Chalkbeat

Chicago school board candidates sign pledge to ban AI use in schools

2026-09-01T15:07:13+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Roughly half of the 45 candidates running for the Chicago school board have signed a pledge to adopt a three-year ban on artificial intelligence use by CPS students and educators.

Crafted by a local nonprofit, the pledge also calls for eliminating school screen time before third grade and limiting it in later grades. It demands that the district hire a chief privacy officer and ban the collection of student biometric data, such as voice recordings captured by literacy software.

“The risks of AI are absolutely outweighing the benefits right now,” said Cassie Creswell, the head of Illinois Families for Public Schools, a parent advocacy group that has lobbied for more student privacy protections. “It’s perfectly possible to have a low-tech education and learn everything you need to know.”

The nonprofit wanted to leverage the city’s first races to elect all 21 members of the school board to exact commitments from candidates, Creswell said, though last week she also called on the current, partly elected board to consider AI restrictions this fall. So far, 23 candidates have signed the pledge.

The local push comes amid a national parent backlash against education technology, including AI-powered software. But some Chicago school board candidates, district officials, and others said the pledge goes too far, denying educators useful tools and limiting their ability to help students thoughtfully and safely navigate an ubiquitous technology.

“I think an outright ban is unproductive, and it really negates our responsibility, which is to come up with better solutions so our kids can both access this stuff, but also so that we don’t do irreparable harm to them,” said Janice Jackson, a former CPS CEO who is now leads the Education and Society Program at the nonpartisan think tank the Aspen Institute.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it remains “steadfast in its deliberate, responsible approach to artificial intelligence.” It noted that the Illinois State Board of Education’s recently released AI guidelines for school districts references CPS’ AI guidebook as a model.

Creswell points to a recent move by CPS to shelve a plan to give high school students access to Gemini — Google’s AI chatbot — as an early win for the effort, though CPS officials said they only briefly weighed that plan and nixed it last spring.

The district said officials considered “an aspirational plan” to enable Gemini access on its high schoolers’ Google Classroom accounts after a small group of educators tested the tool without letting students access it. But the plan was put on hold last May based on input from teachers “to prioritize individual school readiness and educator training.”

“CPS embraces AI’s potential to enhance learning while remaining fully committed to safeguarding critical thinking and student data privacy,” the district’s statement said.

The district said a group of high school students spent the summer designing a new Student Voice AI Council and drafting a Student AI Playbook.

Board member Debby Pope, an appointee and retired educator running to represent district 2b, who signed the pledge, worries about AI’s potential to undermine students’ ability to think creatively, write, and ferret out misinformation.

“It’s extremely important to take an approach of caution and care so we raise a generation that has critical thinking abilities and understands the importance of using multiple sources of information,” she said.

But she said she is concerned that an outright ban might hamper the district’s ability to teach kids already widely using the technology how AI works and how to navigate its pitfalls.

Ellen Rosenfeld, who is running to represent district 4b unopposed, didn’t sign the pledge. She shares many of the concerns in the pledge and supports taking a more critical look at tech use in CPS.

“I am concerned that on AI, we are building the plane while we’re flying it,” she said.

But she said she was uncomfortable signing a sweeping document with a yearslong commitment. She said she is unsure how much jurisdiction the board has to impose such a policy.

Some momentum for technology restrictions is building nationally. Earlier this year, Illinois joined a majority of states in adopting a new law restricting student cell phone use in schools that will go into effect next year.

But the state’s AI guidance is nonbinding, imposing no requirements on how districts regulate the technology’s use. Earlier this summer, the school board in Los Angeles — whose superintendent resigned amid a federal probe into a costly failed AI chatbot contract — passed a policy banning screen time before the second grade. This week, New York City is releasing a new policy that would restrict student AI use in the elementary and middle grades and set screen time limits though it stops short of a full moratorium.

Creswell, of Illinois Families for Public Schools, said the nonprofit’s Pledge to Protect Human-Centered Education was also inspired by a recent Brookings report suggesting that AI’s potential harms to students exceed the possible benefits. She said tech use in CPS and its cost to the district have expanded without enough evidence these tools are improving learning or vendors are safeguarding student privacy. The nonprofit is taking particular aim at Amira, an AI-powered tool for struggling readers that CPS says has shown promising results in supplementing more traditional instruction.

Jackson, the former CPS CEO, said school districts need to be more discerning in selecting education technology tools. A lot of them are “junk,” she said, and she does worry about how companies are collecting and using student data.

At the same time, she said teachers are embracing helpful AI-powered tools, for example using AI to more efficiently plan lessons geared to diverse student needs. Failing to teach smart, responsible use of a technology that has come to permeate daily life can leave students at a disadvantage compared with peers at better resourced districts.

“I don’t think we get rid of technology and educate a bunch of kids who don’t know how to use these tools efficiently, because that doesn’t set them up for success,” she said. “But I do think it’s a moment to take a step back and make sure there are guardrails in place.”

This story has been updated to include information on a newly released New York City policy on student use of AI.

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

Chicago school board delays proposal to steer more dollars to Chicago Arts High School

2026-08-27T22:12:40+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board for the second time postponed a controversial proposal to steer an estimated $5.5 million to Chicago Arts High School, formerly known as ChiArts, a once privately run school the board voted last year to absorb to avert its closure.

The extra money would come on top of $5.7 million already earmarked in the budget passed in July for its transition to a district-run school. School board members who back the proposal say the added money would allow the campus to more fully preserve its conservatory model, in which students receive hours of training from professional artists alongside each day’s academics. But district officials cautioned they would have to dip into funding for some of CPS’s 72 other, generally less intensive arts schools — a move that critics said would be unfair and damaging to other schools.

Supporters on the board said the extra dollars would tide the school over for a year until it cultivates philanthropic backing for its conservatory — a push that curtailing its arts offerings could undermine. Under the proposal, the school would keep more of roughly 70 teaching artists involved with its conservatory last school year.

The push comes after months of vocal lobbying of the board by students, parents, educators, the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents them, and other backers — and at a time of intense fiscal stress for the deficit-plagued district.

“I know this is not the same school people signed up for,” said board member Michilla Blaise. “We need to step up and make sure an extremely successful school continues to be extremely successful.”

Blaise authored the resolution to provide more funding and moved to table it until the board’s Sept. 10 meeting, saying conversations with district officials are ongoing. Blaise’s resolution includes no dollar amount, but the district estimates it would take $5.5 million to provide the additional staff it calls for.

District officials have balked at the proposal. In an internal memo obtained by Chalkbeat, Superintendent Macquline King told board members that CPS had already delivered on its promise to preserve the conservatory model “to the greatest extent practicable.” She noted that other arts high schools received $53,000 on average for their arts programming this year. And even with the backing of a now-dissolved foundation that actively fundraised for the school, its previous model had ultimately proved unsustainable, King wrote.

Chicago Arts High School’s total 2026-27 budget is $14.4 million. With an additional $5.5 million, per-pupil spending at the school would increase to almost $40,000, compared with a district average of about $20,000 — a cost supporters say makes sense for an intensive, specialized program preparing students for arts careers.

Under the district’s existing plan, the school’s nine-hour day was shortened by 50 minutes, to what CPS said was still longer than many comparable schools nationally. The district said it created 20 positions for resident artists, whom the school could eventually share with other area campuses.

At Thursday’s meeting, King said transitioning the school to district management had been a “herculean effort.” The school will now offer eight Advanced Placement classes as well as online courses for about 200 students who are not on track to graduate. Officials said preliminary enrollment this week is down almost 40 students, to about 500, in line with districtwide decreases.

“We needed to create a new school and adjust the model to ensure long-term sustainability and academic rigor,” King said.

In her memo, King had urged board members to weigh their decision in the context of already substantial resources that CPS devoted to absorbing five campuses of the Acero charter network — more than $13 million so far — as well as millions more to deal with fiscal trouble at the now defunct EPIC Academy High School and the ASPIRA charter school network, which closed its campuses in recent years.

In an open letter to the board, Joe Ferguson, the head of the Civic Federation, had urged the board to reject the additional money, arguing that siphoning the funding away from other schools would set a “dangerous” precedent.

“This is the worst kind of Chicago parochialism — favoring one small but vocal group over the needs of the many,” he wrote.

At Thursday’s meeting, board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who is an advocate for more robust arts education across CPS, once again voiced opposition to granting Chicago Arts High School more resources, saying many schools in his South Side district had not received any additional funding for arts programs. He said pushing for more resources for one favored program to the possible detriment of others “borders on corruption,” a comment for which board President Sean Harden censured him.

Blaise said she believes the idea that steering more dollars to Chicago Arts High School would siphon off resources from other campuses is “preposterous.” She noted the school’s students are predominantly Latino and Black and come from across the city.

“The narrative that this is some kind of specialty program for rich white kids is completely false,” she said.

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

A divided Chicago school board adds referendums on new revenue to November ballot

2026-08-13T19:24:26+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

For the first time in its history, Chicago’s school board voted Thursday to put two questions on the November ballot gauging voter opinions on proposals to bring in more money for the deficit-plagued district.

One referendum would ask voters if they support a statewide millionaires tax to raise money for public education. The other would ask if they would favor a new financial penalty on the owners of vacant city land to steer additional dollars to Chicago Public Schools. The school board needed to decide on these questions before a Monday deadline to add them to the ballot.

Because both are non-binding, neither would compel the state or the city to enact the new taxes and turn the revenue over to the district. But supporters of the referendums hoped they could put pressure on state and city decision-makers. Last spring, state lawmakers considered a binding referendum to enact a millionaires tax to fund education and provide property tax relief on the ballot. But the measure failed.

In response to board members arguing the referendums do little to ease CPS’s immediate fiscal pressures, board President Sean Harden argued the board should pursue more urgent fixes but also let the public weigh in on possible longer-term solutions.

“What we have before us is a window of opportunity — pretty short in nature — to activate and use a new muscle,” he said.

The special meeting initially lacked a quorum. Some board members who showed up — largely those appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson or elected with backing from his former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union — accused their colleagues of boycotting to derail the referendums. Some of the missing board members decried the hastily called special meeting to vote on what they described as half-baked proposals and said it conflicted with prior commitments or work. The meeting was eventually reconvened, with two board members supportive of the referendums joining virtually.

The debate about the referendums comes a couple of weeks after a majority on the board rallied around a high-stakes budget gamble: They rejected educator and staff layoffs under CEO Macquline King’s budget proposals. King had argued the layoffs were a responsible way to address the district’s deficits after years of shrinking enrollments and a growing workforce. Instead, the board opted to balance the budget by assuming an influx of additional state revenue. If state lawmakers do not approve that revenue during a November veto session, the district would likely face disruptive midyear cuts and other fallout.

Angel Velez, the board vice president, invoked a growing gap between what Illinois’ formula considers “adequate” district funding and the amount CPS receives. The tax on high earners is a favored proposal of Johnson, who appointed Velez.

“This is fundamentally about how we build the public support needed to move our schools from scarcity to adequacy,” Velez said during Wednesday’s board meeting to review this month’s agenda.

Cydney Wallace, another Johnson school board appointee who introduced the vacant lot question, said the thousands lots across the city are eyesores that impact public safety and cause other issues. She cited research suggesting that developing vacant urban land leads to improvement in residents’ mental health.

“Safe passage to school should also include healthy, cared-for blocks,” she said Wednesday.

Some board members voiced concerns about how the city would target vacant land for the new financial penalty without inadvertently punishing owners who plan to develop it. Supporters of the proposals argued that it will be up to the city to work out the details.

Jennifer Custer, the sole no vote on both ballot questions, said the board must focus on finding immediate solutions to the district’s budget crisis rather than soliciting voter opinions about proposals other agencies would have to enact.

“I don’t see these as being actionable items,” she said. “I see them as window dressing to a larger problem.”

Like Custer, the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Chicago, noted in a statement that referendums make little headway in addressing CPS’ pressing financial challenges and urged the board to stay focused on fixes that it can directly control.

Jessica Biggs, a board member who like Custer is currently running for school board president, said the last-minute special meeting showed a board term “rife with chaos and disorganization.” But she said she would have backed the millionaires tax referendum if she had been able to attend.

“I have been clear that I believe it is long past time to require the very wealthy and big corporations to pay their fair share so we can fully fund our schools,” she said in a statement.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the board also appointed a new chief lobbyist to lead efforts to secure the additional $150 million from the state that the board baked into its amended budget. Iris Millán, now the associate vice chancellor of government affairs and civic engagement at City Colleges of Chicago, will become CPS’s new chief of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs — a position vacant for more than a year.

Some board members, such as Michilla Blaise, ripped into colleagues who missed the Thursday meeting, accusing them of “lack of leadership.” On social media, Blaise referred to them as “the recipients of Billionaire Mike Sacks donations” — a Chicago hedge fund executive and donor to Democratic causes — invoking a line of attack against non-CTU-aligned school board members that the union has embraced ahead of the November school board races.

Several school board members criticized the hastily called meeting to take a vote, saying they couldn’t miss work or other commitments, especially after a marathon board meeting the previous day. One member, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, said the last-minute meeting to vote on proposals he said lacked detail or teeth showed “really poor planning on someone’s part.”

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

Chicago Board of Elections rules on final challenges to school board candidacies

2026-08-11T18:42:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Four final candidates for Chicago school board — including two incumbents — survived challenges to their signature petitions and were cleared to get on the November ballot at a Tuesday meeting of the city’s Board of Elections.

The board commissioners rejected efforts to block the candidacies of board members Karen Zaccor and Michilla Blaise and would-be members Claudia Peralta and Connie Anderson. Candidate Kernetha Jones was kicked off the ballot.

With those decisions, the ballot for November’s historic Chicago school board races is close to set, though appeals of decisions clearing six candidates are pending in Cook County Circuit Court.

For the first time, Chicago residents will elect all 21 members of the board, after decades of mayoral appointments and a transition stretch in which the board was partly elected and partly appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. In three of the races, incumbent board members will be the only options on the ballot, though in at least one case a challenger has vowed to mount a write-in campaign.

The circuit court is slated to rule on a number of dual circulation petition challenges in which challengers argued the petitions should be thrown out because the candidates in the nonpartisan board races enlisted petition circulators who had also collected signatures for partisan candidates in Illinois’ March primary.

The Board of Elections commissioners roundly rejected the argument that those petitions should be invalidated earlier this year. Adam Lasker, general counsel for the board, said Tuesday he expected more appeals could follow the meeting. The board’s work on school board petition challenges is now done. `

Signature challenges to remove candidates from the city’s ballot are a longstanding fixture of Chicago’s rough-and-tumble electoral politics. Of the 51 would-be board members who filed petitions to run in November, 28 faced objections alleging issues with the signatures they collected or other problems. Most survived the bids to kick them off the ballot.

With the ballot now largely finalized, campaigning for the volunteer seats overseeing Chicago Public Schools can begin in earnest — and the races are shaping up to be costly and competitive. Candidates had already raised almost $2 million by the most recent quarterly deadline for reporting campaign fundraising to the state. Some likely heavy spenders, such as the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, have largely held off on spending until the ballot is set and the start of the school year draws more attention to school issues from parents and other voters.

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

Chicago school board to weigh adding ballot questions about new revenue sources

2026-08-10T20:51:15+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board might try to place two questions on the November ballot asking the city’s voters if they would be in favor of new revenue for the cash-strapped district.

One would ask residents whether Illinois should impose a millionaires tax to boost K-12 education funding statewide, and the other would gauge their support for new financial penalties on owners of undeveloped city land to increase Chicago Public Schools funding. Both are nonbinding, which means neither would legally require the state or the city to enact the proposals.

In an email to school board members sent Monday and obtained by Chalkbeat, a school board staffer invoked a 2011 law she said gave the board the ability to place advisory questions on the ballot following a simple majority vote.

“The Board has a unique opportunity to utilize this authority now and make inroads for new revenue for the district,” wrote Fae Rabin, the board’s chief of staff.

The city’s Board of Elections would have to approve the referendums by next Monday to place them on the ballot, so the school board plans to discuss them at Wednesday’s agenda review meeting and vote at a special Thursday meeting.

Last month, a divided board approved a budget that reversed layoffs in the district administration’s own spending plan and addressed a funding gap by assuming an influx in additional revenue from the state. District leaders have vowed to press the state to come through on the extra dollars, arguing that despite significant funding increases in recent years, CPS remains well short of what Illinois considers “adequate” funding. But the prospects of lawmakers approving such an increase during a November veto session in the fall are murky, placing the district at risk of highly disruptive midyear budget cuts.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has argued in favor of a new tax on the state’s high earners. But efforts to pass legislation that would have placed a millionaires tax on the November ballot fizzled out in the state legislature this past spring. A majority of school board members were appointed by Johnson or elected with backing from his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union, so they might be eager to extend the push to the fall election, even though the referendums wouldn’t be legally binding.

Board President Sean Harden could not be reached for comment.

One independently elected school board member, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, said he is checking on the board’s legal authority to add the questions to the ballot and voiced concern about the rushed bid to vote on them this week, rather than during the board’s regular monthly meeting. He noted that the questions include no specifics about how the district would use the additional money to help students.

“If we’re asking the state to amend our funding formula, we have to show we can govern responsibly and connect funding to student improvement,” he said.

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

Chicago Public Schools could take another crack at overhauling its middle management

2026-07-22T22:11:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

As Chicago Public Schools weighed budget cuts this summer, officials revisited a familiar target: middle management.

Staffing in the district’s 18 network offices that serve as bridges between schools and district headquarters nearly doubled over the past decade before dipping last school year as massive deficits loomed, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. The growth stemmed in part from the launch of networks for high schools under former CEO Janice Jackson. More recently, it tracked with the district’s overall staffing expansion fueled with COVID relief dollars.

Although a major overhaul of these networks is on hold, CPS leaders are continuing to discuss whether they could be leaner and more responsive to schools, sources told Chalkbeat.

The spotlight on networks highlights longstanding debates about their role and value, in a moment when CPS faces ballooning deficits, shrinking enrollment — and pressure to boost student outcomes. Some educators and advocates say they find their structure and roles opaque, and feel the district should steer some network funding directly to schools instead. But other principals say their networks have been a crucial source of stability and guidance amid leadership turnover in CPS.

CPS CEO Macquline King first pitched rethinking the network offices last fall to align with the city’s new elected school board districts. But following pushback, the district stuck with the existing structure of 13 elementary, four high school and one alternative high school networks.

The networks evaluate principals, provide guidance on improving instruction, and relay information about expectations, new initiatives, and legal compliance between schools and the CPS central office. Network chiefs’ jobs are similar to superintendents’ roles in smaller suburban districts, according to a statement from a district spokesperson.

Networks had a $40 million budget last school year. To put that in context, more than $4 billion goes directly to schools.

Over time, network office staffing has fluctuated from a low of 119 positions in 2017 to a recent high of 248 in 2024, before falling to 227 last year, according to the Chalkbeat analysis of positions publicly posted in June each year. Even as the district trimmed administrative and school positions to close a $732.5 million gap this summer, network staffing will remain relatively flat, with the budget for networks inching up to $42 million.

King told Chalkbeat CPS focused on ensuring “that the network chiefs are successful in supporting our principals” when budgeting for the networks.

Antonio Acevedo, the chief of Network 7 that last year oversaw 25 schools in Pilsen, Little Village, and parts of North Lawndale, says his team of about 10 people is lean and busy. His own lengthy list of responsibilities includes everything from coaching earlier-career school leaders to forging relationships with community groups to holding professional development sessions on topics such as the science of reading. He said he visits at least two schools a day and speaks to students often.

“We are always trying to strike this balance between trust and accountability,” Acevedo said.

Others say there’s room to streamline and strengthen the networks. Kia Banks, the head of the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, the union that represents principals and has some network members, said how well the networks function varies widely depending on who is leading them. A district as large as Chicago needs “that middle layer of management,” she said, but she raised concerns about duplicative staff positions and conflicting directives from networks and the central office.

“We feel many of the resources that are directed to the central offices and the networks should be placed directly into the schools,” she said.

Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund said in his organization’s annual surveys, principals report high levels of satisfaction with their network chiefs. In the most recent one his group plans to publish later this summer, 84% of school leaders said they get key support from their chiefs, and 78% said they trust them.

Nevertheless, as CPS continues to struggle with budget problems, “The networks are going to be an evergreen target,” Gerew said.

King’s proposed network overhaul highlighted CPS politics

Back in September, King had floated the idea of overhauling the 13 elementary networks into 10 offices aligned with the school board electoral districts. The district had recently begun a shift to a fully elected school board, and lawmakers had drawn a map to represent voters.

The four high school networks would have remained. Network chiefs and deputy chiefs would reapply for their jobs.

Officials said at the time that the goal was primarily to make middle management more nimble and responsive to school needs — and to save money.

The idea caused an internal backlash. Some school leaders worried the change would sever key relationships with their supervisors and disrupt principal evaluations that had already begun.

Some school board members also voiced concern that aligning the networks to the board members’ districts might inadvertently invite board members to meddle in their schools. The Chicago Teachers Union, which represents many network staffers, also expressed concern about cuts to support positions.

Previous CPS administrations have put their own stamp on the network structure, including the addition of high school networks in 2018 under Jackson to give them more specialized support.

Currently, between 10 and 13 people work in each network office, with some additional citywide network staff. There are also 24 central office staffers tasked with network support, according to the Chalkbeat analysis of CPS staffing data.

The number of instructional support leader positions in network teams that conduct classroom observations and provide input on teaching and learning grew substantially during the pandemic, reaching a high of 112 before dipping more recently. In 2026, there were more than 80 such positions, with an average salary of $115,000. They are represented by the CTU.

The average salary for network chiefs — a position that has often served as a stepping stone to top district leadership — hit a high of almost $180,000 last year, then dipped to about $160,000 this year. In total, average network office salaries have changed little even as overall CPS employee pay has risen steadily over the years.

Principals: CPS networks with good leaders help schools

Principals who spoke with Chalkbeat about the networks said that they can work well, although instability and bureaucratic issues can hamper their effectiveness.

Augusta Smith, a former CPS principal and administrator who now works at the parent advocacy group Kids First Chicago, recalled that her former network chief, LaTanya McDade, spent a lot of time in classrooms, knew her campuses intimately, and was consistently responsive when principals needed help or advice.

“I could call on her at any time, and she’d be there,” Smith said of McDade, who went on to serve as Jackson’s chief academic officer.

But Smith said some network chiefs can be much more focused on ensuring compliance with central office directives.

When school board member Jessica Biggs worked as a CPS principal, she had five network chiefs in as many years. She spent much time and energy getting the new arrivals up to speed, making for a “deeply unsupportive structure.”

But that has changed in recent years, Biggs said: More seasoned leaders serve in these roles and act as a bulwark against the turmoil stemming from leadership changes atop CPS.

“I worry about upending the one stable structure as this new administration is getting its footing,” Biggs said.

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

More than $1.8 million raised in Chicago school board election, as contribution caps are lifted in race for board president

2026-07-17T20:25:10+00:00

This story was published in partnership with WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Campaign fundraising in the race to serve on Chicago’s first fully elected school board is picking up momentum, with $1.8 million raised since last October and contribution caps now lifted in the competition for president.

A WBEZ and Chalkbeat analysis of money candidates received from Oct. 1, 2025 to June 30 found the majority of that total – $1.2 million — went to people running to lead the 21-member board. The board president is the only member who is elected citywide.

Attorney Victor Henderson gave himself half-a-million dollars in loans, which lifted donation limits for all five candidates vying for the president role. These candidates have done the most fundraising, with the exception of former Chicago Teachers Union organizer Hilario Dominguez, who has reported no donations so far. The other candidates for president are Jessica Biggs, Jennifer Custer, and Sendhil Revuluri.

Seventeen school board candidates have brought in less than $10,000 and nine did not file a report for the period from April 1 to June 30. Illinois law requires that candidates begin reporting campaign money once they’ve raised or spent $5,000.

The sizable early donations point to the historic nature of the race. In November, for the first time, Chicago residents will elect all 21 members of the school board, which is currently half-appointed by the mayor and half-elected. For three decades before that, the mayor controlled the board.

Although the school board president does not get to vote on board decisions unless there is a tie, that person plays an outsize role in helping set the board agenda and the tone during meetings. Sean Harden, a Mayor Brandon Johnson appointee who serves in the role now, is not running for the seat.

It’s no surprise that fundraising for that role is heating up, said Hal Woods of the education advocacy group Kids First Chicago.

“You need to be able to build a ground game and campaign infrastructure that covers the entire city, and you have a competitive race with really credible candidates,” he said. By looking strong early, Woods said, “You are showing the donor class you are the horse to get behind.”

Meanwhile, the CTU, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and other organizations that have said they plan to spend big on school board races are largely holding their fire for now, as several candidates are still facing challenges to their attempt to get on the November ballot.

The Illinois Network of Charter Schools’ war chest is by far the largest among political action committees with a stake in the election at more than $4 million. That’s fueled by sizable checks from wealthy residents, including some outside of Chicago. The charter advocacy group, which got outspent by the CTU in the 2024 school board election, hasn’t yet thrown its support behind a candidate for president or made formal endorsements in the 20 district races.

The teachers union, which is backing Dominguez for board president, brought in $500,000 since April 1. It spent about $250,000, some of it on defending candidates, including Dominguez, against challenges intended to knock them off the ballot. The CTU’s coffers get replenished with union dues.

The Illinois Network of Charter Schools and two other political committees, the Common Ground Collective and The Urban Center, have been bolstered by big donations from Paul Finnegan, the chairman of the private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.

Since April, campaign records show Finnegan, whose address is listed in Evanston, has given almost $1 million to seven school board candidates, including Custer and Biggs, and a handful of political groups interested in the school board race.

Fundraising push heats up in board president race

Illinois campaign law limits individual contributions to candidates to $7,300, while corporations and labor unions can contribute up to $14,600. But if a candidate contributes more than $100,000 to his or her own campaign, like Henderson did, or if a super PAC spends more than that amount in support of a candidate, those donation limits fall away for all contenders in that race.

Henderson said he decided to make a sizable loan to his campaign because “if I’m asking other people to invest, they want to know that I’m doing the same thing.” Henderson also said his campaign staff suggested that he do it and, since he’s never run for elected office before, he listened to them. He now has a commanding fundraising lead with about $659,000 between his loans and donations from supporters.

Henderson, who is a member of the Urban Prep Charter School network’s board, said he has met with some of the political action committees, including those of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and CTU, and would be happy to take donations from them.

But he wants special interest groups to know that, regardless of whether they donate to him, he wants to work “with them” not “for them.”

“I’m not going to carry anybody’s water,” he said. “There’s too much politics in CPS, and that’s not the right thing to do.”

Other candidates for president said they are not daunted by Henderson’s campaign cash.

Biggs, a current board member, raised just over $154,000 as of June 30, most of it in smaller contributions from individuals. She said she didn’t think the lifting of contribution limits in the hotly contested race would shift the dynamics considerably.

“I’m continuing to build the broadest coalition possible,” she said. “It’s what this moment calls for.”

Biggs was outspent roughly 10-to-1 in her South Side district in 2024, but handily won her current seat representing district 6b, which includes Bronzeville, Hyde Park, and other neighborhoods.

Sendhil Revuluri, a former vice president of the board appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, also said he didn’t expect the lifting of the spending cap to make a major difference. He has raised more than $311,000 so far, including $68,000 that he loaned to his own campaign. He said he tapped his broad professional network to get other donations from across the country.

Still, Revuluri said his campaign is focused on student outcomes and experiences.

“The money is not the goal,” he said. “It’s a means to reach voters and get my message across.”

Custer, an incumbent board member who represents parts of Chicago’s Far Northwest Side, also raised mostly small amounts from individual donors. She says she was surprised the limit was blown so early, but she expected the race would be an expensive one.

“To commit in a citywide race, you are going to need a significant amount of money,” she said. Like other candidates, she says she’ll take money from PACs as long as they know that her “north star is always what’s good for the children”

Dominguez, the CTU’s pick for president, has not reported any donations or expenses. He said he’s going to do his best to raise enough money to compete, but, in the end, he’s hoping that “people power” will fuel his campaign. He said he and his team will be “hitting those doors hard.”

“We’re always going to have to rely on the organized power of moms, of educators, of students,” he said.

Special interest groups prepare to spend big

A number of organizations with connections to Chicago Public Schools are gearing up to jump into the political fray, including the race for school board president.

Andrew Broy, executive director of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said the group plans to make endorsements in August and then start spending more.

“We want to be competitive in all the races where we see a pathway to victory,” he said.

He said the citywide presidential race will be expensive, estimating that the cost of mailers and other outreach to voters across the city would easily surpass $1 million.

In the 2024 school board race, the CTU’s two political action committees spent $4.3 million on races, but rather than donate directly to candidates, they spent a lot hiring companies to create mailers, conduct surveys, and organize canvassing in support of particular candidates. CTU announced 15 endorsements earlier this week and chose to sit out six races.

Service Employees International Union Local 73, which represents support staff in CPS, also announced their endorsements this week. After decades of being seen as allies, SEIU has recently had some public disagreements with CTU, including over who represents school support staff.

In the 13 races where SEIU endorsed candidates, only four are also endorsed by the CTU. Some, like Che “Rhymefest” Smith and Angel Guiterrez, have consistently voted against the current school board majority, which is aligned with CTU.

Dian Palmer, president of SEIU Local 73, one of three SEIU local affiliates in Illinois, said the union was not going to endorse a presidential candidate, but they are now considering backing someone. She’s hopeful her union can help balance some of the big-money interests getting involved in the race with door-knocking and member donations.

“The amount of money is mind-boggling,” she said.

SEIU’s two PACs had about $719,000 on hand at the end of June.

Other groups are starting to dip their toes in the school board races. The Common Ground Collective, led by staffers from former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez’s cabinet, has made some donations to incumbents who are up for reelection, including Biggs and Custer.

Rooted & Ready, a PAC affiliated with U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez, a CTU ally who represents parts of Chicago and the west suburbs, cut $3,500 checks to school board candidates Claudia Perlata, Jason Dónes, and incumbent Norma Rios Sierra, all endorsed by the CTU. The group hasn’t yet made contributions in the president’s race.

Correction 6/17/26: This story has been corrected to include contributions that were inadvertently omitted in the process of analyzing campaign finance data from the Illinois State Board of Elections website. It was also corrected to include the accurate school board district that Jessica Biggs represents.

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

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Contact Sarah at skarp@wbez.org.

Chicago Public Schools releases $9.88 billion 2026-27 budget amid deepening financial strain

2026-07-15T22:01:12+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Facing intense financial pressures, Chicago Public Schools officials unveiled a proposed $9.88 billion district budget that includes five furlough days and a spending freeze that could start in January. But they said they hope to avoid those measures by persuading state lawmakers or the city council to steer more dollars to the school district.

District leaders said hundreds of staff layoffs, a push for more revenue, and other cost-saving measures took a $450 million bite out of the $732.5 million deficit the district faced this summer. To help close the remaining gap, CPS is bumping up the amount it expects the city would contribute in special tax dollars for development, known as TIF, from $100 million to $200 million. Last year, CPS received more than $500 million in TIF dollars, a record amount, but district officials said they wanted to be more conservative in projecting this year’s influx.

Unless even more city or state revenue materializes, the district will furlough all staff for five days when students are scheduled to be out of school and teachers are expected to get professional development — a move that would save $85 million. The district also would freeze some hiring and other spending in the second half of the school year.

“This process is painful for everyone all the way around,” said schools chief Macquline King on a call with reporters. “Ultimately, the budget we have presented is one that does its absolute best to meet the diverse needs of students.”

The district’s teachers and principals unions and some school board members decried the cuts, saying they will affect students.

The district is laying off about 760 teachers and 800 school-based support staff this week, though officials said that the majority will likely get rehired to fill vacancies on other campuses.

The district shared budgets with schools in May and finalized them in early June, but it has not disclosed campus budget allocations. More than 160 central office and citywide administrators were laid off on Friday — a move that CPS said will save $18 million. The blueprint presented Wednesday includes spending on pensions, debt service, and central and districtwide staff.

Last year, the district issued layoff notices to 1,450 teachers, support staff, security officers, and other employees. Officials said that in line with previous years, about 75% of them were rehired. District leaders said that while there will be fewer general education teachers after the district increased student-to-teacher ratios by one student, it is boosting the number of bilingual and special education teachers and classroom assistants. That will result in a net school-based position loss of about 160 in the district, which employs more than 37,000 people on its campuses. Factoring in contractual pay increases, CPS is sending $143 million more directly to schools compared with last year.

District officials again stressed the tough financial realities CPS faces: The costs of employee pay and pensions, the district’s massive debt, and upkeep for Chicago’s aging school buildings keep going up. The district added thousands of new positions using federal COVID aid during the pandemic even as enrollment shrank. District leaders have defended the staffing growth, saying it allowed schools to address longstanding staffing gaps and speed up its recovery. Despite significant state funding increases in recent years, CPS remains about $1.6 billion of what Illinois estimates would make for “adequate” funding.

CPS is asking the board to approve the budget by July 30, which officials say will give them enough time to borrow money against its future tax revenue to address cash flow issues amid a Cook County property tax delay.

Wednesday’s budget is the first fully shaped by King, who stepped in on an interim basis last summer when outgoing schools chief Pedro Martinez had already finalized school budgets. King crafted the final $10.2 billion budget, notably declining to take out a high-cost loan to pay into a city pension fund covering some CPS support staff despite pressure from the mayor’s office.

This week’s budget proposal also did not include a contribution toward the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund. District officials touted the fact that the new budget does not add to the district’s $9 billion debt, with interest and other costs diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that could go toward instruction and support services.

King described the budget as “thoughtful, responsible, and entirely student-centered.” But the proposal left some board members concerned about how cuts would impact schools in their districts.

Anusha Thotakura, an appointed board member who represents the Near North Side and West Town, said many schools have experienced cuts “year after year,” and she wants to see more investments that parents want, such as in early childhood education and dual language programs. At the same time, CPS is in a difficult spot, she said.

“When you start with a pie that is too small and are forced to figure out how to cut it and a way to feed people, you’re never going to win,” said Thotakura, who has advocated for more state funding.

She said she hopes CPS and board members will work extra hard over the next year to secure additional funding, including from the state and city.

In a statement, Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, called the proposal “dead on arrival.” Furloughs, she said, are another blow to educators who are already working in schools that are stretched for resources.

The union, along with allied board members, have called on state lawmakers to raise money for schools through progressive taxes and more recently pressed CPS to sue the county treasurer’s office over late tax payments.

“Does anyone in this state other than CPS educators have power to help school children instead of hurt them?” Davis Gates said in the statement. “It’s time for them to use it.”

Kia Banks, the head of the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, said in a statement the union understands district leaders are in a tough spot. Still, she’s unsure the proposal, which eliminated assistant principals in small schools, represents “the strongest path forward.”

“We are extremely disappointed by the possibility that students could lose resources, programs, and support they need and deserve,” Banks said.

But Danny Vesecky, senior research and policy associate at Civic Federation, said that while layoffs are painful structural changes, they will permanently reduce the district’s expenses. It’s also the “right direction” for the district to move in after federal COVID relief money went away but investments fueled by those dollars, such as more staff, still exist.

“There is unfortunately no way to address that other than unwinding some of the increase in spending that we engaged in in previous years,” Vesecky said.

Vesecky also described furloughs as a reasonable yet temporary solution, since those savings won’t reduce the district’s expenses or deficit in future years.

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

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

CTU endorses 15 school board candidates, throwing weight behind incumbents, mayoral picks

2026-07-14T01:16:22+00:00

This story was published in partnership with WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union announced Monday it will endorse only 15 candidates in the upcoming school board race in which all 21 seats are up for election — a decision that could make it difficult for the union to hold onto its majority.

The union will back 10 incumbents who they supported in the election two years ago or were appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Johnson, a former organizer for the CTU, is an ally of the union.

Notably absent from their list of endorsements is Yesenia Lopez, who won in 2024 with the union’s endorsement, but occasionally voted independently of other CTU-aligned school board members over the past year and half.

CTU last month endorsed their political director Hilario Dominguez in the citywide race for school board president. There are four other people running for that seat.

In the six districts where the CTU did not endorse anyone, it was because the race had only one candidate or there’s no candidate aligned with the CTU.

One of the five non-incumbents getting CTU’s nod is Tameka Walton, who the union said is mounting a write-in campaign. Walton’s petition signatures were challenged and the Chicago Board of Elections is expected to make decisions on petition challenges Tuesday.

Angel L. Velez, the incumbent vice president of the board who was appointed by Johnson and filed to run for his seat in district 9a, also announced on social media last week that he did not have enough valid signatures to stay on the ballot. That leaves Brittany Bailey Preston, the wife of state Sen. Willie Preston, as the only candidate in the race.

Juan Rangel, the CEO of the Urban Center, a political action committee paying for many of the petition challenges, said Cydney Wallace, a Johnson appointee running in 8b is also expected to be removed from the ballot. CTU did not include Velez or Wallace in their endorsements.

The CTU has been seen as a politically powerful force, especially after getting Johnson elected, but it remains to be seen how much their endorsement matters.

In the first school board election in 2024, the union endorsed in all 10 races and only four of their candidates were victorious. Still, the union had a friendly school board because Johnson appointed 11 people, giving them enough backers to have a majority on the 21-member board.

CTU-backed candidates would have to win 11 races to hold onto a majority. The CTU’s two political action committees had a balance of less than $200,000 as of March 31, the last time quarterly filings were due. New reports are due out on Wednesday.

The union also boasts more than 30,000 members that can knock on doors and get out the vote, which will be important in the Nov. 3 election where turnout could be low.

Kimberly Walls-Kirk, chair of the CTU’s political action committee, says the union’s endorsements carry weight with voters because they trust teachers.

“I’m the parent of a child who graduated from a Chicago Public School. I’m a teacher in Chicago Public Schools,” she said. “So if I have a vision of what learning conditions look like for my child, then I, as a teacher, am one of the best people to endorse a candidate.”

A handful of other political action committees have already raised more than a million each and have already started donating money to candidates.

Rangel said he was surprised that the CTU wasn’t more organized as they approached this election. The Urban Center PAC is supported by centrist billionaires and pro-charter groups.

“The CTU has a reputation of having first-class, first-grade political operations, but I think they’ve been kind of sloppy on this this time around, and I’m not sure the exact reason why,” he said.

Dominguez, the CTU’s endorsed presidential candidate, blamed the lack of challengers in some races on the fact that it is a volunteer position that is essentially a full-time job, he said.

Andrew Broy, the president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said that based on 2024 election results, the power of a CTU endorsement is a “mixed bag” — more helpful in some well-to-do or gentrifying areas such as the North Side and Logan Square, and less so on the Southwest and Northwest Side. Overall, he said, recent opinion polls suggest the union’s popularity has dipped.

“That might blunt the positive impact of a CTU endorsement,” Broy said.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter. Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s Black Student Success Director Eugene Robinson Jr. talks about the initiative’s first year

2026-07-09T18:08:35+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Eugene Robinson Jr., Chicago Public Schools’ first director of Black student success, has faced a tricky balancing act over the past year.

Community advocates called for decisive, visible progress on the district’s Black Student Success Plan, the five-year initiative they had championed for years and helped enshrine in state law. Meanwhile, the Trump administration argued the plan discriminates against non-Black students and withheld federal funding over it — a standoff that’s now playing out in the courts.

Against that backdrop, Robinson set out to implement the plan he helped write in 2024. A University of Chicago graduate with a master’s degree in social work, he previously worked as the district’s director of student engagement and led the University of Chicago Charter School’s Woodlawn campus.

The rollout’s first year was decidedly low-key, with lots of public attention focused on delays in naming a new board committee that will help guide the work. The board named most, but not all, of the Black Student Achievement Committee’s members this week.

Chalkbeat spoke with Robinson about what he was able to accomplish this past year and what comes next for the plan, at a time when the district is contending with major budget pressures.

This conversation was edited for length and clarity.

You became the inaugural director of Black student success in June 2024, charged with rolling out a plan that involved a lot of input — and high expectations — from community members. What drew you to this role, and did you have some trepidation?

I’m a product of Chicago Public Schools. I went to Lindblom High School in Englewood. My family has a story that’s connected to why we’re doing this work and to the Great Migration. I am also an uncle of several nieces and nephews who are products of Chicago Public Schools. I’ve worked in higher education, and I’ve participated in a program called Great Expectation Mentoring. In my professional career, I’ve looked at other cities and states doing work focused on Black boys or Black girls. This opportunity allowed me to connect being a product of CPS, growing up in Englewood and Auburn Gresham, coming back to work in schools, working in nonprofits, and as a Black man in general.

Your first task was to write the plan, drawing on recommendations that came through community engagement. The plan sets some concrete goals, but it doesn’t go into detail about how the district will get there. How much work has the district done to figure out the “how,” and how much still remains?

The one thing I like to say is that the Black Student Success Plan is not the work. It is the vision and the aspiration. It is also the item to hold us as a district accountable, and it was written to align with the district’s five-year strategic plan, and with state statute that requires the school board to establish a Black Student Achievement Committee. The goals are very high-level and ambitious. There’s a lot of research and data that talks about certain powerful practices, and there was historical data that we looked at as a district.

But the plan is not the work. Some of this work started at the school level before the plan was actually taking shape. One example is Black student unions — one of the recommendations from the community working group. How do we create these culturally centered leadership and voice spaces for young people?

You led the plan’s first year of implementation in a national climate of intense scrutiny of race-based initiatives. How much were you able to accomplish this year?

The first year was about socializing the plan, letting everyone know that, “Hey, we have a Black Student Success Plan,” and activating that ecosystem for philanthropy with higher ed and community-based partners.

The Black Student Success Working Group didn’t go away. We reconstituted that to look different and to engage differently. We call it the Black Student Success Champion and Stakeholder Alliance Group so we are moving beyond recommendations to how this shows up in schools.

We also were able to establish what’s called the Black Student Success Convening and Collaboration, where we brought together various offices connected to certain goals. For example, we have a goal to increase Black male teachers and Black teacher retention. That’s our talent office.

We walked on a journey of establishing a Black student union framework, so we actually did some focus groups with schools that had Black student unions and schools that did not have them.

Using the two examples you mentioned, did the district’s talent office take some steps this year to make it easier to recruit and retain Black male teachers? Did schools foster new Black student unions?

I would say this is [work that will take place] in Year 3 of the plan. We have never had a Black student union resource and toolkit. We also looked at the history of Black student unions nationally and in CPS, and we actually went into the CPS archives and pulled out photos of Black student unions to understand and make those connections for young people.

We received a small grant opportunity that supports both the Black male educator strategy work and our very first Black student union conference. We are launching a Black male educator wellness cohort with some of this funding. We are working to establish other partnerships to offer professional learning for Black male educators. We’re supporting our grow-your-own work to ensure that Black males in non-teacher roles move up into teaching roles.

How did the Trump administration’s push to get the district to scrap the plan affect your work?

One of the things I would say related to is that we still have that open investigation [by the U.S. Department of Education]. But the district will continue to ground ourselves in the research and the data and our equity framework, which is all about targeted universalism. Targeted universalism is not about taking from one group to support and elevate another group. It is the system recognizing that groups may need differentiated support to achieve the same north star.

We are no different than any other school district having to navigate this climate, like my colleagues that I’m in close connection with in Denver and Los Angeles, who have similar Black student success plans.

Did the fact that the board’s Black Student Achievement Committee wasn’t named earlier this year affect your work on the plan, given the central role it is supposed to play in guiding the initiative?

Even though the committee has not been launched, there is collaboration and communication between the Office of Equity, the CEO’s office, Black Student Success Plan, and the two chairs of that committee. This is all new for us, but there is open communication. The way I will explain it is that the Black Student Success Plan is the work of the district in alignment with the state statute and our five-year strategic plan. The Black Student Achievement Committee will serve as the accountability structure for the district to be able to do this work.

You mentioned the philanthropic funding you lined up. Do you see this work being largely funded through philanthropic contributions going forward, or will the district attach some local or state dollars to the initiative?

There is an overall commitment that the CPS budget process is driven by equity. We are in a budget season now, so I wouldn’t answer that particular question. What I will share with you is that there is momentum to support this work in the philanthropic community, and we’re also looking at other ways of supporting this work.

But I think about the district’s commitment to having an Office of Equity, the positions that come along with that, including my position that never existed before, and also a project manager who works alongside me. Having different offices looking at their data and aligning to the Black Student Success Plan will take people, time, and money. Those offices will identify the resources that will potentially be attached to this work.

What’s high on your to-do list for next year?

I know I talked about Black student unions a lot, but I’m really excited because when we center ourselves on student voice and those who are most impacted and allow them to have a seat at the table, it can make for powerful practice and ignite opportunities for young people.

I am excited that we will be able to host the very first Black Student Union Conference at Malcolm X College on Oct. 21. We have some young people through the Mayor’s Office Youth Works program interning with us to help us plan the conference, and we have collaborated with different partners like Mikva Challenge over the year.

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

Chicago school board names members of Black Student Achievement Committee

2026-07-08T21:06:18+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

More than two years after Illinois lawmakers mandated a new committee to steer Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to improve the outcomes and experiences of Black students, the school board announced a partial list of its members Wednesday.

Jitu Brown and Michilla Blaise, the West Side board members who will lead the new group, helped select its members from a pool of 500 applicants. The committee will help oversee the rollout of the district’s Black Student Success Plan, a five-year initiative that has come under fire from the Trump administration.

Delays in forming the committee have frustrated some student advocates and supporters of the plan. Brown told Chalkbeat last summer that he would announce the members that September. The district later opened a more formal application process in late 2025 and then reopened it in January. At the board’s June meeting, Brown blamed the more recent delays on internal “struggle.”

On Wednesday, Blaise thanked community members for their patience and said the wait paid off in a careful, thorough screening process and strong applicant pool.

“We’re watching every step we make just because the whole world is watching us,” she said. “There are so many people and so many other places that are really hopeful for the work that we do here.”

The committee members are:

Darius Anderson, a community organizer and culinary arts professional
Alyssa Blanchard, a CPS special education case manager
Amber Brooks, an operations and organizational leadership executive
Karen Calloway, the principal at Kenwood Academy
Jemia Cunningham-Elder, the CEO of North Lawndale College Prep
Crystal Gardner, a West Side community organizer
Aquila Griffin-Ingram, a workforce analytics and compensation leader
Valerie Leonard, a community leader and founder of the nonprofit Utopia
Ayoka Noelle Mota Samuels, senior leader at City Colleges of Chicago
Chanise Stephens, a CPS educator, parent, and activist

“These individuals represent a diverse mix of stakeholders from across Chicago,” Brown said. “Each one brings a deep commitment to racial justice, public education, and the success of Black students.”

Four additional members will be announced soon as they complete required district onboarding, board members said.

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

Chicago cut funding for assistant principals in small schools. Most chose to keep them anyway.

2026-07-07T21:49:24+00:00

Data analysis by Sophie Hayssen

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Alex Dakessian, the assistant principal at McCutcheon Elementary on Chicago’s North Side, had a hectic year.

She scheduled classes, helped evaluate 78 teachers and support staff, oversaw the school’s five specialized classrooms for students with significant disabilities, and translated for some of its more than 130 English learners. With two campuses several blocks apart, she sometimes became a “track star running between buildings” when emergencies arose.

But with McCutcheon’s kindergarten through eighth grade enrollment a few students shy of 250, Dakessian’s position landed on the chopping block this spring when the district cut school budgets.

More than 130 small schools were poised to lose funding for their assistant principals next school year. Most, including McCutcheon, used discretionary dollars to keep them or convinced CPS to make an exception, leaving about 40 campuses without that position, Chalkbeat has learned. The move comes as district officials are trying to close a $732.5 million deficit to balance a more than $10 billion budget.

In 2024, Chicago Public Schools vowed to staff an assistant principal on each of its campuses — no matter how small — as part of a new budget formula meant to steer more resources to high-needs schools, many hit hard by enrollment losses. But this spring, the district announced it would cut funding for assistant principals, or APs for short, in schools with fewer than 250 students, among other educator and support staff positions.

The move incensed leaders at the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, which is bargaining with the district to finalize the first fully fleshed-out contract for school leaders. The union has argued that regardless of school size, APs such as Dakessian ensure campuses run smoothly and serve as sanity-saving partners and confidants for principals.

According to numbers provided by school board members, 72 of 138 campuses chose to use discretionary dollars to keep those positions. In the cases of another 23 schools, the district made an exception and funded an AP position, for example because of an upcoming program change.

Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education notes the nonprofit has been a major proponent for staffing an assistant principal in each school. They help ease the intense pressure and loneliness of the principal role and represent a crucial school leader pipeline, with about a third eventually taking over the top job at their CPS school.

But this spring, Gerew says, school budget cuts were inevitable to balance the district’s budget. Because CPS guarantees a minimum level of staffing under its 2024 formula, many small schools were protected from other cuts the district made, Gerew notes. Cutting their APs meant they would share in the budget pain with larger schools, he said. There, principals have occasionally noted that both some schools serving hundreds of students and campuses serving fewer than 100 receive funding for one assistant principal.

“It’s encouraging that the vast majority of principals were able to keep their APs,” Gerew said.

As of its most recent staffing data at the end of June, CPS had a total of 644 assistant principal positions, up from about 600 before the 2023 budget formula changes and from a recent low of 540 in 2017, during another tough budget stretch. In 2026, APs made an average salary of $135,650, based on a Chalkbeat analysis of public CPS staffing data.

In a statement, CPS, which lost 45,000 students since the start of the pandemic, pointed to the intense fiscal pressures it faces. It said school budgets — including the number of eliminated assistant principal positions — remain preliminary until the school board approves an overall district budget this summer. But it said most appeals for additional staffing from schools were approved, and the district would make an effort to reassign employees whose positions were cut.

An ‘arbitrary’ enrollment cutoff with a catch

The principals union has pointed to Dakessian’s case to argue that the district’s 250-student cutoff is arbitrary and to contest a decision not to include pre-K enrollment.

Last year’s official enrollment at McCutcheon was 246 students. But that number does not include about 70 preschool students, who are part of a separate funding stream, but still demand the time and attention of school leaders.

School leaders and their advocates say assistant principals tend to have full plates, pitching in with a wide range of duties, from handing school discipline to communicating with families to filling in when other staff is absent or positions go vacant.

At last month’s school board meeting, Cy Hendrickson, the vice president of the principals union and an assistant principal at Hernández Middle School, said because they work throughout the summer, many assistant principals make less per hour than they would if they had continued teaching. Many regularly work on their own time on evenings and weekends, from completing teaching evaluations to answering parent emails, he said.

“The responsibility of leading and loving a CPS school is too immense and too profound for any one person to bear alone,” Hendrickson said.

The standoff over the AP cuts has cast a shadow over ongoing contract talks between the district and Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, which formally unionized school leaders for the first time after state lawmakers allowed it in 2023. Last fall, the two sides reached a preliminary agreement that included more protections against harassment and more due process rights for principals facing discipline, as well as 4% cost of living increases for 2025-26. But the union and district have been bargaining over a more fully fleshed-out contract.

Kia Banks, the union’s president, said it was “blindsided” by the district’s assistant principal decision — and has continued to push for a way to preserve these positions at the bargaining table. She said at the more than 40 schools losing their APs — campuses serving predominantly high-needs, Black and Latino students — only two principals told the union they feel they can make do without a second-in-command next year.

School board members express concern about AP cuts

Some school board members have voiced concern about the assistant principal cuts, even as they say they understand the district was forced to make difficult decisions to balance its budget.

Board member Karen Zaccor, a former CPS educator, said three schools in her North Side district lost their AP funding, including McCutcheon and Uplift High School, which has bucked district trends by growing its enrollment in recent years. All three chose to keep those positions with discretionary dollars. But she said she worries about what programs and other budget items might not be funded as a result.

“You can’t say, ‘We solved the problem. All of these schools are getting their APs back,’” Zaccor said. “We don’t know what else might be going away.”

School board member Jessica Biggs, a former CPS principal, said she felt the district had made the right call when it committed to staff an assistant principal in each school. She had spent most of her first year as a principal without a second-in-command, at Burke Elementary, which served fewer than 250 students at the time. She struggled.

In her second year, she hired assistant principal Tenesha Hatter, whom Biggs credits with the school’s enrollment and academic growth. Hatter led the school’s efforts to improve its climate and culture and fostered relationships with students to improve attendance, allowing Biggs to focus on boosting academics. Hatter went on to become a CPS principal herself.

“I don’t know if I would have stayed in the role if it wasn’t for her,” Biggs said. At the same time, she added, “There is nothing that’s good to cut right now.”

One small school principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously to discuss the issue without district authorization, recalls finding out the campus would lose its assistant principal funding this spring.

“I remember putting my head in my hands and just sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god,’” that principal said. “It was devastating.”

The school got just enough discretionary dollars to keep the assistant principal. But it eliminated a teaching position to free up more discretionary dollars it still needs for learning materials, supplies, and more. For the first time, it will start charging student fees, and will lean on parent leaders to do “a hella lot of fundraising,” the principal said.

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

Delays in ramping up work on Chicago’s Black Student Success Plan frustrate some advocates

2026-06-25T21:33:38+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Coretta Shane, the mom of a Chicago seventh-grader, applied earlier this year to serve on a new committee that would help steer the district’s Black Student Success Plan, a five-year initiative to address academic disparities Black students face.

She got an email thanking her and promising updates in the following weeks. That was back in March.

Shane knows the plan is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has withheld federal dollars from the district over its refusal to scrap it. Still, the silence hasn’t sat well with her.

“I’ve just heard nothing, which is maddening to me,” she said. “I wish there would be some communication.”

Over the past year, district officials have worked to reassure parents and advocates that they are forging ahead with the initiative — while appearing to move slowly and cautiously to ward off further federal scrutiny and fallout. On Thursday, Jitu Brown, the board member slated to lead the Black Student Achievement Committee, announced yet another delay in naming its members. And when the district this past spring challenged in court the U.S. Department of Education’s move to withhold grant dollars over the plan, one of CPS’ arguments was that it hadn’t even started implementing the program.

Those who pushed to codify the committee in state law have voiced impatience with the slow pace — a sentiment Brown echoed at the board’s monthly meeting on Thursday.

Other advocates and experts say they understand the precarious position CPS is in — and recognize the first year of the plan’s rollout was likely to largely involve low-key planning.

“I just remind myself that this is something CPS has never done before,” said Dominique McKoy, the executive director of the University of Chicago’s To & Through Project, who has followed work on the plan. “This is an effort that’s trying to disrupt decades and generations of frustration for a population that historically hasn’t been served well by the city and the school district.”

In a Thursday statement, CPS said it is making headway on the initiative, and recently got a $250,000 grant from a Chicago-based foundation for its work on cultivating Black student unions and hiring more Black male educators. The district is planning a fall conference bringing together members of more than two dozen Black student unions on CPS campuses this fall. The statement also cited an increase in Black student enrollment in Advanced Placement courses and ongoing efforts to reduce discipline for Black students.

The district has pushed back on the feds’ call to kill the plan

CPS unveiled the plan in early 2025 after a yearslong process of gathering input from community members who had decried gaps Black students face on a long list of academic metrics and in access to some advanced courses and other opportunities.

The day after its release, a conservative advocacy group filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education, arguing the plan discriminates against non-Black students, particularly Latinos. The Trump administration began investigating, and last fall announced it would withhold millions in magnet school grants unless CPS scrapped the initiative altogether.

The plan sets a number of sweeping goals, which include hiring more Black male educators and reducing punitive discipline for Black students, who make up roughly a third of the district’s student body. But it doesn’t go into detail about how the district would tackle these goals or what progress toward them would look like in each year of the rollout. CPS also did not spell out a specific budget for implementation.

Brown, a longtime advocate for Black students in the district, said last summer that the first year of the initiative would be about listening to district employees, parents, and students, and figuring out how to replicate practices that have worked well for Black students.

He had initially said the committee to oversee the rollout would be announced last September. The board office said in May that Brown would be available for an interview only after the new committee is onboarded, but it did not give a timeline for when its members would be named. The district in recent weeks has also asked for more time before providing an interview with officials, and on Thursday, it referred questions about the committee delays to the board office.

At Thursday’s board meeting, Brown blamed the delays on an internal “struggle” after the board held two separate rounds of taking applications this past school year. He did not elaborate what exactly was getting in the way but said, “I am very frustrated, very concerned.”

In the meantime, the district held several community roundtables to gather more input on the plan this past spring. District budget materials from last summer also said CPS’ various central office departments would work on their own visions for implementing the plan during 2025-26. In response to a public records request from Chalkbeat, the district declined to provide these department-level plans, citing an exemption for internal documents that are in draft form.

CPS said a first-year focus would be supporting Black student unions at its high schools and expanding their number. McKoy said there’s some momentum on this issue as well as conversations about cultivating closer partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities. Some Black students in CPS have expressed interest in better understanding what these campuses might have to offer, McKoy said.

Sona Fokum, a research project manager at the Black Researchers Collective, said CPS officials had preliminary conversations last year with the group and other local experts about tracking and evaluating the initiative’s outcomes, including by involving students in the effort. But the collective hasn’t heard about next steps more recently.

When it comes to the federal pushback, the plan remains in limbo. In its lawsuit against the feds, the district has demanded that the government reinstate its magnet funding, noting the decision to withhold it happened before the investigation into the initiative was even formally completed. The district argued the plan is on solid legal footing because it sets out to rectify historical discrimination and missteps that have led to measurable disparities between the outcomes for Black students and those of their peers.

“The Plan does not take anything away from non-Black students,” the district said in court filings.

The Department of Education hasn’t filed a response to the district’s complaint in court, and a spokeswoman did not respond to an inquiry about the status of the investigation.

District Superintendent Macquline King was subpoenaed to testify before a congressional education committee earlier this month on CPS’s handling of hot-button issues, including the Black Student Success Plan and policies on transgender students, which are also under a federal investigation. But the plan itself sparked just a brief exchange with a friendly Democratic lawmaker, in which King stressed the community input that went into designing it and its goal of helping “students that have been historically and systematically void of opportunities.”

Committee’s creation lags

Shane, the mom who applied to serve on the Black Student Achievement Committee earlier this year, lives in South Shore, but she drives her daughter to school across the city to the North Side’s Walt Disney Magnet School, where she was recently elected to the local school council.

Shane has long been a critic of the more meager academic offerings — especially when it comes to science, technology, engineering, and math — that some schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods have. She saw the committee as a chance to advocate for more robust programs at the district level.

“The fact that my daughter can’t go to a school in our neighborhood because of a lack of resources really bothers me,” she said.

Koron Nash, the father of two CPS students, attended a virtual meeting about the plan with Brown, the school board member, organized by the parent advocacy group Kids First this spring. Nash, who also applied to serve on the committee, felt Brown’s commitment to advancing the plan was genuine. Nash strongly supports the plan’s goals.

But he wants to see specifics on how CPS will tackle them, with a budget and metrics to track progress: “At this point, we should be well beyond informing people. We should be taking action. We’re behind the eight ball.”

David Stovall, a professor of Black studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, said with any new multiyear initiative, planning and troubleshooting tend to take up the first year.

Still, he said, he is eager to see the district flesh out the plan — and address head-on the issue of its severely underenrolled schools, many of which serve predominantly Black students. He said he got involved with offering input when the district was first crafting the plan. But he left because officials did not seem open to discussing that issue or addressing it explicitly in the initiative.

“It’s nonsense to talk about a success plan when you’re not doing anything to address this glaring issue,” he said. “If you are going to address marginalization, you have to start with the most marginalized.”

McKoy says the district needs the help of other city agencies, academia, and others to address the needs of Black students and families. He believes the district is still genuinely committed to the initiative in the face of the Trump administration’s attack on it.

“There’s no way that’s not having an effect,” McKoy said. “But I am not seeing folks shy away and change the messaging.”

On Thursday, Brown, the school board member, said he will push to finally name the committee overseeing the initiative in July.

“I’m not really interested in any more conversations about it,” he said. “We need to announce this committee and get to work.”

Chalkbeat Chicago reporters Reema Amin and Makiya Seminera contributed to this report.

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

Why more Chicago schools lean on dollars they raise independently amid budget crunch

2026-06-22T10:00:00+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

This story was created in collaboration with the Chicago Tribune. Editor’s note: Please do not republish.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Karen Calloway is always hunting for more ways to bring in dollars for Kenwood Academy.

In recent years, the principal has rented out the South Side high school’s campus to churches, nonprofits, and sports leagues, and leaned on a new parent group to drum up donations. The effort to supplement what the school receives directly from Chicago Public Schools has paid off.

Kenwood spent $418,983 in outside money in fiscal year 2025, compared to a low of about $90,000 in 2021, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat and the Tribune.

At Kenwood, a predominantly Black high school where about half of the students are low-income, that funding has paid for athletic equipment and uniforms, student clubs and college tours.

“Regardless of the budget, as a principal, you should want to create other arms of revenue for your school,” Calloway said. “It’s being flexible and being nimble about how you use the funding that you have.”

Private fundraising has long been seen as a way to pad school budgets in wealthier communities, usually to pay for nice-to-haves, such as field trips and student clubs. But as the district grapples with growing financial woes, more Chicago schools have leaned on parent fundraising, rental income, cell tower revenue, and more to pay for essentials, including staffing.

In fiscal year 2025, district-run campuses spent a total of $48 million in independently raised revenue, the Chalkbeat and Chicago Tribune analysis found. That’s up 78% since 2021, when the district was newly flush with federal pandemic relief.

