Chalkbeat

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson appoints Connie Anderson to CPS school board

2026-07-30T01:48:51+00:00

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is appointing Connie Anderson to the school board, giving her an incumbent advantage ahead of November’s election when all 21 seats are up for grabs.

Anderson filed candidacy paperwork in May to run to represent District 10b on the city’s Far South Side. Now, she’ll fill the vacancy left by Olga Bautista, who stepped down in March. Anderson is one of five candidates still facing a challenge to her petition signatures.

The appointment is likely Johnson’s last one as 30 years of mayoral control comes to an end in Chicago. Currently, the city’s school board is made up of 11 mayoral appointees and 10 people elected in 2024.

It is not clear if Anderson will be sworn in at Thursday’s school board meeting when the board is poised to take a critical budget vote. The board office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the Chicago Tribune reported that a spokesperson said Anderson would be sworn in at a later date.

However, Johnson appointed Ángel Vélez on the eve of last year’s budget vote and board records show he voted on the budget the next day. Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anderson is the parent of CPS graduates, according to a news release from the mayor’s office. She spent 12 years involved with Friends of Ogden, the parent fundraising arm of a public school in the city’s Gold Coast.

The mayor’s office said she was involved at the school during a controversial 2018 merger between the relatively high-income, racially diverse school and Jenner Academy of the Arts, a majority Black, low-income school that long served families in public housing.

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

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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 school board is supposed to have a noncitizen advisory board. It still doesn’t exist.

2026-06-29T21:00:54+00:00

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When state legislators created Chicago’s elected school board, they also required the city’s mayor to name a noncitizen advisory board, meant to give people without citizenship a more formal voice in school board matters since they cannot vote or run in elections.

But about four months ahead of this year’s school board races — and 18 months after the city’s first elected members were seated — Mayor Brandon Johnson still hasn’t created that advisory panel.

“There is no clarity on this,” Socorro Diaz, a mother of three Chicago Public Schools graduates who is interested in serving on the panel, said in Spanish through a translator. “How is this going to be organized? Because education is too important.”

This year, Chicago will transition from a partially elected school board to a one that is fully elected. The election for all 21 school board seats is Nov. 3.

The panel is supposed to advise the Board of Education on various issues that impact noncitizen children, including on how to create an “inclusive learning environment” and more generally sharing perspectives from noncitizen families. State law maps out almost no instructions for the mayor: It doesn’t establish a deadline for the mayor to create the advisory board, the number of people to appoint, or even whether any of the picks must be immigrants or noncitizens.

For parents who had pushed for this board, its absence felt especially deep last fall during an intense federal deportation campaign in Chicago known as Operation Midway Blitz. At the time, the mayor’s office told Chalkbeat that it was finalizing applications for the advisory board, but it was figuring out how to protect people interested in participating without putting them in the crosshairs of the federal government.

That application still doesn’t exist. The mayor’s office did not answer a question about the status of the application, but in a statement last week, a spokesperson said they hope to create the board by the fall.

“Given the nature of recent immigration enforcement, the Mayor’s Office is working to develop a process that allows community members to participate safely and confidently,” said mayoral spokesperson Griffin Krueger.

Some parents have suggested the mayor’s office can appoint at least some people who may be citizens or legal residents but can still act as representatives for noncitizens.

Kids First Chicago, an education advocacy group that lobbied for the creation of the noncitizen advisory board, had pushed the mayor’s office last year to name the panel, especially as immigration enforcement kept families from sending their kids to school.

Claiborne Wade, a member of Kids First’s Fair Governance Task Force and parent of CPS students, said he can understand the mayor’s office’s concerns, especially with a federal government that is targeting immigrants and noncitizens.

Not having the panel in place, however, means that the board is potentially not hearing from certain immigrant communities whose kids are in CPS, who “do have a voice, too,” he said.

Diaz, who is currently on the Eric Solorio Academy High School Local School Council, first got involved in parent councils almost 25 years ago, when she learned that one of her daughters, at the time a 6-year-old newcomer from Mexico, was not receiving help in understanding English in school, she said. She recalled seeing her daughter set aside in a corner of her classroom, and Diaz repeatedly pushed the principal for help.

Since then she’s participated in LSCs and bilingual advisory councils, too, and believes it’s important for parents to get involved, she said.

When she learned about Chicago’s first school board elections, she felt a mixture of emotions: happiness that parents would get to choose who made policy decisions for the district but sadness that she and others who aren’t citizens wouldn’t be able to cast votes or run for office.

She feels the advisory panel is an advocacy vehicle for parents who can’t be at board meetings or are fearful of revealing their identities. To Diaz, it’s frustrating to not know what’s happening with the panel.

“They need to start being more transparent,” she said.

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

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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 schools will get about $200 million more from City Council TIF surplus

2025-12-23T20:56:54+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will get $193 million more in tax revenue than was included in this year’s $10.2 billion budget after the City Council passed its own budget Saturday, declaring a $1 billion surplus Saturday from city tax increment financing districts.

But the additional dollars will not result in a windfall for classrooms as the school system continues to adjust spending, eliminate vacant positions, and account for increased interest payments on debt.

The TIF surplus amount is unchanged from what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed in October. By law, CPS gets a little over half of any TIF surplus declared by the city. City budget documents released in October said the school district would get $552.4 million, which is $193 million more than the $379 million the school board budgeted to get from those special taxing districts, known as TIF.

Johnson said Tuesday he would not sign the budget plan, but he would not veto it either. That means it will automatically go into effect at the start of 2026.

This is the second year in a row Johnson faced a significant budget battle with the City Council. This year, dozens of aldermen presented an alternative budget after voting down Johnson’s in late November. Facing an end-of- the- year deadline, the alternative budget plan passed Saturday by a vote of 30-18.

During a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday, Johnson expressed strong opposition to some elements of the alternative budget’s plan, particularly a move to sell off debt owed to the city. While he considers some elements of the budget “morally bankrupt,” he applauded other elements, including the TIF surplus.

“We added the largest TIF surplus in the history of the city to go to our schools, our parks, our libraries,” he said. “These investments create spaces for our young people to grow and thrive and keep our city safe.”

A coalition of school board members aligned with Johnson put out a statement after the City Council vote that thanked aldermen for not changing the TIF surplus but criticized them for not supporting the mayor’s proposed corporate head tax.

A significant chunk of the additional money — $175 million — is expected to go back to the city as a reimbursement payment to cover a portion of municipal pension costs for CPS non-teaching staff retirements.

That leaves roughly $18 million for the school district to use.

However, the district’s budget approved in August required officials to identify an additional $50 million in cuts. A CPS spokesperson said in recent weeks the district eliminated 69 vacant positions from 19 central and citywide departments, extended an ongoing hiring freeze at the central office , cut some professional development for teachers, and made additional cuts to central office expenses, saving about $34.4 million.

The district also said it found savings elsewhere, including through its Summer Bridge program which was offered at fewer schools this year, according to the spokesperson. The district estimated it saved $15.6 million through these and other measures.

No employee was laid off, and there are no planned cuts to “student-facing” programs for the second semester, another spokesperson said.

Other unexpected expenses have come up since the district passed its budget in August.

In September, the federal government cut millions in magnet school grants citing CPS’s diversity initiatives, which left an $8 million unexpected hole in this year’s budget.

And last week, WBEZ reported Chicago Public Schools is spending $23 million more than usual to cover interest payments on loans it routinely takes out to cover payroll and other expenses while waiting for Cook County to send tax revenue to government bodies.

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

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

Unspent money, turnover, and tension: Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools provide lessons for future

2025-12-19T23:25:00+00:00

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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

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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 Board of Education members urge City Council to vote for proposed budget

2025-11-25T23:54:58+00:00

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Chicago school board members, educators, and community advocates rallied Tuesday outside Austin High School to advocate for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $16.6 billion city budget, which would mean $552.4 million for Chicago Public Schools.

Their support comes after the mayor’s budget was rejected by a key committee last week, sending the City Council’s process back to square one. The mayor then launched an online portal to solicit more ideas for budget efficiencies from aldermen. Some aldermen are reportedly putting together an alternative proposal.

Jitu Brown, an elected school board member representing District 5A on the West Side, urged Chicago aldermen to vote in favor of Johnson’s proposed budget.

“The status quo is starving a school like Douglass, to where it goes from a school with 600 children, a thriving middle school to a school with only 35 children,” Brown said at the rally. “The status quo is getting rid of all the [career and technical education] programs that used to be in places like Austin and Dunbar and leaving those schools as shells of their former selves.”

Wallace Wilbourn Jr., a teacher at Oscar DePriest Elementary School on the West Side, said if the city’s budget is not approved, school staff could be cut and taxes could go up.

“A no vote on the mayor’s budget will support higher taxes and fees on us, the working people, and cuts to our schools and the services our families rely on,” Wilbourn Jr. said.

Several board members who spoke said there would be cuts at specific schools if Johnson’s proposed budget doesn’t pass. Their comments were based on calculations done by the Chicago Teachers Union.

But city budget officials have said the $552 million for CPS that would come from a surplus of special taxing dollars, known as TIF, are not allocated per school. They are provided to CPS by law as one amount that the school board would decide how to spend.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Tuesday the amount of the TIF surplus “is one of the least controversial parts of the budget.” If the mayor’s $1 billion surplus proposal is approved, the city would also get $223 million in revenue from those special taxing districts.

Depending on the final amount of TIF surplus approved, the district could likely maintain its current budget and avoid midyear cuts. The Chicago Board of Education approved a $10.2 billion budget for the 2025-26 school year in August with an assumption that it will get at least $379 million from the city. The City of Chicago’s budget is separate and operates on a calendar year from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2026.

After Johnson put forward his budget proposal, the Board of Education approved an agreement that said it would use additional TIF surplus funds to reimburse the City of Chicago for certain pension costs the city covers that became the center of heated debate this year.

This story was updated to include comment from a mayoral spokesperson.

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

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

Chicago school board’s CEO search is in a holding pattern

2025-11-25T22:52:19+00:00

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Earlier this month, after Chicago’s school board appeared to have two finalists for the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools, the board was poised to hire a new leader by the end of the year.

Now, it’s unclear which finalists remain and when the district will have a new CEO.

On Tuesday, appointed school board member Michilla Blaise said that the board is “reconsidering the process.” But elected board member Jessica Biggs, who is helping lead the board search committee, said they are rescheduling finalist interviews.

This comes a week after Mayor Brandon Johnson told reporters he was under the impression that “people can still apply if they want” to lead the nation’s fourth largest school system.

Chicago is looking to replace former CEO Pedro Martinez, who was fired without cause and left the district in June. Board members had promised a transparent search process that includes public feedback, but in recent weeks many have declined to comment on where the search stands.

Elected board member Jitu Brown, who represents the West Side, nodded in agreement with Blaise’s comment at the end of an unrelated press conference. Both said they couldn’t share more information because they signed nondisclosure agreements.

“We will have updates,” Brown told reporters.

Biggs declined to share a timeline for when rescheduled interviews could happen.

Two weeks ago, board members appeared to settle on two finalists: former New York City schools chancellor Meisha Porter and current Denver superintendent Alex Marrero, who later said in a statement that he was committed to Denver Public Schools. Sources said they would face final interviews with the mayor, the board, and a community panel during the week of Nov. 10. On Tuesday, Biggs said finalists were not interviewed at that time because of a need to reschedule; she declined to confirm who the finalists were or how many remain.

At one point, the board had scheduled three special meetings for that week. Two were canceled and one adjourned after about an hour.

Multiple board members have declined to comment on what happened or was discussed during the closed session that day, citing their NDAs.

“The board is working on recalibrating and deciding how to move forward together,” Biggs said.

Last week, the head of Alma Advisory Group, the search firm hired to help the board find a new leader, said she did not have a search status update. Alma did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The board’s search process began in the spring with community meetings and surveys collecting feedback from the public about what it wanted to see in a new schools chief. The board also passed a resolution requiring the future CEO to have a superintendent’s license.

Board members began interviewing candidates this fall and planned to have a new leader in place by the end of this year, but also said finalist names would not be made public so as not to jeopardize their current jobs.

But when the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ reported earlier this month that the board had narrowed its choices to two unnamed finalists, some local organizations pushed back. The Chicago Teachers Union, a close ally of the mayor’s, criticized the board for not naming the finalists publicly and asserted in a letter to the board president that state law still gives the mayor the power to choose the CEO, an opinion shared by one of the state senators who created the elected school board law. But legal experts told Chalkbeat the law is not written clearly.

A group of West Side organizations, including the West Side branch of the NAACP, have pushed to keep interim CPS CEO Macquline King in the role and expressed disappointment when she was not reportedly one of the finalists.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Tuesday he was planning to meet with finalists in early November, but after finalist names leaked, the process was paused.

Last Monday, the mayor said he believed there was still a lot of interest in the job.

“I know there are a number of people who would love to be able to serve this city, particularly the time in which you know, again, my budget is putting forth the largest single investment in our public schools in the history of Chicago,” Johnson said. “So there’s a reason why a lot of folks want this position, because they’re going to have a mayor who believes in public education.”

He added that the next leader of CPS will need to transition the school system into “complete autonomy” after the school board becomes fully elected in 2027 and oversee “gradual weaning off of its dependency and its reliance upon the city of Chicago.”

This story has been updated to include comment from a mayoral spokesperson.

Becky Vevea and Mila Koumpilova contributed reporting.

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

Chicago’s 2026 city budget proposal includes $552 million for CPS

2025-10-16T20:00:34+00:00

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a $16.6 billion city budget Thursday that allocates $552.4 million to Chicago Public Schools, significantly more than the $379 million the school board anticipated when it passed its own $10.2 billion budget in late August.

The additional money would allow CPS to avoid midyear cuts and fill gaps created by the Trump administration canceling millions in magnet school grants. It could also allow the school board to approve a pension reimbursement payment to the city, as outlined in the school district’s budget plan, but the city budget overview documents say that is not assumed in its 2026 plan.

“These funds will ensure that we are protecting our young people from the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle and privatize our public education system, that we are protecting special education teachers, restoring funding for our Black Student Success Plan, and making sure our lowest-paid workers receive their pensions,” Johnson said in a speech to the City Council Thursday.

The city’s 2026 budget, which will need to be approved by at least 26 of 50 aldermen on the City Council before the end of the calendar year, declares a surplus of funds from special taxing districts, known as TIFs, aimed at spurring development in blighted areas.

Before the meeting, Johnson outlined highlights of his budget alongside supporters and allies, including school board members Michilla Blaise, a mayoral appointee, and Jitu Brown an elected member who is an ally of the mayor, both of whom represent the city’s west side, and Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates.

He said this year’s budget was “written long before I took office” and represents the work of “generations of organizers,” drawing on his own background and experience as a CTU organizer before he became mayor.

“Back then, it was about trying to protect and save one school even if it took a hunger strike,” Johnson said. “Now, this budget is about saving our entire education system.”

Blaise spoke in support of the budget and said a coalition of board members who voted down CPS’ spending plan in August because it was “balanced on paper, but not reality” pushed the mayor’s administration to deliver more money for CPS.

“This commitment prevents any midyear cuts and allows us to maintain stability in our classrooms,” Blaise said.

She also applauded the mayor for declaring a record TIF surplus to help CPS fill an $8 million hole created by the Trump administration’s decision to cut some magnet school grants over the district’s commitment to improve Black student achievement and protect the rights of LGBTQ students.

“This agreement is essentially Trump-proofing our budget,” Blaise said.

There are more than 100 TIF districts across Chicago collecting more than $1 billion in property tax revenue each year. Any amount of money not committed to development projects in those areas can be declared as “surplus” by the mayor and City Council. By law, CPS gets 52% of any TIF surplus and the city gets 24% with the remaining sent to other taxing bodies.

Johnson’s budget proposal does not rely on CPS making a pension reimbursement payment to the city, but school board members may still decide to do so. The district’s $10.2 billion budget included a statement that if additional revenue came through, the school board would consider reimbursing the city to cover a portion of the pensions of non-teaching staff covered by the city plan.

That pension reimbursement has been a source of conflict between the school board and city hall in recent years. Faced with ballooning payments and given that about half of the fund’s beneficiaries are CPS employees or retirees, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration implemented an intergovernmental agreement with her appointed school board in 2020 to have CPS reimburse the city for an increasing portion of the required annual payment.

The cost-sharing irked the Chicago Teachers Union at the time, which lambasted Lightfoot for burdening the school system with the city’s financial obligations. But when CTU organizer and former teacher Johnson became mayor, he continued to push CPS for the reimbursement.

The Board of Education has not made a pension reimbursement payment to the city since early 2024 when it sent $175 million to cover part of the cost of the 2023 payment. Blaise told Chalkbeat Wednesday the school board may discuss a new intergovernmental agreement at its next meeting on Oct. 23.

Blaise said approving such an agreement would help alleviate concerns from alderpeople who want to “see something in writing” about how CPS will use the additional TIF surplus dollars.

In addition to the record TIF surplus, the Chicago city budget includes $7 million for increasing the pay of more than 3,000 early childhood workers at 86 programs run through the city’s Department of Family and Support Services and additional dollars for summer youth employment programs.

Johnson’s budget also includes a new, first-of-its-kind tax on social media companies. He noted the link between social media use and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and mental illness among young people, especially. “Just like we’ve taxed other addictive vices that are bad for our health, like nicotine and tobacco, it is far past time we treat social media companies the same way,” he said.

The tax would charge social media companies 50 cents per active user over 100,000 in Chicago and is estimated to generate $31 million to support mental health services, Johnson’s office said.

Reema Amin contributed reporting.

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

Chicago Public Schools should sue feds over magnet school money, teachers union president says

2025-09-30T21:18:08+00:00

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Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said Tuesday Chicago Public Schools should “absolutely” sue the U.S. Department of Education over its decision last week to cut millions in federal magnet school funding from the district.

Trump administration officials said $5.8 million will not be awarded to Chicago in the coming year under the Magnet Schools Assistance Program and $17.5 million would not be awarded for the remaining years of the district’s grants. The move created an $8 million hole in the current school year’s CPS budget, district officials said.

The federal government’s decision stems from a dispute over whether Chicago’s school district is violating federal civil rights laws with its efforts to help improve Black student achievement and protect transgender students’ rights.

“This time period is going to require an entire encyclopedia of strategies employed at every turn, because that’s what it’s going to take to both resist, challenge, and win in this moment,” Davis Gates said. “So yes, they have to sue. That is their duty to sue.”

A CPS spokesperson said the district is “considering all legal options” regarding the magnet school money.

A spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson echoed the district, noting that with CPS’ current budgetary constraints, “every single dollar counts.” Johnson said earlier this year that he would take the Trump administration to court if it took federal funding away from CPS because of the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

About two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary of civil rights Craig Trainor told CPS he would not certify the district’s eligibility for the magnet school money unless the district abolished its Black Student Success Plan and changed its policies on transgender students by Sept. 23.

Chicago called the demand “unreasonable and untenable” and requested an additional 30 days to respond. The district’s interim general counsel Elizabeth K. Barton also argued that the federal department was violating its own procedures and “investigatory process” given that there are still two open investigations into both the Black Student Success Plan and Chicago’s compliance with Title IX as it relates to transgender students.

Both of the matters under investigation are requirements of Illinois law, putting Chicago’s school system between a “rock and a hard place,” Davis Gates noted. A 2024 state law requires Chicago’s school board to create a Black Student Achievement Committee and make a plan for serving Black students. Illinois Human Rights Law also requires schools to allow transgender students access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity.

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

Pressure and time: Chicago navigates its elected school board era

2025-09-17T10:00:00+00:00

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In the eight months since Chicago’s partially elected, partially appointed school board was seated, many of its members have had to exercise a muscle their predecessors weren’t required to flex: Figuring out what the public wants.

The 21-member Chicago Board of Education has already navigated most of the core functions of a school board, including picking an interim leader, approving the Chicago Teachers Union contract, balancing a budget with a $734 million deficit and grappling with the hotly protested proposed closure of seven charter schools. The board members have worked through these issues while wrestling with time constraints, internal politics, and external pressure that hasn’t existed before, according to interviews with 15 current and one former board member.

