicago and say, ‘Look at what these teachers are getting. Why don’t we get that here?’”

Chicago officials say that granting the union’s request would cut into instructional time for students. But the union has said the district could handle the 30-minute morning-planning block in other ways, such as by having students work with other school staff or paying teachers more to come in 30 minutes earlier.

“Overall, teachers having more prep time is a good thing for students, and for teachers too, so from the union’s perspective, pushing for more prep time is always going to be a good thing,” Nittler said. “The district’s job is to fit however much prep time they can into a given school day.”

On Tuesday, nine days into the union’s strike, Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson said the district could not come up with ways to give the union what it wants without reducing class time for students.

“What’s holding this up now is a set of political issues, and an effort to try and cut instructional time, which we cannot agree to,” Jackson said.

Increasing prep time can be a boon for unions even beyond the benefit that individual teachers derive from getting more time to plan, grade papers, and collaborate with colleagues. Katharine Strunk, a researcher at Michigan State University who studies unions, said the Chicago demand might reflect how unions are responding to the pressure induced by a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that eliminated compulsory union membership.

“If the union understandably wants more time to help teachers prepare for their school day, but they don’t want to extend the time that teachers are at school, and we don’t want to shorten instructional time for kids because we know that time with teachers is good for them, we need to find other people to staff kids’ classrooms,” Strunk said. “And those people are going to be union members.”

The Chicago Teachers Union has not specified exactly who it believes should work with teachers during the new prep period if one is created, beyond suggesting that art and music teachers could play a role. It also has not publicly squared its demand with other contract provisions it appears to be winning to insulate some support staffers from tasks beyond their core responsibilities.

But it’s clear that the union faces membership issues even beyond the pressure introduced by the Janus ruling. The city’s declining population has driven down enrollment at city schools and reduced the number of teaching positions needed. An expansion of charter schools has created more teaching positions that are not unionized. (The union is working to organize teachers at city charter schools, with increasing success.) And a five-year moratorium on school closures recently expired, making the prospect of more closures — and eliminated teaching positions — loom large against the contract negotiations.

Three of the Chicago Teachers Union’s biggest demands had staffing implications: to reduce class size, add support staff, and increase prep time.

“All of those things are good for kids,” Strunk said. “But they also all drive up union membership.”

The city has agreed to some of the union’s demands on the first two issues, and city officials say they also offered a compromise on prep time when they withdrew a proposal that would have let principals determine how more of it is used.

Whatever happens with the prep time contract dispute, many teachers say their experience is that contractually guaranteed prep time is never as long as it’s supposed to be.

Nate Ramin, who teaches sixth-grade social studies at McPherson Elementary School in Lincoln Square, said he usually spends the first few minutes of his prep period escorting students to another classroom. At a previous job, he was frequently called during his prep to cover for other teachers. Ramin teaches several students with disabilities and says co-planning with special education teachers and attending meetings about those students take considerable amounts of planning, giving him less time to work on his actual lessons.

He pointed out that even if elementary school educators get 90 minutes a day of prep time, they would still fall short of the city’s high school teachers, who are guaranteed 500 minutes of prep time each week. “But it’s not an us versus them thing,” Ramin said. “We’re together on this.”

Cassie Walker Burke contributed reporting.

Strike heads into eighth day with Chicago, teachers union still at odds

2019-10-28T04:52:20+00:00

Chicago schools will be shut for an eighth day on Monday as a weekend of bargaining between the city and Chicago Teachers Union has failed to yield any progress, even after schools chief Janice Jackson came to the table for the first time.

On Monday, the current strike will become the longest in more than three decades.

After several days of gridlock, the biggest sticking point continues to be how much the city is willing to spend on its teachers contract.

“Last night we left with the same deal on the table that is here tonight,” union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said.

While both sides have estimated the costs of their proposed contracts, neither has provided a comprehensive financial breakdown of the proposals on the table.

On Saturday, union officials estimated the gap between what the city has committed to spending and what the union is demanding at $38 million a year for three years. But the district’s Chief Operating Officer Arne Rivera on Sunday morning estimated the cost at closer to $100 million over five years.

The city has underscored what it considers dire fiscal implications of agreeing to the union’s demands. The city estimates its offer to the teachers union at $500 million over a proposed five-year contract.

“This is, by any estimation, an incredible offer,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a press conference at City Hall on Sunday evening. She said her current offer, which includes placing a nurse and social worker in each school within five years, will transform education in Chicago.

“Despite all of this, the CTU has not accepted it. We are enormously disappointed,” Lightfoot said. The city does not have any more money beyond what it already has offered, she said.

After negotiations at Malcolm X College broke for the day, union officials took a combative tone as they lashed out at Lightfoot and the city. They mentioned part of a long list of demands, from smaller class size and more prep time to increased funding for athletics and more librarians and restorative justice counselors. Gates stood by the union demand for a three-year contract; Lightfoot has insisted on a five-year pact.

Over the seven days of the strike, the union has varied in the demands that it publicly stresses. It’s unclear where it would compromise. On Sunday, Gates hinted that it may be holding out to secure all of them. “Our members didn’t walk the picket line to go back to their communities with half measures,” she said.

Teachers, meanwhile, risk losing their health insurance on Friday if the strike continues. In a Sunday evening call-in town hall with members, its second in two days, union leaders spoke about protest plans for Monday and Tuesday, meaning the strike may continue into a ninth day. At the end of last week, teachers said they were tired but still resolute.

In separate negotiations, SEIU Local 73, the union representing school support staff, struck a tentative agreement with the district on Sunday. Its members still need to approve the agreement; in the meantime, they will be on picket lines Monday morning, union President Dian Palmer said.

One Chicago strike ends, but teachers continue walkout — no classes on Monday

2019-10-28T05:02:00+00:00

School support staff have ended their strike, Chicago Public Schools chief Janice Jackson said Sunday evening, after reaching a tentative agreement on a new contract. But classes will remain cancelled Monday because of the continuing strike by teachers — their longest walkout in more than three decades.

The 7,500 members of SEIU Local 73 — including bus aides, custodians, classroom assistants, and security officers — had walked out Oct. 17. The union was fighting for pay increases, improved benefits like a paid Christmas break, better definition of duties of special education classroom assistants, and an end to outside management of custodians by Sodexo and Aramark.

Jackson joined the district’s negotiations with teachers Sunday afternoon, the Chicago Teachers Union announced.

Jackson is credited with helping avert a long teachers walkout in 2016, when as the district’s No. 2 administrator she joined the bargaining table at the last minute.

BREAKING: CPS CEO Janice Jackson has entered negotiations and is at the bargaining table. #CTUSEIUstrike #putitinwriting #faircontractnow
— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) October 27, 2019

On Sunday, daylong talks with the teachers union failed to bridge differences, and the district announced in the afternoon that it would not offer classes nor after-school activities on Monday.

“As of 4 p.m., CTU leadership has informed us that there is no possibility of a deal today,” the district tweeted.

At a press briefing Sunday night, Mayor Lori Lightfoot struck a stern tone as she defended an offer that she said “leads with equity” in the face of serious financial constraints and that addresses issues the union has identified as priorities, including class size and staffing.

“This is by any estimation an incredible offer,” Lightfoot said. “And despite all of this, the CTU has not accepted it. We are enormously disappointed that CTU simply cannot take yes for an answer.”

Lightfoot said that the city would release details of the tentative SEIU Local 73 contract after union members ratify the it. According to one union member who was briefed on a conference call, the deal includes a 16% raise over five years, as the city has originally offered. Bus aides, security, custodians and special education aides will get additional raises when they complete certain years of services.

The deal also makes some improvement in working conditions sought by the union, the SEIU members said. Among them, bus aides will have the opportunity to work at schools in between working their routes, meaning they can get paid in the middle of day when they’re currently forced to be idle.

The five-year proposed SEIU contract would be retroactive to last year, and will expire in 2023 — a period that Mayor Lori Lightfoot had sought.

On Sunday morning, the distance between the two sides was huge, the district’s Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade said. While the district and union agreed on what schools should offer students, she said, they differed on how to be able to do that — and how much to spend.

Chief Operating Officer Arne Rivera said the gap between what is already on the table and what the union is asking for is about $100 million. It would not be responsible for the city to approve spending that much, he said.

The union estimated the gap at $38 million a year.

When pressed on Thursday about when in the negotiations she would consider stepping in to the talks, Lightfoot hedged. “I will go when I think it’s appropriate for me to add value,” she said. “You may not have noticed, but I have a lot of things on my plate.”

Meanwhile, students plan to protest at City Hall on Monday, the eighth day of the strike.

Chicago teachers tired but resolute as strike winds down second week

2019-10-25T23:30:06+00:00

Their feet hurt from days on the picket line, they worry about how their students are faring, and they’re apprehensive about a possibly prolonged dispute with Chicago Public Schools. But striking teachers say they back their union’s decision to hold out on core issues of class sizes and more staffing.

On Friday, the seventh day of the strike, picketing teachers took to the streets again in protest, and blocked traffic to demonstrate their insistence on winning contract demands.

“Civil disobedience is something that some are willing to do make sure we continue that fight to get a fair and just contract,” said Alyssa Rodriguez, a school social worker, who attended the march.

Rodriguez remained in the background Friday. A vanguard of Chicago Teachers Union volunteers risked arrest as they sought to shut down Lake Shore Drive.

Until Friday’s protest, the tempo of teacher picketing had slowed somewhat from before.

“It’s definitely a slower walking pace, but morale seems to still be hanging in there,” said Rodriguez, who works at Rodolfo Lozano Bilingual & International Center Elementary and Wilma Rudolph Learning Center. “People are still really just staying focused and grounded in everyone’s initial reasons and intentions to strike.”

Enthusiasm for the strike started off high last week, propelled by anger at the district and disgust with difficult teaching conditions.

When the strike began a week ago Thursday, Rodriguez said she was “super excited” to picket. That energy lasted through the weekend, as negotiators reported progress.

Rodriguez said she was spurred to strike because her caseload, split between two schools, at times felt impossible. “Listen, I am good, but I am not God,” she joked. “Plan your crisis accordingly, because I am only in the building on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

Then on Monday, negotiations stalled after the mayor said the city could not commit any more funds and bluntly suggested teachers return to their classrooms while negotiations continued. For some strikers, it felt like a slap in the face.

“Lightfoot has basically gotten to a point where she has told us there is no more money, stop negotiating, just go back to work. That to me is really disrespectful and really demeaning,” said Lorena Jimenez, a special education teacher at Piccolo School of Excellence, an elementary in Humboldt Park.

That’s kept her coming back to protests. “My morale is pretty low. I feel a bit defeated, but I am still going to keep coming back each day,” Jimenez said.

Jimenez wants to see better support for parents, like translation services during special education meetings when parents are expected to understand complicated legal documents related to their child’s education services, and lower class sizes so teachers can better assess and help students.

Still, she has concerns about the strike. “It’s so many days outside of the classroom. I’m worried about the kids, I’m worried about myself, I’m worried about budgeting,” Jimenez said. She hopes the strike will change working conditions. “Once we are back in the classroom I’ll have all the energy I need.”

But energy doesn’t replace a paycheck. Teachers will miss more than a week’s pay, and if the strike lasts another week, Chicago Public Schools could stop paying teachers’ health insurance premiums on Nov. 1.

Teachers say public support has been important to keeping their spirits up. Students have held rallies to back the strikers, educators around the country have worn red to show their support, and a slew of presidential candidates have expressed their support for strikers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who rallied with teachers earlier this week.

But most of all, teachers have helped keep each other’s spirits up on the picket line.

Mel Ferrand, a first grade teacher at Ellington Elementary on the West Side, used to be the school librarian but lost the position during budget cuts. Now, thousands of books she used to help children check out are behind a locked door.

During the strike, Ferrand has been double-checking her supply of wool socks to stay warm and dry. She’s also appreciated the gestures of support, like an unfamiliar teacher helping her put her hood on when she struggled with it one day. “It may sound small, but it really helps show how we do care for each other,” Ferrand said. “It’s just how teachers and support staff are. We care for each other.”

Live updates from Day 6 of the Chicago teachers: Civil disobedience training and that weary feeling

2019-10-25T02:27:00+00:00

It’s the sixth day of no classes for 300,000 Chicago students, and that weary feeling has set in — for families scrambling to find care for their children, for teachers returning to picket lines in the early morning hours, and for negotiators at the bargaining table.

The union planned a day of picket lines in the morning hours and civil disobedience training in the afternoon at its headquarters, signaling that more dramatic actions could be on the way if resolution isn’t reached. On Wednesday, the union characterized negotiations as productive — but not on the issues it considers most important.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot, on the other hand, planned to tour a South Side family health center, a day after announcing more city funds for mental health and homeless services.

We’ll be keeping up with the day’s events here with our live updates. Follow Yana Kunichoff (@yanazure), Cassie Walker Burke (@cassiechicago), Kalyn Belsha (@kalynbelsha), and Ariel Cheung (@arielfab).

Have photos, tips, suggestions, or want to weigh in on the strike? If you’re a parent, teacher or student, tell us how you are holding up. Write us at chicago.tips@chalkbeat.org.

8:30 p.m. Progress reported

For the first time during these negotiations, the union and the district hold back-to-back press updates on the day’s bargaining. Each side reports progress, but gives few specifics. Jennifer Johnson, the chief of staff for the union, who frequently gives updates, said teachers hope to be back at school on Monday.

“That is absolutely our hope,” Johnson said. “The details are moving, there’s been a good back and forth today,”

The city’s negotiators also were upbeat. “We are encouraged about the productivity from today, having some really strong discussions about proposals already on the table,” said Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade. “The tone is respectful… There is definitely more progress at the table.”

4:25 p.m. It’s official

It’s official: Chicago Public Schools says school will be canceled for a seventh day, tying the 2019 strike length with the seven-day walkout in 2012. The fact that it’s not a Chicago record offers little solace to parents: Teachers walked out six months into Mayor Harold Washington’s term, in 1987, for 19 work days.

1 p.m. A special education focus

Special education teachers outlined their needs at a Chicago Teachers Union press conference, Oct. 24, 2019.

The Chicago Teachers Union brought a crowd of special education teachers to its afternoon press conference. The union is asking for a case manager in every school, a demand it says the district has rejected, and a smaller caseload for special education teachers.

Samantha Heatley, a full-time case manager at Farragut High School, said she is in charge of managing the services of 170 students. Jennifer Senyard, who teaches on the South Side of Chicago, said she has seen students with special needs have class in converted bathrooms and school closets. (We published a First Person piece from the mother of one of them earlier this week.)

Whether the city could fill new special education positions, even if it agreed to fund them, is a question. The school district, like many others, has a hard time hiring enough teachers with special education training. The union says it will help build a pipeline, but the job has to be one that people actually want to do — and having too many students is a key part of that, said union Chief of Staff Jennifer Johnson.

The state is overseeing special education in Chicago after concluding that the district systemically delayed or denied services, and a recent update found that the city still has a long way to go to meet the needs of students with disabilities.

12:15 p.m. Meet the parents

Where are all of Chicago’s kids during the strike? Chicago Public Schools has reported fluctuating numbers of children reporting to minimally staffed schools each day — between 6,000 and 7,000 daily, about 2% to 3% of the student population.

Many families are taking a more ad-hoc route. Cassie spoke to Chanel Pryor outside the health clinic where Mayor Lori Lightfoot appeared today. Pryor was taking her son, who’s 6 and in first grade, along with her to a doctor’s appointment. Pryor usually works downtown, so she’s been leaving him in the care of his older brother.

“I feel like he should be at school. I’m trying to what I can. Today, I’m taking him to my doctor’s appointment just to get him out of the house,” she said.