In an email, a district spokesperson said the total spent in fiscal year 2025 was $51.8 million, but could not explain the discrepancy.

North Side schools have remained dominant in bringing in this outside funding, but some higher-poverty South and West Side campuses such as Kenwood increasingly held their own. Across the city, principals say they appreciate the boost, even as they note playing landlord and overseeing fundraisers can siphon time away from efforts to improve instruction.

The district made some cuts to school budgets this spring to chip at a $732.5 million deficit, under pressure from billions in long-term debt and pension liabilities, aging infrastructure and state funding that remains short of what Illinois deems “adequate.”

“The district’s budget is getting close to the breaking point, so principals are hustling around for additional revenue, the district’s hustling around to buy additional savings and the long-term revenue sources are kind of tapped out,” said Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund.

Students walk outside Amundsen High School in 2017.

Larger schools say this funding is a lifeline

Until recently, Amundsen High School spent fundraised dollars on computer carts, classroom materials, and other nonessentials.

A decade ago, about 90% of Amundsen’s students were from low-income families and almost 60% were Latino. Then came an all-out effort to attract more families from the school’s well-to-do Lincoln Square neighborhood. The successful push has been a boon for Amundsen’s reputation and enrollment. It has also meant tighter budgets.

In 2024, the school — where roughly a third of students are now low-income and nearly half are white — lost federal dollars it used to receive for serving a high concentration of disadvantaged students. That year, CPS also adopted a new funding formula that, among other things, guaranteed minimum staffing for a growing number of campuses with smaller student bodies — the culmination of yearslong efforts to steer more resources to needier schools.

Facing a growing budget shortfall, Amundsen spent $894,000 in outside money in 2025, including fundraising, cell tower income, and grant revenue, for operational expenses such as partial staff salaries. That’s roughly 5% of its budget.

“We aren’t using [fundraising] because our kids need iPad 10s instead of iPad 9s,” said Bob Farster, a longtime Local School Council representative. “This isn’t frivolous. We’re not using it for things that aren’t 100% necessary.”

Historically in Chicago, parent fundraising has been a story of have versus have-not schools, a dynamic threatening to drive deeper inequity in a segregated district. Indeed, “Friends of” groups at the city’s premier selective enrollment schools, which tend to serve whiter and wealthier student bodies than the district as a whole, can pull in hefty amounts. Take Friends of Payton, which raised $786,000 for Walter Payton College Preparatory High School in 2023-24, according to the organization’s most recent tax filings, more than any other school in the district.

But the picture has become more nuanced.

Amid the funding shifts, school leaders, LSC members and parent groups at larger high schools like Amundsen — often in wealthier areas but drawing diverse student bodies — say outside revenue is helping to bridge budget gaps, paying for staff positions, pressing building repairs or other essentials.

Without independent revenue, one North Side principal who requested anonymity to speak candidly said, “I can’t make the numbers work.”

At about 1% of total campus budgets in 2024-25, this type of income that schools raise independently of what the district provides is still a small fraction of school spending overall. But it’s growing, and it accounts for a larger portion on some campuses, including 6% at Lincoln Park High School, the highest among CPS schools. This school year, 77 teacher and staff positions districtwide were funded through independent revenue, up from 67 in 2024-25.

Securing independent revenue can be time-consuming and uncertain, school leaders say. Renting out parking lots, auditoriums, and other school facilities often involves coming in on weekends and troubleshooting issues with vendors throughout the week, the North Side principal said.

Meanwhile, high-needs campuses on the South and West sides are stepping up their own fundraising.

Schools serving more low-income families hope to boost outside dollars

At Kenwood’s eighth grade graduation in the school’s courtyard earlier this month, graduates, parents and family members flocked to a booth piled high with “spiritwear”: $45 sweatshirts, $20 baseball hats, $10 tote bags, all with the school’s insignia rendered in ornate lettering. A winding line formed by the booth, manned by members of Friends of Kenwood.

RyAnn Nelson-Jaiyesimi, a 1998 graduate, held up a blue T-shirt with “alumni” scripted across the chest. She walked away with two for $20 each, adding that supporting the fundraiser was an easy decision: “We have kiddos from all different backgrounds, so I definitely think it’s important to give back.”

Volunteers bring out a rack of spiritwear to stock in the Friends of Kenwood Academy booth before the start of eighth grade graduation at Kenwood Academy on June 1, 2026, in Chicago.

Ramona Burress, a parent and former head of Kenwood’s Local School Council, helped revive the school’s parent fundraising group at the height of COVID, as many families struggled with access to food, housing, and technology needed for remote learning. Families kept it going after the pandemic’s fallout eased — and after Burress’ three children all graduated from Kenwood.

More recently, Burress joined an informal network of CPS “Friends of” group leaders, dominated by wealthier North Side schools where fundraising is “a well-oiled engine.” In a group chat and in-person meetings, she has gotten tips and ideas for how Kenwood could step up its fundraising efforts, such as a mini-grant competition to support student clubs and sports teams. Burress said the push has also spurred parent engagement at the school and sent a message to students that families and staff care about improving their experience.

At $55,000 last year, the group’s haul is still a fraction of what wealthier schools can raise. It’s also only about 13% of what Kenwood spent in outside revenue last year, income dominated by rental dollars. But the group wants to do more, tapping a network of loyal alumni and local businesses.

“The district is navigating real financial pressures,” Burress said. “Organizations like ours can help to close the gap. Ideally, we shouldn’t have to be here, but we recognize the need.”

The Chalkbeat/Chicago Tribune analysis showed Kenwood and other South and West Side schools serving higher-poverty student bodies have significantly increased the amounts of independently raised revenue in their budgets in recent years, often pulling a mix of rental, cell tower, student fee, and some fundraising income. Dyett High School for the Arts in Washington Park, Corliss High School in Pullman and Benito Juarez High School in Pilsen are among the 80 campuses on the South and West Sides that have tripled their outside spending dollars since 2021.

Overall, this type of spending went up by 40% at South and West Side schools since 2021 and accounted for almost a third of the total amount of independently raised revenue schools across the city spent.

In some cases, outside revenue has allowed such campuses to offer extras that have long been staples at wealthier schools. But increasingly, even as the district has shifted its funding model to prioritize higher-need campuses, some school leaders on the South and West Side say outside revenue has also helped shore up their budgets.

Gunsaulus, a Southwest Side magnet school serving largely low-income Latino families, spent a growing amount of cell tower revenue in recent years. Meanwhile, the school’s parent fundraising arm, Amigos de Gunsaulus, held an annual raffle to pay for field trips in the United States and South Korea all students take. But the group has also recently stepped up its efforts to raise more for campus needs, such as school supplies and arts programs.

Amigos has worked to adapt to its more limited fundraising prowess. Amigos used to host “dressdown” days, when parents could chip in $1 so their student wouldn’t have to wear the school uniform. But, says Vanessa Espinosa, the group’s president, Amigos did away with the practice because it felt unfair to low-income families.

The group has instead tried to emulate the annual fundraising galas and walkathons wealthier schools host, except its members target the school’s teachers and local businesses instead of their families — an approach that helped Amigos raise $166,000 in 2024-25, according to tax filings.

“We are conscious that our community has many limitations,” Espinosa said.

Increasingly, district leaders are noticing these schools’ fundraising efforts.

District officials push schools to get creative in raising revenue

In a district presentation the week school budgets were released this spring, principals were urged to tap any available dollars in the special funds containing parent fundraising, rental, and other revenue before appealing their staffing allocations.

The district has also more recently encouraged schools to rent out their facilities when possible and started taking a cut. Officials say this new “facility fee” helps offset some of CPS’ growing building maintenance expenses. The district said it will raise the fee for some schools this summer “to more accurately reflect actual building operating costs.” Schools hosting cell towers keep a third of that revenue; CPS redistributes the rest to all campuses, the district said.

LaToya Gray stands in front of the Friends of Kenwood Academy booth and straightens the graduation cap of her son, Jachin McGee, 13, who is graduating from eighth grade at Kenwood Academy on June 1, 2026, in Chicago.

A CPS spokeswoman told Chalkbeat and the Tribune that it takes a hands-off approach to school efforts to generate revenue independently and has a “neutral stance” on parent fundraising.

“While fundraising can play a role in finances at the local school level, it will not compensate for the nearly $3 billion in COVID-related funding allocated to CPS,” the district said in a statement.

Still, district officials have shown some interest in helping higher-poverty schools step up their game when it comes to securing outside revenue.

At Kenwood, Burress says she has met twice with the head of the regional office overseeing Kenwood and other high schools about replicating the school’s fundraising efforts on other South Side campuses. School board members have voiced interest as well. Gunsaulus’ Espinosa has also gotten inquiries from a network administrator and principals at nearby schools to present on launching a fundraising nonprofit without a pricey attorney.

Lauren Sartain, one of the authors of a 2023 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago study of CPS fundraising, cautions against relying too much on independently raised revenue.

“To think you can tap these dollars to support all students who have needs is simply not realistic,” Sartain said.

Still, school leaders and advocates said that they are grateful for these dollars — even more so amid this spring’s budget cuts. At Whitney Young, a coveted selective school on the Near West Side, Friends of Whitney Young money once supported building improvements and student groups. But this year, for the first time, the nonprofit will fund two teaching positions.

Friends of Whitney Young president Patricia Herrera put it simply: “We’re basically a lifeline now.”

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

Kate Armanini is the education reporter at the Chicago Tribune.

Editing by Becky Vevea, Corilyn Shropshire, and Mónica Rhor; data analysis by Thomas Wilburn; visual presentation by Steve Rosenberg, Todd Panagopoulos and Susan Gonzales; engagement design by Ellen Przepasniak and Caroline Bauman; copy editing by Mónica Rhor and Robert Loerzel.

Editor’s note: This story was created in collaboration with the Chicago Tribune. Please do not republish.

Amid charter sector turmoil, Chicago school board delays charter school renewals

2026-05-29T13:10:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

After a lengthy and tense debate about oversight of charters, the Chicago school board postponed Thursday a decision on renewing six of seven charter schools or networks serving 8,300 students until after the end of the school year.

After two years of intense charter scrutiny and relatively brief renewal terms, district officials this year touted a new process for monitoring charters and also recommended longer renewals. They wanted most schools to get four-year contracts, with one, Academy for Global Citizenship, earning a seven-year renewal recommendation. The Acero network was cleared for a five-year renewal on the heels of its announcement last school year that it would close seven campuses and the school board’s unprecedented decision to absorb five of them.

District officials said the longer renewals will cut down on red tape, while a new process of sizing up all charters midcycle and flagging nascent financial issues before they escalate will make for stronger oversight. But school board members aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union — the charter sector’s fiercest critic — pointed to a stretch of intense fiscal turbulence and closure announcements in Chicago’s charter sector to argue they had more outstanding questions and wanted the new process to have more teeth.

Some held up Acero as an example, arguing that what they described as an abrupt announcement in fall of 2024 that campuses would close at the end of that school year should count against the network.

“An accurate sense of finances has been eluding us, resulting in harm to students and costs to the district,” said board member Karen Zaccor, who moved to table the renewal votes.

But other board members praised the new process and argued the board should trust the expertise of the district’s evaluation team.

“We can’t keep moving the goalpost because the data, the process, or the recommendations do not produce the political conclusion someone wanted from the beginning,” said board member Angel Gutierrez, who was elected with strong backing from charter advocates.

Superintendent Macquline King and board President Sean Harden, who both usually abstain from weighing in on board debates, took the unusual step of pleading with board members to approve the contracts and continue to work closely with district officials on fine-tuning the oversight process. King noted thousands of largely Black and Latino students would wrap up the school year without certainty about their schools’ future.

“We’ll cause instability and concern,” an unusually emotional King said. “For us, it may seem like, ‘It’s just two weeks.’ For a child, this can be a lifetime.”

But in tabling the decisions until a June 10 meeting in a 11-to-8 vote, board members signaled they had no intention of denying the renewals but rather just wanted leverage to push for more CPS oversight. The University of Chicago Charter School eventually got a four-year renewal on a technicality.

The board did amend the contract for Urban Prep Academy for Young Men to wind down its Bronzeville campus and consolidate its operations on its Englewood campus. That charter was among several that appealed to CPS for a mid-school year cash advance to make payroll, and the district said the merger will help stabilize the school’s finances. Another charter, Rowe Elementary, is also merging its two campuses into one building.

For Chicago charters and contract schools, recent years have brought a string of fiscal implosions. Following the unprecedented move to save the Acero campuses, the district also came to the rescue of the Chicago High School for the Arts, a contract school, when its board announced last fall its financial model was no longer sustainable.

CPS steered additional dollars to EPIC Academy, a South Side charter high school, so it could finish up the school year before closing permanently. And the district scrambled to accommodate displaced students when it closed two high schools in the ASPIRA charter network after months of financial turmoil.

Charter advocates have argued that underfunding by the district, along with citywide enrollment declines, precipitated these crises. But critics of the sector said financial missteps contributed and argued that CPS officials should have done more to see the closures coming.

Members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson or elected with backing by his allies at the CTU hold a majority on the board and have embraced shorter renewals. Last year, a majority of the 16 schools up for renewal received two-year terms.

At the Thursday meeting, Jennifer Conant, the CTU’s charter division chair, argued for keeping renewals shorter, saying some of the schools on this year’s renewal list are budgeting in a way that fails to reflect their declining enrollments — “magical thinking” that she said contributed to EPIC’s and ASPIRA’s closures. But at the same time, she said Acero’s move to close campuses last school year — a decision the network said was necessary to adjust to enrollment drops — should disqualify it from a five-year renewal.

“If that has no effect on their renewal length, you are sending an invitation to more charter operators to do the same,” Conant said.

Meanwhile, several students at Chicago Collegiate Academy argued the school should get five more years. They said the school has worked to stabilize its finances and is moving to a new building that will allow for student growth in the fall.

“A four-year renewal does not reflect where our school is headed,” said honors student Laila Cruthurd. “It’s a limit.”

The advocacy group Illinois Network of Charter Schools criticized the trend of shorter terms, arguing it forces charters to expend too much energy and resources on frequent, time-consuming renewals. Andrew Broy, the network’s executive director, said this spring’s longer renewals are a step in the right direction. He also praised some aspects of a new framework for evaluating charters that the district used this spring, in which charters’ academic performance carried more weight.

But he decried the late date of the renewals that he said makes it harder for schools to plan for the coming year and said a behind-the-scenes push to shorten the contract terms reveals an anti-charter bias on the board.

Conrad Timbers-Ausar, the district’s acting chief portfolio officer, touted what he described as an extensive, data-driven process for evaluating charters and the district’s new financial early warning system, flagging issues such as spending that exceeds budgeted amounts. He compared it to checking in on students’ academic performance throughout the year rather than waiting to fail them on a final exam.

“This is not a rubber stamp process, and it’s not just a compliance exercise,” he said.

Chicago Collegiate Charter School, Chicago Mathematics and Science Academy, Christopher House Charter School, and Intrinsic Charter School would have received four-year renewals.

In other business, the board backed a resolution calling on state lawmakers to pursue progressive sources of additional revenue to raise more money to schools. That vote came after a lengthy and heated debate of an ultimately unsuccessful amendment member Che “Rhymefest” Smith proposed that would have also called on the city to steer more revenue from a special tax program to spur development to CPS.

In remarks to the board at the start of the meeting, superintendent Macquline King said cuts to school budgets her team proposed earlier this month reflect state and federal revenue haven’t kept up with the district’s rising expenses.

”It breaks my heart to deliver the budgets I had to deliver,” she said.

This story has been corrected to reflect the eventual approval of the University of Chicago Charter School’s renewal.

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

Chicago school board members voice concern about school budget cuts and debate state funding resolution

2026-05-13T21:38:11+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools’ newly released, leaner campus budgets cast a shadow over a Wednesday meeting of the school board when members debated a resolution calling on state lawmakers to steer more money to schools.

Several board members invoked the proposed budgets in arguing for the resolution, which would push legislators to explore progressive sources of new revenue that could buttress school district budgets. But other members questioned whether passing a resolution would be an effective way to make the district’s case in Springfield, where lawmakers have signalled skepticism that the state can help more amid its own intense budget pressures.

Earlier in the day, a half dozen board members aligned with Mayor Brandon Johnson also held a press conference calling on state lawmakers to send more dollars to schools and taking aim at a “megaprojects” economic development bill Johnson has vocally opposed. They argued that the proposal, which would back a new Arlington Heights stadium for the Chicago Bears football team, would siphon resources away from schools. A statement from these members called the district’s planned cuts “severe.”

During the meeting’s public comments section, district officials got an earful from labor leaders on the proposed school budgets. Kia Banks, who leads the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, said the union will fight assistant principal cuts and other reductions. She said many school leaders were taken aback by their budgets after delays in their release.

“What we saw was disappointing, frustrating, and sad, and it’s actually self-defeating,” she said, arguing leaner budgets could spur more families to leave the district.

District leaders sent school budgets to principals Tuesday that district officials said would increase special education funding but reduce some teacher, administrative, and support staff positions. Officials would not say by how much funding they are steering directly to school is shrinking compared with last year or how many positions overall might be cut.

But in a memo to school board members, district officials estimated that the school budget shifts would make a $96 million dent in a CPS deficit leaders have pegged at $732 million.

The district is eliminating assistant principals at schools with fewer than 250 students and slightly increasing the student-teacher ratios it uses to allocate teachers to school. Some schools will also likely see reductions in academic interventionists, instructional coaches, and other roles.

CPS leaders presented the changes as a responsible response to the moment: The district added almost 10,000 educators, support staff, and other positions since 2019 as enrollment plunged by 45,000 students. The budget swelled by some $2.6 billion, to more than $10 billion, in the same period. The federal COVID aid that in part powered that increase is now gone, and the $1 billion in additional state revenue CPS received in recent years still leaves the district well short of the state’s calculation for “adequate” funding.

Board members debate funding resolution

At the Wednesday meeting to review the agenda for the board’s regular meeting later this month, some board members argued that the state funding resolution introduced by member Anusha Thotakura was an answer to the district’s precarious fiscal moment. Thotakura said she had worked on bringing it in front of the board for months — and this month’s timing could not be more apt.

She said facing a gaping deficit and “drastic cuts” felt like a “recurring nightmare,” with no progress in securing additional state funding. She cited proposals to raise taxes on wealthy Illinoisans or large corporations as examples of progressive solutions to the state — and district’s — fiscal woes.

“The purpose of this resolution is to bring attention to the needs of our students and, while there are only a few weeks of the legislative session in Springfield, to show a united front and a force among us as leaders in Chicago that we want progressive revenue to support our students and their families,” Thotakura said. She added, “In this final stretch, we have to do more.”

Said board member Jitu Brown: “United, we can shake what we need from Springfield.”

But other board members said that although they might agree with the spirit of the resolution, it would do little to further the district’s Springfield agenda. One board member, Jenni Custer, voiced disappointment that the board had never voted on a clear, unified legislative agenda for this spring’s session. She decried governing by resolution instead.

Board member Ellen Rosenfeld agreed, calling board resolutions “performative governance.” She said everything has to be on the table to solve the district’s structural deficit, from lobbying the state to possible furloughs for CPS staff, which she said would save millions of dollars per day.

“Resolutions really have little to no long-term implications,” she said. She added, “Going down to Springfield and yelling at them and telling them what we’ve told them already doesn’t seem to be that effective.”

Labor leaders bash school budgets

At the same time, labor leaders who addressed the board signalled their members are keeping track of how board members navigate the fiscal challenges ahead of historic school board races this fall.

Banks of the principals union noted that all 21 seats on the school board will be up for grabs in November, and pointed to a recent survey, in which the union’s members said a key criteria to support board candidates would be their ability to line up additional revenue for the district.

Stacy Davis Gates, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, also called on district leaders and board members to step up efforts to bring in more city and state revenue. She questioned the district’s decision to assume just $100 million in revenue from a special property tax program to spur development, just a fifth of what CPS received last year — and said CPS should be actively working to ensure more robust support.

“The budget as announced yesterday is unsatisfactory and dead on arrival,” she said.

She also questioned why all school board members did not join the Wednesday press conference to advocate for more progressive revenue from the state. And she said the district cancelled a group of teachers’ lobbying trip to Springfield previously scheduled for this week.

Under a May Day agreement CPS and the union struck last month, the district had committed to give the day off with pay to as many as 65 CTU members to lobby lawmakers. But the district said Wednesday that CTU provided a list of seven educators but did not meet the five-day advance notice spelled out in the agreement.

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

Chicago Public Schools tightens staffing in school budgets amid massive deficit

2026-05-12T22:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools will likely steer less money overall to its campuses for the 2026-27 school year, though it will cap educator layoffs at each school and significantly boost special education funding, district leaders said Tuesday.

At an embargoed press briefing, officials declined to spell out the amount by which school budgets might shrink overall or the number of teachers and staff positions on the chopping block. They said these numbers are in flux as principals who received their budgets today have roughly a month to appeal their allocations — and as CPS leaders press state lawmakers and the city for more funding. But in a memo to school board members, Emila Zoko, the acting chief budget officer, estimated school budget shifts would result in about $96 million in savings.

The district crafted school budgets during its most financially uncertain spring since before the pandemic, when it is facing a deficit officials now estimate at more than $730 million. For years, CPS poured federal COVID relief dollars and additional state funding into its schools, opening almost 10,000 new positions since 2019 even as enrollment dropped by 45,000 students. But with almost $3 billion in pandemic aid now expired and only a modest state funding boost for the coming school year, the district must grapple with intractable realities, leaders said.

All schools will still staff a minimum of 10 teachers, but the district is increasing by one student the student-teacher ratios it uses to allocate additional educators. For some campuses, that would mean fewer teachers, though no elementary school will lose more than four educators and no high school more than six. The district will also no longer staff assistant principals at schools with fewer than 250 students — a move the CPS principals union estimated will result in about 120 lost positions and vowed to fight in a letter to members.

The district had committed to staffing an assistant principal in every school when it shifted to a new school budgeting approach in 2023 meant to deemphasize enrollment and better support high-needs schools — goals district leaders stressed they continue to uphold. But that formula’s minimum staffing requirements are becoming more challenging in a cash-strapped district with both enormous schools and a growing number of tiny ones.

But district officials said the district will hire more special education teachers and support staff as the number of students with disabilities continues to increase. It will also add 60 new cluster classrooms — for students with more significant disabilities — across the city.

“Despite all the challenges, we’ve created a budget that successfully meets the moment we are in,” said CPS CEO Macquline King.

Illinois has increased the amount of funding it steers to CPS by roughly $1 billion in recent years. But according to the state’s own calculation of “adequate” funding, CPS remains about $1.6 billion short.

The district budgeted with a deficit estimate of $732 million, which assumes CPS will not chip in to a city pension fund covering its support staff as Mayor Brandon Johnson has insisted in recent years. It also assumes an influx of $100 million from a special tax fund for development, or just a fifth of a record amount CPS received last year — a decrease some local experts consider unlikely.

District leaders stressed CPS is also contending with a major rise in expenditures, driven by upkeep for aging school buildings, labor contract costs, and servicing CPS’s massive debt.

Last year, the district mostly held school funding steady in its $10.2 billion budget, even as it made $272 million in reductions to its central administration and departments. It also shrunk the number of custodians, crossing guards, and cafeteria workers in a bid to keep the impact of its cost-cutting away from the classroom.

Officials said Tuesday that they are planning to trim centralized expenses and support positions once again. But they clearly signaled there will also likely be cuts to teaching and student support staff, including possible reductions to the number of academic interventionists and instructional coaches — two types of positions CPS embraced to speed up post-pandemic recovery.

“Very much like last year, everything is on the table,” King said.

Some principals told Chalkbeat they braced for some staffing cuts because of enrollment dips at their schools and the large deficit, so they were not caught off guard. Others said the losses were much worse than they anticipated, though in some cases the teacher layoff caps helped preserve some educator positions that would have been cut otherwise. One principal said an enrollment bump of just a few students yielded an extra teacher for the school.

“These formulas are not nuanced,” the principal said. “They are large stepping stones without much fine-tuning.”

Principals have until June 9 to appeal their staffing allocations and finalize their budgets. Then later in the summer, the district will unveil its overall budget, which includes centralized expenses, pension, and debt service costs in addition to the campus budgets. The school board must vote on that districtwide budget by Aug. 29 at the latest. Officials said CPS will also hold community engagement sessions on the school budget in the coming weeks.

District and Chicago Teachers Union leaders are lobbying state lawmakers for more state funding. The demise earlier this spring of a millionaire’s tax proposal in Springfield that would have brought $400 million more for CPS dimmed some hopes for additional dollars.

But the union and others argue all is not lost. In fact, the school board is slated to vote on a resolution this month calling on the state Legislature and the governor to give the district more resources. Lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker have signaled that amid major pressures on the state’s own budget, they’re unlikely to send more help to CPS.

“We continue our conversations with lawmakers to make sure they understand what our students need and what’s at stake,” King said.

She said that the additional educators and support staff CPS hired since 2019 were a wise investment, noting the district has bounced back academically post-COVID faster than others: “The progress of our students is evidence that our additional staff did a tremendous job.”

In a statement, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter blamed the district’s budget predicament squarely on state legislators and Pritzker.

“There is wealth in Illinois,” Potter said in the statement, “and there are solutions on the table in Springfield to fully fund our schools, make the ultra-rich and large corporations pay their fair share.”

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed to this report.

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

A Chicago school board investigation failed to uncover source of media leaks

2026-05-08T16:04:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A controversial monthslong investigation failed to uncover whether any school board members leaked the identities of CEO finalists and other information to the media.

In November, school board President Sean Harden hired a law firm to find out who revealed the identities of two finalists for district CEO. He later expanded the scope of that inquiry to include a leak alerting a reporter to a December special meeting to adjust a property tax levy the day before it was announced. The investigation by Salvatore Prescott Porter & Porter has drawn criticism, particularly when it came to the special meeting, which was public and scheduled shortly before the winter holidays to discuss a tax increase.

Harden told Chalkbeat Friday he feels the investigation was worthwhile in setting up a shared understanding of how to conduct board business — even if it did not yield the identity of any leakers. He said the leaks damaged trust on the board and with the public, resulted in social media posts and coverage lacking sufficient context, and allowed board members gearing up for board elections in the fall to “curry favor” with reporters.

He said he doesn’t yet have the final law firm invoice, but believes the inquiry cost about $25,000.

“I feel this was the right thing to do,” he said. “Hopefully, this will be an investment the community can benefit from.”

But one school board member running for board president in November, Jessica Biggs, condemned the inquiry as “petty politics at the expense of taxpayers and the public trust” in a Friday post on X.

“This Board should be focused on student achievement and growth,” she wrote. “This ‘investigation’ is an example of everything that is misguided about our current leadership.”

The disclosure of the CEO finalists — one of whom immediately distanced himself from the search — was seen at the time as a move that scuttled the national search process and led to additional months of seeking a top leader. Board members had signed nondisclosure agreements in a bid to encourage applications by leaders in other large districts, who might be reluctant to advertise their interest in leaving their current posts. Ultimately, the school board hired the interim CEO, Macquline King, whom members had enlisted to fill in last summer.

Released by the board office Thursday evening, the law firm’s report says there was insufficient evidence to find the source of the leaks, noting the refusal by multiple board members, including Biggs, to turn over their personal cell phones for examination. Two of the 21 board members, Che “Rhymefest” Smith and Ellen Rosenfeld, declined to cooperate with the investigation entirely and did not speak with the attorneys. Two reporters the firm asked to interview — WBEZ’s Sarah Karp and Paris Schutz, at FOX at the time — also refused.

A search of more than 9,000 emails and other documents also did not uncover any clues.

The report does include a summary of discussions the lawyers had with board members about the motivation behind the leaks. Members offered differing takes on what might have spurred the disclosures.

But, the report said: “Whatever the motivation of the leaks, all witnesses agreed that the leaks made the Board look divided and untrustworthy. Relatedly, many witnesses commented on the tension and distrust within the Board between the appointed and elected members.”

The report also discusses the possibility that someone other than a board member leaked the CEO finalists’ identities.

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

Chicago Public Schools campus budget could bring cuts amid massive deficit

2026-05-06T16:59:30+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Edgardo Ramirez, the father of two students at Chicago’s Saucedo STEAM Magnet Academy, is bracing for the release of the school’s budget in the shadow of a massive districtwide budget gap.

The school, which has largely bucked the enrollment declines plaguing the district, serves about 920 mostly low-income Latino students in the Little Village neighborhood. After years of relative budget and staffing stability, Ramirez, the head of Saucedo’s Local School Council, worries the campus could take a painful hit.

He dwells on what the school might lose: One of the two bilingual coordinators who have guided his English learner children? Or one of the two counselors who helped his older daughter earn a seat at the competitive Jones College Prep High School?

Chicago Public Schools is gearing up to unveil school budgets as early as next week amid deep financial uncertainty. After roughly a decade of largely holding the line or even boosting school budgets with now-expired federal COVID aid, the district could be forced to send less directly to its roughly 500 campuses.

In recent weeks, CEO Macquline King has floated a worst case budget deficit of up to $1 billion. A source with knowledge of the situation told Chalkbeat the district is planning with a gap of about $700 million in mind. Unlike the worst case scenario, that number assumes an influx of some revenue from a special city taxing program meant to spur development — and no CPS contribution to a city pension fund that covers CPS support staff and city employees. Even so, school level cuts, that source said, are “inevitable.”

CPS and teachers union leaders are still lobbying state lawmakers for more funding, noting the district remains about $1.6 billion shy of what Illinois considers “adequate” funding and, unlike other Illinois districts, shoulders the bulk of its teacher pension costs. But extra help might not be on the way from Springfield. There, some lawmakers have questioned thousands of new hires CPS made as enrollment continued to dip in recent years — positions district leaders have argued helped propel academic recovery post-COVID and fill longstanding staffing gaps.

“It’s a really anxious time,” said Kia Banks, the head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. “We are bracing ourselves this time for impact that might hit closer to the classroom.”

The moment is putting to the test a school budgeting approach the district introduced a couple of years ago while it was still relatively flush with federal pandemic relief. It was meant to deemphasize student counts and help higher-need schools by guaranteeing minimum staffing numbers regardless of school size and allocating additional dollars based on an Opportunity Index that factors in student demographics and other metrics.

But in a district with both enormous schools and a growing number of tiny campuses, CPS is now forced to figure out how to make its need-based formula work in much leaner times. CPS high schools with 500 students or more — many of them in better-to-do communities though often serving diverse students from multiple ZIP codes — now get well less than half of the almost $35,000 per pupil that smaller high schools receive on average.

It’s a gap that has widened markedly since the new formula’s 2023 introduction, a Chalkbeat analysis showed. And with numerous small schools that already get the minimum staffing CPS set, some at larger schools such as Saucedo worry their campuses might absorb more of the pain.

CPS presents a districtwide budget after the school budget release, likely sometime in June, that its school board must approve. In a statement, the district said it has worked closely with city and state leaders to get a clearer picture of the CPS’ financial outlook.

“As we have in recent prior years, we will look to prioritize students and in-classroom learning experiences,” the district said.

School budget cuts loom in CPS

The district had aimed to get budget amounts to school leaders earlier this spring, and to some principals, the release in mid-May is cutting it too close to the end of the school year in early June.

“The anxiety doubles when you have to wait so long, especially when the school year ends so early,” said one elementary principal, who like other school leaders who spoke with Chalkbeat requested anonymity to discuss budgets candidly.

The delay stung in part because earlier this spring, CPS moved up the deadline for most end-of-year school spending by almost a month. That forced some school leaders to scramble to dedicate remaining dollars — or return them to the district. Principals at the time told Chalkbeat the district appeared bent on sweeping back more unspent school dollars to help with its budget woes. The district has since said that it’s on track to end this school year about $45 million in the red.

The district said the earlier deadline, which also applied to central office and departments, gave CPS more fiscal clarity and helped encourage school leaders to focus any remaining spending on “critical needs.” The message to schools and departments: “Every dollar counts.”

Banks said the earlier deadline was challenging, but at the same time, the district under King has collaborated with the union and sought more input on budgets than ever before.

Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund said additional cuts to central office and districtwide departments will be harder following the reductions of about $270 million that CPS made last summer. Even if the district cuts central costs aggressively, that still leaves more than $200 million in cuts that likely need to come from school budgets, he said.

He said some school-based positions the district created with COVID aid to power its post-pandemic academic recovery, such as interventionists and academic coaches, might be especially vulnerable.

Financial pressures test the district’s budget approach

At Saucedo, Ramirez, the LSC chair, says he is grateful that the school gets two counselors, two bilingual coordinators, and two security guards. But in a school with more than 900 students and high needs, these key staff members are already stretched thin. Still, he worries that as a larger school with more than one of each position, Saucedo could be a budget cut target.

“One of my big worries is that we could lose positions, which would affect the quality of education here,” he said.

He is also concerned the campus might have to cut its free after-school programs, including academic ones focused on reading and math recovery.

Over the years, school leaders have noted that large schools with opportunity indexes that suggest lower needs face special budget pressures: In a large school, low-income students might represent a smaller portion of all students but still be a sizable group. Under the formula, these schools tend to get relatively lean administrative and support staffing.

Now, some principals at larger schools, especially selective enrollment and magnet campuses, worry the cuts might affect them disproportionately.

“All of us are bracing for cuts,” said another elementary principal. “How could there not be? The money has to come from somewhere. Robbing Paul to pay Peter is what it feels like at this point.”

Gerew of the Chicago Public Education Fund noted that about a fifth of elementary schools are at the district’s minimal staffing floor, meaning there’s little or no room in their budgets for cuts.

“The district is almost certainly committed to retaining the foundational level of support for small schools,” he said. “Thus, if savings have to be made, they have to come from larger schools.”

Banks, of the district’s principals union, countered that small schools have their own struggles with lean staffing, and they usually can’t count on parent fundraising in the way larger schools in wealthier communities can.

The needs-based district budgeting approach was designed to buoy schools that have lost enrollment in part because they were underfunded in previous years.

At Manierre Elementary on Chicago’s North Side, Mykela Collins, a Local School Council member and mother of a third grader, said smaller schools don’t feel immune amid the budget uncertainty. The school serves about 260 mostly low-income Black students, a number that has remained stable in recent years. Collins worries about cuts to after-school programs and possible layoffs after years with no staff losses.

“It’s scary,” said Collins, who traveled to Springfield earlier this spring to lobby for more school funding with the advocacy group Kids First Chicago. “We really don’t know what to expect.”

Charter school officials are feeling the anxiety too, said Andrew Broy of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. The state is poised to increase its calculation for the per-pupil funding charters receive, based on CPS per student spending in district-run schools two years ago. But the district withholds money from charters to help cover pension and debt costs — contributions charter advocates have decried but that the district says are a part of sharing districtwide expenses.

“If these contributions are increased, it could be a net loss for charters,” Broy said.

Hal Woods of Kids First said an added wrinkle to the budget complexity is that all seats on the school board are up for grabs in November, and many current board members will run. He wonders if that might make them more averse to signing off on school budget cuts and perhaps even push them to revisit high-interest borrowing — an idea a majority on the board rejected last summer because it would swell the district’s already massive debt burden and drive up costs in the longer run.

“I wonder whether with CPS classroom cuts on the table, people start having a different take on borrowing,” Woods said. “But you have to give people the full picture. If you take out a loan to stave off classroom cuts, what does that mean for future fiscal years?”

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed to this report.

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

Chicago Public Schools marks May Day after tense debate over canceling school

2026-05-01T19:53:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

For all the intense debate and controversy over May Day in Chicago Public Schools this year, the start of the school day Friday at Burbank Elementary was low on drama.

Eight teachers and five staff members called in sick overnight — a fairly typical number for the 95-employee Northwest Side school, which was able to quickly line up substitutes for all but two elective classes. Meanwhile, students in grades 6 through 8 spent part of the morning writing letters to elected officials on topics such as homelessness, gun laws, and immigration in a nod to a district push to encourage student civic engagement.

Districtwide, CPS officials said about 13% of its teachers were absent amid a national “day of no school, no work, no shopping” — about 3,320 absences in all, compared with 2,615 per day on average for this week, including Friday. Most requested the day in advance as the district had asked. CPS, which employs about 43,000 people, enlisted more than 2,600 substitute teachers and about 940 support staff subs to fill in for absent employees. Central office staff deployed to help out at 76 schools.

The district approved about 40 May Day field trips for 2,200 of the district’s 315,000 students, including some to a Union Park pro-labor, anti-Trump rally, where protestors also called for more school funding. The Chicago Teachers Union, one of the protest’s organizers, had demanded that the district close schools for May Day.

After some tense back-and-forth, the district and the union agreed to make Friday a day of civic engagement for students. Schools stayed open for a full day of instruction. But the district committed to back lessons on labor and civics and to provide transportation so students at up to 100 schools could participate in the downtown rally and other activities.

The district said high school attendance was slightly down on Friday while elementary and middle grade attendance remained stable. About 72% of high school students attended compared to 75% last Friday.

Some parents and advocates voiced dismay that the cash-strapped district chose to chip in for student participation in a political rally and questioned whether classroom May Day lessons would verge on partisan indoctrination.

On Friday, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon criticized the district’s handling of May Day on X, calling it “a dereliction of duty.”

“There’s never an excuse for diverting taxpayer dollars away from students and into political agendas,” she posted.

But the district had stressed that principals would only allow students with signed parent permission forms to attend field trips and would only approve instructional materials that “provide diverse perspectives rather than advance any particular viewpoint.”

At Burbank Elementary, science teacher Caroline Hallendorff pitched reviving a project she had premiered with her students in 2017, when they wrote to electeds about the first Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. The students got responses from President Donald Trump and Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, making the experience a memorable lesson in civics.

Other educators at the school and Burbank Principal Edward Collins rallied around the idea. This time, middle grade students could pick any topic for their letters, which they handwrote in class to “make it very clear it’s not some AI thing,” as Hallendorff put it.

Science teachers Caroline Hallendorff speaks on Friday, May 1, 2026, with students in her science class at Chicago's Burbank Elementary who wrote letters to elected officials for a special May Day project.

Student Daniel Gutierrez, for example, wrote to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson urging him to open more homeless shelters after seeing more homeless people on drives across the neighborhood with his family. In research he did before putting pen to paper, Gutierrez found out life expectancy can be up to 30 years lower for people who experience homelessness.

“This lesson made me really focus on the problems of today that are important to me,” Gutierrez said.

The experience of navigating the day and the run-up to it varied across the district. Some principals told Chalkbeat

Burbank Elementary student Oscar Jaramillo, front, and Daniel Gutierrez. worked on letters to elected leaders as part of a schoolwide project to spur more civic engagement by students on May Day 2026. Oscar wrote to Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin urging him to push for more gun restrictions and Daniel wrote to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson with a request to open more homeless shelters.

Friday that they had few absences and a largely normal school day. One principal said roughly half of teachers on that school leader’s campus took the day off, including some calling out overnight on Friday.

The district had directed principals to reject day-off requests if they meant schools would be too short-staffed to function normally Friday.

At one West Side school, a student “Peacewalk” in the neighborhood was on, then off after an initial district rejection of the plan, then on again. Ultimately, the district did not reject any field trips after reviewing transportation, safety, and chaperone plans. CPS said officials reviewed field trip plans into the early morning hours Friday and ultimately provided yellow buses for 25 of them, with the city offering public transit cards to other students. The district said it would tally costs later this month.

At Burbank, Collins said no teachers or staff requested the day off in advance though some called out overnight. Thanks to a stable of regular substitutes — many of them retired Burbank teachers — the school was able to fill most last-minute absences. However, two “special” classes — art, music, and physical education — would have to be made up next week.

Student attendance was down to 85% Friday from about 92% on average, but Collins was not sure to what extent May Day affected that number. No one approached Collins with a request to plan a field trip, and he heard from relatively few parents about the day. All of them just wanted to verify that school would happen Friday.

Hallendorff said she would mail all the letters students wrote Friday.

“I love the fact that students had this opportunity to think about what’s important to them,” she said, “and to express those feelings.”

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

Chicago Public Schools gears up for May Day protest

2026-04-30T18:03:11+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools officials say they feel confident schools will be fully staffed Friday amid Chicago Teachers Union push to embrace a national “no school, no work, no shopping” day of protest.

The district did not say how many teachers and staff members requested the day off to participate in May Day activities. But it said it is on track to enlist enough substitutes from a pool of almost 10,000 to cover any absences. The district previously said it might deploy some central office employees to help out at short-staffed schools.

CPS also said officials are reviewing about 45 May Day field trip requests, and so far none have been denied.

The union had pushed to cancel school Friday so students and educators could participate in an afternoon pro-labor, anti-Trump administration protest downtown. But district officials balked at the demand, insisting that May Day should remain a full day of instruction and end-of-school-year activities as designated in the CPS calendar.

The union and district struck an agreement to enable teachers and students to take part in the protest, to provide bagged lunches and transportation to the event for up to 100 schools, and to encourage lessons on civic engagement that morning. But more recently, the district has stressed repeatedly that employees must request the day off with enough notice — and must secure approval from their principals for any materials they use to teach about May Day.

These directives have generated tension with the CTU. The union has insisted that its members have academic freedom to select teaching materials that day without school leaders’ pre-approval. This week, district leaders said principals would only allow materials that “provide diverse perspectives rather than advancing any particular viewpoint.”

Recent meetings between district officials and principals have been dominated by discussion of navigating staff absences and materials for May Day, with school leaders bracing for a day with lean staffing. In a post Wednesday on its website, the union implored its members to join protests and rallies.

“We need you there — because we’re taking on the billionaires who are underfunding our schools, shortchanging our communities, and imperiling democracy,” the union’s leadership team wrote in the message.

But CPS said that schools are fully prepared for the day.

“We do feel confident we’ll be able to cover any absences,” a district spokeswoman said.

The district said previously it aims to have a solid estimate of staff absences at least 48 hours in advance of May Day, but it did not immediately provide that number in response to a Chalkbeat request.

Teachers are preparing for a day focused on civics

Nationally, most urban districts are remaining in session Friday. In North Carolina, multiple districts, including Charlotte-Mecklenburg, announced closures this week as they braced for widespread teacher absences. School in Madison, Wisconsin, was also cancelled for May 1.

CPS said schools that submitted May Day field trip requests had to provide safety plans with transportation arrangements, chaperone assignments, and other information. It said officials have agreed to review some requests that came after a Friday deadline, but that some principals have since cancelled field trip plans.

“School leaders have the autonomy and authority to determine if a proposed field trip meets educational and safety standards,” the district said.

In an email to members last week, CTU urged teachers to alert their union representatives if requests for field trips, curriculum, or days off are denied.

At one North Side school, staff and the principal worked together to decide on lessons related to labor and May Day, said music teacher Kat Zamorran, who is part of several union committees.

Zamorran asked students this week about various roles that made a recent school concert possible, such as security staff and teachers. She then broadened the conversation to talk about the jobs kids notice in their daily lives and telling them that May Day is a holiday to celebrate labor.

“It’s kind of nice to ask, ‘Well, do your parents have a job? What do your parents do when you go to school?’” Zamorran said. “That kind of opens it up for kids.”

In one of Zamorran’s classes, students made art that thanked people for their work. One student drew a picture for her mom, thanking her for caring for her. Another made a poster thanking the school’s custodians for cleaning the stage.

Zamorran said her school doesn’t have a field trip planned, but students may hold a small parade outside toward the end of the day.

Parents have varying takes on May Day protests

The district has stressed that only students with signed permission slips from their parents would be able to go on school-sponsored field trips to the Grant Park protest or other May Day events.

Though the district and the union said their agreement struck an admirable balance, some parents and advocacy groups have continued to voice discomfort with the district’s embrace of a politicized event. Others have welcomed the opportunity for students to engage in civic advocacy.

One group of parents, organized in part by the pro-school choice organization Urban Center, described the union’s push as a form of political indoctrination of students. Some of those parents, flanked by Bill Quinlan, the attorney representing former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez in his ongoing lawsuit against some Chicago Board of Education members, attended a school board meeting last week to express their concerns.

Other parents have more mixed feelings.

Princess Shaw, whose 7-year-old daughter attends DePriest Elementary School in the Austin neighborhood, said she didn’t support cancelling classes on May 1 because she and other working parents wouldn’t have child care options. Shaw helped write a letter that the West Side branch of the NAACP distributed to some board members, asking them to keep school open.

She is relieved that classes will be in session.

“May 1 is for my kid to go to school,” said Shaw, who was recently elected to sit on the DePriest Local School Council.

Still, she supports older students who have parental permission to attend a protest as a learning opportunity on Friday and likes the idea of teaching kids about labor history and civic engagement.

About one week before CPS reached its agreement, the Local School Council at Logan Square’s Brentano Math and Science Academy unanimously approved a resolution supporting the idea of a May 1 “Day of Civic Action” after a request from some teachers, said Andrew Yankech, one of the parent representatives on the LSC.

Yankech said he supports the idea of protesting on Friday due to his school community’s concerns over federal education and social service funding cuts, as well as more aggressive immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. The latter has created “a climate of fear” for some Brentano families, especially for those whose relatives have been stopped or arrested by immigration agents, he said.

Those challenges were “front of mind for me,” Yankech said of his decision to support the resolution.

Yankech’s daughter will stay home Friday. Her parents have tasked her with writing an essay about the history and significance of May Day and the labor movement.

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

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

An Illinois governor-backed bill to restrict school cell phone use gains momentum

2026-04-28T20:33:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Illinois is poised to join a majority of states that have mandated restrictions on cell phone use in schools — a priority of Gov. JB Pritzker that he and other supporters say will boost learning and student mental health.

A bill limiting cell phone use floundered last year despite winning unanimous approval in the state Senate. But an amended version this spring passed the House and appears headed for Senate backing.

The bill would ban cell phone use in elementary and middle schools throughout the school day but give districts the option of restricting high school use only during instruction time. It also aims to address concerns about overly punitive or uneven discipline for students and about the access some students — such as those with certain disabilities or medical conditions — need to their phones throughout the day.

The proposal has gotten a lukewarm reception by the Illinois Federation of Teachers. Though they are not actively opposing the bill, union leaders have raised concerns about the possible cost and logistics of implementing the restrictions.

But backers of the legislation, which would go into effect in 2027, have voiced unbridled enthusiasm.

“We think this bill is one of the most impactful things we could be doing in education now,” said Jessica Handy, the executive director of the nonprofit Stand for Children Illinois.

She added, “Kids lose a significant amount of instructional time because of time on their phones. It’s such a barrier to students being able to focus.”

A modest but growing body of research has suggested that limited cell phone use in school can indeed improve learning. A recent study by the research organization RAND Corp., for instance, found a cell phone ban in one large urban Florida district led to test score and attendance improvements, particularly in the middle and high school grades.

Chicago Public Schools, the state’s largest district, currently gives principals discretion to limit cell phone use and doesn’t track how many do so. In a statement, the district said it “supports initiatives aimed at improving educational focus that serve the best interests of students.”

The Illinois Senate will likely take up the bill later in May — and Michelle Mussman, its sponsor in the House, feels good about its odds of passage. So does the Senate sponsor, Cristina Castro, who notes that similar proposals have drawn bipartisan backing across the country.

“I feel we are in a good place to finally send this bill to the governor,” she said.

Last year, Stand for Children and the legislature’s Black Caucus had voiced concern that the cell phone ban could lead to a rise in punitive discipline for students who violate restrictions — and a widening in existing racial disparities in punishment. The new version says schools cannot suspend or expel students over cell phone use infractions.

The bill also includes exceptions for students who need their cell phones for medical reasons, English learners who use them for translation, and students who care for family members.

Handy of Stand for Children said these changes make the legislation “a model bill in terms of how we treat equity and discipline.” But the advocacy group was disappointed that high schools would have the discretion to allow phone use outside of class time. Handy said that would hamper the bill’s potential to help students “rebuild that muscle of having human interaction” and put more of an onus on teachers to make sure phones are put away for class.

“We feel strongly that a bell-to-bell ban is best,” she said. “We don’t love that high schools get to opt out if they choose to.”

The Illinois Federation of Teachers has said the cell phone bill imposes another “unfunded mandate,” noting that the Peoria school district spent almost $250,000 on pouches to store cell phones during the school day. The union says that only adds to other obligations the state places on districts without providing full funding for them, such as providing transportation for students with disabilities. Leaving cell phones at home is not an option for some students, including those from immigrant families terrified of stepped-up immigration enforcement near schools, a union spokesman said.

In an earlier statement, the union’s executive vice president, Cyndi Oberle-Dahm, criticized Pritzker, with whom the union has clashed, over the proposal.

“Schools already have the authority to set cell phone policies, but what they cannot do is fund themselves or the cellphone lockers or pockets that will be required to enforce this unfunded mandate,” she wrote.

Mussman, the House sponsor, said a key benefit of the bill would be making teachers’ lives easier by reducing cell phone-powered distraction and conflict. Districts could use existing student lockers to store phones or lean on apps that disable phone capabilities during the school day.

“There are low- or no-cost options out there,” she said. “Each school has to decide for themselves how to best manage this.”

Karen Foley, president and CEO of the Juvenile Protective Association, a nonprofit that provides mental health services in Chicago schools, said she understands the concerns about the bill’s implementation. Besides the phone storage question, she anticipates a need for more clerical support, as front offices field more calls and messages from parents who would have previously contacted students directly. Districts should also plan to prepare teachers for an initial uptick in behavioral issues and to check in regularly on the rollout and its academic and mental health outcomes, she said.

But the nonprofit is strongly supportive of the legislation based on numerous conversations with students, parents, and educators, who have all spoken frankly about the damage to learning and school climate that phones cause. The JPA has also vocally supported another Pritzker-backed bill that would impose more safeguards and restrictions on social media use by children.

Foley has also been encouraged by anecdotal reports and emerging research from other states that have implemented such restrictions.

“Kids start to talk to each other more face to face,” she said, “and that is such a good thing.”

As for navigating some of the implementation challenges, Foley recommended more input from students and their families: “Kids have incredible ideas if only you ask them.”

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

New Chicago schools chief’s contract makes it easier for district and CEO to part ways

2026-04-22T19:22:29+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The new contract for Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King makes it easier for the district to part ways with her after the protracted and controversial departure of her predecessor, Pedro Martinez.

And unlike Martinez’s agreement, King’s contract includes a nod to the importance of the district’s relationship with the city’s mayor.

The changes would come as no surprise to those who followed the lengthy standoff between Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose handpicked board fired the CEO without cause in December 2024. A provision inserted in Martinez’s contract by a previous board allowed him to stay on the job another six months and to continue pushing back against contract demands by the mayor’s allies at the Chicago Teachers Union.

A new, partly elected board granted King the three-year contract after she served in an interim capacity since last summer. The new contract reviewed by Chalkbeat Chicago requires only a 60-day notice if King is terminated without cause — or possibly even less if she is offered a payout in addition to the severance of 20 weeks pay stipulated in both her and Martinez’s contracts. On the flipside, King must give 90 days notice if she chooses to resign, compared to 30 days under Martinez’s contract.

As previously announced, King will make $380,000 a year — almost $20,000 more than her predecessor was making most recently — under her new contract, which goes into effect July 1.

Notably, a section about the relationship between the board and the CEO in King’s contract adds new language about “the expectation of maintaining productive and professional relationships with critical stakeholders, including the Mayor of Chicago” — a nod by a school board where a majority remains aligned with Johnson at a time of transition away from mayoral control. Martinez’s contract made no mention of the mayor, who appointed all members of the board and exerted significant control over the district back when that contract was signed.

Martinez negotiated the changes to his contract in late 2022 on the eve of the city’s most recent mayoral election. Those amendments appeared to be a bid to claim some additional job security for a role in which top leaders have long largely served at the mayor’s pleasure.

The uncertainty hasn’t gone away: In the runup to King’s appointment, some advocates voiced concern that a new, fully elected school board taking over in January could eventually opt to replace the top leader chosen by the current board, on which 10 members are elected and 11 are appointed by Johnson.

The lengthy notice to the CEO under Martinez’s contract was more of an outlier, said Robert Bruno, a professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“These changes to King’s contract strike me as a return to something more standard,” he said.

Bruno noted that higher turnover and a higher-pressure, more politicized environment have been driving up superintendent salaries nationally. The most recent data from the Council of the Great City Schools shows average salary for superintendents in districts serving more than 100,000 students was $338,650 in 2023, an 8% increase over 2019.

But it’s possible that in Chicago, the CEO and board agreed on a higher salary as a tradeoff for less job security.

“A contract is this hydraulic system where everything is interrelated, where if you push down in one area, you have to give in another,” he said.

King’s benefits are in line with those in Martinez’s contract: The district will also provide a pension contribution equal to 7% of her salary and chip in an amount equal to 10% of her salary to a supplemental savings account. Like Martinez, the district is also providing a driver, a bank of 20 days of paid vacation, and four weeks of paid vacation per year.

King’s contract does away with a detailed timeline for evaluating the CEO in Martinez’s contract, instead simply requiring that she be evaluated by the board each year.

To Bruno, a notable aspect of both King’s and Martinez’s contracts is that they require the leaders to submit performance goals some months into their tenure — rather than including measurable goals as part of the contract itself. Particularly in the case of King, who has spent time leading the district as interim, she and the board could have presumably rallied around a set of goals, said Bruno, who has negotiated contracts with performance goals built in as the board president of a suburban Illinois school district.

Both King’s and Martinez’s agreements called for annual raises of up to 3% following a positive evaluation. But King’s deal does away with an amendment to Martinez’s contract that gave the board president more of a leading role in rallying the rest of the board around such raises. It goes back to previous language that just says that the board is authorized to offer the salary increases after evaluating the CEO.

King signed her new contract on March 27, the board voted nearly unanimously to hire her on March 30, and board President Sean Harden signed the document on behalf of the district on April 2.

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

More than $550,000 has poured into historic Chicago school board races

2026-04-17T21:45:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

More than six months ahead of Chicago’s historic school board races, candidates are starting to ramp up fundraising — and political action committees are gearing up to spend big.

About 40 active school board candidate committees have already raised roughly $555,000 as of March 31 since last October, according to data Chalkbeat analyzed after a deadline this week to file campaign cash disclosures for the first quarter of 2026 with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

More than a third of that total represented the haul of Sendhil Revuluri — a former school board vice president running for the at-large role of board president — giving him a commanding fundraising lead so far. Two incumbents also running for board president — Jessica Biggs and Jennifer Custer — raised about $60,000 and $50,000, respectively, in the same period.

For the first time in the city’s history, Chicagoans this November will elect all 21 members of the school board, which has long been handpicked by the mayor. In 2024, residents chose 10 members, and Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed the rest, including the president. These latest races come at a high-stakes time for Chicago Public Schools, which faces swelling budget deficits, declining enrollment, and other challenges.

The 2024 races drew more than $13 million in campaign cash, an analysis by Chalkbeat Chicago found at the time. With all seats up for grabs, spending on this year’s races is expected to handily outpace that amount, which dwarfed that spent on school board elections in cities such as Denver and Detroit.

The last time around, heavy spending clearly helped propel some candidates to their seats on board, whose members serve without pay. But the races also showed the limitation of campaign cash. Some of the candidates with the most modest war chests, such as Biggs, bested much better funded opponents. Of the nine candidates in contested races backed by the Chicago Teachers Union — the biggest spender on those board elections — three made it onto the board.

The teachers union is once again poised to clash with charter and other school choice proponents, though these groups are waiting until the candidate field is more complete. Candidates will formally file to run between May 18 and 26. The Illinois Network of Charter Schools had more than $3.2 million in cash on hand as of March 31, by far the largest amount among super PACs expected to get involved in the school board races. Super PACs can spend without limitation on races, but they are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidate campaigns.

“We’ll be a very substantial part of the outside spending for sure,” said Andrew Broy, the network’s executive director. “We’ll try to be involved in as many districts as possible.”

Now that the state’s primary elections are over, school board candidates are starting to kick off their fundraising in earnest.

A $68,000 loan to his own campaign makes Revuluri the biggest donor to school board political committees so far. Trailing him are billionaire Michael Sacks and Allstate Corporation CEO Thomas Wilson, who both late last year donated the legal limit of $7,300 to each in a group of elected school board members who have banded together to parry the influence of a Johnson-aligned majority.

Sacks also donated to the Common Ground Collective, a new political action committee led by cabinet members of former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who was pushed out by Johnson. The Sacks donations were previously reported by WBEZ.

Broy, the charter network’s head, said its focus for now is identifying candidates aligned with its pro-school choice mission and helping them get on the ballot. The network’s super PAC has drawn large checks from big-pocketed donors such as James Frank, the executive chairman of the board of Wheels Inc. As in 2024, the group will hold off on spending in earnest until closer to the election. But Broy said he expects spending to ramp up earlier this time around.

“Incumbents are going to want to get a jump on their opposition,” he said. “They’ll try to get an advantage by striking first.”

Broy expects the network will again back several members it funded heavily in 2024, such as Carlos Rivas and Angel Gutierrez.

Following heavy spending on primary races, the CTU’s cash on hand is now paltry in comparison, at about $126,000 at the end of March. But it’s poised to get replenished with member dues in the coming months.

A spokesperson for the union said the CTU will follow its customary process in which members review candidate questionnaires and other information to determine “who are champions for public schools and who are serving billionaire donors set to close schools.”

SEIU Illinois Council PAC, affiliated with the union representing support staff in CPS, made contributions to some elected incumbents late last year. The union has been a close ally of the CTU in previous years, but following disagreements last year might diverge in which candidates it backs.

The March primary races dominated political giving so far this year, making it hard to gain fundraising momentum for fall contests, said Custer, the school board member who is running for the districtwide board president role. She said her committee has been able to raise about $25,000 in the past couple of weeks, an amount that’s not reflected in her Board of Elections filing.

“It is definitely ramping up now,” she said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone.”

Custer said she is approaching “people prominent in the education spaces in and around Chicago” and circling back with donors to her 2024 campaign, including friends and family members. Custer was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union in 2024 but has clashed repeatedly with the union during her time on the board. “I don’t think they’ll come to me,” she said.

Custer said her major campaign expenditure so far has been child care, a permissible expense for candidates for office. Lining up care for her children has allowed her to visit schools, meet with potential supporters, and attend board meetings, she said.

With about $236,000 raised so far according to his campaign, Revuluri, who served as school board vice president during the pandemic, has pulled ahead among candidates who have formed committees to run in November.

Besides the loan to his campaign, his haul comes almost exclusively from individual contributions from across the country. He said he has tapped his extensive professional network, but the bulk of donations are from Chicagoans who have responded to his message of “effective governance that really puts our students at the center.” He said the current board has been too mired in political struggles, which he believes gives him an edge over incumbent rivals.

Revuluri said he is focused on low-cost campaigning, including meeting a goal of speaking with more than 10,000 voters, so he will hold off on most spending until the months leading up to the election.

“We have to meet voters where they are — once they have really tuned in,” he said.

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed to this report.

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

Chicago will keep school in session May 1 but let students and staff participate in protest

2026-04-17T16:12:14+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

School will be in session on May 1 in Chicago, but Chicago Public Schools and its teachers union reached an agreement Thursday that would allow some students and educators to attend a pro-labor, anti-Trump afternoon rally and provide buses to the event.

The Chicago Teachers Union had pushed to cancel classes that day so students and staff members could join a national “no school, no work, no shopping” day of protests. But despite strong backing from Mayor Brandon Johnson, newly appointed CEO Macquline King balked at that demand, saying in an earlier note to parents that “every minute in the classroom is vital for students.”

The standoff became national news and a political hot potato for Johnson, a former CTU employee and close ally. Critics of his stance argued that canceling school on a short notice would put working parents in a tough spot and pointed to the district’s post-pandemic problems with high student absenteeism, especially at the high school level.

In a Friday morning statement, the district stressed holding the line on keeping classes in session for the entire school day. It said that staff are expected to work the full day but can use personal days or other time off after giving proper notice. It also said principals can exercise discretion in allowing students to participate in civic engagement activities that day, but no students will be required to do so.

“This agreement preserves the classroom time students deserve and respects our staff and families who must be able to trust CPS to uphold the academic school year calendar,” said King in the statement. “At the same time, the agreement honors the proud history of civic action in Chicago and beyond.”

The agreement says that the district will work “in good faith” to provide at least 100 schools with bagged lunches and transportation to a 1 p.m. Union Park rally or other events, though the city would supply free transit cards if CPS cannot line up enough buses. The district will also give 65 CTU members paid leave to travel to Springfield the week of May 13 and lobby state lawmakers for more funding for schools. CPS will also designate May 1, 2028, as a teacher-directed professional development day of non-attendance for students.

In an email to members, the teachers union hailed the agreement with the district as “monumental news” and a victory for encouraging civic engagement among students and employees.

“We’re proud to be part of a school district that recognizes the responsibility of educators to stand up for our students, support them in finding their voice, and to not sit on the sidelines of history when the people of this country finally say ‘enough’ to the abuses from the White House,” the message said.

In a statement, Johnson praised the agreement as well, saying his office looks forward to “a day of meaningful solidarity and community resistance to the forces trying to tear us apart.”

The announcement of the agreement caps days of tension and confusion for families. King had argued that the school board could call a special meeting and vote to cancel school on May 1. A majority of board members aligned with Johnson had supported the teachers union request in an informal closed session vote, but a formal, binding vote never took place.

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

Chicago students took more than 13,000 dual credit classes last year. Is it helping them get ahead?