Take, for instance, Ebony DeBerry’s journey from community activist to elected school board member. After easily winning the race to represent a diverse, progressive pocket of the North Side with the backing of the Chicago Teachers Union, DeBerry faced a pivotal vote on Chicago Public Schools’ $10.2 billion budget proposal.

The budget plan had drawn opposition from the CTU and Mayor Brandon Johnson because it didn’t include a pension reimbursement to the city and a loan. DeBerry ultimately split with her allies and cast a vote in favor of the proposal, despite her own “strong distaste” for some of the district’s calculations, she said.

She did so because she wanted to listen to the people she represents, DeBerry said.

“It just keeps coming back to the constituents,” DeBerry told Chalkbeat the week before the vote. “That’s what I would love to do as an elected official: Do as I’m asked.”

Elected board member Ebony DeBerry said she is planning to run for reelection next year.

Previous Chicago school board members appointed by the mayor mostly did as the mayor asked. But now, school board members must consider what the broader public wants to see in schools, especially those who want to keep their seats through the next election in November 2026, when all 21 members will be chosen by voters.

The way board members navigate these major decisions and the political divide on the body provides a window into how this experiment in Chicago democracy is going so far — and how it could impact policymaking for the nation’s fourth largest school district for years to come.

Chicago school board members are unpaid

The 21 people leading Chicago’s transition to an elected school board are doing so on a volunteer basis. They’re working without pay and clocking at least an average of 25 hours a week, according to school board members interviewed by Chalkbeat.

Some are juggling the role with full-time jobs, and others have quit their day jobs. They go on school visits, host office hours, attend meetings, take phone calls, and read materials that are supposed to inform their votes, which multiple board members described as detailed and lengthy.

Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden, a mayoral appointee who also runs a consulting firm, said he spends an unlimited amount of time on board business. His responsibilities also include communicating with board members and keeping in touch with the mayor’s office.

“It really never turns off,” he said. “It’s a Monday through Sunday scenario.”

Elected board member Jennifer Custer, a mom of three, including one under the age of 1, said she has a supportive husband and community of relatives and friends who can help with child care in a pinch. But her responsibilities at home mean she can’t make every obligation and often must get creative.

“Sometimes I take my kids with me to school visits, and schools are very welcoming and very warming to that when I have no other option,” Custer said. “I take my daughter to the board office all the time. You do what you have to do to do the work.”

Elected board member Yesenia Lopez and appointed board member Norma Rios-Sierra both said they quit their full-time jobs in order to have more flexible schedules to serve on the board. Rios-Sierra, a single mom, is earning some money through freelance artwork; Lopez said she will probably need to find another, more flexible job soon.

Angel Gutierrez, an elected member who works full-time, said he wishes he could hold town halls like other legislators, but “I have bills that I pay at home, I have a family to support.”

Former appointed board member Frank Niles Thomas said despite enjoying his time on the school board, he won't run in next year's elections.

Frank Niles Thomas was retired when he was appointed to the board last fall after the mass resignation of the mayor’s first appointed board. Thomas converted his dining room table at his South Side home into his office, and his days filled up with phone calls, answering emails, reading documents, and attending meetings.

Thomas loved serving on the board, he said, but he needed to earn money to support a relative in need.

”You got to have income to deal with it — and I didn’t,” Thomas said, who resigned in June.

Illinois law prohibits paying school board members beyond reasonable reimbursements related to their role. A push to provide pay for Chicago’s new board has so far been unsuccessful in Springfield.

“When we first fought for the elected school board, we definitely were talking about compensation, because we view it as an obstacle to parents if they couldn’t have this be their job,” said appointed board member Karen Zaccor, a retired teacher who was part of the decades-long effort to create an elected board. “That really is asking a lot.”

Factions and alliances emerge in key Chicago school board votes

In addition to the time demands, trying to bridge the board’s political divide can cause a level of “emotional pressure” that elected board member Jessica Biggs said she did not anticipate.

“The stakes are really high,” Biggs said. “Where I thought that there would be some more consensus around things that I see as sort of obviously in the best interests of kids, schools, and the system, everybody else doesn’t see it that way all the time or there are competing interests at play.”

Elected board member Jessica Biggs said she tries to create boundaries, such as an hour of "Do Not Disturb" time on her phone, in order to balance personal and board responsibilities.

Divisions on school boards are nothing new, but public debate and disagreement is unfamiliar when it comes to school governance in Chicago.

From 1995 through 2024, Chicago’s mayors picked people to serve on the city’s school board. By design, board members were aligned with City Hall and were often criticized for being rubber stamps for the mayor, who earned the credit or backlash for the state of the public school system.

That’s partly why observers of the school system were stunned when Johnson’s entire first appointed school board stepped down over disagreements with his office in October 2024, just three months before the new 21-member board was seated.

Several of the newly appointed members stayed on when the new board was sworn in this past January and tensions carried over. Five appointees who remained had voted in late December to fire former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who had sued those board members and would stay in his job for another six months. But many newly elected board members opposed Martinez’s firing.

Together, they faced an onslaught of problems that are at the heart of a school board’s responsibilities: the decision on who would replace Martinez, souring negotiations over the Chicago Teachers Union contract, and the planned closure of seven charter schools run by Acero, which the CTU, staff, and families protested for months.

In interviews for this story, several board members cited their decision in February to save five of the Acero schools and absorb them into CPS as a major accomplishment that maintained stability for families and students.

That vote was also one of the board’s early splits. Some board members wanted language that would allow CPS to check in one year if it was financially viable to absorb the schools. Without that language, three members who are often aligned voted against saving the schools — drawing backlash from organizations like the CTU and some Acero families.

But divisions and new political alliances continued to emerge.

In March, CPS needed to amend its budget in order to pay for upcoming labor contracts, including the new CTU deal. The mayor’s office wanted CPS to consider taking on a loan so the district could also reimburse the city for a $175 million municipal pension payment that had been debated for months.

Following the advice of CPS leadership at the time, seven elected board members signed a letter opposing paying the pension reimbursement amid CPS’s financial challenges. Because budget amendments require 14 votes — or two-thirds approval — the pension payment never happened.

Choosing an interim replacement for Martinez also proved divisive. Roughly half of the board wanted someone other than interim CEO Macquline King, a mayoral advisor who had been investigated multiple times by CPS without facing formal discipline during her time as a principal. Eleven board members — elected member Jitu Brown and 10 appointees — voted for King, while eight other elected officials voted no. DeBerry abstained and told Chalkbeat recently that if her vote had been decisive, she would’ve voted no in line with what she heard from her constituents.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and 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, 4420 N. Beacon St., in Uptown on Aug. 18, 2025.

Despite the divisions that have played out in public, several board members pointed to a handful of issues they’ve agreed on, including ensuring the next schools CEO has a superintendent’s license — and sticking to that goal even after Harden reportedly wanted Johnson’s chief of staff to be considered for the job. They also supported establishing a Black Student Success Plan committee and unanimously passed the new CTU contract.

Multiple board members expressed frustration that they haven’t been able to dig more into education policy, and said many members agree on wanting to center the needs of children. Their disagreements are rooted in how to pay for things.

“It’s been about the money since we came on,” elected board member Therese Boyle said in an interview weeks before the budget vote. “The money is why the original board stepped down; the money is why Pedro [Martinez] had to go; it’s about the money now.”

Most board members interviewed said it’s difficult to have robust discussions with more of their colleagues because of the size of the board. They said it’s difficult to coordinate schedules, and additionally, board members can’t meet or talk in groups of six or more without providing notice of an official meeting, in order to comply with the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

That law is meant to ensure public bodies don’t conduct business in secret. But in practice, some board members argued, it means that by the time they get to a public meeting where the entire board can debate an issue, they’re sometimes already facing a vote. By then, they say, many board members have made up their minds.

Multiple board members also said they’ve tried to work with people they don’t typically align with. Boyle and appointed member Debby Pope, who have voted differently on some hot issues, both said they work well together on special education issues.

During the pension dispute this spring, appointed member Ed Bannon reached out to elected member Che “Rhymefest” Smith, who had signed the letter opposing it, to better understand his view, Bannon said. The two had a “great” discussion about the issues they could collaborate on, such as getting more parents involved in CPS, Bannon said. Smith confirmed the account.

“I do try to reach out to people I disagree with,” Bannon said. “I’m not saying I’m a saint about it and I do it all the time or that I’m expressing myself all the time to all these people, but I hope people think I’m making an effort.”

Who do Chicago school board members answer to?

Many board members said major interest groups and unions, as well as parents, push them on many issues, such as special education services, charter schools, and labor matters.

When asked if they felt pressure from any one group or person, including the mayor’s office, to vote a certain way, no one said yes.

In politics, money often translates into influence. Now, in Chicago, money can be spent on directly backing board members. More than $13 million was spent on Chicago school board races last fall. The top spenders, apart from candidates’ direct spending, were the Chicago Teachers Union’s political action committees, followed by two school choice PACs, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center.

“It’s politics now. There’s factions,” said appointed board member Michilia Blaise, a longtime political consultant who served on the city’s last fully appointed board but also ran against Jitu Brown in the last election before dropping out. “There’s people who have to, like, take care of people who gave them money for their campaigns. It’s people positioning themselves for whatever they’re gonna do later.”

On hot button issues, board members have often voted in line with those who supported their campaigns or appointed them. Of the seven board members who opposed CPS’s budget, six, including Blaise, were mayoral appointees.

On a resolution aiming to increase oversight of charter schools, five elected members abstained. Of those, two — Carlos Rivas and Gutierrez — were endorsed and got campaign donations from the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, which opposed the resolution. The other three abstentions were Ellen Rosenfeld, Smith, and Boyle.

But board members have also broken ranks with their supporters or voted in surprising ways.

Custer was endorsed by the CTU during the election but has not voted in line with the union on some major issues, such as the Acero closures or in favor of a short-term loan.

Blaise proposed extending the renewal term for West Side charter school North Lawndale College Prep, which is in her district, for one year longer than what CPS proposed. Blaise was appointed by the mayor, who has been critical of charters in the past.

Charters make up about a quarter of the 105 schools in District 5, which Blaise and Brown represent.

Brown, who is also an ally of the mayor, is known for his decades of advocacy opposing the expansion of charter schools and the closure of neighborhood schools. He voted in favor of the resolution to tighten oversight on charters. But he also supported the renewals of a slew of charter schools in the spring, including Blaise’s proposal to lengthen the renewal term for North Lawndale College Prep.

Elected board member Jitu Brown ran unopposed in his election last year. He's unsure if he's going to run again next year.

“I have to get over my disdain for the charter industry,” Brown said. “I went to a few charter schools that were clearly schools that were doing the right thing, and I will support those schools, because at the end of the day [I ask], are you doing right by children?”

Appointed members said they don’t feel undue pressure from the mayor’s office to vote a certain way.

Still, elected member Rosenfeld, who represents wealthier North Side neighborhoods of Lake View and Lincoln Park, said the hybrid structure of the board “is a bit of a problem.” She said she knows her votes won’t make everyone happy, but her decisions are based on public feedback. When she considers how appointed members vote, “It’s like, is that how you really feel, or is that how somebody who appointed you told you to feel?”

More Chicago school board elections coming in 2026

Boyle represents part of District 9, including South Side neighborhoods with high voter turnout. The retired school psychologist said she can no longer go on her weekly trip to her neighborhood grocery store without someone recognizing her, which she credits, in part, to two old billboard ads with her face on them.

People have stopped her to talk about special education, the budget, and the former CEO, she said.

“Now I put on a little makeup before I go,” Boyle said, laughing.

Other board members, however, are working to introduce themselves to more people.

Zaccor, who ran unsuccessfully for the board last fall and was instead appointed by the mayor, said she knocked on neighbors’ doors this summer to ensure people know she’s their representative. Zaccor said she’s “probably” running again.

Rios-Sierra, who spent years working for a community organization, said she feels like a political “nobody” and wants to gain recognition.

“I think for me, it’s been a little bit of invisibility still,” she said. “I feel like I should take a little bit more time to get out there and connect with people and do my rounds and really have people see me and understand that I listen and that I can be of service.”

Nine of the 15 current board members Chalkbeat spoke with said they plan to run in next year’s school board elections: elected members Biggs, Boyle, Custer, DeBerry, Gutierrez, Lopez, and Rosenfeld, as well as appointed members Blaise and Bannon.

Another five — elected member Brown and appointed members Zaccor, Rios-Sierra, Pope, and Cydney Wallace — said they’re considering it. School board President Harden and former board member Thomas both said they will not run in 2026.

Wallace, a working mother of four, said she wants to see what kind of “grassroots help” she can get for a potential campaign.

“If I were to run, and my neighbors decided they didn’t want me on the board anymore, obviously I’d be bummed that I lost, but it would be like, ‘Oh no, not all of this free time and not doing all of this work for no money! Whatever will I do?’” Wallace said, laughing.

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

Chicago schools, educators brace for possibility of more federal agents in the city

2025-09-05T22:22:33+00:00

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Chicago teachers and parents are bracing for the possibility that the Trump administration will increase immigration enforcement and deploy the National Guard to the city, even though it is unclear when or even if troops are coming.

Brenda Rivera, a Chicago Public Schools parent and a parent leader for Kids First Chicago, said she is feeling “extremely sad” about the prospect of the Trump administration sending more Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents or National Guard troops to the city.

“Families will keep their kids at home out of fear for their safety or for them being picked up, whether you know, by mistake or not by mistake,” Rivera said when asked if she thinks parents will keep their kids at home. “Students will miss out on their school. I have no doubt.”

In a message to families on Friday, interim CPS CEO Macquline King said the district has “strong protocols in place” to protect students and reiterated that ”school is still the best, safest place for students, especially in these early weeks of the year.”

Friday’s letter also included a new document with guidance for what families should plan for in case there is an increase in federal agents in the city. The Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution last fall to protect students regardless of their immigration status.

The Chicago Teachers Union announced at a press conference on Wednesday that teachers around the city would start handing out flyers on Friday to help families understand their rights.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the teachers union, floated the idea of using remote learning as a way to keep students learning, referencing Los Angeles Unified School District. According to an article by ABC 7 Los Angeles, the district has had an increase in students enrolling in virtual classes this year.

“I’m not looking to relitigate online learning, but I’m also not looking to relitigate the Civil War,” Davis Gates said. However, she doubted that CPS is ready to make online learning available to families and the district’s Friday message to families did not include anything about remote learning options.

CPS said it does not collect students’ immigration status or coordinate with federal agents. The district does not share student records, except in rare cases when court order is issued or consent is provided by parents. It also does not allow federal agents access to schools without a “criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge.”

In a weekly message on Wednesday, State Superintendent Tony Sanders encouraged school officials across the state to review the state’s guidance on how schools should interact with federal agents.

“Let me take this moment to re-emphasize that all students deserve the comfort of knowing that they belong in our schools – without fear,” wrote Sanders. “Public schools should be safe havens, and parents should be assured that their children will be protected while in our care.”

Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill in August called the Safe Schools for All Act, codifying protections from a 1982 Supreme Court case, known as Plyler v. Doe. The decision said students, regardless of their immigration status, have the right to receive a free public education.

Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has threatened to send more federal law enforcement agencies to the city under the guise of reducing crime — even though crime in the city has dropped to its lowest levels since the 1960s, according to a report by WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times.

The Trump administration sent National Guard troops to stop protests against Immigration and Custom Enforcement, or ICE, raids in Los Angeles earlier in the summer. The federal government also deployed National Guard troops in Washington D.C. in August.

On Tuesday, a federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles violated federal law, according to a report by the Associated Press.

On the same day, President Donald Trump said at a press conference he wants Pritzker to call him and ask for support from federal law enforcement.

“I’d be honored to take his call. All he has to do is say, ‘Sir, we need help. It’s out of control,’ and everyone knows it is,” Trump said. “I would love to do it now. We’re going to do it anyway. We have the right to do it because I have an obligation to protect this country.”

Pritzker declined to do so later on in the day at a press conference in the city.

Pritzker said on Tuesday he believes the Trump administration has started to position federal agents and military vehicles at the Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, the largest military base in Illinois. The Department of Homeland Security asked the Pentagon to host 250 agents and 140 vehicles at the base, according to a report by CBS News.

Pritzker speculated that the Trump administration was relocating troops from Los Angeles. He also said federal agents in unmarked cars and in masks are planning to raid Latino communities. Pritzker said he believes federal authorities chose the month of September to increase the presence of ICE agents because of Mexican Independence Day celebrations that take place in the city.

A popular festival in Chicago’s Grant Park celebrating Mexican Independence Day scheduled for next weekend was cancelled this week. Organizers told Block Club Chicago that city and state officials advised them to call off the celebration.

On Thursday, the governor said in a press conference that while he can’t “override” actions by the federal government in the state, he plans to “immediately go to court” if military troops are sent into the city to get a temporary restraining order or another court order to block the deployment.

Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order earlier this month to protest the deployment of National Guard troops or other federal agents to Chicago. The order requires city departments to support Chicagoans, bars federal agents from wearing masks and requires them to provide identification, and keeps the Chicago Police Department under the authority of the city of Chicago.

Becky Vevea contributed to this report.

Majority of Chicago Board of Education signals opposition to interim CEO’s budget proposal

2025-08-14T21:58:44+00:00

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Shortly after the Chicago Board of Education heard a budget proposal by Chicago schools interim CEO Macquline King that did not include a loan or pension reimbursement to the city, a majority of members sent her a letter with a demand: Include the loan and pension payment.

Eleven of the 20 current board members signed the letter sent to King Wednesday during a board meeting where Chief Budget Officer Mike Sitkowski presented the district’s proposed $10.2 billion budget, said Norma Rios-Sierra, an appointed member of the school board who signed the letter obtained by Chalkbeat. The letter was sent after Sitkowski’s presentation, she said.

The proposal, which covers the 2025-26 school year, avoids beginning and midyear cuts to schools, but includes other cuts, including to custodians, hot meals, and central office. It does not commit to reimbursing the city with a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching CPS staff unless the district receives more money than expected from a city pool of taxpayer dollars meant to spur economic development — known as TIF — or from the state. The proposal also excludes any plans for a short-term, high-interest loan to cover costs.

District officials, who were charged with closing a $734 million deficit, said including the pension reimbursement would result in cuts to schools. They have argued that short-term borrowing could lead to a downgrade in the district’s already junk bond-rating status and lead to debt with high interest rates.

Board members were split on the proposal during the Wednesday board meeting, with some elected members expressing support while largely mayoral-appointed members said the city is foregoing its responsibilities by passing up the payment, which would help the city close its budget as it faces its own financial challenges. Earlier this week, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was expecting CPS to fulfill the pension reimbursement.

In addition to Rios-Sierra, the letter was signed by appointed board members Olga Bautista — the board vice president — Michilla Blaise, Karen Zaccor, Debby Pope, Emma Lozano, Edward Bannon, Anusha Thotakura, and Cydney Sylvan Wallace. Elected board members Jitu Brown and Ebony DeBerry also signed. Johnson appointed 11 members, but former member Frank Thomas stepped down and has not been replaced.

The letter, first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, insisted on changes to the budget proposal before it had to be published online by Wednesday in order for the board to vote on the budget Aug. 28, one of the last days the board can legally adopt a budget for this fiscal year. The members’ requested changes don’t appear to be in the proposal posted online, but the letter signals that King’s proposal has for now lost a majority of support needed on the board to pass.

CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus confirmed King received the letter Wednesday evening but did not provide further comment on the board members’ request.

“There are other components we believe could potentially work as presented, but this loan provision, along with the [Municipal Employees’, Officers’ and Officials’ Annuity and Benefit Fund] disentanglement, is critical to keep in place today to preserve our ability to act on them,” the letter said. “It would be difficult for us to support a budget without these two changes.”

The letter does not specify a loan amount or interest rate to be included. The Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday that City Hall had pitched to CPS to take out a $200 million loan. Last year, City Hall asked CPS to take out a $300 million loan to cover the pension payment and labor contract costs. The letter says the loan “should be included as an option to be utilized only in the event it is necessary to avoid further cuts to the classroom.”

“Leaving it out at this stage would unnecessarily limit our flexibility as we continue discussions and refine the proposal,” the letter said.