She’s sympathetic with teachers — “a lot of the things they are asking for we had when I was growing up” — but she’s bothered by the timing. “If teachers felt so strongly,” she asked, “shouldn’t all this been done over the summer and not in the middle of school?” (The teachers union has said it was ready to negotiate sooner, but Lightfoot, who took office in May, was not.)

12 p.m. Students feel the toll

High school students have missed out on a college fair and state championship games while their teachers are on strike. And Mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed frustration today that the strike is disrupting critical milestones for students preparing for college.

“We’ve had to cancel the SAT,” she said. “And right now would be the time when CPS would be making sure our young people have their applications ready for the federal financial aid deadline for Nov. 1.”

Completing the FAFSA, the federal financial aid application, is now required under Illinois state law; before the law passed, Chicago Public Schools had one of the highest participation rates in the state with nearly three-quarters of seniors filing the paperwork.

The SAT college admissions exam was originally scheduled for the week the strike started and has now been rescheduled for Oct. 30. It’s administered for free during the school day in Chicago to increase access for students who might not be able to pay to take it on the weekend. But that approach makes it vulnerable to changes in schools’ operations.

11:45 a.m. “Five years. Five years.”

Looks like Mayor Lori Lightfoot isn’t going to budge on the length of the contract she offers to the Chicago Teachers Union. The union wants a three-year contract; she’s said the city wants the new contract to be in effect for five years.

Asked whether there had been any movement toward a compromise on Thursday morning, Lightfoot was emphatic. “That’s not going to be possible,” she said. “Five years. Five years.”

11:42 a.m. Strike breakfast

Hey LaSalle families, we miss you!!! Please join us tomorrow, 10/25 from 9-11 am for a grill out on the picket line! We’ll bring some food and drinks, you bring the smiles! Feel free to bring something to grill if you would like! 💙💛
— Lauren Peretz (@MsPeretz) October 24, 2019

11:30 a.m. SEIU Local 73 begs for bargaining

SEIU Local 73’s 7,500 members have been on strike from their jobs in Chicago schools since Thursday, when teachers also walked out. Speaking on WBEZ Thursday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city had put together a “fulsome” offer that includes an immediate 9% wage hike for the district’s lowest-paid workers.

But she said the union was sitting on the deal until the Chicago Teachers Union has one of its own. “They value their political relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union more than getting a deal done,” Lightfoot said.

Larry Alcoff, the union’s lead negotiator, said at about the same time that the school district had not in fact been negotiating with the union, which represents support staff and has been working under an expired contract for 15 months. He said there had only been two bargaining sessions with the city since the strike began: one that lasted for an hour and a second that lasted just 12 minutes.

City officials said they could not offer more, he said.

“This is not a publicity stunt,” Alcoff said. “It’s a sincere request that school district negotiators work with us.”

City officials, however, said it was union that walked out of the second talks.

According to SEIU, there are three big sticking points: pay for special education classroom assistants, rules governing when aides can be used as substitute teachers, and paid vacation days for support workers.

10:30 a.m. A fund for striking teachers as lost wages mount

Teachers aren’t paid for the time they’re on strike, so Chicago’s teachers are already looking at a week of lost wages, with no end in sight. The Chicago Teachers Union has no strike fund, according to the Sun-Times, which took an important look at the financial toll the strike is having on union members.

But now the American Federation of Teachers has launched a “strike solidarity fund” to support local educators. “Help us show our union family we have their backs,” the fund page says. “Donate today.”

According to an AFT spokesperson, the national union set up the fund so the local union could focus on negotiations — and get the maximum donation without having a portion go to credit card transaction fees.

One major financial deadline looms: If the strike is not resolved by the end of the month — Oct. 31 is a week from today — the city could stop contributing to teachers’ health insurance plans. That move would leave teachers with hefty COBRA payments if they want to avoid interruptions in their coverage.

10:26 a.m. Weekend planning

The teachers union has just offered a pretty clear sign about what it expects to happen at the bargaining table today and on Friday. On Twitter, the union announced another citywide rally — for Saturday.

Join us, @SEIU73, @ChicagoJwJ, @CTSCampaign
and supporters for the Chicago Labor and Community Solidarity Rally. Saturday, 10 AM. #CTUSEIUstrike

Info: https://t.co/VZHu4zpxMP
— ChicagoTeachersUnion (@CTULocal1) October 24, 2019

10 a.m. Lightfoot’s view

At the same time that school district officials were updating reporters at Malcolm X College, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was sounding a similar note on the South Side. She also said that the city was waiting for a response from the teachers union on its class size and support staffing proposals, and said bargaining had not stalled but was not “making the levels of progress we need to” to reach a deal.

Will she be at the negotiating table today? “When I can add value, I will,” Lightfoot said.

9:50 a.m. “We can get a deal done” but …

Chicago Public Schools officials offered a firm message to the public Thursday morning — but not renewed hope that the strike would be resolved soon.

“We can get a deal done,” LaTanya McDade, the district’s chief academic officer, told reporters. “It’s a matter of both sides giving and being reasonable about not just what proposals are being put forward but being financially responsible about what we agree to, and then also ensuring we’re doing everything we can to get our students back in the classroom.”

She said the district was waiting for counterproposals from the teachers union on multiple issues, especially class size. “Class size is a holdup,” she said.

Remember, the union wants class size limits written into the contract, as well as penalties if they are exceeded.

9:35 a.m. An unusual morning update

We just got word that Chicago Public Schools will be giving a public update on negotiations — in 15 minutes. Our reporter is rushing over for the briefing at Malcolm X College, where negotiators have been at work since last week.

It’s an unusual time for an update — the city and union have been briefing the press more frequently later in the day. And Mayor Lori Lightfoot is making her own appearance at a different event many miles away. More soon.

8 a.m. Seeing red

The Chicago Teachers Union asked its supporters across the country to demonstrate their solidarity by post pictures of themselves wearing red today. Those photos are starting to flood social media this morning, using the hashtag #PutitinWriting. We’ve spotted what looks like the entire teaching staff of a school in Summit, Illinois …

The @iftaft teachers at Argo Community High School stand with @CTULocal1!#PutItInWriting #WSTU571 #UnifiedinPride pic.twitter.com/mVNYKjkpou
— Argo Teachers (@ArgoTeachers) October 23, 2019

the New York State 2017 Teacher of the Year …

We see you, Chicago teachers — and are proud to stand with you! I’m #RedForEd !!! #PutItInWriting @nysut pic.twitter.com/DqMlzc0kYh
— Amy Hysick (@hysickscience) October 24, 2019

and a Philadelphia teacher who says her union there has pushed for similar changes.

Wearing red today in #Solidarity with @CTULocal1. In Philly we have fought for nurses after a child died of asthma @school, for counselors after the District tried to lay off all of them, for class size caps b/c no child can learn in a class of 40+. #PutItInWriting pic.twitter.com/4G2pbXzwyQ
— Sally O'Brien and the way she might look at you (@sally_oh_brien) October 24, 2019

6:30 a.m. Back to school

Teachers wake up to this tweet of support from presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders, who visited union hall a few weeks ago. They return to school picket lines after a day of rallying downtown.

I know what side I'm on. I stand with the 30,000 Chicago teachers and school staff on strike. pic.twitter.com/U2BaLO8Pn8
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 23, 2019

What happened Wednesday

You can catch up on everything that happened on the strike’s fifth day in our live tracker. But here are some highlights:

More tentative small agreements, some momentum, but still no resolution on the five core issues: That’s how union leaders described the state of bargaining Wednesday night. Here’s our recap from end-of-day briefings.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot expressed frustration with the size of the union’s bargaining team, which she said was unwieldy. She also gave a budget address that was light on education news but did reveal that the city is allocating more money to mental health and homeless services. More on that news in our live tracker.
Ariel took a bus ride with some of the school system’s lowest-paid workers and wrote an eye-opening story.
And our team took a closer look at the five issues at the core of the dispute and where negotiations stand over them.

The fight at the heart of the Chicago teachers strike: How much the city can spend

2019-10-24T03:25:47+00:00

With pressure mounting on both City Hall and the Chicago Teachers Union to reach a deal so that 300,000 children can return to school, both sides Wednesday agreed the sticking point isn’t policy. It’s how much the city is willing to spend.

Hopes appear to dim for reaching any resolution by the end of the week.

“I have no idea when the strike will end,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot told the Crain’s Chicago Business editorial board Wednesday afternoon, just hours after she confidently delivered her first budget address in City Council chambers and detailed how she plans to plug a $838 million hole in the city budget.

In a tour of editorial boards Wednesday, Lightfoot stressed that neither the city nor the school system, which have separate budgets, can afford to squeeze out more money to meet union demands. She has pegged the city’s concessions so far at an additional $500 million across five years, and she has said she wants to hold the line there, while estimating the union’s total demands would cost the city nearly $2.4 billion.

“They are going to have to live within their means,” she has said repeatedly.

Leaders of the teachers union, meanwhile, don’t see the resources the same way. They said Wednesday they weren’t satisfied with an additional $66 million in additional tax-increment funds that the city announced Wednesday for schools. (The mayor’s budget directs $163.1 million to schools from the TIF surplus, but $97 million was already budgeted for use this school year.)

“Today the mayor delivered an address of austerity, while announcing a record TIF that the city promptly took back from us,” union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said. “While she celebrates this record surplus, we won’t see it in our classrooms, because we are paying for things the city paid for last year.” Gates was referring to such shared costs as school police, which are coming out of the Chicago Public Schools budget for the first time this school year.

But negotiators made some progress, even while the union planned to ramp up its daily actions on Thursday with a civil disobedience training for its members. President Jesse Sharkey described momentum on smaller issues such as teacher evaluations and translation services. However, resolving five core issues — class size, support staffing, pay, prep time, and the length of the contract — remains elusive.

According to Sharkey, negotiators have largely agreed on staffing targets for additional nurses and social workers; what remains is a way to ensure the city delivers on its hiring promises. The teams are still far apart over teacher prep time.

On class size, an issue that teachers on picket lines speak frequently and passionately about, Sharkey said the two sides had agreed to prioritize high-need schools first. But they disagree over how much money could be set aside to provide relief, most likely in the form of teachers aides, and how the district would enforce measures to ease overcrowding.

“It’s an expensive demand,” he said of the union’s initial ask to lower class size to 20 in kindergarten and 24 in first through fifth grades. “We understand if we can’t fully get our demand, but I can’t bring back to our members and say here’s a few thousand dollars for your high school,” referencing a $9 million proposed budget for a class size committee that would have authority to relieve overcrowding. Of that, only $700,000 would be set aside to relieve overcrowding across 86 high schools, according to the union.

In her editorial board appearances Wednesday, Lightfoot said that the Chicago Teachers Union bargaining team was just too big and too slow. “There is some progress being made but not enough — and not fast enough,” noting that the union’s team has more than 40 people on it, and its size is an impediment to negotiating efficiently.

In 30 years practicing law, she said, “I’ve never experienced something where you have such a large bargaining team on the other side. Even in complicated transactions, there is a chain of command and somebody who really sets a course on the other side for how counterproposals go back and forth.”

In the current negotiations, she said the union spends most of its time in caucuses with its members, reviewing proposals.

“They need to have a seriousness of purpose and an urgency—especially when we’re in Day Five of a strike,” she told editors at Crain’s. “I bear the weight of those children who are stressed out, the parents who are worrying and wringing hands about when the strike is going to end.“

In response, Sharkey said Wednesday that the union had readied its proposal for the city 10 months ago, but discussion began only in recent weeks. “Why weren’t the discussions more serious weeks ago?” he asked.

On strike, too, in Chicago: The desperation of schools’ lowest-paid workers

2019-10-23T22:02:00+00:00

Althea McCaskill has been a bus aide with Chicago Public Schools for 10 years and makes about $16,000 a year. No matter how long her 22-mile route from the first student pickup at 108th Street to Disney Magnet Elementary School in Uptown takes, she is paid for four hours.

She rises at 4 a.m. to make it to her school bus by 5:30 a.m. Her work pauses during school hours, but the break from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. isn’t enough time for other part-time work, and she has gone two years without a raise, she said.

McCaskill and 7,500 members of SEIU Local 73 have been on strike from their jobs at CPS since Thursday, when teachers also walked out. SEIU, which represents CPS bus aides, custodians, classroom assistants, and security officers, says it is still fighting for pay increases that would bring its lowest-paid workers above poverty level, better definition of duties of special education classroom assistants, an end to outside management of custodians by Sodexo and Aramark, and benefits like a paid Christmas break.

The city has offered support workers the same deal it has proposed for teachers: a 16% raise over a five-year contract, additional raises for low-wage custodians and classroom assistants and more paid time off for bus aides. For employees like McCaskill, a 16% raise still would likely have her earning less than $20,000 five years from now.

“That doesn’t show up in your paycheck much,” said Larry Alcoff, chief negotiator for SEIU. “It doesn’t lift you out of poverty.”

SEIU members say they desperately need raises and better working conditions and expressed concern that their negotiations with the city are taking a back seat to those with the Chicago Teachers Union. Negotiations have gone in fits and starts, with a four-day gap at the strike’s start, then a session Monday that the union charged ended when the district left after 12 minutes with no movement toward a deal.

The district denies that it ended Monday’s meeting and said it was SEIU that ended the session.

Since then, the two sides have not scheduled another negotiating session nor made any counterproposals, Alcoff said Wednesday afternoon.

The uncertainty weighs on union members.

“I do this every day, faithfully, for 10 years. Why can’t I get paid what I’m worth?” McCaskill said. The single mom of four, including an adult with special needs, lived in a shelter for months before she was selected in a lottery for low-income housing. Even so, she is often charged a late fee when she can’t pay her rent on time.

She began the school year getting paid for six hours, but that often meant 12-hour shifts, McCaskill said. She would frequently be on the bus for five hours straight without a bathroom break, which McCaskill said was unfeasible for her. Her boss told her there was nothing they could do except cut her hours.

“They tell you to just suffer through it,” she said. “But if anything happens, they throw you under the bus.”

McCaskill joined union President Dian Palmer and other members on a bus that transported them to Wednesday’s downtown rally. McCaskill was visibly stunned as they drove past The 78 megadevelopment near the South Loop. Both SEIU and CTU have repeatedly questioned the city’s use of special taxing districts to lure large real-estate developments.

As Palmer pointed out that The 78 will receive $700 million in tax-increment financing subsidies, McCaskill stared out the window in disbelief.

“I did not know that,” she said quietly. “I can’t afford [to live there]. And to see the things they’re doing, it’s like [saying], ‘We don’t care about you.’ ”

On their way to the rally outside City Hall, bus aides — who make an average $15,600 per year — and custodial staff shared stories of their struggles to make ends meet.

Fellow bus aide Yolanda McGrone was choked up as she described the three months she spent living in her car because she was unable to pay rent for her family, despite working two additional jobs as a home health aide and a medical assistant. She said sometimes she works 13-hour days for the school district but still is paid for less than half that time, as aides are paid by the scheduled route, not by the hours they work. They are not compensated for overtime.

“We work every day at this job, busting our behinds, and we don’t get the respect we are due,” McGrone said, pausing as she broke down. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Being forced to forgo pay is taking a toll. Custodial worker Tashanna Johnson said the strike, now in its fifth day, is threatening her ability to pay rent come November. Her $15.46 hourly wage just barely covers her $1,350 rent in Woodlawn in addition to bills and medication she needs for arthritis and chronic asthma. Sometimes, it’s a choice between paying rent or getting her meds, she said.