2026-03-29T11:00:00+00:00

Data analysis by Cherry Salazar and Thomas Wilburn

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

At the start of her junior year, Arianna Brandt’s high school counselor urged her to go all out on dual credit — courses taught on her West Side Chicago campus that would earn her free college credit.

If Brandt pushed herself, she could even graduate high school with a two-year associate degree and shorten her path to a four-year college diploma.

Brandt felt daunted at first. But she quickly became one of the school’s dual credit “superstars,” in the words of a teacher, giving her new confidence that she belonged on a university campus.

Brandt’s school, Michele Clark High, has bet big on dual credit. At one point, it took the unusual step of enrolling each sophomore in these classes generally geared toward juniors and seniors. That has put the campus at the forefront of a broader push quietly unfolding districtwide: Chicago Public School students took more than 13,000 dual credit classes last year, more than double the number pre-pandemic.

That massive growth in dual credit participation has won praise for sending students to college better prepared and helping them avoid crippling debt — a boon especially for low-income students of color like the ones Clark serves —with early data showing progress.

But the expansion hasn’t always gone smoothly. Schools like Clark have had to course-correct on signing up younger students en masse. And on some campuses, sharp increases in dual credit participation have not yet translated into gains in college enrollment and persistence, a Chalkbeat analysis showed.

Michele Clark High Schools is an "early college" campus on Chicago's West Side that serves predominantly Black students from low-income families.

At the community colleges supervising the classes, the program’s rapid growth has led some faculty to worry about watered-down curriculums and pressure to enroll less-prepared students, offering them credits that selective colleges might not accept.

“My biggest fear is that you expand this in the name of equity, and students get college credit, but they are not prepared when they get to college,” said Troy Swanson, the policy chair at the Cook County College Teachers Union.

A lot is riding on getting dual credit right: Over the past decade, CPS has sharply increased the portion of students who graduate and enroll in college. But college completion rates haven’t improved significantly, leaving more students with debt and no credential.

District leaders and some experts believe that giving students a head start on college while they are still in high school could finally shift this dynamic.

“The district’s dual credit work is promising and clearly popular with students and families,” said Dominique McKoy, the executive director of the To&Through Project at the University of Chicago, whose Consortium on School Research is working on a study of dual credit in CPS, “but we are still learning about the best ways that dual credit can fuel stronger postsecondary outcomes.”

Chicago schools pushed to enroll more students in dual credit

On a recent morning, Brandt sat in a dual credit computer science class at Clark. Another student, a sophomore, mentioned she had dropped a dual credit Spanish class because of a scheduling conflict.

Robert Lee, the instructor, homed in: She’d missed a chance to earn high school and college credit in one go — and possibly hurt her odds of eventually getting an associate degree from Malcolm X College, which oversees Clark’s dual credit courses. It’s part of the City Colleges of Chicago community college network, which accounts for the bulk of the district’s dual credit courses.

Senior Arianna Brandt attends a dual credit computer science class with teacher Robert Lee at Michele Clark High School in Chicago on Jan. 21, 2026. The class earns her both high school and college credits from Malcolm X College.

“You have to play the numbers game those next two years,” he said. “Two for one — always keep that in mind! More bang for your buck!”

Then he pointed to Brandt, who has more than a year’s worth of credits and a courseload of seven college-credit courses this year.

Brandt recalls taking the dual credit plunge and finding the classes as accessible as her regular high school classes, with one key difference: Teachers were stricter about turning in work on time, stressing that would be the expectation at college.

She’d once planned to take a gap year after high school — to work and save up for community college. But now, she’s eyeing four-year universities right after graduation.

“In college,” she said, “I’ll be able to focus on my major, and I’ll be a step ahead.”

Charles Anderson, the principal at Michele Clark High School on Chicago's West Side, has worked to increase student participation in dual credit classes. They are taught by the school's instructors on its campus but also result in credit from Malcolm X College.

When principal Charles Anderson arrived at Clark a decade ago, he found the “early college” school wasn’t doing enough to give students a head start on college. He set out to rectify that.

The school, which serves predominantly Black students from low-income families, started sending some students to take courses at Malcolm X — what CPS calls dual enrollment. But transportation and scheduling issues limited participation. Then, Anderson realized Clark’s own teachers — if they had master’s degrees — could qualify to teach City Colleges classes right at the school as dual credit.

It was a game-changer: A growing number of students started earning 15 or more college credits, a semester’s worth. As the goal of sending students off with associate degrees became an all-consuming focus, the school pushed students to consider college-level classes sooner, starting the summer after their freshman year.

Meanwhile, a number of factors were driving dual credit growth districtwide. Under a sweeping 2020 agreement called the Chicago Roadmap, the district and City Colleges worked closely to expand dual credit and dual enrollment.

For City Colleges, where 10% of students are now dual credit students, that has been an important piece of bouncing back from a COVID-era drop in overall enrollment. In recent years, the partners have taken steps to make it easier to take dual credit, such as allowing seniors with a 3.0 GPA to bypass a required placement test.

CPS also has a three-year, $4.4 million contract with a Washington-based company called Equal Opportunity Schools to help identify students who would be good candidates for college-level coursework but were overlooked.

The district set an ambitious goal of graduating 70% of its students with some kind of postsecondary credential by 2029. Schools such as Brooks College Preparatory Academy started administering the dual credit placement exam to all sophomores.

Dual credit has risen sharply nationwide, with high school students now making up a fifth of community college students overall. Research has shown these classes improve the odds of going and staying in college — especially for students of color and low-income students, who remain underrepresented in dual credit nationally.

But these programs are also drawing growing scrutiny, including from some teachers who remain partial to the national Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate college-credit programs, which they consider more rigorous.

To CPS and City Colleges, the rise of dual credit in the district is an unadulterated success story. Thanks to the program, a record 211 CPS seniors earned associate degrees last year, and more than 1,000 completed 15 or more college credits, saving their families an estimated $10 million.

The lack of racial disparities in dual credit in CPS is notable compared with national data, says Amy Williams, the executive director of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, which supports dual enrollment programs. Meanwhile, in the district’s AP and IB courses, white students are still significantly overrepresented and Black students underrepresented.

A Chalkbeat analysis of school-level dual credit participation data shows a mixed picture. Participation of students with disabilities is growing, but still about 3% of them take these courses. Participation has also remained relatively stagnant at district charter schools, which have not promoted dual credit as aggressively.

There are also pockets of limited access in district-run high schools, particularly in the city’s small South and West Side campuses; in more than a dozen, no students participate and in others, fewer than 5% do. Megan Hougard, the chief of college and career success, said CPS is trying to expand access in small schools by using its Virtual Academy to offer online classes.

Still, it’s undeniable that dual credit is gaining momentum. At Clark last year, 12 students graduated with associate degrees from City Colleges. They were a tight-knit group — some fellow members of the school’s football and track teams — who burned through the school’s dual credit courses largely in lockstep. When they ran out of classes at the high school, Anderson lined up a minibus to take them to the Malcolm X campus during their senior year.

Anthony Spivey, last year’s valedictorian, started at St. Ambrose University as a junior this past fall after the private college in Iowa accepted all of his credits. After taking three classes with Lee, the computer science teacher at Clark, and earning 23 industry certifications, he also knew exactly what he wanted to study: cybersecurity. He could start taking classes in his major right away.

“I felt I was more than prepared to take on a big college workload,” he said.

But fast growth of dual credit has also brought hurdles and skepticism.

A wall displays student photos at Michele Clark High School in Chicago on Jan. 21, 2026.

Some faculty and teachers question pass rates and rigor

Last school year, Anderson, the Clark principal, set out on a bold experiment: The school would make sure that every sophomore was enrolled in at least one dual credit course. The school’s dual credit participation rate skyrocketed to 90%.

It turned out to be too much, too soon.

In recent years, the school’s dual credit course pass rates had remained high even as participation grew. About 42% of students took at least one class and all passed in 2023-24 — a rate Anderson credits to an “everyone’s your study buddy” culture of supporting dual credit students. But by the end of last year, after many sophomores struggled, the pass rate plummeted to 60%.

“What we learned was that there still need to be some prerequisites — some preparation to help students get there,” Anderson said. “We doused them too quickly.”

Brandt ran into challenges too. Last spring, she signed up for a different kind of City Colleges class: a self-paced online statistics course, with no live virtual classes. She struggled with the material and missed interacting with other students. She passed the class after a high school math teacher stepped in to help. But this past winter, Brandt, a straight A student, failed a self-paced online English course.

Anderson says self-paced courses help students better understand how they learn and keep them on track to earn associate degrees. Some experts and even CPS officials say these classes tend to be a poor fit for most high school students, who often need more structure and engagement with faculty and peers. Yet almost 2,000 CPS students enrolled in them last year.

Experts caution that failed college credit classes can be a red flag to college admissions officials and can send the wrong message to students questioning if college is for them.

The fast growth of dual credit and dual enrollment worries some leaders in the union representing City Colleges faculty and some rank-and-file professors, who nationally tend to be the most skeptical voices on the issue.

Swanson, of the Cook County College Teachers Union, said he appreciates the benefits of dual credit. But he worries the system and CPS are too bent on boosting participation, putting students who are too young and unprepared into classes that might not be rigorous enough.

He says the growth of dual credit is threatening some introductory courses at community colleges with extinction because students already took them in high school.

College faculty are tasked with overseeing dual credit courses, but they can only monitor them so much while carrying their own campus course loads, Swanson said.

“To get AP credit, you have to take a test,” he said. “In dual credit, if the teacher says that you get the credit, you get the credit. There’s no standard mark of success.”

Todd Lakin, a Spanish instructor at Malcolm X, said he’s had a positive experience overseeing dual credit courses at Whitney Young Magnet High School and the charter Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy. But he said he pulled out of supervising a class at another high school, which he declined to name because he did not want to single out the campus for what he believes is a systemic issue. He said the curriculum was not at a college-level pace, and some students were not receiving the support they needed to get the most out of the class.

“Dual credit expanded too quickly, and the academic integrity of the courses can be called into question,” he said. “We are doing students a disservice.”

Some faculty have questioned CPS’s high dual credit pass rates, particularly perfect rates in some years at schools such as Clark. Data obtained by Chalkbeat shows 94% of CPS students passed dual credit English 101 last year, compared with 64% of students who took the course on City Colleges campuses. About 87% passed Math 140 in CPS compared with 66% at City Colleges. The district’s overall dual credit pass rate has hovered above 90% in recent years, though it dipped to 87% last year amid a big jump in participation.

The stairs leading to the second floor of Michele Clark High School, an "early college" campus on Chicago's West Side, display the names of universities.

Experts such as Williams say key differences between high school and college classrooms may help explain higher pass rates: High school classes tend to meet more frequently, class sizes can be smaller, and most teachers receive training in how to support a wide range of learners.

Daphne Whitington, an English teacher at Julian High School on the city’s Far South Side, which offers both dual credit and AP, said some colleagues believe the school should be preparing students for selective colleges more likely to accept AP courses. One of Whittington’s students, who had taken numerous dual credit and AP courses, last year got a full ride at the University of Southern California. The university gave her credit for all of her AP courses — and none of her 18 dual credit and dual enrollment credits.

But Whitington said both types of classes made the student a stronger applicant and prepared her for college. Dual credit has also helped round out the small school’s relatively limited selection of AP.

“College is daunting for our kids,” Whitington said. “But being exposed to that coursework in high school is a great bridge for them.”

It’s challenging to size up the impact the growth of dual credit is having so far. A Chalkbeat analysis did not find that campuses that boosted dual credit participation also consistently saw higher college enrollment and persistence. At Clark, for instance, as participation grew in the past three years, college enrollment remained relatively flat at about half of graduates, and persistence dipped.

But City Colleges leaders note CPS students who take dual credit and then enroll on their campuses do better than peers who did not take these courses. About 65% stayed past the first year, compared with 54% of other CPS students. Among the class of 2021, 55% of dual credit takers earned an associate degree in four years, compared with fewer than a third of other CPS grads.

It can be hard to say whether dual credit is sending more students to college or attracting already college-bound students. Still, CPS data shows 83% of students who took dual credit went to college compared with about 65% who did not take these classes. Roughly 82% of dual credit takers in the class of 2022 stayed in college past the first year, about 10 percentage points more than their peers.

Arianna Brandt, a Michele Clark High senior and one of the school's dual credit "superstars," has gotten numerous acceptance letters from four-year universities.

Officials stress because of the time lag in college outcomes, they don’t yet capture the real payoff of the recent rise in dual credit participation.

They say efforts to strengthen the program are ongoing: The system is looking into how to provide more access to tutoring and other help to students taking self-paced online courses, particularly in math, where City Colleges acknowledges students have traditionally not done well. Recently, faculty and teachers met with CPS and City Colleges officials to talk about how to strengthen English course rigor.

Hougard, the CPS postsecondary chief, dismisses concerns about rigor, saying some of the same worries came up amid a push to offer algebra to more middle schoolers — an effort that has successfully increased participation without hurting pass rates.

At Clark, school leaders pulled back from enrolling all sophomores in dual credit. They are focusing on offering students more support, including by encouraging them to band together and help each other as the 12 associate degree graduates from last year did.

Aware of college faculty skepticism, Anderson, Clark’s principal, sent Brandt and other students to meet with professors, in hopes of showing they were not that different from the college’s own freshmen.

Brandt, who wants to study business and athletic training, has already gotten 11 college acceptance letters, and is deciding between Chicago State and Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Meanwhile, determined to earn an associate degree before she graduates high school in May, she is taking four more self-paced online classes and retaking English 101.

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

Chicago school board formally closes ASPIRA charter network

2026-03-19T22:21:32+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board formally voted Thursday to shutter two high schools in the troubled ASPIRA charter network, as hundreds of students have moved to new campuses months before the end of the school year.

In a unanimous vote without any discussion, the board revoked ASPIRA’s charter after months of district cash advances to the network and escalating demands for financial information Chicago Public Schools said the charter’s leadership never provided.

About 500 ASPIRA students have migrated to some 20 district and charter high schools. The largest group transferred to Carl Schurz High School in Irving Park, which this week held an in-person event to introduce some of the 235 new students and their families to clubs and other activities.

In addition to Schurz, about 70 students transferred to Roosevelt and 50 went to Kelvyn Park, a CPS spokesperson said. Charters have accepted about 10 ASPIRA students.

At the board’s Thursday meeting, interim CEO Macquline King praised Schurz efforts to welcome students — and decried what she described as an ongoing lack of cooperation from ASPIRA leaders in transferring student records and other issues, a charge an ASPIRA official strongly disputed.

In an unprecedented move earlier this month, the district started moving students out of the network’s Early College and Business and Finance campuses after concluding that the school could not furnish the money needed to complete the year. ASPIRA’s leaders at first struck a defiant posture, arguing the district was undermining the schools midyear, but they eventually moved to lay off all their employees at the two campuses, though the layoff notices indicated the closures could be temporary.

The vote at Thursday’s board meeting made the closure permanent.

Edgar Lopez, the head of ASPIRA, said in an interview that he is exploring legal actions against the board’s vote.

The district’s charter sector has faced a turbulent stretch, with a string of schools closing or turning to CPS for help with making payroll. Citywide enrollment declines hit charters especially hard last fall, putting a strain on campuses whose funding is largely based on the number of pupils they serve. Charter advocates have also blamed a district practice of withholding thousands of dollars per pupil for CPS’ massive debt and pension obligations.

But critics of the industry have held up the case of ASPIRA to argue that financial missteps and insufficient transparency have at least contributed to the crisis.

District officials have said ASPIRA leaders wildly overestimated projected enrollments in budgeting and failed to come up with a feasible plan to finish out the school year, despite $2.5 million in advances from CPS.

On Thursday, King said the district is backing proposals at the state legislature that would empower CPS to monitor charters more closely and intervene more quickly if it has concerns about their finances. She spoke of the “traumatic” disruption to students, families, and staff when charters flounder without much notice.

“We cannot allow this to be the status quo,” she said.

ASPIRA students scattered to other campuses in recent weeks

King said 75% of ASPIRA students have transferred to district schools, and officials are working to ensure the rest have found a new campus. The district has waived all student fees for them and is providing Ventra cards, mentoring, and mental health services, she said. Making sure seniors can transfer all credits and stay on track for graduation is “top priority,” King said.

She said Alfonso Carmona, the district’s acting chief education officer, met with ASPIRA’s board this week, “imploring them to do the right thing” and help students transition smoothly to new schools.

Jennifer Conant, the charter division chair of the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents educators at ASPIRA, said about 50 students remain enrolled in the two network campuses, though few are coming to school.

Lopez called the district’s claims that ASPIRA hasn’t been cooperative a “fat lie.” Lopez said the network held a fair with about a dozen other schools in the area to help kids decide where to transfer. He also claimed district officials have only visited the school once in recent weeks.

In response to Lopez’s claims, a CPS spokesperson said the district and ASPIRA had partnered to host two fairs for students, and CPS staff had made multiple visits to ASPIRA schools over the last two weeks.

Lopez said he was disappointed but not surprised by Thursday’s outcome. He doubled down on his claims that the district has worked against charters, including not providing enough funding to the network, and that a longtime deficit was made worse by ASPIRA’s overprojections of enrollment. He added that high salaries for teachers unionized by the CTU put pressure on finances. Lopez said he approved of pay raises in the last teacher’s contract, in part to avoid talk of a strike, but he ultimately could not afford them.

Asked what his message is for students and families who left ASPIRA, he said, “I’m sorry, even though it’s not my fault, but I’m sorry.”

There is no immediate impact to ASPIRA’s alternative school, which is officially managed by Youth Connection Charter School. A CPS spokesperson said Youth Connection “expressed its commitment” to keeping the school open for the rest of this academic year. But the Youth Connection board would have to decide if it wants to continue its partnership with ASPIRA, and CPS is discussing the matter with the school, according to the spokesperson.

Schurz principal Heidy Moran said ASPIRA students began enrolling on March 6, just a couple of days after she found out through staff that they may receive an influx of kids. That same week, the 1,120-student school received more than 100 calls from parents with questions about the school, prompting her to hold a virtual welcoming event for families.

Schurz High School has stepped up to welcome students

At Wednesday’s event to introduce new students to activities, the school’s staff and students manned booths in a small gymnasium, where families could sign up and ask questions about activities such as sports, craft club, and Gender and Sexuality Alliance, known as GSA. A panel of current Schurz parents and students shared tips with an audience of roughly 50 people in the school’s auditorium about getting acclimated at the school.

Jonathan Escobar, 18, a senior who attended Wednesday’s event with his mother, said his experience so far at Schurz has been “strange.” He didn’t want to leave ASPIRA Business and Finance, but he and his family agreed he had to transfer after hearing repeatedly that ASPIRA did not have money.

He said many of his friends joined him at Schurz, but he still misses his teachers and his old classes. He’s also waiting for confirmation from Schurz officials that he’s on track to graduate. If it was up to him, Escobar would graduate in a small ceremony with just his fellow ASPIRA classmates.

“It’s still sad for me, but we have to move on,” he said.

Jonathan Escobar, a senior who formerly attended ASPIRA Business and Finance High School, poses for a photo during an welcoming event at Schurz High School for new students like him.

Schurz has enrolled 150 transfer students since September who come from other local schools, other states, or even other countries, so to receive 235 more students in a short period of time is “unprecedented,” Moran said. She’s also sensed a feeling of grief among students who miss their old teachers and building and described the transition process for them as “very challenging.”

The school created a “welcoming team” made up of staffers charged with organizing events and initiatives to make the new kids feel more comfortable, Moran said. One of their initiatives was to pair each new student with a more veteran Schurz student, who helps them find classes.

“It’s nice — you see them greeting each other in the hallway afterward,” Moran said.

Moran said that for the most part, credit requirements at Schurz have been “a perfect match” for most ASPIRA seniors, meaning they should be on track to graduate. There are some remaining wrinkles, including ensuring ASPIRA kids who were taking dual enrollment classes can still do so virtually at Schurz. Some students may also need to take credit recovery classes in order to graduate, but Moran did not know an exact number of students.

The Thursday vote left uncertainty for employees at the two ASPIRA schools. Conant, the CTU charter chair, urged the district to hire educators and staff at campuses welcoming ASPIRA students, which she argued would ease their transition.

Cindy Camacho, who has worked at ASPIRA Business and Finance High School for eight years, said she was aware that ASPIRA was grappling with declining enrollment but the impending closure came as a “big shock.”

Camacho, who is still at the high school, said she’s unsure how she’ll manage her finances once she’s laid off, especially since she’s currently enrolled in a master’s program. She said she’s worried about the students — especially seniors — and how they’ll navigate a new environment this late in the school year.

“I think that all of the actions that [CPS] started taking a few weeks ago should have been taking place last semester,” she said in a recent interview.

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

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

Chicago Teachers Union asks school board to back a May 1 day of ‘no school’

2026-03-19T21:12:47+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union asked the school board to allow students to miss school on May 1, when the CTU and other local labor groups are joining a national pro-labor protest that will decry the Trump administration’s policies.

The national day of “no school, no work, no shopping” will advocate for raising taxes on the rich, reining in immigration enforcement, and steering more funding toward schools, the union said. The union said students as well as educators should be able to participate in the action. CTU leaders point to a state law that allows middle and high school students an excused absence each year to participate in a civic event.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU employee and close ally, has voiced support for letting students miss school that day, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

At the school board’s monthly meeting Thursday, Jackson Potter, the CTU’s vice president, appealed to the board to back the union’s request. He noted that the union’s contract allows for swapping one existing professional day for teachers for another day of no attendance.

School board members, where allies of Johnson hold a majority, did not address the union’s request. They could take it up at either of two meetings in April. A May 1 day off for middle and high school students would come after the weeklong spring break in March and three days of non-attendance for all students in March and April, including a parent-teacher conference day this week.

Potter said more than 500 district students participated in the May 1 march last year.

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

Lack of Latino finalists for Chicago schools chief draws concern

2026-03-18T20:39:09+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

When the Chicago school board announced three finalists for the role of district CEO last week, there was a notable absence: Latino frontrunners.

Some Latino advocacy groups and community leaders have since voiced disappointment, pointing out that almost half of the district’s students are Latino. Making the matter more politically delicate is that Chicago Public Schools is seeking a replacement for its first Latino schools chief, Pedro Martinez, who was fired without cause over the objections of some prominent community advocates.

Some say the lack of Latino finalists is fresh evidence that the district must work to build a pipeline to top leadership posts for strong Latino contenders, within and outside the district.

“What we see is a disconnect between whom we serve as a district and who is making the highest-level decisions,” said Yesenia Lopez, an elected school board member representing a district on the city’s Southwest Side.

On Friday, the board said interim CEO Macquline King, former New York City schools chancellor Meisha Porter, and former East Baton Rouge superintendent Sito Narcisse — who are all Black — would vie for the district’s top role. They will meet with Mayor Brandon Johnson and a community panel next.

The board did have a Latino frontrunner, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero, back in November, when the district appeared to be near the finish line with the search. But when his name was leaked to the media along with Porter’s, Marrero distanced himself from the process, insisting he was committed to his current district.

It’s not clear if other Latino contenders were in the running for finalist slots more recently. School board members signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from discussing the CEO search. It is possible that candidates currently in leadership roles elsewhere might have been discouraged from continuing on when the board decided to make finalist names public last week.

In response to a request for comment from school board President Sean Harden, the board office released a statement saying that search has focused on finding candidates with “the core competencies” needed to lead CPS in partnership with the board.

“The robust recruitment and nationwide interest in the role resulted in an applicant pool, from screening to finalists, that is diverse across several metrics, including but not limited to race, ethnicity, and gender,” the statement said.

The search, which involved extensive community engagement through surveys, focus groups, student panels, and other events, yielded more than 100 applications.

Some Latino leaders decried Martinez departure

Miguel del Valle, Illinois’ first Latino state senator, who served as school board president during former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term, said he is reluctant to criticize the current board without knowing more about the level of interest from strong Latino candidates and any efforts to encourage such candidates to apply.

Still, he said, “Having been very much involved in selecting the first Latino CEO of CPS, I have to say I was disappointed.”

Martinez’s dismissal by a Johnson-appointed board in late 2024 drew condemnation from some community leaders. Illinois Latino Agenda, a coalition of leaders advocating for representation in positions of power, called the move “an affront” to the Latino community, arguing he had brought academic gains and stability to a school system long plagued by frequent leadership turnover.

Lopez, the school board member, said that after last Friday’s finalist announcement, she’s heard from some community leaders and elected officials on the Southwest Side, where Martinez — the son of Mexican immigrants who attended CPS — enjoyed a lot of support.

“He was seen as a person with a lived experience, bringing that cultural lens and speaking the language,” she said.

She said she worries that Martinez’ ouster and its aftermath might have discouraged some Latino candidates from pursuing the CPS top job. And she stressed the district faces a larger issue. Latinos make up fewer than a fifth of school leaders in CPS.

Lopez said a lack of community roots in top leadership can translate into policies that fail to fully consider the experience of many families. As an example, Lopez said she supports offering access to online learning for some immigrant families fearful of stepped-up immigration enforcement. But she also said extended online learning during the pandemic strained Southwest Side families, where many parents are frontline workers, and some lacked access to technology.

Latino advocates push for a leadership pipeline

Linda Xóchitl Tortolero, the president and CEO of the advocacy group Latino Policy Forum, who has since joined Illinois Latino Agenda as a member, noted in a statement that the CPS search is playing out at a time when the local Latino community feels under duress amid the Trump administration’s enforcement push, which has affected attendance for the district’s growing number of English learners and for some of its other students. She urged the district to choose a new leader with extensive experience serving Latino, immigrant, and English learner students and a record of improving their outcomes and school experience.

“Children and families deserve to see themselves in their leaders,” she said. “They also deserve leaders who see them, know them, and fight for them.”

A 2025 study by the Council of the Great City Schools, which advocates for urban school districts, showed that among 77 member districts, about 20% of superintendents were Latino in 2023. About 45% were Black, and roughly 30% were white. Only 4% were Latina women.

The report found a major increase in Latino representation in top district jobs since the start of the pandemic and a dip in the number of Black leaders. These trends coincided with a steady increase in the portion of Latino students in large urban districts and a marked decrease in the number of Black and white students.

Lopez said the board is unlikely to go hunting for a Latino finalist after a year-long search process and given a goal of selecting a new permanent CEO in April. But she said the district must do more to cultivate the next generation of Latino leaders — and saying they aren’t out there or won’t apply for key CPS posts isn’t good enough.

“That’s just an easy scapegoat answer,” she said.

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

Three finalists announced for Chicago Public Schools’ top job

2026-03-13T21:54:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news.

Three finalists — including interim CEO Macquline King — are vying to serve as the next chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, the school board announced Friday.

In addition to King, the finalists are Sito Narcisse, former superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish School System in Louisiana, and Meisha Porter, former chancellor of New York City schools.

Each of the candidates will interview with Mayor Brandon Johnson and participate in a “candidate community engagement” panel, according to a press release from the board office. After that, the board will hold a special meeting to discuss the finalists and vote.

In a statement, Johnson said he will meet with candidates next week and wants to hear feedback from the community panel.

“This is a critical time for our school district and for our nation, and I take this responsibility seriously as we work to ensure the next leader reflects the values of our city and is prepared to meet the needs of our students, families, and educators,” Johnson said.

The board office did not say if board members will do additional interviews with the candidates.

The school board set out last spring to find a new top leader after a previous board appointed by Johnson fired then CEO Pedro Martinez without cause following a clash over district finances. The search has been bumpy at times: As it neared a planned December completion, one contender, Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero, pulled out after his and Porter’s names were leaked to the press. The district search firm, Alma Consulting Group, parted ways with CPS last month, and a group of school board members released a statement charging Johnson with meddling in the process.

King’s inclusion on the list of candidates is a surprise: The board declined to advance King to a previous pool of finalists last fall.

Chalkbeat reported last week that the board had again decided on multiple finalists. Adding King as a finalist was a more recent decision that shows the board is “listening to the community,” said Norma Rios-Sierra, an appointed board member who is on the CEO search committee.

“She has a lot of support from a lot of community leaders, and she had some time to demonstrate how she works,” Rios-Sierra said.

King, a former principal and City Hall education policy advisor under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Johnson, has led the district since last June, including through a budget fight that put her at odds with the mayor’s office. The principals union has praised her leadership so far.

Some organizations, including the West Side branch of the NAACP, and a group of elected board members who originally voted against hiring her last year, have called for her to remain in her post until a fully elected school board can pick the next Chicago schools chief when it takes office in January 2027.

King began her CPS teaching career in 1994 and eventually became a principal at two schools, most recently at Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown, which involved a difficult merger with another school.

King’s personnel records drew some scrutiny before she was hired as the interim CEO. The records, which did not include any formal discipline, had two memos from district officials about how she should improve her performance. At the time she told Chalkbeat the criticism was fair but that those directives — centered on findings that she had not immediately reported allegations of abuse and failed to conduct a background check for a volunteer — were the result of understaffing at her school. King couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Porter, who was raised in Queens and attended New York City public schools, became the first Black woman to oversee the nation’s largest school system for 10 months in 2021 after her predecessor abruptly resigned. She spent more than two decades rising through the ranks as a teacher, principal, and a high-level administrator who eventually oversaw all schools in the Bronx. She is well-respected in New York City education circles, including by teachers, parents, and administrators.

She served as schools chancellor during the pandemic and as the district was beginning to reopen schools. During her short tenure, she oversaw policy pushes under former Mayor Bill de Blasio to eliminate separate gifted and talented classes and a $200 million universal curriculum for schools. Both initiatives were scrapped by de Blasio’s successor, Mayor Eric Adams. Porter was replaced as de Blasio left office.

After leaving the district, Porter became the president and CEO of the Bronx Community Foundation. The foundation, which was set up to help finance other local nonprofits, failed to distribute most of the money it raised from 2019 to 2023 and spent more on consultants and overhead than charitable giving, according to an investigation by the news organization New York Focus. In 2024, the organization’s board of directors fired Porter.

She most recently was a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation, an organization that works with school leaders and families, according to her LinkedIn. Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Narcisse led the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, Louisiana’s second largest, for three years, until January 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile. The school board voted not to renew his contract at that point, according to local news coverage, though he expressed interest in getting his job back later that year. He has since worked as managing partner of SJ Apple Consulting Group, a firm he founded that offers consulting services to school districts.

Narcisse focused on expanding preschool, college credit opportunities, and career pathways in East Baton Rouge. During his time there, the district drew headlines and a rebuke from the American Civil Liberties Union after high school students were bused to a “Day of Hope” event billed as a college and career fair. Students reported the event, held at a local church, carried strong religious overtones throughout, and transgender students said they were bullied.

He previously served in top school district administrative posts in Washington, D.C., and Nashville. Narcisse did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Kia Banks, the president of the district’s principals union, had previously said many members wanted a new, fully elected board to pick a permanent CEO early next year, with King remaining at the helm as the district navigates the upcoming budget season. Banks said Friday she is still wary of disruption at a turbulent time for the district, which faces a massive budget deficit and pressure from the Trump administration.

“Stability is always important,” Banks said. “We’ve made a lot of progress under Dr. King. Making a shift with there being so many challenges right now can undo a lot of progress made.”

She said there is no representative from the principals union leadership on the community panel that will interview finalists, and she is unsure of the next steps in the search process.

In a statement, Chicago Teachers Union vice president Jackson Potter didn’t address the specific candidates but sought to remind the board of union priorities when choosing a CEO, including someone who would expand Sustainable Community Schools, push back against cuts from the Trump administration, and push Gov. JB Pritzker to increase taxes on the wealthy in order to boost education funding.

Hal Woods, policy director at education advocacy organization Kids First Chicago, said over the yearlong process, parents involved in his organization haven’t wavered in wanting the board to “prioritize someone who is most likely to lead with integrity, who is going to be partnering with families authentically, and who is going to work to improve outcomes from students across the city.”

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

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

A new Chicago program aims to keep teens facing serious charges out of detention — and out of trouble

2026-03-12T18:23:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Some West Side teens charged with serious crimes can now stay in school and out of detention while awaiting trial as part of a new pilot program by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and Chicago Public Schools.

To participate, teens have to go to school five days a week and take part in cognitive behavioral therapy, mentoring, and other services provided by two community nonprofits.

The pilot program is a nod to the key role that school can play in reengaging youth facing criminal charges — and, on the flip side, the havoc that stints in detention can wreak on their odds of graduating.

In recent years, there’s been a push to cultivate alternatives to detaining young people across the country, but also pushback to such reform efforts. Against that backdrop, the Cook County initiative aims to strike a balance between giving teens more support and holding them accountable: Their charges won’t be dismissed as they are in so-called diversion programs. Officials say it’s the first Cook County program that conditions pretrial release on regularly attending school and therapy.

“We’re hoping that these young people will continue being engaged in their community through school and the community-based organizations so they’re able to hopefully decide that they want to take a different path,” said Umi Grigsby, deputy chief of policy at the Cook County State Attorney’s Office.

Three teens have joined the program since it started last month with a goal of engaging up to 60 youth in the Little Village and North Lawndale neighborhoods this year. Its backers point to an oft-cited statistic from the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab research: About 90% of school-age youth who got shot in Chicago were not going to school at the time.

“By addressing the needs of this population, which often faces the risk of isolation, CPS helps to foster a sense of belonging and community to provide students with the opportunity to continue their education,” a district spokeswoman said in a statement.

Research shows school is key to preventing recidivism

The grant-funded effort drew some inspiration from CPS’ Choose to Change program, which provides intensive cognitive behavioral therapy and mentoring to students facing challenges, including involvement with the criminal justice system. It also shares these elements with Back to Our Future, a more recent program to reengage dropouts that the district put on hold amid recruitment and other issues and then restarted last fall.

Teens charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm, or sex crimes and those who are placed on electronic monitoring cannot participate in the new program. Officials said they could not disclose what charges the three participants in the program face so far to protect their privacy.

A growing body of research has backed the crucial role of keeping teens engaged in their education, said Antwan Turpeau, a research fellow at Chapin Hall, a Chicago-based research center, which will evaluate the new program. School gives young people a structured day, positive activities, and informal mentors in teachers and staff.

“School is one of the top protective factors for this age population,” Turpeau said. “Detention often disrupts schooling and credit accumulation.”

He said he was glad to see a central role for mentoring and therapy in the new initiative, as well.

“A majority of these young people come from underinvested communities with a lot of community trauma,” he said. “They’ve seen a lot at a young age and haven’t had the place and the space to process what they’ve been through.”

Grigsby said the program is the brainchild of Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, with input from Jadine Chou, the school district’s former safety and security chief.

Teens are usually detained for 30 days pretrial, but sometimes spend longer in jail, becoming disconnected from school and neighborhood support. Burke’s office zeroed in on the 10th police district on the West Side, with a high incidence of juvenile arrests. There, Judge Beatriz Frausto-Sandoval will oversee participation in the program, called Juvenile Pre-Trial Detention Alternative Pilot Program.

As a control group, officials looked at 39 teens charged with serious offenses in the 10th district between September 2023 and August 2025. Fourteen were held in pre-trial detention, getting locked up more than 50 times among them in that period. The outcomes often weren’t great: Some went on to rapidly reoffend after their stints in detention, sometimes facing more serious charges, such as going from possession of a stolen vehicle to attempted murder. Some of the later offenses were committed during electronic monitoring or curfew supervision.

Officials hope the new program can keep teens out of detention — and out of trouble. Two nonprofits — New Life Center in Little Village and The Firehouse Community Arts Center in North Lawndale — will provide 20 hours of therapy and other services each week. Unlike in diversion programs, where the attorney’s office drops charges in exchange for participation in community service and other conditions, teens will continue facing charges. But successful participation in the program will factor in their sentencing.

Other CPS programs have also embraced behavioral therapy

The CPS spokeswoman said the attorney’s office will determine where and how the teens attend school. The district will monitor how they are doing. The teens participating in the program so far were all enrolled in school when they were charged.

The program’s backers looked at the outcomes of Choose to Change, which has been shown to reduce criminal justice involvement, among other positive outcomes that persisted for years after teens left the program. A strong emphasis on cognitive-behavioral therapy and mentoring are also a cornerstone of an overhauled Back to Our Future, which serves 58 students, most of them from Little Village and North Lawndale. Some of them have involvement with the criminal justice system, but that’s not a requirement of that program.

As part of the new program, Chapin Hall will track data on school attendance, participation in therapy, recidivism, and more; researchers will also speak with teens about their experience in the program.

“We’re really looking at lowering recidivism,” Grigsby said, “making sure that young people feel connected to their community.”

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

Chicago school board Vice President Olga Bautista steps down

2026-03-04T20:03:42+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Olga Bautista, the vice president of the Chicago school board and a staunch ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson, is stepping down from the board.

Bautista, the co-executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, said she will also step away from professional commitments after winning a new sabbatical award from the Chicago Frontlines Fund, an organization that makes grants to environmental justice nonprofits.

Bautista was appointed by Johnson in 2024 after an entire largely Johnson-appointed board resigned amid a clash between the district’s administration and the mayor’s office over district funding. The board she joined went on to fire then-district CEO Pedro Martinez in late 2024, and she continued serving after a partly elected board was seated in January 2025.

Bautista has remained a close Johnson ally on the board: She was one of seven members on the 21-person board who voted no on the district’s budget last fall when a majority of the board backed it, flouting the mayor’s push to include a controversial pension reimbursement to the city and take out a high-cost loan to afford it.

Bautista, who has two children attending the district, steps down as campaigns for all seats on the board, which will be up for grabs in November, are getting underway.

In a statement Bautista read at the start of a Wednesday board meeting, her last, she nodded to the key moment of transition for CPS as she departs the board: The district is still looking for a new permanent schools chief as the city prepares to select a fully elected board for the first time.

“I’ve left jobs before, but none that mattered as much as this position,” a visibly emotional Bautista said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said Johnson plans to fill the vacancy left by Bautista’s departure before fall’s school board elections, and he thanks her for her service on the volunteer board.

“She has been a dedicated voice for safe, well-funded schools and meaningful community engagement in shaping the future of public education,” the statement said.

Allies of the mayor will continue to hold a majority on the board after Bautista steps down.

In a statement, the Chicago Frontlines Fund said it established the new sabbatical for environmental leaders so they can take six months off for “intentional rest and reflection” to prevent burnout.

Fellow board members — largely those also aligned with Johnson — praised Bautista’s service on the board and her advocacy for environmental causes in the city. They described her as a supportive, welcoming presence on the board, willing to offer guidance during late night phone calls or over fresh-made guacamole at her home. Board President Sean Harden thanked Bautista for helping him ease into his role when he was “a deer in the headlights” during his first board meeting.

“I am a little upset you’re not taking me with you,” joked Harden, who has said he is not running in the fall school board elections.

Michilla Blaise, who along with Debby Pope was a fellow appointee to the 2024 board, commended Bautista for her steady leadership.

“We were thrust into a storm of epic proportions,” Blaise said. “I didn’t know Olga at the time, but we were immediate sisters.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from the mayor.

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

Chicago Public Schools to start moving students out of troubled charter ASPIRA

2026-02-26T21:32:23+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools will begin transitioning students from two ASPIRA charter high schools to other schools after months of financial turbulence at the network and deep uncertainty for its families and staff.

In a letter to the district this week, ASPIRA leaders insisted they will keep the campuses — ASPIRA Business and Finance and ASPIRA Early College high schools — open through the end of this school year. But district officials say the charter has not spelled out a clear plan to pull that off, even after the district steered millions of dollars in cash advances to it this winter.

CPS told the charter network in a letter dated Thursday that it will start the transition process this week and expected ASPIRA to assist with providing student records. During a Chicago Board of Education meeting Thursday, officials said students who wish to leave the ASPIRA campuses will have a guaranteed seat at a group of nearby district-run high schools and will have access to a “transition coordinator” for regular check-ins and other services.

CPS will host a town hall for families about the transition process sometime next week, officials said.

ASPIRA’s two high school campuses together serve about 700 students, who are predominantly low-income and Latino. The district said a third ASPIRA campus, an alternative high school on the Northwest Side operated in tandem with the charter network Youth Connections Charter School, is not facing closure.

In an interview with Chalkbeat after this story published, ASPIRA CEO and President Edgar Lopez attributed the network’s financial challenges to rising salaries and what he described as underfunding from the district.

Lopez said he’s upset CPS won’t give ASPIRA more runway to secure more funding. The network currently has enough money to operate the campuses in question up until about April, and he said they have “some leads” on ways to close the funding gap.

“If this is for the kids, what’s the rush?” Lopez said. “What’s another month?”

The Chicago Teachers Union, which represents staff at ASPIRA, held a rally with ASPIRA teachers, students, and parents outside the Chicago Board of Education headquarters Thursday ahead of the board meeting. They called for CPS to help families find new schools now that would “keep students and staff together.”

Lavelle Turner, a senior from ASPIRA Business and Finance High School, told reporters he’s “very concerned about my future” and that closing the school will impact many of his fellow seniors.

“Will my credits be transferred if I change schools? Will this affect my college applications? I would like CPS to answer these questions,” Turner said, adding that he’d like to attend a school with his peers so he can be around familiar faces.

The district is “reviewing and assessing” graduation requirements for juniors and seniors, Conrad Timbers-Ausar, the district’s acting chief portfolio officer, who oversees charters, told the board. He added that CPS plans to provide a letter that graduating seniors can provide to college admissions offices so they can “understand the recent events.”

Griselda Hermosillo, parent of a freshman at ASPIRA Early College High School, told reporters in Spanish that she is worried about what happens to student credits and their individualized education programs, or IEPs, which spell out legally required services for students with disabilities, if the school closes midyear. She said Lopez, the ASPIRA president, has left her in constant doubt about the school’s future.

“If this has been a false hope, we would hope CPS will give us the actual plan,” Hermosillo said.

CPS accuses ASPIRA of mismanaging finances

The move comes months after the district said ASPIRA had failed to responsibly manage its finances and was struggling to make payroll. CPS said it has already provided $2.5 million in advance payments to ASPIRA, which faces a $2.9 million deficit, and has reached a state-imposed legal limit for how much it can steer to a charter school.

CPS had asked ASPIRA to provide multiple documents by Wednesday, including proof that it could obtain funding from a third party and a plan showing how it would make it through the rest of the school year. ASPIRA provided neither, according to the district.

Instead, in its letter to the district, ASPIRA asked CPS to provide the network with the legal maximum amount of funding for the last four school years to reduce or eliminate its deficit. By state law, the district must provide charter schools with per pupil funding that’s equivalent to 97% to 103% of funding at district schools; ASPIRA is requesting 103%.

The network also said it was working on other funding fixes, including obtaining a bridge loan, raising money from alumni, and crowdfunding. But in its response, the district said it cannot provide funding for previous fiscal years retroactively, and it will start transitioning students out in light of “the emergency situation created by ASPIRA’s failure to demonstrate financial sustainability, which places the education of ASPIRA’s students at risk.”

Lopez denied that the financial issues are due to mismanagement. He said his network isn’t the only one facing financial problems, and he believes the district’s response is part of a broader plan to shutter charter schools. Asked how confident he feels that third party money will come in, Lopez said, “We’re working on it.”

ASPIRA is latest in string of charter troubles

The ASPIRA turmoil is playing out against the backdrop of larger turbulence and uncertainty in the city’s charter and contract sector — schools that are publicly funded and overseen by the district, but operated by private entities.

Last year, the Chicago Board of Education voted to absorb five campuses of the charter network Acero into the district to prevent their closure. It also moved to chip in so the South Sides’ EPIC Academy High School could finish out the year before closing and take over the Chicago High School for the Arts, or ChiArts, a West Side contract school. This week, the district held a meeting with ChiArts families concerned that the school would lose its conservatory model, in which professional artists work with students during an extended school day.

District officials and charter leaders have said the larger upheaval is due to declining enrollment across the city and tight finances, including a district move to withhold thousands of dollars per pupil from charters to chip in for its massive pension and debt costs.

But charter critics say schools such as ASPIRA have also made major fiscal missteps and should have been monitored more closely by CPS. The district has taken ASPIRA to task for budgeting based on wildly unrealistic enrollment projections and for withholding key financial information from CPS.

At the board meeting, appointed board member Debby Pope blasted ASPIRA for the possible closures. She said the situation should be a message to other charter operators to be financially responsible and turn in required documents on time to CPS.

“We cannot do this to our children,” Pope said. “It is just not OK.”

Appointed board member Karen Zaccor called for the district to find a way for ASPIRA students to spend planned activities together, such as already planned field trips and graduation.

In addition to the documents CPS requested, ASPIRA has not yet submitted a required financial audit or the monthly cash flow reports the district requires of charters such as ASPIRA that it has placed under financial remediation.

In a Wednesday interview with Chalkbeat, Timbers-Ausar said CPS will strive to work closely with families to find high-performing schools where students can transfer this spring.

“It has to be a process that is first and foremost student-centered and family-centered to provide as many options as possible,” he said. “We have to stay very engaged every step of the way with those families.”

The district expects it will have conversations with the Chicago Teachers Union about the possibility of finding other roles for them, Timbers-Ausar said.

This story has been updated with additional comment from school board members, ASPIRA CEO Edgar Lopez and Conrad Timbers-Ausar, the district’s acting chief portfolio officer.

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

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

Chicago’s school board close to identifying finalists — again — for superintendent search

2026-02-25T20:02:56+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Board of Education is getting closer to choosing finalists — again — for Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO.

Multiple board members said the next step in the search process is to identify finalists from the group of candidates they’ve been considering. Norma Rios-Sierra, an appointed board member who is on a working group for the almost yearlong CEO search, told Chalkbeat the board will have a group of finalists “very soon” and “definitely before the end of the school year.”

But even as the search continues, six of the 21 board members and groups such as the district’s principals union are escalating calls to keep interim CEO Macquline King in her role into 2027, when a fully elected school board takes over. They argue that with a tough budget season already underway and the looming campaigns for all 21 school board seats, the district needs stability instead of a push to conclude the rocky search.

Last week, that group of elected board members revealed that the board was parting ways with its search firm, Alma Advisory Group, and accused Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office and its allies of intervening in the search process.

The mayor’s office has denied those claims and said the mayor has not meddled or interviewed candidates. The mayor wants to interview finalists identified by the board, Rios-Sierra said.

Other board members say the search remains on track and denied the accusations of sabotage. They said they plan to have a CEO in place before the start of next school year. Several board members who spoke with Chalkbeat declined to share names of front-runners or the number of people they are currently considering.

Appointed board member Anusha Thotakura said the board is continuing to interview “high quality candidates,” and as of at least earlier this month, one of the candidates is someone “whose name was leaked to the press several months ago.” But she declined to specify whether that candidate was Meisha Porter, former head of New York City public schools, or current Denver superintendent Alex Marrero, whose names were revealed by the Chicago Sun-times/WBEZ and Chalkbeat in November.

A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said Tuesday Marrero is not a candidate; Porter did not respond to a request for comment.

In November, the search appeared to be in its final stretch when the leaks seemed to derail it. Marrero said he was committed to Denver the day his name appeared in the press.

“We’re taking this process very seriously and are trying to move with a sense of urgency that this level of a decision deserves,” Thotakura said.

As planned before, finalists will still be interviewed by a panel of community members, Rios-Sierra said. The board has not said who is on the panel but it was originally envisioned to include students, teachers, and other residents.

The district has now been without a permanent leader since former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez left last June; King has been serving since and applied for the CEO job but didn’t advance to a finalist round, the Sun-Times and WBEZ reported.

In November, after news broke that the board had two finalists, the Chicago Teachers Union blasted the board for keeping their names secret. Board members, who disclosed months earlier that they would not reveal finalist names, had signed nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from discussing aspects of the search publicly. The union declined to say whether it will again call for finalist names to be revealed.

After Chalkbeat and the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ revealed the two finalist names, the board appeared to be left with just Porter.

Then the process appeared to come to a halt, but some board members later said they were rescheduling interviews and interviewing more applicants. Rios-Sierra said, at the time, many of her colleagues wanted to consider more than one finalist and that there were conversations about expanding the finalist pool.

Che “Rhymefest” Smith, one of the elected board members who released a statement last week decrying Alma’s departure and accusing the mayor’s office of interference, said he and other search committee members who signed it have been left in the dark about the status of the search. He said he believes a finalist or finalists have been selected and might meet with Johnson next.

The district can’t keep King “hanging on forever” and should work out an agreement for her to stay on, lest she leave for another job, Smith said.

Smith had opposed King’s appointment as interim last summer, but now says King, who came from a role in the mayor’s office, has led the district capably since. Smith and the chair of the board’s search team, elected board member Jessica Biggs, penned an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune last week that, in part, said they’re hearing calls to keep King in place until the new board is elected.

“This is the part where I have to listen to the community,” he said.

Unlike Martinez, King was not offered a contract when she was hired as interim CEO. Her offer letter — obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request — does not indicate a specific end date for her job.

Kia Banks, the head of the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, which represents school leaders, said her members have increasingly said they believe King should continue in her role. She said she worries that next year’s fully elected school board could second-guess or reverse any decision on a permanent top leader made this year.

Banks said King, a former district teacher and principal, has steered CPS through myriad challenges and is in the best position to craft budgets for schools and the district. The union, which reached its first preliminary contract with the district last August, is negotiating a more complete collective bargaining agreement.

“The search as it has been going on this year has become less about the needs of the students and more about which board members will prevail given their differences,” Banks said.

The West Side chapter of the NAACP has also called for keeping King in the top job until a new school board is elected and seated next January.

In a statement, Chicago Teachers Union vice president Jackson Potter said many national candidates may not be a good fit and the CEO search “requires being thoughtful and thorough to find a leader to repair, reconcile and rebuild CPS,” including with the current funding challenges facing the district. CPS is projecting a $520 million budget deficit next fiscal year.

The union did not say whether it supports keeping King in place until next year.

SEIU, which represents school support staff, did not respond to a request for comment.

Melanie Asmar contributed to this report.

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

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

A new bill would force Chicago Public Schools to pay into municipal retirement fund

2026-02-24T18:27:55+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools officials are voicing concern about a pair of bills targeting pension costs for employees, particularly one that would force the district to take on a controversial payment into a municipal retirement fund.

But the Chicago state lawmaker who introduced the proposals says the bills are simply “placeholders” meant to spur conversations between district, city, and state officials.

One of the bills authored by Sen. Robert Martwick, a Democrat, would compel the district to start paying into a city pension fund that covers Chicago Public Schools support staff as well as city employees. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has pressed CPS to foot these costs — an issue that contributed to the firing of the district’s former CEO and bitterly divided its partly elected school board.

Martwick’s other bill would shift all costs of paying into the district’s separate teacher pension fund from CPS to the state — a move he acknowledged is a long shot this year. District leaders have long decried that Illinois largely covers teacher pensions in all school districts except Chicago, where it pays for roughly a third of these costs.

In a statement, the district said the proposals could put CPS in a bind. Given its own deficit and significant federal funding cuts, it’s unlikely the state would take on CPS’s teacher pension costs during this election year. Meanwhile, the municipal fund proposal would saddle the district with “an unfunded mandate that CPS simply cannot afford” as it faces a deficit of more than half a billion dollars. Taking out a loan and adding to the district’s huge debt burden to make the recurring payment is not a solution, the statement said, as officials have insisted in the past.

“Without a corresponding increase in state or local funding, this shift would force a choice between pension payments and student education,” the district’s statement said.

In an interview, Martwick, a Chicago Teachers Union ally and an architect of the city’s transition from mayoral control to an elected school board, said the city and the district must disentangle their finances before that board is seated in January. His bill is meant to spur them to figure out how to do that, he said.

Bills are meant to start pension conversations, author says

Meanwhile, a larger role for the state in footing Chicago’s teacher pension costs is “the right thing to do,” he said, and his bill will keep that request in the foreground as some lawmakers press for an influx of new revenue for education.

“There are no easy answers here; there’s no way to make the pension debt magically go away,” he said. “These decisions are challenging, but for the good of the students and taxpayers, they must be made.”

Joe Ferguson of the Civic Federation, a Chicago-based nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, said he agrees that the city and district must have a conversation about handling the municipal pension fund costs going forward. But he said Martwick’s proposal gives the city an edge at a time the district is especially “fiscally fragile.”

“The larger problem is that there aren’t meaningful, collaborative discussions between the city and CPS,” he said. “Instead, we have a piece of legislation that says nothing about where the money would come from, which is how the city has been approaching this issue.”

If both bills were to become law, the district could come out ahead — but only if the state allows it to use dollars from a dedicated teacher pension property tax levy for other expenses. It’s somewhat unclear what the cost of the district’s annual payment into the city’s Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund would be. In its statement, the district suggested the payment would be $175 million to $200 million, but a recent budget presentation by the mayor’s office to local school council members estimated it at $346 million.

CPS’ costs for its teacher pension fund came to about $660 million in this year’s budget, most of it covered from a pension property tax levy but some coming from its operating revenues.

Chicago school board members in October unanimously backed a $175 million reimbursement to the city’s pension fund — but only after Johnson steered a record amount of special tax dollars to CPS to cover the payment and other costs. Earlier in the fall, a majority on the board had defied the mayor and voted for a district budget that didn’t include that payment, only committing to make it if an influx of new revenue materialized.

The mayor and board members aligned with him and with the teachers union, his former employer, have said taking on the pension payment permanently would help the district separate its finances from those of the city as CPS transitions to a fully elected school board. They have said the district must chip in for its own employees’ pension costs in a move that will ensure a collaborative relationship with the city.

But school board members who pushed back against including the payment in the budget last fall noted that under state law, the city is on the hook for those costs — and passing them on to the district would mean painful cuts that would affect the classroom. They balked at the idea of taking out a high-cost loan to make the reimbursement, noting the district already wrestles with staggering debt service costs.

The district said shifting the municipal pension fund costs onto CPS without new revenue would queue up an “immediate fiscal crisis” for the new fully elected school board in early 2027. It said the district needs a comprehensive solution to its pension issues in collaboration with the city and the state.

One idea from CPS? The state could take on more of the district’s teacher pension costs, and CPS could use some of the pension property tax dollars freed up as a result to pay into the municipal retirement fund.

The proposals have murky prospects in Springfield

Martwick said his bills are works in progress that “involved no input from anyone,” and he said the exact cost of the municipal pension payment CPS would have to take on under one of them is still being clarified. He had no intention of giving the city an advantage in such a conversation, Martwick said. As a resident and father of CPS students, he said it’s important the district tackle the task of separating their finances from those of the city with a sense of urgency.

“It almost sounds like they’re saying, ‘No, no, no, let’s stay entangled,’” he said. “CPS needs to grasp that this disentanglement is real.”

He said he introduced the bills against the backdrop of a larger push by Illinois progressives to pursue new revenue for the state, such as raising taxes on wealthy residents. If that push works, he said, he wants CPS teacher pensions to be on the list of things the state could start funding.

A couple of Chicagoland state lawmakers recently introduced a CTU-backed bill to fully fund the state’s “evidence-based” school funding formula and cover some mandated services, such as transportation for students with disabilities.

CPS officials have voiced an interest in consolidating the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund with that of the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, which covers educators outside of Chicago — a move that they say could save CPS big. But the teachers union has opposed the idea.

Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago said he sees both Martwick bills as “conversation starters” with murky prospects of passage this spring. The two proposals amount to “a grand bargain,” he said, in which the district can use money freed up by passing on teacher pension costs to the state to make the city payments covering support staff pensions. The catch? There’s nothing in it for the state.

Woods said he didn’t think Martwick would push for the city fund bill in isolation, noting it would swell the district’s deficit to almost $1 billion and almost certainly lead to disruptive classroom cuts without an unexpected influx in revenue.

“I don’t think he would stick CPS with a $346 million bill and no way to pay for it,” Woods said.

This story has been updated to clarify that the district would need state approval to redirect revenue from its pension property levy to other expenses.

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

Some board members claim ‘sabotage’ as Chicago school board and search firm tasked with finding new CEO part ways

2026-02-13T00:39:35+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Board of Education is parting ways with Alma Advisory Group, the search firm tasked with helping the school board find a new CEO, according to a statement from six of the board’s 10 elected members.

The statement, obtained by Chalkbeat, does not specify when or why Alma wrapped up its work on the search. The board members who signed it — Carlos Rivas Jr., Ellen Rosenfeld, Jessica Biggs, Angel Gutierrez, Therese Boyle, and Che “Rhymefest” Smith — say they now want interim CPS CEO Macquline King to stay in the job until a new, fully elected school board is seated next January.

The end of Alma’s contract is another twist in the CEO search process, which began last spring and appeared to be coming to a close in the late fall, only to seemingly come to a halt. Former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez left the district in late June after he was fired without cause, and the district has not had a permanent CEO since.

Search firms generally remain involved until a pick for the role is announced and in some cases might help with negotiating a contract.

The statement, which praised Alma’s work with the board, claims mayoral appointees “sabotaged” the search process and the mayor and “his allies” have “started running political interference.”

After this story published, the Chicago Board of Education office said in a statement that Alma will work with the school board for the next 30 days to “ensure a seamless transition into finalist interviews,” then remain on retainer with the district for future executive-level searches. The statement described Alma offering “extensive support,” including screening more than 100 candidates, and said the board is “deeply grateful” for its work.

The statement, which said the application window for CEO candidates closed Feb. 6, did not provide an explanation for Alma’s exit.

But another elected school board who has repeatedly voted in agreement with that group of elected members said Thursday she still feels optimistic about the search. Jenni Custer said the board is on the cusp of selecting several finalists for the CEO role, though members haven’t decided how many and whether all of them will be named publicly.

“We have a lot of great candidates left in our pool,” she said. “We need to see this through before we say the process has been unsuccessful.”

Custer said that in her understanding, the board and Alma parted ways because of a mutual sense that the search firm’s work was done at this point: “Alma has taken us as far as they can, and now the ball is in our court.”

But Smith, one of the statement’s signatories, said he witnessed mayoral appointees “sideline” Alma when it recommended “best practices” for the search. Smith declined to offer more details about what exactly prompted Alma’s exit.

“Now that Alma has left, how can you trust this process? Who’s leading it?” Smith said.

The school board is currently 11 members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the 10 elected members.

Chicago Public Schools referred Chalkbeat to the Chicago Board of Education office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Board President Sean Harden and Monica Santana Rosen, the head of Alma did not respond to requests for comment.

After this story published, the mayor’s press office said in a statement that the allegation by these board members is “baseless and inaccurate.” The mayor’s office has not intervened in the CEO search or interviewed any candidates, the statement said.

The mayor’s office, in turn, accused board members of leaking names of candidates to the press — a matter that Harden hired a firm to investigate. It’s unclear where that investigation stands.

Each of the board members who signed Thursday’s statement had voted against hiring King as the interim CEO last year. And last fall, board members chose not to advance King as a finalist for the permanent CEO job before the process was halted when other finalist names were reported by Chalkbeat and the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ.

Later in November, school board members said they were “recalibrating” the search process. It’s unclear exactly where in the search the board is at or how close it is to choosing a candidate.

But during a board meeting Tuesday, Biggs and Smith publicly praised King’s leadership.

“I just wanted to take this time to just say thank you: Thank you for balancing the budget, thank you for visiting schools, thank you for inspiring confidence in our partners and thank you for being here and being a competent leader,” Smith said.

The board members’ calls to keep King are now in line with a broader call from the West Side NAACP and a coalition of Black-led groups, which want King to stay until at least a newly elected board is seated next year.

The question of the mayor’s role in selecting the district’s next leader has hung over the search, with some board members concerned that Johnson would exert control through his appointees. Smith said the board had at one point invited the mayor’s office to share what it wanted to see in the search process, but Johnson’s team said no.

The city’s mayors have traditionally hand-picked the district’s top leader, but there was an expectation that Johnson would play a more hands-off role amid the transition to a fully elected board.

Tensions on the board rose after the names of two finalists, New York City’s former top education official Meisha Ross Porter and current Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero, were leaked to the media late last year, disrupting the search.

The Thursday statement from board members noted “names of finalists have been leaked, progress has stalled, and major decisions have been put on hold” — and it blamed interference from the mayor’s office for these disruptions.

“By making it impossible for a professional firm to see this through, Mayor Johnson and his appointed board members have shown that they are either unwilling, unable, or uninterested in finding a qualified CEO/Superintendent to lead CPS into the future,” the statement said.

Custer said she hasn’t yet seen clear evidence that Johnson’s office is meddling in the process.

This story has been updated with comment from board member Che Smith, the mayor’s office and the Chicago Board of Education office.

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

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

Underfunding or mismanagement? Financial troubles at multiple Chicago charters spur a push for answers and solutions.

2026-02-11T17:21:23+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Jema Fabara knows what can happen when a charter school hits financial turbulence. She lost her teaching job when the Acero network’s Cruz campus closed last year.

Now Fabara, who is teaching at the ASPIRA charter network’s alternative high school, worries the same thing could happen again as that network struggles to make payroll and considers merging schools. This time, the turmoil could also affect her son, who is a senior at her school, and a nephew attending ASPIRA’s nearby Early College campus.

ASPIRA is one of a string of charters in the city that have floundered financially and in some cases moved to merge or close schools over the past year and a half. Two other charters asked Chicago Public Schools to front them money this winter just months after the district chipped in to help the South Side’s EPIC Academy High School finish out the school year before it closes this summer — and less than a year after the school board’s unprecedented decision to absorb five of seven Acero schools the network had slated for closure.