Board members also wrote that they support the district “continuing the disentanglement” of a pension payment to the city for non-teaching CPS staff — a reference to reimbursing the city with the $175 million payment.

CPS is not legally required to reimburse the city for that payment, which contributes to a $1.3 billion municipal pension fund. The district has previously paid it, starting under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez’s refusal to reimburse the city with that payment as CPS faced budget challenges last year helped lead to his firing.

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

Who picks the person to lead Chicago schools? Elected officials and legal experts disagree.

2025-08-13T10:00:00+00:00

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Months after the Chicago Board of Education hired a search firm to help look for the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools, board President Sean Harden received an email from one of the chief architects of Chicago’s elected school board legislation.

At the time, State Sen. Rob Martwick, who represents parts of Chicago’s Northwest Side and some suburbs, said newly-elected and appointed board members had been asking him who has the power to choose the next CEO.

Martwick, who is also an attorney, decided to email Harden on May 28 with the answer: It’s the mayor — and it would be “outside of the law” for the board to choose, he wrote.

In the email obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request, Martwick cited a section of Illinois’ school code that was first written when Chicago’s schools were put under mayoral control in 1995. It states: “The Mayor shall appoint a full-time, compensated chief executive officer, and his or her compensation as such chief executive officer shall be determined by the Mayor.”

But school board members point to a different section of the school code that puts the power of picking a superintendent in the hands of the Chicago Board of Education.

Some legal experts, however, disagree that there’s a straight answer — including on whether the law gives the school board hiring power once it’s fully elected in 2027.

“It is completely unclear,” said Teri McMurtry-Chubb, a professor of law at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The competing opinions raise questions about whether the law is clear enough on who hires the CEO and whether current or future Chicago mayors could try to argue that it’s their choice, not the board’s.

The mayor appoints 11 members to the 21-member school board until 2027.

Martwick’s interpretation — or his May 28 email — hasn’t had any apparent impact on the board as it looks for the next leader of CPS by as early as next month. Jessica Biggs, who is the chair of the board’s transition team, said the question arose earlier this year.

“I think that there was a wondering early on in the process about whose authority this actually was, but it’s my understanding that that question was resolved pretty quickly, and it was determined that that authority rests with the board,” Biggs said.

Martwick, an ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s, sent the email one month after the school board committed to hosting community feedback meetings about the CEO search and two months after it passed a resolution requiring the next leader to have a superintendent’s license. His note also came about a week after the board had narrowed its choice for an interim CEO to a handful of candidates, which at that point excluded the mayor’s chief of staff.

Martwick said he has not discussed the issue with the mayor or City Hall, and that his interpretation is also based on what he and fellow lawmakers settled on as they negotiated the legislation.

“I didn’t want this, but the concession that I made was that the mayor would appoint the school board president and the mayor would appoint the CEO during the transitionary period,” Martwick said. “After [it’s] fully elected, [the board is] a separate, standalone government, and they retain the power to do everything.”

Martwick and other lawmakers pushed for years to establish the city’s first elected board after more than a decade of advocacy for an elected school board from community groups and the Chicago Teachers Union.

In February 2024, the mayor sent a letter to state Senate President Don Harmon, asking for 10 people to be elected to the school board this year and to allow the mayor to appoint the 11 others until 2027. Harmon — who had originally supported the idea of full and immediate elections — filed legislation carrying the mayor’s preferred plan, which was ultimately passed.

Asked what he thinks of the school board moving ahead with its search process despite his interpretation of the law, Martwick said the board could open itself up to legal action from the mayor.

“There’s no legislation police, right? We don’t come around and say, ‘Oh, you’re not following the law,’ but you leave yourself open to some sort of legal challenge,” Martwick said.

“But I suppose if they say, ‘You guys decide — that’s OK with me,’ you know, then that’s the way it goes.”

Legal experts interpret Illinois law differently

In Illinois state law governing public schools — also known as the school code — the Chicago mayor’s authority for choosing the district’s CEO is outlined in a section related to CPS’s former Board of Trustees, which existed between 1995 and 1999, at which point it was replaced with a mayoral appointed board that oversaw Chicago schools until this year.

That section of the law was not removed when the elected school board bill became law and there is no explicit date for when the mayor loses the power to appoint a CEO, even as other sections of the law outlining Chicago’s transition to an elected school board set specific start and expiration dates.

However, a different section of the school code states that after June 30, 1999, “the board may, by a vote of a majority of its full membership, appoint a general superintendent of schools” and that the board can conduct a national search for a superintendent.

In practice, between July 1999 and January of this year when the hybrid school board was sworn in, Chicago’s mayor has chosen a CEO, who was later approved by a vote of the school board, whose members were all appointed by the mayor.

David Bloomfield, a former general counsel of New York City public schools before that district became a mayoral-run system, said from his reading of the Illinois school code, Chicago’s school board chooses the CEO. He said the mayor’s authority is outlined in a section that talks about an emergency declaration that was “overhauled by more recent reforms.”

“I don’t think it’s ambiguous, and if my interpretation is correct, no legislative action is needed,” Bloomfield wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. “It’s just obsolete, not really requiring repeal.”

But Nadav Shoked, a law professor at Northwestern University who has studied local government law, said the school code doesn’t set an explicit expiration date for the mayor’s powers and uses more passive language for the board — that it “may” hire a CEO — making the law unclear and potentially inviting legal challenges.

He drew out a hypothetical situation: If a board-picked CEO approves the firing of a principal, that principal could choose to sue the CEO and argue that person has no power because they weren’t hired properly. Shoked said he’d bet on the board winning such a case, since the law does allow the board to hire a CEO, and the broader intent of recent reforms have been to make the school board its own governing body. Still, the ambiguity could lead to legal challenges and legal bills for CPS, he said.

McMurtry-Chubb, the law professor from UIC, said the law as written could allow both the board and the mayor to hire co-CEOs, which “would also be another drain on resources that we just don’t have.”

If the mayor or the board hired someone the other wasn’t supportive of, the CEO could “endure a potentially contentious work environment,” McMurtry-Chubb said.

State lawmakers should clarify the law to say who has the authority to hire the CEO, McMurtry and Shoked said. And the board can make some moves in the meantime to avoid a legal move from City Hall, Shoked said.

“To the extent that they’re not currently at war with the mayor, they can solve the problem by just making sure that once they come up with their candidate, just get the mayor to also agree,” Shoked said.

Neither Harden’s office nor the mayor’s responded to requests for comment.

Biggs feels the law is “pretty clear” that after 1999, it’s the school board — whether elected or appointed — to hire the CEO. She said Harden worked with board members to decide when they should invite the mayor to “offer his recommendation.” The mayor’s office has also not raised concerns about the search with her, she said.

“As a sister agency of the city, we’re interested in working in partnership with the mayor’s office,” Biggs said, including deciding when to introduce candidates to the mayor’s office. “I do not have a concern about a legal challenge.”

The current law does not have explicit language that says who can choose the CEO after 2027, when the 21-member board will be fully elected. Martwick said the General Assembly would need to clarify the law’s language if it’s ambiguous, but it’s his understanding from the negotiations around the elected school board legislation that the power to choose the district’s leader belongs to the board after it becomes fully elected.

“I will testify to that in open court,” Martwick said. “That is the intent of the legislation.”

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

Chicago expands Sustainable Community Schools initiative even as budget worries grow

2025-08-04T21:15:00+00:00

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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.

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

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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

Chicago Public Schools plans to release school budgets relying on unlikely city, state money

2025-05-14T23:08:26+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is putting together a roughly $10 billion budget for next school year that relies on getting more money from the city or state. But neither entity has committed to the funding, and critics call the plan unrealistic.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, district officials said that while individual campuses could see changes based on enrollment, the total amount of funding that goes to its roughly 600 schools would stay the same as last year — for now. Principals are slated to get their school’s budgets on Thursday but could see changes and cuts over the summer if new revenue doesn’t come through. The principals union sent a letter to members Tuesday calling the anticipated budgets “magical” and “false,” as first reported by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times.

“If it changes, then that’s going to have a multitude of ripple effects throughout the district, throughout the communities,” said Tyrone Dowdell, the longtime principal of Green Elementary School in Washington Heights and a board member of the principals union. “I don’t want for any of our colleagues throughout the city to have to change and tell their Local School Councils something different from what they say in May.”

Last month, district officials privately told the Chicago Board of Education CPS is expecting a $529 million deficit, which it could close by cutting up to 1,700 school-based positions, Chalkbeat previously reported.

At the time, the district also laid out two other scenarios: one in which the district’s deficit grows because of additional costs, and one where the deficit shrinks because CPS gets more money. The latter of those two scenarios is what the district is proposing: A $229 million deficit with the assumption that the city or state will come up with an additional $300 million for CPS.

Under that scenario, CPS will still need cuts to balance the budget but could keep them away from schools, officials said. CPS has not yet finalized what those cuts would be but is “confident” it will find “reductions and efficiencies,” said CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus. The district closed last year’s roughly $500 million deficit with a mix of cuts to central staff and administrative costs, but kept overall funding to school budgets level.

With both the city and state grappling with their own deficits, CPS’s hopeful outlook is unlikely to come to fruition.

How the budget deficit gets addressed may depend on who replaces current CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, whose last day is June 18. The district’s new fiscal year starts July 1; the Board of Education has historically voted on a budget in June or July.

Martinez advocates for more city funding

The district’s budget calculations include different possibilities, including getting $600 million from the city related to Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, districts, or double what CPS received last year in TIF-related funds.

Additionally, CPS did not budget for a pension reimbursement to the city — setting up another potential fight with City Hall.

Martinez said Wednesday the budgets going to principals Thursday represent what the school board, unions, and Mayor Brandon Johnson want: no cuts to schools. District officials touted adding hundreds of staffers and new investments funded by federal COVID relief money, such as extra help for struggling students. A 2024 Chalkbeat analysis found those one-time COVID relief dollars, which have now run out, helped support roughly 7% of school budgets annually over the past four years.

The district has been asking the state for more money over the past year, Martinez said. If TIFs didn’t exist or were allowed to expire when they’re supposed to, Martinez said, the district would be getting at least an additional $600 million annually.

TIFs are special taxing districts that last for at least 23 years and set aside a portion of property taxes in that specific area to help spur development and improve public amenities, including parks and schools. Surplus money that’s not earmarked for projects goes back to the local taxing bodies, including CPS, which gets roughly half. When a TIF expires, the property value goes back to the tax base, benefiting government entities like CPS.

Martinez said if the city dissolved existing TIFs now, CPS would be able to solve its budget problems. Dissolving a TIF early, however, requires City Council approval, which school board President Sean Harden said is a “steep hill” to climb.

Nevertheless, Martinez said he’s encouraging the mayor, the City Council, the school board, unions, and families “to unite around a plan to use TIF funding to close our budget gap and supply our district with sustainable revenue for the future.”

“This is the only scenario that will allow us to maintain school funding levels,” he said.

The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Critics call the potential budget plan unrealistic

Harden, who was appointed by the mayor, told Chalkbeat that CPS may also be in a weak position to press the city for more money after refusing to reimburse the city for a portion of CPS-related pension costs. That reimbursement is not legally required, but the district had previously made the payment, starting under Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Doing so this year would have required borrowing or cuts and an inability to afford labor contracts, district officials argued.

Additional revenue is not likely to be coming from the state legislature either. Some school board members have said they’ve gone to Springfield at least twice this year to advocate for more funding. District officials also went at the end of April.

“Any proposal that assumes revenue from the city, state, or any place else, the board would want to see the basis for that assumption,” Harden said.

Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said the district’s budget plan so far appeared to be a pressure tactic on the city and the state to send more money that is unlikely to materialize. What CPS revealed Wednesday is more of a “tactical document for negotiation” that doesn’t allow principals, schools, and parents to “begin to plan for the coming school year,” Ferguson said.

Martinez rejected the idea that he is making a political move or that it is irresponsible.

“I think it’s irresponsible to force our schools to cut a significant number of staff … I think it’s irresponsible to have over $1.2 billion every single year coming into the city that taxpayers think are going to the taxing bodies, and they are not,” Martinez said, referring to revenue generated by TIFs. “I think it’s irresponsible to propose tax increases at the city level when you have this much money.”

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

Chicago mayor commits $7 million to raises for early childhood education workers

2025-05-13T19:21:05+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday that Chicago will spend $7 million on increasing salaries for 3,000 early childhood workers, as part of an effort to pay them closer to what their counterparts at K-12 schools earn.

The money will boost wages by 5-10% for a range of staffers whose jobs are funded by state money, including teachers and teacher assistants at dozens of community-based early childhood providers. These providers are part of the city’s early learning system overseen by the Department of Family and Support Services, or DFSS, city officials said.

In addition, workers at Head Start, a federally funded program that serves kids from low-income households, will get a one-time 2% bonus, according to a city press release.

These programs are separate from Chicago Public Schools’ preschool programs, which provide half- and full-day programming for 3- and 4-year-olds at schools.

Many early childhood education providers have struggled to fund their programs and stave off a teacher shortage that they say stems from low wages — especially since federal relief from the pandemic ended. Officials say low pay and high stress are contributing to the teacher shortage in the early childhood field.

Full-time early childhood teachers in Chicago earned roughly $36,000 a year, according to a 2023 state survey. A 2022 study found that Chicago’s early childhood educators are paid on average $18,000 less than elementary school teachers, even if they have the same degree.

Johnson noted that almost 20 years ago, as a new CPS teacher with a master’s degree, he earned close to $45,000.

“It’s time we have salaries that are showing up for the people that are showing up for the families,” Johnson said during a press conference at the North Lawndale YMCA, which is one of at least 86 early childhood providers where workers will receive wage increases.

DFSS uses state and federal funds to provide early childhood education to about 13,000 kids, according to the city press release. The city’s $7 million contribution towards pay raises comes from the city budget’s corporate fund, which is used for basic city services.

Johnson’s announcement came after SEIU Healthcare, a union that represents thousands of early childhood workers in Chicago, pushed the city to address pay parity for their members. The union held town halls and testified to the City Council, according to Brynn Seibert, vice president at SEIU Healthcare Illinois.

Seibert said the next step is to push elected officials to ensure the wage increase “becomes permanent.” The wage increases, which will be implemented by child care agencies, will go into effect after July 1 for one fiscal year. Johnson said he plans to whip up support in the City Council for future raises.

Tahiti Hamer, an early childhood teacher at North Lawndale YMCA and an SEIU union leader, said she’s struggled to financially support her two children with her salary for the past 25 years. While she’s stuck it out, others have left the profession, leaving teachers like her working through their prep time and even struggling to eat lunch or use the bathroom.

“For kids, it means the family’s faces they’re used to seeing every day are gone and there are fewer staff to support them,” Hamer said, “and it is hard for parents, too, who are entrusting us with their children every day … who face a huge burden when classrooms close because there are not enough staff to keep them open.”

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

A majority of Chicago teachers, support staff ratify tentative Chicago Teachers Union contract

2025-04-14T19:43:35+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union announced Monday 97% of teachers and support staff at Chicago Public Schools who voted last week approved the tentative deal it reached after a year of sometimes heated bargaining with the district.

The union said 85% of all union members voted last Thursday and Friday across 500 schools and some central locations for citywide employees. The Chicago Board of Education must still vote to approve the deal. The board must also amend its budget to pay for the first year of the four-year contract, which will include retroactive pay reaching back to last July.

During a press conference Monday announcing the results, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the approval numbers were a result of the union’s democratic process, including consulting its roughly 30,000 members on proposals for the contract.

“That should be an expectation: That people are engaged, that people have an understanding, that they get their questions answered, they see the progression of the work and then they ratify in those numbers,” Davis Gates told reporters.

To members who voted no, Davis Gates said the union will continue to “build” with them and asked those members to give the union “a few more years” to meet their demands. Davis Gates is up for re-election in May and faces at least one slate of challengers.

The approval from CTU’s membership caps a process that heightened tensions between the district, the union, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher and CTU organizer. It fueled deep disagreement over how to pay for the contract and other costs, leading to the resignation of Johnson’s entire first appointed school board and the firing of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who will stay through the end of the school year.

In recent weeks, tensions grew to a boiling point, raising the question of whether the union would go on strike, as it did in 2019 and 2012. That didn’t come to pass. The union and the district agreed on a tentative deal that was far more modest than the original 700-plus proposals the union had pitched at the start of bargaining.

The new contract will include 4-5% raises annually over the life of the four-year contract, as well as additional pay for more veteran teachers. It will also require hiring hundreds more staffers, including more teacher assistants, and includes some new class size limits.

One of the thorniest issues resolved in the final days of bargaining was additional preparation time for elementary school teachers. Those educators will receive an additional 10 minutes of prep time each day, as well as an additional three teacher-directed professional development days that were previously controlled by principals. District leaders said this will be achieved differently by schools, such as by increasing recess time to the state-mandated requirement of 30 minutes so that teachers can prepare.

While CPS has said it can afford the first year of the contract, it’s unclear how it will pay for the rest of the deal, which in total is projected to cost $1.5 billion. Martinez has said the district’s revenues could be enough to cover the costs, but it struggles every year with a structural deficit.

Potentially choppy financial waters are ahead for the district, which is projected to face at least a $500 million deficit next fiscal year. Additionally, there is a looming threat of federal funding cuts under the Trump administration. Union, district, and city officials have all said they plan to advocate for more funding from the state, though so far it’s unclear if those demands will be met. Mayor Johnson said the city will sue the Trump administration if it withholds federal funding because of the district’s policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Asked if she is worried about furloughs and layoffs in the upcoming school year, Davis Gates said no. She said the union has organized and fought before against painful cuts and layoffs, including during the 2013 school closures. Key players in those fights now sit in the highest places of power in Chicago’s government, she noted.

“I’m not worried about it because Jitu Brown is on the school board and he did that work already. I’m not worried about it because Brandon Johnson is on the fifth floor and he did that work already. I’m not worried about it because Jeanette Taylor is in the City Council and she’s done that work already,” she said. “See, we have set ourselves up for this moment.”

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

‘We’re gonna sue’: Chicago mayor says Trump threat to cut funding over DEI is ‘unconstitutional’

2025-04-04T19:22:52+00:00

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson threatened to sue the Trump administration if it follows through on a threat to withhold billions in federal education funding to states and districts over diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

In a letter Thursday, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights with the U.S. Department of Education, told state education leaders they must certify within 10 days that their schools do not engage in any practices that the administration believes illegally promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“We’re gonna sue. It’s unconstitutional to disrupt freedom of speech,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to be intimidated by these threats, it’s just that simple. Whatever it is that this tyrant is trying to do to this city, we’re going to fight back.”

The latest threat comes after Trump’s education department already targeted Illinois and Chicago schools for equity efforts. In February, the department opened an investigation after a Virginia-based group filed a complaint challenging Chicago Public Schools’ recently-released Black Student Success Plan. In March, two conservative groups filed a Title IX complaint against Illinois, CPS, and a suburban district over its LGBTQ+ policies and the education department promptly began an investigation.

CPS received $1.3 billion in federal funding this academic year, $400 million of which flows to schools with high percentages of low-income students. The $1.3 billion in funding is about 13% of the district’s annual budget. The Trump administration specifically threatened to withhold these dollars, commonly known as Title I, in addition to other money earmarked by Congress to support specific populations in public schools.

Illinois education officials also said late Thursday they will “never waver” in helping all students “from every community, background, socioeconomic status, gender, and race – which is consistent with federal and state laws and our values.”

Illinois received $6.4 billion from the federal government this academic year for public education, $1.2 billion of which went to schools serving large percentages of students from low-income families.

Federal money for public schools, which are governed by local school boards and primarily funded by local property taxes and states, was already projected to decrease this year with the expiration of COVID relief dollars.

Illinois schools got roughly $7 billion in federal COVID relief funding over the past four school years. Chicago received about $2.8 billion of that money, which helped pay for existing and new staff, academic recovery programs, limiting class sizes, and growing its universal preschool program. A 2024 Chalkbeat spending analysis found an average 7% of Chicago’s school budgets came from COVID dollars.

The federal pandemic relief money helped Chicago schools cover a structural deficit that is once again plaguing the district’s budget. CPS typically begins its budgeting process for the coming school year in the spring, and distributes proposed budgets to principals and local school councils in April or May.