Without income for strike days and with an adult son with autism to care for, Johnson said she has seriously considered leaving the strike and going back to work as one of two morning janitors at Morgan Park High School.

“I’m worried about being homeless,” Johnson said. “How am I going to explain this to my landlord? I don’t have a whole check coming. I’m scared.”

Here are the 5 big issues in Chicago’s teachers contract dispute — and where negotiations stand

2019-10-23T13:46:08+00:00

At times it may seem that Chicago and its teachers union are litigating every single facet of teaching and learning in local schools during the dispute that resulted in the current teacher strike. But in fact, union officials have said five issues make up their core demands.

As the city enters a fifth day of canceled classes and rallies (follow our live coverage here), we’re summarizing where each of those issues stands — and what could happen with them as negotiations continue.

SUPPORT STAFFING

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The union wants the city to hire thousands more teachers, social workers, and nurses and to put the hiring plan into the contract. A win here would make a difference for students, if the new positions can be filled (there are shortages in several critical categories that complicate hiring). Guarantees of new workers would also position the union to grow its ranks even though the school district is shrinking.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot pledged this summer to hire hundreds more support staff and phase them in over five years, but only this week did she agree to write some staffing targets into the contract. She also promised to have a nurse and a social worker at every school by 2024, and provide a special education case worker for every school with a concentration of students with disabilities.

What we’re hearing: Stepping back from their initial request, the union has agreed to a phase-in plan that would focus on high-need schools first. But the sides are battling over how to measure staff and enforce the plan. The union wants language that would allow it to file grievances if those goals are not met.

CLASS SIZE

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The union’s expired contract caps class sizes, but schools often exceed them with no penalty. Relief, offered through a class size committee with no budget or enforcement power, can be a long time coming, if at all.

The union wants the district to lower class size caps and, for the first time, to compensate teachers whose classes exceed those counts — not an uncommon provision in union contracts elsewhere.

What we’re hearing:The city’s latest public proposal did not budge on the current caps — 28 in kindergarten through fifth grade; and 31 in middle and high schools — but it did establish a pot of money to hire more teacher assistants in overcrowded classrooms through high school. The union said this was a good step, but that the funding offered wasn’t sufficient to lower class sizes

The issue remains unresolved.

TEACHER PREP TIME

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The city and union have gone back and forth on issues around how much time during the school day teachers get to spend on work that doesn’t involve working directly with students, and about who controls that time. Currently, the union is asking for teachers to get 30 more minutes per day for prep for elementary teachers. To accommodate that request, schools would either have to start later or the district would pay teachers an additional sum to arrive earlier. The city’s current offer is for no change from how things are now — a significant concession from its earlier demands that principals be able to direct a much larger portion of the time.

What we’re hearing: Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson have signaled that they would hold the line against shortening the instructional day. Teachers on picket lines have said prep time is a big issue in schools where educators already feel stretched thin, and unions officials say the issue could be decisive in making a deal.

CONTRACT LENGTH

Where things stand and what’s at stake: City Hall says it will only agree to a five-year contract. The union wants a three-year term. This matters because how long a contract lasts determines the timing of the next negotiations. A three-year horizon would put pressure on the current mayor to make another deal with the union right before she’s up for reelection. A five-year horizon would give her some breathing room — and more time to fund and ramp up staffing to fulfill the same agreements.

What we’re hearing: The city says it needs a five-year contract to pull off all of the changes the union is demanding. But the union says it will agree to a five-year contract only if it wins some key demands. Its request for a shorter contract is in line with labor trends: The most common length of a teachers union contract is three years, the National Center on Teaching Quality found in 2015. So far, neither side has publicly offered a compromise (and there’s an obvious one here, mathematically, though it would fall right in the middle of the next mayoral election).

TEACHER PAY

Where things stand and what’s at stake: The city has offered significant pay increases to teachers at all levels, although the city and union have different takes on just how significant. The union is still pushing for higher pay for veteran teachers and for paraprofessionals, who include teachers aides. Chicago is a district that struggles to fill all of its teaching positions. Earlier this year, the union won pay increases for paras in the contracts it negotiated for teachers at a handful of charter schools — suggesting that the issue could be a top priority for union negotiators.

What we’re hearing: The district is offering to raise salaries on average by more than 8% for paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, with an immediate 14% pay hike for hard-to-staff nurse positions. The union says there hasn’t yet been an agreement on paraprofessionals pay. It also wants higher automatic pay bumps as teachers accrue seniority.

However, pay issues haven’t been a focus at the bargaining table in “weeks,” Lightfoot said over the weekend. But that may be by design. Legally, the union can’t strike over anything other than compensation issues. Reaching an agreement on pay would make it impossible for the union to keep pressing on class size, support staffing, and other issues, so expect teacher pay to be the last issue to be settled.

Live updates from Day 5 of the Chicago teachers strike: Mayor says unwieldy union bargaining team slows talks

2019-10-24T01:07:00+00:00

Good evening from Day 5 of the Chicago teachers strike. With little progress in negotiations again Tuesday, the Chicago Teachers Union switched up its playbook today. Instead of dispatching teachers to their schools to picket, it sent most of them downtown for a big rally that shut down much of the Loop.

The rally was timed for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first budget address, which she gave this morning in City Council chambers at City Hall. The teachers union wasn’t the only group present: Several activist groups with agendas beyond education turned out as well.

Our caffeine-fueled team — Cassie Walker Burke (@cassiechicago), Yana Kunichoff (@yanazure), and Ariel Cheung (@arielfab) — has been keeping the live updates going as the strike finishes its first week. Follow along here.

File photo of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaking at Chicago’s City Club on May 28, 2019.

7:51 p.m. Mayor: Unwieldy union team slows bargaining

Mayor Lori Lightfoot told the editorial board of Crain’s Chicago Business Wednesday that the Chicago Teachers Union bargaining team was too big and too slow.

“There is some progress being made but not enough — and not fast enough,” she said in a wide-ranging interview with the newspaper’s editorial board.

Lightfoot noted that more than 40 people sit on the union’s team and insisted the size is an impediment to negotiating efficiently. She said that the union takes “days not hours” to respond to the school district’s proposals, and that “the two core issues that the union identified for us, class size and staffing, we have given them written proposals and we are waiting for an answer.”

She said that the two sides are negotiating more now than when the strike began. But even when they are in the same building, the teams spend only a small portion of their time across the table from one another. Sometimes the union’s bargaining team arrives late, she said; often they go into caucuses that can last hours.

Still, this isn’t toughest negotiation she’s been through in her three decades as a lawyer, she told a Crain’s journalist.

(The union shot back on Twitter: “Of course this isn’t the toughest negotiation she’s been a part of. Because she hasn’t been a part of it.”)

“I have no idea when it’s going to end,” Lightfoot said, explaining that the two sides have reached agreements on minor issues, but “on the bigger issues that are going to make the difference between when the dispute is resolved and when it isn’t, we’re not there yet.”

As the strike moves into its sixth day, a member of the Crain’s editorial board asked the mayor if the school year should be extended to make up for the school days missed during the strike. “No, I do not, and we will not” by even one day, Lightfoot said. She cited logistical issues, such as high school seniors needing final transcripts to enroll in or finance their post-secondary education.

Which makes an expedited resolution all the more imperative, she said.

“When I say there’s got to be a quickened pace and a sense of urgency and a way to get to resolution and check off issues so we can move on to the next one,” the mayor said, “I mean it.”

4:20 p.m. No classes Thursday

The last two days, Chicago Public Schools has announced on Twitter at the stroke of 4 p.m. that classes would be canceled the following day. That didn’t happen today, but district officials have just informed families what had become a forgone conclusion: There won’t be classes on Thursday — the sixth school day missed due to the teacher strike.

3:50 p.m. How the other strike fares

Just one more reminder that SEIU73, the local chapter of the Service Employees International Union, is also on strike right now in Chicago. We’ve just posted a story about how the union’s school workers — many of the lowest-paid in the city — are faring after five days without pay.

2:46 p.m. Seeing red on social media

Thursday’s solidarity social posts are likely to come from far beyond the city, now that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten has amplified Chicago union chief Jesse Sharkey’s request for strike supporters to share pictures of themselves wearing red with the union’s #PutitinWriting hashtag. Weingarten sent an email to AFT members and allies across the country directing them to Sharkey’s video, which he released on Tuesday.

1 p.m. Taking teachers’ temperature

Chicago Teachers Union members rallied in downtown Chicago on the fifth day of their strike, Oct. 23, 2019.

Teachers who attended the union’s morning rally ahead of the mayor’s budget address said they are tired but resolute.

What’s keeping Kadisha Harris, a social studies teacher at Amelia Earhart Elementary School, going is thinking about her students who had to teach her how to give them their asthma medication because the school doesn’t have a full time nurse.

“Financially, it might be a little struggle, but it’s a short-term struggle for a long-term relief,” Harris said, referring to the fact that teachers are not paid during a strike. “I miss my students, and I miss teaching,” said Harris, who took part in the 2012 teachers strike.

Lorena Jimenez, a special education at Piccolo Elementary School in Humboldt Park, said she’s committed to the strike but felt demoralized after the letter from the mayor telling teachers to go back to work.

“That to me is really disrespectful and really demeaning,” she said. “It’s so many days outside of the classroom. I’m worried about the kids, I’m worried about myself, I’m worried about budgeting.”

12:30 p.m. A contrasting special education view

Earlier this week, we published a First Person piece from a mother who said her son’s experience in Chicago as a student with disabilities made her support the strike. On Tuesday, Cassie met a mother with the opposite takeaway.

“One of my kids, who has a disability and needs to be in a routine, she is going around the house in circles and she’s just cleaning,” said the mother, who asked to be identified as Mary, her first name, to avoid repercussions for her children. “Only parents in the disability world will understand — all she’s doing is packing things in boxes because she doesn’t know what to do. I’m so over it.”

Mary said her reservations about the strike were rooted in her child’s school experience, not just the disruption this week, and her desire for change. “All of the learning and instruction that is supposed to be taking place isn’t happening,” she said.

“I’m not on [the mayor’s] side. I’m not on the side of CTU, either. I’m not on anyone’s side,” Mary added. “I’m on my children’s side.”

11:30 a.m. Homeless families get a budget boost

With a teachers contract still up in the air, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s address was short on education details. But her budget does deliver on a pledge to the Chicago Teachers Union to address some of its concerns about affordable housing in the city. The budget puts $5 million into a “flexible housing pool” to connect frequent users of emergency rooms and shelters to supportive housing and increases by another $5 million a fund for construction of affordable housing units.

“These investments are particularly focused on Chicago’s young people experiencing homelessness,” Lightfoot said. More than 16,000 Chicago Public Schools are estimated to be homeless, according to a September report from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

11 a.m. Yes to TIF funds; no to “meaningful” property tax increases

We’ll have more soon about what Mayor Lori Lightfoot said during her budget address, but two tidbits about the budget are already making the rounds.

One is that Lightfoot is doing some of what the Chicago Teachers Union has urged her to do and use special funds called TIFs to generate new revenue for Chicago Public Schools.

Of a $300 million TIF surplus that she declared Wednesday, $163 million will go to schools — $66 million above what the district had already budgeted, the Sun-Times is reporting. But those funds cover only a portion of the city’s current offer to the union, not any of the additional concessions the union wants. Lightfoot also vowed in her speech to reform how the city deploys TIF funds, which are intended for community improvement projects: “The days of the TIF slush fund are over,” she said.

Second, Lightfoot emphasized that she was able to go from a $838 million budget hole to a balanced budget — one that includes some improvements, such as Sunday library hours in some neighborhoods — without “meaningful” property tax increases.

That’s likely to calm the fears of some in the city who have viewed the teachers union contract talks, and their mounting costs, with trepidation.

“I’m very saddened that I can’t be there to tutor my kids right now. And I was a teacher at one time. I know class size is important,” said Janet Rhines, who volunteers with Open Books’ Reading Buddies program and who visited the Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday. “But I’m also a taxpayer, and I’ve seen the taxes in my neighborhood go up drastically to the point where we’ve considered moving and maybe even leaving the state. I’m torn between the sides.”

10:30 a.m. Freedom schools and volunteering

As the strike wears on, community groups are launching new initiatives every day for students whose teachers are on strike. Two that crossed our desk this morning: a “freedom school” starting Thursday in Kenwood that will focus on equity issues and a volunteering opportunity organized by the Jewish United Fund of Chicago.

Thread: Chicago parents/students
Starting this Thurs & every weekday during #CTUSEIUstrike please have your 7-12th graders come to the Freedom School outside Kenwood from 9-1030am. The School will focus on Social Justice in Ed. & Black Empowerment #PutItInWriting #FairContractNow pic.twitter.com/Gduai3EjZj
— KA Freedom School (@KAFreedomSchoo1) October 23, 2019

Hey CPS students! Need something to do while your school remains closed? Join TOV Teens-Volunteering for an afternoon pop up. Register: https://www.juf.org/teens/teenvolunteerpopup.aspx Posted by Jewish United Fund of Chicago – JUF on Tuesday, October 22, 2019

10:15 a.m. View from the school bus

Ariel joined bus aides, who are members of another union on strike, as they headed to this morning’s citywide rally. Here’s her report:

Althea McCaskill, a Chicago school bus aide, rode a bus to a citywide rally Oct. 23, 2019.

Bus aide Althea McCaskill was stunned as she and other SEIU Local 73 union members drove past The 78 megadevelopment on a bus heading to the downtown strike this morning. As union President Dian Palmer pointed out that The 78 will receive $700 million in tax-increment financing subsidies, McCaskill stared out the window in disbelief. “I did not know that,” she said quietly. “I can’t afford that. And to see the things they’re doing, it’s like [saying], ‘We don’t care about you.’ ” McCaskill has been a bus aide for 10 years and makes about $16,000 a year. No matter how long she works during her 22-mile commutes from the first student pick-up at 108th Street to Disney Magnet Elementary School, she is paid for four hours. She rises at 4 a.m. to make it to her bus by 5:30 a.m. Her work day pauses during school hours, but the break from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. isn’t enough time for other part-time work, and she’s gone two years without a raise, she said. “I do this every day, faithfully, for 10 years. Why can’t I get paid what I’m worth?” McCaskill said. The single mom of a teenager and an adult with special needs lived in a shelter for months before she was selected in a lottery for low-income housing. Even so, she is often charged a late fee when she can’t pay her rent on time.

10 a.m. Budget time

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is minutes away from starting her first budget address since taking office. She’s planning to outline her spending priorities — and what she’ll do to deal with the city’s predicted $838 million budget shortfall.

That gap is one reason why Lightfoot emphasized on Tuesday that she cannot responsibly make further concessions to the teachers union. Already, she said, the city has agreed to $500 million in new spending over five years.

9 a.m. That’s commitment

A pregnant Chicago Teachers Union member, Margot Taylor, joined a citywide rally Oct. 23, 2019.

Spotted in the throng downtown: A Chicago Teachers Union member who is 37 weeks pregnant wearing a sign that says, “Having strong CONTRACTions, but in need of a strong CONTRACT.” Margot Taylor said she’s planning to stand at the edge of the rally in case she has to go to the hospital.

(Teachers in Chicago get 10 paid days of parental leave to care for newborns, then can use sick time to extend their paid time off. That’s less paid time off than many workers get, but more than is required by law. New York City’s union recently won 12 to 14 weeks of parental leave for its members, who previously received no paid time off.)

8:40 a.m. Where the issues stand

Having trouble figuring out what’s really happening behind the scenes in negotiations? You’re not alone. We stepped back to look at what has happened so far — and what could come next — for five big issues that union leaders have said are the most important when it comes to reaching a deal. Those issues are support staffing, class size, teacher prep time, contract length, and pay.