The district, which oversees most city charters, has flagged some of the struggling charters for financial issues for years and still renewed their contracts. CPS officials say they have taken numerous steps to tighten fiscal oversight in recent months, even as some charter critics say CPS should be doing more.

But in a confidential memo sent in October to interim CEO Macquline King and the school board and obtained by Chalkbeat, Alfonso Carmona, the district’s interim chief education officer, says charters face a widespread and systemic “crisis.”

Citywide enrollment losses have hit charter budgets hard, even as CPS has stepped in to heavily subsidize its own shrinking schools. Meanwhile, the district is withholding thousands of dollars per pupil from charters to chip in for CPS’ massive pension and debt service costs, forcing them to rely on increasingly uncertain funding sources, such as federal grants and fundraising, the October memo said. At the time, the district projected that six charter operators would end this fiscal year in the red.

In the memo, Carmona, who was overseeing the district’s charter schools, also voiced alarm about the school board’s decision to absorb the Acero campuses rather than letting them close — a precedent that created a “moral hazard,” he wrote.

“We are confronting a structural financial problem with the potential collapse of a significant portion of the charter sector, which now looks to the district as its financial backstop,” Carmona wrote.

About 50,000 students, or about a fifth of CPS’ enrollment, attend charters, which are publicly funded and privately managed — a student body that’s overwhelmingly Black or Latino and low-income. For Farbara’s family and others at charters, the financial issues have brought protracted uncertainty and even the specter of having to switch schools midyear.

Now, a new working group made up of school board members and charter and district leaders has started meeting to seek solutions, hard as they might be to come by for the budget deficit-plagued, shrinking district.

Does CPS fund charters equitably?

In recent months, charter leaders have blamed the sector’s budget struggles on chronic underfunding by CPS. The district is required by law to give charters at least 97% of the “per capita tuition charge,” a calculation the state sets that’s meant to ensure per student funding for charters is comparable to that for district-run schools. For the current school year, that 97% portion is about $19,740.

The district then charges a 3% fee to cover expenses related to overseeing the charters and withholds thousands of dollars for its long-term pension liabilities, short-term borrowing costs and — for charters in district-owned buildings — long-term debt related to facility spending. That brings the per-pupil amount down to $14,800 for charters in CPS-owned buildings and $17,600 for other schools, according to the district’s memo, which means the district is providing just 83% of the per capita tuition charge on average.

CPS officials say state and federal grants round out these funding amounts, and all schools — district-run and charter — should share in pension and debt costs the entire district is facing. The district is allowed to deduct these costs from charters under state law, notes Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

But charter leaders such as Serdar Kartal, the Illinois regional superintendent of Concept Schools, note that not all schools receive added grants at the same level; those tend to be increasingly uncertain and come with many strings attached.

Charter officials say it’s unfair to pass on massive pension and debt costs to charters, arguing that these costs exist because CPS leaders historically underfunded the district’s teacher pension fund and made bad borrowing calls without any input from charters.

“These are longstanding decisions that have created a structural deficit for CPS, and the gap should not be closed on the backs of charter students,” said Mike Madden, president of the Noble charter network.

For charters, other financial pressures also have ramped up recently. Even as the district shifted to a school funding model that guarantees core positions to all district-run schools regardless of size and takes into account their students’ needs, charters — where 87% of students live in poverty, compared with 69% in district-run schools — still get dollars largely based on enrollment.

For years, charter enrollment remained more stable than that at other district schools, but this fall, it dipped about 4.5% compared to 1.7% in CPS-run schools. Some charters felt budget pain — with none of the financial cushion CPS gives its own small schools.

The advocacy group Illinois Network of Charter Schools holds up the example of Noble’s Baker College Prep campus and the district-run Bowen, two high schools with fewer than 300 students that share a building on Chicago’s Far South Side. Baker got $15,800 per student this year; Bowen got $25,150, according to CPS data Chalkbeat reviewed.

Charter leaders say recent changes to the district’s GoCPS school choice site have made it harder to find charter options, and the district has held the line on enrollment caps in charter contracts even for thriving schools.

Carmona, who oversaw the district’s charter schools from 2022 to 2025, told Chalkbeat the end of COVID relief funds, a drop in philanthropic support for charters, the cost of maintaining aging buildings, and rising labor costs, particularly for charters that have unionized, have added to the pressures.

“What we’re seeing today is not even close to what we have seen in the past,” he said.

Should CPS watch charter finances more closely?

Some school board members and the Chicago Teachers Union have blamed at least some of the charter issues on poor financial management — and called on CPS to hold charter operators on a tighter fiscal leash.

The union points to EPIC, the South Side charter high school serving about 240 students, whose board of directors announced in September the school would close by the end of this school year. The union has said EPIC’s demise had a lot to do with an ill-conceived purchase and planned $22 million renovation of an old church building to house the school even as enrollment dropped for years.

EPIC has argued it needed the space to replace its crumbling building, and leaders hoped an attractive new campus would help arrest steep enrollment declines.

EPIC had gotten a clean bill of fiscal health on a financial scorecard CPS keeps and uses in deciding whether to renew charter contracts. But other charters that have reported money problems recently had shown signs of “living beyond their means” on that scorecard. In a letter to ASPIRA leadership late last year, CPS officials criticized the school for financial missteps and lack of transparency, including for budgeting based on unrealistic enrollment projections.

In recent years, CPS repeatedly determined that both Passages, a Far North Side elementary school serving about 380 students, and Urban Prep, which operates two small all-boys high schools, did not meet all standards for good financial health. The two schools were the latest to turn to CPS for help with cash flow issues this winter. The district, which itself resorts to short-term borrowing to make payroll and pay vendors, said that as of last month it has advanced $3.9 million to Urban Prep and ASPIRA. Carmona says he expects Passages and Urban Prep to “end the school year without any financial issues.”

Dennis Lacewell, Urban Prep’s chief academic officer, said the school has cut administrative positions, among other recent steps to strengthen its fiscal health. After a protracted legal battle, the school averted a CPS plan to shutter it and take over based on allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual misconduct the network vehemently denied. But Lacewell said its recent issues stemmed primarily from the federal government freezing a payment from a COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program the school was counting on.

ASPIRA board members and Passages did not respond to requests for comment.

Despite flagging their financial shortcomings, the district last May proposed renewing contracts for ASPIRA, Passages, and Urban Prep for two more school years, and the school board approved.

That was by design: Two-year renewals are a way to signal there are issues that must be fixed, and not doing that in time could mean closure, Carmona said.

As a condition of their latest contract renewals, CPS placed ASPIRA, Passages, and Urban Prep on financial remediation plans, which include submitting monthly cash flow statements to CPS.

Matthew Luskin, chief of staff at Chicago Teachers Union, said the district should consider asking for oversight of charter budgets in order to prevent midyear closures by catching “risky spending,” such as spending down their reserves.

CPS “can actually make the effort here to police this a little bit and get out ahead of these crises,” Luskin said.

At Chalkbeat’s request, Marlowe, the municipal finance expert, reviewed the district’s financial scorecards and characterized them as “the absolute bare minimum” and a “very retrospective” way of looking at a school’s finances.

While audits show how money was actually spent, they’re usually not available until nine to 18 months after the end of a fiscal year for public sector agencies, such as school districts or charters, Marlowe said. In order to get a more current picture, CPS could consider requiring monthly cash flow reports for all charter networks, not just those in financial remediation, or examining who they’re contracting with for certain services, Marlowe said.

Carmona said the district has tightened up financial oversight in several ways. That includes using actual enrollment figures from the previous school year rather than projections for the first quarter of payments for charters so they can budget better, requiring more reporting on charter debt obligations, and asking for more years of budget projections.

Meanwhile, some school board members and charter operators say they have been encouraged by the first two meetings of the new charter working group that school board President Sean Harden formed late last year.

Board member Ellen Rosenfeld said the group is focused on better cooperation between CPS and charters and on solutions, such as a request that the Illinois Network of Charter Schools start providing a “watch list” of schools that are struggling so the board isn’t caught off guard if some need help from CPS.

Fabara, the ASPIRA parent and teacher, says after months of fingerpointing, families are hungry for a proactive push for solutions that takes in their input and ideas.

Otherwise, she said, “You’ve already fallen off the boat, and you’re crying for help as you’re going down.”

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

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

State lawmakers introduce Chicago Teachers Union-backed bills to increase state education funding

2026-02-09T21:38:32+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A pair of Illinois state lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would significantly increase state education funding — an opening salvo in a push by the Chicago Teachers Union and other labor groups to boost money for schools during this spring’s legislative session amid intense financial pressures on the state.

The proposals, sponsored by state Sen. Graciela Guzmán and Rep. Will Davis, both Democrats, would require the state to fully fund its so-called evidence-based formula for schools by a 2027 deadline lawmakers set in 2017 — a goal the state is not on track to meet. It would also provide more funding for some school district services that the state mandates, such as transportation for students with disabilities and counseling.

The state has been increasing funding for K-12 schools by about $350 million a year, though it only chipped in $307 million more last year, for a total of $11.2 billion. To fully fund schools, advocates estimate the state would have to increase that amount to at least $550 million, but likely more than $1 billion, said Davis, who represents the south suburbs of Chicago.

At a Monday press conference, the lawmakers did not specify a source of the added funding, but they pointed to ongoing discussions about ways to raise progressive revenue. The teachers union has pressed for higher taxes for wealthy residents of the state. Supporters framed their proposal as a response to what they described as a Trump administration assault on public schools, including the dismantling of the federal Department of Education.

“At a moment when Donald Trump and his allies are attacking public education, this bill is a line in the sand,” said Guzmán, a former organizer for the CTU who represents a portion of Chicago’s Northwest Side.

To do everything the legislation introduced Monday requires in 2027, the state would have to spend an additional $3.9 billion a year, Ralph Martire, the executive director of the think tank Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, said in an interview. The center is proposing a package of tax measures that would raise revenue, including expanding the sales tax base to include consumer services and increasing the income tax rate while providing tax relief to low- and middle-income households. Those two measures alone would raise enough revenue to provide the additional education funding in the Lewis and Guzmán bills and to address the state’s massive structural deficit, Martire said.

However, the state also faces $4.4 billion of added costs down the road if it chooses to fully offset safety net cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Congress passed last year, the center has estimated.

The state has increased funding for Chicago Public Schools by about $1 billion in recent years, even as enrollment shrank dramatically. But the district remains about $1.6 billion short of what the state considers adequate funding. It received $1.9 billion from the state last year.

A 2024 report from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability found that because of inflation and flat K-12 funding in 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic, districts would not meet the state’s definition of adequate funding until 2034 if it continues to add $350 million each year — a forecast Martire now says is out of date.

Joining the CTU in backing the bill was the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, the union representing the district’s school leaders. Kia Banks, the principals union’s president, said tight funding in some schools has forced school leaders to delay hiring, freeze staff positions, and make other difficult decisions.

At Monday’s press conference, Samuel Thomas, a sign language interpreter for the Waukegan school district, stressed the proposal wouldn’t just help Chicago. He said his district scaled back its after-school programs and couldn’t renew some education apps this school year.

“We are asking Gov. Pritzker and lawmakers to fully fund our schools because our students can’t wait,” he said.

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

Chicago Public Schools 2026-27 and 2027-28 calendars are on hold

2026-01-28T16:06:15+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board has sent district officials back to the drawing board on the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school calendars members were poised to approve this week.

Some board members questioned earlier this month whether the district could wrap up the first semester before winter break, so high school students would not have to do end-of-semester testing after the holidays. They argued that worrying about tests during the break and taking them after two weeks away from the classroom isn’t great for students’ mental well-being or academic achievement.

“The No. 1 concern I hear from students is about mental health, and having a break as an opportunity for resetting, recovering, and spending time with their families is really important,” said board member Anusha Thotakura at a recent meeting to review the board’s January agenda. “If you have testing for second quarter after winter break, students won’t have that opportunity to reset, relax, and come into the new year energized.”

District officials said at the time that ending the school year’s second quarter before winter break would be impossible without an unusually early start to the year. But they agreed to conduct a follow-up survey of students, parents, and staff to gather feedback about potentially revising the calendar. The deadline to complete that survey was Tuesday at noon, roughly two days before this week’s meeting.

“Given how close the survey deadline was to the Thursday Board meeting, it is not on the agenda for January 29th to account for the District to have a reasonable period to process results, and then for the Board to consider those results before casting a vote,” the school board office said in a statement Tuesday.

Under the calendar unveiled earlier this month, the 2026-27 school year would start on Aug. 24 and end June 11. CPS parents have perennially called on the district to firm up the calendar well in advance, and officials at the agenda review meeting two weeks ago had celebrated bringing it to a vote earlier than in previous years.

The district had surveyed students, parents, and employees during the fall, garnering more than 14,000 responses. Significant majorities told the district that they wanted calendars for the next two years this winter as well as fairly consistent summer breaks. Only 10% said they wanted the school year to start more than two weeks before Labor Day.

Nicole Milberg, the district’s chief of teaching and learning, told members that the district was able to wrap up the first semester before winter break this school year because Labor Day fell relatively early on the calendar and because CPS leaders opted for a second semester significantly longer than the first one. But this coming school year, because of a later Sept. 7 Labor Day, starting two weeks before the holiday means students will have three additional weeks after winter break to wrap up the semester.

The district looked into eliminating the full week off for Thanksgiving and moving more professional development days for educators to the second semester, said Milberg, who is herself a CPS high school parent. But a pre-winter break end to a semester that meets state seat time requirements still wasn’t possible without starting school well before Labor Day.

“We do absolutely know and understand the challenges we are presenting,” Milberg said. “There is no perfect calendar.”

But a number of school members nevertheless pressed the district on the timing. Some said a semester end before winter break could help get seniors’ grades to colleges where they apply sooner — and would align with the City Colleges of Chicago semester for those who take dual enrollment classes there.

And when it came to end-of-semester testing, board member Ellen Rosenfeld said, “Quite frankly, the retention they might have after two weeks of break is not the same.”

Thotakura asked the district to conduct a follow-up survey, clearly asking respondents if they would be OK with starting school more than two weeks before Labor Day if it means ending the semester before winter break.

“I don’t think that 10% reflects how many people would be happy to cut their summer a little short if that means the second quarter can end before break,” she said.

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

New enrollment analysis flags shrinking portion of Chicago children who go to Chicago Public Schools

2026-01-20T19:28:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Through years of steady pre-COVID enrollment losses in Chicago Public Schools, one thing stayed consistent: Roughly 75% of school-aged children in the city attended the district.

In recent years, though, that “market share” has slipped — a key takeaway of a new report on CPS enrollment by the advocacy group Kids First Chicago released Tuesday. The analysis using U.S. Census data says the loss is small but significant — a dip of more than 4 percentage points since 2018 that accounts for 18,000 fewer students.

Until recently, the portion of school-aged children served by CPS’ district-run and charter schools remained consistent through the mass school closures of 2013, financial troubles, and teacher strikes. Now, it’s slipped closer to 71%.

“There are actually fewer families choosing to send their kids to CPS,” said Hal Woods, the chief of policy at Kids First. He added, pointing to the growing number of students with disabilities the district serves, “Even as CPS is losing students, the needs of the existing students are going up.”

After two years in which migrant student arrivals stabilized the district’s enrollment, CPS resumed losing students this past fall. It enrolled about 9,000 fewer students compared with last year. Overall, the district has lost more than 70,000 students during the past decade, and a growing number of severely underenrolled schools are a major challenge facing it. The district, which slipped to fourth-largest nationally during the pandemic, now serves about 316,200 students.

As the Kids First report noted, these losses have been driven largely by demographic trends outside the district’s control: In fewer than 20 years, the number of babies born in Chicago has been nearly halved. Sharply declining birth rates mean that the deficit-plagued district is poised to continue wrestling with shrinking enrollment.

Meanwhile, most students who left CPS in recent years have done so because their families moved out of Chicago, district data suggests.

The erosion of CPS’ market share preceded the pandemic, but picked up during COVID, with some families opting for private schools and homeschooling during an extended remote learning stretch. Not all of them came back. Private schools now serve a greater share of school-aged children, maintaining a relatively steady enrollment as the number of children shrank.

The portion of school-aged children who are not enrolled in school — including homeschooled students, dropouts, and others — also grew, based on the Kids First analysis of Census data.

The report also noted enrollment declines have been largest on the city’s South and West sides, while student numbers held steady in more affluent North Side and central areas. Parts of the city hardest hit by enrollment loss are home to a growing number of small schools — including high schools serving fewer than 200 students — where students tend to have more limited course and extracurricular offerings.

The per-student costs at some of these tiny schools are eye-popping. But their budgets are barely a rounding error in the district’s overall $10.2 billion budget, Woods noted, though the costs of maintaining their often massive, aging buildings are mounting.

Still, Woods said, “The notion that school consolidations or rightsizing is a panacea for the district’s financial problems is erroneous.” He added, “We see this data as an impetus to talk about what the student experience is like in these low-enrollment schools.”

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

Chicago Public Schools to borrow more as it faces property tax revenue delays

2026-01-15T19:53:49+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board is poised to increase the amount the district is borrowing to make payroll amid delays in receiving property tax revenue.

The board is expected to boost that amount by $400 million, to $1.65 billion — a change that district officials estimate will set the deficit-plagued Chicago Public Schools back about $6.6 million in added short-term borrowing costs.

District officials told the board this week they estimate that delays in receiving property tax revenue from Cook County have cost the district more than $70 million over the past eight years. This school year, they are costing CPS about $220,000 in interest costs a month — “a lot of money and definitely more than the cost of one teacher,” as school board member Carlos Rivas put it at a Wednesday meeting to review the board’s monthly agenda.

“All of these delays cumulatively have really been a pain point for us,” said Wally Stock, the district’s acting chief financial officer.

In recent years, the delays have been caused by massive issues with the county’s efforts to update its computer system. The board will vote on the midyear increase in its short-term borrowing, which allows the district to keep paying its staff and vendors, at its regular meeting in late January.

After the latest round of property tax delays, county tax bills went out in November, with a due date in mid-December. The district is in the process of receiving its revenue, almost eight months into the fiscal year, Stock told the board.

“I am optimistic and hopeful that with the new computer system, they will get back on the rails and get the bills out on time,” he said. But he added, “It’s hard to say.”

Cook County is helping some smaller suburban taxing districts weather the delays with a bridge loan program, but CPS does not qualify. Still, Rivas and other members suggested CPS officials should speak with county officials about the possibility of chipping in for the district’s swelling borrowing costs. Rivas said he worries the district will find itself once again navigating property tax revenue delays later this year.

“We need to keep putting pressure on our county folks to help us out,” he said.

Some fiscal experts have said that CPS should build up the kind of cash reserve that school districts with healthy finances set aside to weather unforeseen expenses or revenue delays without having to borrow in the short term. The district also has hefty long-term debt related to maintaining its portfolio of aging buildings, and the costs of servicing it are a significant drain on its budget.

At a special meeting during the district’s winter recess, the board approved a modest property tax levy increase by a 15-to-5 vote, with board members arguing that CPS should tap any possible influx of dollars at a time of increasingly tight finances and looming deficits. That increase, which will cost the owner of a $250,000 home an additional $8 a year, will bring in an extra $40 million for CPS this fiscal year. It bumped up the levy amount to the maximum the district can set, which officials had slightly underestimated when they determined it back in the summer.

A Cook County spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on the board members’ interest in redress for the added borrowing costs because that has not been communicated to the county. But she noted that as of earlier this week, nearly all taxing districts in the county have received 80% of their property tax distributions, and the remainder are being processed.

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

Chicago study: High school attendance makes a big difference

2026-01-13T08:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Middle and high school attendance still matters enormously post-COVID, and schools can do a lot to improve it, according to a new report from the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research.

In Chicago and across the country, student absenteeism surged during the pandemic. In Chicago Public Schools, the increase has been especially significant and unabated in the high school grades, where a 2025 Chalkbeat and WBEZ investigation showed a quarter of students missed 35 or more days the previous year. Nevertheless, the graduation rate has continued to inch up in the district, where leaders say CPS has rightfully moved away from penalizing students for missing school and instead gives them more opportunities to make up work or submit assignments virtually.

But the Consortium on School Research study released Tuesday found absenteeism has a clear impact on learning: The more school days students missed, the lower their test scores and grades. And, even as the authors acknowledge that many factors outside schools’ control affect attendance, they stress that schools can make a big difference. Campuses with similar student demographics and in similar neighborhoods have had markedly different post-pandemic attendance, the report notes.

At schools that maintained strong attendance, students reported feeling safer, more connected to their teachers and peers, and more challenged and engaged in their classes, the study found.

“Post-pandemic, we were hearing all these questions: Does attendance matter as much any more? And can schools really do anything about it?” said Elaine Allensworth, one of the report’s authors. “All the studies we do suggest that attendance is still vitally important at all grade levels.”

Next, Allensworth and her fellow researchers plan to dig deeper into the practices that help schools improve attendance despite serving high-needs student bodies.

The report compared attendance and other metrics during three pre-pandemic and three post-COVID schools years through 2023-24. It found chronic absenteeism rose dramatically across all grades, by 20 percentage points overall. Students are considered chronically absent when they miss 10% or more days in a school year.

Last school year, 40% of the district’s students were chronically absent, CPS data shows.

More widespread absences took a toll. In fact, the study suggests that attendance had an even stronger impact on test scores and grades than it did before the pandemic.

At the same time, the researchers noted that grades post-COVID were higher both for students with high attendance and for those who miss a lot of school — a development they said calls for further study. For instance, sixth graders who were absent 10% of the time had an average GPA of 2.9 before COVID and 3.2 in the more recent years. Possible explanations the study offers are changes in grading practices and standards, or technology use that enables students to complete assignments even when missing class.

These findings echo those of Chalkbeat and WBEZ’s recent series, which found a districtwide push to give students more grace that intensified during the pandemic and more lenient grading scales at some high schools. In response to that reporting, former CEO Pedro Martinez told Chalkbeat that while he was greatly concerned about absenteeism in the early grades, he was less worried about high school absence, where he said students are eager to use technology to give them more flexibility.

But Allensworth said being in school still matters, noting previous research linking high school attendance to college going and performance.

“The more students are in class, the stronger their learning gains and their later outcomes,” she said.

In a statement in response to the study, the district said attendance at all grade levels is a key focus. It pointed to school-level work to closely monitor student data so teachers and staff can intervene promptly if attendance or other metrics start lagging. It also noted stepped-up outreach to families and efforts to increase participation in after-school and other enrichment programs, which has been shown to improve attendance.

The University of Chicago research affirms the district’s “commitment to creating schools where every student feels seen, safe, and connected,” the statement said.

The study notes schools alone are “neither the cause nor the solution to increases in chronic absenteeism rates,” noting that neighborhood safety, transportation options, and economic instability affect attendance. But schools have considerable power to boost attendance, and in fact the study found a school’s neighborhood did not appear to be a major factor in the COVID-era absenteeism increases. As previous research has suggested, school climate was key — even more so post-pandemic.

The researchers looked at the connection between attendance and schools’ scores on 5Essentials, a student and staff survey designed by the University of Chicago. One influential factor that stood out to Allensworth was the strength of the relationships between teachers and parents. Studies have suggested that those relationships are really important for attendance at the elementary level, but Allensworth was surprised to see the key role they appeared to play in high schools as well.

“It’s much harder for some students to get to school every day than for others — we have to acknowledge that,” she said. “But you can’t just say there’s nothing we can do about it. If you don’t do anything, the students who have the most barriers will be the ones who will miss the most school.”

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

Chicago Public Schools unveils calendars for the coming two school years

2026-01-12T19:20:43+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools is looking to start the 2026-27 school year on Aug. 24 and wrap it up on June 11, based on a proposed calendar the district unveiled Monday.

A tentative calendar for the following school year is also out, with an Aug. 23 start date and June 9 end date.

As in the current school year, both calendars include 176 student attendance days, four professional development days, four Teacher Institute days, four school improvement days, and two parent-teacher conference days. Also in line with this year’s calendar, students and staff will be off for the entire week of Thanksgiving. They will get a two-week winter recess and a week off for spring break in late March.

The school board will review the calendars at a meeting this week and is expected to approve them at its regular meeting Jan. 29.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s most recent contract approved last week increased the number of teacher-led professional development days from three to six and decreased those directed by principals from nine to six.

Under the proposed calendar, the pre-K school year will once again start a day after the year for older students and will end a day earlier.

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

Report: Sexual misconduct, abuse widespread on campus where former dean sentenced to 22 years worked

2026-01-07T15:34:14+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A culture of rampant sexual misconduct and assault at a Little Village high school complex went far beyond the case of a former dean sentenced to 22 years in prison last year, according to the annual report by Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog.

In December, the school board approved a record $17.5 million settlement to a former student abused by Brian Crowder, the former dean at Greater Lawndale High School for Social Justice, who was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault and other charges. But the report by the CPS Office of the Inspector General released Wednesday said seven other former teachers, administrators, and staff at that school and at one of three campuses sharing a building with it also engaged in inappropriate behavior toward students and recent graduates during the 2010s.

These issues were first reported by NBC5 Chicago last year, which identified the second school as Infinity Math, Science, and Technology High School and named two educators involved.

The watchdog report, which was pending at the time, has since found employees groomed students for sexual relationships in person and via social media, and sometimes pursued them as soon as they graduated. One teacher, who also ran a legal aid clinic on the shared campus, presented himself as a protector of girls and women — only to make overtures to numerous former students months after they graduated and have sex with at least four of them, the watchdog found.

According to the report, these issues were so widespread that staff at the inspector general’s office spoke with one former student who had faced advances from three teachers: one during her junior year, one in her senior year, and one soon after she graduated.

“Our investigations revealed a culture at the time where professional boundaries between staff members and students were blurred,” said Philip Wagenknecht, the inspector general. “It was not unusual for staff to message students on social media, gossip with them, and treat them like friends rather than students. This could have been seen as normal and may have made it easier for bad actors to go unnoticed.”

In response to the investigation’s findings, the district extended its existing prohibition on social media and other nonacademic interactions with students to include former students during the year after they graduate or leave a school. The district also provided additional training to all staff at Little Village Lawndale High School campus.

All of the investigated employees had either already left the district or resigned amid the inquiries. The district placed a ban on rehiring them in their personnel files and — for those licensed by the state of Illinois — reported them to the state.

In a statement, the district said it is “committed to preventing, identifying, and responding to any form of abuse, misconduct, or exploitation within the community” and provides ongoing training to all employees and vendors on preventing and reporting misconduct.

The cases at these two schools were among 335 the inspector general’s Sexual Allegations Unit closed in fiscal year 2025, issuing 55 reports substantiating misconduct. The unit also opened 246 new cases during that year.

The bulk of the abuse and misconduct at Little Village Lawndale described in the report took place before 2018, when CPS tightened its rules and oversight following a 2018 Chicago Tribune series on unchecked sexual abuse in the district; those changes included the ban on social media contact with students and the launch of the sexual allegations unit. In some cases, former students interviewed by the office spoke up about troubling experiences with teachers and staff that classmates had shared with them years ago.

“The victims and witnesses who made the initial reports or who agreed to participate in the resulting investigations exhibited enormous bravery and potentially prevented more students from being victimized,” the report said.

According to the report, Crowder started grooming the student when she was a sophomore at the school and and started sexually assaulting her when she was 15 or 16. He posed as her stepfather to help her obtain two abortions, the report noted. It also said Crowder and the student continued having sex after she graduated. She went to the police when the former dean sent her threatening messages about a new relationship she had started.

The watchdog also found that a former teacher and coach at Greater Lawndale High School for Social Justice school groomed a 17-year-old student, exchanged more than 18,000 text messages with her, and kissed her, though the former student declined to say whether they had other physical contact. The Illinois grooming law only applies to children aged 16 or younger, and the watchdog could not find evidence of a criminal offense.

At Infinity High School, a teacher styled himself as a champion of female students, spoke about rescuing girls from abusive relationships, and launched a legal clinic at the school, leading some students to confide in him about past sexual trauma and other issues, according to the report. But shortly after more than a dozen students graduated, he reached out to them on social media, the watchdog found. His messages quickly turned sexual, including describing his sexual preferences and sending nude photos, the report said.

The watchdog’s report said the teacher had sex with at least four recent graduates. Watchdog staff found evidence of inappropriate behavior with at least one of the recent graduates while she was still a student. He told watchdog staff that he believed the encounters were “entirely appropriate” because the district had never told him not to pursue them. He was suspended and eventually resigned during the investigation and shut down his legal clinic.

Some of the former students filed police reports against the teacher, but the Chicago Police Department ultimately found that his behavior was not criminal because the recent graduates were at least 18. In Illinois, the age of consent is 17, or 18 when people in a position of authority are involved.

Watchdog staff also found an administrator at that school pursued and had sex with a former student shortly after graduation, even though her parent had confided in him that she was vulnerable. Several former students also complained to the watchdog about other inappropriate behavior while they were still at the school. Watchdog staff found multiple employees at the school had learned of concerns about the administrator but failed to report them.

That former administrator also resigned from CPS during the investigation and got a job at another Illinois district, falsely certifying that he had never been the focus of a sexual misconduct inquiry, according to the report.

The inspector general’s reports do not customarily identify employees who engage in misconduct or the schools where they work.

The report says misconduct at the two schools peaked in 2015 and 2016, saying “a general lack of boundaries” on campus enabled the abuse. One of the former employees who was investigated told watchdog staff that this permissive culture meant he “found himself engaging with students like a peer or a friend rather than an authority figure.”

This story has been updated to clarify some language.

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

Chicago Public Schools inspector general’s report outlines fraud by district employees

2026-01-07T12:45:44+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools has to repay more than $1 million in federal dollars after its in-house watchdog uncovered fraud involving a staffer who had inflated student enrollment numbers in a federally funded program for years.

That’s one of the fraud cases outlined in the annual report from the Chicago Public Schools Office of the Inspector General for fiscal year 2025, including some involving federal COVID assistance programs. The report, out Wednesday, also noted that the district last year stopped using a family income form after the watchdog previously found numerous teachers and administrators who are also district parents misreported their income on it, making their children eligible for fee waivers and other benefits.

Philip Wagenknecht, the district’s inspector general, said the case of the program manager who overstated enrollment numbers stands out because his office had previously flagged her and recommended discipline and stricter oversight. Fox News previously reported that the district agreed to repay federal funds from the Indian Education Formula Grant, meant for Native American students.

“With respect to fraud and financial mismanagement, this was arguably the most egregious conduct covered in the annual report,” Wagenknecht said. “It wasn’t a clerical mistake or an accident.”

In November, the inspector general also released a special report on district travel expenses, which ballooned following the influx of federal pandemic relief dollars. Some, such as a series of overseas staff development trips that included a hot air balloon ride and wildlife safaris, were costly and of questionable value, that report said.

The program manager who the watchdog says repeatedly falsified federal grant applications had been the focus of an earlier investigation in which the inspector general’s office uncovered similar issues. In 2021, the office had recommended discipline for the program manager and her supervisor, and urged the district to increase oversight of that program. Back then, the inspector general’s office found a longstanding practice of overstating the number of students enrolled in the program, which the report does not identify.

The district did not discipline the employees at the time, but added an extra layer of oversight. Nevertheless, last fiscal year the watchdog found the program manager had continued to submit inflated program enrollment numbers. For example, the district’s 2024-25 program application listed 275 enrolled students, but the watchdog found records for fewer than 100, many of them incomplete.

The district has fired that employee and placed a ban on rehiring her in her personnel file, according to the report. It also agreed to repay almost $1.2 million to the U.S. Department of Education by the fall of 2026.

In another case outlined in Wednesday’s report, a Chicago principal got two loans worth more than $41,000 through the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program, which were later forgiven. According to the report, she claimed to be a struggling self-employed property manager, even as she made more than $140,000 in her school leader post. That principal was also the focus of a separate inspector general investigation that found she was absent from her school job for long stretches without explanation and generally neglected her duties as principal.

She told watchdog staff that she had no outside employment and that the information she submitted to obtain the loans and have them forgiven was false. The school board moved to dismiss that principal and place a ban on rehiring her.

The district watchdog does not customarily identify staffers or the schools that employed them.

The latest inspector general’s report also outlines the case of Brian Metcalf, a former CPS principal and network chief who in late 2023 was indicted on several counts of wire fraud related to a scheme to defraud an Indiana charter school network he oversaw. The CPS watchdog found that before he left the district in 2018, he also engaged in a phony billing scheme with a vendor named Kimberly Maddox that defrauded CPS of at least $88,500.

Maddox and another Metcalf co-conspirator were also indicted. Metcalf reached a plea agreement that involved paying restitution to CPS and the charter. He also admitted that he and his co-conspirators defrauded two post-CPS employers of more than $1 million.

CPS said in a statement that it’s taking the findings of the latest watchdog report seriously.

“As a district of more than 40,000 employees serving over 315,000 students, CPS remains dedicated to providing proactive, comprehensive training for employees and vendors, enforcing all policies, rules, and laws, and taking appropriate action, including implementing appropriate discipline when required, in accordance with the highest ethical standards,” the district’s statement said.

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

Unspent money, turnover, and tension: Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools provide lessons for future

2025-12-19T23:25:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

When Anna Vilchez became principal at Steinmetz College Prep four years ago, she had to quickly turn to an unexpected crisis.

Since 2018, the high school on Chicago’s Northwest Side had teamed up with the nonprofit Northwest Center as part of Sustainable Community Schools, a partnership between the school district and its teachers union. High-needs campuses and partner nonprofits receive about $500,000 a year to expand family outreach, wraparound student services, and after-school programs.

But as Vilchez took over, Steinmetz and Northwest Center were poised to part ways. Their visions for the program were at odds. Meanwhile, the nonprofit struggled to spend the money it received through the initiative. Vilchez set out to salvage the partnership.

As Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union gear up to expand the program from 20 to 70 schools in the next two years, their leaders say the initiative has been a boon to high-poverty campuses. It has allowed them to enlist key support staff, offer more programs, and give their communities more of a voice in school decisions.

Chicago is expanding its Sustainable Community Schools. They haven’t yet boosted student outcomes.

But a Chalkbeat analysis of program spending showed schools and especially their community partners have left more than $6.6 million on the table since 2018. The initiative has also faced leadership and staff turnover, and tensions between schools and their nonprofit partner, which — along with the pandemic’s disruption to its rollout — could help explain why the model hasn’t yet given the 20 pilot schools an edge in improving student outcomes, as a Chalkbeat analysis of academic and school climate metrics found.

Clear goals and firm leadership are key to realizing the promise of the community school model, said William Corrin, an expert at the think tank MDRC.

“For Chicago, this juncture seems really critical,” he said. “We’re about to create more community schools. So what could we do to set ourselves up to do it better?”

‘There was no blueprint’ for Chicago’s community schools

Steinmetz, in a grand building in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, was exactly the kind of school the district and union were looking for when they negotiated a 20-campus Sustainable Community Schools pilot that started in 2018. A neighborhood campus that serves predominantly low-income Latino students, including many English learners, the school was also already a community hub, with a health clinic and a Parent University.

Deja Kirk, a senior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, sings in the school’s recording studio on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. The space is used by students in the music program to create and record original work as part of the school’s STEAM initiatives.

Steinmetz teamed up with local nonprofit Northwest Center for its successful bid to join the program. Then COVID hit, disrupting the rollout.

Here, as on other campuses, turnover and some resistance from educators and staff have been key hurdles. Jesse Livingston, the resource coordinator with Northwest Center (formerly the Northwest Side Housing Center), said teachers have seen programs and reform efforts come and go over the years, leaving them skeptical that this latest initiative would last. Some have also balked at the idea of engaging students, parents, and the nonprofit in more school decisions.

“Our biggest challenge has been adult buy-in,” he said. “Every school community wants to function as a village, but there’s conflict and a clique mentality and old gunky energy.”

Earlier on, the school and the nonprofit also didn’t see eye to eye on what the program should accomplish and struggled to understand how the other did business.

Angel Gonzalez, at the time the school’s program coordinator who also had experience working at a nonprofit, tried to mediate. Lack of guidance and training were big issues, he said.

“There was no blueprint,” Gonzalez said. “You just had to figure it out as you went along.”

Money for community schools initiative left on the table

Northwest Center, like other community partners in the program, receives about half of the $500,000 allocated to Steinmetz. But records obtained by Chalkbeat show the nonprofit, and others in the program, are not spending all the money.

Livingston said unfilled positions and midyear turnover as well as the district’s cumbersome reimbursement process for vendors have been key challenges.

“We’ve gotten better every year,” he said. Data show the nonprofit left more than $142,000 unspent in the first year working at Steinmetz, while last year, they used all but $45,000.

Chalkbeat found money went unspent at many of the other 20 schools, though last year they came closer to using all of it. At Beidler Elementary, the school and its partner, Blocks Together, have failed to spend more than 45% of their overall SCS funding so far, which the district attributed to “operational challenges rather than a lack of need.”

The union in its last round of contract negotiations won a provision allowing schools to carry over up to $300,000 in unspent SCS dollars to the next year.

Spending and staffing data Chalkbeat obtained shows in more recent years, campuses in the program used the money to pay for relatively few staffers. Some principals said rising salary and benefit costs have meant the dollars don’t stretch nearly as much as they did in 2018. The district did not provide data on school staff hired by partner nonprofits.

Across the city from Steinmetz, Farragut High School on the Southwest Side used Sustainable Community Schools money to pay for valuable positions, including a college and career coordinator and a youth intervention specialist, principal Virag Nanavati said.

But even as the school dipped into non-SCS funds to pay for these staffers, its partner, Enlace Chicago, left more than $75,000 unspent the year before Nanavati started alone. At the time, that meant the money stayed with the district instead of flowing to the school.

Nanavati says the nonprofit struggled to staff after-school programs and ran some that were poorly attended. The nonprofit also hired a resource coordinator, an assistant to the resource coordinator, and two counselors, even as the school had to cut staff because of budget woes. Enlace did not respond to a request for comment.

The school and Enlace worked to rethink the spending, Nanavati said, pitching in for holiday celebrations that have brought in prospective families and other residents. Farragut also expanded its after-school offerings, offered attendance incentives, and launched a credit recovery program during the school day — initiatives he credits with a dramatic increase in the school’s graduation rate this year.

“Your lead partner needs to understand that it’s not their money,” he said he told a principal at one of the 16 schools joining the program this fall. “It’s money to serve students that they help manage.”

Overcoming tensions to honor the community schools model

In the weeks after she started at Steinmetz, Vilchez spent an entire day with staff at Northwest Center, talking about how to work better together and avert the looming breakup.

Vilchez says the partnership with Northwest Center is strong now. The nonprofit oversees the school’s Parent University classes, from yoga to financial literacy to suicide prevention, as well as student after-school programs. It also connects families with key resources, including foreclosure prevention, workshops for first-time home buyers, and help enrolling in public benefits.

District officials say they are trying to better prepare schools and partners to work together as 16 new campuses transition into it this school year. The district has spelled out clearer staffing and spending expectations, and provided more training to both schools and nonprofit staff, said Autumn Berg, the district’s community schools initiative director.

“There’s always going to be struggle in partnerships,” she said. “It’s a lot like being married. You have to figure out how to work together. You have to figure out how to communicate.”

Galadryel Arroyo, a senior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, is pictured on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. She is a member of the school’s mural club, which is part of its STEAM programming.

Vilchez says the program is paying off at Steinmetz. The school’s restorative justice work powered by Sustainable Community Schools led to a reduction in more serious student misconduct and suspensions. The say in decisions the model gave students and parents boosted a sense of connectedness to school. This fall, a districtwide student survey captured that greater sense of belonging, she said.

But there is still a lot to do, particularly in improving student outcomes. Vilchez said she welcomes the greater focus from the district on how the program is affecting academic and other metrics.

“I just hope that they honor what the SCS model is about — giving schools autonomy and flexibility to meet the needs of that specific community,” she said.

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

Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools are growing. But few outperform neighboring schools.

2025-12-19T23:25:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Principal Anna Vilchez takes pride in how much Steinmetz College Prep has to offer:

More than a dozen student-led after-school programs, from photography to DJing. A 3D printer-equipped engineering lab. Some 30 classes each month through its Parent University.

These offerings are paid for through Chicago Public Schools’ Sustainable Community Schools initiative, a joint effort by the district and its teachers union that has given high-poverty schools about $500,000 annually to team up with community nonprofits to provide wraparound support.

Vilchez is grateful for the boost. But she also wants to see more gains in the school’s attendance, graduation rate, and test scores — growth similar community school programs have powered in other cities.

Unspent money, turnover, and tension: Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools provide lessons for future

A Chalkbeat analysis of student outcomes at the 20 schools in the program since 2018 suggests the investments have not yet led to widespread improvement in how likely students are to attend school regularly, graduate from high school, or pass key reading and math tests. This is partly due to the pandemic’s disruption to the rollout, but also a lack of clear goals and guidelines, tensions between schools and their nonprofit partners, and money left unspent, Chalkbeat found.

Nevertheless, Chicago Public Schools is more than tripling the number of Sustainable Community Schools to 70 by 2027. The expansion will cost $35 million annually — a major investment at a time when the district is wrestling with budget deficits.

Supporters, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, say the initiative transforms some of the city’s most disinvested campuses into service-rich neighborhood hubs, bringing needed programs and support staff often seen as givens at higher-income schools.

“Schools are successful when every single child has everything that they need,” Johnson said last summer when he announced 16 additional campuses joining the program. “The success of a school is not just based on student outcomes.”

But critics say the district should have ensured the model is delivering measurable results before enshrining the expansion into its latest teachers contract.

District officials say they are spelling out clearer expectations and giving more guidance to schools, especially the 16 schools joining the initiative this school year.

“We’ve learned that giving schools money and partnering them [with nonprofits] does not give them the foundation of how to actually transform their school,” said Autumn Berg, the district’s community schools initiative director. “It took us a long time to get there.”

On traditional metrics, Sustainable Community Schools do not outperform

Before Steinmetz became a Sustainable Community School in 2018, the campus — which serves predominantly low-income Latino students — had few enrichment programs. And it never consistently gave students and parents a say in what it offered.

That changed with the program, which now funds a range of after-school activities, including an after-school K-pop dance club founded by junior Miguel Hernandez.

Hernandez, who came to the school as a freshman English learner, is now taking college-level arts classes at Columbia College.

He credits much of his growth to the club.

“I created a great bond with a lot of people,” he said.

Miguel Hernandez, a junior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, practices a dance routine on the school’s auditorium stage on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. Hernandez founded the school’s K-pop dance club and is now taking dual-enrollment dance classes at Columbia College Chicago.

Hernandez’ experience reflects a community school promise: Engaging programs created with input from families give students a reason to go to school and do better in their classes. But the model hasn’t yet given most Sustainable Community Schools an edge in attendance and achievement.

Chalkbeat compared student metrics over time at the 20 pilot schools to those at 29 campuses that applied to the program but didn’t get in, which have an almost identical average poverty rate to the pilot group and also serve almost exclusively Black and Latino students. The analysis also looked at about 300 campuses with poverty rates of at least 80%, the minimum required to apply to the program.

Student outcomes shifted similarly in all three groups since 2018, with the SCS schools seemingly getting little academic boost from the program’s investments. Absenteeism shot up comparably during the pandemic and has remained well above pre-COVID levels, with Sustainable Community Schools struggling slightly more than other high-needs schools.

A district analysis last school year obtained by Chalkbeat did find that among students who regularly attend after-school programs at the 20 Sustainable Community Schools, chronic absenteeism was 13 percentage points lower than for their peers in the same school.

The pilot schools have also had consistently higher graduation rates than the campuses that didn’t get into the program. But over time, those campuses improved slightly more and narrowed the gap.

When it comes to test scores, all three groups saw the same trends on the SAT and the Illinois elementary proficiency test.

The Sustainable Community Schools have seen marked reduction in suspensions and, after a COVID-era uptick, in behavioral incidents. But so did other high-poverty schools.

On a University of Chicago-designed student and staff survey called 5Essentials, measures of school connectedness and climate have declined districtwide post-COVID. But the 20 pilot schools experienced a steeper drop than other high-needs schools, with almost half getting a rating of weak or very weak in the most recent year for which data was available.

And even as program supporters have held it up as a possible antidote to declining enrollment, the 20 Sustainable Community Schools have lost more than a fifth of their enrollment since 2018, while districtwide enrollment dipped about 11%.

Students move between classes at Steinmetz College Prep High School in Chicago on Dec. 9, 2025. The school is expanding its STEAM curriculum as part of the district’s Sustainable Community Schools program.

At Steinmetz, absenteeism, academic outcomes, and enrollment largely followed these pilot groups trends, with a sharper drop in suspensions than other high-poverty campuses.

In recent years, the community schools model has gained traction nationally, though the Trump administration recently cut some community schools grants.

Research has shown well-implemented programs can yield measurable student gains. Isaac Opper, a University of California, Los Angeles and RAND School of Public Policy expert who helped evaluate New York City’s community schools program implemented before the pandemic, said that several years in, that initiative had produced attendance gains, graduation rate increases, and modest but notable test score improvements.

“If you are seeing no difference, one story is that Sustainable Community Schools isn’t working,” Opper said. “Another is that it is working, but so are other things the district is doing.”

But there are outliers. Several schools in Chicago’s initiative have seen student outcomes markedly improve and enrollment stabilize. What they appear to have in common: consistent leadership through the seven years of the program, teacher and staff buy-in, and a clear vision for how to make the most of the added dollars.

At Richards High School on the Southwest Side, enrollment is up, graduation rate increases are outpacing the district’s, and absenteeism, though still high, has dipped below pre-pandemic levels. Metcalfe Elementary on the Far South Side saw improvements in test scores and attendance. Its 5Essentials rating rose to the highest possible.

Metcalfe Principal Stephen Fabiyi says the program has helped support smaller class sizes in the early grades and a robust, well-attended after-school program that blends enrichment and academic help from the school’s teachers. Getting family input on programs and curricula boosted engagement.

“My kids would have a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful in school without Sustainable Community Schools,” Fabiyi said.

With Sustainable Community Schools expansion, a promise of more accountability

Monique Redeaux-Smith, a former CPS teacher who now works at the Illinois Federation of Teachers and co-chairs the district’s Sustainable Community Schools task force, says that at these high-needs schools with histories of disinvestment, the program is “trying to rebuild after a series of hurricanes.”

“I’m not worried about not seeing outcomes,” she said. “I know from having conversations and from seeing and talking to these schools and school stakeholders often that it is making a difference in the experience that young people are having every day.”

The model just needs more time, Redeaux-Smith said.

Mayor Johnson echoes that sentiment. When pressed about the program’s outcomes, he has brushed aside critics, arguing metrics like test scores have been historically abused to justify disinvestment in neighborhood schools and even their closures.

The STEAM Makerspace at Steinmetz College Prep High School is shown on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. The space is used by students for hands-on projects in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math as part of the school’s STEAM program.

Dwayne Truss, a former school board member who says he’s a fan of community schools generally, says the Sustainable Community Schools program shouldn’t be growing so much given the lack of measurable results and budget crisis, he said.

“It would seem that you would wait until you have the data before you that says this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and go forward with this massive expansion,” Truss said.

District leaders say they are working to harness the lessons of the program’s rollout as Chicago grows it in the coming years. CPS and the union have agreed to bring in outside experts to evaluate the program and its outcomes this school year.

Officials say there are clearer expectations for the schools and partners, and a longer, more supportive transition into the program.

And the district is pushing for a new process whereby schools that don’t meet a set of performance goals — still under discussion — could lose half and eventually all of their SCS funding.

Vilchez and other principals say they hope the new push to better track results won’t take away flexibility and the ability to let families and local communities shape the model’s priorities. At the same time, they want the program to power student gains.

“I am committed to owning our data,” Vilchez said, ”and working to improve it.”

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

Chicago school board accepting applications for Black Student Achievement Committee

2025-12-01T21:17:57+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board is seeking applicants for its Black Student Achievement Committee seven months after its members voted unanimously to launch it.

The committee will help steer the district’s implementation of its Black Student Success Plan, an initiative that sets out to boost the number of Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions and embrace more culturally responsive curricula. The plan landed in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts shortly after the district unveiled it in February.

The plan is under an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Officials at the dwindling federal department have said they will withhold millions in federal magnet school grants if the district does not scrap that initiative and its transgender student policies.

Chicago Public Schools leaders have said they won’t do that.

Board member Jitu Brown, who will chair the committee, told Chalkbeat last summer that he was considering a cross-section of district employees and community members for the committee. In September, Brown said he would introduce the committee members that month.

Some community advocates have voiced frustration with the delay in announcing the committee’s membership, arguing board members must bring urgency to the task of addressing the academic and discipline disparities Black students have long faced. The committee was mandated in a bill Illinois lawmakers passed in 2024 that set the stage for Chicago’s transition from a mayor-appointed school board to an elected one.

Brown said last week that the board remains adamant about forging ahead, but it rethought the approach to picking committee members more recently.

“I do understand the sense of urgency because this institution has not historically done right by Black children,” Brown said. “It’d been a place where inequity has nested. We’re committed to disrupting that.”

But Brown added that “We wanted to have a process that the public can trust.”

He said the board sent about 500 applications to people who had expressed interest in serving on the committee.

Students, parents, CPS employees, and residents can apply for one-year terms on the 14-member committee. They must live in Chicago, complete the district’s vetting process for volunteers, and have a “demonstrated commitment to racial justice and public education.” A school board press release said applicants would complete ethics, Freedom of Information Act, and other training before their names are announced publicly in early 2026.

Those interested can apply here. The deadline to apply is 5 p.m. on Dec. 15.

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

Chicago Public Schools eyes colocation of 2 Brighton Park elementaries

2025-11-20T16:30:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A Chicago Public Schools elementary and a charter school the district saved from closure could share a building under a plan officials are considering.

The Acero Cisneros campus in Brighton Park, which the district is in the process of absorbing this year, could move to the nearby Shields Elementary building, according to a letter to the Shields community from Conrad Timbers-Ausar, CPS’ acting chief portfolio officer. He said officials are weighing the move ahead of a Dec. 1 state deadline to announce school actions, such as closures or moves. The schools would share the campus but retain separate principals, staff, and students.

The Chicago school board made the unprecedented decision last February to transform five schools in the Acero charter network into district-run schools rather than let their operator shutter them. District officials budgeted $20 million dollars this school year to fund the transition. All but one of these campuses saw enrollment losses this fall that added to earlier declines.

Enrollment at Shields has also shrunk dramatically over the past decade as slowing immigration, falling birthrates, and gentrification have put pressure on enrollment at majority-Latino elementaries in Chicago. Shields serves about 390 students this fall, down from more than 1,000 in 2015. Cisneros has roughly 230 students, down from 560 a decade ago.

A district spokesperson said in a statement that the 70-year-old former Catholic school building Acero Cisneros currently occupies has three age-related concerns, including “severe water infiltration and drainage failure” that has caused irreparable damage to the gym floor, as well as gas and water leaks and odor emissions from an underground storage tank by the school’s boiler. Some of the facility concerns at Cisneros were discussed by the school board last spring and its initial plan was to save just four Acero campuses and let Cisneros close.

All of the Acero campuses being absorbed by CPS are in buildings owned by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Earlier this year, the Acero Santiago campus was put up for sale, but has since been pulled off the market.

In his letter to families, Conrad-Ausar said the Cisneros principal and advisory council approached CPS and requested a possible colocation for the 2026-27 school year. The district zeroed in on Shields because of its proximity, he said. The schools are a five-minute drive or 15-minute walk apart.

“As part of our District’s commitment to ensuring a high-quality education for every student, CPS will review the proposal,” Conrad-Ausar wrote, adding that the district will weigh enrollment patterns, cost, impact on the school communities, and other factors.

After losing about 70,000 students over the past decade, CPS faces a growing number of aging, underutilized school buildings. In the past, the district frequently colocated district-run and charter schools in the same building. But there are fewer of these arrangements today and they have at times drawn criticism for pitting the two schools in a competition for students. Community advocates for Bowen High School, for instance, have argued that its colocation with a charter school contributed to enrollment losses at the small school.

The district is hosting a meeting with Shields families to get their input on the colocation proposal at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday on the school’s campus. It is also inviting input via email at transitions@cps.edu.

The district spokesperson said if the proposal is advanced, both schools will be notified by Dec. 1 and more community meetings and a public hearing will be held in January.

This story was updated to include more information from Chicago Public Schools about the condition of the Cisneros facility.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

Chicago offers free virtual therapy to students, but some have concerns

2025-11-13T22:31:13+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools high school students have access to free virtual therapy through an agreement with a for-profit company that carries no cost to the district. But a group of student privacy and mental health advocates are raising flags about the contract, arguing it may violate an Illinois student privacy law.

CPS and the company, Hazel Health, say the provider safeguards student data and has helped the district tackle a teen mental health crisis at a time of limited access to care, threatened further by looming Medicaid cuts.

“CPS has worked hard to ensure all CPS high school students have access to free, high-quality online therapy and counseling while maintaining student safety, privacy, and trust,” a district spokeswoman said in a statement.

But student privacy advocates are urging the school board to drop or overhaul the district’s agreement with Hazel Health. They say the company’s parent consent form raises concerns about the possible use of student data to develop its product in violation of the state’s online student privacy law.

“If these services are for the students, they shouldn’t be guinea pigs,” said Cassie Creswell of the nonprofit Illinois Families for Public Schools. “They shouldn’t be the data that is generating tech profits.”

The advocates say the district should prioritize expanding its stable of social workers and clinicians and working with local health centers, where staff might be more attuned to students’ communities and experiences.

School-based teletherapy exploded nationally during the pandemic, when school districts spent millions in federal COVID aid on these services as youth mental health needs skyrocketed. In Chicago, officials have pointed to results from an annual survey showing that roughly 40% of high school students report feeling persistent sadness and hopelessness and more than 15% seriously considered suicide.

Chicago is not alone in turning to teletherapy at a time when local providers have struggled to meet a massive rise in demand. As of the 2023-24 school year, 13 of the 20 largest school districts had added virtual mental health therapy for students. Some leaned on local providers, but others enlisted for-profit companies, with San Francisco-based Hazel Health emerging as a dominant player who licensed therapists serve 5 million students by its own account.

CPS said it could not provide up-to-date data on the number of students served and sessions completed since the initiative with Hazel Health launched in March. Data as of September obtained by advocates through a public records request showed that at that point, about 250 students had completed roughly 920 sessions.

In Chicago, the company charges private insurance or Medicaid for the services; an agreement with health insurance behemoth UnitedHealthcare helps with the cost. But the services might not remain free to CPS indefinitely. The company has said it is speaking with insurers, city, and state leaders about the possibility of covering services in CPS and other Illinois districts with grants, state dollars, or other funding.

Creswell and other advocates recently wrote to district interim CEO Macquline King and school board members urging them to discontinue the contract, or at least push for revisions to better protect student privacy.

Currently, the company’s consent form for families says Hazel Health can use student information for “the development and improvement of software, hardware, and related tools designed to improve services,” which Cresswell said could run afoul of the state’s Student Online Privacy Protection Act.

Kyle Hillman of the Illinois chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, another group that signed the letter to board members, said school-based social workers develop trusting relationships with students and work closely with educators. They can also bill Medicaid for services, which Hillman said is a better use of these taxpayer resources. Hillman said he doesn’t have details about Hazel Health’s services, but at some privately funded providers, a focus on profits has meant large caseloads and brisk staff turnover.

“Our position has always been that for-profit mental health is not in the best interest of kids,” he said.

In written responses to Chalkbeat, a Hazel Health spokesman stressed the company does not sell, share, or use student data for commercial purposes and safeguards it carefully in keeping with state and federal law. It said more than 70% of CPS schools have connected students with the service and feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

The company did not provide information about its therapists’ caseloads. But in a letter to advocacy groups, the CPS Office of Health and Wellness wrote that Hazel aims for 25 client hours per therapist per week to allow a lot of time for prep and supervision. That letter also noted the high caseloads of more than 1,000 students per school social workers and 385 students per counselor on average across the country.

Karen Foley, the executive director of the nonprofit Juvenile Protective Association, which provides therapy at 22 mostly elementary Chicago schools, says the group of Chicago advocates has raised valid questions. Her organization keeps therapist caseloads to 20 students, who have complex mental health needs. It develops relationships with students and their families over time, and works closely with their teachers and principals.

At the same time, Foley says, young people are facing a mental health crisis, with stepped-up immigration enforcement adding to longstanding stressors, such as poverty and gun violence. She said thousands of Chicago students are struggling with mental health needs that might not be severe or visible enough to make them a priority for limited services — a void that Hazel Health’s therapists could fill.

“I believe having interested adults listening to kids is always a good thing,” she said. “We should all be trying lots of different things.”

The no-cost contract between CPS and Hazel Health, which recently absorbed two other teletherapy startups, will automatically renew in December.

Board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who flagged student mental health as a priority during his election campaign last year, said he said he is doing more research to decide if the board needs to rethink the contract with Hazel Health.

He is taking the advocates’ concerns seriously, but he’s also heard from school employees who’ve said the free therapy has been welcome “at a time of scarcity, when families don’t know where to get their students’ needs met.”

Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

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

Wildlife safaris, hot air balloon, camel rides: Chicago Public Schools watchdog decries ‘lavish’ staff travel spending

2025-11-12T06:05:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools staffers took “questionable, excessive, and even exorbitant” trips to South Africa, Egypt, Finland, and elsewhere — complete with wildlife safaris, a hot air balloon ride, and camel rides at the district’s expense, a new report by the CPS watchdog found.

Lax oversight and an influx in federal COVID aid led to the increase in travel expenditures, which more than doubled since 2019 even as budget trouble loomed, according to the district’s Office of the Inspector General.

The watchdog also found hundreds of district and school staff traveled to a series of conferences in Las Vegas and other cities, in many cases racking up high hotel and airfare costs. When the organizer of these events put on similar professional development events in Chicago or virtually, few district employees attended.

Overall, the district spent $7.7 million on staff and student travel in fiscal year 2024, compared with $3.6 million in 2019. The watchdog’s report said many trips were likely worthwhile and enriching to employees and students, but some seemed of questionable value.

“Over and over, CPS employees booked trips using CPS funds without required pre-approvals, exceeded CPS spending limits on hotel rooms and airfare, and enjoyed out-of-town activities of dubious necessity or value to students — all as CPS drew closer and closer to a budget crisis,” the report said.

Over the summer, the district laid off hundreds of custodians, crossing guards, cafeteria workers, and others and made other budget cuts to close a $734 million deficit in its $10.2 billion budget. It faces more massive shortfalls in the coming years.

In response to the inspector general’s findings, the district imposed a freeze on nearly all staff travel unrelated to student activities this fall and formed a committee this month to come up with better travel approval procedures and controls. A new financial system the district is currently rolling out will better flag travel expenses that exceed district limits or mismatches between preapproved and actual spending, the district said in a statement.

Interim district CEO Macquline King and treasurer Walter Stock announced the travel freeze in a letter to staff in late October.

“This measure reflects our continued commitment to responsible financial stewardship and to prioritizing resources that directly support classrooms and students,” they wrote.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Philip Wagenknecht, the inspector general for CPS, noted that almost 200 of the district’s roughly 500 schools had no overnight travel spending. But otherwise, his office found questionable travel expenses across the city, driven in part by the greater budget flexibility that came with federal pandemic recovery dollars.

“This is a case of systemic issues in CPS,” he said. “These abuses were widespread.”

The watchdog started investigating after receiving a complaint that one elementary school had paid more than $20,000 to a travel agency for an upcoming staff trip to Egypt without district approval, in addition to other “lavish” outings. CPS canceled that and three other trips planned by the agency. The inspector general does not generally name employees, schools, or vendors in its reports.

Ultimately, the watchdog found that eight schools had spent more than $142,000 for 15 staff trips overseas, billed as school visits and professional development but packed with unscheduled time and optional activities. Thirteen had never been preapproved as required. District officials had explicitly rejected one trip, but staff went anyway.

The inspector general’s office also got a second complaint that a CPS principal traveled to multiple conferences in Las Vegas without district approval, at one point booking a $400 a night suite for him and his wife two nights before the event began.

The watchdog later found that 600 school and district employees had traveled to professional development events by the Vegas conference organizer at a cost of more than $1.5 million between 2022 and 2024. Almost 90% of these attendees exceeded the district’s hotel room spending limit, and at least two dozen took flights from Chicago to Las Vegas costing more than $1,000.

Among other examples of questionable travel, one teacher spent $4,700 for a seven-day stay at a luxury Hawaiian resort to attend a four-day professional development seminar. The inspector general also flagged some student trips, including a 2023 college tour for 80 students preapproved at $15,000 but actually costing $72,000. One trip to South Africa for 20 students cost more than $5,200 per person.

In some cases, travel agencies charged the district up to 20% of travel costs in hidden fees.

Among the watchdog’s recommendations was to convert a vacant CPS building or a portion of an underutilized school into a professional development center for both district employees and staff from other districts seeking training.

“CPS can use its bargaining power to bring more professional development to Chicago,” Wagenknecht said.

The report said the district is looking at disciplining two employees.

The inspector general found that the travel agency that organized the overseas staff development trips violated the district’s code of ethics by offering a CPS staffer free airfare and lodging to lead a future tour while it sought business with the staffer’s school. The agency, which did not have a contract with the district, isn’t working with CPS now. But the watchdog recommended that the agency’s staff undergo training and sign a contract if it were to work with the district in the future.

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

Chicago school board approves controversial $175 million pension payment to the city

2025-10-31T00:29:08+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board voted Thursday to make a pension reimbursement to the city after 18 months of controversy and leadership turmoil stemming from the payment. But there is one catch.