CPS did not respond to a request for comment on how a potential loss of federal funding could impact its budget, which was $9.9 billion this school year. Officials have previously estimated a deficit of about $500 million for the next academic year.

The school district must also grapple with the costs of a new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union. The two reached a tentative agreement Monday, but CTU members still must ratify the deal and the school board will need to approve it alongside a budget amendment.

Despite the looming financial pressures, Johnson said he would not “stand idly by” and that the Trump administration would “meet the muscle of working people, and it starts right here in Chicago.”

Johnson, a former union organizer and former social studies teacher, also pointed to the tentative agreement with the teachers union for provisions protecting teachers’ ability to teach Black history and protections for LGBTQ+ students and staff.

There is significant uncertainty around what practices the education department considers illegal. Guidance issued earlier this year says that schools wouldn’t be penalized just for teaching Black history but programming that “acts to shame” students based on their race or “accuse them of being oppressors” could create a hostile environment.

Congress allocates federal money to local public schools and the education department distributes it. The department can incentivize and penalize districts, but withholding federal funds is easier said than done. Public schools are largely locally controlled and decisions around curriculum, infrastructure, and programming are the jurisdiction of local school boards.

“You cannot withhold funding based on curriculum and I think we have to hold the line on that,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, a history professor at University of Illinois at Chicago and former member of the Chicago Board of Education. “I understand that that will include a legal fight, and that is a fight worth fighting.”

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

Seven Chicago school board members say they oppose reimbursing city for disputed pension payment

2025-03-22T23:33:10+00:00

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Seven Chicago School board members say they oppose a plan to allow Chicago Public Schools to reimburse the city for a highly disputed pension payment — kneecapping for now the city’s efforts to close its budget books.

The declaration from the seven members — in a letter obtained by Chalkbeat and sent to board President Sean Harden on Saturday — means the city does not have enough support from the Board of Education to get the $175 million it is seeking from Chicago Public Schools. Reimbursing the city would require a vote from the board to amend CPS’s budget, and such an amendment needs two-thirds approval — or 14 yes votes — from the 21-member board.

The board president does not vote unless there is a need to break a tie. Harden did not immediately return a call for comment. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office could not immediately be reached.

“We cannot in good conscience make payments towards things for which we have no sustainable means of raising revenue,” said the letter signed by elected board members Jessica Biggs, Therese Boyle, Jennifer Custer, Angel Gutierrez, Carlos Rivas Jr., Ellen Rosenfeld, and Che “Rhymefest” Smith. The group has so far emerged as a faction of the board that has sometimes been critical of policies favored by Mayor Brandon Johnson, who appointed 11 of the 21 board members.

The pension reimbursement has been a major subject of debate between city and school district officials for months. For several board members, the idea of making cuts, borrowing money, or restructuring debt to cover the payment — which has been floated by City Hall and, more reluctantly, an independent consultant — has been a nonstarter.

“As a body entrusted to govern the Chicago Public Schools, its teachers, staff, and students, it is important to make decisions that are in the best interest of the district and in line with our fiduciary responsibilities,” the letter said. “Any terms brought forth that suggest more borrowing and the addition of more debt to the district is not financial best practice and creates further risk to the district.”

The issue centers around a pension fund the City of Chicago is legally obligated to fund, which covers, in part, retirement for CPS staffers who are not teachers. CPS began contributing to the pension fund under an agreement with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Johnson continued that practice, but CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has resisted reimbursing the city this fiscal year as the district faces financial challenges.

That resistance has become so charged that it helped cost Martinez his job.

In the letter, the seven board members say they will partner with the city in lobbying the state so CPS can levy taxes in order to cover the pension payment in the future.

“We see an opportunity to work together to create more responsible budgeting on these issues in the future, and look forward to those conversations,” the letter said. “We understand that the financial entanglement between the City and CPS are vast and intricate.”

The City of Chicago must close its current budget by the end of this month and needs the reimbursement from CPS or must turn to another fix, such as dipping into its reserves, which the city argues could result in a bond rating downgrade and make it harder to borrow in the future.

The district appears close to settling a new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, and Martinez has said he wants to ensure the district has the funding to pay for additional labor costs. CPS — which did not budget for pension payment or union contract costs — would need to receive more funding from another source, make cuts, or refinance its debt in order to make the payment, according to the outside consultant’s report.

The city has provided the district with an additional $139 million in surplus Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, dollars, which come from special taxing districts meant to spur development. The district was set to amend its budget last week in order to accept the additional funding and earmark it toward the pension reimbursement and labor contracts with teachers and principals. That additional money is not enough to cover all of the district’s upcoming costs.

However, amid ongoing contract negotiations and pushback from several board members who don’t want to reimburse the city, Harden tabled the amendment.

The letter says the listed board members will vote yes on a budget amendment that allocates the $139 million toward new union contracts for teachers and principals.

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

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tries to broker compromise on teachers union contract

2025-03-20T01:18:19+00:00

Mayor Brandon Johnson, Chicago Public Schools, and the Chicago Teachers Union agreed on one thing Wednesday following a closed-door meeting between the three parties: They are very close on settling a union contract that has been bargained for nearly a year.

But while the mayor and Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden characterized the meeting as productive, CTU leadership and CEO Pedro Martinez emerged frustrated.

Johnson, a former middle school teacher turned CTU organizer, called the remaining issues as “minute” and warned of the potential added costs of a strike.

“None of these issues that they need to settle on will be worth the consequence of six, seven days or how ever many days out of school,” Johnson said. “They are so close.”

The two sides have been stuck on how much additional preparation time elementary school teachers ought to get: 10 minutes or 20. They also remain apart on what veteran teachers are paid and how frequently highly rated teachers get evaluated.

Wednesday’s meeting was convened by the mayor at Harden’s request. Both CPS and CTU shared where they stand and discussed pathways to a deal, but parties on both sides declined to share details.

Harden said both sides are “so close, I have to believe that …we haven’t just struck the right chord yet,” Harden told reporters. “But we’re gonna keep grinding at it.”

Martinez said he sees “no remote possibility of a strike” because both sides are “that close.” Still, Martinez said his team was asked to stay at the meeting longer, but he didn’t feel comfortable with that. CPS and the union will go back to bargaining Thursday morning, he said.

“The power dynamics are just unfair to our team, who all we’re trying to do is protect our district and protect our students,” Martinez told reporters after the roughly two-hour meeting. “This was not a negotiation.”

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates agreed that things are close — and “absolutely landable tonight” — but criticized Martinez for refusing to stay longer on Wednesday to get a deal. She said at one point he “stormed out of the room.”

“You’re suing the district to keep your job, you’re saying you’re the only decisionmaker for this contract, and then you storm out of the room,” Davis Gates said of Martinez, who won a temporary injunction that prevents board members from attending negotiations.

Martinez left the meeting after the mayor and “at no point disrespected the mayor,” according to a source who attended the meeting.

Asked if the union will strike if both sides can’t close their gap, Davis Gates said, “See you all later,” and left. Seventy-five percent of union members must vote yes in order to authorize a strike.

The mayor’s high-stakes convening of the key players comes on the eve of a pivotal school board vote scheduled for Thursday to amend the current school year’s budget — a move that typically happens after collective bargaining agreements are settled.

The amendment on Thursday’s agenda accepts $139 million in unanticipated revenue from the city and leaves open three ways to spend it: on a new contract for teachers, a collective bargaining agreement for principals, and a $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

Harden said “there is a path on the table” to pay for both the contract and the pension payment, but he did not disclose more details. Harden told reporters that the board’s bond attorney has confirmed that it can refinance its debt as one option.

Davis Gates again raised concerns about the board passing a budget amendment before a contract deal, without knowing the true cost of the contract, even though historically the board has waited to amend its budget until after it reaches a deal.

The added revenue is not enough to cover both a payment to the city and increased labor costs related to the contract.

The teachers union has ramped up pressure to settle the contract ahead of the budget amendment vote. But the timing of the amendment vote is rooted in when the city government must close out its books on last year’s budget, which is March 30. If CPS does not approve the amendment, city officials have signaled they may have to dip into reserves to cover the $175 million pension reimbursement However, CTU’s current leadership faces urgency of its own with internal union leadership elections in May.

Bargaining between CTU and CPS started out more hopeful than previous years, given that the union had a strong ally and former staffer of their own in the mayor’s office. But talks began souring in the summer, after CPS said it was facing major financial challenges.

Tension between Martinez and the mayor’s office, which at one point suggested the district take out a short-term loan to, in part, pay for contract costs. In October, Johnson’s first set of school board appointees resigned en masse, and a mix of new appointees held seats during a short interim period. In December, Johnson’s appointees voted to fire Martinez, but he has remained at the helm of CPS — and in charge of contract negotiations.

Changes in management can slow the pace of bargaining, said Robert Bruno, an expert in labor relations at the University of Illinois.

“It isn’t just that the management people are changing, but it’s what those people represent,” Bruno said, noting that Martinez is not in alignment with the current school board. “They have different attitudes. They come with different expectations.”

Nevertheless, Bruno said it seems like CPS and CTU “have been close for a long time” and a strike is first and foremost, harmful to students and families, but also “is likely to be harmful to the mayor’s longterm political interests.”

“The cost of a strike would just be so disproportionately more than finding a compromise,” Bruno said.

Johnson echoed that sentiment and urged all parties to stay at the table to negotiate a compromise.

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

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

Consultant lays out limited funding options for Chicago’s school board ahead of consequential vote

2025-03-18T20:00:00+00:00

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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 fight over school staff pensions: 4 big things you need to know

2025-03-13T00:17:57+00:00

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Chicago’s new school board is considering an amendment to the school district’s $9.9 billion budget that aims to address a short-term budget quagmire.

The decision made by the 21-member, partially elected governing body could have long-term implications as Chicago Public Schools moves away from 30 years under mayoral control.

The budget amendment on the school board’s agenda for its March 20 meeting accepts an additional $139 million in unexpected revenue, but does not spell out what the board will spend the money on. It lays out three possibilities: paying the yet-to-be determined costs of a new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, funding an inaugural collective bargaining agreement with the union representing principals, and giving the money to the city as a contribution to the retirement fund that supports non-teaching school staff.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is pushing for the latter, which would continue a practice started under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot of having the Board of Education pitch in on these pensions. The city must balance its books by the end of this month, and Johnson’s allies on the board have expressed agreement with the mayor.

But Johnson continues to face resistance from CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and district leadership, who are staring down financial challenges of their own, including a deficit of at least $500 million dollars next school year. They and at least a few new school board members have argued it’s more prudent to put the money toward labor contract costs and funding classrooms today, not helping the city make a pension payment.

The issue has become so politically controversial that it contributed to the resignation of the previous Board of Education and the firing of Martinez, who will leave in June. Indeed, the fight over the municipal pension payment is the “single, largest and, in the moment, most critically important” financial entanglement between CPS and the city, says Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, an independent, non-partisan government research organization.

Ferguson said it’s “critically imperative” that the school board and City Hall get to work on a long-term solution before the school board becomes fully elected in 2027. A new state law addressing the issue might end the drama, but legislators haven’t taken it up so far.

Two-thirds of the school board — or 14 members — would need to vote yes to approve the budget amendment.

Here’s what to know about this disagreement and the options officials have.

What is the municipal pension payment?

The Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund, or MEABF, supports city workers, staff of the Chicago Housing Authority, and non-teaching staff at Chicago Public Schools when they retire.

More than half of the fund’s members are current or former CPS employees — a percentage that has grown over time. CPS budget officials have noted that while 60% of the pension fund’s beneficiaries are current or former CPS employees, they account for only about one-third of the fund’s liabilities.

Even so, under state law, the Chicago city government is solely responsible to make annual payments to the fund, not CPS.

This year, the city is legally on the hook to pay that municipal pension fund $955.7 million, according to budget city documents. That’s far more than the roughly $165 million annual payment it was making just a decade ago.

Like most pension funds in Illinois and Chicago, the municipal fund has massive unfunded liabilities. Put simply, for every dollar it owes to present and future retirees, only about 25 cents is available. To fix this, the city is now required to pay more every year so that there’s enough money to pay retirees in the future.

In 2015, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel introduced a record property tax increase that was approved by City Council to meet these growing pension obligations. The following year, the city imposed annual increases to a water-sewer tax that would be dedicated to the municipal retirement fund.

Facing a ballooning payment, Emanuel’s successor, Lori Lightfoot, implemented an intergovernmental agreement with her appointed school board in 2020 to have CPS reimburse the city for an increasing portion of the required annual payment given that school district employees make up more than half of the fund’s members. Since then, the Board of Education has made four pension payments; the most recent one in early 2024 was $175 million.

For the past year, the mayor’s office has pushed CPS to once again contribute $175 million toward the municipal pension payment — and the City Council passed a budget with that assumption.

But so far the school board has not budgeted that payment this year. Nor has it approved an intergovernmental agreement to do so.

What options does the City of Chicago have?

The city’s 2025 budget proposed by Johnson and approved by City Council in mid-December assumed CPS would, once again, kick in $175 million.

The $17.1 billion spending plan includes a $1.13 billion payment to the MEABF, more than the required amount of $955.7 million, which is calculated based on what’s needed to cover future benefits. That’s because it also includes a $168.7 million voluntary advance payment to the MEABF, which is roughly $6 million short of what the city wants from CPS.

These additional payments are similar to paying off additional principal on a mortgage. They also started under Lightfoot. However, they are not required by state law.

Senior mayoral aides said this week the advance payment is a priority for the city because it saves on long-term costs. They also said they don’t consider CPS’s $175 million contribution as going toward the advance payment.

But if CPS does not come through with the $175 million contribution, the city could drop the advance payment. That could be met with mixed reactions from credit rating agencies, said Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. Some agencies might downgrade the city, while others could be more sanguine about it.

They could also dip into reserves, which Ferguson noted would have negative consequences.

“The city’s in a position where it is adding to the storm cloud of another [credit] downgrade,” he said.

Not making the advance payment or dipping into reserves or any other changes to the city’s budget would require 26 City Council votes.

The mayor already had a difficult time getting his budget approved last fall. His administration’s initial proposal, which included a property tax hike, did not go over well with the City Council. A revised budget without that tax hike narrowly passed 27-23.

What options does CPS have?

It’s been clear since the CPS board approved a $9.9 billion budget passed last summer that the district would need to amend its spending plan once officials finished negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union and the district’s new principals union.

For months, the mayor’s office has suggested CPS take out a loan to cover new contract costs and still kick in a portion of the municipal pension payment. More recently, Johnson’s office has suggested the district could issue municipal bonds at relatively low interest rates.

But the district has asserted that it cannot legally borrow money and show those loan proceeds as revenue in order to balance its budget. If the district is pressed to pay for both increased labor contract costs and a contribution to the municipal pension fund, CPS leaders have said they may need to make mid-year cuts or resort to layoffs or furloughs.

Senior mayoral aides continue to argue against cuts that would impact classrooms.

In its initial budget, CPS expected to get $159 million in surplus tax revenue from special development districts. An additional surplus declared by the mayor adds $139 million more to that number. The latter is the source of the new revenue in the budget amendment the Board of Education will vote on later this month.

But the additional infusion of cash isn’t enough to cover all of the district’s looming expenses. Last fall, Martinez testified before the City Council the district would need $484 million from those taxing districts to make ends meet.

Martinez said last Thursday in an email to staff and families his team will recommend to the board to prioritize spending the additional $139 million on labor contracts only — not the municipal pension payment.

CPS has limited taxing authority. It can only raise property taxes annually up to a state-imposed cap, which is 5% or the consumer price index, whichever is less. It has done that every year in recent history.

The school district has a worse credit rating than the city although the city’s rating is not much better and was also recently downgraded. But Marlowe, the municipal finance expert, said at the end of the day, it’s all the same property tax base.

“It is probably more cost effective from a taxpayer perspective, for the city to play a larger role,” Marlowe said. But he added that its important for both CPS and City Hall to do their due diligence to determine the least costly option.

“They have to make those pension payments. That’s not negotiable. So somebody’s going to have to blink and decide that the money is going to flow from from one side to the other,” he said.

What’s a long-term solution for this pension issue?

The city and the Chicago Board of Education could split responsibility for funding the MEABF longer term via two options: a stronger intergovernmental agreement, or a change to state law.

The current dispute and the fact that there is no intergovernmental agreement this year shows the limits of the first option, said Ferguson.

“If it were legally enforceable, this already would have been resolved,” Ferguson said.

Signing a new intergovernmental agreement every year is also subject to politics. Chicago will have school board elections every two years and mayoral elections take place every four.

“There’s going to be this kind of ad hoc, piecemeal thing, I think, until there is a true philosophical reckoning with: What is the relationship between the city and CPS going to be financially in a new world with a very different kind of CPS board?” Marlowe said.

A change to the state’s pension code is “the cleanest, most permanent, most enforceable” option, Ferguson said.

But that idea has its own political baggage. Illinois lawmakers have historically been reluctant to help Chicago with its pensions or financial challenges. They are also focused on revising changes made to the pension code a decade ago.

“I don’t think that there’s much appetite in Springfield for the state to play referee,” Marlowe said.

Senior mayoral aides said they are having multiple conversations in Springfield about CPS finances, but declined to speak specifically about changes to the pension obligations.

A CPS spokesperson said they are not aware of any proposed legislation to change who is responsible for the municipal pension fund. District officials said if lawmakers were to shift any responsibility to the school district, they would need to consider how to fund these payments.

This story was been updated to include additional comments from a municipal finance expert.

Reema Amin contributed.

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

As big costs loom, Chicago’s school board plans to amend its budget. But questions remain.

2025-03-06T01:49:45+00:00

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This story was updated to include a comment from Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden.

Chicago Public Schools is proposing a budget amendment to the school board that would increase the district’s operating budget by $139 million to address looming expenses for the district — but could open the door to other solutions, such as budget cuts or “other entities” taking on debt for CPS.

The increase to the current $9.9 billion spending plan represents a historically large influx of cash from the City of Chicago, which declared a surplus from Tax Increment Financing, or TIFs, which are special taxing districts designed to spur development. The district’s budget already includes $159 million in previously allocated TIF funds.

The proposed budget increase falls short of the $175 million city officials expect CPS to contribute to the pensions of non-teaching staff. It also may not be enough to cover looming costs related to a teachers contract, which is still being negotiated.

The amendment will likely cause fault lines among the 21-member board, which has disagreed on how to solve the district’s money problems. One board member who spoke to Chalkbeat Wednesday already committed to a no vote.

The amendment — which requires a two-thirds approval vote to pass — calls for the additional $139 million in TIF funds to be used for paying for new labor contracts with the two unions representing Chicago’s teachers and principals as well as the pension payment to the city.

But that money alone will not cover both of the costs, which the amendment said are still being negotiated. Acknowledging this, the amendment also says CPS will find other ways to pay for any additional costs — including through more TIF surplus funds, other local revenue, “other entities incurring debt on CPS’s behalf,” or budget cuts “beyond those needed to keep the initial approved … budget in balance.” It’s unclear who the “other entities” are. A spokesperson for City Hall said the city “will not be borrowing on behalf of CPS.”

After this story was published, Board President Sean Harden told Chalkbeat he was unaware that the final draft would include a reference to other entities incurring debt for CPS. Harden said he and district leadership “spent a lot of time making sure we’re capturing everything we need” in the amendment, but he has not spoken to anyone about incurring debt for CPS. CPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“That language was not approved by me,” Harden said.

Still, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office praised the amendment.

“Mayor Johnson has maintained that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has an obligation to its workforce and its retirees and this proposed budget amendment is in line with that obligation,” said Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, in a statement. “Mayor Johnson is supportive of any tools that the school district can utilize on its behalf to balance its budget without cutting teachers or resources for students.”

The district will hold hearings over the budget amendment at 10:30 a.m. on March 13 and March 14 at the board office, located at 42 W. Madison St. in the Loop.

Looming financial problems have roiled the district for months and fueled a major leadership shakeup, including the resignation of Johnson’s first, seven-member appointed board and the firing of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. CPS leadership — which did not budget for union or pension costs — has resisted borrowing money to pay for labor negotiations or pensions, and has repeatedly said it faces at least a $500 million budget deficit next fiscal year.