A lot is still in flux but at least one thing is unlikely to change. From our article: “Legally, the union can’t strike over anything other than compensation issues. Reaching an agreement on pay would make it impossible for the union to keep pressing on class size, support staffing, and other issues, so expect teacher pay to be the last issue to be settled.”

8:10 a.m. On the bus

According to a recently posted job description, school bus aides in Chicago help students get on and off their buses; keep order while the bus is moving; and refer students who have misbehaved to their schools for discipline. They also lift students with disabilities, many of whom take schools buses.

Today, many of the aides, who are represented by another union on strike, are joining the citywide rally. Ariel is riding along.

Spending the morning with bus aides on strike with @SEIU73 as we head downtown to today’s rally. Keep tabs on #CTUSEIUstrike today with @chalkbeatCHI here: https://t.co/VpthbZ8OLW #ctustrike #CPSStrike pic.twitter.com/dbvnxmNBsp
— Ariel Cheung (@arielfab) October 23, 2019

8 a.m. All eyes on Chicago

One result of the strike’s extended duration is that national news organizations have now had a chance to cover what’s happening here. In the last couple of days, we’ve spotted an NBC News piece that focuses on teacher pay; a Jezebel ridealong with striking teachers; and a Teen Vogue story that emphasizes what students have to say, among others.

7:30 a.m. Charter strike day 2

About 40 teachers at Passages Charter School on the city’s North Side strike for a second day in the Andersonville neighborhood. About 420 students attend the school, which offers pre-K through eighth grade instruction to a mostly immigrant and refugee student body. Nearly 70% are from low-income families, and 38% are English language learners.

Cassie met Tessa Simonds, a middle school language arts teacher there, on the first day of the Chicago Teachers Union strike, when Passages teachers joined district teachers on picket lines. Simonds, a member of the bargaining team, said the issues at the table were teacher salaries, special education services, and the school day and school calendar. “Wages are still far below those of Chicago Public Schools,” Simonds said.

Last school year, Chicago saw three charter teachers strikes at various networks. In most of them, teachers won changes after walking out. At Acero schools, which last winter saw the first-ever charter teacher strike in the country, teachers won pay raises, a class size cap, a shorter school year, and language in the contract declaring schools off-limits to immigration officers.

6:30 a.m. Loop logistics

The traffic and weather reporters have started early with maps showing potential street closures downtown due to the rally. Police are warning commuters of traffic delays and suggest taking public transit. Extra officers will be stationed downtown.

Here’s the plan for the morning. Teachers union members have been told to gather at four locations at 8 a.m. and march to City Hall.

<li”>311 S Wacker Park (Jackson/Wacker)Swisshotel (near Wacker/Columbus)
D’Angelo Park (Harrison/Franklin)
Millennium Park (Randolph/Michigan)

Multiple activist groups plan to meet teachers outside of City Hall around 9 a.m. Mayor Lori Lightfoot is expected to give her budget address starting at 10 a.m. A rally will follow at 11 a.m. outside the Thompson Center.

“We expect traffic to be impacted until early afternoon,” the police department tweeted.

Chicago teachers talks stall; no hope for early end to strike, union warns

2019-10-22T03:06:02+00:00

The teachers strike isn’t ending soon.

That was the warning from the Chicago Teachers Union after daylong bargaining ended Monday evening with little progress to report.

“Unless there’s a change at the top of the city in regards to their willingness to make meaningful changes, we’re not likely seeing a quick settlement to the current strike,” union President Jesse Sharkey said.

The glum outlook contrasted with the hopeful tone and tentative agreements announced over the weekend.

He accused the mayor of essentially halting bargaining by telling news media that she wasn’t putting any new proposals on the table.

Responding to a letter from Mayor Lori Lightfoot asking teachers to stop their strike while negotiations continued, Sharkey said that teachers won’t go back to work without a legally binding settlement.

Earlier on Monday, an exasperated Lightfoot said she had met some of the union’s key demands in writing, but that the city cannot afford its multiple requests. “Beyond what we’ve put on the table, there is no more money,” Lightfoot said.

The union has insisted that Chicago Public Schools, with an increase in state funds and a rosier financial picture, has a large budget to dole out. But the district faces outsized pension obligations and long-term debt that now tops $8 billion, making it the second most indebted school district in the country.

The city of Chicago — which oversees the school district and could contribute additional funding to the deal — is facing a projected $838 million shortfall in its 2020 budget. The mayor has said she faces tough choices ahead, including possible hikes in taxes on ride-share companies and on restaurant sales.

“You have told us and the public that the most essential issues to resolve in order to reach an overall agreement are class size and staffing,” Lightfoot wrote in the letter co-signed by schools chief Janice Jackson. “What we’ve offered on both core issues addresses concerns for the highest-need schools first — an approach grounded in equity. And what we’ve offered is something CPS can both afford, and achieve. That is no small feat.”

Union Vice President Stacy Davis Gates blamed the mayor for being dismissive of the union’s efforts in contract talks, particularly the union’s push for improvements the mayor said she also supports. In response to the mayor’s statements, the union said it won’t send its full bargaining team into negotiations on Tuesday, leaving only four officers to take part in talks with the city. Scaling down the team makes any resolution Tuesday unlikely.

“The mayor holds all the power,” Gates said, noting that the union offered contract proposals back in January. “We are asking to be partners in making the city better.”

In a statement on Monday night, Lightfoot said she hoped for an agreement that would immediately end the strike, and said the city had initially left negotiations on Monday feeling positive. “It is now deeply concerning to hear that CTU is pulling members of its bargaining team away from the negotiating table tomorrow at this crucial juncture,” the statement said. “Our full team will be ready first thing tomorrow morning to continue working toward the fair contract our teachers, students, and families deserve.”

One of the most significant outstanding issues remains class size. The union wants a lower cap on class sizes and a mechanism to enforce them. Both sides have agreed to phasing in support to meet the current class size cap at the schools that need them most.

Negotiators had discussed creating a committee that would have funds to offer solutions like more aides. But that committee wouldn’t have enough money to ease overcrowding in high school classes, the union said.

Lightfoot said in the letter that the city’s counteroffers on class size had prioritized high-poverty schools. A separate offer, on staffing, would provide a nurse and a social worker for every school within five years.

Her plea to the union, the letter said, was to continue negotiations but let students return to classes. “The economic hardships to families will be difficult to ever calculate,” she wrote, going on to voice concerns about disruption to seniors’ college applications, student sports competitions, and general safety of the district’s 361,000 students. “Given where we are in negotiations, this hardship seems unnecessary.”

The union, meanwhile, said it’s keeping rank-and-file teachers updated and gauging support for the strike, by holding a daily meeting of strike captains who then report to union delegates across the city.

On Tuesday, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is expected to rally with Chicago teachers. Educators from Passages charter school on the city’s North Side also plan to walk out on strike, marking the fourth charter teachers strike in Chicago in less than a year.

Parents, students worry about the toll of Chicago teacher strike: losing days in the classroom

2019-10-22T00:20:44+00:00

As day four of a Chicago teachers strike loomed, parents scrambled to arrange child care and older students rallied to support their teachers, but adults and teens alike expressed concern about the lasting impact of losing several days of school.

Marwen, a nonprofit youth center near Cabrini-Green, put out word that it would expand services for students as young as second grade from its usual offerings for students in sixth grade and above. It has been partnering with local restaurants to feed children. Monday saw attendance at Marwen hit 48 students — double what it saw on Thursday.

“Beyond 50 students, we’ll have to figure out how to harness more resources, because we want to do this with high quality,” said Aurora King, director of education. “There’s certainly a need for this kind of a space.”

Mom Julie Garner was relieved to find Marwen was offering free, interactive care for students. Her 11-year-old son, Deniro, has spent the past three weekdays sculpting, painting and making finger puppets at Marwen.

“I thought it would be more fun to be there than sitting in school all day when they’re not getting taught,” Garner said. “As a single mom, I always have to be creative about where I’m going to take him, and I knew because this was districtwide, there would be stuff available for the kids.”

Deniro recently switched schools from one near their Morgan Park home to Ogden-Jenner, because Garner felt it had more resources for him. The change meant a 45-minute commute to school every day, but Garner said it was worth it. Now, she fears the strike could set back her son’s education.

“It takes a month to get kids acclimated after summer break, and now we have to start all over,” Garner said. “And teachers are already cramming everything in as it is. Tomorrow is day four — that’s a lot of time when it comes to school.”

Older students voiced concerns Monday that their college applications, PSATs and graduation dates would be impacted by the ongoing strike. Students like 16-year-old Lario Arriaza participated in picket lines and protests of their own.

“There’s a need to change our schools,” said Arriaza, a Prosser High School junior who joined friends at a Voices of Youth in Chicago Education rally Monday morning before heading to Harold Washington Library to spend a few hours. “We’re standing with the teachers for however long it takes.”

Later in the day, the Raise Chicago Coalition gathered outside Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office in City Hall to demand a $15 minimum wage for youth labor. Student speakers spoke about the hardships of being homeless while in school — an issue that union negotiators demanded the district address — and needing to work to pay for things like student registration, mandatory music electives and AP classes.

Maria Bradley, 17, who attends King College Prep in Kenwood, worries about losing class time during the Chicago teachers strike. On Oct. 21, 2019, she said she’s spending the strike looking for jobs while not in school.

“My graduation fees don’t even include my cap and gown, which a generous teacher has offered to pay for so I can walk the stage,” said Jennifer Nava, a senior at Kelly High School in Brighton Park. “We aren’t demanding fair wages so we can go out and party — it’s so we can focus on what truly matters instead of the constant stress of making sure our parents can pay the next bill and keep our families off the streets.”

Maria Bradley, a 17-year-old student at King College Prep in Kenwood, said the strike has one silver lining — she’s able to look for jobs while not in class. Bradley and her father, a butcher who works limited hours due to illness, recently moved from Hyde Park to a home near 80th Street and are struggling to make ends meet.

Bradley has been staying up until the early morning as she juggles doing homework, searching for a job, applying to college, and auditioning for band scholarships.

As for the strike, “we’ve been out of school for more than three days, and we don’t have money, and now we’re missing out on our education,” Bradley said. “Either way it goes, we’re not winning at all.”

With polls favoring teachers, Lori Lightfoot agrees to put added staffing and class sizes in the contract

2019-10-16T01:51:00+00:00

Updated: The Chicago Teachers Union said Tuesday night that city parents should begin preparing for a “short-term” strike. Read more here.

With the clock ticking down toward a Chicago teachers strike and a recent poll showing public opinion favoring teachers, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has made a significant shift in her bargaining position, saying the city is ready to write staffing and class size promises into the union contract.

The union demand to put staffing promises in writing has been a key sticking point in months of contract negotiations, with the union demanding that promises be contractually binding and the mayor saying she had put her intent to increase staffing in the city’s budget.

“We have expressed a willingness to find solutions on these two core issues that would be written into the contract,” Lightfoot said during a press briefing Tuesday afternoon.

However, just a few hours later, Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said that significant “gaps” remained between City Hall and union negotiators on several issues, including class size, that make a walkout all but unavoidable.

Sharkey also said Tuesday that the city and a separate union, Service Employees International Union Local 73, representing school support staff and park district workers, had not yet reached a deal.

“Three bargaining units, two unions, one mayor, and no deals,” Sharkey said. “Something has got to shift there.”

A survey conducted by ABC7 and the Chicago Sun-Times of more than 600 Chicagoans and released Monday night found that 49% would support a teachers strike, with 38% opposed.

What an agreement could look like remains unclear. In negotiations over the weekend, the union suggested a compromise on its demands that Chicago hire more nurses, social workers, and special education case managers, by agreeing to staff the neediest schools first. But on Monday night union officials said they had not yet reached an agreement on the proposal.

Bargaining will continue Wednesday.

The union’s representative 700-member House of Delegates must approve any proposed contract agreement before a strike is averted. Leadership has called a House of Delegates meeting for Wednesday evening, when members will vote yes or no on the city’s latest offer.

Meanwhile, parents all over the city received robo calls from the district updating them about strike plans for students.

Schools chief Janice Jackson said contingency plans are in place for the 300,000 Chicago students who could be displaced by a strike. Separately, the city has been bargaining with a union representing school support staff and park district workers, who have also authorized members to walk out with teachers Thursday.

District officials said they will cancel classes, tutoring and after-school activities, but plans to keep schools open to offer child care and free meals for students. Students with special education or nursing needs will not get services, but the district is working on lining up some contract nurses, Jackson said Tuesday.

Are Chicago teachers among the country’s highest-paid? A look at salaries and the contract conflict

2019-10-04T18:12:00+00:00

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has said that her latest offer to the city’s teachers will make them among the highest-paid educators in the country.

The union has disregarded her offer, insisting the city lower class sizes, add support staff and put those guarantees in writing.

But salary and benefits remain critical, because they are among the few issues that a 1995 law permits the Chicago Teachers Union to strike over.

Under the current Chicago union contract, beginning teachers make a base salary of just over $56,000 a year, while the most senior teachers with extra credentials make $108,242 a year.

Chicago district officials have characterized their current salary offer to teachers — a 16% cost-of-living raise over a five-year contract, with 3% in each of the first three years and 3.5% annually in the next two years — as generous and even “historic.”

The union wants more faster: a 5% annual raise in a three-year contract.

The district is offering to cover health insurance premiums, which are estimated to increase 6% annually, and to keep costs flat for teachers for the first three years.

“This is a significant benefit for CPS teachers and staff,” Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson wrote on a blog post earlier this week. “Under this offer, teachers will continue to enjoy these benefits for five years at about the same rate they are paying now.”

When factoring in steps and lanes — the automatic hikes that teachers get for longevity and educational credits — how will the salary of Chicago teachers match their counterparts in other major urban areas?

In 2017-18, the last school year for which comparable data is available, Chicago ranked toward the top in pay for more experienced teachers — a master’s degree holder with 10 years of experience, for example — and 22nd out of the 124 largest districts for a first-year teacher. The ranking was compiled by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan policy and research center.
Kency Nittler, the organization’s teacher policy director, said, “Chicago teachers in comparison to other teachers in large districts are being paid relatively well.”

She said that the district’s offer to teachers is solid, and not outside the bounds of what districts regularly offer in negotiations.

Nittler added that, in a difficult work environment, raises may not be enough to retain teachers. That echoes the argument the Chicago Teachers Union has been making in calling for smaller class sizes and more support staff, such as nurses, social workers, and special education case managers.

“Those (calls) are coming from a place of ‘your salary alone is not enough,’” she said.

On pay, the latest public statements indicate the union and City Hall still differ. The union wants to increase the number of steps — to 25 — at which teachers will earn automatic raises for longevity.

But the two sides are apparently nearing agreement on higher minimum salaries for teacher aides and on instituting a schedule of automatic raises — like the “steps and lanes” hikes that teachers get for experience and educational credits.

The district also is offering to raise salaries on average by more than 8% for paraprofessionals and school-related personnel, with an immediate 14% pay hike for hard-to-staff nurse positions.

So what are the signs of a “good” deal? Experts are divided — often by their politics — on the answer.

Daniel DiSalvo, of the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, said any pay raise or reduction in class size is a win for teachers because it makes teaching better compensated and less difficult.

“If you are reducing class sizes at the same time you are increasing pay, it’s extra generous,” DiSalvo said. He noted that some cuts to public education have been forced on states and districts by ballooning costs of rescuing underwater teacher pension funds.

Others argue that it will take significant pay bumps to compensate for decades of stagnant teacher wages and sometimes deep budget cuts to education.

Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that teacher salaries must be seen in a broader economic context. She points out that in the 1960s teaching was a relatively well-paid job for women when they had fewer opportunities. Now, women can choose among better paid and competitive jobs, so districts may need to offer more to attract quality candidates.

Pay was key in the wildcat teachers strikes that swept through Arizona, West Virginia and North Carolina last year. Denver teachers struck last winter over how and how much the district paid them. In Los Angeles, teachers rejected the district’s offer for retroactive raises, went on strike, and then essentially agreed to the same pay deal as before, but one that was sweetened by an increase in support services and lower class sizes.

U.S. teachers earn 60% less than workers in other professions requiring comparable education levels, according to a 2017 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It’s a phenomenon Allegretto calls the teacher pay penalty.

Some Chicago teachers say the job is impossible not because of low wages but because they feel overwhelmed by paperwork and struggling with too few resources to meet the complicated needs of their students.

That sentiment has been a consistent thread in the run-up to the strike and will likely be a theme on Wednesday night, when the union’s 700-member House of Delegates votes to set a possible strike date.

Have questions about the strike? Take our parent survey and we will get your questions answered.

Correction: This story was updated to say that Chicago’s first-year teacher pay ranks the district 22nd among the 124 largest urban districts, not toward the bottom. Chalkbeat regrets the error.

Chicago schools are in better financial shape, but civic watchdog says district needs long-term plan

2019-08-28T21:42:24+00:00

The same day that Chicago’s school board authorized a $7.7 billion budget and approved of borrowing billions more to pay for building upgrades, a longtime civic watchdog issued a report saying the district is sorely in need of a long-term financial plan.

While the Chicago Public Schools’ finances are in “much more stable shape,” compared to just a few years ago, the group had “concerns” about the district’s long-term fiscal health, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall told the school board Wednesday. While voicing support for the school system’s single-year 2019-2020 budget, Msall stressed the need for the district to take a longer view and to do so in the public eye.

“We urge the board of education to work with staff on a multi-year financial plan,” he said. “Chicago will again rely on short-term borrowing [for day-to-day operations], the teacher pension fund remains severely underfunded, and while costs continue to grow, the overall student enrollment continuing to decline.”

Turning that around won’t be easy, he acknowledged, saying, “there are very few easy solutions [to the problems] that face the district.”

In a presentation on Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools Treasurer Walter Stock told the school board that the district is in better financial health than in past years, and that he was asking them to approve another round of long-term borrowing — a $1.9 billion bond issue — to pay for critical building needs. Some $650 million of those loans would go to pay off projects that were part of a capital plan announced last year by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel; another $550 million would go to pay for hundreds more projects trumpeted earlier this month by Mayor Lori Lightfoot. That would leave nearly $700 million to use for projects in 2021 and beyond.

“We have critical building needs,” said Stock, who was not immediately able to provide a new total for Chicago district’s outstanding debt since the district recently made some payments. As of June 30, its long-term debt totaled $8.4 billion, making it the second most indebted school system in the country (after Los Angeles).

While the district’s bond rating has improved recently, it remains in junk status, which ratchets up the amount of interest it pays when it borrows money from the capital markets. That’s money diverted from the classroom that could otherwise be used on things like teachers’ salaries and supplies.

Msall also spotlighted a few unknowns weighing on the district, chiefly how it will pay for the pending contract with the teachers’ union and how the district will follow through on hiring necessary support staff it has promised going into this school year.

The number of support staff, who include social workers, nurses, and special education case managers, and the timeline for hiring them have been an issue of disagreement between the union and district leadership.

The union has stressed Chicago’s improved financial position to bolster its arguments for why teachers should get bigger cost-of-living raises than the city is currently offering. Mayor Lightfoot’s latest offer would give teachers a 16% raise across five years. The union has said that’s not enough.

But there’s a fundamental tension there. Chicago Public Schools still only receives about 64 percent of what it should from the state, according to the revamped funding formula that determines “adequate” spending for each district. So while it’s getting more money each year, there are still financial pressures — and when more money goes toward salaries, less can go into programs that also support schools.

“These are challenging questions,” said Carrie Stewart, a partner at the firm Afton Partners who works as a financial consultant to public school districts, not currently including Chicago Public Schools. “It seems that much of supports the union is asking for are things that our students need and deserve – these are things students in other districts benefit from. And yet here we are at 64 percent of funding adequacy – there is only so much that CPS can afford with the funding available, and the recent independent report (from the factfinder) has essentially confirmed that.”

There’s a tension, too, in what’s left to invest in equity measures. “There may be very good arguments for why every teacher in the district needs an increased salary,” said Benjamin Boer, the former state policy director at Advance Illinois and a public finance consultant. “But the problem is, there is evidence that the district has an equity issue. That there is not enough money for the different needs of different schools, and if you’re sending out money equally to all schools because you are raising salaries, it gives you a lot less flexibility on the equity front.”

In addition to supporting the proposed spending plan for this coming school year, the Civic Federation report released Wednesday praised more stable footing for the teachers pension fund and transparency measures, such as the board’s decision to start livestreaming its meetings and provide more frequent public financial updates.

Besides the long-term debt total rising, other concerns raised in the report include the continuing enrollment decline amid increased spending on personnel, the continued reliance on short-term borrowing to pay for day-to-day operations, and the need for more transparency around why some schools are selected for capital upgrades and others are not.

The need for transparency around capital selections came up in a series of public hearings last week. Despite lingering questions, the school board still greenlighted the capital plan — and the larger budget — on Wednesday.

Chicago wants to spend more on accommodations for students with disabilities. Advocates say the plan still falls short.

2019-08-28T17:07:17+00:00

When Grace was 7 years old, a rare genetic condition that renders her bones brittle caused the Drummond Montessori Elementary School student to begin using a wheelchair. But only Drummond’s first floor is wheelchair-accessible, so Grace is carried upstairs to her class, or scoots up the stairs on her bottom on days she can find the strength, according to a lawsuit filed against the Chicago school district in 2017.

The 11-year-old has resisted transferring to another school with an elevator, because the network that supported her through the trauma of her medical ordeal is at Drummond, in the Logan Square community on the Northwest Side.

“Whether pulling herself up the stairs or being carried, she has fought to stay in the community with those students and teachers,” said Grace’s lawyer Charles Petrof, who is representing her in an ongoing lawsuit to push the district to accommodate her.

Students like Grace would get a boost from the budget Chicago has proposed for this school year. The district plans to spend $10.5 million — the most in any year since 2012 — to make schools more accessible to students with special needs.

That spending, which represents 1% of the proposed budget, is part of a longer-term plan to make schools more accessible. The district says it will make all school buildings accessible over the next five years — but only for their first floors.

Now, a disabilities rights group is pushing the city to do more to allow students such as Grace to attend classes and events on any floor of any city school building. The group, Access Living, released a report Monday grading the district’s budget proposal, which the city school board approved with a unanimous vote Wednesday afternoon.

“This is an improvement, thank you,” Grace’s mother Karen Pillsbury told the school board during the public comment period before the vote. “But my issue is we’re only making schools first-floor accessible, and I think that misses the mark.”

She said her daughter can get to the first floor, “but then what?”

“Your art is in the basement, your cafeteria is in the basement, your gym is on the third floor, and getting there is a workout in and of itself,” she said. “There’s a large portion of the school that is off limits, and it’s not off-limits to just students. It’s off limits to parents, grandparents who will never see a graduation or school assembly.”

Complying fully with the Americans with Disabilities Act’s requirements for accessibility would cost the district, at a minimum, $300 million, according to Chris Yun, an education policy analyst with Access Living. She estimated that it would cost at least $250 million to put elevators in all of the district schools without one, and another $50 million for ramps, railings, toilets, and other interior features.

The proposed budget is “a good start,” Yun said. “But if you appropriate $10.5 million per year, how long will it take?”

Her group, Access Living, wants the district to prioritize “complete school accessibility” so that students with mobility issues aren’t limited in their choice of schools and can enjoy the same programs as their peers. (The group’s report also calls on the city to allocate funding to fix problems that landed the city’s special education program under state oversight.)

“As the district focuses on racial equity, it is important to recognize that CPS can’t achieve its goals without support for students with disabilities as well,” the report says.

At Wednesday school board meeting, district Chief Operating Officer Arnie Rivera gave a much bigger estimate than Yun for what it would cost to make all school buildings fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

About $600 million.

But there are no specific plans currently, short or long-term, to spend that much to accommodate students with disabilities.

The district plans to spend at least $80 million over the next five years to make all building’s first-floor accessible, he said. Rivera noted that the district hadn’t decided which schools would get improvements, and would first consult with stakeholders, including Access Living and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.

Education officials emphasize that they are spending aggressively to make buildings accessible after a long period of disinvestment. From 2013 to 2019 — the period when former Mayor Rahm Emanuel set the city schools’ budget — the district spent only $2.6 million total on renovations to make schools more accessible to students with disabilities.

“The past few years we had not made investments in making sure our schools were accessible,” Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson told WBEZ on Tuesday. “We want to make sure we have first-floor accessibility … You will see those investments in many of our neighborhood schools.”

Chicago has more than 650 schools, many of them in old buildings that are expensive to retrofit with elevators. The district itself considers 200 schools not accessible, and another 50 are accessible only on their first floor.

Marshall Metropolitan High School, 3250 West Adams Street, in West Garfield Park on the West Side, doesn’t have an elevator like many school district buildings.

“We’ve been trying to get one for years,” said Roy Baldon, a Local School Council member at Marshall Metropolitan High School, about an elevator.

At a hearing about the city’s proposed capital budget at Whitney Young High School last week, Baldon told Chalkbeat that Marshall’s lack of an elevator has limited the school’s ability to serve students with disabilities.

And not just students.

Shawn Harrington, a former Marshall basketball star and bas featured in the film “Hoop Dreams” was working as a basketball coach and special education aide at the West Side school in 2014 when he was shot in a case of mistaken identity and paralyzed from the waist down. He ultimately left the school.

“If we had that elevator,” Baldon said, “maybe he would be able to come back and do more.”

Harrington could not be reached for comment. But Rus Bradford, a friend who wrote a book about Harrington, confirmed that the lack of an elevator was an obstacle for Harrington. His job as a special education aide involved him following students from class to class to help keep them on task.

“They would go up and down stairs, and he can’t,” Bradford said. “He could get in the building with a wheelchair, but he couldn’t do his job.”

Chicago teachers union rejects neutral fact-finder’s report, setting countdown to strike

2019-08-26T16:45:00+00:00

The Chicago Teachers Union early Monday formally rejected a neutral fact-finder’s report calling for wage and health benefits primarily on the city’s terms and thus started a countdown toward a Sept. 26 teachers strike, the earliest possible date teachers could legally walk out.

The union’s next step will be for its House of Delegates representative body to set a date for a strike authorization vote. Its next meeting is Sept. 4.

The fact-finder, Steven Bierig, officially released his report to the public on Monday, although a summary of his conclusions was leaked to WTTW-Channel 11 earlier this month. The report recommends a 16% cost-of-living raise for teachers over five years, and proposed the district not increase health care contributions for teachers for the next two years, but then raise them a quarter of a percent each in years three and four, and half a percent in year five.

At back-to-back press conferences Monday — one week before Chicago students return to school — the district and the union each laid out their own arguments on what it would take to close the deal.

The city accepted Beirig’s recommendations at its press conference at Webster Elementary School on the city’s West Side, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she would up her offer to the 16% advised in the report at a total cost of $351 million across five years.

“That’s real money on the table, folks,” the mayor said.

Until now, she had been offering a 14% raise over five years.

The proposed bump means that the average teacher would see a salary increase of 24%, including the scheduled salary increases that teachers receive based on years of service, Lightfoot’s team said.

But the union, rejecting the fact-finder’s proposals at an event at outside Suder Montessori School on the Near West Side, said that while Lightfoot’s pay proposals were couched as generous, teachers have faced a decade of wage stagnation that included furloughs and pay freezes.

“In Chicago, educators in our classroom have been disrespected, where conditions in our classrooms have deteriorated, where we feel like there have been cuts after cuts,” union President Jesse Sharkey said.

Sharkey added that the union would not strike a deal without contractual promises on increased staff positions in special education, more aides, and smaller class sizes.

The two narratives reveal a key area of disagreement over how investments should be made in Chicago schools. The city said it has promised staffing boosts and investments in neighborhood schools — and those investments are reflected in the 2019-20 budget plan it made public in August. The school board will vote on the plan Wednesday.

The mayor has said she will fund hundreds of new social workers, special education case managers and nurses at district schools over the next five years, and claimed that a majority of these positions are reflected in the district’s 2019-20 budget proposal.

The union has criticized that proposal for falling short in filling in gaps in support staff. It wants the district to hire nearly 5,000 additional teachers, professionals and aides, at a cost of $880 million over three years.

“What we have seen in the budget is a pitiful shadow of what the promises sound like,” Sharkey said. “It’s not adequate.”

Bierig said in his report that staffing is outside of the fact-finder’s scope.

The union is legally limited to bargaining only on issues that address core teaching conditions, such as pay and benefits. That means the union can’t legally walk out over staffing issues.

But at Monday’s press conference, Sharkey argued that the mayor had made a political commitment to better invest in equity in schools, and the union wants them in writing.

“We see all these issues as being connected … as part of the overall package our union will accept,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to work in a school where, if two or three teachers call out sick, special education teachers are being pulled from their work to cover classes.”

Lightfoot also has proposed adding $73 million to schools sites next year, several initiatives to boost neighborhood schools, a$12 million boost for bilingual education, and equity grants to help small schools.

After the union sets a date for a strike authorization vote, its 25,000-plus members will have a chance to vote for or against a strike. In order for teachers to walk out, a state law passed during former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure requires that at least 75% of union membership must vote in favor of a strike.

Lightfoot, who has said in recent weeks that the city faces a bigger-than-expected financial hole, plans to give her first budget address as mayor on Thursday. Last week, City Hall announced a hiring freeze. But while financials look tight, Lightfoot said Monday she had no concerns about paying for her contract proposals.

“We are not going to agree to a contract for which we don’t have the resources,” she said.

Meanwhile, negotiators are bargaining several times a week, with a session set for Monday.

Lightfoot has said she hopes the two sides will resolve differences before school starts next week.

The union, meanwhile, has said that until it sees its key demands in a contract, its teachers will continue preparing for a strike.

Find the full text of the fact-finder’s report and the responses from the union and City Hall below.

Here is City Hall’s response.

Here is the Chicago Teachers Union response.

‘It’s not clear to me at all.’ How Chicago Schools prioritized campuses for building upgrades

2019-08-22T04:53:15+00:00

After sitting through a presentation on Chicago Public Schools’ $820 million capital spending plan for next school year, school board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri addressed a question that other Chicagoans have asked: How does the district decide which campuses get improvements and which ones have to wait?

“The answer is complex, and it’s not clear to me at all,” said Revuluri, who joined the board in June. While he’s learned a lot, he said about the budget: “I have not learned this yet.”

But he hopes that by next year, the process will be clearer to him and to the community.

Revuluri spoke to Chalkbeat Wednesday evening after a community meeting at Whitney Young High School, one of three sites where the district held simultaneous public meetings on the proposed $820 million capital budget, ahead of an Aug. 28 board vote.

But Chicago Public Schools has not conducted a facilities needs assessment in several years, and it only recently contracted a company to embark on a new citywide review. Chief Operating Officer Arnaldo Rivera told the audience at Amundsen High School on the city’s North Side that the district internally compiled the list of proposed upgrade projects and that it prioritized schools with the largest concentrations of at-risk students.

“We are trying to figure out how do we target our greatest needs instead of what can we do this year to move forward,” Rivera said. “CPS hasn’t had the luxury of doing multi-year plans.”