The board voted unanimously to authorize the $175 million payment to the city to support a municipal pension fund that covers city workers and some non-teaching district staff — but only if the entire $552.4 million tax surplus boost for Chicago Public Schools that Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed comes through.

Chicago’s City Council must approve that record level of funding from special economic development taxing districts, known as TIFs, as part of the 2026 budget the council must pass by the end of the calendar year. The proposed surplus would provide CPS with almost exactly the $379 million in TIF funding the district’s 2025-26 budget passed in August assumed — plus an amount equal to the pension payment.

The vote on the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund marks the end — for now — of an intensely divisive chapter for the district that ultimately contributed to the departure of the previous CPS superintendent. Some hope it will build trust between the district and the mayor. Yet others worry about the timing, due to fiscal uncertainty and budget cuts. And the one-year agreement doesn’t resolve pension responsibilities in the longer term.

Some City Council members have said they think the surplus tax amount in Johnson’s proposal is too large. Before Thursday’s special board meeting, some board members said they would prefer to wait until the district actually receives the TIF money before approving the reimbursement.

The CPS budget approved in August said the district would only make the pension reimbursement payment if additional revenue from the city or the state came through.

But district officials assured the board Thursday that the agreement protects the district in the event that it does not get the full TIF amount proposed by Johnson. And some board members argued that approving the agreement now would send an important message of good faith to the mayor’s office and aldermen.

“This is something that as a board we voted on, and it’s important to keep our word,” elected board member Yesenia Lopez said.

Still, a couple of board members said that despite voting for the payment, they are concerned it would siphon away funds that could instead reverse cuts to district custodians, crossing guards, and other positions the district made this summer.

“It absolutely takes dollars away from the classroom and our school communities who need support now more than ever,” said elected board member Ellen Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld and other board members also called for a longer-term plan to spell out responsibility for the pension payments and disentangle city and district finances.

The city is required by law to make annual payments to the municipal fund. But faced with ballooning payments in 2020, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot shifted a portion of it to CPS. That move angered the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s former employer and close ally. The union lambasted Lightfoot, accusing her of balancing the city’s budget on the backs of students.

With backing from an almost entirely Johnson-appointed school board, former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez refused to pay the reimbursement, citing looming budget deficits. The clash over the payment led to the resignation of the entire school board and to Martinez’s firing by a new board handpicked by Johnson.

But current board members aligned with the teachers union and mayor have argued that chipping in for the pension fund is part of being a reliable partner to the city.

The district has seen some added financial pressures this fall, including federal grant funding the Trump administration has withheld over the district’s Black Student Success Plan and transgender student policies.

Under the new pension payment agreement the board approved Thursday, the district can subtract the $8 million in federal magnet grant funding it stands to lose from the pension reimbursement if it cannot recoup that grant loss in another way. However, as Lopez noted, the agreement doesn’t account for other funding the Trump administration might cut or withhold.

CPS funding has been top of mind for board members this week. Some members joined the CTU on a trip to Springfield Wednesday to lobby for more funding for CPS. Some members also held a Thursday morning press conference to press Chicago City Council members to back Johnson’s TIF proposal.

“We’re trying to be good partners across the board,” said appointed board member Michilla Blaise during the meeting. “We’re trying to make friends. We’re trying to bring home the bacon for CPS.”

In other business, the board voted to table until its next meeting Tuesday a resolution to approve spending $1.4 million to ensure that the financially troubled EPIC Academy, a charter high school on the South Side, can finish out the school year. The school is then slated to close next summer.

The decision to postpone the vote came after elected board member Jitu Brown proposed an amendment to that resolution calling on the district to craft a transition plan with input from the EPIC school community that tries to keep students and staff together at a high-performing school or schools.

District officials noted that the amendment could conflict with the district’s principals contract, which gives school leaders authority over hiring on their campuses. Some board members raised concerns about the last-minute introduction of the amendment, which ultimately failed a board vote.

Brown explained that he had conceived the amendment the previous evening while speaking with the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents EPIC educators, and the advocacy group Advancement Project on the way back from Springfield.

During public comment earlier in the meeting, Andrew Escalante, a social studies teacher at EPIC, asked the board for more engagement with the school community and a plan that keeps students and staff together as much as possible.

“We are people and as people, we deserve honesty, stability and a voice in what happens to us,” he said.

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

Chicago school board to vote on pension reimbursement to the city

2025-10-28T17:32:06+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board will hold a special meeting Thursday to authorize a $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

The planned vote on an agreement to pay into a city pension fund that covers city workers and non-teaching Chicago Public Schools staff comes less than two weeks after Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a record $552.4 million funding boost to the district. The intergovernmental agreement the school board will consider states that the pension payment will only take place if the district receives this money, which would require City Council approval.

To help close a gaping deficit in her $10.2 billion 2025-26 budget, interim district CEO Macquline King assumed $379 million from the city’s surplus of funds from special taxing districts, known as TIFs, aimed at spurring development. Under King’s budget, the district would make the $175 million reimbursement to the city only if CPS received an unexpected influx of dollars.

The $552.4 million in surplus funding proposed by Johnson provides roughly that pension reimbursement amount in addition to what the district already included in its budget.

But the district has more recently faced some added financial pressures, including federal grant funding the Trump administration withheld over the district’s Black Student Success Plan and transgender student policies, both of which are the subject of federal investigations.

At its special meeting at 9 a.m. on Thursday, the board will also consider spending $1.4 million to stabilize the financially troubled EPIC Academy charter school this school year and closing the campus next summer.

The payment to the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund has been a source of intense debate and turmoil in CPS over the past year and a half. With backing from a largely Johnson-appointed school board, former CEO Pedro Martinez refused to make a reimbursement to the city, which had long covered the pension payment until former mayor Lori Lightfoot shifted a growing portion of it to CPS starting in 2020.

Martinez argued that the district could not afford the payment amid looming deficits and it remained the legal obligation of the city. A clash over the payment and other budgetary issues contributed to the resignation of the entire school board and to Martinez’ firing by a new board handpicked by Johnson.

Current board members appointed by Johnson or elected with support from his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union have argued that resuming the pension payment is key to being a reliable partner to the city and at the same time to becoming more independent from the city as CPS shifts to a fully elected school board. Some had even pushed for taking out a high-cost short-term loan to allow the district to make the payment.

Jennifer Custer, an elected school board member who has opposed making the pension payment in the past, said she will support signing the new agreement with the city. She said she would have preferred to wait until the district actually receives the money, especially given some of the uncertainty amid the federal government shutdown and inquiries into CPS.

But she said some of her colleagues on the board felt Thursday’s resolution would be an important “show of good faith” to the city. And she believes the agreement’s wording protects the district if the promised TIF surplus dollars do not come through.

“We have made sure that the district is on solid footing,” Custer said. “We would not be left holding the proverbial bag.”

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

‘It is an emergency’: Some Chicago school board members call for virtual learning for immigrant families

2025-10-24T17:12:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

In an emotional discussion, Chicago school board members said district families are living in fear because of increasingly aggressive federal immigration raids, and some urged the district to offer virtual learning to immigrant students.

At the board’s regular October meeting, a Chicago Teachers Union leader and several board members aligned with the union called for virtual learning, along with other steps to address increased immigration enforcement in the city. When district CEO Macquline King noted that the district cannot shift to remote learning without an emergency declaration from the state’s governor, board member Emma Lozano urged district leaders to consider approaching Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration about doing so.

“It is an emergency, period,” Lozano said, her voice breaking. “This is an emergency right now.”

She added, “We need to work this out because our children are totally frightened they’ll come home and not find their parents there.”

The district, which has already launched an around-the-clock command center to respond to enforcement-related concerns, is meeting twice every day to triage requests for help from schools and is fielding calls until late at night, said King.

District officials said Thursday that attendance at the start of this school year overall remains on par with the same period last year, though there have been slight dips of 1% or less for Latino students and English learners. Data obtained by Chalkbeat for the first month of the year showed larger dips in some schools in predominantly Latino neighborhoods.

Destiny Singleton, the board’s honorary student member, broke down in tears as she spoke about how students are alerting each other about Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence near schools in text chains and on social media.

“I feel we shouldn’t have to do this because we are children,” she said. “We are terrified.”

In recent weeks, during “Operation Midway Blitz,” Chicago has been at the center of stepped-up raids by immigration enforcement agents and increasingly confrontational tactics, including an instance when agents used tear gas in the vicinity of an elementary school and another where heavily armed agents stormed a South Side apartment building.

While the Thursday meeting was underway, Juarez High School’s principal sent a letter to families to say that a member of that school community had been detained by immigration agents in a nearby neighborhood. It was not clear from the letter who was detained.

Board members on Thursday also called on the district to provide more signage for schools and to explore allowing earlier school dropoffs and the opportunity for families concerned about running into immigration agents to return to schools after pickups. Some had raised the possibility of virtual learning earlier, but they pushed harder for considering it at Thursday’s meeting.

King said district and school leaders have been consumed with responding to immigration activity near schools and affecting family members and staff. She especially praised CPS principals, saying they have added the role of “school protectors” to the many responsibilities they juggle.

“CPS will remain vigilant during this time and continue to do everything it can to support our staff, families, and students,” King said.

King said schools have responded forcefully to immigration concerns, including by posting more staff around school buildings and organizing “walking school buses,” in which volunteers walk to and from school with families concerned about encounters with immigration agents. King also promised to discuss the possibility of before- and after-school access to school buildings with the district’s labor unions.

Board member Karen Zaccor said the district should heed calls for virtual learning from families fearful of taking their children to and from school.

“Increasingly, we are hearing from our families a desire to have that as an option,” she said.

King said the district’s senior leadership team has discussed that possibility, but, she stressed, “As a district, CPS does not have the authority to call remote learning.”

Board member Carlos Rivas echoed those limitations during the meeting and later said he is also concerned about how access to child care and technology would hamper a shift to virtual learning to some families.

Vicki Kurzydlo, the CTU recording secretary, also joined the call for remote learning and suggested CPS expand access to its Virtual Academy, an online school for students with significant health issues or disabilities.

“Attendance is plummeting not because parents don’t care but because they are afraid,” she said.

Average attendance across the city during the first month of school, however, was on par with the same time period last year, at about 92%, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and analyzed by Chalkbeat Chicago. There are shifts on the neighborhood level: Last school year, 20 of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods saw dips in attendance during the first month of school compared with 37 neighborhoods — or more than half — this year. Those include Pilsen and Little Village, two predominantly Latino neighborhoods that have been a focus of immigration enforcement in recent weeks; some schools there reported attendance drops of as much as 7 percentage points.

The issue of virtual learning access is sensitive for the district, which had an extended stretch in remote learning during the pandemic and struggled with offering hybrid options, in which some students log in virtually while others are in the classroom. Like other districts, Chicago is still working on addressing the academic fallout from the pandemic.

Patrick Brosnan, the head of the nonprofit Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said he has heard some families inquire about online learning.

But, he said, “I would not say it is an overwhelming demand, nor do I know how many kids and families would take advantage of it every day if it was offered.”

He said he has seen a forceful response to increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement from the district and school leaders and staff. He and other advocates are in close touch with principals and others about sightings of ICE agents and other concerns, he said. He said some 30 schools in the nonprofit’s area have gone on lockdown recently amid enforcement activities in their vicinity.

“It’s been impressive to see the district respond,” he said. “They’ve been way ahead of other city agencies.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated some schools had attendance drops of as much as 7%. Rather, those schools saw attendance drop as much as 7 percentage points.

Chalkbeat Chicago reporter Reema Amin contributed to this report.

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

Chicago school board members get more details on district enrollment drop

2025-10-23T22:13:21+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A shrinking number of school-aged children in Chicago and a growing number of Latino students leaving the school district drove the loss of more than 9,000 students this fall, district officials told the school board Thursday.

In a presentation during the regular October board meeting, officials flagged enrollment declines across grades and types of schools, but particularly at district pre-schools and charter elementary schools. The number of school-aged children in Chicago is down 15% compared with a decade ago, said Sara Kempner, the district’s executive director of data science, insights, and research. Over the past decade has shrunk the number of students the district serves by more than 70,000.

The district reported last month that its official enrollment stood at about 316,220 students, an almost 3% drop compared with last school year. The dip came after two years of slight upticks brought largely by the arrivals of migrant families in Chicago.

This year’s data show the number of Black and Latino students and those who are learning English decreased, while white and Asian American enrollment ticked up modestly.

“Overall, our district’s racial and ethnic makeup has not shifted significantly,” Kempner said.

A Chalkbeat analysis of preliminary data this fall showed that charter schools as well as small district-run neighborhood schools serving predominantly Black students were among the hardest hit by the enrollment drop.

Some advocates and others have voiced concern that stepped-up immigration enforcement in the city is driving down enrollment and attendance as some families fear sending their children to school. Some might have left the city for suburbs or other areas seen as less of a focus of the Trump administration’s deportation push. District officials said Thursday that overall district attendance so far is on par with the start of last school year, though Latino and English learner attendance dipped slightly.

Even as overall enrollment dropped, the number of special education students grew by about 2.5%.

“As we lose students, our students need more from us,” board member Ellen Rosenfeld said, “and that’s the big red flag that concerns me about this data.”

The number of new student enrollments dropped especially in pre-K, kindergarten, and ninth grade, while the number of families leaving the district remained fairly stable. Moving out of Chicago remained the single largest reason families give for leaving CPS, officials said.

The neighborhoods that saw the largest drops in enrollment were the Near North Side, Fuller Park, and the Lower West Side, while student numbers grew the most in Lincoln Park and South Chicago.

One board member, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, urged the district to survey departing families about their reasons for leaving the district. Kempner said the district is open to considering that, but such a survey would likely yield mostly “extreme” perspectives.

“My reaction is maybe we need to hear these extreme responses and not be afraid of that,” Smith said.

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

Chicago schools considering $60 million, four-year contract to track technology

2025-10-20T11:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools wants to pay one of its biggest tech device suppliers up to $60 million over four years to automatically track the district’s tablets, laptops, and other technology.

The school board is expected to vote later this month on a contract for CDW, the Vernon Hills, Illinois-based technology behemoth that also sells the district tech equipment, for a system and services to help monitor and inventory devices issued to students and district staff.

The move comes after late 2022 reporting by Chalkbeat and WBEZ and an early 2024 report by the district’s inspector general that showed school and district officials were losing track of thousands of computers and other devices after a pandemic-era technology spending spree. That report highlighted what the watchdog deemed unacceptable numbers of lost devices and lack of accountability in safeguarding them.

In January 2024, days after that report came out, the district announced a slew of policy and other changes it said would address the findings, including training school staff and holding them more accountable.

Since then, there have been fewer missing devices as the district started electronically locating more of them, including some detected in countries around the world. More recently, the watchdog recommended that the district either resolve issues with its previous vendor in charge of tracking technology — or find a new one.

Earlier this month, Paul Valente, CPS’ facilities automation architect, told school board members the new contract with CDW would use radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already on devices and other technology to automatically track them. As a former school technology coordinator, he said, he would spend weeks scouring the building for misplaced devices to do an annual inventory.

“I would have really loved to have had this service because it would have automatically counted the devices for me,” he said.

Bart Epstein, an education technology expert and former CEO of the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange, said the radio frequency identification system could be a worthwhile investment. But given the substantial price tag and the district’s previous missteps with tracking devices, the contract raises questions about how ready the district is to make the most of the investment.

“Chicago has a history of purchasing asset management technology and not using it properly,” he said. “An RFID system automates the counting of devices, but it does not eliminate the humans. Even a great technology that’s poorly implemented is useless.”

The district would still need to train staff on using the system properly and hold them accountable for doing so. CPS has roughly 150 technology coordinators, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s most recent staffing data.

That’s slightly fewer than 2020, just before the district went on a $308 million technology spending spree buying devices amid the COVID pandemic. Chalkbeat and WBEZ’s 2022 investigation unearthed a pattern of poor tracking of those devices, with many going unused or getting lost. A later investigation by the district’s inspector general found the district marked 77,000 devices as lost or stolen in 2021 and 2022.

In a statement last week, CPS officials told Chalkbeat that multiple initiatives are underway to better track the district’s more than 636,000 technology devices and cut down on losses. These efforts helped reduce annual loss to 7%, down from 11% cited in the most recent OIG report. The new CDW contract would be “a key component of this continued progress,” the district said. The system would let the district track devices that leave school buildings without permission in real time, recover them faster, and make taking annual inventories easier, the district said.

“It should be noted that this work goes beyond the recommendations outlined in the OIG report,” the district said.

At the meeting earlier this month, school board members did not question the contract’s $15 million a year price tag, despite CPS’s ongoing financial challenges. Ed Bannon, an appointed board member from the north west side, asked why the district passed on a lower bid for the job.

Valente initially said CDW put in the lowest bid. Officials acknowledged there was a lower-cost proposal. In response to a question from Chalkbeat, the district said four vendors had submitted proposals, but those would only become public once a contract has been signed.

The district’s facilities department was also looking into adopting the tracking technology offered by CDW to safeguard some of its equipment, Valente said.

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

Chicago Public Schools recommends absorbing ChiArts, closing EPIC Academy in June

2025-10-09T01:31:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools officials are urging the school board to absorb one independently operated high school facing closure into the district and wind down another one after this school year.

The recommendations come after officials at EPIC Academy, a South Side charter school, and ChiArts, a West Side contract school, both announced they no longer planned to operate the schools, citing financial difficulties. Leaders at both schools suggested CPS keep the campuses going as district-run campuses, as the district is doing with five Acero schools the network had slated for closure.

School district officials want the board to vote later this month to preserve ChiArts as a district-run school, but they are recommending the board let EPIC Academy close at the end of 2025-26 and make a plan to transition its students and staff to other campuses.

At Wednesday’s school board meeting, some members decried the string of recent decisions by charter and contract school operators to stop operating campuses. Some urged district officials to do their best to minimize disruption for students and to engage the school communities in finding solutions.

At a Tuesday press conference, the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents educators at Acero, EPIC, and ChiArts, called for a state investigation into why these schools have foundered financially, often within months of receiving renewal by the district. The union, which has been a vocal critic of charter schools, forcefully pushed to avert the Acero closures.

Earlier this year, the school board passed a resolution to increase oversight of charter schools and embrace a more stringent process for deciding whether to renew them.

But Andrew Broy, head of the advocacy group Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said in an interview with Chalkbeat there is no evidence of financial mismanagement at Acero or EPIC. He said “unaffordable” educator contracts the CTU negotiated at these schools and CPS underfunding coupled with enrollment dips made the campuses financially unsustainable.

“It’s a rich irony that the CTU organized some charters, forced on them structurally unaffordable contracts, and then complains when they are forced to close,” Broy said.

Megan Pietz, a fifth-year teacher at ChiArts and CTU leader who rallied outside the school Tuesday, said union contracts should not be blamed for contributing to the independent board not seeking renewal.

“If you cannot afford to figure out how to pay people a living wage with the same public tax dollars that Chicago Public Schools can figure out how to pay people a living wage with, then you probably shouldn’t be in the business of public education,” Pietz said.

At the Thursday meeting, district officials also rejected the suggestion that information — including about sketchy fiscal practices — had been withheld from the board. Alfonso Carmona, the district’s chief portfolio officer, said federal COVID relief dollars and a practice of holding charter budgets harmless amid enrollment drops helped EPIC weather dramatic enrollment losses until this fall. CPS ended that practice this year, and a grant the school was counting on did not materialize in time, Carmona said, and neither did an offer on a building the school tried to sell.

“This is the same as me losing my job and not being able to pay my mortgage,” he said.

Still, said school board member Yesenia Lopez, “It honestly breaks my heart that we’re having these conversations again.” She added, about renewing EPIC this past spring: “There was information that wasn’t shared with us.”

Parents called on the board to save their schools

The announcements at EPIC Academy and ChiArts this fall set off anxiety among students and parents and a scramble to advocate for the continued existence of their schools.

On Wednesday, numerous students, parents, and educators at both schools pleaded with the school board to avert their closures. Several parents spoke about moving their families to Chicago from the suburbs or out of state so their children could attend ChiArts, the city’s only public school that combines college prep academics with an arts conservatory model.

“What happens at ChiArts is something magical, therapeutic really,” said parent Aracely Madrigal, adding her daughter found a supportive environment there after some staff and peers at a former school refused to use her preferred pronouns and name. “I can say without exaggeration that this school saves lives.”

At the CTU’s Tuesday event outside ChiArts, Cook County Commissioner Tara Stamps, a former teacher and CTU employee whose district includes ChiArts, said the decision by ChiArts to not seek renewal is destabilizing for the community.

“This is what happens when education is treated like a hustle,” Stamps said. “When it’s transactional, instead of a public good, when decisions about our children’s futures are made behind closed doors at big tables with people who will never see these babies’ faces, who will never walk down these hallways, who will never see their artistry and their brilliance.”

Brooklynn Rodgers, a junior visual arts student majoring in sculpture at ChiArts, asked CPS to find a way to keep the school open.

“Don’t take this community away from us,” Rogers said. “Don’t take this away from the city or for the next generation who haven’t found their way to express their boldness.”

Broy, at the charter network, said Tuesday that CPS has put a strain on charter school budgets by imposing a 3% administrative fee and withholding dollars for employee pension costs.

The network has also recently raised concerns with the district about changes to the GoCPS application used by families to attend a school other than their zoned one. Broy said the system makes families less likely to choose charter schools because the default does not show families charters unless they specifically search them by name. Broy said this has hurt charter enrollment, which impacts these schools’ budgets because they’re more reliant on student numbers compared to district run schools. The GoCPS application is currently open, and families have until Nov. 14 to apply and rank the schools they want to attend next school year.

Charter schools have lost enrollment in recent years, mirroring the districtwide trends.

In the case of Acero, four out of the five schools the district opted to adopt experienced dramatic declines in enrollment this fall, coming on the heels of previous student losses there. The district earmarked $20 million in its 2025-26 budget to help with the transition of these schools to district management. District officials said the move will require staff to reapply for their jobs next school year, which several teachers spoke against at Wednesday’s meeting.

Some board members want to engage with school communities before votes

Carmona stressed that absorbing a charter or contract school is a complex process of bringing these campuses into compliance with numerous district requirements that these independently run schools do not have to meet, including that all their teachers be licensed educators. Absorbing ChiArts will involve an added roughly $2.5 million to operate the school’s art conservatory, which is currently funded by the school’s foundation.

“These are effectively new schools that we’re opening,” he said.

Carmona said the board should vote at their Oct. 23 meeting so that families have certainty and so students will know whether or not to apply to these schools next school year. The GoCPS application is currently open, and families have until Nov. 14 to apply and rank the schools they want to attend next school year.

Board members urged the board to keep ChiArts going and to look for a way to keep EPIC families and teachers together at another area school. Some members such as Ed Bannon urged the district to seek input from the two schools’ families before the vote later this month. Carmona argued that the board must first decide if the CPS will absorb the schools.

Member Ebony DeBerry raised the possibility of finding new independent operators for either school, though Carmona argued this would be a tall order on such a short notice. Member Carlos Rivas said all families want to keep their schools open.

“But there are realities in terms of what’s possible for us to do,” he said. “We need to work with communities to understand what we can do together.”

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

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

ChiArts, an arts-focused contract high school, could close after operator does not seek renewal with CPS

2025-10-03T21:01:55+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago High School for the Arts, an arts-focused Chicago contract school known as ChiArts with a popular conservatory model, did not seek renewal and wants Chicago Public Schools to consider taking over the campus.

The request comes after an unprecedented move by the Chicago Board of Education in February to absorb five charter campuses run by the Acero network that the nonprofit had planned to close. Earlier this year, another Chicago charter school, EPIC Academy, announced it would close at the end of this school year — unless the school district takes over operations of the schools as it did at Acero campuses. These moves suggest the Acero vote has set up a template for independent school operators facing fiscal challenges to push for campus handovers to CPS that would avert these school’s closures.

In a letter to parents this week, ChiArts leaders said rising financial pressures on the West Side school led to the decision not to seek renewal. They assured families that the school will finish out the school year undisrupted and said they are discussing options to keep the campus going in the longer run with CPS leadership.

Similar to charter schools, contract campuses are tuition-free schools run by private entities with public dollars.

“You will be happy to know that the ChiArts board, leadership, and CPS are already working closely together to create a sustainable plan that protects what makes ChiArts so special — its tuition-free, pre-professional arts training and rigorous academics,” Tina Boyer Brown, the school’s executive director, and Néstor Corona, its principal, said in the note to families.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which represents educators at ChiArts, EPIC, and Acero, said in a statement that the recent closure announcements are a sign that “the charter bubble is popping.” The union — a longtime critic of charters that has blamed them for the emptying out of some neighborhood campuses — advocated vocally for keeping the five Acero campuses open by absorbing them into the district.

The union blasted the ChiArts board for making the decision to pull out of running the school without input from staff and families and for informing them of that decision only after the deadline to apply for renewal had passed. And it signaled it might again press for a CPS intervention in keeping the school open.

“When charter operators abandon the schools they were entrusted to run by the district, CPS owes support to every student and staff member,” the union said in its statement about ChiArts.

ChiArts parent Rousemary Vega found out about the possibility the school could close when her daughter, Zamara Ramos, called her crying from the school. Ramos, a freshman at the school and an aspiring actor, was a 2-year-old in a stroller when Vega became a fixture at protests against the 2013 closure of Lafayette Elementary, whose building ChiArts now occupies.

“It’s devastating news,” Vega said about the ChiArts announcement. “It was just, ‘Not this again.’ It’s a nightmare.”

Vega said that when her daughter started at ChiArts in the fall, the family got no wind of the school’s financial troubles. Ramos remembers the exhilaration she felt when she received her acceptance letter from the school and felt certain the campus would open doors to a career as a performer.

“I just got here and now I might have to leave,” Ramos said. “It definitely hurts because this is like a second home to me already.”

Vega and Ramos said they hope the school board will do whatever it takes to preserve the school’s unique arts model.

An exterior photo of the Chicago High School for the Arts on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025 in Chicago, Illinoia.

The district’s school board gave the school a two-year renewal last year — a shorter period because the school was flagged as not meeting standards in the Financial and Operations Performance category. It is currently in financial remediation, the district said. The district said in a statement it is assessing whether the school’s current financial setup, which relies on philanthropic support and non-traditional staffing, is sustainable.

In a statement, CPS praised the school’s model, which combines intensive arts instruction with college prep academics, and said making a decision on the future of the school will require more “review, conversations, and collaborations.”

School leaders said in a statement that the school has struggled financially in recent years.

“Despite careful fiscal management and the school’s strong enrollment, the school faces funding shortfalls amid rising operating costs, leading to a recurring, unsustainable deficit,” the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the school said ChiArts leaders were not available for interviews Friday. But in response to questions from Chalkbeat, she provided a statement from school leaders noting rising operational costs the school has faced recently.

In the spring of 2024, the school had decried school budgeting changes in CPS that it argued had left it underfunded. At the time, the district was transitioning to an approach that assigned a set number of staff to each school regardless of enrollment and then allocated additional positions and dollars based on school need. It did not apply that new model to charter and contract campuses. The school’s enrollment has remained relatively stable at about 600 students in the past decade even as the district’s overall student numbers plunged.

Carlos Rivas, the school board member whose district ChiArts is in, said Friday that he had been briefed by CPS on the issue and had a meeting scheduled with the school’s leaders.

“The goal is to find a long-term solution,” he said.

The school will host an in-person meeting on campus at 6 p.m. Monday and a virtual meeting at noon on Tuesday.

Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

How one bilingual Chicago Public Schools graduate became a dual language educator in the district

2025-09-29T22:02:26+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Yehiri Gonzalez first heard about a new program to shepherd Chicago students into teaching careers at the height of the pandemic. After receiving an email from the school district, the then-high school senior and her friends debated whether the program could be real.

Gonzalez was intrigued.

The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she had spoken little English in the early grades and struggled to keep up, at one point leaning on a tutor who came to the shelter where she had stayed for a time. She credits growing as a student and getting into the highly selective Lane Tech College Prep High School to finding peers and educators who shared and understood her background. She wanted to offer that support to other students.

As it turned out, the program, known as Teach Chicago Tomorrow, was no scam. It was a new district partnership with City Colleges of Chicago and Illinois State University that offered students financial assistance, academic guidance, and eventually, priority for CPS teaching jobs.

Gonzalez became one of 20 students in the program’s first cohort in 2021. She was one of five to graduate with an education degree in four years and begin teaching this fall. Another five are still on track to graduate in the next couple of years.

In total, 246 students have enrolled in the program, including a record 102 who started this fall. The district’s goal is triple the number of CPS grads it hires to teach each year, from about 140 to more than 500.

After graduating from Illinois State University and student-teaching at Talcott Elementary on Chicago’s Northwest Side, Gonzalez returned to the school in August as a sixth grade teacher in its dual language program. She spoke with Chalkbeat about being an English learner in CPS, making it through Teach Chicago Tomorrow, and learning to lead her own classroom over the past month.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What stands out the most about your experience as a student in Chicago Public Schools?

What stands out is the experience of being an English language learner. It can be hard to accept the fact that you’re an English learner if you are born and raised here. That was a big part of growing up for me, and I know that many of my classmates had that similar experience of feeling like a weird English language learner. I do belong in this program because I don’t speak English, but then I don’t belong, because why don’t I know English? Obviously, I do not think that anymore.

When I was a child, I really loved being in a bilingual program. I was in the program up until third grade, and I had a really good sense of community and belonging even though I was transferring constantly. Especially if the teachers looked like me and spoke the same language as me, I felt an even greater, more authentic connection.

Do you have a memory that captures just how challenging it was to be an English learner at the time?

When I was in fourth grade, I got put into a monolingual English program. All my classmates spoke English. My teacher only spoke English. I had a really challenging time, especially because the school community did not look like me, and I felt like I didn’t belong there. How do I connect with these people? How can I create a friendship? How can I learn in this environment? Because of that language barrier, I didn’t understand what I was doing most of the time. I remember getting straight Fs that year.

You were learning English and also for a time living in a shelter. How did you navigate that?

At the shelter, we were learning English for a bit. It was a little bit more basic, and it was whenever we had the chance to do it, because sometimes the hours and the timing were difficult for me. But there was some support there, and sometimes they had things like homework help. But when I was in fourth grade, I was not living in the shelter anymore, so that actually made it more difficult to get any support outside of school.

How did you eventually find your stride as a student and your way into Lane Tech, one of the most selective high schools in CPS?

In fifth grade, I got put into a different school. It was also monolingual English, but I felt more connected because there were more people who looked like me and spoke my language, and I didn’t feel ashamed of speaking Spanish. I felt more comfortable trying to speak and write English. In fifth grade and sixth grade, I had already adapted to English, so that I was helping the newcomers who had just arrived. I was translating all the work to Spanish for them.

As a person who’s first generation and the oldest in my family, I didn’t know what selective enrollment was at all. In eighth grade, there was a mentor from the nonprofit City Year. Her name was Colleen. She said, “You have really good grades, and there are different types of high schools that you can go to.” She walked me through the process. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think I would have been successful in getting into Lane or even trying to apply.

When did you first start thinking about becoming a teacher and why?

It was something that I always had in the back of my mind. I’m the oldest of four, so I was always helping my siblings with school. In middle school, I would help the newcomers translate their work. When I was in high school and we had service learning hours, I would volunteer at the local park and help fundraise money for kids so that they would have access to programming. So I found myself going into education because I really wanted to help and let students have that authentic connection and someone who represents them in their classroom.

How did you find your way into the Teach Chicago Tomorrow program?

My friends who are in the program and I always joke about this. It was COVID, the winter of 2020-2021. Everyone is trying to figure out where you’re going in the middle of a pandemic. All of a sudden, we get this email from CPS that says, “Do you want to be a teacher? Join a Q & A session for the Teach Chicago Tomorrow initiative.” And we’re like, “This sounds too good to be true.”

I remember speaking with my counselor at Lane, and she said, “It’s a new program. That’s why no one has heard of it, but you should definitely apply. I think you would be a good fit for it.” I got in, and I met other people who had that same mentality as me, who were products of CPS, who wanted to teach at CPS, and who were bilingual and first generation. We were really able to connect and learn from each other. And all of us are educators today, teaching in CPS.

How much academic, financial, and other support did you get through the program?

My first two years, I went to community college at Truman virtually. I was able to have support from a program partnered with Teach Chicago Tomorrow called Supporting Emerging Educator Development. They explained, “This is what community college looks like. These are the classes that you need to take to successfully connect to Illinois State University.”

They helped us get access to mental health resources. We were also able to get academic help through One Million Degrees (a nonprofit that provides academic, personal, and other support to City Colleges students). We had access to staff who were able to support us through our transition to Illinois State. Every single credit that I took at Truman went into my Illinois State degree so I was able to finish my bachelor’s in four years.

The district says that the program is set up so ideally, students can complete it without paying any tuition or fees. Is that how it played out in your case?

Through CPS, I connected to Lincoln Park Zoo, and I interned there. Then they hired me as a part-time educator. I worked at the zoo for three years, and then because of Teach Chicago Tomorrow, we were offered positions in the CPS Tutor Corps initiative that started in 2021.

They also have some scholarships, but it really depends. You get a scholarship your first two years of community college, but when you transfer out, you don’t have that scholarship anymore. I’m a Golden Apple scholar as well, so that’s how I paid for school.

This fall you are teaching sixth grade at Talcott. What have these first weeks of leading your own classroom been like?

It’s been a lot of trial and error. How do we make sure that students give their input and their value? For example, when I graded their math classwork, instead of just giving them a grade, I asked them, “What does it look like to get an A in this classroom?” Co-creating those norms and expectations together helps them see, “I know that I can do this because we came up with it together and have that mutual agreement.”

They are taking initiative in their own learning and becoming more independent. Thankfully, I have the students that I student-taught last year. So I’m able to better support them and pick up off where I left off last year.

Do you feel that during this first month, you’ve learned something about teaching that you can’t necessarily pick up taking classes or even student-teaching?

I feel like a lot of it is making decisions on the spot. You learn a little bit about that during your student-teaching, but you still have support from someone else. Being by yourself and having to do everything on your own, it’s a lot of, “Wow, I have to really make this decision quickly, and what’s the best decision?”

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

Chicago’s search for new schools chief narrows, source says interim CEO plans to apply

2025-09-24T17:18:16+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The search for Chicago Public Schools’ next top leader is ramping up.

Chicago school board members are preparing to begin interviews with CEO candidates, staying on track to meet a goal of choosing a new schools chief by the end of 2025.

District leaders and the head of the consulting firm helping with the search say the opening at the helm of the country’s fourth largest district has drawn a strong pool of contenders, even as some were scared off by recent leadership turmoil and the complex politics of the job. More than 85 people have applied for the job, and the district’s search firm expects at least a few more might yet get in the running.

One of those soon-to-be applicants is the district’s interim CEO, Macquline King, according to a CPS official with knowledge of her plans who requested anonymity to discuss them openly. When asked earlier about her interest in the permanent job, the former CPS teacher and principal said she had not decided but was focused on her interim responsibilities. She declined to comment for this story.

In the coming weeks, the school board will start interviewing about 20 top candidates prescreened by the Chicago-based firm, Alma Advisory Group. Over several rounds of interviews, they will zero in on a smaller group of semi-finalists, and eventually three to four finalists with the credentials and mettle to steer a district with a $10 billion budget and 45,000 employees. Only one frontrunner will be publicly announced before the board takes a vote to hire that applicant, likely in December.

The district launched the search earlier this year following the firing without cause of former CEO Pedro Martinez, who had clashed with Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union over dealing with CPS’s fiscal challenges.

The next district leader would have to navigate the district’s transition to a fully elected 21-member school board, looming budget deficits, declining enrollment, and clashes with the Trump administration over diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other challenges. But that leader also gets to build on recent academic momentum that has brought improvements in the district’s graduation rate and a post-pandemic recovery that gained some national notice.

“It’s fair to say this position is not for the faint of heart,” said Monica Santana Rosen, the CEO of Alma. “There are leaders out there who would be strong contenders who’ve said, ‘No, thank you.’”

But, said Rosen, the challenging, high-profile position is also a major draw: “We’re feeling really good about the quality of the applicant pool.”

Jessica Biggs, who chairs the board’s search committee, said applicants include people who have worked for CPS or served as superintendents or in senior education leadership roles elsewhere.

“It’s really a unicorn, the person who is the right fit for this job,” Biggs said. “There are really a handful of people across the country who are well suited to do the job.”

Board members were trained recently on interview protocols and will conduct second round interviews in the coming weeks, followed by a semifinalist and finalist round.

Neither the school board nor Alma will release candidate names before the finalist is announced.

“The tension here is wanting to make sure we attract the best talent, and sometimes the best talent can’t let the spaces where they are currently know they are looking to leave,” Biggs said.

The board is weighing a community panel that could include students, teachers, and other residents and would interview the finalist confidentially before a public announcement, Rosen said.

In any case, Rosen noted the district solicited extensive community input before kicking off the search. It hosted community roundtables in the spring to collect feedback about what the public wants in the next schools chief, hosted focus groups, conducted a survey, and shaped its job description based in part on that input.

“We feel confident that community voice will be a part of the process,” Rosen said.

Earlier this year, State Sen. Robert Martwick, an architect of Chicago’s transition to an elected school board, wrote the board president, Sean Harden, to argue that state law gives the mayor the final say in picking the next top district leader through 2027 when a fully elected board is in place. But following guidance from the district’s legal team, the current hybrid school board is planning to vote on the CEO.

“We embrace the fact that the mayor is an important leader who appoints 11 of the board members and his voice and perspective really matter in this process,” Rosen said, adding that the search committee is keeping Johnson in the loop, and he’ll get to interact with the frontrunners.

In March, the school board passed a resolution requiring its next leader to hold a superintendent’s license, saying the district needs someone with extensive background in education to steer it. CPS is one of relatively few large districts that have a CEO rather than a superintendent at the helm.

Rosen said that finding the district’s next top leader is a priority for school board members, who see it as an important part of their legacy.

“We really want to get this right,” she said.

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

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

No more networks? Chicago Public Schools considers reorganizing middle management

2025-09-23T21:46:08+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools leadership may restructure middle management and is considering aligning it to school board electoral districts, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the plan.

District leaders say the change could be a way to make the administration more responsive to school needs and to save money, but some principals are concerned about an organizational overhaul in the middle of the school year.

During a routine call with principals on Friday, CPS leadership said it planned to reorganize the current network system of middle management into districts, but didn’t offer additional details, according to two principals who spoke to Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity in order to avoid reprisal.

The networks organize schools based on geographic location and each has a network chief who principals answer to. Among their responsibilities, network chiefs evaluate principals, provide instructional expertise if needed, and may step in when principals need help during the year, such as for additional staff or issues with their building.

According to two school board members who spoke directly to interim CPS CEO Macquline King, the potential restructure would involve reorganizing the district’s 13 existing networks for elementary and middle schools into 10 that would align with the Chicago Board of Education’s electoral districts. The four high school networks would be kept the same. The plan would also require current network chiefs and their deputies to reapply for their jobs.

On Monday, district spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said CPS has been considering changes at central office to “strengthen teaching and learning for all students,” and that no final decisions have been made about the district’s network offices. She did not outline specific plans that CPS is considering.

“All plans remain subject to change as CPS leadership continues to thoughtfully review options and considerations moving forward,” Barragan said.

The number of students under each network varies. For example, Network 14, which covers part of the North Side, oversees two dozen schools with a total 27,000 students. But Network 5 on the West Side has 28 schools with just under 8,000 students.

Switching to the 10 districts mirroring school board electoral districts could also mean uneven distribution. For example, District 5 on the West Side has more than 100 schools, many of them charters. But just over 30 schools exist in District 4 on the North Side.

A senior CPS official told Chalkbeat that the goal of the reorganization is to make the district’s administration more nimble and responsive to school needs. It would also reduce spending on administrative positions, delivering a portion of $50 million in savings the district’s 2025-26 budget assumes it will make this year and allowing it to steer more dollars directly to schools in the longer run. The official said it is too soon to say how much the district would save thanks to the overhaul or how many administrative positions might be affected.

However, the two school board members who spoke with King said the cost savings were estimated to be roughly $2 million.

The district recently passed a $10.2 billion budget that included a slew of cuts to close a $734 million deficit, but district leaders said the plan avoided midyear cuts to classrooms. Still, CPS faces potential funding threats, including a recent threat from the Trump administration to withhold federal funding.

It’s not uncommon for new leadership to restructure the district’s central office. Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his handpicked CEO Forrest Claypool laid off hundreds of central office staffers and did an organizational restructure. Before that, former CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard also oversaw a revamp of district’s management structure that was meant to provide oversight and additional support for schools.

In addition to the 17 networks that exist for most CPS schools, there are also separate networks for options — or alternative — schools, charter schools, and schools run by principals who have been granted more autonomy than their peers.

One elementary school principal said a midyear change feels “very unfair” to school leaders. Her network chief has already evaluated her once this year, and she’s concerned about losing a supervisor with whom she’s built a positive relationship and knows her school well.

But another longtime district principal said less middle management would free up more dollars to spend directly on schools.

“Reorganizing is always an opportunity to build a better structure,” the principal said.

One of the principals who spoke to Chalkbeat said it could make sense to reorganize schools in a way that corresponds with school board electoral districts given the new structure of the board.

But two school board members who spoke to King said they’re concerned such a change could send the message that school board members have a managerial role with schools when they shouldn’t.

“I don’t want me to go visit a school, and the principal thinks this is going to affect their evaluation or they have to put a show on for me,” said board member Carlos Rivas.

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

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

Feds to withhold some funding from Chicago schools over Black Student Success Plan, transgender student guidelines

2025-09-17T20:23:37+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Trump administration says it will withhold some federal funding from Chicago Public Schools over an initiative to improve outcomes for Black students and guidelines allowing transgender students to play sports and use facilities based on the gender with which they identify.

Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, wrote the district Tuesday saying his office has found CPS violated anti-discrimination laws and will lose grant dollars through the Magnet School Assistance Program. The district, with a budget of roughly $10.2 billion, has a five-year, $15 million Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant it received last year.

The feds are demanding that the district abolish the Black Student Success Plan it unveiled in February and issue a statement saying it will require students to compete in sports or use locker rooms and bathroom facilities based on their biological sex at birth, among other demands.

However, Illinois law conflicts on both fronts, putting CPS in a difficult position. The state issued guidance in March that outlines compliance with the Illinois Human Rights Law, including that schools must allow transgender students access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Separately, an Illinois law passed in 2024 requires the Chicago school board to have a Black Student Achievement Committee and plan for serving Black students.

Chicago Public Schools said Wednesday in an emailed statement that it “does not comment on ongoing investigations.” Previously, its leaders have said that the Black Students Success Plan is a priority to address longstanding academic and discipline disparities that Black students face. They have vowed to forge ahead with the five-year plan in defiance of the Trump administration’s crackdown on race-based initiatives.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said earlier this year that he would take the Trump administration to court if it takes federal funding away from CPS because of the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. His office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to a complaint from a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit earlier this year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the Black Student Success Plan, which sets goals to double the number of male Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions, and teach Black history in more classrooms. Trainor said in his department’s interpretation, the initiative runs afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year banning the consideration of race in college admissions by offering added support to Black students and teachers exclusively.

“This is textbook racial discrimination, and no justification proffered by CPS can overcome the patent illegality of its racially exclusionary plan,” he wrote.

The OCR also launched an investigation in March of CPS, the Illinois State Board of Education, and suburban Deerfield Public School District 109 to look into their policies on transgender students using facilities and participating in school sports. Trainor said Chicago’s Guidelines Regarding the Support of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education.

District officials told Chalkbeat recently that the members of a new school board Black Student Achievement Committee tasked with overseeing the plan’s rollout will be unveiled later this month.

Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, issued a statement decrying the federal move to withhold funds from CPS and saying the district will stay the course.

“We will not back down,” she said in the statement. “We will not apologize. Our duty is to our students, and no amount of political bullying will shake our commitment to them.”

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

Chicago Public Schools forges ahead — cautiously — with its Black Student Success Plan amid federal inquiry

2025-09-15T21:51:22+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

When Chicago school board member and longtime activist Jitu Brown heard last spring that the school district’s Black Student Success Plan was under a federal investigation after a complaint from a conservative group, he vowed that the district would stay the course.

“I am not built to shrink,” said Brown, who will lead a school board committee tasked with overseeing the plan’s rollout.

“It’s racism cloaked as civil rights,” he added about the investigation.

Chicago Public Schools unveiled the long-awaited plan to address academic and disciplinary disparities its Black students face this past February. It outlined several five-year goals: Double the number of male Black teachers, decrease Black student suspensions by 40%, and grow the number of classrooms where Black history is taught, among others.

Brown said the district will forge ahead this school year despite the investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which is reviewing whether the plan discriminates against other district students. He said he will announce the members of the school board’s Black Student Achievement Committee later this month.

But the Trump administration’s campaign against race-based initiatives and the threat of withholding federal funding is casting a shadow over the Chicago plan’s implementation.

District officials deferred all questions about the plan and its rollout this year to the school board.

In spite of the federal scrutiny, some parents and advocates are pressing the district to ramp up work on the plan this fall. They are eager to see a more detailed blueprint for meeting the plan’s goals, a dedicated budget for its rollout, and metrics to track whether the district is making headway each year.

A spokeswoman for the Office for Civil Rights, which has requested that CPS turn over extensive documents related to the plan, said the inquiry is ongoing.

Parents Defending Education, the Virginia-based group whose complaint triggered the investigation, did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously argued that Chicago’s initiative is “racially exclusive” and conflicts with the Trump administration’s sweeping interpretation of a U.S. Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions.

Black students make up roughly a third of CPS’s student body. Based on early, unofficial enrollment data, they were the racial group whose numbers decreased the most this fall as the district’s enrollment resumed a decades-long downward slide.

Board committee to listen and seek out best practices this year

Brown, who has a long history of activism on racial justice and equity in Chicago, represents the West Side on the school board and was chosen earlier this year to chair the new Black Student Achievement Committee, which is required under Illinois law.

He said his first order of business is firming up the committee’s membership, which is expected to be unveiled at the board’s regular meeting later this month. Brown said appointed board member Michilla Blaise, who also represents West Side communities, will serve as the committee’s vice chair, alongside principals, teachers, students, community leaders, local school council members, and others. Once the committee is announced, it will tackle the task of fleshing out a vision to implement the plan.

Developed with extensive community engagement, the Black Student Success Plan acknowledges a district track record of falling short in serving Black families, noting that Black students have disproportionately attended racially segregated, disinvested schools and have been affected by school closures more than other racial groups. The plan sets five overarching goals, but it does not explain exactly how the district would meet these goals.

The day after the plan was released in February, Parents Defending Education, which has challenged race- and gender-based initiatives across the country, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. It argued that the effort discriminates against other students in the district, particularly Latinos, who have also lagged behind their white and Asian American peers.

Within weeks, the OCR announced it would pursue an investigation into the complaint. It requested records describing the initiative’s rationale, how students and schools would be chosen to receive services, and more, according to documents the district provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Chalkbeat. CPS said its responses to the feds are not public.

While CPS works through the details of the investigation, Brown said he is preparing for a year of outreach.

“Year one will be about building a rapport and rhythm within the committee and beginning to engage communities on what can be done differently,” he said.

Brown said there are effective practices benefiting Black students across the district — some involving little to no additional spending. He pointed to a peer mentoring program at National Teachers Academy, in which older students coach and read with students in the earlier grades. He also held up Kenwood Academy, a high-performing neighborhood school with a magnet component serving predominantly Black students, which Brown’s son attends. Brown said other schools can learn from what “the HBCU of Chicago” is doing right.

Despite the OCR investigation and a broader societal swing away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, Brown said he’s not interested in watering down the plan’s goals. In Chicago, Brown is well-known for his activism, including spearheading a 2015 hunger strike to reopen a shuttered South Side high school. Brown now leads Journey for Justice Alliance, a national network of community-based organizations, which issued a pre-pandemic report on educational disparities.

Still, it remains unclear how close CPS and the school board are to start implementing the plan. District officials have declined to discuss its implementation this year since the announcement of the federal inquiry. CPS’s recently released budget did not spell out a specific allocation for the rollout but listed it as a signature initiative of the Office of Equity, saying it will work closely with 13 district departments crafting their own strategies for implementing the plan.

According to the district’s budget book, the Office of Equity’s budget decreased slightly compared with last year’s approved budget, to about $1.9 million. The document says that in the spring of 2026, the office will reconvene a community working group that provided input into the plan and prepare to launch districtwide Black student unions.

Valerie Leonard, a community advocate who served on the community working group and who lobbied state lawmakers to mandate the Black Student Achievement Committee, said she believes CPS is moving slowly and cautiously because of the federal scrutiny.

She said the blueprint is a “wonderful beginning,” but continues to push for a detailed vision for how it will meet the plan’s goals year by year, with interim goals and concrete, nonpunitive measures of how the Black student experience is improving.

She urged officials not to delay that work or leave advocates like her out of the loop, noting that intensive community engagement has already happened.

“We can’t get bogged down in analysis paralysis,” she said.

CPS could have a legal case to make

Cara McClellan, an associate practice professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, said Chicago is not required to put its initiative on hold during the federal investigation. CPS could be on solid legal footing as long as it can make a strong case that its efforts are tailored to address discrimination and inequities its Black students have historically faced under its care, she said.

The district needs to clearly articulate how it fell short and how the plan tackles the fallout, McClellan said. For example, she pointed to extensive research showing that racial bias and discrimination have historically contributed to disproportionate discipline, including suspensions, for Black students.

McClellan said she is skeptical of the Trump administration’s effort to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision banning the use of race in college admissions.

“There’s nothing in Students for Fair Admissions that says you can’t remedy a history of discrimination against students,” McClellan said.

The federal government has argued that the decision prohibits institutions from using even non-racial factors such as poverty to address disparities.

“What we’re seeing is an attempt by the Trump administration and conservative groups to say that Students for Fair Admissions stands for much more than it does,” she said. “One decision doesn’t append other areas of the law.”

Parents Defending Education, the group challenging Chicago’s plan, had previously filed a complaint against a similar plan to help Black students in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2023. Under pressure from the Biden administration, that district last year made changes to its plan to target high-needs schools rather than Black students specifically to receive extra support — changes that rankled some of the original plan’s supporters.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has said the city would sue the Trump administration if it moves to take away CPS funding over its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Chicago parents urge action and practical solutions

Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago said regardless of the federal scrutiny, the district should earmark money for implementation and spell out clearly where it stands now on the goals it has set: How many Black male teachers work in CPS? How many classrooms teach Black history now?

Woods said some of the parents affiliated with his group are concerned about the possible loss of federal funding at a financially precarious time for the district and want CPS to navigate the federal scrutiny cautiously. Others want it to move forward unapologetically.

Katrina Adams, a mom of three district students who leads a nonprofit that offers after-school and summer programs through the Chicago Park District, says she has long been deeply concerned about the disparities facing the district’s Black students.

Not enough are graduating ready for college or careers in high-demand fields. If salvaging the district’s initiative means changing its name or how the district steers help to students, she’s open to it: “It’s about who needs the most support. In the long run, this will help all students.”

But Mykela Collins, the mother of two CPS students, doesn’t want the CPS to make any concessions, even as she worries about how the district will roll out the plan amid rising budget pressures and a tough political climate.

“Why can’t Black students have a focus solely on them?” she said. “What’s the problem with focusing on a group of students who really need it?”

Brown said the school board is determined to push the district to serve Black students better, regardless of how the federal inquiry plays out.

“This work will happen no matter what,” he said. “There’s a deep commitment to it.”

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

Three small Chicago schools get big-ticket STEAM makeovers. Can the effort reverse declining enrollment?

2025-09-09T11:00:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

This story was published in partnership with ProPublica. Sign up for Dispatches, their newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country.

This summer, worried parents called the principal at Chalmers Elementary on Chicago’s West Side to ask if the district had shuttered the school. They had noticed second-floor windows boarded up.

But despite years of declining enrollment, the school wasn’t closing. It was undergoing major renovations.

Students returning to Chalmers last month found an expansive new engineering space, computer lab, and arts studio. The teachers who greeted them had received special training. A cache of new technology — 3D printers, computers, and bee-shaped robots to teach students basic coding — offered fresh possibilities.

The influx of dollars and attention has lifted hopes at Chalmers, with officials at Chicago Public Schools and City Hall testing the idea that investing in high-poverty schools can reverse enrollment losses.

But it could take years and millions of dollars to see if it works.

Chalmers, in the historic North Lawndale neighborhood, served about 210 students last year in a building with capacity for 600. Just around the corner, about 210 students populated Johnson Elementary on a campus meant for 480. The local high school, Collins Academy, was down to 200 students. The schools serve mostly Black and low-income students.

The enrollment slide at the three schools and others in the area was partly the result of decisions by previous mayors and public school administrations who labeled North Lawndale’s schools as failing and opened new ones — many run by private entities — that drew families away. About a decade ago, the district closed and overhauled Collins and fired educators at Chalmers and Johnson who had built relationships with families and temporarily handed the schools over to a private operator to try to turn them around academically.

All the while, families have been leaving the neighborhood or having fewer babies, creating demographic challenges outside school officials’ control. Across the district, overall enrollment dropped by 70,000 in the past decade. That decline meant some schools in North Lawndale and elsewhere became tiny, costly to run and unable to offer a rich student experience.

Three of every 10 Chicago schools sit at least half-empty, and closing or merging them remains a political third rail. Chicago officials, faced with pressure from the teachers union and community groups, have not confronted this challenge. And, as Chalkbeat and ProPublica reported in June, for years the district has largely left chronically under-enrolled schools to struggle.

Now, CPS and the city — under new leadership — are backing a different, community-led approach: spending at least $40 million to transform Chalmers, Johnson, and Collins into science, technology, engineering, art, and math, or STEAM, academies. The money is covering building upgrades, professional development, new educator positions, and technology in the initiative’s first two years.

After years spent promoting better-resourced selective and magnet schools and opening up charters en masse, CPS is hoping to draw families back to the neighborhood schools that many of them abandoned.

The district has held up the North Lawndale initiative as an example of working closely with local communities to find solutions to underenrollment — and as a model for other Chicago neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment and student losses.

“When we are successful in having high-quality programs, what we know from history is that more children will want to come,” former CEO Pedro Martinez said at a press event at Collins last school year.

Education experts say the North Lawndale experiment is promising, and locally, the project has drawn a lot of cheerleaders, roughly $1 million in philanthropic backing and no vocal opposition. But solving the city’s enrollment challenge by trying to attract families to neighborhood schools is a daunting and uncertain task. New science and technology programs the district launched in other neighborhoods in recent years have not always brought a surge of students.

Chicago still maintains a robust system of school choice, and the school-age population continues to shrink. Without an influx of new students from outside of North Lawndale, growing the three schools could mean siphoning students from other schools with their own enrollment woes.

Preliminary data a few weeks into the school year shows flat enrollment, but the project’s supporters say word about it is just getting out. A key challenge is ensuring the cash-strapped district keeps funding the new positions, staff training, and facility upgrades after money for the first two years runs out.

Ralph Martire, the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, which has criticized the district’s spending in the past, says it’s tough to argue against programs that could boost student outcomes in high-poverty schools.

“There’s never a good reason not to invest in the education of kids who’ve been traditionally underserved,” he said. “The impact on enrollment — that’s really hard to predict. I don’t know that we have the data to give a definitive answer.”

In any case, given that the initiative took seven years to launch and that it came with a high price tag, it’s likely not a solution the Chicago school district can readily replicate in other neighborhoods grappling with underenrollment.

“The question is how the district is supporting innovative models at scale, not how they’re supporting one-off alternatives alone,” said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.

“Districts are trying all kinds of things — work-based learning, dual enrollment, themed academies, small schools within schools — and yet we still see these declines,” Hahnel said. “The education sector is really struggling right now to figure out what it takes to attract families.”

Chalmers is one of three Chicago Public Schools in North Lawndale shifting to STEAM programming, which adds the arts and social studies to the traditional STEM focus of science, technology, engineering and math.

How past policies drove students away

In the name of school reform in the 2000s, Chicago officials under Mayor Richard M. Daley and later Mayor Rahm Emanuel enacted a series of policies that contributed to the shrinking of neighborhood schools like those in North Lawndale.

After the federal No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 and schools in some high-poverty areas did not perform well on annual standardized tests, many were labeled failing and in need of drastic reforms. Chicago’s schools CEO at the time, Arne Duncan — who under President Barack Obama led the U.S. Department of Education — embraced opening independently operated, publicly funded charter schools.

His administration maintained that was the fastest way to give vulnerable students a better experience and spur traditional public campuses to improve. In North Lawndale, families eager for higher performing, better resourced options have embraced the new schools, or sent their children to CPS magnet or selective enrollment schools farther from home.

In the 2005-06 school year, there were about 5,000 students living within the boundaries of North Lawndale’s 12 schools, and about 70% went to their assigned neighborhood school, according to a ProPublica-Chalkbeat analysis of district data. There were three charter schools open in the neighborhood.

The most recent data from the last school year shows there are roughly 4,000 students living within the boundaries of the 10 remaining neighborhood schools in North Lawndale, but only about 30% attend their assigned school. Meanwhile, the neighborhood is now home to seven charter schools — among the highest concentration of them in Chicago — and they enroll 2,800 students.

Duncan declined to speak with ProPublica and Chalkbeat about Chicago’s enrollment troubles.

Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, watched all of this happening and said she grew alarmed by the emptying out of the neighborhood’s public schools and outraged by the dearth of specialized programs they offered.

By 2018, Allen-Green and a small group of other longtime North Lawndale residents and former educators had tackled an ambitious goal: give local families a high-quality neighborhood school they’d be eager to choose. Among these advocates was Areulia Davis, whose kindergarten class had met on the auditorium stage in an overcrowded Pope elementary in the 1960s. In 2013, she’d seen a diminished Pope become one of 50 campuses shuttered in the country’s largest mass school closures.

The group felt their mission was key to a broader Quality of Life Plan that North Lawndale leaders unveiled in 2018, which also included goals to increase affordable housing, improve safety and create more jobs.

“We wanted to bring the children of North Lawndale back to the schools of North Lawndale,” Allen-Green said.

Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, has worked to revitalize schools in North Lawndale and pushed for the STEAM program.

Allen-Green and the other former educators pitched a plan to build a new state-of-the-art STEAM school. They say district officials urged them to include the consolidation of three underenrolled schools alongside the proposed $65 million construction project. The idea echoed what the district had just done in Englewood on the South Side at the time: closing several small high schools and replacing them with a state-of-the-art high school focused on science and technology.

The North Lawndale group lined up almost two dozen high-profile partners, from the city’s science museum to universities, to help with teacher training, field trips, and other services.

But their plan met with intense opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union and families at the three schools that would be targeted for closure. Shuttering schools would be especially disruptive to families amid the pandemic, and especially painful in a neighborhood still reeling from earlier closures, the union said.

Allen-Green countered that she and other project backers had been on the front lines of opposing school closures in 2013. But, she argued, with unabated enrollment losses in the following years, it made sense to combine the resources of several tiny schools.

Still, Allen-Green’s group backed off and began formulating other plans without any closures. One finally stuck: Give three existing schools — Johnson, Chalmers and Collins — a STEAM makeover.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union employee and staunch opponent of closures who has promised to improve housing and draw families to places like North Lawndale, became a proponent once he took office. (Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment about Chicago’s efforts to address small schools.)

By 2024, City Hall pitched in $10 million toward the $41 million project from a city pool of tax dollars for economic development.

And when Johnson selected where he’d ring the bell to mark the first day of school, the mayor chose Chalmers in North Lawndale.

Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett said families are excited about the STEAM revamp.

Doing “right by the kids we’ve already got”

Like other parents dropping off their children at Chalmers on the first day of school in August, Angela Dixon said she knew little about the school’s transformation into a STEAM campus. She likes the school because of its proximity to her home and the supportive small school feel, which has helped her third grade son thrive.

School leaders on the STEAM campuses say the overhaul, including a more student-led approach to teaching, is already generating positive buzz. Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett says he’d like to see more students enroll, especially in the early grades. Still, Crockett, who gives himself two days at the start of the year to learn each student’s name, thinks the project will help even if it doesn’t significantly boost enrollment.

“I don’t quantify achievement by the number of bodies,” he said. “I want to do right by the kids we’ve already got.”

But for Allen-Green and other community members supporting the project, a major preoccupation this year remains selling the three schools to more families in the neighborhood. They are pushing the district to hang new banners promoting the campuses, polish their websites, and pay for new school marquees.

They hope Johnson and Chalmers will draw some students from outside the neighborhood. District officials say they’ll be leaning on the three schools’ principals to drive these marketing efforts.

But across the city, efforts to bolster neighborhood schools have run headlong into trends and attitudes unleashed by the district itself when it endorsed magnets, selectives, and charters as stronger options.

A view of the skyline from a classroom at Johnson Elementary.

Students wait in line to enter a classroom at Johnson.

In December 2023, the school board passed a resolution vowing to rethink school choice and prioritize neighborhood schools, nodding to their role as vital community hubs. It drew pushback and alarm, including from Black and Latino families on the district’s South and West sides wary of CPS limiting their options. The district backed off from any moves that might be seen as undermining its magnet or selective enrollment programs. Still, the district’s new five-year strategic plan includes a goal to “increase the percentage of students attending schools within their neighborhood or community area.”