In recent weeks, City Hall has turned up the pressure on CPS as it tries to balance its own books by the end of this month. Last month, city officials emailed school board members a presentation about the pension payment and included suggestions for issuing bonds to garner $242 million, according to the presentation obtained by Chalkbeat and first reported by the Chicago Tribune.

Chicago Teachers Union leaders questioned why the district and school board are discussing a budget amendment before reaching an agreement on the teachers union contract.

“We want to make sure their budget amendment is the right amendment to land a transformative contract,” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates. “If they settle the contract before they do the budget amendment, then our math will be correct.”

School board members continue search for funding solutions

Board member Jitu Brown, who represents the city’s West Side and is an ally of the mayor’s, said he had not yet studied the amendment. Generally, he wants a solution to make both the pension payment and settle labor negotiations, but doesn’t want to “balance the budget on the backs of Black and brown children.”

“That’s looming over all of us right now,” Brown said. “One thing we don’t want is a teacher strike, so we are trying to get that settled.”

Brown said he’s open to borrowing but said he would want a relatively low interest rate, more TIF surplus funds and more state funding.

Another board member, who requested anonymity to share thoughts candidly and not undermine the public hearing, said they will vote no on the amendment because they are against being on the hook for the pension payment at a time of financial duress, as well as borrowing and cuts. Even if another entity took on debt for CPS, the district would still be on the hook to pay them back, this board member said.

“To use that money in any capacity to pay the city is making a choice to give to the city — to make them whole —over our own organization and the people who directly impact and work in the classroom and the students themselves,” the board member said.

Another board member, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said she was taken aback by the mayor’s office’s PowerPoint presentation on how to solve the pension issue. On Tuesday, she said she is torn on how to solve the district’s budget issues and is trying to get “as much information as I can.” The district has argued that it cannot generate revenue like other districts, but at the same time, the city wants its money. She could not be immediately reached for her thoughts on the budget amendment posted Wednesday.

“It seems like the mayor’s office is trying to push a certain way for CPS to pick up the tab, while CEO Martinez and some other individuals on the board feel it’s not the board’s responsibility,” she said. “So it’s a lot of back and forth: one for the short term, but in a few months we’re gonna start talking about the budget for next year.”

Several board members are also waiting to see what outside consulting firm Baker Tilly — hired last month by school board president Harden — is suggesting the district should do.

Harden turned to the consultant amid rising tensions with City Hall and pressing questions about CPS’s financial challenges. He signed a contract on Feb. 18 to spend up to $35,000 to get an opinion from Baker Tilly on funding options to alleviate CPS’s looming deficit and to assess the risk associated with those options, according to records obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act. The Chicago Tribune first reported the existence of the contract.

Chalkbeat filed a FOIA request for Baker Tilly’s analysis or any recommendations, but CPS’s FOIA office said on Tuesday that no such records exist. Multiple board members said that to their knowledge, the analysis is close to completion.

A fourth school board member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said Harden told board members this week that Baker Tilly had come up with “various potential financing scenarios” but did not provide further details.

That board member and another said Harden expressed that he did not want the analysis or, separately, potential financing solutions for CPS, in writing because it would be subject to open records laws, or FOIA.

“He literally said, ‘I am FOIA’ed every single week; I don’t want this stuff out of context and open for interpretation,’” one of the board members said.

Harden said Wednesday he wants to be “very thoughtful about what gets shared” and said he would share the Baker Tilly report with board members once it’s complete. Earlier Wednesday, the board office said it expects to make the final report available to the public.

“For me it’s important that we have all our ducks in a row, we know exactly what direction we’re going in so we can speak to it intelligently without any issues related to it,” Harden said.

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

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

Chicago is kicking off the search for its next schools chief

2025-03-03T22:19:46+00:00

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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 Mayor Brandon Johnson makes final appointment to 21-member partially-elected school board

2025-02-18T21:36:58+00:00

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Cydney Wallace, a Black Jewish activist and mother of four, is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s final pick to sit on the city’s new 21-member Board of Education.

Her appointment comes two months after Mayor Brandon Johnson named his other appointees, which was required to happen by Dec. 16 under state law. The mayor’s office said the delay was because school board positions “are unpaid and often thankless jobs.”

According to a press release from the mayor’s office, Wallace currently works for the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County and is a Chicago Public Schools parent. She is also the vice president of the board of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.

Wallace lives in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood on the 8b side of District 8, according to Chicago Board of Elections records. She will represent schools and communities in the Chinatown, Bridgeport, Back of the Yards, and Gage Park neighborhoods. Angel Gutierrez is the elected representative for District 8 and lives in Garfield Ridge on the 8a side. In 2026, both seats will be up for election.

In 2022, Wallace filed to run for Chicago’s Police District Council, but did not have enough valid signatures to get on the ballot in the 2023 municipal elections.

Wallace will be sworn in at the school board’s next meeting scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 27. She will join the 20 members who were sworn in Wednesday, Jan. 15. The partially-elected, partly-appointed group will serve for the next two years. All 21 seats will be up for election Nov. 3, 2026 and a fully-elected board will be sworn in Jan. 15, 2027.

Chicago held its first school board elections on Nov. 5, 2024, electing 10 people to serve their communities alongside 11 mayoral appointees. The moment begins a historic shift in governance as 30 years of mayoral control in Chicago comes to a close.

Mayor Johnson, a CPS parent, former teacher, and union organizer, will still maintain significant influence over the public school system through his 11 appointees and at least three other elected members who were supported and endorsed by his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union.

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

The mayor’s on ‘union leave’ from CPS despite leaving CTU. Does that undermine contract talks?

2025-01-08T18:31:28+00:00

Mayor Brandon Johnson taught for four years at Chicago Public Schools before going on leave in 2011 to work for the Chicago Teachers Union and ultimately launch a career in politics.

But even though he no longer works for the union, Johnson remains on “union leave” from the school district.

That means, after all these years, he could return to the classroom — and earn a six-figure salary as if he never left.

The mayor’s leave status has attracted more scrutiny and concerns about a potential conflict of interest in recent weeks, as his administration negotiates a contract with the CTU that could benefit him in the future. Those negotiations have become increasingly tense and have fueled a monthslong leadership shakeup at CPS, including the recent firing of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

Under CPS policy, Johnson — or any CPS employee who leaves to work for the union — can accrue seniority during their time away and return to CPS with the guarantee of a job.

In an interview with Chalkbeat on Tuesday, the mayor said he hasn’t thought about what he would do after his time in office but said teaching middle school “is still the best job I’ve ever had.” He denied that his union leave status represents a conflict of interest, because he’s not currently earning a CPS paycheck.

“There’s no economic benefit for me as a CPS employee on leave as mayor of the city of Chicago,” Johnson said. “We have firefighters who are on leave, right, [on the] City Council, and they actually vote on their contracts. There are police officers who are on leave and they actually vote on those contracts. I don’t vote on any contract, so there’s no conflict of interest.”

Ald. Nick Sposato, who represents part of the city’s Northwest Side, said he was on leave from the Chicago Fire Department for his first eight years in office and voted on firefighter contracts. During that time, he did not feel conflicted because council members were not directly involved with bargaining.

“Nobody ever had a problem with me being a fireman and voting on fire contracts,” Sposato said.

Sposato, who is occasionally critical of the mayor, also said he did not believe Johnson would “give the farm away” for personal gain years from now.

“I believe he’s a man of integrity,” he said of Johnson.

Until 2027, Johnson will appoint a majority of members to the Board of Education, who will vote to approve union contracts and allocate money to pay for the costs.

On Christmas Eve, an internal CPS memo included in Martinez’s legal filings against the Chicago Board of Education documented concerns about Johnson’s employment status with the district. The memo was first reported on by the Chicago Tribune. In that June 2023 memo, Ben Felton, the chief talent officer for CPS, wrote that he was concerned about a potential conflict of interest due to the mayor’s ongoing employment with CPS, an organization that he oversees.

Felton wrote that he raised the issue with then-Deputy Mayor of Education Jen Johnson, who is not related to the mayor, on four occasions between May and June 2023. The mayor declined to resign his position because he wanted to “signal his support for education and teachers,” Felton wrote in the memo.

Johnson, who remains a close CTU ally, repeated that sentiment Tuesday.

“I’m committed to making sure that the people who do teach, the people who are in our schools, that they know that they have an advocate … and to ensure that our public schools and our public teachers are fully supported,” Johnson said.

If Johnson were to return to his CPS job, he would at minimum be placed in the district’s Reassigned Teacher Pool and assigned to a school, according to Felton’s memo. Felton added that he felt the mayor’s return to CPS “is unlikely,” but that his leave status was “not an immaterial benefit.”

Dick Simpson, professor of political science at University of Illinois at Chicago and a former alderman, said no mayor in recent history has been in Johnson’s position. But he said the economic benefit to the mayor “is not substantial enough” to be deemed a conflict of interest.

“If he becomes involved in the negotiations and the running of the schools, which many mayors like Richard M. Daley did or Richard J. Daley before him, the question is whether or not his own history and involvement will cause him to make decisions which are bad for the city or in this case, the school system, or both,” Simpson said.

The mayor’s office has pushed CPS to take out a short-term loan to help pay for the costs of a new labor contract with the CTU and the principals union, as well as to cover some pension obligations. Martinez has refused to take that step — one of the factors that led to his firing.

Other observers see things differently.

“If he has no plans to go back, he should easily resign” from CPS, said Vladimir Kogan, professor of political science at Ohio State University who has studied local politics and education policy. “I think this is a problem of his own creation.”

Joe Ferguson, Chicago’s former inspector general who now leads the Civic Federation, a government watchdog group, said it’s unclear whether the mayor’s employment status and his official position cross legal lines.

“It impels a much greater degree of transparency and public facing disclosure of his actual activities, communications, and positions, so that there is no question of where he is acting in conflict with his former employer, and there should be a reassessment of the law and regulations,” Ferguson said.

Johnson could earn over $100,000 upon CPS return

If Johnson went back after his first term in office, in 2027, he would be considered a 20th-year teacher, even though he taught for just four years before his 2011 departure. These details were not mentioned in Felton’s memo.

That means, according to the current CTU contract, that Johnson could earn at least $100,419 upon his return. That figure is the base salary for a minimum 208-day schedule and doesn’t include other benefits. It does not account for raises or changes to salary brackets that could change in the next contract. Chalkbeat was unable to verify the salary “lane” Johnson was in before he left CPS. These lanes change a person’s salary based on factors like earning a master’s degree. Johnson has a master’s degree in teaching, according to his biography.

The salary figure represents someone who has worked for 20 years and is in the lowest lane; someone in the highest lane would earn a base salary of just over $113,300, under the current union contract.

CPS has offered annual raises of between 4% and 5% for the new contract.

After Felton raised concerns about the mayor’s employment status to former Deputy Mayor Jen Johnson, she said she asked the city’s ethics adviser about the issue and that the adviser “did not have concerns,” Felton’s memo said.

Chalkbeat filed an open records request with the Chicago Board of Ethics for any official advisory positions about the mayor’s employment status; the board said no such records existed.

After this story published, Steve Berlin, executive director of the ethics board, told Chalkbeat in an email that “neither the staff of the Board of Ethics nor the Board itself was asked about leave arrangements, and have issued no opinions addressing this issue.”

One former senior CPS official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues, said that the mayor, CPS, and CTU should all know that Johnson no longer qualifies for being on union leave due to his departure from CTU, and act accordingly by working to change his employment status.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus said, “CPS flagged this area of concern as outlined in the Chief of Talent Ben Felton memo. It is presumed that the mayor determined that no action was necessary.”

At the same time, the former official acknowledged, Johnson’s position as the most powerful elected official in the city — and technically as the boss of CPS — can make it intimidating for members of his own administration to take action without his consent, especially if he’s expressed his desire to stay on leave, he said.

“It’s the mayor’s responsibility and his team’s responsibility to identify that this is an issue and take action about it,” the former official said. “And they were presented baldly with the choice, basically, and said, ‘No.’”

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

This story includes an updated response from Chicago Board of Ethics Executive Director Steve Berlin.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson talks class size, contract talks, school board appointments

2025-01-08T18:01:49+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson defended his decision to stay on “union leave” from Chicago Public Schools in an interview with Chalkbeat Tuesday.

The mayor taught middle school in CPS before going on leave in 2011 to become an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. He launched a political career when he was elected as a county commissioner in 2018 and went on to win the competitive race for mayor in 2023.

Chicago’s mayor still maintains significant power over the city’s public schools even as the city transitions away from 30 years of mayoral control. Johnson appointed school board members during his first year in office and recently replaced that group after all of them resigned amid tensions between the mayor and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. He selected new appointees and will maintain control over 11 appointments on the new 21-member, partially elected school board.

Staying on union leave allows him to accrue seniority and ensures his job protection, should he decide to return to the classroom. But Johnson denied his employment status is a conflict of interest, because he’s not currently earning a CPS paycheck.

Chalkbeat sat down with Johnson in his office on the fifth floor of City Hall for a brief interview Tuesday to discuss that and other topics like class size, migrant students, and Martinez. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The school board is going to be sworn in on Jan. 15. You announced 10 of 11 appointments in late December, but have you selected somebody to serve in that 11th seat?

I’m incredibly excited and thrilled and humbled to be the first mayor in the history of Chicago to not only commit to elected representative school board, but see that come to fruition. In my time as an organizer and as a teacher and as a parent, the public education system in the city of Chicago ran by previous administrations have just been abysmal as it relates to showing up for working people. So I am, again, humbled by the opportunity, and we will have a fully appointed and represented board that reflects the values of the people of Chicago.

But you haven’t picked the person to serve in District 8?

We will.

What have you told the school board appointees that you’ve selected so far that you want them to prioritize?

I want them to prioritize what the people of Chicago want. As the first mayor in the history of Chicago to believe in public education so much that I send my children to the public schools in Chicago, I know exactly what parents want. I’m one of them. Smaller class size is something that parents want. And I know that experience too as a public school teacher, by the way, the only mayor in the history of Chicago to actually have taught in our public schools.

I want them to fight hard to ensure that we have libraries and librarians in our schools, social workers and counselors. I told them that we have to fight hard for resources and funding to have psychiatrists and psychologists in our schools, to have a well-rounded, rich curriculum that includes after-school activities, right? The bell rings, learning shouldn’t stop, right?

I told them that we also have to ensure that we are fully funding special education, that we are fully funding our bilingual education. There are parents who do transport their kids from one neighborhood to the other, because their neighborhood does not have all the resources that those families deserve and need. We have to have reliable transportation within our public schools to ensure that families can have reliable access to those resources.

Leading the way in this moment requires us to show up for working people, whether you live on the north side or the southeast side or anywhere else in between that we can be proud of our public school system that prioritizes families.

Class sizes are one of the sticking points in the contract negotiations. As I understand it, there’s disagreement about the caps in the middle grades. You were a middle school teacher.

You know how I feel about this then!

What do you think is an appropriate class size in the middle grades?

In some of the top school districts in the state of Illinois you have some classes that are anywhere from 17 to 22 children. Look, the middle school age is a very critical moment in our child’s children’s development. The middle school age is a transformational and transition time for young people.

As a former middle school teacher, the social and emotional development of a child is critical at that moment, particularly, as we see rises of behavioral and mental health challenges. This is why I fought, and will continue to fight hard for appropriate class sizes, because we want to ensure that children can balance equations as well as draw conclusions, but they should also feel safe and secure in their overall development.

On the campaign trail, you said “who better to deliver bad news to a friend than a friend?” Is there an example you could give of a time you’ve had to deliver bad news in the contract talks right now?

I don’t think there’s any debate that our schools are not fully funded. I wish we had the evidence-based funding model that the state of Illinois has calculated, that $1.1 billion were available to us today. You know, it’s unfortunate that that doesn’t exist.

But that’s not just confined to my friends. That’s the state of Illinois. There’s $3.6 billion that the state of Illinois, just based upon this funding formula, should be appropriated for school districts.

We have this strong triangulation — probably for the first time in the history of Chicago or, I don’t know, for the first time that I’ve ever experienced — with the Board of Education, the mayor’s office, and workers all aligned around the vision for our public schools and that that is progress in and of itself.

Your appointed school board, as one of its last acts, voted to end the contract with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. You didn’t mention him just now as you were talking about alignment. Who would you like to see lead the school district?

I’ll be perfectly frank with you. I’ve spent most of my time thinking about the 325,000 families that want transformational leadership. They want and elected a mayor who’s a parent and has been a former teacher, and that’s what my focus has been on. This is not about some individual, because there’s not one single individual that can transform our public schools.

The Board of Education will get an opportunity as they have made a decision to go into a different direction, and when that time comes, I’m confident that the interests of the people of Chicago will be front and center as we think about this one position.

But keep in mind, we have 30,000 workers in our Chicago public schools. That’s where my heart is — 30,000 workers who show up every single day fighting for resources to ensure that their students have everything that they deserve and need. It’s the 325,000 children who rely upon our public schools. That’s where our focus should be. That’s certainly where mine is.

Can I ask why you didn’t replace the CPS CEO right after taking office?

Look again, this is not about just one individual. What were we focused on in May 2023? We were focused on [parental] leave. We got it done. We were focused on the evidence-based funding formula to ensure that we are funding our schools based upon needs.

We were focused on our bilingual education. The governor of Texas used human beings to attack us, right? It’s a very nasty way to govern. There are 20,000 more students in our public schools who were bussed from Central or South America. And so that’s what my focus has been on.

It’s not on one individual, right? Because if it was one individual, perhaps, we could find a prototype and plant that person down, and they can overcome systemic racism that has existed in our public schools for decades.

This was not about one individual. This is about the hundreds of thousands of families that are looking to me to fight and advocate on their behalf.

You mentioned the influx of new migrant students. Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago have reported on the lack of support and staffing for bilingual education in some schools. Do you think the district’s done enough?

No, it hasn’t. This is what I’m saying. We have to have more resources for special education. We know that Chicago Public Schools, historically, has not lived up to the promise and expectation of parents, like when I was in the classroom.

We have not properly supported special education, bilingual education, particularly with this influx. That’s why it requires bold leadership in this moment, and that’s what I’m calling for. This is why I believe that some people are having a tough time with my leadership, because I have been very bold and outspoken about investments, not austerity, not privatization, not cuts, consolidations, closures, all of that crap that destroyed public education in this city,

A story published earlier this week in the Chicago Tribune looked at the wave of expiring special taxing districts, known as TIFs. There is a projected increase of tax revenue that would go to sister agencies, including the Chicago Public Schools. What would you like to see the district do with that additional revenue?

That’s always been my goal — to ensure that the tax dollars that were designed to support these sister agencies, that those dollars actually show up for the people of Chicago.

As far as what we need to see, we need better staffing. We do. We need more staffing. We saw this during the pandemic. One of the reasons why our schools were able to recover, you know, the way they did, is because we actually had paraprofessionals to help support these educators. But we also need to make sure that we have libraries and librarians, social workers and counselors. We don’t talk enough about the number of psychiatrists and psychologists that we need in our schools.

Do you understand how difficult it is when you’re living and trying to survive in a city where disinvestment has been the prevailing form of governance? Kids show up [to schools] who are hungry or unhoused, right? We need to see more support for our unhoused students in the city of Chicago, 20,000 children are underhoused in the city. And so as we ensure that there are more dollars available for these sister agencies, we have to respond to what families want.

We need to make sure that we’re providing support services for special ed, bilingual education, and transportation. We need better staff and stronger staffing in our schools to support these efforts, but we also have to support the entire community so that families are fully supported in a way that gives them the ability to experience the wholeness and the purpose of what public education was designed to do.

Would you ever like to go back to teaching in a classroom in Chicago Public Schools?

I really enjoy being mayor of the city of Chicago. I will say teaching middle school is still the best job that I’ve ever had. I did teach a year of high school, but I really enjoyed teaching seventh and eighth grade.

I haven’t really thought about what happens two terms from now or three terms from now. But I will say this, as mayor of the city of Chicago, I’m committed to making sure that you know the people who do teach, the people who are in our schools, that they know that they have an advocate on the fifth floor, and to ensure that our public schools and our public teachers are fully supported.