Rivera described a three-step process that started with a 2015 assessment of buildings with the greatest need. It factored in schools’ program expansions, overcrowding, and geographic locations. But he didn’t offer specifics about why some schools were chosen over others.

About five people signed up to speak at the Whitney Young meeting, and their comments ranged from praise for district investments to echoing Revuluri’s question about the inscrutable process behind the list.

Dozens of parents, students, teachers and community members at schools that had successfully lobbied to win construction projects thanked the district. Others pointed out other lingering conditions in their schools, like dilapidated bathrooms, broken playgrounds, and missing elevators for disabled students.

“We fought hard to get a playground. It just warms my heart up,” said Joseph Williams, of Beasley Elementary, speaking at a hearing at Morgan Park High on the Southwest Side.

At Amundsen, 10 of the 15 speakers represented Sullivan High School, which is in line to get a new roof. The school has needed one for at least seven years, Principal Chad Adams said.

“There had been rumblings [about the budget], us sending pictures downtown [of water coming into classrooms, buckets in hallway],” Adams said. “We kept at it and parents kept advocating.”

At the hearing at Whitney Young, elated supporters of Orozco Elementary School praised an investment in new pre-kindergarten classes. Chinatown residents asked for a new neighborhood high school on the Near South Side, a long-sought goal.

Several speakers from Morgan Park Academy expressed appreciation for an expected $23 million in upgrades, including new sports fields. But one alumna noted that the band room is in such disrepair that the equipment gets moldy and needs to be replaced often.

When the district announced the budget earlier this month, leaders touted plans to fix up 300 schools and build more pre-K classrooms, with a focus on neighborhood schools and equity.

This year’s $820 million capital budget is about 19% less than last year’s $1 billion spending plan. The biggest chunk of the proposed budget, about one-third or $289 million, would fund projects upgrading school security systems and information services and technology at schools. Another 30% of the capital budget, some $253 million, is proposed for “school facility needs,” like roof repairs and replacements, and improvements to windows, mechanical systems and building shells.

About $180 million is proposed to support educational programming, with two-thirds going to pre-K expansion, and the remainder going to high school science lab renovations and science and technology programs. About 5% of the budget, or $44.8 million, is earmarked for upgrades to school yards, playgrounds, and fields.

The largest chunk of the capital budget is still not tied to particular schools. It lists $530 million in citywide projects but doesn’t detail their locations. For a list of school-specific projects, and to see if your school made the list, click here.

Sarah Karp of WBEZ contributed to this report.

Teachers challenge Chicago’s timeline for adding school support staff at budget plan hearing

2019-08-21T14:43:00+00:00

Despite Chicago Public Schools reaping $198 million more for the coming school year for its $6.1 billion operating budget, the district will add just around 100 more special education case managers, social workers, and nurses to schools.

Why Chicago’s 600-plus schools won’t immediately see a bigger surge in support staff was a central question at a budget hearing Tuesday.

While the budget plan directs $73 million more to schools sites next year, most of that money is intended to support special education and new programs, not fill gaps in support staff. Among the other areas of new investment are supplemental bilingual teachers, opening more preschool classrooms, and awarding “equity grants” to spread desirable programs to under-enrolled schools.

At the first of two back-to-back hearings, educators wearing teachers’ union T-shirts — the union bused members over after a meeting about their lapsed contract — described conditions at their schools and demanded to know how Chicago plans to shore up its support staff.

The school board votes on the plan on Aug. 28.

Educators described students needing medical attention but schools having a nurse on campus only one day a week, and shortages in social workers at one school where several children lost parents to gun violence.

One teacher, Yvette McCaskill, from Morrill Math and Science Elementary on the Southwest Side, said her school library was shuttered and the librarian redirected to fill a special education vacancy, while McCaskill was asked to teach a class for English language learners.

“Spoiler alert: I’m not bilingual,” she told the school board.

During the hearing, district leaders set out to explain the discrepancies between long-range plans and the reality on the ground.

In July, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson announced that the district would hire hundreds more social workers, nurses and case managers for special education students.

But those positions will be spread across five years, said Matt Lyons, the district’s chief talent officer. He acknowledged schools face a critical shortage of credentialed workers, even though the district has ramped up hiring.

Already, the district has increased the number of social workers by 7% from last year to 490, he said. “We will start this coming school year with more social workers than any point this last decade.”

Timing and supply-demand issues also work against a large district. The mayor’s pledge to add support staff came in July, well after the normal January-February hiring season, he said. And opening positions for special education case workers in one area of the city could end up poaching staff from others.

“If we open five case manager positions on the North Side, we likely create three to four teacher vacancies on the South Side,” he said, adding that the district is trying to be “very deliberate” about how it rolls out positions.

Lyons said the district has been trying to broaden the field of candidates by covering tuition for some registered nurses and social workers to earn credentials to work in schools. His team has also focused on recruiting from top-flight programs in the region, like the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, to boost supply.

Administrators also described ongoing financial pressures. Since a 2015 budget crisis, Chicago Public Schools’ financial position has improved in part because of increased state revenues. Illinois passed a new state funding formula in 2017 that directed more money to schools statewide.

But Chicago is still short $2 billion from what the state’s formula estimates it needs to educate its 361,000 students, most of whom are low-income. And it is the second most indebted school system in the country, which means a chunk of the overall budget — some $700 million — will be diverted this school year to pay down the district’s $8.4 billion long-term debt. Another $450 million will go toward short-term debt and $855 million will go toward teachers’ pensions.

Because it still has a negative cash balance, the district regularly takes out short-term loans, and pays interest on them, to help cover day-to-day operations between influxes of tax revenue.

Including $800 million more for building repairs and upgrades, Chicago’s total projected spending for the 2019-20 school year is $7.7 billion. To see which schools are in line for immediate improvements, click here.

Chicago plans to employ 20,080 educators, 1,100 school-level administrators, and another 10,800 support staff this school year. Staffing costs the district $3.3 billion in the plan.

The district’s central office will grow by slightly more than 100 positions with the bulk of new hiring concentrated in the department that will steer a $135 million curriculum overhaul project, in the inspector general’s office, and in the office that protects students.

By the 2021-22 school year, Lightfoot promised two full-time special education case managers to schools with 240 or more special education students, and one full-time case manager to schools with more than 120 special education students.

The mayor proposed adding 200 social workers to Chicago schools over the next five years, along with 250 full-time nurse positions.

Staffing has been a key teacher ask in contract negotiations with the district. Besides raises, the union wants the district to hire nearly 5,000 teachers, professionals and aides, at a cost of $880 million over three years.

The union has complained that, despite Lightfoot’s campaign pledge to increase government transparency, the budget remains opaque. For instance, public documents don’t clearly account for the added positions.

The district responded that it hadn’t listed all proposed new positions in the budget document yet, but the money for them was there in a contingency line item.

On Tuesday, that response appeared to satisfy the school board, which asked leaders to consider preparing a list of common questions and answers to help explain details to the public.

Corrected: This story was updated to clarify how Chicago’s additional budget monies will be allocated.

More administrators, more money for small schools: Here are 8 items getting more funding in Chicago schools budget

2019-08-13T20:35:47+00:00

Chicago Public Schools just released a $7.7 billion budget proposal — its largest to date — and one that includes money for teacher raises, building upgrades, new technology, pre-K expansion and additional counselors.

The budget plan is about $117 million or 1.5% larger than last year’s. Chicago will hold a series of budget meetings before the school board considers approving it Aug. 28. Find the full list of meetings below this article.

Schools will get about $3.8 billion of the district’s operating budget, roughly $73 million more than the amount budgeted for school-level costs last year, according to a district spokesperson. The district is putting fewer overall dollars into its student-based budgeting formula but sending more to schools through supplemental funds for high-need students, “equity grants” for dwindling enrollment and expansions of popular programs like International Baccalaureate or science and technology programs known as STEM.

About two-thirds of schools will see their budgets go up, while the rest will see their budgets go down, because school budgeting in Chicago is still largely tied to the number of pupils in a building, and overall enrollment is down.

District leaders, though shouldering about $8.4 billion in long-term debt, have said they are standing on improved financial footing after years of cuts and tight budgets, with more money from tax revenues and $1.87 billion from the state’s evidence-based funding formula, a 4% increase over last year.

A look at eight growing investments gives a glimpse of the district’s priorities and challenges in the coming year.

1. Increase in “supplemental funds” amid enrollment declines

When announcing the budget last week, leaders touted increased spending on support for students in special education, English learners, low-income students and schools with declining enrollment.

With enrollment declining at Chicago Public Schools, the district proposes spending 1.1% less on enrollment-based budget allocations at traditional district-run schools. But the district says total funding for schools has increased compared with last year’s budgeted amount because of supplemental funding for high-needs students, including students living in poverty, English learners, and for schools with declining enrollment. However, the district does not factor into its base funding formula all of the categories that advocates have sought, such as homeless students, refugees, and students exposed to trauma. The district has committed to reexamining its funding formula over next year.

The Chicago Teachers Union has criticized the budget proposal, saying that it falls short of critical investments needed to ensure that every school has a librarian, nurse, and enough full-time social workers and psychologists to serve its population. In late July, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced plans to hire hundreds of support positions over the next five years, which would end up being 95 new positions this year. The union wants it enshrined in the contract, and City Hall negotiators have so far demurred.

2. Still no small schools plan

The budget lacks a comprehensive strategy on underutilized schools. As it did last year, the district proposes allocating about $31 million to prop up budgets for 219 schools with low or declining enrollment that wrestle with limited resources and fears of closure, but about one-third of those schools will still see budget cuts. The district also plans to spend $32 million over five years ($5 million in 2019-20) investing in new academic programs meant to attract students to neighborhood schools.

3. Equity office grows — a wee bit

The 1-year-old equity office is increasing its proposed budget by 22% over what it spent last year, to about $1.3 million. The money will help fund two additional positions, and support the Great Expectations Mentorship program, which aims to improve the leadership pipeline for black and Latinx men. Over the next school year, the district’s equity office will work to center equity in policy decisions, train educators and staff, and implement “an African American and Latinx male equity plan,” according to the budget.

4. A growing bureaucracy

The district’s proposed central office budget will increase by 14% to $279 million, and increase from about 900 people at the end of last school year to 1,060 people. Experts say the relative size of Chicago’s education bureaucracy, about 5% of the district’s operating budget, is bigger than other large urban school districts, even as the city has moved toward a more decentralized approach to governing and funding schools. Marguerite Roza, an education finance researcher, questions whether the district could put more of those dollars and positions into schools as it seeks ways to allocate resources toward students with the most need.

5. More money for special education and student supports

The special education department has a proposed budget of $267 million, an increase of about 3.5% over last year’s spending. The department, under state oversight following findings that it routinely delayed or denied students services, is being led by an interim chief as the district tries filling a vacancy left at the top by Elizabeth Keenan’s departure. The budget proposes investing $10 million to fund nearly 100 additional nurses, social workers, and case managers. Yet the district still has scores of vacancies from similar promises made by the last mayor, and budgeting for the positions doesn’t guarantee the district can fill them.

6. English learners getting a boost in support positions

With 18.7% of the district’s children classified as English language learners, slightly up from 18% the year before, the office of Language and Cultural Education has a proposed 11% increase from last year’s spending to $10 million and will retain 39 positions. The district also proposes allocating $32 million to schools for bilingual and English instruction, with three-quarters of it for elementary students.

In addition, a $12 million bump in state funding for English learners will provide support services like tutoring and native-language reading material at 112 schools.

“The good news is CPS finally saw the light, and this money will go to serve children in classrooms,” said Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum, which advocated for the extra funding. “But it’s certainly not enough.” Advocates for English language learners, like Puente, argue that too many schools lack trained teachers and materials for teaching English language learners.

7. More dollars for district watchdog

Last year, after an investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed that the district had mishandled scores of allegations of student sexual abuse, Chicago Public Schools introduced a new department of student protections and pledged to invest more toward an investigations unit. The district’s Office of the Inspector General is getting a 44% increase to 49 positions under the district’s proposal, and will add 15 positions to a team tasked with investigating student sexual abuse allegations. The department’s proposed budget will grow to $6 million, a 67% increase over what it spent last year. At the last school board meeting in July, the department reported it had 219 open investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct.

8. More training for school security officers and an expansion of Safe Passage

The district proposes increasing its safety and security budget to $38 million, a 3% increase over last year’s spending. The office, which oversees the more than 1,000 school security officers working in schools across the city, plans to launch an initiative that would require all district schools to complete a safety audit, recertify all security staff in de-escalation and sexual abuse prevention practices, and add 10 schools to a program that pays community members to stand along school routes to ensure student safety. School resource officers, or police officers who serve in schools, are overseen by the Chicago Police Department.

Public budget meetings will be held next week.

Capital hearings will be held on Aug. 21 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at:

Amundsen High School — 5110 N. Damen Ave.
Morgan Park High School — 1744 W. Pryor Ave.
Whitney Young High School — 211 S. Laflin St.

Additionally, Chicago Public Schools will hold two budget hearings on Aug. 20 at district headquarters 42 W. Madison at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Corrected: This story was updated to reflect that year-over-year spending on schools increased by $73 million according to the district and to include dates for public budget hearings.

Chicago to spend $820 million on fixing up schools. Is yours on the list?

2019-08-08T22:12:27+00:00

Chicago plans to spend $820 million next year fixing up 300 of its schools and building more pre-K classrooms, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and schools chief Janice Jackson said Thursday, standing in a vintage classroom inside the century-old Morgan Park High School on the city’s Southwest Side.

About $1 in every $7 spent will go toward a universal pre-K expansion.

The rest will go for new roofs, playgrounds, and athletic fields for schools like Morgan Park — which stands to get $23 million for a new roof and new sports fields. The athletic powerhouse, which has 1,230 students but increasingly must compete with in-demand selective enrollment programs nearby, was left out of last year’s $1 billion capital plan announced by Lightfoot’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel. It was Chicago’s biggest campus investment in decades.

Lightfoot said about half of the district’s schools — some 300 — will receive upgrades in the coming school year. The list is heavy on neighborhood schools, she emphasized.

That fact wasn’t lost on Morgan Park’s Local School Council chairwoman, Carisa Parker, and another longtime council member, Peggy Goddard, who were buzzing at Thursday’s news, part of a larger reveal of the first schools budget of Lightfoot’s tenure.

“We’ve been advocating for this as long as I can remember,” said Parker, a mother of four, who has served eight years on the school council.

The capital plan, which also includes $30 million in new science labs and an $85 million expansion of high-speed internet and other tech upgrades, was “created with a focus on equity, prioritizing the schools and neighborhoods that need investments most,” Lightfoot said. The city’s new mayor recently said she plans to spend the year revisiting the formula that determines how much money individual schools receive.

Find the full list of schools expected to receive upgrades under the proposed plan below.

Outside of the capital plan, the district will spend $6.18 billion in 2019-20, a slight increase from last fiscal year. The new line items announced Thursday include $12 million for teachers and curriculum materials for English language learners and $10 million to boost accessibility for disabled students.

The district also put a price tag — $10 million — on a promise announced last week to add nurses, case workers, and social workers to schools, as well as to invest in recruiting qualified workers.

“It was really important today, as we roll out this budget … to ensure that we’re providing our students, our most vulnerable students, with the resources that they need,” Jackson said.

Including the capital expenses, nearly half of the district’s budget, or about $3.8 billion, will go to staff, materials and other equipment for schools. The district released a school-by-school breakdown in the spring.

The rest goes to pay for teacher pensions, central office positions and network staff, transportation, and other items.