Some areas with underenrolled schools still have robust numbers of CPS students living in them. Martinez has held up the neighborhood of Austin as an example of an area that has enough students to fill bustling campuses, but many families instead choose schools elsewhere.

“If every student went to school in Austin that lives there, we’d be overcrowded,” he said at a City Club Chicago speech in June. (Martinez was fired after a clash with the mayor over the district’s budget.)

More than 1,500 potential students live within the boundaries of Austin’s local high school, but only 114 enrolled last year.

An experiment in Englewood on the city’s South Side, where population was dropping, sought to create an attractive new neighborhood high school while closing four small ones. The district built an $85 million modern STEM high school, and enrollment grew initially. But last year it slipped to about 630 from its peak of about 830 three years earlier. It had an attendance rate of roughly 65% and a graduation rate of about 62% for the 2023-24 school year, both significantly below the district average.

Mistrust of neighborhood schools can run deep, said Blaire Flowers, a West Side mother of five. Families remain wary of high educator turnover, few engaging programs, and lackluster graduation and other student metrics — or they simply want the rich course offerings and extracurricular activities of schools elsewhere. After her own negative experiences as a student in the neighborhood, she has largely chosen North Lawndale charter schools for her children over the years.

She thinks the STEAM initiative could be a game changer for local schools: “Right now there are no programs in these high schools and elementaries that make students want to go there.”

But Flowers said she and other parents will wait for solid evidence that the makeovers are paying off in stronger student outcomes before considering these schools.

Corey Morrison, executive director of the district’s STEM Department, said CPS has brought coveted programs to dozens of its neighborhood schools in recent years. Some, like Peck Elementary on the city’s Southwest Side, have earned recognition as exemplary STEM schools. But they haven’t shifted the demographic trajectories of their neighborhoods.

Still, Morrison is hopeful about the prospects in North Lawndale.

“I just don’t see how this doesn’t draw the community because it came from the community,” he said. “They’re telling us what they need and want, and we’re designing the very best version of that we can provide.”

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

Chicago Public Schools enrollment drops, preliminary data show

2025-09-08T11:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment has dipped to roughly 313,000 this fall — a decrease of about 12,000 students, assuming preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat holds steady until the 20th day of school on Sept. 15 when the district takes its official count.

The early numbers, which are posted publicly on the CPS school profiles and updated daily based on the district’s student record system, show drops in the number of English language learners and Black students.

In a statement, the district said it would not comment on the preliminary numbers.

“CPS anticipates that enrollment numbers may shift somewhat in the coming weeks, as late registrations and student mobility continue to affect totals,” the district said. Last year, district officials provided early figures on overall enrollment as of the 15th day of school.

An influx of migrant students brought a modest enrollment boost the past two years after years of steady losses that had left CPS with about 70,000 students fewer than a decade prior. Now, with migrant family arrivals to Chicago waning and an immigration crackdown under the second Trump administration, that reprieve in enrollment losses appears to have been temporary.

In other ways, the preliminary enrollment numbers show a continuation of trends that have been underway for years in the district, which during the COVID-19 pandemic lost its status as the country’s third-largest and dropped to fourth.

Chalkbeat’s analysis found Black student enrollment continued to drop, and some schools serving primarily Black students — including ones that have shrunk dramatically over the past decade — were among the hardest hit. Latino enrollment — long on the decline due to slowing immigration, falling birth rates, and gentrification in once-heavily Latino neighborhoods such as Pilsen — fell the most, by more than 5% compared to last year. The district had slight upticks in the number of white and Asian American students.

The number of low-income students also continued to decline based on the preliminary data. These students now represent fewer than 70% of the district’s overall enrollment.

Overall, charter schools, which reported more stable enrollment during the pandemic’s turmoil, experienced sharper enrollment losses: more than 6% compared with about 3% in district-run schools. Some of the most dramatic losses were at four of the five campuses the Acero charter network wanted to close last school year — and which the district intervened to keep open.

District officials and labor leaders have voiced concern that a looming immigration enforcement push and the possible deployment of the National Guard in Chicago by the Trump administration could affect attendance and enrollment in the coming days and weeks. Some think these developments could already be driving down the district’s daily attendance numbers.

Enrollment numbers increased steadily in the first two weeks after the Aug. 18 start of the school year, then started leveling off in week three following Labor Day. Last year, district officials discussed preliminary enrollment as of the 15th day of school at a September school board meeting.

Years of enrollment declines in CPS have contributed to a growing number of very small schools, often in large, aging buildings — an issue that has negatively affected the student experience on some campuses even as it has pushed up their per student costs.

This fall, high school enrollment, which has been more stable in recent years, decreased by almost 4%, slightly more than elementary enrollment.

Alexandra Ritson, director of learning and engagement at the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project, said the district is up against complex factors affecting enrollment. Many, from immigration policy changes to the rising cost of living in some neighborhoods that have driven low-income families to leave the city, are outside of CPS’ control.

But in recent years, Ritson said, the district has also taken some steps to address a factor it can control: the sense of belonging historically underserved families and students feel in its schools. She pointed to the Black Student Success Plan the district unveiled last spring, an initiative that is the focus of an ongoing federal investigation amid the Trump administration’s assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

“The district is doing a lot to change course and make sure Black students and families have more sense of belonging,” she said.

Fall enrollment numbers so far worry school leaders

CPS officials noted that enrollment won’t affect the district’s 2025-26 budget, given that the state’s funding formula is largely divorced from overall student numbers, instead taking into account a school district’s level of student poverty and the number of students with disabilities.

The number of CPS students receiving special education services, which has remained fairly steady in recent years as overall enrollment dropped, ticked up slightly this fall by several hundred students.

But, if it holds, the drop in low-income students could affect state funding next year: CPS just received a boost this summer after the state again classified it as among the districts with the highest level of needs statewide, also known as Tier 1. The state had designated the district as Tier 2 in 2022 after the number of students living in poverty decreased and the district got a boost in property tax revenue.

Enrollment counts, while still important, are less tethered to a school’s funding after district officials moved away from a practice of revising budgets in the fall based on the number of students who show up at the start of the school year. CPS more recently shifted to a school budgeting approach that grants a minimum number of staff to each campus and directs additional resources based on a school’s level of student needs.

“While it is too early to determine the full budgetary implications, CPS remains committed to maintaining equitable and stable investments in schools and will continue to engage school leaders, families, and community members,” the district’s statement said.

Still, some school leaders who were not authorized to comment publicly told Chalkbeat they are watching the enrollment numbers with concern.

One principal at a majority Latino high school said a marked dip in students this fall set off alarm bells on campus. Thanks to daily home visits and phone calls to families, enrollment has bounced back somewhat since the start of the school year, but remains below what the school projected. The campus lost some teaching and staff positions this fall on the heels of enrollment decreases in recent years.

“I am still reeling from that, and this is another hit I’d have to take next year,” the principal said. “Next year, I don’t know what I’d cut.”

Some families school staff were able to reach said they had moved out of state or out of the country over the summer. A number enrolled in private schools.

The principal said concerned school leaders have been discussing the enrollment numbers.

“Too many kids are not here,” the principal said. “Everyone’s worried about the same thing.”

But another high school principal whose school also saw a drop said the numbers might yet bounce back closer to where they were last year. The campus has also spoken with families who have left Chicago or returned to home countries in Central America.

“We’re not receiving nearly as many newcomers as we have the past two back-to-school seasons,” the principal said. “I am cautious, but I’m not panicking yet.”

Schools reach out to families to boost turnout

José Quiles serves on the local school councils at three Northwest Side schools, including Lyon Elementary, which his grandchildren attend, and Steinmetz College Prep, from which his children graduated. Both schools have faced declining enrollment for years and appear poised for more losses this fall, including over 16%, or about 170 students, at Steinmetz.

Quiles said some migrant families who arrived at the schools in recent years have since moved to the suburbs, which they perceive as more affordable and safer from an immigration enforcement perspective. Some families, including longtime residents whose children were born in the United States, are still keeping them away from school out of fear they might be targeted by immigration agents, Quiles said.

“I tell them, ‘Hey, it’s really important for you to keep your kids in school,’” Quiles said. “But they are afraid.”

But he also said he believes longer-standing factors are at play, from gentrification to the pressure neighborhood schools face from often better-resourced selective enrollment or magnet schools: “I can’t put it all on what’s happening with immigration.”

One charter school, Chicago Collegiate, last week launched a “rapid enrollment push,” with staff going door to door in its Roseland neighborhood, fanning out at local community events, posting on social media, and asking current families to get the word out about the school’s college prep focus. The small sixth through 12th grade school is down 27 students this fall, a nearly 11% decrease compared with last year.

Reena Smith, the school’s director of marketing and development, said the goal is to appeal to families who might be second-guessing their school choice after the first two weeks of the school year. The school also paid for billboards and CTA signs this fall and translated some print marketing materials into Spanish for the first time.

“This is something new we’re trying this fall,” Smith said. “This is our first push on this scale. We’ve done everything.”

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

CPS adopts $10.2 billion budget without high-cost loan for pensions

2025-08-29T02:11:02+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

After a long delay and intense political wrangling, Chicago Public Schools has a 2025-26 budget of roughly $10.2 billion that rejects high-cost borrowing and will only make a controversial pension payment to the city if there’s unexpected new revenue.

The Board of Education voted 12-to-7 Thursday to back the budget put forward by interim CEO Macquline King earlier this month. The approval came despite weeks of back and forth and speculation that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s allies on the school board would amend the budget to commit to a payment to a city pension fund that covers CPS non-teaching staff and city workers.

The mayor has pressed the district to borrow and make the payment, and Thursday’s vote made for a surprise repudiation from a board on which he appeared to hold sway.

Several board members appointed by Johnson or elected with backing from his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union joined other elected board members in supporting King’s original budget. It closed the district’s $734 million budget gap without a high-interest loan and without the $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

King, who previously worked in the mayor’s office and is a former teacher and principal, is the second schools chief who has stood by a budget that refrains from short-term borrowing to balance it. Defying Johnson on the issue contributed to the firing of her predecessor, Pedro Martinez, by a Johnson-appointed board last school year.

King’s administration and its supporters on the school board argued that the district shouldn’t add to its massive debt burden that drains away hundreds of millions of dollars meant to educate students each year. At Thursday’s school board meeting, King urged the board to pass her budget blueprint, saying it reflected extensive input from parents and vowing to continue advocating for more revenue for CPS.

“Throughout this process, I’ve been trying to block out the noise and focus on what really matters: the student experience,” she said.

But Johnson-aligned board members argued that the budget should give the district more flexibility and do right by a city facing its own fiscal woes. The city is on the hook for the pension payment under the law and had made it historically until former Mayor Lori Lightfoot started steering a portion of it to CPS — a move the CTU sharply criticized at the time as balancing the city budget at the expense of children.

Board members who supported the payment said that as the board transitions from a mayor-appointed to a fully elected school board, the district should take responsibility for chipping in to the fund.

“I think we should honor our obligation and be a good partner to the city,” said board member Michilla Blaise. “I think we should pay our fair share.”

But ultimately, opponents of King’s budget did not have the votes to block and amend it, said Ed Bannon, a Johnson appointee. Bannon bashed the budget for relying on an uncertain influx of tax revenue from the city — but ended up voting for it anyway.

“To me, this budget is not a win for either side,” he said. But, he said, “It was the best budget deal we were going to get.”

The holdouts who voted no were Olga Bautista, Karen Zaccor, Ángel Vélez, Emma Lozano, Jitu Brown, Blaise, and Norma Rios-Sierra. Member Debby Pope abstained, and board President Sean Harden only votes if he needs to break a tie.

CTU criticized King budget; support staff union backed it

The budget assumes CPS would get $379 million from a city-controlled pool of taxpayer dollars for economic development, known as surplus Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, funding. Board members who favored making the pension payment argued the city could withhold that funding from the district in retaliation if CPS did not pay. But elected board members noted that the cash-strapped city was likely to declare a large TIF surplus to help balance its own budget, and CPS would automatically receive a portion of that surplus by law.

What’s more, a majority of Chicago aldermen — including some Johnson allies — sent the board a letter Wednesday urging them to approve the budget without a loan or the pension reimbursement to city hall, saying those would be “willfully reckless financial decisions” that will hurt district students and employees.

District officials have said that the loan would lead to $175 million in interest and other costs — and a downgrade to the district’s bond rating. That would mean higher borrowing expenses in the future and paltrier savings from refinancing existing debt.

The budget also involves some $272 million in cuts, mainly to central office expenses, but also to custodial services, crossing guards, and cafeteria staff. The district refinanced some existing debt to save money and dipped into a fund set aside to help make debt payments, among other steps to address the deficit.

Despite the support staff cuts, the SEIU Local 73 — the union representing some district support staff — rallied before the board meeting in support of King’s budget. Its leaders and members argued that this was not the time to help out the city with pension payments and saddle CPS with more borrowing costs in the process. The advocacy group Kids First Chicago also held a rally calling for passage of King’s budget.

Kids First Chicago and SEIU 73, the union representing support staff in CPS, in support of the administration's budget

But in a press conference before the meeting and during public comment, CTU leaders and members suggested that failing to borrow could open the door to disruptive midyear cuts to district employees and programs.

Union leaders have put intense pressure on state lawmakers and Gov. JB Pritzker this summer to provide more dollars for the district. They have noted that even after a roughly $1 billion increase in state funding to CPS in recent years, the district remains about $1.6 billion short of what Illinois would consider adequately funded. By all accounts, however, more state help is not on the way this year — a position Pritzker affirmed this week.

Stacy Davis Gates, CTU’s president, said the aldermen who wrote the letter could resolve the budget impasse by committing in writing to steer $500 million in TIF funding to the district.

“The city council can be our hero,” she said. “Twenty-six of them said, ‘We’ve got you.’ Thank you. Put it in writing.”

During public comment, Eric Branholm, a pre-kindergarten special education teacher at Belmont-Cragin Elementary on the city’s Northwest Side, said the budget bakes in cuts from the summer that affected his school this fall. It lost a dual language coordinator, two custodians, afterschool programming, and some instructional materials. He said the district faces further uncertainty as the Trump administration threatens to withhold some of the district’s funding and to take over policing in the city.

“In a moment like this, you just simply cannot pass a budget that ties your hands and takes the option of borrowing off of the table,” he said.

A string of elected officials addressed the board as well. Some aldermen urged board members to redouble their efforts to lobby the state for more funding and to take on the pension payment as a district responsibility. Others cautioned against taking out a high-cost loan. State Sen. Willie Preston, a Chicago Democrat, said “absurd” borrowing to help the city with pension costs would severely undermine the district’s case for more state support.

“This proposal to take out a loan mortgages the future of the children you claim to protect,” he said.

The budget was delayed well past the July 1 start of the fiscal year because of Martinez’s departure and back-and-forth over how to close the deficit. But the board faced a deadline laid out in state law to pass it by the end of this week.

In a recent memo, CPS Chief Financial Officer Miroslava Mejia Krug had sought to reassure board members that they could approve borrowing later in the fiscal year through a simple majority vote in the case of “a true emergency.” She reiterated the concern that including a $200 million loan and the pension reimbursement to the city in the CPS budget would result in cuts to schools.

Board members say they’ll push for more funding

A day before the vote, the mayor appointed Ángel Vélez, a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, to a board vacancy in time to cement a majority of Johnson-aligned members. Some board members Thursday questioned whether he was prepared to vote on the budget and called on him to recuse himself from that vote.

But Vélez pushed back, and Harden censured his colleagues for what he saw as a lack of decorum.

Members on both sides of the vote said they will hold aldermen to their vow to come through with TIF funding — and will keep pushing the state to give CPS more money.

“Please keep that energy up because I am going to,” said DeBerry. “Let’s get more from the state for our children.”

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

Chicago Public Schools’ debt has hit over $28,000 per student. Here’s what that means.

2025-08-26T21:34:53+00:00

Data analysis by Cherry Salazar.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools’ outstanding debt is roughly the same size as its annual budget: almost $10 billion. The district owes more per student than it spends per pupil in many of its schools.

Its massive obligations appear even more sobering compared with other cities.

Among the 25 largest school districts by student enrollment, CPS has the third-most outstanding debt, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data for fiscal year 2023, the most recent available. That data shows CPS owes more than $28,000 per student, up from roughly $17,000 in 2013.

The debt burden for CPS has risen in recent years as it has fallen in some other large districts. It is also one of only three districts among the 25 largest where the debt has consistently exceeded annual revenue — a sign of financial instability, experts say.

City and school district leaders are fighting over whether CPS should borrow more to cover costs. The Chicago Board of Education is slated to vote on a spending plan later this week that limits new high-cost borrowing. But pressure is mounting from Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies on the school board, who make up a majority, to leave open the option of taking out a short-term, high-interest loan to help cover a pension payment to the city and other costs.

Not all school district debt is created equal, experts stress: For districts with a growing enrollment and tax base, taking on debt to expand or modernize facilities makes sense. Many have voter-approved bonds that ensure a steady influx of dollars to pay off that debt.

But in Chicago’s case, CPS is spending hundreds of millions in state aid meant to educate students on paying off debt instead. At the same time, enrollment is falling, and its aging buildings are expected to cost billions to maintain in the coming years — projects that could lead to even more debt.

“It’s one thing to be highly leveraged when you are a growing district,” said Justin Marlowe, who leads the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. “Sometimes, borrowing in that case is exactly the right thing to do. It’s a different story when your enrollment is flat or declining.”

Credit rating agencies are watching closely. Among the nation’s 25 largest school districts, CPS is the only one that has a junk bond rating from Moody’s. That means when it does borrow, the cost to pay back lenders is higher than it can be for other borrowers.

The district will spend roughly $1 billion to make debt payments this school year, or $264 million more than last year, according to the CPS budget proposal. CPS will use about $395 million in state revenue meant for teacher and staff salaries, textbooks, and more to pay off debt.

The mayor’s allies on the school board say borrowing is necessary to chip in for a municipal fund that covers CPS support staff pensions, maintain a cordial relationship with the city, and avoid budget cuts. But other board members and district leaders have countered that the payment will be too costly and place the district on shakier financial ground — a contention that several experts second.

Census data analyzed by Chalkbeat does not include CPS’s unfunded pension liabilities for its teacher pension fund. This year, those liabilities grew to $13.9 billion, and the CPS budget includes a more than $1 billion payment, about a third of it covered by the state.

Overall, experts say the district should continue work to improve its credit ratings, find additional revenues, and confront the massive needs of its aging buildings.

“There’s not an easy, fast ticket out,” said Daniel Vesecky of the Chicago-based think tank Civic Federation.

How did CPS end up in so much debt?

The district’s debt burden has swelled over the past two decades.

CPS has taken out bonds repeatedly to fix up aging buildings, including some it went on to close in past years and some operating at a fraction of their ideal capacity today.

In the years before the 2008 financial crash, district officials also engaged in risky borrowing in an effort to lower interest rates on existing debt that backfired when the economy collapsed, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

And in the mid-2010s, at a time of intense financial strain before the state overhauled how it funded public education, Chicago’s school board did what officials today call “crisis borrowing” — much of it to pay for servicing its existing debt.

Experts said debt per student is generally a more accurate reflection of debt burden. But CPS officials cite a different metric of $2,970 in debt per Chicago resident. It has also steadily risen, but officials say it remains only slightly above the national average.

An influx in additional state revenue and federal COVID relief helped Chicago reduce its debt-to-revenue ratio from more than 150% in the mid-2010s to about 100% now. But anything more than 40% is a serious cause for concern, said Oliver Giesecke, a municipal finance expert at Stanford University.

Census data shows that the total amount of debt districts across the country has risen steadily and is more than double what it was two decades earlier. Still, Giesecke said the national housing boom and the growth in the property tax base helped stabilize many school districts’ and cities’ budgets since the Great Recession — but not in Chicago.

“Chicago’s housing market and overall economy has generally underperformed in those years compared to the national market,” he said.

Marguerite Roza of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University notes two districts that owe similar amounts can be on very different fiscal footing. CPS is dealing with enrollment declines and does not have a dedicated source of revenue to cover all of its debt service expenses. That’s different from growing districts where voters backed a large bond, she said: “These districts may be financially healthy — and that’s how you build a high school.”

Marlowe at the University of Chicago said another drawback is the relatively long amount of time Chicago is taking to pay off debt compared to other districts, in the name of getting fiscal breathing room now and spreading out the impact onto future budgets.

“The tradeoff is you pay a lot more in interest and fees and other costs unrelated to the district’s mission to educate students,” he said.

Good and bad debt in the CPS budget

This summer, Chicago school district officials put forward plans to issue $600 million in new debt for capital expenses. They also spelled out plans to refinance debt from that “crisis borrowing” a decade ago in order to realize about $129 million in savings. It would have saved significantly more if it had a better credit rating.

“We’re always fighting to get our credit ratings up,” said Wally Stock, CPS treasurer and deputy chief financial officer. “We’re still in the penalty box.”

Stock said the district has become more intentional in prioritizing critical building repairs and other projects to slow down the pace of borrowing. He noted the district has also seen some credit upgrades in recent years.

District officials say nearly $200 million of this year’s $1 billion debt service expenditures will go specifically to cover costs incurred during crisis borrowing in the mid-2010s. That could pay for at least 2,000 additional teachers instead.

Some think the state should play a larger role in covering the cost of maintaining and updating school buildings. Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, pointed out that while Illinois only covered a small portion of districts’ capital expenses. That’s left districts like CPS essentially to fend for themselves, and also fueled inequities between wealthier and poorer districts, she said.

Illinois “has been just delinquent on the capital side,” Filardo said.

Marlowe said closing and consolidating buildings, many of which are aging and were built to serve way more students than they do, would rein in additional debt — even though politically “that’s very challenging to do.”

Filardo opposes that approach, saying that closures tend to affect communities that are already disadvantaged. But in Chicago and elsewhere, district leaders are often reluctant to talk about this issue and engage communities in a search for solutions, she said.

“You have to admit you don’t know what to do and are willing to listen,” Filardo said.

Vesecky of the Civic Federation said the district should focus on making sound fiscal decisions in order to improve its credit rating and on building up its reserves. That would limit the need for short-term borrowing that the district is doing again this summer to meet payroll while awaiting delayed property tax revenue, costing more than $23 million. And it would drive down interest and other debt service costs and free up dollars to serve students.

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

Chicago Public Schools students head back to class amid budget uncertainty

2025-08-18T18:48:54+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Armed with a school bell and flanked by CPS and union leaders, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and interim Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King opened the first day of the 2025-26 academic year with a pair of visits to schools on the North and West sides.

Johnson and King visited Courtenay Language Arts Center, where King served as principal from 2013 to 2022. They later made an appearance at Austin College and Career Academy, a high school on the West Side that has newly joined the Sustainable Community Schools program, a CPS and Chicago Teachers Union initiative that provides wraparound services to students and families, which the mayor has promised to expand.

At Courtenay, the mayor and King rang a large bell as kids and families cheered. At Austin, a teacher served as the morning DJ off to the side of the building, playing hits like Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” and Robin S.’s “Show Me Love” as students greeted each other and staff.

Students started school on a schedule similar to years before last year’s Democratic National Convention, when the start date was shifted to accommodate for the large-scale event. Monday was the first day for K-12 students, while pre-K students return to class Tuesday.

King was picked in June to take over the helm of the nation’s fourth largest school district six months after the school board voted to fire Pedro Martinez, who clashed with Johnson over how to balance the district’s budget.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and interim CPS CEO Dr. Macquline King smile for a photo during the first day back to school for CPS students at Mary E. Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown, where King served as principal from 2013 to 2022 when she left to work in the mayor’s office.

King and Johnson posed for pictures together, striking a more congenial tone than the mayor and King’s predecessor did during their appearance together last year on the first day of school. The two worked together in City Hall, where King was senior director of educational policy in the mayor’s office before becoming interim CEO.

King made brief remarks at Courtenay before introducing Johnson as “the mayor of education who has made so much possible,” and Johnson complimented King on her work as interim CEO before making his own remarks. Neither King nor Johnson took questions from reporters at either stop.

The two may also be at odds, however, over how to close the district’s $734 million deficit. Last week, King put forward a budget plan that does not include a reimbursement to the city to pay a portion of a pension payment that partially covers school district employees. The proposal says CPS would only contribute if it finds additional revenue. The 21-member school board is also divided over the proposal, with Johnson’s allies urging King to include the city pension reimbursement. Johnson said last week that he expects CPS to make that payment.

Johnson, who said he dropped his own kids off to school Monday morning, did not address the district’s budget situation, but rather highlighted fears that the federal government could cut funding for public education.

A former CTU organizer and an ally of the union, Johnson also highlighted several elements of the new CTU contract finalized this spring, including more staffers, smaller class sizes, and commitments to teaching Black history.

“Our workers, whether you are a [Special Education Classroom Assistant] or a social worker, they’re all here to support our families, particularly at a time at which there’s a great deal of consternation at the federal level, where dollars are being starved away from our city,” Johnson said outside Courtenay. “But we are going to work tirelessly to ensure that every single child has a high quality education.”

CPS starts year with budget uncertainty but fewer staff vacancies

CPS is starting the school year for the first time in recent memory without a budget. In 2016, facing a similarly difficult financial outlook, Chicago’s school board approved a budget in late August, but that year, the school year started after Labor Day.

The school board must legally adopt a spending plan by Aug. 29 and is expected to vote on a plan Aug. 28.

Kids walk to school during the first day of classes for Chicago Public Schools students at Mary E. Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown on Aug. 18, 2025.

Students and families may notice some changes in classrooms this year related to both budget cuts and the new Chicago Teachers Union contract. These include smaller class sizes in the early grades, additional teaching assistants, fewer hot meals, fewer custodians, and adjusted bell times at about two dozen campuses.

Custodians represented by Service Employees International Union held a rally outside of Jones College Prep on Monday to protest CPS cutting 480 full-time custodial positions.

District officials, however, also said CPS started the year with some of the lowest staffing vacancies “in recent history.” As of Sunday night, CPS had just under a 2.5% vacancy rate for teaching staff compared to 4.4% at the start of last school year, and a 3% vacancy rate for support staff, compared to nearly 7% this time last year, officials said.

For the first time in at least three years, the district has largely the same number of teaching positions as the year before — 22,671. And it has 13,267 support staff positions, down by 567 positions at the start of last school year, according to CPS data as of Friday. Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer, said not adding more positions helped the district shrink vacancies, but he heavily credited the district’s Teach Chicago effort, which has multiple programs meant to recruit and keep people in CPS, including at hard-to-staff schools.

“We know in CPS, as is true in any big school district in America, that when you have teacher vacancies they disproportionately impact students that are furthest from opportunity, whether that’s kids in some of the highest need communities or kids who require teachers in higher need subject areas, like bilingual education and special education,” Felton said.

Students and teachers share hopes and concerns about the next year

About an hour after their visit to Courtenay, Johnson and King moved on to Austin College and Career Academy High school on the West Side.

The mayor made brief remarks before joining King and other officials, who stood near the entrance and welcomed students as they walked into the building.

School staff and Chicago education leadership welcome students as they walk into Austin College and Career Academy for the first day of school on Monday, August 18, 2025.

Debra Woods, a special education teacher at Austin high school and a CTU delegate, watched as district, union, and city officials greeted students. Woods said she hopes that joining the Sustainable Community Schools program means the high school will be able to provide extra programming for kids. She also hopes the initiative will result in more parent and community involvement at Austin High.

“We haven’t had a lot of success with that so hopefully this will help,” Woods said.

But Woods’ optimism is paired with nervousness about her school’s future, given the district’s financial troubles. Woods said she was a teacher in 2013 when her former school, May Elementary, was closed with 49 others that year and merged with Leland Elementary. She left education for one year following the mass closures before a colleague persuaded her to come back to the field.

Austin College and Career Academy on Mon., Aug. 18, 2025 on the first day of school in Chicago, Illinois.

Austin high school, she noted, has the capacity for hundreds of students but enrolls fewer than 200 kids. The school has seen dwindling enrollment for the past two decades and enrolled just 140 students last year.

The district’s proposed budget includes no plans for closures and no beginning or midyear cuts to schools. But officials have projected deficits for future school years.

“There is this fear of what’s going to happen to our school? Will it be closed? Will it be combined with other schools?” she wondered out loud.

Nevertheless, Woods said “We are the ones who create productive citizens in our communities. The fact that we struggle so much to have the resources that we need and there is still a deficit, it’s so hard to figure out where that funding will come from, it’s disappointing.”

Stanley Scales, 15, felt nervous as he waited to enter the school for the first time. The sophomore used to attend Providence St. Mel, a private school in Garfield Park. But his mother, Tanya Saracco, who was with Stanley, said she isn’t working as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer and can no longer afford tuition at the private school, so they decided to enroll at Austin, which is his neighborhood high school.

As a fan of flag football, Stanley said he hopes to try out for school sports. He also has a simple goal this year: “To pass.”

Sarocco described Stanley as a “good kid” who’s smart, so she doesn’t have many concerns, besides bullying.

Staff at Austin College and Career Academy welcome a student for the first day of school in Chicago, IL on Monday, August 18, 2025.

Asked if she has any concerns about the lack of a budget, Saracco said, “As long as [Stanley does] what he has to do, and gets good grades, and doesn’t get in trouble, I’m not worried about it too much,” she said. “They’ll figure it out — they always do.”

Kaniyah Harris, 14, is starting her freshman year at Austin high school after graduating from nearby McNair Elementary School. She felt anxious about the first day but as she waited outside of the building with her parents, she grew calmer, she said.

“I’m gonna stay focused this year,” Kaniyah said. “I’m not trying to pressure myself, but I’m gonna stay focused, get good grades, and stay successful.”

She had advice for her peers who are also nervous: Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, stay positive, be respectful, and “pick your friends — don’t choose everybody.”

First-day jitters were also on display at Chalmers Elementary in North Lawndale. In the gym, some students clung to the parents dropping them off, and a staffer reassured a boy gripping his mother’s hand, “It will all be OK.” Overall, it was a more laidback vibe compared with last summer, when the West Side campus hosted Johnson and then-CEO Martinez, whose relationship had recently soured, for the first day of school.

The school — along with nearby Collins High School and Johnson Elementary — underwent extensive renovations over the summer as part of a community-led initiative to reinvent them as Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math schools. All three have grappled with declining enrollment over the past decade, and supporters hope the STEAM project will give them a boost in a neighborhood with few specialized programs.

Chalmers got a spacious new maker space, computer lab, and arts studio on the second floor — a makeover that workers scrambled to wrap up Sunday.

Many parents dropping off students Monday had not heard much about the initiative. They said the close-knit, supportive environment is what brings them to Chalmers.

One third grader, Aaliyah, and her grandmother, Angelica Smith, arrived more than a half hour before the 8:45 a.m. first bell. The girl, in the school’s elementary grades uniform of dark green polo and khakis, was ready to kick off the year, Smith said: “She wanted to get in and eat breakfast and see if she remembers any of her friends.”

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

Colin Boyle is the photo editor at Block Club Chicago.

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

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

Chicago school board members divided over district’s 2026 budget proposal

2025-08-13T21:56:31+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news.

Chicago school board members clashed over a controversial payment to a city pension fund as they weighed in on the district’s $10.2 billion budget proposal unveiled for the first time Wednesday.

The budget, which covers the 2025-26 school year, was delayed well past the July 1 start of the fiscal year due to former CEO Pedro Martinez’ departure earlier this summer and efforts to close a gaping $734 million budget deficit.

Interim CEO Macquline King, a former mayor’s office employee, put forward the spending plan, which the 21-member school board must approve by the end of the month. It does not include a reimbursement to the city for the $175 million payment to a pension fund covering non-teaching CPS staff along with city employees — though unlike last year’s budget, it sets a goal of making the payment in case of an unexpected influx of funding. The proposal also does not involve taking out a short-term, high-interest loan to balance the budget, an idea the mayor’s office has previously championed.

The budget proposal assumes CPS would get $379 million from a city pool of taxpayer dollars for economic development, known as surplus Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, dollars — an uncertain proposition at a time when the city faces its own budgetary woes.

A number of school board members — primarily those appointed by the mayor — sharply criticized the decision not to budget for the pension payment. They argued that this move would alienate the city and mayor’s office and endanger the likelihood that CPS will get more TIF surplus funding. A couple members brought up the possibility of borrowing, including specifically to make the pension reimbursement.

“If we’re going to act like we don’t care about the city budget,” Michilla Blaise, one of the 11 Johnson-appointed members, said, “why should they care about ours?”

But other members praised district officials for presenting a balanced budget that does not include staff furloughs or cuts directly affecting the classroom. They said making the pension payment would translate into painful budget cuts, while taking out a loan would mean steep interest and other costs at a time when CPS already pays $1.06 billion a year to service its debt.

“Why would the education mayor come down and shake CPS down for $175 million?” said elected member Angel Gutierrez, noting Johnson’s transition team urged him not to saddle CPS with the payment. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

The budget proposal reflects a total of $272 million in cuts, including to the district’s central office staff as well as custodial services, crossing guards, cafeteria staff, and more. Before Wednesday’s board meeting, SEIU Local 1, the union that represents some district custodians, held a protest against job cuts affecting its members. Custodians held mops and chanted “Keep schools clean” in front of district headquarters and decried the cuts, which they said blindsided their union and will result in dirtier school buildings.

SEIU Local 1, which represents custodians working for outside vendors in Chicago Public Schools, held a protest in front of the Aug. 13, 2025, school board meeting. The district announced this month it's ending these vendors' contracts and bringing some of their positions in-house, resulting in a net loss of 480 janitor jobs.

District officials outlined steps to close the deficit

The district will host two budget forums to get input from the public on at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Aug. 19 at district headquarters, at 42 W. Madison St. The board is slated to vote on the budget proposal at its Aug. 28 regular meeting.

Earlier this summer, King estimated the budget deficit at $734 million, factoring in the pension payment to the city. Her predecessor, Martinez, whose refusal to make the pension reimbursement or take out a short-term, high-interest loan contributed to his firing, left out the payment and sent local schools their budgets assuming a best-case scenario deficit of $299 million that also included an influx of city tax dollars.

At the Wednesday meeting, the district’s chief budget officer Mike Sitkowski said the proposal was informed by input from residents who urged the district to protect classroom instruction, resist more high-cost borrowing for operating costs, and forego the city pension reimbursement. The district is taking on $2.4 billion in new long-term debt to pay for maintenance of its aging school buildings. The new budget proposal includes $556 million in capital expenses.

In addition to the cuts, Sitkowski explained that officials closed this year’s budget gap thanks to an unexpected increase in state funding, a refinancing of some district debt in a way that ensures longer-term savings, and a decision to dip into a “rainy day fund” set aside specifically to help make debt payments, among other means. He said this year’s budget will mean a smaller budget deficit for the 2026-27 year, though it remains significant at $520 million.

“This budget fully protects our school buildings,” Sitkowski said. “It avoids the risk of beginning-of-year or midyear cuts to schools.”

Some school board members hailed King’s proposal for resisting the pressure to take on the pension payment to the city. District leaders said CPS aims to make that payment if it receives more than the tax surplus dollars it’s requesting — or if the state comes through with extra funding. The city is on the hook for the payment under state law and has made it historically, but Johnson has argued the district should take it on as it moves away from mayoral control and toward a fully elected school board in 2027.

“This budget does really center the kids and protect our schools,” said elected board member Jessica Biggs.

But other board members echoed the mayor’s argument that it’s time for the district to take responsibility for these retiree costs and voiced concern about some of the recent budget cuts. Some said they worried that if the city doesn’t come through with the TIF surplus revenue the district is budgeting, that would mean disruptive midyear budget cuts or furloughs.

“I just don’t think this really is a balanced budget, and I’m very concerned,” said member Olga Bautista, another Johnson appointee.

Board members asked if city officials have weighed in

This week, district, mayor’s office, and labor leaders made another push for more state funding in a series of closed-door briefings with state lawmakers and Chicago aldermen. That’s even though Illinois legislators and Gov. JB Pritzker have repeatedly signaled they don’t think the state is in a position to steer more dollars to the district.

Some board members pressed King and other officials on what city leaders have signalled about their own appetite for steering more money to CPS, but officials demurred, saying they first wanted to present the budget to the school board.

“The question did come up, but I wasn’t going to get ahead of the budget,” said King, who otherwise deferred to Sitkowski to present the budget and field board member questions.

The district announced earlier this month that it will end its custodial contracts with private companies and bring some of those positions in-house, resulting in a net loss of 480 janitor jobs. District officials have said that bringing oversight of the remaining 2,100 custodians entirely under district purview would result in cleaner buildings, even with considerably fewer custodians.

Union leaders and custodians said the affected employees got little notice and have to reapply for their jobs, losing seniority and potentially their current pay. They voiced skepticism that the remaining custodians can handle cleaning the district’s schools.

District officials stressed Wednesday that their proposed budget fulfills all obligations under recent labor contracts, including the Chicago Teachers Union contract approved earlier this year, which added about $1.5 billion in additional staffing and compensation costs over four years.

During public comment, CTU officials again called on the board to redouble efforts to advocate with the state, highlighting a roughly $4,000 per student gap between what the state estimates would be adequate funding for CPS and what the district now receives from the state. Jackson Potter, the union’s vice president, said the CTU opposes cuts to crossing guard, custodian, and special education classroom assistant positions.

Potter also said CPS should permanently take on some of the cost of the municipal pensions since many of the covered employees work for the school district. He said making sure those pensions are funded is “an obligation” and “not a hot potato to be thrown around by CPS or the city.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the deficit amount that the administration of former CEO Pedro Martinez used to craft school budgets earlier this year.

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

CPS budget proposal won’t include city pension reimbursement to avoid more school cuts, sources say

2025-08-12T15:35:41+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Interim Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King is planning to propose a $10.2 billion budget to the school board Wednesday that doesn’t include midyear cuts to schools or a reimbursement to the city of Chicago for a highly-debated pension payment covering the retirements of city workers and CPS staff, multiple sources told Chalkbeat.

Not including the pension reimbursement — a move that most elected school board members have said they support — would help close the district’s budget deficit, which was estimated at $734 million in June. According to a source with direct knowledge of the budget plan, King’s budget proposal also does not include a plan to take out a short-term, high-interest loan — a strategy to address the budget deficit previously pitched by the mayor’s office, where she worked before she became CEO.

But if the board adopts a budget without the pension reimbursement, it could lead to more tensions with City Hall as the district breaks away from 30 years of mayoral control. It could also prompt another midyear dispute over the matter.

A second source with direct knowledge of the budget plan said the proposal assumes CPS will receive $404 million from a city pool of taxpayer dollars meant to spur economic development, known as surplus Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, dollars. That is $100 million more than the record amount CPS received last year in TIF surplus dollars, which are controlled by the mayor’s office.

However, district leaders are willing to reimburse the city with the pension payment if the city provides additional TIF dollars beyond the $404 million included in the proposed budget, or if the state provides a “windfall” of additional revenue, to help cover the cost, the second source said.

Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said Monday afternoon it is “not correct” that CPS’s budget proposal does not include the pension reimbursement. He said negotiations are ongoing between City Hall and CPS.

Earlier this summer, the district announced hundreds of layoffs and cuts, including to hot meals. King’s budget proposal does not include additional cuts that would impact classrooms or direct student services and avoids the need for cuts to schools in the middle of the year, according to a source with direct knowledge of the budget plan. It also does not include furloughs and fulfills commitments to unions, the source said.

There was “no way to avoid the potential for midyear cuts” or future cuts without declining to reimburse the city for the municipal pension payment, according to the source.

The district closed its remaining deficit through “additional savings and cuts away from the classroom,” other one-time funding sources and revenue and through refunding of existing debt, the source said, adding that there may be additional layoffs at the central office but that’s not yet certain.

In March, a coalition of Chicago’s newly-minted elected school board members blocked a budget amendment that would have transferred $175 million from CPS to the city to put toward a $1.13 billion payment to the Municipal Employees Annuity and Benefit Fund.

But not pitching in for that pension payment will likely draw ire from the mayor’s office and members of City Council as the city faces its own financial challenges. Aldermen and the mayor must pass a budget before the end of the calendar year and typically begin their budgeting process in October. CPS began reimbursing the city for a portion of that pension payment in 2020, under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez was fired, in part, for refusing to reimburse the city for the pension payment, which is for non-teaching CPS employees.

King is expected to present the budget Wednesday at a Chicago Board of Education meeting to review its agenda for its meeting later this month, when it is expected to vote on the budget — one of the last days the board can do so, per state law. The district’s new fiscal year began July 1.

“It looks like our superintendent is not a rubber stamp superintendent,” said elected school board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who voted against hiring King and opposed the pension payment in March and was aware of King’s upcoming budget proposal. “She heard the community loud and clear.”

Smith said many residents told district officials that they did not believe the cash-strapped district should take on the pension payment at a series of forums CPS hosted to get community input on the budget.

He said he and a majority of fellow elected board members remain staunchly opposed to borrowing, which he said would place the district on shaky legal ground and only defer the problem to next year while adding borrowing costs: “We’d be stuck repaying the loan and still needing the money.”

Norma Rios-Sierra, an appointed member of the board, said she is not yet certain what the budget proposal will include, but thinks that not paying the pension payment “is a mistake.”

She said she supports a budget plan that would avoid cuts to schools and said many of her constituents don’t want the district to pay the pension payment. However, she compared foregoing the pension reimbursement to not paying a bill and wants to have more conversations “with all stakeholders.”

“We need to find a permanent solution,” she said.

School board President Sean Harden did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union announced that representatives from the union, school district, mayor’s office, and labor groups representing district principals and support staff will hold a series of briefings for aldermen and state lawmakers Tuesday to argue for more funding for CPS from the state. Illinois lawmakers have sent an additional $1.1 billion to the district over the past seven years, but by the state’s own calculation for what would constitute “adequate” funding, Chicago’s allocation remains $1.6 billion short.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools reaches historic tentative bargaining agreement with its principals

2025-08-08T22:09:21+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools principals won pay increases and more protections against harassment in their first ever tentative collective bargaining agreement, according to the union representing the district’s school leaders.

The historic contract, which the district and union tentatively reached Friday, needs to be approved by the union’s members and the school board. It includes a retroactive 4% cost-of-living increase for the 2024-25 school year and more due process protections for principals who face discipline, said Kia Banks, the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

It also includes cost-of-living and baseline pay increases for the coming school year, but the union is waiting to share information about them with its members before publicizing the amounts.

Banks said the union and the district will continue to negotiate on a number of issues, including benefits and a process for unsuccessful candidates for principal positions to appeal that outcome.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said the deal is an interim agreement that includes 4% raises for both this past year and the coming school year, which the district has already implemented. The school board will review that agreement at its regular meeting later this month.

“Our shared goal is to reach a comprehensive agreement that supports our school leaders and advances our mission to provide a rigorous, joyful and equitable learning experience for every student,” the district said.

Illinois lawmakers passed legislation in 2023 that allowed the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association to unionize the district’s principals for the first time, and the union officially formed later that year. It has been negotiating with the district since the spring of 2024, though highly contentious and protracted bargaining with the Chicago Teachers Union put the principals union contract on the backburner for much of that time.

The tentative agreement comes days before district leaders will unveil a 2025-26 budget whose approval was delayed almost two months past the fiscal year’s start amid a leadership transition and efforts to plug a $734 million deficit.

Banks said the new contract will also provide more professional development to school leaders and enshrine more protections against abuse and harassment they can face from staff, local school council members, parents, and others.

The retroactive 4% cost-of-living increase for the past school year is in line with what the teachers union negotiated in its own agreement. Principals have received raises comparable to those in the CTU contract in previous years, but those were never guaranteed until now, Banks said.

“This agreement will give school leaders the confidence and dignity to continue to do the work they do every day,” Banks said.

“In the midst of a leadership transition and a huge budget deficit, this process could have taken much longer,” she added. “There was a willingness from the district to consider our school leaders as partners, and that helped the process along.”

The average principal’s salary in CPS is about $161,000, based on a Chalkbeat analysis of district staffing data last spring. Assistant principals make roughly $131,000 on average.

Principals, who don’t get the summers off, can make less per hour than veteran educators they supervise — an issue that Banks hopes ongoing negotiations with the district will address.

Unlike teachers, principals cannot go on strike under state law though an amendment to legislation that green-lit unionization allows them to enlist an outside mediator to help with the negotiations. The union has not resorted to that option so far, Banks said.

Union leaders said they believe a collective bargaining agreement that more clearly spells out school leaders’ duties, workdays, and recourse they have if they experience harassment would improve principal retention. Roughly half of elementary principals and two-thirds of high schools principals in CPS leave their positions within five years, according to University of Chicago data.

“We have a long way to go; we’ve barely scratched the surface,” Banks said, adding that much credit for the agreement goes to the years-long advocacy of her predecessor in the president role, Troy LaRaviere. “District decisions have always been made for us and about us but never included us.”

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

Chicago expands Sustainable Community Schools initiative even as budget worries grow

2025-08-04T21:15:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools will add 16 schools to a joint initiative with its teachers union that provides campuses $500,000 annually to offer more student and family services, officials announced Monday.

The Sustainable Community Schools initiative has offered after-school programs, parent outreach, restorative justice support, and other services in tandem with community nonprofits at 20 schools since 2018.

The expansion to 36 schools for the 2025-26 school year is part of the new Chicago Teachers Union contract that includes an agreement to grow the number of participating schools to 70 by the end of the four-year deal in 2028.

At a press conference at the South Shore Cultural Center, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and district and union leaders hailed the program’s expansion, even as they acknowledged significant fiscal challenges that make its sustainability uncertain.

The district is gearing up to unveil a 2025-26 budget in the face of a $734 million budget deficit. But officials said they are determined to keep backing the program.

Johnson’s mayoral transition team recommended rapidly growing the number of schools in the program to 200. The mayor used the occasion to make yet another appeal for more state funding for the district — an ask state lawmakers have signaled they are reluctant to accommodate. On Friday, Illinois released new calculations showing CPS will get an additional $76 million in state aid this year, bringing the total to $1.9 billion, slightly more than district officials expected.

“Until our schools become community hubs in every single neighborhood, we won’t see real transformation,” Johnson said, calling Sustainable Community Schools “truly the future of public education.”

A string of pandemic-era evaluations of the initiative have shown mixed results, even as they acknowledged COVID’s disruption of its rollout.

Some schools offered more mental health and social-emotional support to students and moved away from punitive discipline. Others reported slower staff buy-in and communication issues with community nonprofits. Overall academic outcomes were largely in line with those at schools with similar demographics not receiving the extra support.

The 20 schools participating in the program have also lost 15% of their student enrollment since 2018, and a half dozen have lost more than a quarter of their enrollment — a much sharper decline than the district overall experienced.

When asked how the city will track whether the program is paying off for students, Johnson said he wouldn’t measure success based on student outcomes, such as test scores and graduation rates, but rather on the extra staff and programs the schools offer students.

“The schools are successful when every single child has everything they need,” he said.

At Monday’s event, Alicia Anderson, a recent graduate from Fort Dearborn Elementary School on the South Side — one of the initiative’s original campuses — said the program had shifted the campus climate. She said the school now offers more mental health support and chances for students to weigh in on classroom and school decisions.

The initiative “is important because it gives schools the opportunity to put their students first,” she said.

School board member Jitu Brown spoke about the hunger strike and community activism that led to the reopening of the South Side’s Dyett High School in 2015, and which he joined as an organizer.

He said the effort inspired the Sustainable Community Schools program, which has boosted Dyett: The school’s boys basketball won the state title earlier this year, an experience Brown said he wants all Chicago students to have. Its latest four-year graduation rate of 87% is above the district average of 81% and close to the state average of 88%, using the state’s graduation rate calculations.

Officials said the district and union chose the 16 schools joining the program this school year using the city’s hardship index, which factors in poverty, homelessness, and other factors. They invited almost half of the district’s roughly 500 campuses to apply.

Officials said they sifted through 87 applications to choose the new schools, seeking a mix of majority Black and majority Latino schools in neighborhoods that experienced historic disinvestment. Officials did not say which community organizations will partner with the 16 campuses; no representatives of these schools spoke at the Monday press conference.

“It’s an investment in our students,” said interim CPS CEO Macquline King. “It’s an investment in our communities. It’s an investment in our future.”

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

Chicago Public Schools official tells families budget cuts will mean changes on their campuses

2025-07-25T22:07:49+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools students may see fewer hot school meals, delays in updating technology, fewer crossing guards, and other changes at their campuses this coming school year as the district tightens its budget.

That heads-up came in a note to families from the district’s Chief Operations Officer Charles Mayfield on Friday afternoon, a time when CPS has repeatedly sent updates about cost-cutting in recent weeks.

In the note, sent roughly three weeks before the Aug. 18 start of the school year, Mayfield wrote that students and educators will feel some day-to-day changes related to the district’s efforts to close a $734 million budget deficit.

“While these adjustments will impact how some services are delivered, our priority is to ensure that every CPS student continues to receive a high-quality education in a safe, clean, and supportive environment,” Mayfield wrote.

It was not immediately clear whether the changes Mayfield detailed reflect layoffs and other budget cuts reported earlier in July, or if some represent additional cuts. CPS spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions. The district is getting ready to unveil its overall 2025-26 budget in August amid deep uncertainty about how it will address its budget gap.

Changes to custodial and engineering staff will mean adjusted cleaning schedules and likely delays in non-emergency repairs and other school maintenance, Mayfield wrote.

Fewer kitchen workers will result in simplified menus and more cold meals, even as the district continues to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all its students. After-school programs that currently serve hot meals will start providing packaged snacks.

A Chalkbeat analysis comparing staffing levels in the proposed 2025-26 school budgets to those in last year’s budgets showed the new budgets include 238 fewer lunchroom workers and 220 fewer non-teaching discretionary staff.

The district will also curtail its crossing guard and Safe Passage programs, though Mayfield stressed that no school will lose either program entirely. The city of Chicago used to cover the cost of the district’s crossing guard program, but shifted what was then a $14 million program to CPS amid the pandemic. Some of the recent cuts impacted routes serving private schools.

The email indicated that reduced funding will impact schools’ ability to offer health services, like physical exams and vaccinations. Mayfield said the district would work with families to help them access these services elsewhere. And the Healthy CPS Hotline at 773-553-KIDS (5437) would continue to provide health information and help families apply for public benefits, albeit with a reduced staff.

Mayfield also referenced changes to bell times at 22 district schools to help with providing transportation to more students, a shift the district first announced during Thursday’s school board meeting.

“We recognize that these changes may create challenges for students and families, and we will work hand-in-hand with our school communities to make the adjustments as smooth as possible,” Mayfield wrote.

He said families will hear directly from their schools with more details on how the changes impact each campus in the coming days.

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

Chicago Public Schools says special education staffing shift is not about balancing the budget

2025-07-02T17:10:33+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

Changes in how Chicago Public Schools staffs its special education programs are coming under intense scrutiny as the district grapples with a $734 million deficit for the coming school year.

The Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU Local 73, which represent special education classroom assistants, held separate rallies last week protesting possible cuts to the ranks of educators and support staff serving students with disabilities.

But district officials say the changes aim to address longstanding staffing imbalances in which CPS has overallocated employees serving students with disabilities to some schools, while others have struggled to fill these roles amid a national special education staffing shortage.

After adding thousands of staff positions in recent years, CPS leaders said the number of special education teachers and the overall budget for special education are poised to grow again. Special education classroom assistant positions will likely decrease, but “an overwhelming majority” of affected employees will be able to find a job at a different school because of widespread vacancies, officials said.

“The changes that we’re making are unequivocally unrelated to any budgetary pressures or budgetary cuts,” said Mike Sitkowski, the district’s chief budget officer. “Our commitment as a district, and my commitment personally has been to make sure that we have the resources we need in place for our students with disabilities that we’re legally and morally obligated to provide.”

But labor leaders say they remain wary of the changes, which they argue the district made without enough staff and family input. They say that shifting special education teachers and support staff among schools will be disruptive for students with disabilities, who tend to thrive on consistency.

“SECAs develop a rapport with students,” said Trumaine Reeves, SEIU’s CPS division director. “They get them to open up and get on the right track.”

The number of students with IEPs the district serves increased almost 8% in the past five years to about 53,500 students last year after dipping during the pandemic. During that same period, the number of special education teacher positions grew 26% to about 5,300 this spring, and the number of SECA roles rose more than 60% to 7,455, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district staffing data. But hundreds of these positions go unfilled each year, often in schools serving low-income students with the highest needs.

This coming school year, the district will add 120 case managers in keeping with its new teachers contract, which officials said will lead to more manageable workloads for educators. It will also staff 100 more clinicians, such as speech pathologists, occupational therapists, psychologists, and others. It will launch more than 30 new cluster programs, for students with significant disabilities, in a move officials said will improve access to specialized services.

Amid a changeover in its top leadership, CPS is still at work on its 2025-26 budget, which officials say they’ll likely unveil in early August — much later than usual and weeks after the July 1 start of the fiscal year. The district announced dozens of layoffs and vacant position cuts last week, most of them in the central office, and more reductions might be coming as the district wrestles with its deficit. Some school leaders and employees have said the uncertainty this close to the start of the school year has created a lot of anxiety, especially among special education teachers, support staff, and families.

CPS says changes will help address vacancies

But district leaders insisted in an interview with Chalkbeat Chicago that they would still make the recent changes to how they assign staff serving students with disabilities even if they had a blank check. Overall special education funding will increase from the current $1.3 billion even before factoring in employee raises, though officials couldn’t say by how much before the overall district budget is set.

They said they worked with real-time enrollment and staffing data to ensure that teachers and support staff are placed in the schools and classrooms where they are needed. They said they used enrollment numbers from the end of this past school year — a time when these numbers peaked — reflecting an annual increase of thousands of students qualifying for special education services over the course of the year.

Joshua Long, who leads the district’s Office for Students With Disabilities, said that while some schools, particularly on the South and West Sides, struggle with perennial vacancies for special education teachers and support staff, others have overstaffed these positions. He said he set out to address such staffing imbalances when he took over in late 2023 after serving as a principal at a specialized CPS high school for students with disabilities. He contrasted one network of schools on the city’s North Side with a 2% vacancy rate for special education teachers with another on the South Side where almost 20% of these roles are unfilled.

The district now has more than 360 vacant special education teacher positions and 400 vacant special education classroom assistant posts. The district’s new approach will better ensure that educators and support staff work on the campuses where they are truly needed, he says. Some campuses are losing special education teaching positions this fall, but their number overall will likely tick up, or at least remain stable, officials said.

“We as a district have to make sure that we have a formula that is equitable so we’re not further perpetuating these systemic vacancies and then denying students the services that they need,” Long told Chalkbeat.

The district will have fewer shared assistants in cluster programs

Another shift will reduce the start-of-the-year number of special education classroom assistants that the district staffs in its cluster programs, which serve exclusively students with significant disabilities. State guidelines call on districts to assign one assistant to classrooms with up to 13 students with special needs. But CPS has staffed at least two in each cluster class, where some students also have assistants assigned to work with them one-on-one. This coming school year, it will staff one per classroom, except in 32 new cluster programs the district is launching in the fall, to ensure a strong start.

Leaders and members of SEIU 73 and the CTU bashed the district over the shift at their rallies last week. They said that it is reverting to a state standard that reflects a “bare minimum” of staffing set by state officials who haven’t spent time in a special education classroom, in the words of Jeannine Carrasquillo, a special education classroom assistant at Henderson Elementary who has served in the role for more than two decades. Students in these classrooms often have intense behavioral and academic needs, and they require additional adults, not fewer.

Reeves, the SEIU division director at CPS, said the pandemic-era teacher and assistant increases addressed longstanding special education understaffing. They came after a damning 2018 report detailing the district’s lapses in providing services to students disabilities led the state to place it under a special monitor. He said staffing imbalances among schools in the district are a problem. But his union was “blindsided” by the new staffing changes, and he questioned if families had a chance to weigh in on them.

“I wish there had been an opportunity to discuss and collaborate on this issue,” he said. “I don’t think the answer to a problem is to create a bigger problem.”

Long said research has shown that more adults in the classroom aren’t better for students with disabilities. What the district called “over-adulted environments” can result in less student independence and less interaction with other students, including peers without disabilities.

Barbara Cohen, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Legal Council for Health Justice who advocates for students with disabilities in CPS, said adults can get in the way of efforts to help students with disabilities become more independent. Cohen, who also consults for the Chicago Teachers Union, said the issue often isn’t the presence of too many adults, but rather a lack of proper training in how they can help students navigate the classroom without being overbearing.

“I don’t think the solution is necessarily to cut the number of paraprofessionals,” she said. “The solution is to have teachers and support staff who understand better what effective support of students looks like.”

Cohen said she applauds new onboarding training for special education classroom assistants the district launched last summer. She would like to see even more of it: “You need ongoing support to be an effective SECA.”

The CTU has also flagged communications from the district letting school leaders know that in some cases, they could seek exemptions to a state rule that in most cases, no more than 30% percent of students in general education classrooms have disabilities. The district said most classrooms will continue to meet that requirement, but some schools need extra flexibility. The union has asked teachers to report cases when their schools ask for these exemptions and vowed to push back.

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

Chicago Public Schools budget deficit rises to $734 million, interim CEO says

2025-06-27T00:39:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools must close a $734 million gap in its budget, Macquline King, the district’s newly appointed interim CEO, told the school board Thursday.

That’s up from a $529 million deficit number district officials had previously cited. Officials said King’s larger number, which had been briefly presented as a worst-case scenario in previous months, includes a $175 million payment to a city pension fund that covers some district staff, among other public employees. It also factors in $30 million in costs for absorbing five Acero charter schools into the district to avert plans by the charter network to shutter them.

Former CEO Pedro Martinez argued the city is solely responsible for the pension payment, and his refusal to reimburse the city contributed to his firing by a former school board appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson.

The pressing and thorny issue of balancing the district’s budget has immediately become a heavy burden for King, a former CPS principal who came to the role after serving in the mayor’s office, as she presided over her first board meeting. She addressed the situation during her remarks to the board, whose members chose her to step in for Martinez on an 11-to-8 vote earlier this month.

The district, which usually unveils its overall budget in June, had a $10 billion budget last school year. It’s not clear yet what the overall budget will be for the 2025-26 school year, but officials have said they will present a plan in late July or August, after King has had a chance to review options to address the deficit.

Currently, there are no easy ones.

Chicago Public Schools interim CEO Macquline King, right, listens during the Thursday, June 26, 2025 school board meeting.

The Martinez administration had called on the state and the mayor’s office to steer more money to the district. But state lawmakers passed a budget with largely flat education funding, and the city hasn’t yet signaled it would boost the amount of special property tax revenue it sends CPS.

Failing that, the district could be forced to make staffing cuts on the cusp of the new school year, which starts Aug. 18. Or else, it could revisit the idea of taking on a short-term, high-cost loan, a move that Martinez and some elected school board members have cautioned would saddle the district with more costly debt.

King didn’t give any clues about how she would proceed. But she promised to act with transparency, keep students at the center of any decisions, and take a collaborative approach.

“Transitions bring change,” she added. “But they also bring opportunity.”

Several board members of the partly elected school board — all of them appointed by Johnson — told King they have high hopes for her leadership. They encouraged her to avoid budget reductions that affect students.

“It’s not time to talk about cuts,” said board member Michilla Blaise. “It’s not time to talk about layoffs. It’s time to talk about revenue strategies.”

Before the board meeting, the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU Local 73, which represents support staff in the district, held separate, back-to-back rallies calling on district officials to refrain from cutting positions and laying off workers in the coming year. The two unions, once close allies whose relationship became strained during the recent CTU contract talks, called for more revenue for the district.

Teachers union rally speakers demanded that the state steer more dollars to the district and public education more generally, noting today’s announcement that Gov. JB Pritzker is running for a third term.

Stacy Davis Gates, the union’s president, said the state can provide “the only sustainable solution” and added: “Let’s get some revenue on the table. Let’s tax the rich.”

At their own rally and during later public comments to the school board, SEIU Local 73 leaders called for more state funding as well. But they put the onus of addressing the district’s deficit much more squarely on Johnson, a former teachers union employee and strong ally.

SEIU Local 73 President Dian Palmer and others argued Johnson and the City Council could help solve the district’s financial woes in a big way by giving CPS more Tax Increment Financing dollars, from a program that reserves property tax money for development projects. That issue created tension between Martinez and Johnson.

Rallygoers slam possible cuts affecting students with disabilities

At the union’s rally, people also criticized a possible loss of positions related to dual language and students with disabilities. They said the district is poised to cut an unspecified number of dual language coordinator positions.

Theresa Nuestro, a parent of two students with autism at Jungman Elementary, said Special Education Classroom Assistants, or SECAs, have been essential to her children’s success in school. These staff members guide their learning, help them navigate the school environment, and manage a life-threatening peanut allergy and diabetes.

“Without adequate SECA support, our children don’t just struggle to learn,” she said. “They are at risk.”

Chicago Public Schools has said its overall spending on positions to support students with disabilities will increase this coming school year, even before factoring in employee raises. The district will add 120 new case managers and 100 new clinicians in keeping with its new teachers union contract, the district said in a recent letter to school leaders.

But as part of changes to how it allocates Special Education Classroom Assistants, who are represented by SEIU, the district will reduce the number of those positions assigned at the start of the year to existing cluster programs, which serve students with more severe disabilities. It’s not clear how the overall number of these assistants would be affected, as the district said it will add more SECAs to classrooms as schools assess student needs.