You are still on leave from CPS.

That is correct.

A number of people have said that is a conflict of interest.

Right, because at first, folks were saying that it was a conflict because I was on leave from the CTU. When they realized that wasn’t right, then they found another reason to figure out there’s a conflict of interest.

Do you believe that’s a conflict of interest? Have you considered resigning that position, given that you are now no longer on “union leave” because you no longer work for the union?

Let me just say this, there isn’t one. There’s no economic benefit for me as a CPS employee on leave as mayor of the city of Chicago. We have firefighters who are on leave [in] City Council, and they actually vote on their contracts. There are police officers who are on leave and they actually vote on those contracts. I don’t vote on any contract, so there’s no conflict of interest.

It’s not like there’s this classroom just waiting for me that once I’m done as mayor of the city of Chicago, I can just roll back in and start teaching the five causes of the American Revolution. Can I just say this respectfully? I just find it to be quite fascinating that somehow, as a parent, as a public school teacher, that somehow that will be in conflict with me as mayor of the city of Chicago advocating on behalf of the people of Chicago.

I wanted to give you a chance to respond. It’s brought up in Pedro Martinez’s lawsuit against the school board and people are pointing to it as ethically problematic.

Let me just say this, right, there have been board members who have been a part of banks and corporations that benefited from CPS contracts. Board members who were on boards of private charter schools that benefited their friends economically. And what has that done for the people of Chicago?

Now you have a parent, you have a public school teacher, that is advocating on behalf of the public that somehow that’s some sort of conflict. You know what? That’s a conflict to the interest of corporations who want to run our school districts to the ground. And guess what? They’ve done it. But now, with bold progressive leadership, we are rising out of the ashes of those who saw public education as a way to line their pockets, and now we actually have someone who believes in the public good.

Jen Johnson is no longer deputy mayor of education. Have you looked into filling that role?

That’s a very good question. Thank you for that. And let me just say Jen Johnson is a remarkable human being, just a classy human being that has served in this city as a social studies teacher, just like myself. Just a brilliant mind.

We’re going to go through a robust interviewing process to find the right person who understands my vision, the vision that I was elected on to ensure that every single school in the city of Chicago is fully funded and supported. That process continues to unfold. We’ll let you know once we make an announcement.

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

The Chicago schools CEO got a pink slip for Christmas. He went to court. What happens now?

2025-01-03T18:49:20+00:00

The days before winter break provided no vacation from the conflict and drama engulfing Chicago Public Schools.

On the Friday before Christmas, the Chicago Board of Education voted to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. But Martinez will stay on the job he’s held since 2021 until at least June. Martinez has taken the school board to court to try to reverse his firing. In addition, a judge granted a temporary restraining order on Christmas Eve that preserves Martinez’s powers as CEO — for now.

The strife between the school board, Martinez, and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has riveted the city. It’s also generated major uncertainty right before another big — albeit long foreseen — shift for CPS: A new 21-person school board will take over in less than two weeks.

On top of all that, the district and the Chicago Teachers Union are engaged in high-stakes, increasingly fraught negotiations over a new CTU contract.

So where are things headed for CPS? Here’s what to watch for in the coming weeks.

Martinez continues as CPS CEO amid legal battle

Before the school board even notified Martinez of his firing, he sued the board and filed for a temporary restraining order in an effort to preserve his powers as CEO. In response, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Joel Chupack ruled the school board cannot interfere with Martinez’s role as CEO. That means school board members cannot attend negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union without his permission, which some did shortly after they fired Martinez.

The next court date for Martinez’s lawsuit and the temporary restraining order is Jan. 9 at the Daley Center. The court has not issued a ruling on other allegations that Martinez’s team has made in their lawsuit, including that the board allegedly did not receive proper training before moving to fire Martinez. According to CPS, board members are supposed to be trained on a slew of topics, such as ethics, the district’s budget, education theory, governance, and staff firings that require a board vote.

Regardless of how long he has left as CEO, Martinez will be in charge as the district navigates some of its most pressing challenges since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include balancing its budget and settling new labor contracts with both the Chicago Teachers Union and the principals union.

New Chicago school board starts governing

Chicago’s new school board will be sworn in on Jan. 15. Ten of them were elected and the rest were appointed by the mayor. It will be the first school board in Chicago’s history with elected members, although Johnson must still appoint a final board member.

As with Martinez, this board will immediately have to tackle big issues like voting on labor contracts and figuring out how to pay for them as a projected $500 million deficit looms. The board will also inherit a new five-year strategic plan, which calls for more children to attend public schools within their neighborhoods.

The new school board is also scheduled for district-led training the week of Jan. 6. A previously scheduled week of training sessions in December for the new board got cancelled. By law, all school board members in Illinois must complete training requirements related to their duties.

CTU contract approval awaits new school board

The bad blood between City Hall and Chicago Public Schools leadership stems in part from souring contract negotiations between Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union, which is a close ally of the mayor’s.

The union and the district are still far apart on some key issues, including additional prep time for elementary school teachers. Even though the school board has told Martinez that he’s fired, he is still in charge of negotiations on the district’s side until June.

The new school board will likely also have to approve the new contract. Some of its members are aligned with the union and Johnson. Others aren’t. While the board could approve a new deal with CTU through a simple majority vote, a new contract will almost certainly also require CPS to amend its budget — and the latter would require approval from two-thirds of the school board, according to state law.

Budget amendments also require a minimum 15-day period of notice to the public before the board can vote.

That timeline makes it likely that the city’s new 21-person board will be the final entity to sign off on a new contract. During previous contract negotiations, the board has signed a deal and amended its budget to pay for the contract on the same day. If a deal is struck in the coming days, it’s possible the new board members could approve it at their first meeting on January 30.

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

Chicago school board fires CEO Pedro Martinez

2024-12-21T05:00:16+00:00

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hand-picked school board voted Friday to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, taking a step their predecessors had resisted and capping a months-long campaign by the mayor and teachers union to oust the schools chief.

The board voted unanimously to fire Martinez without cause, which under the terms of his contract means he will stay on the job for six more months — through the end of the current school year — and then receive severance pay of about $130,000.

“It’s not right,” an angry and emotional Martinez told reporters after the vote.

“Obviously I’m disappointed by the board’s decision tonight,” he said, adding that he would ensure a smooth transition for the next CEO. “Leading the system that shaped me has been an opportunity of a lifetime.”

The firing was a dramatic culmination to months of turmoil that pitted the mayor and the teachers union — a close ally that catapulted him into office — against Martinez. The unprecedented development comes weeks before Chicago’s new, 21-person hybrid school board with appointed and elected members begins work. It also comes as the district enters a decisive phase in its high-stakes negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union over a new contract.

Martinez made a last-minute legal bid Friday to save his job before the vote. His attorneys filed motions seeking to block his potential firing, alleging board members were appointed “to do the bidding” of a mayor and teachers union that have “scapegoated” Martinez.

According to a source close to the CEO, Martinez earlier turned down a settlement offer of more than $500,000 to depart, which would have amounted to salary and benefits owed to him for the remainder of his contract.

Days after Martinez is fired, Chicago Board of Education members attend CTU contract negotiations

CTU issued a statement after the vote saying Martinez was stalling by not agreeing to a new union contract that “guarantees every CPS student a quality school day, protects recent academic gains, and provides classrooms with the resources our students and families deserve.”

“We look forward to the road ahead for CPS, and we urge the board and the mayor to step into the leadership gap that the CEO has created and choose a future candidate who understands the assignment,” the statement read.

Ahead of the vote, incoming elected school board members, education organizations, and former CPS CEOs Arne Duncan and Janice Jackson issued statements in support of letting the new board decide Martinez’s fate. That list grew Friday to include U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia and Yesenia Lopez, an incoming elected school board member who was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union — which cast a vote of no-confidence in Martinez in the fall.

At the meeting, a group of principals expressed support for Martinez and raised concerns about CTU proposals that they feel will take away instructional time from children. The principals union has expressed similar concerns over the past several weeks. Meanwhile, Jackson Potter, vice president of the CTU, said the union has made more progress in negotiations this week and wants a swift deal.

More than a dozen elected officials also spoke — both in support of and against Martinez.

Tara Stamps, a Cook County commissioner, former teacher, and CTU staffer, blamed Martinez for schools on her home turf of the West Side that still have “chronic underfunding” and “crumbling infrastructure.”

“Pedro Martinez’s leadership have left these schools in a drought and our teachers and our students are paying the price for that,” Stamps said.

Others called for the board to wait. Jennifer Custer, an incoming elected school board member who was backed by the CTU, asked the board to hold off on a decision. She also criticized the union’s contract proposal.

“Are you going to condemn the first elected board to serve in a capacity where our sole job for the next two years is not to address student outcomes and making CPS a better place, but to figure out how to steady the ship in the wake of the chaos that is created by the decision to fire a CEO mid year and inevitably agree to a contract that we can’t afford, and while the district suffers financially already?” Custer said.

After the public comment period, the board met in closed session. After 90 minutes, members emerged and voted Martinez out without comment. The board then left without taking any questions from reporters.

Tensions stem from district’s money woes

The conflict between Martinez and the mayor’s office reflects a fundamental rift over how the district should navigate a time when federal COVID relief dollars are running out and major deficits loom.

The union and Johnson have argued that the district should add more staff, reduce class size, and agree to a litany of other proposals. The mayor’s team suggested over the summer that CPS take a high-interest loan to cover the new costs — and then redouble its push to line up new revenue from the state or other sources. The Martinez administration countered that any prospects for new funding are uncertain, and the district should avoid adding to its significant debt burden.

The previous appointed board — under pressure to oust the CEO and take on the loan — resigned en masse in October. While that board had some concerns with Martinez, it wasn’t prepared to fire him, sources previously told Chalkbeat.

Johnson appointed seven new members in October. He announced Monday four of them would continue to serve, while three will step down because they are not eligible based on where they live. The mayor announced six other appointments to the new board and has yet to name one more.

More recently, the fate of schools in one of the city’s largest charter networks has proven divisive.

The board and the mayor’s office criticized Martinez for not acting aggressively enough to find alternatives to planned school closings at Acero charter school network. On Friday, the Board of Education approved a resolution to cover Acero’s budget deficit to keep all seven schools open next school year. The board also directed CPS leadership to create a plan to transition five of the campuses into CPS schools for the 2026-27 school year.

Martinez oversaw pandemic rebound, new strategic plan

Martinez was hired in 2021 by Johnson’s predecessor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He arrived at a turbulent time – as school buildings reopened for full-time in-person instruction after being shuttered during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak – and began the work of addressing the pandemic’s academic and social-emotional damage.

By some accounts, Martinez’s tenure has brought a measure of stability after COVID’s massive disruption. His administration has touted data showing the district’s students have recovered in reading faster than most other districts across the country.

During his roughly three years at the helm, Martinez presided over a significant expansion of the district’s workforce, using federal pandemic relief dollars to bring on thousands of new teachers and support staff.

He also oversaw the adoption of a controversial plan to ban campus police and an overhaul of the district’s approach to budgeting this spring that de-emphasized student enrollment; instead, the district now provides base staffing positions to all schools and factors in a school’s level of student needs in budgeting for additional positions and support.

Martinez was also at the helm when thousands of migrant children from Central and South American countries enrolled in the district’s schools, leading to challenges to deliver greater bilingual services for students at many schools, particularly those in low-income, Black communities.

On the day the previous school board passed a new five-year strategic plan — which focuses on Johnson’s priority of boosting resources for neighborhood schools — the mayor asked Martinez to resign.

When Lightfoot appointed Martinez, a Chicago native and former CPS chief financial officer, he was the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District. Johnson chose to keep Martinez in the role after defeating Lightfoot in the 2023 mayoral election — which teachers union president Stacy Davis Gates said at the start of this school year she requested of the mayor. The union said at the time that the CEO appeared to be ushering in a new era of more collaboration and better rapport between the CTU and district officials.

But things changed this summer amid contract negotiations over an extensive, costly slate of CTU proposals. Martinez, along with the Johnson-appointed school board, balked at taking on the short-term, high-interest loan. Johnson had urged the district to take out the loan to pay for the contract’s costs and cover a $175 million payment to a city pension fund that covers non-teaching staff.

The CTU had lambasted Lightfoot for passing that pension cost on to the school district and argued the city should continue to cover it as it had in the past. The Johnson administration has in part blamed the city’s budget woes on that pension payment. On Monday, the Chicago City Council narrowly passed Johnson’s $17.1 billion budget plan after a bruising two month budget process during which even his progressive allies criticized his leadership.

Martinez said in September that Johnson asked him to resign and he refused, citing a need for stability in a district roiled by frequent leadership turnover in recent years.

In recent weeks, the teachers union intensified its criticism of Martinez, even as his administration offered educators up to a 5% pay raise in the coming years and benefit increases at no cost to teachers, among other concessions. Union leaders have said Martinez is resisting union staffing, class size, and other proposals that would transform a district historically plagued by inequities in the student experiences among campuses and neighborhoods. They also claimed Martinez didn’t lobby for more state funding aggressively enough or make a plan for the expiration of federal COVID relief money.

Mila Koumpilova contributed.

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez takes legal action seeking to block potential firing

2024-12-20T21:04:59+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez launched a final-hour legal bid Friday to block his potential firing, alleging that board members about to consider his fate were appointed “to do the bidding” of a mayor and teachers union that have “scapegoated” Martinez.

Martinez’s attorneys made those claims in circuit court filings seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to halt his ouster.

The move came shortly before a specially called 5:45 p.m. board meeting in which members were scheduled to consider terminating Martinez. It was not immediately clear whether a judge would consider the motion and, if so, whether it would happen ahead of any potential vote.

Earlier Friday, Martinez’s legal team wrote a letter to the school board urging members to hold off on firing the CEO, who has clashed with the mayor and weathered months of speculation on his fate. Firing Martinez, the letter says, would not only breach his contract “but also the relevant Illinois law governing the Board’s actions.”

“Tonight’s purported vote is the culmination of a months-long campaign orchestrated by the Chicago Teachers Union (“CTU”) and its ally, Mayor Brandon Johnson, to improperly and unlawfully terminate Mr. Martinez based on wholly pretextual reasons,” wrote William Quinlan, Martinez’s lawyer, in the letter.

Neither the teachers union nor the mayor’s office immediately returned a request for comment.

The court filings allege that Johnson and the CTU are improperly seeking Martinez’s ouster because the CEO opposed the administration’s push, first reported by Chalkbeat, for the district to take out a short-term loan to pay for pension obligations and labor contracts, including that of CTU.

The legal filings connect efforts to fire Martinez with ongoing contract negotiations between CTU and the school district — suggesting a good outcome for the union is a motivating factor.

The attempt to fire Martinez, the filings argue, is also fueled by the looming arrival of new board members elected to join mayoral appointees on a hybrid board. The new arrivals are a mixed group, having run as CTU-backed, school choice-oriented, and independent candidates.

The board may fire Martinez with or without cause. Terminating his contract without cause would allow Martinez to stay for an additional six months and then pay him severance of about $130,000 - the equivalent of 20 weeks of his annual base pay of $340,000.

The court filings allege that the school board either intends to fire Martinez for cause based on “manufactured allegations,” or effectively fire him “by altering his job status or diminishing his responsibilities.”

Crain’s Chicago Business first reported that Johnson is considering a “co-CEO” option and has newly appointed board president Sean Harden in mind. Harden worked as deputy CEO of community affairs under former CEO Ron Huberman between 2009 and 2011, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The letter from Martinez’s lawyer to the board said the school board sent Martinez his performance evaluation for the 2023-2024 school year on Monday. The evaluation, which Quinlan described as “less than a page,” gave Martinez an overall “needs improvement” rating.

That rating stated Martinez “made no efforts” to meet one-on-one with the new board members — who Johnson appointed in early October after the entire previous board resigned en masse — and that the district’s new five-year strategic plan “did not really come from [Mr. Martinez’s] office.”

“The various alleged deficiencies identified in the letter were meritless — Mr. Martinez did meet with almost all of the new Board members and his office did ‘really’ lead the creation of the Five Year Strategic Plan,” Quinlan, the lawyer, wrote.

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

Mayor Johnson announces 10 of 11 appointees for new Chicago Board of Education

2024-12-17T03:12:39+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson picked 10 of 11 people Monday to round out the city’s new half-elected, half-appointed school board — including some who ran unsuccessfully in Chicago’s first school board elections this November.

The new board will be sworn in Jan. 15, 2025, and will include 10 people who won in November. State law required the mayor choose the other 11 people, including a board president, by Monday.

The shift to an elected school board in Chicago has been years in the making. The process set forth in state law is complicated. Though there were 10 school board races in November, each district was split into two subdistricts. State law limited who Johnson could pick — allowing him to only choose people who did not live in the same subdistrict as winners of the election.

Johnson announced the school board appointees late Monday, just hours before the deadline.

Sean Harden, a South Side native and former CPS employee, will serve as president of the Board of Education and represent the city at large.
Ed Bannon, who ran for alderman in 2023 and served on the Dever Elementary School Local School Council, will represent District 1a alongside Jennifer Custer in 1b.
Debby Pope, a current appointed school board member and former CTU employee and retired teacher who filed campaign finance paperwork and considered running for an elected school board seat, will represent District 2b alongside Ebony DeBerry in 2a.
Norma Rios-Sierra, an artist who also works as cultural events manager for nonprofit Palenque LSNA, will presumably represent District 3a alongside Carlos Rivas Jr. in 3b.
Karen Zaccor, a retired teacher and active CTU member who finished second in a six-way race in November’s election, will represent District 4a alongside the winning candidate Ellen Rosenfeld in 4b.
Michilla Blaise, a current school board member who withdrew as a candidate one month before Election Day, will represent District 5b alongside Jitu Brown in 5a.
Anusha Thotakura, a former teacher who also lost her bid in November, will represent District 6a alongside Jessica Biggs in 6b.
Emma Lozano, a Pilsen pastor and advocate for bilingual education and immigrant rights. It is not clear which district Lozano lives in, but it would presumably be either district 7b or 8b alongside either Yesenia Lopez in 7a or Angel Gutierrez in 8a.
Frank Niles Thomas, a current board member appointed last month, will represent District 9a alongside Therese Boyle in 9b.
Olga Bautista, a current board member appointed last month, will presumably represent District 10b alongside Che “Rhymefest” Smith in 10a.

It was not immediately clear why the mayor only announced 10 of 11 picks before the deadline. State law does not spell out any impacts for partially missing the deadline.

Johnson’s picks will make up a majority of the board, giving him significant influence over a governing body that for the past three decades was exclusively controlled by Chicago’s mayor.

The mayor’s appointees included most of the current board members as well as losing school board candidates who were endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, a close ally of the mayor’s.

Johnson’s office announced the names after the mayor struggled to negotiate a deal with aldermen on his second city budget. Late Monday, after multiple amendments and Johnson tossing out his proposed property tax increase entirely, the City Council approved a $17.1 billion city budget by a vote of 27 to 23.

After that budget vote, as he called for more state revenue, Johnson told reporters he was looking for school board members “who understand the urgency of this moment, people who know that they have to organize and work collectively to fight for progressive revenue in the state.”

“But really the big characteristic that I’m proud that people demonstrated was a real care for the families who do the work as well,” Johnson said, adding that he also searched for people who were not “dismissive” of teachers.

The mayor’s influence over the school board may extend beyond his own picks. Four of the election winners were backed by the union, which ideologically aligns with the mayor. That means 15 of the 21 members could often vote in alignment with his policy preferences, such as avoiding school closures and sending more money to neighborhood schools.

It also could mean the board could vote to borrow money in order to cover pension obligations and labor union costs, as Johnson pushed CPS to do in the spring and summer, helping to lead to the resignation of the entire previous board.

Before taking office, school board members are required to complete state-mandated training. Last week, newly elected board members were notified by the school district’s board office that training planned for this week would be postponed, per a request from the current board. Carlos Rivas, who was elected to represent District 3 on the West Side, said the Academy of Local Leadership at National Louis University, in light of the district’s cancellation, is now providing training this week. Rivas was part of an inaugural fellowship with ALL Chicago this spring.

“At the end of the day, what’s most important is that we are prepared to govern on day one,” Rivas said.