Of the 300 schools that will benefit from Lightfoot’s capital plan, about half of the schools in the district, 105 will receive funds to accommodate pre-K classes or to otherwise serve young learners.

“Particularly for our youngest children, we need to make sure that they feel this blanket of love and support all around them at the earliest age,” Lightfoot said. “We have a commitment and an obligation to our young people and we intend to make that commitment in everything we do.”

Lightfoot, who has been meeting with community preschool providers who have felt slighted by the city’s expansion of pre-K, said she planned to make more announcements in the coming weeks about what direction she plans to take universal pre-K, a plan set in motion by her predecessor. She made it clear the district will continue to offer more seats for 4-year-olds.

Community providers have complained that the district’s expansion of pre-K is causing them to lose students and teachers, making it hard for them to run their businesses.

Jackson said Thursday the district will take out another series of bonds to pay for the bulk of the capital upgrades. The specifics will be made public by the Aug. 28 board of education meeting, she said. The state is expected to provide not quite one-quarter, or $191 million of the total — an amount that was approved last spring as part of a six-year, $45 billion state capital bill. But it’s not clear when that money will be made available.

As of July, Chicago Public Schools had accumulated $8.4 billion in long-term debt, and it was still borrowing to pay for day-to-day operations. According to a financial presentation to the new school board then, it plans to take out $1.25 billion more in short-term loans starting this month. The district takes out short-term loans in anticipation of tax revenues because it has limited reserves.

Chicago is the third largest school district in the country, and the second most indebted, according to research from Chicago-based Merritt Research Services, which analyzes municipal bonds.

5 big questions for Mayor Lori Lightfoot about Chicago school funding reform

2019-08-02T19:06:44+00:00

Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to reconsider how Chicago funds schools during the next school year and explore ways to spend more on students with the most need.

But that raises plenty of questions about how Chicago Public Schools will prioritize spending to be more equitable at the nation’s third-largest school district.

Lightfoot’s pledge came Tuesday as she spoke about a teacher recruiting and retention program. She proceeded to pledge more resources for schools and create hundreds of critical support staff positions without saying how she’d pay for it.

“The fortunes of CPS absolutely have improved,” Lightfoot said. “We feel comfortable this will fall within the resources we have.”

But while the district is on firmer financial footing than in recent years, thanks to a boost in state aid, it’s still paying off $8.4 billion in long-term debt. It runs an annual deficit and borrows to pay for day-to-day operations. How can it more equitably distribute the money it does have, all the while funding new programs, keeping others afloat and continuing to subsidize shrinking schools?

Here are five other big questions.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks at a press conference at Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School on the West Side.

How will public engagement shape Chicago school funding reform?

How the district goes about public engagement will likely affect how critics — and Lightfoot’s school board — respond to a proposed funding overhaul. Lightfoot and school district leaders said they will listen to community members first. That’s plenty of time to hear from Chicago’s 77 community areas, but no small feat. School finance is pretty technical stuff, too, so an open question is how much the district will invest in public education around the issue.

School board member Dwayne Truss recently voted no on an update to the district’s system for rating schools because he felt the district hadn’t adequately engaged teachers and families about the accountability policy. Truss was also a frequent critic of the district’s enrollment based budgeting approach before his appointment to the board in June, as a West Side activist and parent.

Last month, he told Chalkbeat during a recess at the board meeting, “A lot of issues at CPS are worth looking at again, including student-based budgeting.”

Will central office spending and structure be revisited, too?

Marguerite Roza, an education finance researcher studying weighted student funding models, suggested the district could restructure and downsize its bureaucracy if its looking to direct more funds into a needs-based school spending formula, including a 900-employee central office and another 230 employees supporting network offices throughout the city. The district also has another 4,600 employees on a citywide roster that support schools. Roza said the district could consider moving more centrally managed positions and dollars directly into schools, under principals’ purview.

Since the late 1980s, Chicago has leaned toward decentralization, putting decisions and budgeting into the hands of school leaders, an approach Roza credits in part for the district’s academic gains.

Compared with other big school districts, “Chicago still has a larger central office,” she said. “Does the next step mean moving more of that money out to schools, so people end up working in schools, not the central office or downtown?”

Will Chicago redistribute current dollars or only tap new funds for a needs-based formula?

There’s more than one way for Chicago to reform its student funding formula.

First, some background: Chicago uses weighted student funding, which allocates dollars based on individual student needs. Chicago provides some supplemental aid for students with disabilities, for those living in low-income households, and for schools with the highest concentrations of English language learners. The district also subsidizes schools with low or declining enrollment. But the bulk of schools’ budgets are funded based on how many students they have.

The district could redistribute funds from its current formula by reducing its enrollment-based allocation, and adding more weights to its formula for high-needs student groups not currently accounted for such as refugees and students experiencing homelessness. But that could leave less money for schools with fewer high-need students.

“Low poverty schools could see budget cuts, and those would be difficult to deal with in the short term,” education finance researcher Ross Rubenstein said.

The district could also seek additional dollars to pour into an updated funding formula, but finding more money is easier said than done.

Leaders hope that the 2017 state funding reform law that sent more money to high-need districts like Chicago will continue to yield more funds. But that money isn’t in the bank yet, the state’s financial situation remains tepid and its unpaid bill backlog north of $6 billion. A lot depends on whether Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s graduated income tax plan passes. If Illinois provides more money for schools as the legislature has pledged, Chicago would be among the first in line to receive more: Chicago is only receiving 63 percent of the funding it should be getting, according to targets set by the state’s formula.

How will facilities money and planning for building repairs and upgrades factor in?

Capital funds accounted for $1 billion of the district’s $7.5 billion in spending last fiscal year, and parents have long complained about dilapidated school buildings.

Every month, parents and advocates approach the podium to tell school board members about shoddy conditions, from leaky roofs and mold to out-of-date bathrooms and overcrowded classrooms. And at citywide public hearings last year on the capital budget, community members complained about not getting their fair share and argued the district’s capital investments should be more transparent and fair, even as others praised the district for investments in their school communities.

Meanwhile, the district is playing catch-up on state requirements for an architectural needs assessments of school buildings. The school board recently approved a $5 million contract for a Maryland-based firm to conduct facility assessments of every building in the district within two years, and it faces an April 2021 deadline to update a 10-year facilities master plan.

How does the expired union contract impact the funding reform timeline?

Lightfoot’s negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union will shape how the school district and principals spend their money. But the city and union haven’t come close to agreeing on teacher salaries, one of the district’s biggest costs and the largest slice of school budgets.

The union also wants Chicago to expand the $10 million-a-year community schools initiative to 55 more schools, and it’s not clear how that effort would be accounted for in a new funding formula. The school board last month approved a one-year expansion of the program.

Do metal detectors keep schools safe? Chicago school board wades into debate.

2019-07-25T15:25:03+00:00

Each day, thousands of Chicago students walk through metal detectors and put their backpacks through X-ray machines designed to check for weapons and keep schools safe.

On Wednesday, the city’s new school board approved $2.4 million to replace those machines with newer versions, even as they discussed whether the hulking metal devices actually keep students safe or whether such investments are misplaced.

“You can have equipment and not have the right climate and it won’t work and vice versa,” said Jadine Chou, chief of safety and security at the district, who nonetheless asked the board to approve the contracts. “As our thinking evolves on this, we may start moving in a different direction.”

The vote came up as the school district hosts citywide meetings about policing in schools this week. The meetings have raised questions about police accountability, transparency, over-patrolling youth of color, and, more generally, how schools handle safety and discipline.

Chicago Public Schools did not respond to a deadline request for the number of high schools currently with screening equipment.

Chou said her team is working with schools to find the right balance between culture-based solutions and preventive measures like metal detectors. Schools must go through their local school council to decide if they want metal detectors on campus, she said.

“How do we keep kids safe? It’s a part of climate, a part of relationships,” Chou said. “We want to work with all of our schools to make sure we have the right balance.”

Each metal detector costs $3,350, according to district documents.

Citing safety concerns, a group of Illinois lawmakers tried but failed to advance a bill last fall to require every K-12 school in the state to install a metal detector. Educators pushed back, saying that the costs would be too high and that research had not proved their efficacy.

Chou noted that since she started at the district in 2011, the understanding of school safety has shifted from “zero tolerance” of any type of weapon to a more holistic approach, and the district is ready to shift away from metal detectors if evidence suggests.

Board member Elizabeth Todd Breland said a majority of elementary schools and plenty of high schools are keeping children safe without metal detectors or X-ray machines.

Chou agreed with Todd Breland, saying the machines have become a “controversial topic.” She added that the local school councils that govern each campus have the option to remove the machines, but only one school has inquired about that, and ended up leaving the equipment in place.

Unlikely education allies press Mayor Lori Lightfoot to reform Chicago school funding

2019-07-24T16:44:48+00:00

One of the many open questions facing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is whether to rethink the way Chicago funds its schools.

An unlikely group of allies, from a rebranded school choice group instrumental in charter school expansion to the Chicago Teachers Union, is ramping up lobbying efforts around the issue. Many of the groups submitted memos to Lightfoot’s education transition committee calling for a more equitable funding approach based on student needs.

Lightfoot’s team told Chalkbeat in a statement this week that the mayor is “firmly committed” to equitable funding and to ensuring that “schools and educators have the resources needed to support and address the needs of schools and families.”

Lightfoot has spent the last few weeks meeting with teachers, principals, parents and community members about education issues, “including school funding,” her spokeswoman said. But it was not clear whether Lightfoot will ask the district to revise the formula or whether she’s still in the exploratory phase.

“I think what we would like to see is a bit more of a sense of urgency around it,” said Gerald Liu, the policy director for one of the groups lobbying district leaders, Kids First Chicago, and who worked 11 years as a program manager and analyst at the district’s budget office. “You can’t talk about equity without talking about resource equity.”

Chicago is one of at least 30 large school districts using weighted student funding, which tries to allocate funding based on individual student needs. The district allocates funds to schools based on the number of students, with high schools getting the most per-pupil, followed by grades K-3 and grades 4-8.

The district then provides some supplemental aid for students with disabilities, for those living in low-income households, and for schools with the highest concentrations of English language learners. The district also subsidizes schools with low or declining enrollment.

But some of the groups lobbying the mayor contend that the district doesn’t allot enough money to certain populations that need more support, such as homeless students, refugees and students with other life circumstances that might affect their learning.

Other urban districts, such as Boston and Houston, take that approach, said Marguerite Roza, an education finance researcher studying whether such weighted student funding models close gaps in student achievement.

Lightfoot and other leaders stress the need for more state money to adequately support schools and pay for equity. But Roza said the district has discretion to more equitably distribute the money it does have.

“Districts are adding more student types,” she said. “Do you need an extra social worker if you have a lot of kids involved in the criminal justice system, or if you’re in a community with a lot of crime or trauma?”

Kids First is pushing for the district’s budget office to adopt its “equity index” budgeting tool, which considers factors like the incidence of trauma and violence in a neighborhood, or the concentration of single-parent households in a community. The organization detailed its proposal in a memo to Lightfoot.

Kids First Chicago has partnered with the district to help shape school choice in Chicago since the early 2000s — from funding charter school expansion, when the group was known as the Renaissance Fund and New Schools Chicago. More recently, the group has focused its efforts on parent advocacy, and helped compile a schools inventory report known as the Annual Regional Analysis. The district uses the report to help allocate resources and equip communities with the information to lobby for investments.

Constance Jones, CEO of the Noble Network of Charter Schools, suggested in a memo to Lightfoot that “schools with higher levels of poverty, English language learners, special education students, or nearby violence or crime should receive more resources to best meet the needs of their students.”

Katya Nuques, executive director of Enlace, called in her memo for the “creation of an education equity fund to close the achievement gap created by race, poverty, and overall lack of opportunity,” funded by fees levied on real estate development in the Loop.

Parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand’s memo called for Chicago’s district to “allocate operating funds via a need- and evidence-based formula” that considers the specific needs of students there.

And as it negotiates for a new contract, the Chicago Teachers Union has repeatedly called for the district to adopt a more nuanced funding formula that accounts for students needs by school and community.

Even before the contract fight ramped up, the union was one of the most consistent voices railing against the district’s current student-based funding model, which they say makes it hard for schools with low enrollment to hire experienced teachers, especially black veteran educators whose salaries are more expensive. Union leaders say it contradicts the spirit of a 2017 Illinois law that updated the state’s funding formula and directed more money to districts most in need.

“This is a huge deal for us,” union spokeswoman Christine Geovanis said. “We want CPS to deploy resources on a school by school and neighborhood by neighborhood basis.”

In its five-year vision plan, Chicago Public Schools committed to reviewing funding models and exploring ways to support equity by investing more resources in underserved populations.

Since the plan was released in May, the district hasn’t provided any updates. But it appears Chicago’s school funding plan may shift, even if it falls short of the union’s demands.

Most Chicago schools will get a budget boost this fall as the city adds new programs and props up spending at schools with low enrollment. The district also spread $6 million among 100 or so schools with the highest concentrations of English language learners.

Overall, Chicago Public Schools will send schools $60 million more next school year than it did last year, according to the district. That growth reflects nearly $90 million in new programs and a $30 million decrease because of declining enrollment.

Two-thirds of city schools will see their budgets go up, according to numbers provided in the spring. A third of city-run schools will see their budgets decline.

Chicago schools equity chief promises new decision-making tool this summer

2019-06-06T16:44:06+00:00

The man Chicago Public Schools hired to tackle racial disparities and other inequities in the nation’s third-largest school system promises he’ll produce an “equity framework” this summer.

In nine months on the job as the district’s first chief equity officer, Maurice Swinney hasn’t published any reports or unveiled any big initiatives targeting long-entrenched inequities in Chicago, one of the nation’s most diverse and segregated cities.

The former Tilden High School principal said that his office plans to begin showing its work sometime in the next few months, beginning with the equity framework, a tool for district leaders and educators to guide “how we need to think, behave, organize and do this work to get to equitable outcomes.”

Swinney said that work requires shifts in mindsets for district leaders to better identify and understand how inequities afflict students across the district, and resources to tackle the problems they see. But he declined to outline specifics of his plans and how he expects to accomplish the task as commissioned by schools chief Janice Jackson.

“She’s given a charge to myself and other members of the executive cabinet that this is about equity across Chicago Public Schools, and that we all have to take up this mantle to do this work,” he said. “And so how do other offices and departments interact with me and my team, and then act differently in order to disrupt systems?”

The city’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has also pledged to examine how resources are distributed in schools. Lightfoot’s education transition team recently outlined a vision that moves away from strict student-based budgeting. In it, schools serving high-poverty areas, students in special education, English language learners and students enduring trauma would be first in line for the district’s limited resources.

Since September when Swinney was tapped to lead the district’s equity office, he said his department has kept busy holding listening tours, crunching data that illustrates the disparate achievement and health outcomes among student groups, with a targeted focus on achievement of African-American and Latinx males, which he emphasized as a tenet of the district’s five-year vision plan.

Recently, he said, his team worked with the district’s budget team to push for $31 million in “equity grants” to soften budget cuts at scores of schools with low or declining enrollment, helping preserve some educators’ jobs.

“When you cut positions you start to cut relationships,” Swinney said.

His comments came Wednesday in an interview with Chalkbeat after a panel discussion at Loyola University Chicago hosted by the nonprofit Friends of the Children about tackling the cycle of intergenerational poverty, violence and trauma that Chicago students, families and educators wrestle with, particularly in some of the city’s most distressed, segregated and disinvested neighborhoods.

Swinney said the conversation around how schools can help youth dealing with trauma has to start with acknowledging that “traditional education is built on racist structures.”