Jeannine Carrasquillo, a SECA in the district for 21 years, noted that the lower support staffing levels reflect state guidelines that she said are outdated and were created by those without relevant experience.

“Pushing these bare minimum numbers and layoffs of SECAs only pushes the idea that special education students don’t matter,” she said.

Meanwhile, several students wearing “Green schools are a budget solution” T-shirts at the CTU rally also called on the school board to back a pilot project to prioritize environmentally friendly projects in the district’s aging schools. They decried learning in schools that still grapple with issues such as mold, unsafe drinking water, and lack of air conditioning.

The board unanimously backed a “Healthy Green Schools” resolution, which sets a 2025-26 goal of pursuing at least a dozen clean energy projects, such as solar panels or geothermal heating. Board members said the initiative would improve the district’s facilities, save money in the long run, and expose students to environmental careers.

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

Chicago Public Schools budget for 2025-26 school year delayed

2025-06-25T15:51:08+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools’ budget for the 2025-26 school year, normally released in June, is delayed until at least late July, prompting uncertainty and anxiety for principals and schools — and potentially setting them up for cuts right before the fall.

The district’s new fiscal year starts on July 1 and schools received their budgets for the coming school year in May, based on the assumption that the district would have just a $229 million deficit to close. Those school-level budgets were mostly flat, district officials said, though some schools already experienced some cuts.

But those plans assumed the school district would receive an additional $300 million in new revenue that did not materialize from the state and has not yet come from the city. Those projections also assume that the district will not reimburse the city $175 million to make a part of a city pension payment that covers some school staff — the source of a bitter fight last school year that partially led to the ousting of former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

The district is more likely looking at a $529 million deficit — which could grow for numerous reasons, including if the school board decides this year to pick up part of the city’s pension payment. The Trump administration has also threatened to withhold federal funds from districts such as Chicago that have stuck with efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Martinez’ departure and the appointment of interim CEO Macquline King earlier this month put the work of finalizing the budget on hold until the district’s new leader can put her stamp on the plan, including potentially revisiting the idea of high-cost borrowing to balance the budget that Martinez had rejected as fiscally irresponsible.

Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget director, told the Chicago Board of Education earlier this month that he expects a districtwide budget to be presented for approval in July or August. State law requires the board to adopt an annual budget no later than 60 days after the beginning of the fiscal year.

A resolution on Thursday’s school board meeting agenda would authorize expenditures through Aug. 29, 2025 or until a budget is adopted. The school year is set to start on Aug. 18.

The mounting unknowns have left school and parent leaders warning their school communities that cuts could be coming.

“The biggest thing is this anxiety of having to communicate to parents, to my staff, with this idea of, ‘This is not for sure,’” said one elementary school principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak with the press. “You are all going on summer break feeling good about your jobs, but if we come back and have to make cuts at the school level, that’s what’s going to be devastating.”

That principal said her school’s proposed budget is largely the same as last year. But any future cuts could mean the school would lose at least two teaching positions and some discretionary funding, which could mean losing a tutoring program.

Another possibility: The district could again consider a high-cost, short-term loan that Mayor Brandon Johnson championed last summer. Back then, Martinez strongly opposed adding to CPS’s substantial and costly debt, and a school board of mostly Johnson appointees backed him. Now, that decision would fall to King, who came from the mayor’s office, and a board on which mayoral appointees and members elected with help from Johnson allies at the Chicago Teachers Union enjoy a solid majority.

At a speech at the City Club of Chicago this week, union President Stacy Davis Gates invoked the loan, referring to it as a way to “make the district’s structural deficit more manageable.” She insisted local leaders shouldn’t look at balancing the budget as a “math problem” but as a showcase of their values and support for students.

But a coalition of seven elected board members remains opposed to borrowing, said member Che “Rhymefest” Smith. Smith said these members want the city to continue making the full pension payment and give CPS more unused tax revenue from special Tax Increment Financing districts, which exist to capture tax money that can spur development in a hyperlocal area.

Smith said he hopes board members who were appointed by Johnson after they ran unsuccessfully will stand with his group. In a Chalkbeat/Chicago Sun-Times questionnaire, member Karen Zaccor said a loan “sounds like a terrible idea,” but she would consider it as one of a limited number of bad options to address the deficit. Member Anusha Thotakura said in that questionnaire she is against short-term, high-cost borrowing, calling it a bid to “pay for today’s student’s benefits and learning at the expense of tomorrow’s students.”

This week, Thotakura told Chalkbeat she would “oppose borrowing generally as a quick fix” to a structural deficit the district will confront year after year without additional revenue. But she also said board members might have to weigh that option against potentially painful staff or program cuts. Her hope is that the district can find inefficiencies or other savings that protect the student experience.

Whatever the path forward, Smith said he understands the budget uncertainty creates anxiety for school leaders and educators: “We got a new school year coming, and our administrators and teachers deserve to know what our allocations are going to be.”

Schools wrestle with the budget unknowns

Staff and families at Foreman High School in Portage Park are feeling that uncertainty. The school’s proposed budget includes several cuts, including fewer Special Education Classroom Assistant positions, general education teachers, and about 6% less in discretionary funding compared to last school year, according to Jessica Keirns, the chair of the Local School Council, and the principal’s budget presentation. The LSC ultimately voted against the proposed budget, she said.

Foreman won’t offer AP English next year and will cut a section of a forensics course. Officials there also appealed the proposed cuts to special education positions.

Keirns said she doesn’t think Foreman families are fully aware that more cuts could be coming. The district’s precarious budget situation feels “scary,” especially if federal funding doesn’t come through, she said. Keirns is frustrated that neither the state nor the city have found ways to provide more funding to CPS.

For Foreman, cuts to staff means students are losing familiar faces who help make the school feel like a close-knit community.

“For so many of these students, school is the most stable place they have in their lives,” she said. “These budget cuts are interrupting that.”

Kat Cree, a special education teacher at Wells Community Academy High School in West Town, said for now, Wells is slated to lose two full-time special education teachers, or one-third of that group of teachers.

Several people have told Chalkbeat their schools are seeing cuts to special education staff. In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said its spending on special education positions will increase this coming school year over last year’s $1.3 billion, even before factoring in employee raises. The district will add 120 new case managers and 100 new clinicians in keeping with its new teachers union contract, the statement said.

The statement said the district “implemented significant changes” to how it allocates Special Education Classroom Assistants, reducing the number of those positions assigned at the start of the year to existing cluster programs, which serve students with more severe disabilities. The district will continue to “front load” more SECA positions for newly created cluster programs to ensure “a strong start.” It did not explain how SECA positions are being impacted at schools without cluster programs.

The impact on students will depend on their needs, Cree said. For example, a student with autism, who needs routine and a quieter classroom in every subject, might feel “completely thrown off,” especially if they lose access to a co-teacher they can turn to in more than one subject. But students who have dyslexia and struggle with reading “may ultimately squeak by” if they at least have help from a co-teacher in English class and get some online help, Cree said.

“Some students may ultimately be OK, and for some it’s gonna be devastating because no two students with disabilities are completely alike,” Cree said.

Cree, who uses they/them pronouns, said the school said staff would be notified July 7 if they’ll be staying at the school or be laid off.

“We’re finishing out the school year and nobody really knows if they’re gonna be working here next year,” Cree said.

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

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

‘No regrets, and I’d do it again’: Pedro Martinez reflects on more than 3 years leading Chicago schools

2025-06-17T20:15:44+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is leaving this week after three and a half turbulent years at its helm.

He took over at the height of the COVID pandemic, just as schools were navigating a rocky return to full-time in-person instruction and taking stock of the damage to student learning and mental health. School leaders have credited him with steering the district to a post-COVID normal, and the district has gotten some national recognition for its efforts to bounce back from the pandemic’s academic toll, especially in reading.

But the past year brought fresh upheaval: Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union employee, and the union clashed bitterly with Martinez after he balked at the union’s far-reaching contract demands. For the past year, Martinez has argued the mayor should release all the money from special taxing districts known as TIFs and end their existence in order to solve the school system’s financial woes. Johnson has released surplus funds from those districts and several are set to be dissolved in the coming years.

With backing from the largely Johnson-appointed school board, Martinez refused to borrow to cover the contract and a controversial staff pension payment. Then came the resignation of the full board, much acrimonious back-and-forth as the mayor and union sought to oust him, and eventually — at a hastily called meeting days before Christmas — Martinez’s dismissal by the new school board without cause. Under his contract, he stayed on for another six months.

More recently, the CEO settled a new four-year contract with teachers, but he is heading out only after filing defamation claims against the union president, Stacy Davis Gates, and the school board president.

Martinez is an alum of CPS’s Benito Juarez High School and served as the district’s chief financial officer from 2003 to 2009. He served as a deputy superintendent and superintendent in two districts in Nevada, including Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Martinez was superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District for six years before being hired by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration in 2021. He starts as the education commissioner of Massachusetts later this summer.

Chalkbeat Chicago recently spoke with Martinez about his firing, the unfinished business of his tenure as CEO, and his advice for his successor in the face of a massive budget deficit, lingering academic fallout from the pandemic, and threats from the Trump administration to withhold funding.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

You are leaving Chicago because a school board appointed by Mayor Johnson fired you in late December. Do you wish you had navigated your relationship with the mayor and with his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union differently so you could have kept your job?

It was about standing up for what I believe in — standing up for what’s right. I could not agree to irresponsible borrowing when there are other solutions. When I was here the first time, I had served as a chief financial officer for most of that time. At that time, the district had strong credit ratings. We were able to borrow at low interest rates. We had over a billion dollars in the bank. We never borrowed for payroll.

I left for 12 years and came back to find the district with the lowest credit rating you can have. We’re the second largest junk bond producer in the country, and the only one that’s higher is Puerto Rico.

During the 2015 to 2018 era, the district was having significant deficits. Because of that, we have $2 billion [in debt] by now on our balance sheets, and it’s made up of almost all interest. That’s part of our structural deficit today. I could not agree to do more of the same when we have solutions already on the table. Who brought this to my attention, ironically, was the teachers union because they’ve been such strong advocates of expiring TIFs and releasing TIFs. And they’ve been right all along. I didn’t realize how big these TIFs had gotten. I was shocked when I saw the numbers.

This was about taking a stand, trying to make sure that we were putting the district on a responsible path, especially when we’re seeing so much evidence of success. We’re seeing for the first time in the district’s history our Black students are leading our literacy gains. Our Latinx students are also showing significant gains. We have no race gaps when it comes to early college and dual credit programs. My Latinx students outperform the nation when it comes to Advanced Placement exams. Early on when I was talking to the mayor, he was really impressed by the results we were getting.

Didn’t some of the earlier borrowing that led to the district’s ballooning debt burden happen during your first tenure in the district?

During my tenure as CFO, the only bonds we ever did were for capital improvements. When I look back in terms of the positions that I took, I have no regrets.

So you are not second-guessing the way you handled the conflict with the mayor and union last year, even though it resulted in you losing your job?

What I do regret is that I thought it would be a lot easier to convince the mayor based on the fact that his union was the strongest advocate for TIFs when we showed him the numbers. I thought it was going to be easy. The school board that resigned was fully on board. That’s why they passed the budget the way they did. That’s the one regret I have: I didn’t realize that there would be a misalignment.

The Chicago Teachers Union has a harsh assessment of your time at the helm as you’re leaving the district. What is getting in the way of having more cordial relationships with labor?

In Nevada, I had a wonderful relationship with the unions. They were actually my allies, both in southern and northern Nevada. Ruben Murillo, the head of the southern Nevada union, wrote a recommendation letter for me as I was coming to Chicago.

In San Antonio, we started with a very cordial, very collaborative relationship. The state forced us to clash because it was either closing a school or implementing a charter.

In Chicago, we started cordially. Things went separate when Stacy put out her 700 proposals, wanting 14,000 additional staff, wanting to increase our deficit by over $5 billion. The feeling was, “We’re in control. We have the power. We’re going to get what we want.”

My team said there’s no evidence of any of the proposals really leading to more student achievement. In fact, it was the opposite. It was reducing instructional time, which our students need more of, not less. It was teachers having the freedom to teach whatever they want in classrooms when, for the first time, we’re seeing students being exposed to more rigor. It was our weakening teacher evaluation system, which is already not very strong.

I took a stand. No regrets on that, and I would do it again, because it’s important for us as leaders to not just take an easy path. We have to stand up for what’s right, because we’re entrusted with the trust of our families and communities about their children.

The fundamental challenge that led to this clash with the mayor’s office and the union is still very much there: The district is looking at a sizable deficit at a time when a major influx of state funding seems unlikely, a loss of federal funding seems like a possibility, and frankly, the city is dealing with its own financial limitations. What can your successor do about this?

This is a time when the mayor, the board, and the incoming CEO have to come together. The solution is right in front of them again. We have over $3 billion in TIF surplus, and that number is low because we don’t have more recent data in the banks today. There’s a revenue source of over $1.2 billion, which our taxpayers think is already going to the taxing bodies. They think that CPS is getting its portion, with the city, the parks, the City Colleges.

I can’t even take credit for finding the solution. The teachers union has been the strongest advocate for this. It not only helps us, it helps out the city. The mayor wouldn’t have to propose a tax increase if he had released the TIFs. These are revenues that our taxing bodies are being starved of for years.

Would it be fair to acknowledge that there are political and fiscal complexities when it comes to releasing the entirety of those funds to CPS and other city agencies?

When you have over $3 billion in the bank, you have an opportunity to create a long-term plan. The teachers union has always rallied for the immediate expiration of all TIFs and the immediate release of all funds. If that had occurred, I wouldn’t be borrowing for payroll.

What is some work that you regret leaving unfinished or that you didn’t get a chance to tackle during your time?

We got all these gains in spite of not really having support, especially from the unions and from City Hall. And I really credit our principals, our assistant principals, and our teachers and paraprofessionals, who said they would do what’s right for children at a time when the district was very unstable, right at the peak of the pandemic.

This work has never been a one-year or two-year plan. It’s always been a 10-plus-year plan. I feel sad that I can’t see it all the way through, especially because the momentum is so strong, and it is something that just has been exciting.

Earlier on, after you took over, you said that you would be really interested in exploring innovative academic models, especially at the high school level, like the career academies that you launched in San Antonio. Why didn’t the district do that?

We’ve actually created the infrastructure while I’m here. We strengthened our early college programs. We went up four-fold in terms of college credits earned by students through early college and dual credit, and record numbers of students getting associate degrees, getting at least a semester of college credit. I’m also excited about seeing more students than ever getting certifications in career tech. We have more children than ever partnering with the trades, getting apprenticeships with the plumbers and with the electrical unions. I won’t be able to see it all the way through, but that work started under my leadership and will continue.

One post-COVID issue that has been really challenging for Chicago and for many other districts is high chronic absenteeism, especially at the high school level. In my recent reporting on this issue, I did not get a sense that the district really has a comprehensive plan to address that challenge. Why not?

When you look at our chronic absenteeism, it’s at the high school level, and it is with our youngest children, in preschool and kindergarten. I’m less worried about our high school students and more worried about our younger students. With them, the challenge we have is, how do we continue to work with parents so that they understand the value of that early education? Because especially with our children who are starting behind just because of poverty, our best strategy is to get them in as soon as possible. So if I had the ability, I would have the children in full-day preschool at age 3, especially children with disabilities, multilingual students, children who live in poverty. During my term, we finished the expansion of universal preschool across the entire city of Chicago.

At the high school level, attaching attendance to graduation and to academics is a very outdated idea. If anything, what our older students have shown is that they actually did okay and better than their younger peers during the pandemic. They actually are hungry to leverage technology. You’re seeing the world of higher ed going more and more in that way, with more hybrid programs and more online programs. It’s an outdated notion to think that seat time should be a driver for graduation. I am so proud of our high schools that they don’t allow students to just fall through the cracks. The old CPS did that for decades. Now, we make calls at home when children are absent. We do the best we can working with parents.

The Trump administration has come after CPS for its diversity, equity. and inclusion efforts. Do you worry about a loss of federal funding, and how do you think the next CEO should navigate these changes at the federal level?

We have been very strategic and always acted with integrity. So I am not worried about CPS losing funding because of issues around DEI. I worry about other cuts that could happen at the federal level because the federal government right now is under a lot of pressure to cut expenses, and I see a lot of programs being cut that are very essential to our communities. It’s not going to happen immediately. It’s going to be about a year out, at least for education. My call is for everybody to work together to understand these complexities and to continue to advocate for our communities.

What do you see as the top challenge facing the next CPS CEO, and what’s your best advice to the leader who will take over for you?

We don’t need more taxes. We don’t need irresponsible borrowing or financing schemes. We’ve never allowed our structural deficit to get bigger than half a billion dollars, including with all the outrageous demands of the union. I’m asking the mayor, our board, and the incoming CEO to work together. The solution is right in front of them. Longer term, always remember that our district’s talent level is deep, not only at the central level, but also at the school level. The more and more we continue to invest in our schools and to advocate for our schools, we’re going to continue to see strong results.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the year Martinez started as CPS CEO. It was 2021, not 2022.

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

100 students in a school meant for 1,000: Inside Chicago’s refusal to deal with its nearly empty schools

2025-06-13T09:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news.

This story was published in partnership with ProPublica. Sign up for Dispatches, their newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country.

More than 4,000 students once crowded DuSable High School, then an all-Black academic powerhouse on Chicago’s South Side. Its three-story Art Deco building drew students with a full lineup of honors classes, a nationally known music program, and standout sports teams.

Nat King Cole played the piano in his classroom as a DuSable student. Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, studied there. On Friday nights, teenagers zipped through its hallways on roller skates and danced in the gymnasium.

But at the turn of the millennium, enrollment plunged as Chicago closed a massive public housing complex nearby and a growing number of Black families left the city. Amid a national infatuation with smaller high schools 20 years ago, Chicago Public Schools conducted a grant-funded experiment to chop DuSable into three separate schools sharing a campus. What remains today, after that grant money ran out, is an enormous building and, inside, two tiny schools clinging to life.

One has about 115 students and claims the north corridors. The other, with only 70 students, takes the south wings. The inoperable pool is off-limits.

Hundreds of unneeded hallway lockers hide behind decorative paper and student posters of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and former first lady Michelle Obama, whose father attended in the 1950s.

The two little high schools in Bronzeville share the same entrance and sports teams, but other things are doubled: two main offices, two principals, two assistant principals, two school counselors. Even though there’s a teacher for roughly every five students, the course offerings are limited.

Chicago Public Schools operates more than 500 schools and spends about $18,700 per student to run buildings that it considers well-utilized. At the DuSable schools, the cost is closer to $50,000 a student.

The DuSable schools are emblematic of an unyielding predicament facing the district. Enrollment has shrunk. Three of every 10 of its schools sit at least half-empty, and they are costly to run.

More critically, there are 47 schools, including those inside DuSable, operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district’s measure. That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country’s history, Chalkbeat and ProPublica found. The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.

Many of those schools are in historic buildings that need millions of dollars in repairs.

The costs are not only financial. Students in the city’s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities, and sports. Chicago’s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates, a ProPublica and Chalkbeat analysis found.

But officials in Chicago have chosen not to confront the problem of the city’s tiny schools. The teachers union and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who used to be an organizer and legislative liaison for the union, are quick to shut down discussion of downsizing. Widespread anger over the 2013 closures helped fuel the union’s rise to political power over the past decade; the union has also wielded the radioactive closure issue to undermine opponents, notably outgoing district CEO Pedro Martinez.

Union leaders, many community activists, and some researchers say closures disrupt displaced students’ learning and harm the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, which were disproportionately affected by that earlier wave of closures. They argue the district needs to do much more to try revitalizing these campuses before it considers shuttering or merging them.

Helping to delay a reckoning: Since 2013, the district has operated under a series of moratoriums on closing schools, including one state lawmakers enacted with strong support from the teachers union. And a statewide school finance overhaul under former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner increases or at least holds funding steady for districts even if enrollment declines.

Chicago has too many schools for the number of students it serves today, Martinez said in an interview with ProPublica and Chalkbeat. The district is spending too much on aging buildings, and it’s not providing a rich experience for students in many of its tiny schools, he said, adding: “They’re not having joy in that environment.”

But he said he inherited a closure moratorium and worked with school boards that had no appetite for closing or merging schools. “Our footprint is too large,” said Martinez, who leaves the district this month. “Every time somebody wants to address this issue, you see at all levels of politics, nobody wants to do it.”

He said he hopes a fully elected school board that will take over in 2027 will tackle the issue head-on, working closely with the communities it serves.

In a statement, the district noted its building utilization formula is “just one measure,” and it could overestimate available space.

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

With public school enrollment declining across the country, a growing number of cities — Milwaukee; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Boston; San Francisco; Philadelphia — are grappling with the issue of underenrollment. Some plan to close schools.

But Chicago, the country’s fourth-largest district, operates on a larger scale: It has more students and more buildings than most other cities. The city’s school-age population, meanwhile, is on a downward trajectory, federal COVID-19 aid ran out this year, and the district faces a budget deficit of more than $500 million.

And yet, Chicago “doesn’t seem to be having an honest conversation about the challenges it’s facing,” said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.

The DuSable High School building houses two smaller schools, the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine. Unused lockers are covered with posters and decorative crafts.

‘A lack of political courage’

The 2013 closings of 49 Chicago elementary schools and one small high school were more than controversial. Families there felt that their communities were being torn apart as the city moved to shutter schools with long and rich histories. After protests and angry meetings, students were displaced to schools that were farther away from home. Neighborhood hubs were mothballed.

Deep distrust of Chicago Public Schools after the mass closures lingers, especially in Black neighborhoods like DuSable’s Bronzeville. University of Chicago research showed those closures set students back academically, though a small number who moved to high-performing campuses fared better. Some community groups and the teachers union in Chicago see schools as a public good; shuttering them is another mark of disinvestment.

That was the backdrop when a group of DuSable High School alumni grew concerned about dwindling enrollment at their beloved school and worried the district might target the building for closure. They approached CPS just before the pandemic with an alternative idea: Consolidate the two tiny schools at DuSable and focus classes on STEM careers.

The Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine would unite and revert to the name DuSable.

The alumni had no illusions that they could fully restore DuSable to what it once was. Compared to the school’s heyday, a much smaller number of school-age children live in Bronzeville today. But the alumni wanted more for the school.

The group met repeatedly with school and district leaders in DuSable’s wood-paneled social room, where trophies mark decades of athletic and musical excellence.

Officials told the group to get more input from current families at both schools — a daunting task given that the district would not provide their names or contact information. The plan fizzled out.

Hal Woods, now a policy director with the parent advocacy nonprofit Kids First Chicago, worked as the district’s school development director at the time and sat in on those meetings. He said the bottom line was that the plan smacked too much of a closure.

“We didn’t want to be seen with our fingerprints on this,” he said.

The Robert Taylor Homes — at one time the largest public housing project in the United States — once loomed over DuSable High School, as seen in these images from 1966. The complex was demolished by 2007, and DuSable High School never recovered from the loss of that student population.

Former school board President Jianan Shi, a Johnson appointee who served from 2023 to 2024, said rebuilding trust and planning for schools’ future with local communities at the helm takes time; it must begin now.

But, he said, “There’s a lack of political courage to have this conversation, and yet it’s often weaponized.”

Amid the uproar over the 2013 closings, Chicago’s then-mayor, Rahm Emanuel, vowed that his appointed school board would not close schools for five years. The state legislature then imposed a 2021 moratorium on closing Chicago schools until January of this year, part of a bill that changed the Chicago Board of Education to an elected, rather than mayor-appointed, body.

Today, Chicago has 634 schools, including 119 charter and contract schools run by outside entities, and a teachers union ally holds the mayor’s office. Last September, amid a power struggle between Johnson and Martinez, the Chicago Teachers Union publicized a facilities analysis that the district had done in late 2023, which included hypothetical scenarios for consolidating 75 schools, including Williams and Bronzeville. The union argued that even entertaining that idea was cause to fire Martinez immediately.

As the CTU pounced, Martinez pushed back, saying the district had concluded that no school would be closed while he was in charge — which he now says was really the school board’s decision. At the next school board meeting, he presented a new resolution that got unanimous support: CPS would not close any schools until 2027.

But the city’s demographic realities are not on hold. About 325,000 students enrolled this year, a drop of more than 70,000 from a decade ago. District officials project that three school years from now, there could be as few as 300,000 or, in a best-case scenario, as many as 334,000 students. Those estimates are based in part on the city’s sharply falling birth rates. Citywide, from 2011 to 2021, the number of births dropped by more than 43%.

Still, CTU leaders insist that the city is actually poised for a population turnaround. During President Donald Trump’s second administration, Chicago under Johnson can bill itself as a progressive refuge — a place that protects immigrants, abortion care, LGBTQ+ rights, and access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and adults, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the CTU.

“We are going to need to be a citadel of protection,” he said, adding that the last thing the city wants is to shutter some of its schools, then see families arriving in these neighborhoods en masse only to find limited classroom seats.

The union’s real issue with school closures, Potter said, is that Chicago has done them without enough educator and community input and has rushed them, destabilizing other nearby schools.

An influx of immigrant families allowed CPS to stabilize its enrollment and the city to notch modest population increases in the past two years after a lengthy decline. But some demographers think the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown might mean these gains are short-lived.

Jim Lewis, a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute, a research hub at the University of Illinois Chicago, is skeptical about the possibility of an influx of school-age children in areas with shrinking schools. Some gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods have drawn new residents, but they tend to be higher earners who generally have fewer kids.

Lewis cautions that people tend to overestimate the power of schools to attract residents. Studies have shown that crumbling schools can deter families, he said. But research also suggests new programs and attractive campuses can only do so much to draw them — unless those schools come with a complete package of job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, affordable housing, and more.

“I’m all for beautiful new schools,” Lewis said. “Do I think by itself it changes the demography of a place? I don’t think so.”

What to do about underenrolled schools and Chicago’s diminished school-age population is a decision for Chicago’s school board. Currently, 10 members are elected and 11 are appointed by the mayor. Next year, all will be up for election.

Some members, who said they could only speak candidly if they aren’t named, said the board must discuss solutions for tiny schools, including consolidation. But being branded “school closers” is a concern ahead of elections. Others said they’re open to discussing alternatives to school closings, including bringing health clinics or other family services into vacant parts of underenrolled schools.

“I think we have to talk about small schools as a result of historic racism, underfunding, neglect, and inequity,” said member Debby Pope, a former CTU employee. A conversation is going to be essential, she said, but with a moratorium on closings in place and the possibility that the board could extend it, “I don’t think this is the moment for that conversation.”

Dozens of Chicago schools are operating at less than one-third capacity.

Small enrollment, limited opportunities

About 5 miles southeast of DuSable is Hirsch High School, which was one of the district’s largest school building projects when it opened in the 1920s and once dealt with severe overcrowding. It’s gotten so small now that M’Kya Craig had taken all the electives the school offered by her junior year.

She was one of roughly 100 students at Hirsch, which could enroll 1,000. She browsed the school’s limited courses and decided to take yearbook for a second time. She was bracing to take the course a third time her senior year, but Hirsch added an African American literature class.

Craig appreciated that staff at the small school got to know her well, including a counselor who helped her get into Chicago State University. But she often felt frustrated by the school’s slim course offerings and scarce extracurriculars over the years.

“We lost a lot over the years due to being a small school,” she said.

Most of the district’s underenrolled schools serve students who do not participate in Chicago’s expansive system of school choice, where high-performing students test into selective schools ranked the best in the state, and other students find their way to magnets, charters, or strong neighborhood schools, often in wealthier parts of Chicago.

Many of the district’s small schools serve Chicago’s highest-needs students.

Hirsch High School on Chicago’s South Side opened in 1926 and has the capacity for 1,000 students. It currently has around 100.

At the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine, one of the schools inside DuSable, junior Georgia Deaye was drawn to the school’s medical career program and loves the close-knit feel.

“The connection with teachers is way deeper than if I was at another school,” she said.

She participated in a summer internship program that Williams accesses through one of the larger district high schools and recently got her CPR certification. The most recent graduation rate at Williams was 93%, among the highest in the district. The graduating class was 14 students. There are a total of 70 students enrolled there, at a cost of $54,000 per student.

“Small schools are not always painted in a positive light,” said Williams Principal Leonetta Sanders, but the smaller environment is ideal for some students. In part because of its size, the campus hasn’t had to deal with gang problems or violence, she said.

“Safety,” she said, “is always money well spent.”

Some research has suggested that students tend to do better in smaller schools, notes Bruce Fuller, an expert at the University of California, Berkeley. But those findings apply to small-by-design campuses with healthy enrollments, not schools that have shrunk dramatically as families have moved away.

Fuller doesn’t think that student outcomes at those underenrolled schools have been studied rigorously because it would be too hard to control for factors such as the high needs of the students they tend to serve. “There’s consistent evidence that smaller can be better,” Fuller said. “But small in this life cycle of decline is a totally different story.”

In Chicago’s tiny schools, the limitations, even at a high per-student cost, are substantial. Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, the other school inside DuSable, used to be able to teach Spanish and French but now offers Spanish only. The school once offered Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses but realized it could not continue to offer both; it kept the IB program.

The schools have tried to make up for the limited course offerings by encouraging students to take online courses and dual-enrollment classes that local community colleges offer to high school students.

“You’ve got 12 kids in a class. The board is not going to pay for a calculus teacher,” Grace Dawson, who leads DuSable’s robust alumni group, said of the school district. Students are being “robbed” of opportunity, said Dawson, a former Chicago school principal.

Flush with federal COVID aid, the district added more than 7,500 new positions over the past four years even as enrollment kept declining. It also recently started guaranteeing a certain number of staff, including 10 teachers, at each school regardless of enrollment. Williams and Bronzeville, which used to share an assistant principal and a gym teacher, each hired their own. Douglass High School on the city’s West Side now has 27 employees for 28 students.

That includes six regular education teachers, six special education teachers, a school counselor, a college and career coach, a conflict resolution specialist, a restorative justice coordinator, and an assistant principal and principal. The cost to run the school is $93,000 per student.

“Is a Douglass student getting a $93,000-a-year experience? No,” said Woods of Kids First Chicago. “We can confidently say that. CPS pumps extra dollars into these schools so they can offer the bare minimum.”

The district, which handles requests for comment about individual schools, did not dispute the high per-pupil price tag at Douglass. It has said its new budgeting approach gives all schools a fiscal boost regardless of size.

David Narain, who was principal at Hirsch until 2023, said the school’s smaller size allowed his staff to focus intensely on a highly mobile student body, where many students came in reading at the third or fourth grade level. But it was challenging to build a school culture on a campus with so few students.

“You try to have a homecoming, but there’s no football team,” he said. “There’s nothing to come home to.”

And Narain understands the financial tension the district faces. “The writing is on the wall,” he said. “You can’t continue to run these schools and give them all of these resources.”

Williams Preparatory School, one of the schools inside DuSable, offers students a medical career program.

Old buildings, big expenses

In a district with a $10 billion budget, the overall spending on staff and programs at small schools can seem negligible. But keeping aging campuses running is costly no matter how many students are there. The average Chicago school building is 85 years old; dozens of them were built before 1900.

Analysis of capital spending data by ProPublica and Chalkbeat found that since 2017, the district’s 47 severely underenrolled schools — ones that sit more than two-thirds empty — have cost more than $213 million to maintain and renovate.

The emptiest buildings account for $400 million of the district’s estimated $3.1 billion in needed critical repairs. The DuSable building alone needs $21 million in urgent repairs.

Adding to the financial uncertainty at CPS is the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funding from districts such as Chicago that have maintained their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

Education policy researcher Chad Aldeman, the former policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said some closures or consolidations seem inevitable on the heels of Chicago’s massive enrollment losses. If the district doesn’t make a plan now — with community input and help to ease the transition for students — it could find itself scrambling later to reorganize in crisis mode.

“A lot of places that are closing schools are in financial distress,” Aldeman said. “They are trying to save money rather than thinking holistically.”

Closing schools can also carry steep costs. In 2013, the district spent big to add staff at schools that took in students, spruce up those schools, and move furniture out of the closed buildings.

Then there’s what to do with vacant buildings. The district is still trying to sell 20 vacant schools from the 2013 closures, which it pays to maintain.

CTU leaders, who pushed to add thousands of new school staff positions in recent contract talks, have long advocated spending more to breathe new life into underenrolled schools — an invest-and-they’ll-come theory.

Potter, the CTU vice president, holds up Dyett High School — which the district closed but later reopened after a CTU-supported hunger strike in protest — as an example of a “phoenix rising from the ashes.” Its basketball team won a state title this year. Though the school is still at 58% capacity, enrollment has stabilized at roughly 500 students, a benchmark CPS has used to weigh whether a high school is big enough.

“Why would you start with a question about consolidations when you can start with a question about support?” he said.

But recent years have tested the power of added investments to boost enrollment.

In 2018, the district and teachers union jointly launched an initiative to target 20 high-poverty campuses, including Dyett, with an additional $500,000 a year. They’ve used the money to partner with a local nonprofit to offer more services for students and families.

Some of these schools have since reported parent and student engagement gains. But with a few exceptions, they have steadily lost enrollment since then, in some cases dramatically.

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

Jennifer Smith Richards is a ProPublica reporter who writes about abuses of power — often focusing on schools and education — throughout the Midwest. Contact Jennifer at jennifer.smithrichards@propublica.org

Some Chicago high schools are rethinking lenient grading amid surging absenteeism

2025-05-22T04:00:22+00:00

Teachers at Richards Career Academy High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side raised a question last spring that took principal Ellen Kennedy aback: Should the school stop giving students so much leeway on grades and go back to stricter standards?

The school — which serves mainly low-income Latino and Black students — had piloted a new grading approach in 2019, then embraced it when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted students’ lives and learning. Students could redo assignments repeatedly and turn in work late. Even if they didn’t complete the assignment, the lowest score they could get was 50 rather than zero — a concept known as no-zero grading.

In Chicago and around the country, no-zero grading started to take hold at least a decade before COVID struck — part of a larger push to give students more chances to show what they learned. Its supporters argue that giving students zeros for missed or badly bungled assignments makes it too hard for them to recover, leading some to stop trying — and to stop showing up to class.

But teachers at Richards and at least one other high school in Chicago are pushing back on the controversial approach to grading. They worry it allows some students to eke out passing grades with little effort and undermines the importance of turning in work on time and coming to school regularly.

Read the full story.

A quarter of Chicago high schoolers missed more than a month of school last year

2025-05-16T14:00:01+00:00

Morning after morning in her junior year, Carmelia McKeehan thought about making the short walk to Farragut High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side, only to retreat to her bedroom, twiddling away hours on YouTube still in her pajamas.

She didn’t realize just how many days she was absent last school year — until a worried school counselor printed out her attendance record to share with her mother.

Carmelia, 18 at the time, recalls staring at the printout and asking the counselor: “I missed this many days of school?”

She had only shown up for about a quarter of the year.

“I was totally shocked,” she says now.

Carmelia’s experience reflects a dramatic rise in absences among high schoolers in the country’s fourth largest district — a spike that comes as schools nationwide grapple with lower attendance after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across Chicago Public Schools, nearly 25,000 high school students — or a quarter of all high schoolers — missed at least 35 days last year, according to CPS data obtained by WBEZ and Chalkbeat. That’s double the number of students who missed that much school in 2019 — and twice the number of days the state deems troublesome enough to flag a student as chronically absent.

And yet, Chicago Public Schools’ graduation rate has continued to inch up — from 81% in 2019 to 85% in 2024. Part of the reason: School district officials are giving students more chances to make up work and pass their classes even after weeks of absences.

In short, it’s easier now to miss a lot of school and still graduate.

WBEZ and Chalkbeat looked into this trend. Read more here.

Chicago Public Schools’ second-in-command leaving in June

2025-05-01T22:25:54+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the Chicago Public Schools chief education officer and outgoing CEO Pedro Martinez’s second-in-command, is leaving the district at the end of the school year.

Chkoumbova’s departure could herald more high-profile defections from the district as Martinez prepares to leave CPS in June. In late December 2024, the school board fired him without cause, which gave him another six months on the job under his contract.

A 24-year veteran of CPS, Chkoumbova announced her decision to step down in a Thursday afternoon message to families. She did not spell out what is next in her career, except to say she will “seek out new opportunities to drive positive change in public education.” She touted her longevity in the district, which she first joined in 2001 as a special education teacher.

“An immigrant from Bulgaria, I was new to both the country and the classroom, and my sole focus was to help students with disabilities get the most out of their education,” wrote Chkoumbova, who went on to lead Chopin Elementary and Disney II Magnet School before taking on roles in district administration.

Martinez promoted her to chief education officer in January 2022. Chkoumbova said she is proud of her work on the district’s five-year strategic plan, a new school budgeting model that emphasizes school needs rather than enrollment, and a more holistic approach to evaluating school quality. She highlighted gains in the district’s graduation rate, pre-kindergarten expansion, and participation in middle school algebra.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, she also said the district’s leadership team had rolled out “one of the most thoughtful and effective academic recovery programs in the nation.”

“While we are not where we want to be, we have demonstrated that a lot of the strategies that we have put in place are absolutely effective and they’re moving our students in the right direction,” she said.

Chkoumbova told Chalkbeat that Martinez’s dismissal signaled to her “a desire for a new direction” more broadly with district leadership, and she did not want to stand in the way. She said she is not interested in serving as interim CPS CEO — a role that the school board will almost certainly have to fill as it looks for a permanent replacement for Martinez.

In recent months, some school board members have voiced concern that Martinez’s firing could trigger more departures from his leadership team, potentially creating instability and a more challenging transition to the next CPS administration. He was ousted after clashing with Mayor Brandon Johnson over the district’s budget and amid contentious contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s former employer and key ally.

Martinez was chosen to take on the role of Massachusetts education commissioner this summer. The new, partly elected Chicago school board recently kicked off the search for his replacement.

In a note to members, Kia Banks, the chief of staff at the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, the union representing school leaders, praised Chkoumbova’s work, calling her “the driving force behind the open, honest, and productive dialogue we’ve built with CPS leadership in recent years.”

Chkoumbova’s departure comes at a time of unprecedented scrutiny of CPS’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by the Trump administration, which has launched multiple investigations into the district. She said the district is taking the inquiries and the threat of pulling some of the district’s federal funding seriously — while it remains focused on addressing academic disparities facing its students, including its Black students.

“We are assessing all of these risks to make sure that we protect the funding and the resources that are coming to our district,” Chkoumbova said. “At the same time, we don’t deviate from our values.”

This story has been updated to include comments from a Chalkbeat interview with Chkoumbova.

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

Chicago school board launches a Black Student Achievement Committee

2025-04-25T00:51:20+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board voted unanimously to form a new district committee tasked with improving the experience and academic outcomes of Black students.

The committee was a requirement of a bill Illinois lawmakers passed in 2024 that set the stage for Chicago’s transition from a mayorally-appointed school board to an elected one. But the Black Student Achievement Committee’s launch comes amid unprecedented scrutiny of race-based initiatives by the Trump administration, which has threatened to withhold funding from school districts and states over efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In recent months, a growing chorus of Chicago community leaders and advocates questioned why CPS had not yet launched the committee — and called on the partially-elected board to do so immediately. These calls intensified as CPS in February unveiled its long anticipated Black Student Success Plan, which includes pledges to hire more Black teachers and markedly reduce suspensions for Black students, among other steps.

The plan drew an instant challenge. A Virginia-based advocacy group that has scrutinized the teaching of race and gender in public schools across the country submitted a complaint against CPS’ plan with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights the day after its release. That office had cautioned school district and university leaders against pursuing DEI initiatives days before the plan’s unveiling, suggesting it might be a sympathetic audience to the complaint from the nonprofit Parents Defending Education.

Under the state law, the new committee would focus on closing disparities for Black students and improving their experience on CPS campuses. These students make up roughly a third of the district’s student body.

The district, along with the state of Illinois and a suburban district, is also facing a Title IX investigation into policies around supporting transgender and nonbinary students. Mayor Brandon Johnson has said his administration would sue the feds if they started to withhold federal education funding over DEI. It’s unclear if the new committee might draw fresh federal scrutiny.

In a statement, Valerie Leonard, a North Lawndale community leader and advocate who worked on the district’s Black Student Success Plan, lobbied the state to create the committee and welcomed the it’s launch Thursday. She said she was nominated to serve on the committee by board member Jitu Brown, who will chair the new group.

Leonard argued that the board should embrace a community proposal for tracking progress from the committee’s work to “enhance accountability and clearly communicate strategies, metrics, and progress.”

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

Glitch with ACT prevented 11,000 Illinois students from finishing the test

2025-04-18T18:53:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

About 11,000 Illinois high school students couldn’t complete the ACT, a college entrance exam required for graduation and used by the state to measure school performance, after a technical issue disrupted testing earlier this month.

The students who could not finish the test on April 8, the first day of testing, have to retake the exam within the testing window, which ends May 2. The testing window between April 8 and May 2 is to ensure students fulfill the state’s graduation and accountability requirements.

The hiccup made for a rocky start to the state’s shift back to the ACT as the test required to graduate from high school. Illinois used the ACT for 15 years before switching to the College Board’s SAT in 2016. The problem delayed the start of the exam for thousands of other students. But state education officials and the company that administers the ACT said there have been no issues with testing since April 8.

State Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote last week in a message to school district leaders about the testing glitch, saying he’d expressed his concerns to the president of ACT.

According to a spokesperson for ACT Inc., a malfunction to the company’s servers delayed the start of the test for some students and prevented others from moving to another section of the exam. Some schools opted to resume testing April 8 while others decided to reschedule.

ACT said that on the same day, students completed 38,500 ACT with Writing tests for 11th and 12th graders, and 22,000 PreACT Secure or PreACT 9 Secure for 9th and 10th graders.

The Illinois State Board of Education is required by federal law to administer accountability assessments to high school students. The College Board’s contract with the state board ended in June 2024. Prior to the end of that contract, the board started a procurement process that took bids from ACT and the College Board. Ultimately,

ACT Inc. received a $53 million testing contract for six years, after the state’s procurement process ranked the company’s application higher than the College Board’s SAT.

A spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools said that the majority of high school students in the district who were taking the exam on April 8 were impacted by the ACT glitch.

“While the technical issues were reportedly resolved by 9:30 a.m., the experience varied across CPS schools — some students were able to complete testing without issue, while others were unable to finish,” said the CPS spokesperson. The district said due to the disruption students were given options to complete testing during the day or to retest at a later time.

High schoolers in Rockford School District 205, the third largest school district in the state, were also impacted by the technical issue.

“We, as a district, responded very quickly to the ACT issues last week and our students were able to test the same day. We were able to provide transportation to those students who started later,” said a spokesperson for the school district.

Rockford says students will not have to retake the ACT, but the district plans to have a makeup day for students who did not test. That makeup day usually includes students who were absent the day the exams were given.

“ACT sincerely apologizes for the disruption and knows the impact any technical issues have on schedules, student experience, and instructional time,” the company said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

ACT is offering vouchers to students for a national test date in June or July. Those weekend tests do not meet state graduation requirements but could allow students to improve the scores they include in college applications for free.

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

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 starts work on its capital budget as $3 billion in ‘critical’ repairs loom

2025-04-08T21:59:03+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

If Chicago Public Schools were to tackle all the building repairs and upgrade projects on its list, that would cost $14.4 billion. Just the ones the district considers “critical”? About $3 billion.

District officials highlighted these eye-popping price tags — which haven’t budged since the fall of 2023 — on Tuesday at the second of five virtual and in-person hearings CPS is hosting this month to get community input as it develops its capital budget for the 2025-26 school year.

Maintaining CPS’s 520 campuses and other facilities is no small task: The average age of CPS’ roughly 800 buildings is more than 85 years, and dozens of schools were built before 1900. Chicago’s oldest public school building was built in 1874.

Over the years, officials have readily acknowledged that they tend to put off many projects because they can’t afford them, often focusing on the most urgently needed repairs — an approach that sometimes means having to tackle costlier projects down the line as building issues escalate. For that reason, officials stressed at Tuesday’s virtual hearing, the $3 billion figure for pressing repairs on leaky roofs, malfunctioning heating and cooling systems, and other issues is poised to grow.

“That’s just to bring our facilities to a state of good repair,” said Ivan Hansen, the district’s chief facilities officer.

The district is facing these costs at a time of rising financial pressures: the end of federal COVID aid, ballooning structural budget deficits in the coming years, and the risk of losing funding from the Trump administration.

At the Tuesday hearing, attendees could submit questions to CPS officials and were invited to fill out a survey at the end. Only seven people logged in.

In the current year, the district earmarked $611 million for facilities spending in its $9.9 billion overall budget. The previous year, district officials had budgeted an unusually low $155 million for buildings and put many projects on hold so they could craft a longer-term infrastructure plan. Officials said Tuesday the district has spent more than $4 billion on capital projects since 2016.

“While the needs continue to be consistent and significant,” Hansen said, “the funding varies on an annual basis.”

At the hearing, district officials explained that in recent years, CPS has used two metrics to steer dollars to certain projects and schools first. One is the equity index, which combines metrics on the neighborhoods where a school’s students live, its student demographics and historical funding for facilities projects. The other is a facility condition index.

CPS said this is the first year the district is hosting in-person hearings to get input on its capital budget.

All the capital hearings will be live-streamed on CPS’ YouTube Channel, and the presentation materials are available on the Capital Plan Community Meetings website in English, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Urdu, and Arabic. Residents can also provide input through online survey.

The upcoming budget hearings are:

5:30 p.m. April 15, in-person at the CPS Garfield Park Administrative Offices, 2651 W Washington Blvd., in English and Spanish
5:30 p.m. April 17, virtual in Spanish only
3:30 p.m. April 19, in-person at the CPS Colman Administrative Offices, 4640 S. State St., in English and Spanish

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Ivan Hansen, the district’s chief facilities officer.

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

Chicago principals union looks to lock in first collective bargaining agreement

2025-04-07T22:44:04+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools officials are back at the bargaining table — this time, with the district’s principals.

In February, CPS and the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, the union representing school leaders, restarted contract talks after putting them on hold in the fall amid time-consuming and often contentious negotiations between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union. The district reached a tentative agreement with the CTU last week.

The principals union is advocating for more professional development, a process that allows unsuccessful candidates for principal jobs to grieve that result and get feedback, eligibility criteria, and more due process for principals facing discipline, among other things. A key priority is a proposal to enshrine more protections against harassment and abuse of school leaders in the new contract, said Kia Banks, the union’s chief of staff.

The two sides are building a principals collective bargaining agreement from scratch — and Banks said they agreed not to rush the process or duke it out in the media.

“This is our first contract, and I think the district is taking an approach that allows for us to have more discussion,” Banks said.

State lawmakers passed a bill that allowed Chicago Public Schools principals to unionize in 2023, and the CPAA, which had long-served as an advocacy organization for school leaders and administrative staff, stepped in to fill the role.

Principals enter ‘new era’ with union representation

The prospect of an inaugural collective bargaining agreement feels momentous, said Chris Graves, the principal of Jordan Elementary on the city’s Far North Side.

“It’s more than a small victory,” he said. “It’s a new era for us.”

The principals union is prohibited from going on strike under the new state law. But a revision to the initial law made earlier this year does allow CPAA to enlist an independent mediator to help with contract talks if they stall.

So far, the district and union are not sharing proposals publicly. In response to questions about the resumption of negotiations with principals, CPS said in a statement that it values the district’s school leaders and is scheduled to meet with their union again this week.

“The District looks forward to an engaging and collaborative conversation focused on the overall safety of our school leaders,” the statement said.

Banks said the union hasn’t yet presented an offer on salaries and benefits to the district. School leaders in CPS customarily have received the cost-of-living increases that the Chicago Teachers Union negotiates for educators in their contract, which stand at 4% to 5% a year in the tentative agreement that CTU members are voting on this week.

According to the district’s latest staffing data, principals in Chicago make a salary of $161,960 a year on average while assistant principals make $131,800. The district’s average teacher salary is about $96,000, according to CPS.

The union is prioritizing anti-harassment protections

Banks said negotiations restarted in February with a discussion of the union’s ask on anti-harassment protections. In a union survey, she said, a significant number of principals and assistant principals reported experiencing verbal abuse, threats, harassment, and occasionally physical incidents involving students, parents, staff, or community members.

Principals are the public face of district policies and decisions, Banks said — there to explain or defend them to members of the public who might disagree. That task became especially fraught during the pandemic in Chicago and across the country as COVID protocols and policies came under intense scrutiny. Principals also sometimes must deal with students and parents upset about student discipline decisions. Some have faced personal attacks and threats during virtual or in-person local school council meetings.

“There are so many access points that make principals vulnerable,” Banks said.

Banks said CPS officials have pointed to the district’s anti-bullying and harassment policy and student code of conduct as examples of protections already on the books. The union argues these policies don’t always go far enough or are not uniformly applied.

Graves, the Jordan Elementary principal, said a contract could spell out when district administrators must respond to harassment or threats against school leaders, along with a timeline for doing so promptly. While it’s hard to say how widespread this issue is, Graves said anecdotally, “I get a sense that for people who leave the role, that’s often one of the biggest reasons.”

The collective bargaining agreement can also make a big difference in spelling out where school leaders’ duties end — and where other district officials should step in to keep principals focused on serving their students, Graves added. This can be especially important for Chicago’s school leaders — who must answer to multiple people: network chiefs, district administrators, the school board, and their own local school councils.

For the past decade, the Chicago Public Education Fund has surveyed school principals about their experiences in an effort to help CPS improve retention among school leaders; roughly half of elementary principals and two-thirds of high schools principals in the district leave their role within five years, according to University of Chicago data. In the group’s most recent survey, principals said having more time devoted to improving teaching and learning in their buildings would improve their experience the most, followed by more financial resources for their schools.

Graves also said he would like to see a clear description of what the principal’s workday looks like and a process for handling district communications and issues after hours. CPS principals routinely work on evenings and weekends, and while they’re often best equipped to respond to emergencies, it can be draining to feel on call 24 hours a day.

“To have some guardrails and boundaries feels very empowering to us,” he said.

Towanna Butler, the assistant principal at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences on the Far South Side, said the new union contract in the works would improve the principal experience across the district.

“It’s powerful that we’ll have a collective bargaining agreement that will ensure that we are all heard and treated fairly,” she said.

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

CTU and Chicago Public Schools reach tentative contract deal

2025-04-01T17:51:47+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement Monday night that would reduce class sizes in some grades, add hundreds of new positions, and give elementary school teachers more preparation time while many students get more recess.

The deal would also grant teachers a 4% raise retroactively to cover the first year of the contract, which is the current school year, and 4-5% for each of the next three years.

The deal secures significant wins that the union left on the table during a bruising, lengthy strike in 2019 and comes after it pushed hard for its most ambitious, costliest slate of demands to date. But the tentative deal is far more modest than the union’s initial proposals, which included adding thousands of new staffers and 9% annual raises.

Teachers union members and the school board still need to vote to ratify the new contract, which would be retroactive to last June.

After helping propel Brandon Johnson, a former union employee, to the mayor’s office, the CTU expressed confidence heading into negotiations. But the union and CPS leadership clashed fiercely for nearly a year over what to include in the contract and how to pay for it.

The conflict led to the October resignation of the entire school board of Johnson appointees last October. A new board handpicked by the mayor fired CPS CEO Pedro Martinez without cause in late December, though a clause in his contract allowed him to stay on for another six months.

A partly elected, 21-member school board has pressed the Martinez administration to settle the contract since it took over in January. Johnson appointees and CTU-endorsed candidates hold a solid majority on the board.

The district said the agreement is a financially responsible and fair deal in line with other public unions. The union hailed the agreement as a victory for teachers and students.

“I have never seen a document before that has win, win, win, win, win, win for every stakeholder,” CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said in an interview. “Our young people win, the people who provide their education win, the families that send them to the Chicago Public Schools win, principals win, the Board of Education wins, the CEO wins, the mayor of Chicago wins.”

In a briefing with reporters, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the agreement maintains autonomy for principals, gives teachers fair wage increases, provides a “joyful experience” for students, and balances all of that “with being responsible to our taxpayers.”

The deal would expand the union’s membership ranks with additional librarians, clinicians, and teaching assistants. It would also cement CPS teachers’ position among the best paid in the country, with an average salary poised to surpass $110,000 by the contract’s end. An entry level teacher would earn nearly $69,000, and median teacher pay would be more than $98,000 next school year, district officials said.

District officials estimated the tentative four-year deal would cost a total of $1.5 billion over the life of the contract. District leaders said they can cover the cost of the first year, but questions remain about how the district will afford future years while holding onto a structural deficit. Martinez, who leaves the district in June, said it will be important to advocate for more state funding and shifting certain pension obligations.

The agreement would avert the possibility of a teacher strike, which CTU leadership had invoked in recent weeks. It could also relieve pressure on Davis Gates and CTU Vice President Jackson Potter, who are being challenged in an election by colleagues who question their leadership’s transparency and approach to politics.

Days after Johnson convened a meeting between CTU and CPS leaders that reportedly gave negotiations a boost, Board of Education President Sean Harden postponed a high-stakes vote to amend the district’s budget to pay for the CTU contract and a pending principals contract along with a controversial $175 million pension fund reimbursement to the city that was a source of tension between City Hall and CPS.

Here’s how the two sides resolved several sticking points that snarled the talks.

Additional teacher prep time and more recess for kids

The tentative deal would increase the amount of preparation time elementary school teachers get to 70 minutes every day, up from the current hour. Students in many schools would get an additional ten minutes of recess to meet a state requirement, union and district officials said.

But the two additional weekly 15-minute preparation periods that are currently provided would be eliminated, according to the district.

Schools will implement this differently and will get guidance from CPS on how to add the instructional time, said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. For example, a school could add to its recess time, and additional teacher prep time could be added then. Another school that already has 30 minutes of recess time could decide to add more time to specialty classes in order to give homeroom teachers more prep time.

If the deal is approved, elementary teachers would also get additional preparation time throughout the year, which union and district officials said would be achieved by adjusting principal and teacher-directed days of professional development. Currently, there are 12 such days, nine of which are directed by principals. In the tentative agreement, six would remain directed by principals, and six would be teacher-directed.

The issue of prep time was the “single stickiest” because it involved changing the school day, Davis Gates said. Both district and union officials agreed on Monday that teachers should have more preparation time. Still, district officials pushed back vehemently on adding the 30 minutes that the union initially asked for, which would’ve restored prep time eliminated when CPS lengthened the school day in 2012 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The union reduced its ask to 20 minutes in the final weeks of bargaining.

Chkoumbova said cutting down on instructional time for students, many of whom are still recovering from the pandemic, “was not an option.” District officials noted that Chicago teachers get more prep time than counterparts in most large urban districts.

“No one’s happy with this,” Davis Gates said of the prep time compromise.

Still, it was more progress than what the union won in 2019, when prep time was also a thorny union proposal that largely didn’t materialize.

Smaller class sizes

For the past three decades, Chicago Public Schools officials were not required to bargain with the Chicago Teachers Union over class sizes due to changes in state law in 1995 that limited the scope of what they could bargain over to primarily pay and benefits.

But the Illinois legislature restored those collective bargaining rights to CTU in 2021, making this round of contract negotiations the first since Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed that bill into law. Although the union did secure wins around class sizes in 2019, there were limits to enforcing them.

The new tentative agreement reduces the class size caps in kindergarten and middle school and includes provisions to automatically add teaching assistants to classrooms that exceed the limits.

The tentative agreement would lower kindergarten class sizes to 25 students and add a teaching assistant for any class with more than 23 students, according to the union. Both are down from the previous limit of 28.

The class size cap in first through third grade would remain at 28, and in fourth through eighth grade, it would drop from 31 to 30 students, according to the union and CPS.

The new agreement dedicates $40 million to enforcing these class sizes — $5 million more than the previous contract.

More school nurses, librarians, and teaching assistants

A key union priority was significantly increasing district staffing across a wide range of positions the CTU represents. The union argued that the influx of employees would be transformative in stepping up services for students, but staff increases are the costliest for the district to implement.

CPS hired about 7,000 new teachers and staff since 2020, using the $2.8 billion wave of federal pandemic relief money. District officials have said they want to protect those positions even as federal COVID relief dollars have dried up.

The new tentative contract deal adds hundreds more employees over the course of the next three years, union officials said. The district projected between 800-900 new positions, which will be “indexed and targeted into the highest needs schools,” said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer.

According to both the union and the district, the tentative agreement adds 24 centralized fine arts positions and 68 technology coordinators. The union saids it would add roughly 90 new librarian positions, but the district said the agreement would give schools the flexibility to replace current positions with librarians.

The union said it will also boost teaching assistant positions by 50%, though district officials said staffing increases will depend on enrollment and school needs. The number of teacher assistants has dwindled in the last decade, while the number of Special Education Classrooms assistants, or SECAs, grew. The union’s fight to increase the number of teacher assistants eventually drew a wedge with its sister union, SEIU Local 73, which represents the SECAs.

The union has argued boosting those jobs will help reduce class sizes and increase support for kids. As of the latest public staffing data, the district had opened just over 1,000 teacher assistant positions and had filled all but 100 of them.

The new contract would also add 215 additional case managers by 2028 who are supposed to ensure children with students with disabilities are receiving legally required services, according to the union. However, after this story published, CPS said it estimates the number of new case managers would be 124.

The addition will help reduce case loads for case managers, Davis Gates said.

The contract would also codify the district’s new budgeting model that largely provides staff positions instead of dollars to schools.

The union’s current contract requires a social worker and nurse in every school. Under the new agreement, schools will be required to have a nurse and a social worker in every school every day, which is not currently the case, union officials said.

More salary steps, less frequent evaluations for veteran teachers

While the two sides found themselves in general agreement over the broad strokes of a pay and benefits package earlier this year, the union continued to push for changes that would benefit more veteran educators.

The first would add additional pay bumps for teachers with more than 14 years of experience. CPS officials had resisted the union’s proposal, arguing that retention of those teachers is already high. But the tentative proposal would add $30 million in pay increases for the longest-serving teachers, the district said.

CTU also pushed for changes to the district’s teacher evaluation system, which union officials said has tended to give educators working at high-needs schools consistently lower marks. This is partly due to a state requirement to connect at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation to student performance. There’s a bill making its way through the legislature that would make that optional.

But apart from that, in recent weeks, the union continued to ask that the district agree to evaluate highly rated tenured teachers once every three years instead of every two, which is already allowed under existing state law. The district had balked, saying that would affect the quality of teaching.

Now, under the terms of the tentative deal, two types of teachers will be placed on three-year evaluation cycles: teachers with 19 or more years of experience with higher evaluation scores, who are currently rated “proficient” and earn the same designation again, and other teachers who are currently rated as “excellent” and earn the same designation in the next evaluation cycle.

This story was updated with additional data from CPS on the proposed increase to case managers.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

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

Chicago’s school board is hiring a new leader. A superintendent’s license is now a job requirement.

2025-03-21T01:40:07+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board unanimously passed a resolution Thursday requiring the next leader of Chicago Public Schools hold a superintendent’s license.

CPS is one of relatively few large districts that have a CEO rather than a superintendent at the helm. The Illinois law that gave control of the city’s schools to the mayor in 1995 renamed the position and lifted the requirement that its leader hold a superintendent’s license as required of all other school districts in the state. The resolution says the board will push Illinois lawmakers to change state law.

Board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith introduced the resolution, arguing that the district needs someone with an education background and knowhow to lead it.

The district is gearing up to begin a national search for its next top leader after enlisting a Chicago-based search firm to run it earlier this month. The previous school board fired CEO Pedro Martinez without cause late last year amid a clash with the mayor’s office over how to handle the district’s rising financial pressures.

Under a clause in his contract, Martinez, who served as the superintendent in San Antonio before taking over CPS in 2021, will stay on until the end of June. Replacing him is a crucial job for the partly elected school board that took over in January.

“A superintendent will put schools first as we move forward,” Smith said. “That’s why this is so important.”

A superintendent generally has an advanced degree and a superintendent endorsement from a university, which requires additional training in education. The approved resolution says Chicago’s next leader “shall hold a valid Illinois Professional Educator License, with a Superintendent endorsement as issued by the Illinois State Board of Education or an equivalent credential from another state.”

Historically, under decades of mayoral control, Chicago’s mayors have appointed the district’s CEOs — often close allies with a financial or business background and little or no experience running a school district.

Smith’s resolution also applies to interim top leaders for CPS as well — an administrator the school board might have to appoint if it doesn’t find a permanent replacement for Martinez by his departure in June.

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

Chicago school board postpones key budget amendment vote

2025-03-20T23:57:47+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago school board postponed a high-stakes vote on whether to amend its budget and make a pension payment that has pitted the district against the mayor’s office.

In the minutes before the start of the board’s monthly meeting Thursday, Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden pulled the amendment from the agenda, along with a separate resolution that would have committed the district to pay the city $175 million toward a municipal pension fund both this year and next.

A number of school board members had signaled they would not support the amendment, and putting off the vote allowed Harden to avoid an embarrassing failure to whip up the necessary votes. Budget-related items require two-thirds vote — or 14 members — to pass.

The delay came on a day when both the district and the Chicago Teachers Union reported they were on the cusp of reaching a deal in contentious contract talks that have stretched on for almost a year. The budget amendment would have also covered the cost of that contract and one for the principals union that’s also under negotiation.

Harden said he was shelving the amendment vote because CPS and the union were “extremely, extremely” close to landing a tentative agreement. He suggested the board would revisit the amendment shortly, after the contract and its cost were locked in.