Rivas said the school district’s board office said they still plan to hold five days of sessions with new board members from Jan. 6-10.

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

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

Chicago Teachers Union contract negotiations cause rift with other school employee unions

2024-12-06T20:49:51+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union’s contentious contract negotiations have already spurred a major clash between district leaders and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office and endangered CEO Pedro Martinez’ role.

Now the teachers union’s demands for a significant expansion of CTU-represented positions and of educators’ say over school matters are pitting that union against two other district labor groups: The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association and the Service Employees International Union 73, a longtime CTU ally.

The principals union, which is in the midst of negotiating its first contract with CPS, wrote a letter this week to the Board of Education saying some CTU proposals would trample on principals’ authority to run schools. Meanwhile, the Service Employees International Union 73, which represents support staff at schools, has voiced concern over a CTU demand it says will take work away from its members — and threatened to sue the district if it approves the proposal, the Chicago Tribune reported. The rift with the SEIU is especially notable as that union has jointly advocated for more special education services and staff with the teachers union, and the two groups went on strike together in 2019.

Principals union leaders said they are concerned about school board pressure on Martinez to settle the teachers contract as quickly as possible and about the cost of the union’s staffing and other proposals. They worry that the cash-strapped district might have to resort to assistant principal layoffs and other cuts to afford them. CPS estimated the union’s initial proposals to cost $10 billion but is reassessing that estimate; the union has called that estimate inaccurate and has pared back some of its proposals, but it has not shared a cost estimate.

“We don’t believe the problematic provisions are intentionally problematic,” wrote Troy LaRaviere, CPAA’s president, in the letter to the board. “They are simply the result of the limited perspective of teachers. By that I mean teachers run classrooms, not schools.”

Thad Goodchild, CTU deputy general counsel, told Chalkbeat that the goal of the union’s proposals is to beef up staffing in critical areas and ensure teachers have a voice at schools. He said there’s “an open dialogue” between leaders of both unions, and CTU is also “working to find a solution” with SEIU.

Contract negotiations with the teachers union have stretched on since April and soured the relationship between Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher, CTU employee and close union ally, who has asked Martinez to resign. The school board, installed by Johnson after the previous board resigned amid the conflict, wrote to Martinez late last month to demand a quick resolution to the talks.

The CTU recently shared what it is calling a “roadmap to settlement” with the district, including a smaller raise proposal than the 9% a year it demanded at first and a pared-down set of staffing and other demands. But that roadmap still includes proposals that would give teachers the final say over curriculums and a larger role in evaluating principals.

Principals worry their role in school decisions will shrink

The principals union says one of its major concerns is a proposal that would allow teachers to pick their own curriculums as long as they meet state learning objectives.

Goodchild, from CTU, said the proposal is meant to ensure that teacher voice exists in all schools.

“Academic freedom doesn’t mean that teachers get to teach whatever they want — it means that their professional judgment is respected and that they aren’t expected to teach from scripted, online curriculum with lots of gaps in it, which unfortunately is the direction that district has been heading in recent years,” Goodchild said.

But one elementary school principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly, said she felt that allowing teachers more academic freedom would prevent staff from developing a schoolwide strategy for instruction.

“I know it’s not implemented really well in every single school, but the mechanism for that teacher input and voice exists, and I think to swing to the extreme of every teacher making their own decision in that regard is going to be harmful for kids,” the principal said.

The principals union, which formed last year, also started negotiating with the district in April. But unlike the publicly contentious teachers' contract negotiations, talks with principals have unfolded quietly behind closed doors, and the two sides have taken a few months off as the CTU talks intensified.

According to a CPS presentation for the school board obtained by Chalkbeat, district officials and principals union leaders have met five times, and the union has put forth proposals on wages and benefits, discipline and discharge procedures for school leaders, and more.

The two sides haven’t reached agreements yet, Banks said, but, “We have enjoyed a much more amenable and open-minded engagement with CPS than others have.”

Earlier this week, a group of school leaders working independently of the union also sent a letter to the school board saying the contract talks with the CTU and the pressure on Martinez to step down are creating “an atmosphere of uncertainty.” Nearly 700 CPS principals and assistant principals representing almost 80% of the district’s campuses signed the letter, arguing that replacing the CEO would be “a decision rooted in political interests, not the interest of students.”

CTU leaders have dismissed these concerns on social media, with Vice President Jackson Potter recently calling principals “middle management foremen of the system.”

SEIU says CTU demands will hurt its members

Other CTU proposals have threatened a rift with SEIU Local 73.

A recently amended contract proposal by the Chicago Teachers Union obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago would give the district more flexibility to choose between teacher assistants, represented by the CTU, or Special Education Classroom Assistants (or SECAs), represented by SEIU, based on what a student’s Individualized Education Program or a 504 plan requires. SEIU Local 73 says this proposal will take work away from SECAs, who are trained to work with students with disabilities.

Stacia Scott, executive vice president of SEIU Local 73, told Chalkbeat that adding flexibility for school leaders to choose between teacher assistants or SECAs to work with students with disabilities could cause confusion in a school building.

“We have tried to make our contract as explicit as possible so that we can focus on ensuring that SECAs are providing the services that are legally required to special education students,” Scott said.

SEIU Local 73’s recent contract with the district requires that SECAs receive professional development and training and that SECAs are included in IEP meetings. It also protects SECAs from performing other tasks in schools that would take time away from students with disabilities, unless it is to support a student’s IEP.

Goodchild said the CTU proposal is ultimately meant to beef up special education staff such as teacher assistants so that students with IEPs get the support they need.

The number of SECAs has grown by roughly 150% over the past decade, when comparing employee figures from December 1, 2014 to the same day this month, according to data from CPS. In that same time period, the total number of teacher assistants grew by just over 50%, the data show.

“We’re trying to, you know, restore balance,” Goodchild 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.

Chicago Public Schools and its union remain far apart in teacher contract talks

2024-11-22T00:05:53+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union this week stepped up pressure on Chicago Public Schools in contentious talks over a new contract — while district leaders countered they have made generous offers at a precarious financial time.

The union’s president, Stacy Davis Gates, this week sent a letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson, a close CTU ally, asking him to intervene because CEO Pedro Martinez “has slow-walked negotiations.” On Thursday evening, the union also held a rally downtown that drew a raucous standing-room-only crowd to decry Donald Trump’s reelection — and to argue that it adds extra urgency to wrapping up the contract talks, which began in April and continued as the current contract expired in June.

On a Thursday call with reporters, district officials argued that the two sides have made headway in the talks, though key areas of contention remain at a time when a major expansion of staff and other spending could imperil the already deficit-plagued district. CPS faces a half-billion dollar deficit next school year after its federal COVID aid runs out this year.

District officials said the union’s full slate of proposals would add $5.5 billion in some 13,000 additional staff positions and $3.7 billion in compensation increases over the four years of the contract.

Union officials cast doubt on those figures but declined to provide a more recent cost of their proposals, citing “fluid” ongoing negotiations.

“We are not still at our initial proposal at this stage of bargaining, so I think what they’re trying to do is a PR ploy to improve their bargaining position and try to put the least amount of money that they possibly can into investing in schools and school communities,” Thad Goodchild, deputy general counsel for the union, told Chalkbeat.

The bargaining over a new contract was at the heart of a major clash between Martinez and Johnson, which has led to months of CPS turmoil — and might yet cost the CEO his job.

The schools chief and mayor have disagreed over how to pay for the cost of the contract amid a darkening financial outlook for the district, which is spending down the last of its federal COVID dollars and has no clear prospects for added revenue. The union has put forth its most far-reaching and costliest slate of hundreds of proposals yet — one it has presented as a blueprint for a major district transformation.

“Our students are making tremendous progress,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. “Our focus has been on how we can sustain and build on this progress in a challenging budget environment.”

But, she added, “The gap between the CTU’s proposals and our financial situation is significant.”

District touts its compensation offer to teachers

The district and union are bringing in a neutral fact-finding expert to evaluate the district’s financial situation and impact of proposals; a report is expected in early January, but it will only be made public if one or both sides reject its findings.

The union, which until this spring had portrayed Martinez as someone ushering in a new, more collaborative era in labor relations, has soured on the CEO since contract talks began in earnest this summer. The CTU has turned into a relentless critic openly calling for Martinez’ ouster.

In her letter to Johnson, Davis Gates said the union, the mayor, and a school board he appointed in October agree on a direction for the district. The current board was installed after the entire previous board of mostly Johnson appointees resigned under pressure to fire Martinez. (The board’s new president quit shortly afterward after antisemitic and misogynistic social media posts came under scrutiny.)

“We are now at a critical juncture that requires your intervention to ensure that the Board of Education enshrines the commitments to transform public education that the people of the city of Chicago elected you to carry out,” she wrote.

Bridget Early, the deputy mayor for labor relations, who has attended the talks since the spring, told Chalkbeat she can see her office playing a more active role, which she said Martinez had requested earlier this fall as well. She said she would like to see the two sides start to meet “all day, every day” to speed up progress.

Early said they are close on key issues such as expanding the Sustainable Community Schools program, which gives some high-needs campuses extra funding to team up with nonprofits on beefing up after-school and other programs.

The union on Monday presented a new “roadmap” with revised proposals reflecting priorities such as preparation time for elementary teachers, Early said. “It felt disingenuous for the district today to continue to perpetuate that the contract will cost $10 billion.”

Goodchild said on Thursday that CPS has provided a “decent number of proposals over the course of this week,” but described it as “really incremental progress … at this stage of the game.”

In her letter, Davis Gates said the union’s proposals include codifying protections for LGBT students and staff, special education students, and English learners. She said all would be especially relevant following Trump’s election.

The letter was a rare instance of the union calling on Johnson, a former CTU organizer who got elected with help from the union, to step in. That’s a major shift from negotiations under his predecessors, Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot, when the CTU argued mayors drive the process and must take responsibility for slow progress.

The district has said it has already made a generous compensation offer at the bargaining table, but no agreement on pay has been reached: Teachers would receive raises of up to 5% a year — or as much as 8% when increases for experience and added education are factored in — during the four years of the contract.

CPS officials said for a typical CPS educator — someone with about a decade of experience and a master’s degree — that offer would bring the salary to about $125,000 by 2029. They would also get health care and other benefit increases at no cost to them. Overall, the district said, its offer will cost $1.3 billion over the next four years.

A regular CPS teacher now makes a median salary of about $95,000 a year. District officials said this compensation is the second-highest among large districts across the country and compares to a median salary of $78,000 for suburban Cook County teachers.

“We are proud of our record on teacher compensation,” said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer. “We are not trying to nickel-and-dime our teachers here.”

Goodchild said the district’s initial salary proposal was “serious,” but it does not account for inflation and rising cost of living that was missed during previous contracts.

Union seeks more headway on staffing, class sizes

The district has also agreed to lower class sizes in kindergarten and grades 4 through 8, pay for at least three arts, physical education, STEM, or world language teachers at each school, and offer more professional development. It would also hire additional counselors and case managers at some schools.

But the 330,000-student district has resisted other proposals to grow staffing. Its payroll has grown by roughly 7,000 full-time positions since 2019, to about 46,000 positions, according to district data — an expansion that has contributed to the addition of roughly $1 billion to the district’s almost $10 billion annual budget.

“The headwinds we are facing financially are really significant,” said Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget chief, cautioning that union proposals would drive the district’s deficit to $4 billion by 2029.

District officials also signaled they have pushed back on some union proposals that do not necessarily carry a price tag but would infringe on principals’ flexibility to lead their campuses or — in the case of a proposal to increase elementary teacher prep time — could decrease instructional time for students.

Goodchild called the criticism “myopic,” and said the union’s proposal around prep time is broader than how the district is presenting it: It is meant to provide more enrichment to students, such as art and music, which the union said would allow more prep time for teachers.

Goodchild said the district and the union are also far apart on proposals around beefing up bilingual staff and making schools more energy efficient, such as through adding solar panels.

In its original package of proposals, the union had asked for 9% annual raises, smaller class sizes, more environmentally-friendly school building, housing assistance for homeless students, cash for transportation and mental health services for migrant students, a librarian in every school, in-home counseling for students who experience trauma, and more.

In a letter to members this week, the union listed as top priorities proposals to build more prep time for teachers into the elementary school day, hire more librarians and expand sports and other programs, secure enforceable class size limits, and a “salary and benefit bump that adequately addresses veteran educators and inflation.”

It said intense pressure on Martinez, including a September vote of no confidence in him by its governing body, has helped spur movement at the bargaining table.

Asked how a potential ouster of Martinez would affect the ongoing negotiations, district officials said they would stay the course.

“This is not about CEO Martinez; this contract is consequential for our educators and our students,” Chkoumbova said. “The sooner the better — we’re not dragging our feet.”

CTU rally highlights union demands

Thursday’s CTU rally, held at a downtown church, drew hundreds of people, many of them dressed in bright red CTU shirts and sweatshirts. Audience members at one point rose to their feet, waving signs with some of the union’s biggest demands, such as “A library with a librarian in every school,” and “Smaller Class Sizes.”

Jenny Carrasco, 17, a senior at Back of the Yards College Prep, sat with friends in a pew holding a sign that said “Green Schools Resilient Communities.” Carrasco said a CTU member invited her and other students involved with the Sunrise Movement, an organization focused on addressing climate change.

Carrasco wants to see more green-friendly schools, such as using more energy efficient practices in buildings and adding more solar panels and more air conditioners to her school, which has often felt too humid.

“We need a healthy environment,” she said.

At one point, the union’s deputy legislative director Hilario Dominguez led a chant to the tune of the song, “Bad Boys (Watchu Gonna Do)”: “Pedro and Trump, Watchu gonna do? You don’t want no problems with the CTU.”

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

Chicago Board of Education pushes Acero to find alternatives to planned charter school closures

2024-11-15T00:40:31+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution Thursday that called for a later deadline for GoCPS applications and sought to find alternatives to the Acero charter school network’s plan for seven campus closures on the Southwest Side.

The board’s resolutions came during a specially called meeting and were the latest in an increasingly tense situation surrounding the charter network’s planned closures, which have increased friction between Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office and Chicago Public Schools leadership.

The Acero charter network announced last month that it will close seven campuses because of a $40 million budget shortfall. The staff at those campuses are members of the Chicago Teachers Union.

The board’s Acero resolution called for Acero officials to meet with the board to discuss alternatives to the campus closures, which would impact 2,000 students and 500 staffers.

Families and teachers have rallied against the closure since the network’s announcement. Earlier this week, the mayor said he directed CPS leadership to dig into the network’s finances and wanted to see a “contingency plan” from CPS related to the closures.

The board’s resolution demands that if the network declines to find alternatives, Acero “shall return all unspent public funds and property” to the district.

Resolutions are nonbinding in nature and don’t compel Acero to meet with CPS or discuss alternatives. However, Acero must meet with CPS by Nov. 15 to discuss the school closures as part of its agreement with the district. All charter networks — which are privately run entities that receive public funding — operate based on conditions set in agreements with CPS.

Based on Acero’s agreement with CPS, the district does not appear to have a legal pathway to prevent the closures.

In an emailed statement, Acero said “there are no winners when high-quality schools are forced to close their doors due to the implications of inequitable and inadequate public school funding.”

“While we are disappointed by the misinformation surrounding this heartbreaking circumstance, we welcome working with the Chicago Public Schools to find long-term and sustainable solutions for everyone impacted by these anticipated closures,” the statement said. “This is clearly evidenced by the nearly 20 meetings Acero Schools has had with senior CPS officials before the special meeting to provide timely information to advance this initiative.”

CPS was expected to give a presentation at the meeting that would provide “a more complete picture” of the Acero closures and “provide options for impacted families, address the questions raised and the feedback received during the briefings and meeting, and outline several solutions for the Board to consider at a future meeting,” CPS said in an emailed statement earlier this week.

But that presentation was canceled, Board Vice President Mary Gardner said at the top of the meeting. Asked why, Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said, “I don’t know,” and said the board’s office would have a better idea. Board members Frank Niles Thomas and Rafael Yañez declined to comment to reporters after the meeting.

Chalkbeat obtained a copy of the presentation, which included options the district could pursue in response to the closures. One option is that CPS would provide “support” to Acero to keep the campuses open. The presentation said the district has “confirmed and identified the financial needs” but didn’t elaborate, saying more budget information would be shared at upcoming board meetings.

A second option would be helping affected students enroll at CPS-run schools, which the district says is in line with what it has done in the past when charter operators moved to close their own schools. It would provide more money to district schools that enroll “a significant number” of additional students.

A third option would have the district absorb the seven Acero campuses slated for closure and reopen them as CPS schools in the 2026-27 school year. The union has previously asked the district to absorb the campuses.

This option “may provide the least amount of disruption to students and families,” the presentation said. The presentation noted that the district would have to take a number of steps to add the schools to CPS’ portfolio, including getting board approval and amending the capital budget, but that long-term costs “may not increase significantly.” Still, there would be costs associated with transitioning the schools from charters to district-run buildings, the presentation said.

The presentation also laid out the steps the district has taken since Acero announced the closures Oct. 9. City Hall officials have criticized how CPS leadership has monitored Acero and responded to the planned closures.

According to the presentation, between Oct. 11 and Nov. 1, the district met with the charter operator and requested more financial information. It also provided families with information on what to do next. The presentation noted that this was standard operating procedure, and the Board of Education did not ask the district to deviate from that until its Nov. 1 meeting, which followed weeks of upheaval, including the entire former Board of Education announcing its resignation Oct. 9.

Asked if the board was trying to block CPS CEO Pedro Martinez from presenting at the meeting, the mayor told reporters Thursday, “I’m not aware of this blockage that you’re speaking of, and there’s no particular directive outside of making sure that we invest in children,” according to a tweet from a Chicago Tribune reporter.

In an extraordinary moment before the board passed the resolution, board member Michilla Blaise criticized district leadership and thanked Acero families for raising their concerns about the closures. Caroline Rutherford, an Acero teacher who is currently on leave, asked CPS “to take action to keep our schools open” during the public comment portion.

“It seemed that CPS was kind of resigned to letting it go and giving up, and that based on your work and how your words touched us, we’re making sure we’re putting our feet down, and we’re going to stand with you in terms of at least exploring what the opportunities are,” Blaise said.

The board also sought to push the deadline for GoCPS — an application families use to get seats at a variety of schools, including charters and selective enrollment programs — to Dec. 15 to give affected families more time to choose a school for next year. District officials are expected to officially move back the date, a spokesperson said.

The district has already pushed the deadline back to Nov. 22.

Separately, the board also retained outside law firm Cozen O’Connor, which offers legal services for a wide range of subjects. District officials did not respond to questions about why the board decided to hire the firm.

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

Chicago Mayor Johnson calls for CPS to craft ‘contingency plan’ for planned Acero closures

2024-11-13T00:14:12+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday criticized Chicago Public Schools leadership in relation to a heated school closure proposal by the Acero charter school network and used the moment to call for greater accountability of charter schools.

Johnson, however, did not elaborate on what steps he would like to see the district take to prevent those closures. The Chicago Board of Education does not appear to have a legal path to stop the closures, according to its agreement with Acero.

While Johnson emphasized that he’s not saying CPS CEO Pedro Martinez did something wrong, he said the district needs to put together a “contingency plan” in response to the proposed Acero closures and that he and his team “haven’t seen that type of leadership” from the district.

The proposed Acero closures have added tension to the already tense relationship between Chicago Public Schools leadership and Johnson, who in September asked Martinez to resign. Martinez has refused to step down.

On Tuesday, Johnson also questioned how the Acero network — whose staff is unionized by the Chicago Teachers Union, a Johnson ally — reached its current financial situation just a year after CPS deemed it worthy of a three-year contract extension. The network has blamed the closures on a $40 million budget shortfall, Block Club Chicago reported.

“This is not about pointing the finger at someone doing something wrong — this is about how we course correct so families don’t lose out,” Johnson said.

Acero did not immediately responded to requests for comment.

In an email statement to Chalkbeat, a CPS spokesperson said the district is working with the charter network’s leadership to schedule a parent town hall, hold ongoing town hall meetings, and provide support for students.