“And that there is institutional and structural racism that has caused what young people are experiencing in their communities and in their families,” he said.

Also on the panel were Colleen Cicchetti, executive director of the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital, which trains local teachers on how to identify and support students who have endured trauma, and Eddie Bocanegra, a violence intervention expert. The talk was moderated by Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

Panelists stressed that childhood trauma has causes other than gun violence, from physical and sexual abuse to the loss of a loved one to the challenges of living in poverty and more. They also emphasized the importance of providing mental health professionals in schools and training teachers to identify and address trauma in students, investing in community mental health resources, and mentoring.

Chicago Public Schools will lay off 220 teachers, nearly 500 support personnel

2019-05-31T21:49:50+00:00

Chicago Public Schools announced Friday that the district will lay off 220 teachers and 498 clerks, paraprofessionals, and other support personnel at the end of the school year, in part because of declining enrollment.

This school year enrollment dipped 2.7% from the previous year, down to 361,000 students.

The district announces layoffs each year as schools adjust for enrollment, the addition or subtraction of programs, and changes in student demographics. Emily Bolton, a spokeswoman, said teachers impacted by the cuts will be invited to apply for jobs elsewhere in the district. CPS is hosting its next job fair June 25.

This past school year, the district rehired 65 percent of teachers that it laid off the previous spring.

Chicago plans to employ a total teacher workforce of 20,949 in the fall, an increase of 1.6% from the current year. But that figure is down from more than 25,000 teachers who worked in Chicago schools a decade ago. In the 2009-10 school year, Chicago employed 25,136 teachers for 409,000 students.

Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey called the cuts to teachers’ assistants, clerks and other support professionals “a slap in the face” in a year when Chicago received additional state funding.

“These cuts, contrary to CPS spin, are higher this year than last year, even as CPS funding has continued to improve,” Sharkey said. “It simply makes no sense that as CPS’ budget is growing, it’s providing less funding for staffing and classrooms at schools who need these supports.”

The district said the job cuts represent 1.1% percent of the teacher workforce.

The job cuts affected about a quarter of the city’s schools, according to the district.

In her first term as mayor, Lightfoot’s schools agenda to include overhaul of budgets, campus policing

2019-05-17T18:00:39+00:00

In her first term as mayor, Lori Lightfoot will likely overhaul the way the district gives money to schools, moving away from per-pupil allocation that penalizes shrinking schools, with the goal of tackling racial and economic inequity at a school district steeped in “Chicago’s legacy of structural racism and intentional exclusion.”

That characterization of Chicago Public Schools and the recommended funding shift are included in the mayor-elect’s transition report, released Friday.

More than 400 people attended a breakfast meeting Friday at Malcolm X College on the Near West Side where Lightfoot’s transition committees presented recommendations for the mayor-elect’s agenda.

Lightfoot’s education committee summarized suggestions for how Lightfoot should run the nation’s third-largest school district.

The committee’s vision includes distributing resources based on need, where schools serving high-poverty areas, students in special education, English language learners and students enduring trauma would be first in line.

Committee meetings, Lightfoot’s values, and surveys of community members informed the recommendations.

“These Chicagoans express gratitude for the skills and heart of the educators who serve our young people,” said Sylvia Puente, executive director of the Latino Policy Forum, and one of four women of color leading the education transition committee. “But those same Chicagoans said that too many of our young people bare the burden of our city’s legacy of disinvestment, inequality, racism, and exclusion.”

The committee report recommends engaging the community to define adequate funding for high-poverty schools and to develop an equity-based formula. The committee also suggests improving training and support for Local School Councils and other school decision-makers about budgets, and pressing the state for fair and adequate education funding.

Puente said that Lightfoot’s administration must “demand and adequately distribute funding for our young people.”

“CPS receives 64 percent of every dollar we need in our schools,” she said. “The full dollar is needed.”

That statement spurred applause, as did a call to “replace police presence with restorative justice” in schools.

Lightfoot, who said she was particularly involved in the education committee discussions, told Puente afterward, “the priorities you outlined are in line with my vision of things we need to do regarding education.”

She also cited an altercation earlier this year at Marshall High School where police were filmed dragging a girl down a flight of stairs and tasing the student, who police said fought them, while trying to remove her from the building for alleged misbehavior.

“It brought home to me [the question of] whether it made sense for us to have police officers as, effectively, first responders in our schools,” Lightfoot said.

The school district and police department, under a federal police reform agreement, are crafting a policy on the role of police in schools.

Lightfoot said that “some schools are dangerous” and need a security presence, but challenged schools chief Janice Jackson and police chief Eddie Johnson to look at other jurisdictions “to see whether or not we can have other responders who are truly trained to address issues that come up in schools with some different tools other than arrest.”

The education committee report covers a host of issues, listed at the end of this article. Puente went over some of the priorities outlined. She emphasized the need to engage community members.

“Those most harmed by history must help shape the path forward,” she said.

She also stressed that the district needs to “build the teacher pipeline so that our students see themselves in their educators,” adding that “3,000 more black educators, and 5,000 more Latino educators are needed to have equitable representation.”

Chicago Public Schools data shows that the teaching population is much white than the student body, which is only 10 percent white.

The committee also stressed addressing college affordability, removing barriers to postsecondary success, implementing approaches to instruction and discipline that account for students’ trauma, providing universal pre-kindergarten, and expanding an initiative that links schools with community partners to help transform campuses, and provides funds to support their efforts.

In curriculum, the report also suggests expanding options like International Baccalaureate and career-technical programs, and alternative credit programs for students who drop out of high school and college.

Here’s a copy of the report:

With talks on Chicago teachers contract stalled, union heads for a mediator

2019-04-25T21:23:37+00:00

Chicago teachers union President Jesse Sharkey said Thursday that the slow pace of talks with the district could mean bringing in a mediator as soon as next week and called on mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot to speed things up.

Lightfoot has yet to take office, but Sharkey’s statements to a Thursday lunch audience at the City Club laid out the stakes: a possible teachers strike early in Lightfoot’s term. The 2012 Chicago teachers strike etched a black mark on the record of outgoing mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“Congratulations on your victory — I don’t envy the task ahead of you… This mayor is going to need unions,” Sharkey said, addressing the incoming mayor, who was not present among the business and civic leaders gathered at the lunch. “Negotiations need to speed up. We want to conclude them as school is beginning next year.”

The union is fighting on several fronts: It is pressing for raises at multiple charter operators — a standoff that could devolve into a strike as early as next week. It is trying to negotiate a new contract with Chicago Public Schools. And its leadership faces a challenge in internal union elections set for May 17.

Sharkey is more accustomed to appearing on the picket line than in front of the button-down gathering at the City Club. His comments offered a peek at the key demands of a union that has been a bellwether for teacher labor fights nationally, from its aggressive strike in 2012 and lately with its launch of the nation’s first charter strike and its continued organizing in the charter sector.

Among those demands are a request for increased pay and benefits, which would include a 5 percent pay raise the union has suggested be funded by raising taxes on the wealthy; a full-time nurse in every school five days a week, trained staff to help students dealing with trauma, and continuation of a community schools program where schools partner with local groups.

“We’re not going to apologize for asking for fair pay … it’s not fair that people should take a pay differential because what they do is considered ‘women’s work,’” said Sharkey, who noted many demands aligned with Lightfoot’s campaign promises to better fund city schools and address inequities.

He also called for the mayor-elect to move toward creating an elected school board, which Lightfoot had endorsed during her campaign. A bill making its way through Springfield would create a 21-member school board. “It’s a voting rights issue in a city dominated by black and Latinx parents,” Sharkey said.

In response to concerns that school board elections could bring in a flood of moneyed interests trying to sway elections, Sharkey suggested a city ordinance to limit campaign contributions.

“Rahm is leaving, and we are still here,” he said. “We have organized hundreds of charter educators into the unions. Our national conversation about education is shifting.”

At more than $1 billion, Illinois tops the nation in school administration spending

2019-04-15T19:36:06+00:00

It may not be the biggest state, nor the one with the most students, but Illinois leads the nation in school district spending on administrators. Even amid a looming statewide financial crisis, the state’s 852 districts spent more than $1 billion in fiscal year 2016, the most in the nation, according to a newly released analysis.

A report from the Metropolitan Planning Council analyzed administrative spending in Illinois and compared it with other states.

“There is a lot that the state can do to more effectively spend its money to educate children,” said Adam Slade, a researcher with the council.

Illinois also spends twice as much per pupil on school administration as the national average — $544 in Illinois to $226 nationwide. Measured per pupil, that is the third highest rate in the country, nearly double New York at $349 and nearly five times as much as California, where admin costs are $95 per student.

Not only do most districts spend a lot on administration, Illinois has 852 districts, more than many other states. About one-quarter of those districts operate only one school. Roughly 4 percent serve fewer than 100 students.

The reasons for that are complicated, says Josh Ellis, vice president of the council. Some rural school districts in Illinois serve sparsely populated areas with few students. Historically, some school districts were formed as a tool to to enforce racial segregation.

In Illinois, Ellis said, “It’s been historically easy to create another unit of government.”

The Metropolitan Planning Council argues that this multitude of districts isn’t the most efficient. It points out that districts with more students tend to spend less per capita on administration. Chicago Public Schools, for example, spends $349 per student on administration still above the national level but below the statewide average of $544.

The council suggests that districts share administrative services and even superintendents, based on geographic proximity and the needs of students.

That’s already happening in some places. Most recently, the town of Paw Paw in western Illinois voted to deactive its school district. Its 50 students will stay in their schools, but will be educated by another, neighboring district.

Illinois administrative spending per student has risen 5 percent since 2014-15, when the policy group pegged it at at $518 per student. At that time, Illinois’ overall statewide spending on administrative costs was still more than $1 billion.

The comparatively high administrative costs strains school budget. Education advocates hope to move more money move into classrooms. On the state level, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is lobbying hard for a graduated income tax that would increase the tax rate for higher earners, but he has to convince the legislature to amend the state constitution to do so.

Separately, legislation moving through Springfield that would allow voters to force schools boards to consolidate to save resources by sharing top administrators. Currently, a local district has to pass a resolution to make this happen.

For Slade, consolidating districts is one way to change the fiscal situation of education in Illinois, without the political buy-in or lobbying needed for major fiscal reform bills.

“The normal paralysis we have in elected government to change or modify how we provide services is an illusion, there are very specific steps we can take to put our children first,” said Slade.

Teachers union warns that bargaining will stall until Lori Lightfoot resolves leadership question

2019-04-04T23:40:41+00:00

The Chicago Teachers Union, eager to push ahead with bargaining now that Lori Lightfoot will be Chicago’s next mayor, already has hinted at a strike early next school year — but negotiations can’t gain momentum until Lightfoot decides whether she’ll keep Janice Jackson or name a new schools chief.

Lightfoot, who trounced union-backed candidate Toni Preckwinkle 3-to-1 in a runoff election Tuesday, faces a plethora of choices over the next four weeks before she’s sworn in, from building her transition team to deciding who she wants leading city departments and agencies, including Chicago Public Schools, which serves 361,000 students.

Lightfoot has remained non-committal about Jackson, but the June 30 expiration of the teachers’ contract puts additional pressure on the mayor-elect to make a decision about who Lightfoot wants leading schools.

“You don’t want to wait too long [on a decision], because the school year is almost over, and you want to have something in place well before September,” said Andrea Kayne, a professor of educational leadership with DePaul University College of Education. “Lightfoot will need to educate herself — but act quickly — because if she does replace Janice, then she has to pick a new person, and they have to get their team in place.”

The union delivered 75 contract demands to the city in January after a rally outside the office of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The list included increasing pay and benefits, decreasing class sizes, and adding more black and brown teachers, more social workers and librarians, and affordable housing for families and employees.

The union is seeking a 5 percent raise — but school-by-school budgets released last week factored in half that for next school year.

That will be a sticking point, union President Jesse Sharkey said.

School district spokesman Michael Passman wouldn’t comment on the district’s bargaining agenda or response so far to union demands. Instead, he emailed Chalkbeat a statement stressing that Jackson and her No. 2, LaTanya McDade, “are two lifelong Chicago educators who understand the supports our teachers need to be successful.”

“The district is committed to working toward a contract that rewards educators for their service, supports the best interests of families, and enables CPS to build on its record-setting academic progress,” the statement said.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson.

The union would like to set the table for more formal talks in May, negotiate through the summer and pledges to strike in the early fall if necessary.

There are reasons Lightfoot would want to stick to a fast timeline. Bargaining can be an expensive process if it’s drawn out. In 2015-16, the city paid nearly $1 million to the Franczek P.C. law firm to help handle contract negotiations that nearly devolved into a strike.

Union leadership might also want to make some progress at the bargaining table sooner to better position itself to its own membership.

The union faces its own deadline of sorts: Its leadership elections are happening the same week as the inauguration. Members First, a caucus of challengers running to replace the current union leadership, has complained about the time and resources the union spends on what critics view as non-school issues and political causes, and is vying to focus the union solely on protecting members and bargaining for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Sharkey brushed off questions about the challenge. But he insisted that the union would present a unified front and push for a better contract regardless of the outcome of its elections.

Negotiations with the city aren’t the union’s only focus. It is also pushing a state bill to strengthen bargaining rights over issues like class size and staffing, and is negotiating with 13 charter and contract schools, several of whose labor units have threatened strikes as well. The union has led strikes against schools in two charter networks this school year, including the first charter strike in the nation’s history.

“She’s our boss”

When she was a candidate, Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot unveiled her 15-point education plan in January at the Union League Club of Chicago.

Despite the strike threat, the union already has softened its message toward Lightfoot. It has issued a statement striking a more conciliatory tone, after criticizing her as a corporate lawyer backed by wealthy interests, now saying that Chicagoans voted for her “out of a desire for bold and progressive ideas.”

Still, the union has pledged to fight aggressively for a contract and costly improvements at the district.

“She’s our boss, and we’re a labor union — it’s that simple,” union President Jesse Sharkey told Chalkbeat this week.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey speaks to reporters outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters on Feb. 27.

Martin Malin, who mediated the last round of negotiations during 2015-16, expects contract talks to pick up steam in the summer.

At this stage, he said there might be “little issues” that the union’s and district’s negotiating teams can discuss “that will be there regardless of whatever policy direction the new mayor goes in,” but that it’s unlikely the two sides would begin wrestling with what he called “strike issues.”

“The parties are really not in a position to think about meaningful negotiations until the new mayor takes office, until she gets her leadership team in place, until policy decisions are made by the new mayor and her leadership team,” said Malin, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace. “There’s no reason for them to be talking about anything of ultimate significance right now.”

Experts, like the union, seem hopeful that contract talks won’t descend into the vitriol that characterized the 2012 teacher strike, widely seen as a misstep by Emanuel in his first term. The mayor lobbied successfully in Springfield ahead of negotiations for a law that made it harder for teachers to authorize a strike, and had tough words for the union in the media and behind closed doors during the conflict. But the union ultimately won key concessions — and enjoyed overwhelming public support.

Observers say Lightfoot could learn from the difference between how Emanuel handled the two sets of negotiations.

“If you contrast the public approach of the mayor in 2012, and his approach in the 2016 negotiations, you’ll see he was a lot calmer,” Malin said.

Kayne said a more cordial tone in negotiations is in the best interest of Chicago students, that “it’s not about giving in to the union.”

“It’s about having a good, working, constructive relationship,” she said.

The union is also backing legislation that could change in its relationship with the mayor’s office.

The Illinois House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a bill to take away the mayor’s power to choose Chicago school board members and instead establish an elected school board, a change supported by Lightfoot during her campaign. The bill still has to pass the Illinois Senate and be signed into law by the governor.