“Considerable progress has been made,” he said. “I am very pleased about that.”

During a press conference in front of CPS headquarters before the board meeting, CTU leaders said a bargaining session Thursday morning during which district leaders presented counter offers has brought the two sides even closer to each other though some daylight remains on the key contested issues. Union officials highlighted pay for veteran teachers and elementary teacher preparation time. They also urged the school board to back the amendment and cover the $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

District officials had presented the board with a budget amendment that added in an extra $139 million in property tax dollars that CPS received from the city this past winter. The amendment also says the district could use the money to pay for the contracts and reimburse the city for the $175 million payment to the pension fund, which covers some non-teaching staff. But it did not spell out how the district would swing both expenditures.

In recent weeks, the city has stepped up pressure on the district to pay up. During a public hearing on the amendment last week, city officials and some aldermen threatened that the city could withhold future tax revenue from CPS if the district doesn’t reimburse the payment.

But district leaders and some elected board members have continued to insist that the district just simply doesn’t have a good way of scrounging up the money for the payment, which by law remains the responsibility of the city. A report by the consulting firm Baker Tilly released this week seemed to validate that stance: It noted that restructuring the district’s debt — an option the mayor’s office has championed recently — is uncertain and likely won’t give the heavily indebted CPS much bang for its buck.

Anticipating the possibility that the amendment might not get enough votes, some board members also introduced a separate resolution to commit the district to paying the $175 million to the city both this year and next. That resolution would have needed a simple majority of the board to support it. Unlike other items coming before the board, it contained blank spots where Martinez’s signature and that of Chief Financial Officer Miroslava Mejia Krug would be.

But it appeared that this board could not pass this resolution without a budget amendment appropriating the money to cover that new expense.

The continued logjam at the bargaining table with the teachers union also loomed over the Thursday night meeting. Dozens of teachers packed the board meeting to call for a quick resolution to the contract talks.

The two sides are stuck on how much preparation time elementary school teachers should have. The union initially asked for 90 minutes — returning 30 minutes that were cut a decade ago in order to lengthen the school day. The union reduced their ask to 80 minutes and the district has moved to 70 minutes, up from the hour these teachers currently have. Other outstanding issues include how much veteran teachers are paid and how frequently highly-rated teachers are evaluated by principals.

At the Thursday press conference, Chrystel Williams, the union’s recording secretary and a former CPS paraprofessional, noted that the city’s fund pays for pensions for paraprofessionals. She argued that the district’s resistance to chipping in for the fund is a “slap in the face” for support staff who rely on it.

Support for the pension payment is a reversal for the CTU, whose leaders had sharply criticized former Mayor Lori Lightfoot for passing on costs to the district, saying she was balancing the city’s budget on the backs of students. With Johnson in charge — and a partly elected school board stepping in earlier this year — the union has shifted its position.

Signaling that union leaders feel they are close to a deal, Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, of which the CTU is part, made an appearance at the press conference. She called on the board to settle the teachers contract, arguing that President Trump’s push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education added urgency.

“The way in which we fight Donald Trump is for Chicago to say, ‘We care about our children,’” she said.

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

Consultant lays out limited funding options for Chicago’s school board ahead of consequential vote

2025-03-18T20:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A highly anticipated report from a consultant hired by the Chicago school board confirmed what its members already knew: There are no great options to secure more funding as the district tries to pay for a new teachers contract and weighs a pension reimbursement to the city.

The five-page memo from consulting firm Baker Tilly outlines three options: cuts, including staff furloughs, debt refinancing, and more city money from special taxing districts. All of these potential solutions have already been floated by either Chicago Public Schools or Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration.

Baker Tilly’s analysis also revealed another challenge facing CPS: The school district must find $200 million in savings before June 30, when the current fiscal year ends. That’s because the district is expecting less tax revenue and spent more than planned on special education, transportation, and its buildings, according to the memo.

It’s the latest twist in the task facing the Chicago Board of Education just three months after its members were sworn in. Addressing CPS’ immediate financial challenges will be one of the first significant decisions the 21-member board, which is half elected and half appointed, makes as it shifts away from mayoral control.

School Board President Sean Harden, who was appointed by the mayor, hired Baker Tilly in February for a cost not to exceed $35,000 as tensions grew about how to solve CPS’s ongoing financial troubles, which include paying the City of Chicago $175 million toward a pension fund that includes CPS staffers who aren’t teachers.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Harden said the district has been working for several months to close that $200 million gap. He said CPS is looking at options that don’t involve cutting staff or furlough days — the latter of which could have direct consequences for students who would miss out on learning and could violate state laws around the minimum number of school days each year.

CPS did not immediately return a request for comment.

“The reality is we have constraints in terms of what we can actually do and what will meet our timetable,” Harden said. “We just have to do the work; there is no shortcut to this.”

Harden said he’s been working “intimately” with district staffers, who have been combing through every option. The complex idea of restructuring or refinancing debt must also be done within the constraints of the law, Harden said.

The Baker Tilly report comes two days before the Chicago Board of Education is set to vote to add $139 million in city funds to its budget and commit that money toward paying pension obligations the city has been demanding before the city must close its books on March 30. The vote would also commit the new dollars to paying for new labor contracts with the unions representing teachers and principals.

But the new revenue will not cover the pension payment and the new labor contracts. Johnson told reporters Tuesday that the Board of Education “has options” that have ”not been articulated from” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

“We are working hand in glove with the Board of Education as they have to wean off the dependency of city government and prepare to be an independent body,” Johnson said. “This transition is going to take a lot of work, and we’re putting that work in.”

As a candidate and union organizer, Johnson opposed having CPS pick up a portion of the city’s payment to its municipal pension fund, which covers CPS staff who are not teachers. But as mayor, he has held firm that CPS cannot cut staff and must both reimburse the city $175 million for the pension payment and pay for new collective bargaining agreements with teachers and principals, which are still in negotiations. He reiterated that stance Tuesday.

However, Martinez has resisted the mayor’s demands for months, insisting the district does not have the money for both the pension reimbursement and added labor costs. That refusal has, in part, cost him his job.

The risks of cutting costs

The memo, authored by Baker Tilly principal Brock Bowsher, said cuts are a risky choice. Shaving the district’s budget now to meet the pension and contract obligations — such as by cutting staff or reducing vendors — “could be highly challenging, at best” because doing so could significantly impact students and school operations and could damage the board’s reputation. For example, CPS would have to institute 10 to 11 districtwide furlough days to cover the $175 million pension payment, Bowsher wrote, based on the firm’s conversations with the board.

He wrote that staff layoffs could also impact ongoing labor negotiations. Contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union have reached their most tense point as the deal boils down to a handful of key issues, including preparation time for teachers.

In a letter to Martinez Monday night, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates pushed CPS to reach a tentative deal on a contract before the board’s Thursday meeting “instead of choosing a path to protracted confrontation.”

The union gave the school board its “last, best, and final offer” on March 4. The two sides continue to meet and say publicly that a deal is near. The union wants an agreement before the budget amendment is voted on Thursday. Historically, the school board waits until the contract is settled before doing a budget amendment.

CTU invited members to a webinar Wednesday night to discuss next steps. The union has been petitioning at schools in recent weeks and the next step would be a strike vote. Once a vote is taken, the union must give 10 days notice of its intent to strike. A strike would also have immediate consequences for students, staff, and families.

Refinancing is an option, but with unclear consequences

As City Hall recently suggested, Bowsher said another option in front of CPS is to refinance its debt, which would require “a more in-depth analysis” that is outside Baker Tilly’s scope.

The different types of borrowing all come with some uncertainties, such as the state of the financial market, interest rates, and if these options can come to fruition in time for this fiscal year, Bowsher wrote. It’s also unclear if CPS can legally use those options with its current financial situation.

“Bond issuances can generate immediate cash flow or savings; however, this may result in additional interest costs and also increased future debt service payments, and thus potential future budget shortfalls,” he wrote.

Justin Marlowe, a municipal finance expert at the University of Chicago, echoed the report’s words of caution: All of the debt refinancing options in the memo carry risk and possible higher interest costs for the district in the long-term, in return for what’s likely a modest amount of dollars freed up in the short term. That’s especially the case after the past few weeks of market volatility caused by uncertainty over the Trump administration’s tariff policy — and particularly for a junk borrower such as CPS.

“All of these options have been explored, and none of them are desirable,” Marlowe said. “I get that it’s a tradeoff they might have to make, but it’s very bad financial management, and it saddles taxpayers with higher long-term costs.”

Joe Ferguson, president of the nonpartisan watchdog The Civic Federation, said board members should vote only after they publicize any legal opinions from their attorneys about the options presented by the city, including borrowing and refinancing their debt.

New school board remains divided on solving money troubles

Elected school board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who represents south side neighborhoods along the lakefront, told Chalkbeat Tuesday that he hadn’t carefully reviewed the Baker Tilly memo yet, but the takeaway is clear: There are no good ways for CPS to secure additional dollars this spring.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to stop wasting taxpayer money to get information that we already know,” he said.

He said the board should have instead listened to district officials and experts, such as those at the Civic Federation, when they cautioned against CPS taking on more debt. He says he remains unwilling to vote for an amendment that commits CPS to reimbursing the pension payment — “not if it puts our children and our schools and administrators at risk, and not if it means going deeper into debt.”

Board member Jennifer Custer, who represents the northwest pocket of the city, said the report outlined options that have already been shared with the board. Custer, who has expressed concerns about having to cover the pension obligation this year, said she will also vote no on the budget amendment as it’s written.

For Custer, the report confirmed that each option “would have future repercussions.”

“I just don’t think that’s the best practice for the district or any municipal body when thinking about how they want to manage their finances,” Custer said.

Asked if the district and the board can find solutions in time to potentially pay the pension payment and settle the union contract, board President Harden said he and staff are working “every day without any real pause.”

“We are aware of the board meeting being Thursday, so we’re working with those fixed times in mind,” Harden said. “But no one is panicking.”

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

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

Chicago’s school board debates high-stakes budget amendment ahead of vote

2025-03-13T22:33:58+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A divide started to emerge Thursday in the Chicago school board’s meatiest discussion so far this year over a city pension fund payment that has pitted CPS leaders against the mayor’s office.

Some board members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson or elected with Chicago Teachers Union endorsement urged the district to pay the city $175 million to cover a portion of an annual payment to fund the retirements of non-teaching school staff.

That payment has caused a major rift between district leaders — who note that the city, not the budget deficit-plagued district, is on the hook for the cost under state law — and Johnson, who insists the district must chip in as it becomes more independent from the city.

But other elected board members appeared to signal more support for CPS’s stance that it’s the city’s responsibility to cover the pension cost. They want to use the money to cover the cost of new contracts with their teachers and principals unions — both still under negotiation.

Next week, the school board is expected to vote on an amendment to the district’s budget for the current school year. It will revise the $9.9 billion budget to add in an additional $139 million in tax revenue CPS received from the city.

But it leaves a lot of ambiguity about how CPS will pay for more than $300 million in added costs.

On Thursday, at the first of two public hearings on the amendment, district officials told the board the amendment’s open-ended phrasing gives members the leeway to decide how to spend the extra dollars. But they stressed repeatedly, as they have in the past, that unless the city comes through with additional funding, the district will need mid-school year budget cuts to cover both the cost of the two contracts and the pension payment.

Board members puzzle over the way forward

Some board members made it clear they want the district to find a way to pay for the teachers contract, a principals union agreement, and the pension payment. They argued that failing to fork over the pension payment would anger city leaders and could make them withhold tax revenue from the district in coming years as punishment.

“We recognize that all three are obligations that the district has, and we are doing everything in our power to meet them,” said board President Sean Harden.

But other board members said that at a time of mounting fiscal pressures and uncertainty for CPS, the city shouldn’t pass on costs it has historically covered to the district. Across the board, members voiced some uncertainty and even confusion about their options and way forward. Harden said an upcoming report from Baker Tilly, the financial consultants the board hired to review the budget, will be “a major component to determining what our next steps are.”

Board member Jitu Brown said he spoke with some aldermen who signaled that they won’t look kindly on a CPS refusal to kick in on the pension payment — and that might affect their willingness to pass on surplus tax revenue down the road.

“They won’t be supportive of those resources coming to CPS for our long-term health,” he said.

But Carlos Rivas, one of the board’s elected members representing Humboldt Park, Hermosa, and Logan Square, voiced skepticism, noting the city is legally obligated to pass on a portion of surplus dollars from special tax-increment-financing, or TIF, districts to CPS and cannot just choose to cut off the district.

Another elected school board member Jennifer Custer, who represents neighborhoods on the far Northwest side of the city, noted that the extra TIF money the district received from the city recently isn’t even enough to cover the pension payment.

Some mayoral appointees stressed that CPS’s budget reflects a record influx of cash from TIF surplus — a total $298 million. Besides the new $139 million in revenue from the TIF surplus in the amendment, the budget already included $159 million from that source.

Debby Pope, another Johnson appointee, insisted that CPS should strive to make that payment, perhaps by “rearranging things” in its budget. The district has chipped in for the pension fund in recent years, she noted; that fund, which she said has been “outrageously underfunded” over the years, covers many CPS employees.

Some board members repeatedly invoked an option the mayor’s office has floated in recent days — refinancing the district’s debt to eke out more dollars for this year’s budget — even as district officials insisted CPS did all the refinancing it could possibly do at the start of the school year.

City officials argue for debt refinancing

Senior mayoral aides on Tuesday said CPS could refinance existing debt to free up about $250 million in order to pay for both the pension reimbursement and increased contract costs.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago, said CPS would be “hard-pressed in the current interest rate environment” to refinance in a way that would free up $200 million.

Marlowe added that the district could try to do “an extreme scoop and toss” where they make zero principal payments for several years and then face ballooning payments in 15 or 20 years.

“It seems like a trade off they’re just not willing to make,” he said.

To better understand those and other financial options, some board members, such as Johnson appointee Michilla Blaise, called for a chance to question outside experts and city leaders, perhaps as early as the second public hearing on the amendment on Friday.

Meanwhile, other board members, such as Karen Zaccor, another Johnson appointee, called on the district to settle its contract with teachers so the board would know exactly how much money it needed to steer to that this year.

“It would be really important to get it done as soon as possible,” she said. “We can have actual numbers and not those theoretical numbers we can offer.”

Chicago Teachers Union leaders, organizers, and members packed the available public hearing slots Thursday, asking the board to press district officials to give in on a number of CTU contract negotiation priorities: more preparation time for elementary teachers, less frequent teacher evaluations, smaller class sizes, and additional staffing. And they urged the district to settle its four-year contract with teachers — with negotiations almost a year in the works — before passing the amendment.

Two-thirds of the 21-member school board need to vote yes for the amendment to pass. Some members have told Chalkbeat they plan to oppose the amendment because they believe the district cannot and should not have to handle the pension payment. When former Mayor Lori Lightfoot passed on some of that pension fund’s costs to CPS, the teachers union sharply criticized her for balancing the city’s budget on the backs of students.

CTU leaders did not directly address the pension payment on Thursday. But Stacia Scott Kennedy of SEIU Local 73, which represents support staff in CPS, cautioned the board about covering the pension payment at any cost, including by cutting staff or further indebting the district.

“Those chickens come home to roost years from now,” she said. “It’s the children and the workers who come to suffer from these decisions.”

At Thursday’s meeting, district leaders and board members seemed to agree on one thing: The district and the city must work out a clear way to handle financial obligations each has struggled to cover in the longer run. Brown said he wants a comprehensive plan from district leaders on addressing CPS’s budget challenges.

“It’s almost like we’re in a boat, and we have duct tape on the bottom of it, and we’re just hoping a leak doesn’t spring,” he said.

The next public hearing is 10:30 a.m. Friday, March 14 at the district headquarters, at 42 W Madison St.

Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

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

Hackers expose information for 700,000 current and former Chicago students, district says

2025-03-07T21:23:25+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

In a ransomware attack last year, Russian hackers stole private information for more than 700,000 current and former Chicago Public Schools students and put it on the dark web, district officials said Friday.

According to the district, the hackers gained access to a server where a CPS technology vendor stores student data. Using a weakness in the vendor’s software that CPS uses to share data with other agencies, the hackers stole information from the district and more than 60 other organizations across the country.

Students’ names, dates of birth, genders, and Chicago Public Schools student ID numbers were stolen.

“While we are still investigating this incident, we believe that all current students, and all former students dating back to the 2017-2018 school year were impacted,” the district said in a statement.

For roughly half of the impacted students, or about 344,000 current and former students, Medicaid ID numbers and dates of program eligibility were included in the data breach.

The stolen student information was originally encrypted, which the district likened to the hackers stealing a locked briefcase but without the key. However, district officials confirmed Friday that the hackers were able to break that encryption, exposing students’ private information.

The dark web is a part of the internet inaccessible with search engines, where illegal activity often takes place. The district said it would write to families Friday afternoon to inform them about the breach.

The district said it was never contacted about paying ransom in return for the stolen data. A growing number of school districts in recent years have been victims of such data ransomware attacks, which have at times exposed sensitive student and employee information. Technology news site TechCrunch reported that the Russia-linked ransomware gang Clop stole the data from CPS and almost 60 other organizations, taking advantage of a bug in software tools from tech company Cleo.

The district said Friday it worked with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the State of Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology and other agencies to investigate the incident. Officials stressed that the stolen data did not contain Social Security numbers or financial information.

The district said it does not have any evidence that any of the stolen information has been misused. More information and resources for families are at cps.edu/databreach.

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

Chicago is kicking off the search for its next schools chief

2025-03-03T22:19:46+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago’s school board is kicking off its search for the district’s next top leader — one of its most consequential decisions, coming on the heels of unprecedented leadership turmoil in the district.

The board is enlisting Alma Advisory Group to run a national search for a replacement for Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez. The previous school board fired Martinez without cause in December, which, under his contract, allowed him to remain at the district’s helm until late June. Martinez makes about $360,000 a year and will receive $130,000 in severance pay.

Now, the current board — made up of 11 members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and 10 elected members — will need to agree on a job description with a clear set of expectations for the new leader, a task experts say is key to a successful search.

The mayor, whose predecessors have traditionally made the call on whom to hire as district CEO, could also push for someone he favors as mayoral control winds down. Or he might take a more hands-off role in recognition of the city’s transition to a fully-elected school board.

A number of other factors could complicate the efforts. Several other large urban districts are in the middle of their own superintendent searches, potentially setting up some competition for what experts say is a relatively limited pool of candidates with the experience and leadership chops to run a district with an almost $10 billion budget and 45,000 employees.

Months of upheaval at the school district and battles with the mayor’s office, which led to the dramatic ouster of Martinez, could turn off some strong contenders. A fairly tight timeline until his June exit could also require the board to find an interim CEO.

Will this CEO search break with the past?

On paper, the school board has long been tasked with finding and appointing district CEOs by a majority vote.

But in practice, during the past three decades of mayoral control of CPS, mayors have generally installed their CEO choices in the position — often close allies without much prior experience in education. The school board, which used to be fully appointed by the mayor, voted in line with the mayor’s wishes.

In 2021, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot charged her board with conducting a national search to replace CEO Janice Jackson after she stepped down. But ultimately, Lightfoot interviewed the top contenders and signed off on Martinez’ hiring.

In districts with elected school boards, their members are squarely in charge of hiring the district’s top leader. Amid the city’s transition to a fully elected board, Johnson could take a more hands-off role. Still, it’s clear that he could wield significant influence over the board’s pick thanks to his appointees and CTU-aligned elected members.

The new board’s rules say an incumbent CEO cannot be precluded from joining the candidate pool.

Sean Harden, the board president, said the search to fill one of the most consequential jobs in Chicago is a top priority. But he said it would be premature to discuss it as the board seeks to rally around a profile of the ideal candidate and other next steps.

“You want to make sure it’s a thoughtful approach,” he said. “We only have one chance to make a first impression.”

Is it a good time to hire a new CEO?

Chicago could have some competition for talent as it sets out to fill its top education job. San Diego, Memphis, and New Orleans are all searching for permanent leaders, according to the Council of the Great City Schools. Separately, Clark County, Nevada, the fifth largest school district in the country, which includes Las Vegas, is in the final stages of interviews. (Martinez was on a short list for the Clark County top job, but was not selected to be one of four finalists.)

Ray Hart, the Council’s executive director, said there are not quite as many districts looking for new leaders as there were right after the pandemic. Still, he likens the job of lining up the next leader of the country’s fourth largest district to “finding that needle in a haystack.”

“There are only a handful of individuals across the country that have the expertise to run a large urban district such as Chicago,” he said.

The district’s new CEO would be stepping in months after his predecessor was fired without cause at the urging of the district’s teachers union in the midst of contentious contract negotiations. Those recent power struggles could affect the search, Hart said, but might not turn off all interested candidates.

“In most of our districts, complicated politics are par for the course,” he said. Still, he added, “The board is being interviewed just as much as the candidate. It’s a mutual process.”

Chicago board member Carlos Rivas said he worries that the recent turmoil could affect the district’s applicant pool — and districts that might compete with CPS for talent are further along in their own searches.

“What if this amazing, once-in-a-lifetime leader is interviewing for Memphis Public Schools right now?” he said.

Martinez continues to fight his dismissal in court, arguing that a board of six Johnson appointees inappropriately fired him in a hastily called meeting days before Christmas.

But Martinez, who served as superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District before being picked to lead CPS, is also looking for a new job.

Some elected school board members joined the new partly-elected Chicago school board in January feeling hopeful that there might be a way to reverse Martinez’ firing. But they have largely accepted that’s likely not possible.

“I think at this point his fate is sealed,” said Rivas. “He’s an amazing leader, and I am sad we’re losing him, but I think it’s best that he look for his next job.”

Will Chicago residents get a say?

Earlier this year, the district solicited bids from executive search firms that can manage the quest for a new CPS CEO. Out of four finalists, board members gravitated toward Alma Advisory Group.

Alma is a known entity to CPS, having handled previous administrator searches, and drew support for its Chicago roots. They’ve also worked with several urban districts on recent superintendent searches.

CPS did not respond to questions this week about how much the company would be paid for the search. Other details, such as the timeline for the search, are also still to be determined.

It’s not clear if CPS or the school board will seek direct input from communities. But the CEO search will give the 10 newly elected school board members their first chance to represent their communities. Rivas said Alma representatives will begin meeting one-on-one with them in the coming week to gauge what they’d like to see in the next CPS leader.

Board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith proposed a resolution to require that the next CPS top administrator hold a superintendent’s license, as reported earlier by WBEZ. Superintendents often have an advanced degree in education and additional training.

Smith and other members have argued that the district should seek someone with education experience to take the helm, but others have voiced concerns about ensuring a larger pool of candidates. The status of that resolution is not clear, and Smith did not respond to a request for comment.

Sendhil Revuluri, who served as board vice president during the roughly five-month 2021 search that brought Martinez to CPS, said it’s crucial that the board begin by setting clear goals for the school district with community input — then look for candidates whose experience and skills best position them to meet these goals.

Revuluri also said he would strongly encourage the board to spell out a clear and perhaps more public process for evaluating its next CEO, with concrete criteria and a plan to regularly monitor measurable outcomes. He said not including such a process in Martinez’ contract was a “massive missed opportunity.” That year, CPS’ search drew 20 applicants, but Revuluri felt few had the large district experience that made them a fit for the Chicago job.

“You need to know exactly what it is you are looking for before you can go find it,” he said.

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

Chicago Public Schools is relaunching a program to reel in dropouts

2025-02-28T15:40:16+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago’s school board voted Thursday to spend up to $25 million to revive a troubled program that aims to reengage some of the city’s toughest-to-reach dropouts.

The new contract enlists the social services agency Metropolitan Family Services to oversee a revamped Back to Our Future program. So far, the city of Chicago has kicked in $1.5 million and the state another $4 million to fund the initiative, and district officials said they hope philanthropists will also chip in.

Last summer, the district wound down Back to Our Future, launched during the pandemic to help 1,000 students ages 14 to 21 who had disconnected from school. The district teamed up with three nonprofits to provide 12 weeks of high school credit recovery, job skills, mental health support, mentoring, and a stipend to participants, among other services.

A Chalkbeat Chicago investigation last fall found that recruitment stumbles, a lack of a clear education plan, and frustration at the state with a dearth of outcomes data ultimately led to the decision to pause the program, which lost its funding from the Illinois Department of Human Services last spring. Ultimately, the program cost roughly $8 million. It steered about 150 students back to school and helped 60 graduate, most of them from alternative high schools.

The board unanimously approved the contract with Metropolitan Family Services Thursday without discussion. During a meeting earlier this month, some had praised Back to Our Future as a worthwhile and innovative initiative to help young people whom school districts have traditionally written off. Others wondered whether the district would work more closely with alternative high schools, which were brought in late in the game last time around after CPS found few students were successfully completing an online credit recovery program at partner nonprofits.

At that earlier meeting, CPS officials said the original program showed small results, which were nevertheless significant given its focus on extremely vulnerable students.

“While this was really ambitious, and we set out to do something really great for the school district and the city of Chicago at large, this was a very hard to reach population,” Toni Copeland, director of student supports and violence prevention programs at the district’s Office of Safety and Security. “That was something we anticipated, but maybe not in the way we should have.”

Copeland said the program drew the attention of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Office of Community Safety, which included a revamp of the program into his $100 million People’s Plan for Community Safety, rolled out last year.

The consensus was that the program needed an agency to oversee spending, train the partner nonprofits, monitor results, and ensure that both CPS and the nonprofits are pulling their weight, Copeland said. The district got three bids from organizations interested in serving in that role. Metropolitan Family Services has no experience working with disconnected youth, but was picked based on its experience working with nonprofits that serve vulnerable adults, officials said.

Metropolitan Family Services provides a wide range of programs in the city and suburbs, including after-school programs, job training, legal assistance, and counseling. Its president and CEO, Ricardo Estrada, who has led the nonprofit since 2011, is married to Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant, and refugee rights.

Back to Our Future was the brainchild of former CPS chief of safety and security Jadine Chou, who left the district earlier this month for a job in the private sector.

Earlier this month, school board members peppered CPS officials with questions about the program, asking for a written plan for its implementation, inquiring why the district needs a middleman like Metropolitan Family Services, and wondering if there is a better plan to engage alternative high schools.

“The vast majority of students who were able to graduate from the program were graduating from options schools, and so it seems like they ought to be engaged from the beginning,” board member Jessica Biggs told officials, using the CPS name for high schools serving students who had dropped out or are at risk of dropping out.

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

Parents Defending Education challenges Chicago district’s Black Student Success Plan as discriminatory

2025-02-21T22:10:07+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

An out-of-state advocacy group filed a federal antidiscrimination complaint challenging Chicago Public Schools’ Black Student Success Plan the day after the district released its long-awaited blueprint.

Parents Defending Education, which has challenged race-based initiatives and the teaching of topics involving race and gender in schools, submitted a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, asking it to block the five-year plan’s implementation. It invoked the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning the use of race as a factor in college admissions, and a “Dear Colleague” letter from the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights late last week warning school districts to halt any race-based initiatives or risk losing federal funding.

District leaders in Chicago said they would review and respond to the complaint. A Chalkbeat reporter was turned away from a kickoff event celebrating the new plan Friday afternoon by an official who said it was not open to the public. CPS officials have previously said the plan is essential in addressing longstanding disparities in achievement, graduation, discipline, and other outcomes for its Black students.

The plan sets goals to increase the number of Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions, provide more professional development for all educators, and ensure that Black history is taught in more classrooms, among other steps.

The plan’s release collides with an aggressive push by the Trump administration to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The administration argued in its Dear Colleague letter that even using income and other non-racial factors in education initiatives runs afoul of the Supreme Court’s admissions decision — a claim some legal experts deem a major stretch.

In a letter to families Friday, district CEO Pedro Martinez did not specifically refer to the Black student plan but said that CPS will stay the course amid Trump administration changes and threats of withholding funding, including when it comes to teaching students’ cultures and history in the classroom.

“We will stay true to our values and our mission — to provide all students with a rigorous, joyful, and equitable daily learning experience that affirms and celebrates their identities,” Martinez wrote.

Last year, Parents Defending Education filed a similar complaint against a Los Angeles Unified School District program to improve outcomes for its Black students. At the Biden administration’s urging following the complaint, that district overhauled its program to open it to all students at schools that qualified for it. That’s a development the group also touted in its complaint against CPS.

“Parents Defending Education hopes that this complaint will spur quick action to remedy unlawful practices and end discrimination on the basis of race, and political indoctrination in America’s schools,” a spokeswoman for the group said in a statement to Chalkbeat Friday.

In its complaint, the group argued that CPS students of other races also struggle academically, pointing to a district chart about results on a reading assessment in the early grades that showed a slightly smaller portion of Latino students read on grade level compared with Black students. Overall, though, Black students in CPS have faced some of the district’s widest disparities in academic outcomes — a longstanding issue that sparked a CPS equity push under former CEO Janice Jackson that laid the groundwork for the new plan.

The group also noted a reference to “present-day harm” to Black students in plan materials, urging the Office of Civil Rights to not only investigate the initiative but to also audit the district to find out if it is violating the rights of any students.

CPS has noted that a state law passed last spring requires the board to have a Black student achievement committee, suggesting that it is complying with Illinois mandates in crafting the plan.

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

Chicago releases its Black Student Success Plan amid backlash against race-based initiatives

2025-02-20T18:22:24+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools unveiled a five-year plan Thursday to improve the outcomes of the district’s Black students — at a time of unprecedented backlash against efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in education.

The release of the Black Student Success Plan, during Black History Month, is part of CPS’s broader five-year strategic plan and aims to address long-standing disparities in graduation, discipline, and other metrics faced by its Black students, who make up roughly a third of the student body.

The district set out to create the Black Student Success Plan in the fall of 2023, but its quiet posting on Thursday comes as both conservative advocacy groups and the Trump administration are taking aim at race-based initiatives in school districts and on college campuses.

Late last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s top acting civil rights official warned districts and universities that they could lose federal funding if they don’t scrap all diversity initiatives, even those that use criteria other than race to meet their goals. He cited the 2023 Supreme Court Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision that banned the use of race as a college admissions factor.

CPS — in a progressive city in a Democratic state — has largely been insulated from standoffs over diversity and inclusion in recent years, when districts in other parts of the country have come under intense scrutiny over how they teach race and how they take it into account in hiring, selective program admissions, and other decisions. Increasingly, though, deep blue cities like Chicago are finding themselves in the crosshairs.

Last year, a Virginia-based advocacy group challenged a Los Angeles Unified School District initiative aimed at boosting outcomes for its Black students, which CPS said inspired its own plan. At the urging of the Biden administration, Los Angeles made changes to downplay the role of race, causing an outcry from some of its initiative’s supporters.

Chicago’s plan vows to increase the number of Black teachers, slash suspensions and other discipline for Black students, and embrace more culturally responsive curriculums and professional development to “combat anti-Blackness” — goals some of which could run afoul of the Department of Education’s interpretation of the Students for Fair Admissions decision.

Still, some district and community leaders in Chicago say CPS’s plan might be better-positioned to withstand challenges than Los Angeles’ initiative — and they said the district must forge ahead with the effort even as it braces for pushback.

“Now is not the time for anticipatory obedience and preemptive acquiescence,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a University of Illinois Chicago professor of African American history and a former Chicago school board member who served on a working group that helped craft the plan. “This is not the time to shrink but to live out our values.”

The new plan says Illinois law mandates this work and cites a state statute that requires the Chicago Board of Education to have a Black Student Achievement Committee. That committee has not yet been formed.

CPS declined Chalkbeat’s interview request and did not answer questions before publication. The district is hosting a celebration at Chicago State University at 3 p.m. Friday to mark the plan’s release.

Chicago set out to create Black Student Success Plan years ago

CPS convened a working group made up of 60 district employees, parents, students, and community members that started meeting in December of 2023 to begin creating its Black Student Success Plan.

The following spring, it hosted nine forums to discuss the plan with residents across the city — what the plan’s supporters describe as one of the district’s most extensive and genuine efforts to get community input.

The working group in May released a list of recommendations that included stepping up efforts to recruit and retain Black educators, promote restorative justice practices, ensure culturally responsive curriculums that teach Black history, and offer more mental health and other support for Black students through partnerships with community-based organizations.

The district adopted many of these recommendations in its plan. It sets some concrete five-year goals, including doubling the number of male Black teachers, increasing the number of classrooms where Black history is taught, and decreasing how many Black students get out-of-school suspensions by 40%.

“The Black Student Success Plan is much more than simply a document,” the plan said. “It represents a firm commitment by the district, a roadmap, and a call to action for Chicago’s educational ecosystem to ensure equitable educational experiences and outcomes for Black students across our district.”

The effort built on equity work to help “students furthest from opportunity” that started five years ago under former CEO Janice Jackson, said Dominique McKoy, the executive director of the University of Chicago’s To & Through Project. In CPS, by a range of metrics, those students have historically been Black children.

McKoy, whose work focuses on college access, points out that the district has made major strides in increasing the number of students who go to college. But more students than ever drop out before earning a college degree — an issue that has disproportionately affected Black CPS graduates.

“There’s evidence and data that we haven’t been meeting the needs of Black students,” he said. “This plan is about responding to the data. Being clear about that is one of the best ways to insulate and defend that process.”

But McKoy acknowledges that now is a challenging time to kick off the district’s plan.

“Undoubtedly there will be critics who will think it’s racial preference to help students who need help and will attack the district for doing so,” said Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

Last year’s challenge against a $120 million Los Angeles program aimed at addressing disparities for Black students offers a case study, Noguera notes. Parents Defending Education, which opposes school district diversity and inclusion programs, filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The group has also challenged programs to recruit more Black male teachers and form affinity student groups based on race in other districts.

Ultimately, Los Angeles overhauled the program to steer additional staffing and other resources to entire schools serving high-needs students, rather than more narrowly to Black students. The Los Angeles Times reported that to some critics, those changes watered down the program, which was beginning to show some early results. But Noguera says he feels the program is still helping Black students.

However, it is clear that the Trump administration plans to go much further in interpreting the Students for Fair Admissions decision and seeking to root out DEI initiatives. In a “Dear Colleague” letter to school leaders Friday, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department, said efforts to diversify the teaching force or the student bodies of selective enrollment programs could trigger investigations and the loss of federal funding. About 20% of CPS’s operating revenue comes from the federal government.

“The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions,” Trainor wrote. “The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

‘Get the help to the kids who need it’

Chicago, like Los Angeles, might consider a focus on schools — chosen based on metrics such as graduation rates, test scores and others — where the plan would help Black students and their peers, Noguera said. Maybe it doesn’t even have to refer to Black students in its name, he said.

“The main thing is to get the help to the kids who need it,” he said. But, he added, “In this environment, who knows what’s challenge-proof.”

He said what helped in Los Angeles was deep community engagement that lent that district’s initiative credibility and good will; the changes that the district made in response to the legal challenge did not erode those.

Darlene O’Banner, a CPS great-grandmother who served on the working group, said CPS got the community engagement piece right. She thinks the plan will offer a detailed roadmap for improving Black students’ achievement and experience.

“I am not going to think of the unknowns and what’s going on in the world,” O’Banner said. “We’re just going to hope for the best. We can’t put the plan on hold for four years.”

The working group issued its recommendation in early fall and stopped meeting following the September resignation of all school board members, who stepped down amid pressure from the mayor’s office to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez over budget disagreements.

Valerie Leonard, a longtime community advocate who also served on the working group, said during the community meetings for the Black Student Success Plan last year, there was no discussion of possible legal pushback to the plan.

“Illinois is a liberal state,” she said. “It never really occurred to us a year ago that this plan would be in danger.”

But more recently, as she heard Trump assail DEI initiatives, Leonard said she wondered if the plan would survive.

Leonard pushed Illinois lawmakers last year to mandate the Board of Education appoint a Black Student Achievement Committee as part of the state law that cleared the way for an elected school board in Chicago. The district’s plan invokes that committee though it hasn’t been formed yet. The board formed a more generic student success committee earlier this month.

“We believe that the problem with Black children in public schools is so dire that it needs to be elevated to its own committee,” she said. “When our children get lumped into something that’s for all, they inevitably fall between the cracks.”

McKoy at the University of Chicago said he feels “cautious optimism” and hopes the city and state rally around CPS as it pushes to improve outcomes for Black students.

“The plan itself isn’t going to do the work,” he said.

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

Chicago Teachers Union rejects neutral arbitrator recommendations for a new contract

2025-02-06T21:53:32+00:00

This story has been updated to include comments from district leaders.

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

A neutral arbitrator recommended Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union agree to a new contract that includes, among other things, annual raises between 4% and 5%, 90 new librarians hired by 2029, and more family engagement coordinators.

The CTU rejected the recommendations, saying they did not tackle other union demands, such as the structure of the elementary school day, and teacher evaluations. The union’s rejection starts a countdown to a possible strike.

Martin Malin, the arbitrator, largely sided with the district in recommending holding the line on significant staffing increases for other positions — including counselors, fine arts teachers, case managers, and technology coordinators — citing the district’s precarious financial position.

In issuing his recommendations around salary increases, Malin wrote that “we do not live in typical times,” with President Donald Trump’s looming tariffs and economists predicting labor shortages. But he said it would be a “fool’s errand” to try to predict inflation and sided with CPS’s latest offer of 4% raise in the first year of the contract and 4% to 5% in subsequent years depending on inflation.

Malin also raised concerns that at least one of Trump’s executive orders, aimed at “ending radical indoctrination” in schools, could be a “potential threat” to CPS’s federal funding.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the report echoed what district leaders have said about the financial limitations CPS faces and the need for restraint and flexibility in staffing. He said he is disappointed the CTU rejected what he called “a very thoughtful and thorough analysis.” But he and other officials voiced hope that the report would nevertheless spur momentum at the bargaining table.

“This report presents an opportunity for progress in our ongoing negotiations with the CTU,” said Miguel Perreta, the district lead negotiator. “Overall, the report highlights how close we are at bargaining.”

CTU president Stacy Davis Gates told reporters Wednesday said she was “dumbfounded” by the report because it unexpectedly affirmed some of the union’s viewpoints. Even though the union’s formal rejection moves the parties closer to a strike, union officials — like CPS leaders — saw the report as an opportunity to settle a deal.

“Look, we don’t agree with everything in it,” Davis Gates said. “There are things in it that make a lot of sense in terms of moving this process ahead. ”

The union and district began bargaining last April and the previous four-year contract expired in June. The two sides agreed to bring in a mediator in the fall after negotiations became increasingly contentious. The union, which has advocated for its most far-reaching and costly slate of proposals yet, paused the mediation process in December, suggesting the two bargaining teams were making headway.

But union leaders asked to restart the process after sticking points, including pay, staffing, and teacher evaluations, snarled the negotiations. CPS officials insisted that further concessions at the bargaining table would doom the deficit-plagued district to major financial trouble — and said they believe the findings of the neutral arbitrator would back them up.

Here’s what the fact-finder recommended

State statute says Malin can consider “all disputed issues” and make recommendations that take into account past contracts, the economy, and the impact on classrooms. The two parties can accept his recommendations as the “final resolution of the disputed issues” and incorporate them into the collective bargaining agreement.

In his 19-page report, Malin lays out the arguments made by both CTU and CPS on a series of contract provisions, including annual raises and the staffing levels of counselors, case managers, librarians, nurses, teaching assistants, family and community engagement coordinators, and teachers certified to work with English learners. One-by-one, he either sides with CPS or CTU or kicks the issue back to them for more bargaining.

He sided with the district on annual raises and staffing levels of counselors and case managers. He sided with the union on staffing levels for librarians and made middle-of-the-road recommendations on raises for seniority and staffing levels for teaching assistants, family and community engagement coordinators, and teachers certified to work with English learners.

Malin did not grapple with the disagreement over adding more preparation time for elementary school teachers. CTU is asking for an additional 20 minutes of preparation time, with no loss of instructional time, including by adding enrichment classes for students. The district’s counter is to add an additional 10 minutes of prep time by tweaking existing preparation periods and “reallocating” a few additional minutes.

The union started setting the stage for ultimately rejecting the report long before it was complete: CTU leaders said Malin has been fair, but argued that the process is set up to favor the employer, including by being overly focused on the financial implications of union proposals.

At a Wednesday press conference before the report’s public release, union officials echoed that assertion in explaining why they were rejecting its conclusions.

Union attorney Latoya Kimbrough said the report was “without a doubt the best fact-finding report the parties have received since this became a part of the law” under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. She said the union hopes the report will push the district closer to the union’s priorities.

Hilario Dominguez, the union’s legislative director, said CTU also plans to hold meetings with the new members of the Chicago Board of Education over the latest in contract talks.

The board ultimately votes to approve the contract and, separately, amend the district’s budget to pay for the contract. The latter requires a two-thirds vote of approval.

Rejection of recommendations starts countdown for a strike

The district and union have resorted to a third-party mediator three times since the fact-finding process became part of state law in 2010. Twice, educators went on strike after one or both sides rejected the mediator’s recommendations.

When one side rejects the report, it becomes public — and starts a 30-day clock before the union can give the district a 10-day strike notice. On Wednesday, CTU officials did not suggest they were close to a strike.

Tensions over the teachers contract and how to pay for it fueled a clash between CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU employee who was elected with the union’s backing. Johnson’s handpicked school board fired Martinez without cause in December, leaving him at the helm of the district another six months under his contract.

Martinez said last week that the two sides have made a lot of progress in bargaining and are close to settling the contract.

“I can’t even imagine the need for a strike,” he told the new, partly elected board during its January meeting. “Given how close the two sides are, it wouldn’t make sense to do anything so drastic.”

The union has also acknowledged progress between both sides, but more recently has criticized the district for not bringing enough new ideas to the table to settle a deal.

The district and union have agreed to add some special education and support staff positions, set class size limits in most grades, and expand a Sustainable Community Schools program that pairs some schools with a community partner organization to beef up programs.

Prior to fact-finding, the two sides were already close on compensation. The district’s latest proposal, which the arbitrator sided with, would give teachers 4% to 5% raises each year and push the average teacher salary above $110,000 by the end of the contract.

But the union is pushing for additional staffing with assurance of no layoffs or furloughs — despite CPS officials’ insistence that would imperil some 7,000 positions the district added over the pandemic. And the CTU still feels the district can do better on pay, especially for veteran teachers.

Especially contentious have been union proposals that would give teachers much more leeway in picking their curriculums and scale back educator evaluations.

CTU could get help from state lawmakers to win changes on teacher evaluations. A bill that would no longer require districts to use student test scores to measure teacher performance sailed through committee this week and is sponsored by the Democratic Senate majority leader.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

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

Chicago restores busing for more magnet school students

2025-01-29T23:58:16+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools is restoring bus service for roughly 700 students at 18 selective enrollment and magnet schools after cutting it to prioritize students with disabilities last school year.

The district resumed transportation for a small number of these students in December using a new “Hub Stop” model, in which some schools serve as centralized pickup and dropoff points for students. CPS is now expanding this pilot program.

District officials said previously that the campuses were selected using CPS’ Opportunity Index, a measure of a school’s level of student need that factors in student demographics, neighborhood characteristics, and other metrics.

Students at 17 elementary schools and one high school are slated to begin receiving transportation Monday, according to information obtained by the advocacy group CPS Parents for Buses and shared with Chalkbeat. Those schools are: Beasley, Coonley, Ericson, Greeley, Hawthorne, Inter-American, LaSalle, Morton, Murray, Pershing, Poe, Pritzker, Pulaski, Sabin, Saucedo, Skinner West, Suder, and Kenwood High School.

CPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and it’s not clear how many schools and students participated in the pilot’s first phase in December. In November, the district said it had reduced the number of students with disabilities waiting on rides to school from about 1,200 to about 150.

Some families at these schools received emails from Kimberly Jones, the district’s executive director of student transportation services, to let them know their children are now eligible for rides. The note said they would hear from the district’s transportation vendors directly about pickup and dropoff times.

“We’re happy for all families who received good news and concerned for families who didn’t,” CPS Parents for Buses said in a statement. “We continue to advocate for innovative solutions that will ensure that public school transportation is never again placed on the chopping block.”

CPS has struggled to provide transportation and limit long commute times for its students with disabilities — challenges that district officials have largely blamed on a national bus driver shortage that began in 2020 during the COVID pandemic. These issues triggered multiple complaints to the state in recent years and the suspension of all transportation for general education students.

In announcing the start of the new transportation hub program late last year, CEO Pedro Martinez promised the district would add more schools and students to it — as long as it did not begin interfering with its efforts to provide rides to all students with disabilities who need them.

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

Chicago Public Schools launches long-awaited site to show how schools are doing

2025-01-28T17:22:58+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

Chicago Public Schools launched new school profiles on its website — a milestone in the district’s five-year push to change how it portrays the quality of its campuses.

The new school accountability dashboards replace the district’s controversial number ratings for schools, which CPS put on hold and then scrapped during the pandemic. Those ratings had drawn the ire of educators and some community members, who said they unfairly stigmatized campuses that serve students with high needs. The old level ratings had also factored into high-stakes decisions about school closures and staff overhauls.

Some parents who’ve provided feedback on the shift said families welcome having a one-stop repository of information on school performance again. But they said they’d like to see simpler, more accessible language in information about the metrics the district included to put the numbers into context. And they noted that a busy parent must click repeatedly to get to each metric — only to find out in many cases that these numbers aren’t available yet.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said the new system aimed to strike a balance.

“We didn’t want this to be just another state report card; we are embracing the complexity of the data,” she said. “If it looked like a one-pager in red and green, that just brings in the trauma.”

The new profiles went up in mid-December, the day after the window to apply to the district’s selective and magnet programs closed. Chkoumbova said the timing was not intentional. After all, families could find most of the information available on the dashboards so far on schools’ Illinois Report Card profiles.

For now, the profiles include only a portion of the data they’ll eventually feature — mostly traditional metrics such as test scores, chronic absenteeism, and graduation rates. Later this year, the district is gearing up to add long-anticipated information that gets at students’ experience and well-being — metrics that in some cases officials are still weighing how to best capture.

Still, CPS leaders say the launch of the new dashboards is an important start. They can be a handy tool as the members of a new, partly elected school board learn about the district and its schools. District officials plan to show off the profiles at the board’s monthly meeting on Thursday.

“We are transitioning to a completely new way of how we view student success and the district’s role in supporting schools,” said Chkoumbova.

The dashboards are available here by scrolling to the bottom and looking up a school.

The new profiles are five years in the making

Chicago first set out to overhaul how it measures and publicly communicates about school quality in 2019. At that time, school board members called on district officials to do away with the School Quality Rating System, or SQRP, policy, which many considered too focused on metrics that are affected by poverty levels and other demographics of the student body. The district formally adopted a new Continuous Improvement and Data Transparency policy in 2023.

With input from academics, parents, and others, the district tried to design a more holistic approach, bringing in a wider array of metrics, including some that got at the experience students have on campus — and at whether the district is providing schools the resources they need to improve that experience.

After years of largely behind-the-scenes work, the new dashboards went live quietly in December, giving principals and other educators a chance to weigh in.

Claiborne Wade, the father of four CPS students, served on a district committee that provided input on the new accountability system. He said he is a big believer in the district’s efforts to take a more holistic look at school performance.

“It’s more than test scores and attendance rates and graduation rates,” he said. “Those are important, but so is making sure we have funds for extracurricular activities and parents have a seat at the table.”

Last week, Wade presented the new dashboards to a group of 10 parents actively involved at DePriest Elementary on the West Side, where he works as a family coordinator as part of the Sustainable Community Schools program. Some liked that the new dashboards offer information about each metric and how to interpret it. But many felt these explanations were too heavy on education jargon and terms such as “alternate assessments.”

Jaqueline Vargas, the mother of two CPS students and two district graduates, said the site asks parents to do too much navigating — especially given that many metrics are not landing on the dashboard until later this year.

“You have to click a lot, but when you finally get there, the information isn’t there,” said Vargas, who also served on the district’s Transparency Committee.

She said she would love to see more information on parent leadership groups and parent engagement more generally, photos of principals, and readily accessible listings of the specialized programs and support services a campus offers. One of her CPS graduates was really interested in cooking while in high school, but the family had no idea that even though their neighborhood high school did not offer a culinary program, two nearby campuses did.

Hal Woods, chief of policy with the parent advocacy group Kids First Chicago, said the dashboards are clearly a work in progress. The layout can be more user-friendly. The metrics available so far are largely what SQRP offered, though the recently released dashboards do include some new information, such as whether a school has quality curriculums.

Parents are eager to see the full set of metrics later this year, Woods said — including those that show how schools are providing social and emotional support to students, a task that recent research has shown greatly affects outcomes such as high school graduation.

The district aims to better measure the student experience

Like districts across the country, CPS is still grappling with how to measure the student experience on campus more fully, said Elaine Allensworth of the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research. For the past two years, the district has given students a survey called Cultivate, which was developed by Allenworth’s team at the university. But she says the survey was designed to give teachers information about students’ experiences in their classrooms — not as an accountability tool for families and others.

“There’s a concern that if the survey becomes public, teachers would feel under pressure to make their schools look good and won’t feel as comfortable using it for their own development,” she said.

The district also explored how to best present another key piece of the student experience: extracurricular activities. The district could likely do more than simply listing the activities a school offers, Allensworth said. The new dashboards show the portion of students who participate in any activities. But are these activities high-quality? Are outside partners chipping in?

Chkoumbova said the district will continue to work on improving the platform. In late February, it will include new data on the growth toward math and reading proficiency on state tests that students make — a metric that Ellensworth said is much more telling about how well a school is doing than the portion of students who meet state standards on these tests.

Chkoumbova feels CPS is on the right track.

“We are trailblazers,” she said. “There are very few systems that have taken such an innovative and different approach.”

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

Spending during Chicago’s first school board campaign season exceeded $13 million

2025-01-27T13:00:00+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union was the biggest spender in Chicago’s first school board elections, which pitted the union against pro-school choice groups as both angled for influence on a new, partly-elected board.

Overall, between candidates’ own war chests and money spent separately by political action groups and super PACs, more than $13 million flowed in the run-up to the historic November elections, a Chalkbeat analysis of campaign disclosures from late March to the end of December filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections found.

Brisk spending has become a hallmark of school board races in large urban districts. The Chicago total — which includes spending by both candidates and interest groups — outpaced spending in districts such as Denver and Detroit. In Los Angeles, however, nearly $15 million was spent on its school board races in 2020. Teachers unions have often faced off against pro-charter and school choice groups, but — unlike in Chicago — unions have usually spent less than those groups.

“This is not a typical school board election in any way, shape, or form,” said Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of political science and education at Teachers College at Columbia University. “It’s an entirely new system at a critical moment when education is arguably more politicized than we’ve ever seen.”

Last fall, Chicago residents elected 10 board members, including one who ran unopposed; they were sworn in alongside 11 mayoral appointees on Jan. 15. In 2026, all 21 seats on the board will be up for grabs at the ballot box.

Candidates raised more than $5.6 million between March 26, when they could first begin gathering signatures to get on the ballot, and Dec. 31, 2024. They reported $3.3 million in expenditures during the same period.

In addition to candidates’ direct spending, the union’s two political action committees spent $4.3 million — including a $1.5 million spending spree the week of the election — during that same time period. In some cases that spending could have also given a boost to other candidates in other races, but most went to nine candidates in contested school board races, three of whom won seats on the board.

Two pro-school choice super PACs — those for the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center — jointly spent roughly $3.5 million during the same period. These groups also backed three candidates who prevailed at the polls.

In some cases, Illinois Board of Elections disclosures can include errors or duplicate spending reports by candidate campaigns and political action committees spending on their behalf. The latter groups also do not always list specific candidates when they report expenditures. State law requires campaign finance disclosures be filed every quarter. The latest ones, which covered the final quarter of 2024, were due Jan. 15.

Chalkbeat’s analysis of financial disclosures comes after a historic and hotly contested election season that saw the union and charter camps trading sharp words ahead of election day. Each accused the other of aiming to buy board seats: The CTU slammed the charter group for leaning on large checks from deep-pocketed donors, including from out-of-state billionaires such as Netflix CEO, Democratic mega donor, and charter supporter Reed Hastings. The charter group said it wanted to push back at a time when it said city leaders are hostile to charter, selective enrollment, and magnet schools. Some candidates also called out the CTU for sending voters direct mail portraying candidates — including active longtime Democrats — as puppets of now President Donald Trump.

The CTU declined to answer specific questions related to its campaign finance reports. But in a statement, the union said the expense was necessary to advocate for high-quality neighborhood schools and ensure “public school champions were the biggest bloc of candidates Chicagoans chose to represent them.”

“We fought hard to create the elected school board and shouldn’t have had to fight so hard or spend so much to counter the influence of out-of-state billionaires and forces of privatization,” the statement said.

The Illinois Network of Charter Schools spent about $2.3 million in the election’s nine contested races, backing candidates in some and opposing CTU-endorsed candidates in others. Andrew Broy, the network’s executive director, said the expense was worth it.

“Somebody had to be a counterweight to the million-plus dollars the CTU was going to spend to promote their agenda,” he said.

Chicago voters also elected three candidates who benefited from neither CTU or pro-school choice spending. Two of these candidates, Jessica Biggs and Therese Boyle, had some of the smallest war chests and spent the least per vote they earned, suggesting there are clear limitations to how much money can buy in the city’s fledgling school board elections.

Bruce Leon, an independent candidate in District 2 on the North Side who loaned himself $620,000 of his own money, had the largest war chest of any school board candidate. He finished second to CTU-backed Ebony DeBerry.

Despite the wave of spending, the teachers union and others who supported an elected school board have called for additional campaign spending limits specifically for Chicago school board elections.

Currently, candidates running for office in Illinois are bound by limits on how much they can raise, such as $6,900 from an individual contributor and $13,700 from a corporation or a labor union. But super PACs are not subject to those limits. And as spending to back or oppose any one candidate exceeds $100,000, the campaign contribution caps for all candidates in that district are lifted. In most Chicago school board districts, spending by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center lifted those caps by early October.

Collins, at Columbia University, said there’s only so much the city and state could do, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision cementing the ability of super PACs to spend with few restrictions, as long as they don’t coordinate directly with candidates’ campaigns.

Collins, who has followed school board campaign spending in recent years, says that roughly $1 million per seat has been typical in large urban district board elections. And the spending standoff between teachers union and charter advocates has also become a fixture of such races across the country, from Providence, Rhode Island, to San Francisco.

“In large urban districts in blue states especially, those have been the two prize fighters in the ring,” Collins said.

It’s unusual, however, to see a teachers union, which usually leans more on its ability to put boots on the ground for door-knocking and phone-banking, outspend pro-school choice groups so handily, he said. Those groups have had a clear financial edge in other cities.

According to Board of Elections disclosures, the union’s political committee spent more than $500,000 on field work between March 26 and Dec. 31.

According to Chalkbeat’s analysis, candidates and political groups in Chicago spent a combined $3.8 million on direct mail to voters, almost $1.2 million on digital ads, and nearly $500,000 on text messaging, among other expenditures.

Urban Center Action — the pro-school choice PAC run by former UNO charter network head Juan Rangel and affiliated with Paul Vallas, the former Chicago Public Schools CEO who lost the 2023 Chicago mayoral race to Johnson — spent about $1.1 million, mainly on field work.

Broy, of the charter network, said the CTU holds a “structural advantage” in being able to draw on dues from its almost 30,000 members, forcing advocacy groups like his to rely on large checks from a relatively small number of individuals to compete. Broy also questioned the CTU practice of underwriting smaller political groups that used funding from the union to support CTU-endorsed candidates — a practice that, had the spending caps remained in place, could help circumvent them.

But Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections, said his agency has received no formal complaints about spending in the school board races. The board sent a letter to CTU leadership in the fall asking why the union has two separate political action committees — a potential campaign rules violation.

Dietrich said it is possible that one PAC is affiliated with the union and another with its foundation. The board has not received a response from the union.

Asked about the final price tag of the election, Dietrich said, “No amount would surprise me given how quickly the spending limits came off, and the big players who got involved.”

Broy said the network is already recruiting candidates and fundraising for the 2026 school board race.

“I think there’ll be a lot of interest in that election,” he said.

Between his appointees and CTU-backed elected candidates, Johnson appears poised to hold continued influence over the board’s decisions in the next two years. But Collins, the Teachers College expert, said the intense spending clash in last year’s board races raises the possibility of a divided, gridlocked board in the district’s not-too-distant future.

“Will they be able to agree on tough budget decisions that will keep the district afloat?” Collins said.

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

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

Chicago’s new partially-elected school board is sworn in

2025-01-15T20:43:50+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest news on Chicago Public Schools.

The members of a new partially elected Chicago school board made history Wednesday, marking a pivotal moment in the city’s transition away from mayoral control of its schools.

Ten of 20 members were elected by Chicago residents in November; the rest were appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, who had yet to appoint a final, 21st member in time for today’s swearing-in, as spelled out in state law. A fault line between these two groups came into view immediately when the board split on naming a vice president — a vote that signaled the mayor’s continued sway over the body.

The inaugural meeting of the hybrid Chicago Board of Education came after more than a decade of advocacy by educators, parents, and others to elect school board members. After a string of failed attempts, Illinois lawmakers cleared the way for it in 2021. They passed a law laying out a gradual shift, in which a partly elected board — the largest of any major U.S. city — takes office now, and a fully elected board would be seated in early 2027.

In a newly renovated and greatly expanded boardroom at the district’s downtown headquarters, elected board members and mayoral appointees, including two who ran unsuccessfully this past fall, took the oath of office and reviewed the agenda for their first formal meeting on Jan. 30.

The new unpaid board steps in at a crucial moment for the 323,000-student district, which faces looming budget deficits, demographic changes that will likely bring about further enrollment declines, and the task of signing off on a new teachers contract. The board will also grapple with who will lead CPS after the previous board pushed out CEO Pedro Martinez without cause, giving him six final months at the helm of the district under his contract.

Martinez is fighting that decision in court, but even if that is successful, his contract ends this spring, meaning the new board will face a school board’s arguably most important task: choosing a new top administrator.

The members’ first action Wednesday was a divided vote for board vice president, underscoring that Johnson still holds a majority on the new body. All of Johnson’s appointees and three elected members voted for Olga Bautista, the mayor’s appointed representative from district 10b.

It was an early glimpse at the dynamic of the new board, where many elected and appointed members bring conflicting views on Martinez’s departure and other key issues. Five of the board’s members voted in late December to fire the schools chief after months of efforts by the Johnson administration to oust him at the urging of the Chicago Teachers Union. Martinez and Johnson have clashed over how — and how much — to pay for a new teachers contract and other budgetary issues.

But many incoming members were strongly opposed to that move, urging their appointed colleagues last month not to take any action on Martinez or the teachers contract before the new board is seated.

The tension came into view with the election of Southeast Side environmental activist Bautista to serve as second-in-command to board President Sean Harden. Both are Johnson appointees. Most elected members of the board rallied around one of their own, district parent and former CPS school leader Jessica Biggs — a pick that would have reflected the board’s new, more democratic makeup.

But they did not have enough votes as all appointees and three Chicago Teachers Union-endorsed elected members backed Bautista.

When the competing motions for vice president came in, state Sen. Robert Martwick, one of the architects of the school board legislation, who sat with an audience of about 100, smiled, put his fists up, and said quietly, “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”

On Wednesday, the mayor said his office has met with “a number of individuals” — at one point smiling when he said that there have been some “interesting” candidates for the last appointed spot on the board. Asked why there is a delay, Johnson said the post is a “hard job,” and his team has been asking tough questions to ensure appointees “have what it takes.”

”I think it’s important that the people of Chicago recognize that we have to get this right,” he said.

In October, Johnson hastily appointed new board members after the previous board made up largely of the mayor’s appointees resigned rather than fire Martinez. Johnson’s pick for board president only lasted a week after antisemitic and misogynistic social media posts surfaced.

After taking the oath of office in a ragtag chorus, the new board members made brief remarks, recognizing the historic moment and vowing to keep students and families at the core of their decision-making.

To raucous applause and whoops from a packed audience, elected board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, an artist and community activist, introduced himself and noted his many music awards and world travels.

But, he said, “The pinnacle of the beauty of my life is being elected by a community that sees fit to start a new era in education.”

He invoked the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King — the meeting coincided with his birthday — that education must help citizens distinguish “facts from fiction.”

A long line of public speakers welcomed the new board — and hastened to solicit its support.

“Good Lord, there are 21 people up here, and people were elected to be here,” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, her voice breaking with emotion.

She asked the new board to back the union’s outstanding demands in contentious negotiations with the district: more staffing, including a librarian in each school; more prep time for elementary school teachers; and changes to the district’s teacher evaluation system.

Numerous parents and educators from charter schools facing renewal asked the board for support. Some from the Acero charter school network thanked Johnson appointees who last month voted to keep six campuses open despite the network’s plans to shutter them.

A large delegation from Urban Prep asked the new board to approve a five-year renewal for their campuses, which CPS tried to close because of allegations of fiscal mismanagement and sexual misconduct by a former CEO.

Both the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and the CTU spent big on the November school board election, with overall spending hitting $7 million or more. Three candidates the charter network supported made it onto the board.

On Wednesday, Allison Jack of the network told board members it wants to partner with them and the CTU as it serves

This story was updated to correct the number of elected school board members who voted for Olga Bautista to serve as school board vice president.

Reporter Reema Amin contributed.

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