According to the CPS spokesperson, when a charter decides to close, CPS implements internal procedures including contacting families to review options, such as neighborhood schools or schools with available seats, and providing financial support to district schools that could see an influx of students from the closed schools.

Last month, the Acero network announced that it was planning to close seven of its schools, or about half of those it operates, impacting about 2,000 students at those campuses. The network cited a $40 million budget shortfall. It’s unclear where students will enroll, but those students, like any Chicago resident, have the right to enroll in their neighborhood school.

As a charter school network, Acero is privately managed but publicly funded. It is allowed to operate 15 campuses, largely on the Southwest Side, based on conditions set out in a contract with Chicago Public Schools. Acero’s current contract was last renewed in July 2023 and runs through June 2026.

Acero’s contract allows the network to close schools but says the network must provide written notice to the district by Oct. 15, and that closures can’t happen before June 30 or the end of the school year — whichever happens last, “except in situations of an emergency where the health, safety or education of the Charter School’s students is at risk.”

CPS did not immediately say whether the network notified the district by Oct. 15. The news of the proposed closures became public Oct. 9 — which CPS CEO Martinez has said publicly is around the same time he found out.

Since the network’s announcement, Acero families and teachers have rallied against the closures and have aired their concerns with the Chicago Board of Education.

Union officials have asked the district to intervene or to absorb the campuses and keep them open for another school year. When the district declined to renew an agreement with Urban Prep charter schools in 2022, CPS officials promised to keep those schools open as district campuses. That ultimately did not happen and the two campuses remain open under an agreement with Urban Prep until June 2025.

CPS did not immediately respond to questions about the options it might be considering pursuing at this point.

The Chicago Board of Education plans to hold a special meeting Thursday during which it will vote on a resolution calling for Acero representatives to come before the board and discuss alternatives to the closures. The resolution also says that if Acero ultimately closes the seven campuses, it “shall return all unspent public funds and property,” and that the district should extend its deadline for GoCPS — the application Chicago families use to apply to various schools, including charters and selective enrollment campuses — until Dec. 15. That deadline has already been pushed back to Nov. 22.

Asked why the mayor is advocating so strongly for Acero given his past criticism of charter schools, Johnson said he doesn’t want “any family to endure that type of trauma” that comes along with school closings.

Still, Johnson invoked a long time position of his — that as privately-run entities, charter schools should get more accountability. CPS is already tasked with monitoring charter schools, setting out conditions in each operator’s contract, and deciding whether operators’ schools should be renewed.

“Part of what my task is to challenge CPS and its leadership to respond to charter operators who have these structural elements within their budgetary framework that are not sustainable long term, and that will require audits,” Johnson said. “It will require CPS digging in a little bit deeper to look at the trends that are happening.”

Tensions continue to build between Johnson, CPS

On Monday, mayor’s office staff, including Chief of Staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas, and two of the mayor’s closest allies — Alds. Carlos Ramirez Rosa and Byron Sigcho-Lopez — met with CPS staff, including Martinez, about the proposed Acero closures. Chicago Board of Education members Olga Bautista and Frank Niles Thomas were also present, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting, who was not authorized to speak to the press about private discussions.

It was a “contentious discussion,” in which mayoral staff questioned CPS leaders about when they discovered the proposed closures, whether it has combed through the charter network’s financial documents, and what CPS has been doing about the issue, the source said. Martinez said the district has engaged with Acero families and is thinking through best options, the source said.

“Pedro’s story stayed consistent with what he’s said privately and publicly: He found out when the district did around the same time they went public,” the source said.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Sigcho-Lopez said the meeting left him “concerned with [Martinez’s] leadership style” and, like the mayor, wanting an audit of Acero’s finances.

“He had a lot of excuses, a lot of contradictions, but not a lot of answers in terms of actually what he is going to do to ensure that those 2,000 kids are not forced, you know, into a transition that is not in anyone’s interest,” Sigcho-Lopez said.

Pacione-Zayas told Chalkbeat that CPS officials were asked if the district had reached out to the Illinois State Board of Education for guidance and if the district had considered absorbing the campuses – including how it would affect their budget.

“None of that was prepared,” Pacione Zayas said. “All that was revealed to us was that they extended the GoCPS [application deadline] by seven days.”

Families use the district’s GoCPS application to apply to schools, including preschool programs, selective enrollment, and magnet schools.

CPS has reviewed the costs behind a number of scenarios, including absorbing the campuses, according to a CPS source who was not authorized to speak with the press. The source declined to elaborate whether it was a viable option and said they were unsure if City Hall was aware of the district’s analysis.

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

Chicago extends deadline for $500 grants to help families of students with disabilities

2024-11-11T22:03:42+00:00

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The City of Chicago has extended a deadline for low-income families to apply for at least $500 if they have children with disabilities — a cash grant effort meant to provide some relief for students and parents with additional needs who faced challenges during the pandemic.

The original deadline for the effort — first unveiled in April — was Oct. 30. The Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities has extended the deadline to this Friday, Nov. 15.

The new deadline comes after less than half of the desired number of grantees had been approved for or received the grants as of early October. Those interested can apply online at www.AdaMOPD.com or can text “AdaMOPD” to (877) 478-1359.

When the city announced the program, it said it would provide grants to as many as 8,000 families using federal COVID relief money from the Biden administration. But as of mid-September, roughly six weeks before the original deadline, the city had awarded just 2,000 grants, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request. At that time, a total of 8,722 applications had been submitted, according to the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities.

By Oct. 1, 9,263 applications had been received or started, according to a breakdown provided by then-City Hall spokesperson Ronnie Reese. At that time, a total 3,717 families had been approved for the grants, which included families who hadn’t received the money yet, Reese said. Roughly 4,400 people had started applications but had not completed them and “have not provided all the required documentation or information,” Reese said at the time, adding that a community outreach team was trying to help these families to finish their applications.

The city had asked another 779 applicants to provide more information as of Oct. 1. The city rejected 264 applications because they weren‘t eligible; 57 applications hadn’t yet been reviewed. A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately share updated figures on Monday.

Students with disabilities faced mounting challenges during the pandemic. These students are legally entitled to services at school that are outlined in an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, which can include extra help or therapies at school. School closures during the pandemic, however, separated many students from those supports.

Like other districts, Chicago Public Schools fell far behind during the early part of the pandemic in evaluating students with disabilities for the support they needed, a Chalkbeat investigation found.

The city had budgeted $5 million for the program through American Rescue Plan dollars, which the federal government distributed to cities and states during the pandemic. About $1 million of that went to Ada S. McKinley Community Center, which the city partnered with to distribute the grant, in order to cover administrative costs.

Chicago received almost $2 billion in American Rescue Plan funds. Similar to COVID relief money that went to school districts, these funds are temporary and must be earmarked by next month, according to the city.

Grantees for the program must be parents or guardians of students with disabilities and can apply for up to two grants per household. Applicants must be Chicago residents and must earn no more than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $93,600 at most for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Families must have documentation that proves their child receives services at school, such as an Individualized Education Program or 504 plan, or proof from a doctor that their child has a disability.

In a prepared statement, Jamal Malone, CEO of Ada S. McKinley Community Services, which contracted with the city to help sign people up for the grant, said that with school in “full swing,” families may learn about the grant during school visits, such as during parent-teacher conferences.

His organization is also hosting events at local libraries to inform families about the grants.

Sherry Henry's son poses with his artwork. Henry says his love for art grew after he purchased a sketchbook with some of the grant money from the city of Chicago that was meant to help students with disabilities from low-income households.

Sherry Henry, whose son is in middle school and is on the autism spectrum, attended the mayor’s announcement in April and said she received her grant money over the summer. She said she largely used the grant to pay her bills, but she also let her son choose something he wanted. He picked out some sketchbooks.

She credits the extra money for sparking a love of art in her son, who chose to buy the sketchbooks.

“He never said he was going to be an artist before, but he said he’s gonna be an artist now, so yeah, so I can smile about that,” Henry said.

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

Chicago has picked its first elected school board members. Now it’s Mayor Johnson’s turn to choose.

2024-11-07T16:50:05+00:00

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For the first time in Chicago’s history, voters on Tuesday chose 10 people to be on the city’s partially elected, 21-member school board.

Now there’s a new question: Who will Mayor Brandon Johnson choose as the remaining 11 board members?

Chicagoans may not know the answer for another month because state law gives Johnson until Dec. 16 to make his appointments.

But early election results, the mayor’s recent overhaul of the school board, and the mayor’s alliances provide some clues as to whom Johnson could pick. The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for an interview in time for this story.

Preliminary election results show that four winners were backed by the teachers union — the mayor’s close ally — in Districts 1, 2, 5, and 7. Three more people, backed by pro-school choice groups, won in Districts 3, 4, and 8. And the remaining winners, in Districts 6, 9, and 10, did not take money or volunteer support from the union, pro-charter, or pro-school choice groups.

With 11 appointments and four ideologically aligned elected members, Johnson will still hold significant control over the school system as it transitions out of 30 years of straight mayoral control.

The former seven-person board that resigned en masse — six whom Johnson appointed — acted on several of the mayor’s priorities, including removing police officers from school campuses, implementing a new school funding formula, and passing a strategic plan that focuses on neighborhood schools.

The mayor’s new majority could again be instrumental for him to push through his preferred agenda, including ousting CPS CEO Pedro Martinez or taking out a short-term loan to pay for pension and labor union obligations. It could also keep the board from approving school closures, since a state law that prevents such closures in Chicago is set to expire Jan. 15, 2025, the same day the new board will be sworn in.

However, there are some restrictions on whom Johnson can now appoint.

According to state law, each school board district is split into two subdistricts for the purposes of the 2026 election and beyond. Tuesday’s winners become incumbents in the subdistrict in which they live. The law spells out that between now and Dec. 16, Johnson must appoint school board members who live in the opposite subdistrict of the winning candidate.

In an interview with Chalkbeat last month on the day the entire previous school board resigned, Deputy Mayor Jen Johnson said the mayor’s office has been “thinking about and monitoring the machinations” in the election. Asked if the mayor was gaming out different scenarios, or considering people who live in both parts of each district, Deputy Mayor Johnson, who is currently on leave, declined to elaborate.

“I’m not going to get into details, but we’ve taken it all into account,” she said.

Will the mayor pick losing school board candidates?

The mayor could appoint people who ran for school board and were endorsed by his ally, the teachers union, but did not win a seat.

There are three people who fit the bill: Karen Zaccor, Anusha Thotakura, and Felix Ponce.

Zaccor, a longtime community organizer and retired teacher, lost her bid to represent District 4 to Ellen Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld lives in 4B, but Zaccor lives in 4A. In an interview with Chalkbeat on Wednesday, Zaccor said the mayor’s office has not yet approached her about being appointed. If Johnson does, she would accept.

“I’m not in any way shape or form going to be a puppet for anybody, but yeah, I think I can contribute things that other people cannot based on having just come out of the classroom and also coming from a long history of being part of fighting for equity,” Zaccor said.

In District 6, the union-backed candidate Anusha Thotakura lives in 6A, opposite of winner Jessica Biggs, who lives in 6B. Thotakura said Wednesday she has not heard from the mayor’s office but that it “will really be an honor to be considered by the mayor to be appointed as an independent thinker who did receive a lot of community support.”

“I think we do share a lot of values and a vision for high quality public schools in our city, so to that extent, it really would be an honor to be considered,” she told Chalkbeat.

In District 8, Felix Ponce is the union-endorsed candidate who lives in 8B, opposite of winner Angel Gutierrez, who resides in 8A. Ponce did not immediately return a call asking for comment.

Could newly appointed board members stay on?

Johnson already appointed a new set of people to the school board last month, after the previous board resigned en masse. One member — the board president — has already resigned amid a swirl of controversy related to past antisemitic, misogynistic, and conspiratorial online comments.

Although the mayor claimed the new appointments were part of a transition plan, he will now need to re-evaluate his appointments in light of who won Tuesday’s school board races.

Chalkbeat analyzed public records, including property records, filings with Cook County and Illinois Board of Elections, to determine where the new current school board members reside. That does not rule out the possibility that they may have moved recently.

Michillia Blaise, a current school board member who ran in District 5 on the West Side but later dropped out, could stay on as a Johnson appointment because her last known address is in 5B, opposite of Jitu Brown, who won Tuesday night. Brown was the only candidate on the ballot in District 5 and lives in 5A. Blaise used to live in an Albany Park home she owns but is now separated from her husband and lives with her two children in a property owned by her mother in East Garfield Park, in District 5, she told Chalkbeat over the summer.

Another new school board appointee, Mary Gardner, would likely have to step down since her last known address is in the same part of District 5 as Brown’s home. The mayor could select Gardner as board president, however, because the person in that role can live anywhere in Chicago. The board will begin to transition into a fully elected board in 2026, so voters will also choose the board president at that time.

Board members Debby Pope and Olga Bautista could also stay on, since their last known addresses according to public records are on the opposite sides of winners in Districts 2 and 10, respectively.

Ebony Deberry, a union-backed candidate, won in District 2 and lives in 2A, while Pope listed an address in 2B on paperwork she filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections when she was mulling a run for school board.

Che ‘Rhymefest’ Smith, an independent candidate, appears to have won in District 10 and lives on the 10A side. Bautista, a longtime environmental activist who ran for alderperson in the 10th Ward on the far southeast side by the Indiana border in 2015, owns a home in 10Bb, according to Cook County property records.

Board member Frank Niles Thomas appears to own a home in subdistrict 9A, according to Cook County property records. That would allow Thomas to stay on, since his home is on the opposite side of District 9 presumed winner Therese Boyle, who lives in 9B according to Chicago Board of Elections records.

How will the mayor determine whom to appoint?

The Mayor’s Office did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests to interview the mayor about how he’s thinking through school board appointments. But at a press conference last month, he talked about the process.

“There are plenty of people who want to be on the school board.” Johnson said. “We don’t have an issue with that.”

He also reiterated several times that he still holds the sole power to appoint people. There is no formal or public process for expressing interest.

“I have the authority to vet as many people as I want,” Johnson said.

In Tuesday’s election, the candidates in District 1 and 3 both lived in the same subdistrict. There are no losing candidates or current school board members living in the opposite subdistrict.

In District 7, Yesenia Lopez lives in the 7B subdistrict, according to Chicago Board of Elections records from this election cycle. Current appointed board member Rafael Yanez appears to own a home in District 7A, based on Cook County property records and city building permits.

Correction: This story previously incorrectly said the mayor could choose board member-elect Jitu Brown for board president. The board president won’t be an elected member until 2027. It has also been updated to correct the subdistrict Yesenia Lopez will represent, which is 7B, not 7A.

Samantha Smylie and Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago’s new school board president resigns a week after taking office

2024-10-31T20:00:35+00:00

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Chicago’s new school board president, the Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, resigned Thursday after his past antisemitic and misogynistic comments online resurfaced.

It’s more leadership turmoil for the Board of Education, which will soon transition to a 21-member partially-elected governing body, ending 30 years of mayoral control.

Johnson’s departure comes less than a month after Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed him on Oct. 7 alongside five others. The shocking overhaul came after the mayor’s first set of appointees resigned en masse amid tensions between the mayor and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

The newly appointed school board members swore themselves in just last week and are scheduled to meet Friday.

The mayor said in a statement Thursday afternoon that he asked for Johnson’s resignation and that he resigned effective immediately.

“Reverend Mitchell Johnson’s statements were not only hurtful but deeply disturbing,” Mayor Johnson said. “I want to be clear: antisemitic, misogynistic, and conspiratorial statements are unacceptable.”

The mayor said that his office would “identify a qualified individual” — he did not provide a timeline — and that the school board would meet as scheduled.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for Johnson’s resignation earlier Thursday.

“Any person charged with the stewardship of the Chicago Public School Board must exemplify focused, inclusive, and steady leadership,” he said in a statement. “The views expressed in the current Chair’s posts – antisemitism, misogyny, fringe conspiracy theories – very clearly do not meet that standard.”

Pritzker is of Jewish Ukrainian descent. As of Thursday afternoon, 40 of 50 Chicago aldermen and the City Clerk Anna Valencia also signed a letter calling for Johnson to step down.

Earlier this week, Jewish Insider reported that Johnson crafted more than a dozen Facebook posts with antisemitic statements following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Johnson issued a statement late Wednesday apologizing “to the Jewish community.”

“The remarks I posted were reactive and insensitive, and I am deeply sorry for not being more precise and deliberate in my comments posted last year,” Johnson wrote. “Since then, I have asked for and received feedback from my Jewish friends and colleagues, who helped me be more thoughtful in the way I address these sensitive matters.”

But additional Facebook posts surfaced Thursday in which Johnson supported a conspiracy theory that 9/11 was “an inside job” and questioned why working women don’t want families.

Mayor Johnson said when he announced the new appointments that the members were still being vetted. The mayor also said the new appointments, including Johnson, would stay in their roles after the transition to a hybrid elected and appointed board.

But it’s not clear if the new appointees can continue to serve past Jan. 15, when elected and appointed members are set to be sworn in. That’s because the mayor must appoint people who live on the opposite side of the geographic districts as the elected winners, which won’t be known until after Nov. 5.

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

How much has been spent on Chicago’s school board elections? Almost $7 million.

2024-10-31T12:31:39+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn

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Chicago’s first school board elections are getting expensive, with nearly $4 million pouring directly into candidates’ coffers and almost $3 million spent separately by pro-school choice super PACs as of Oct. 28.

Super PACs, which face no contribution limits and are not allowed to coordinate with candidates, have sent direct mail, texts, and run political ads supporting seven school board candidates.

The Chicago Teachers Union and a number of groups allied with and funded by the union have spent at least $1.5 million directly on CTU-endorsed candidates, according to campaign finance disclosures.

In eight of the 10 school board races, the CTU-backed candidate has raised the most cash. CTU-endorsed Rev. Robert Jones, Felix Ponce, and Jason Dones top the list of candidates citywide who have received the most direct cash and in-kind contributions, with a quarter of a million dollars or more each, based on the most recent data reported to the Illinois Board of Elections.

The candidate with the most money so far, however, is Bruce Leon, who is self-funding his campaign and loaned himself $550,000.

As the pace of spending has picked up, so has the heat in a war of words between the teachers union and school choice proponents, who have decried greater scrutiny of charters, selective enrollment, and magnet programs in the city amid a push to revitalize neighborhood schools.

The union and its supporters held a Monday press conference in front of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools’ downtown offices, calling out large checks the network’s super PAC got from wealthy individuals outside of Illinois — including Netflix executive Reed Hastings, a major Democratic Party donor and charter school supporter — and vowed to push for legislation curbing such spending. Two other super PACs have spent money on Chicago’s school board races, Urban Center Action and Parents for Great Schools Illinois.

But some school board candidates have decried how CTU is spending money in the election. The union and allied groups, such as Chicago Working Families, have sent mailers presenting candidates they don’t support as puppets of former President Donald Trump and tying them to Project 2025, the conservative playbook on how to remake the federal government. The mailers have incensed candidates who say they are registered Democrats known for yearslong involvement in liberal causes.

The charter network shot back this week, arguing the union is borrowing from Trump’s playbook with a divisive effort to distribute “fake news.” The group said the union — in close alignment with a network of groups which it has helped fund — is spending big to cement its influence on the board.

Chicagoans will elect 10 school board members from 10 geographic districts this Nov. 5. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU employee and close union ally, will appoint 11 people to serve on a hybrid board for two years. In 2026, all 21 seats will be up for election.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Hilario Dominguez, the union’s political coordinator, said the union has had to step up its spending to keep up with the influx of cash from the charter network and Urban Center, another pro-school choice group led by former UNO charter network CEO Juan Rangel and affiliated with former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas, who lost the 2023 mayoral race to Johnson.

“We’re being forced to spend because they are outraising us,” he said. “Our spending is in response to their war chest.”

CTU bankrolled effort that removed 12 candidates from ballot

The latest campaign spending disclosure data also offers the first clear evidence that the union paid several law firms to mount challenges to the ballot petitions of numerous candidates, successfully knocking 12 of them off the ballot this past summer.

The union paid a collective $40,000 to Stephen Fine, Mike Kreloff, and Sorling Northrup, the firm where Kevin Morphew is an attorney, according to campaign disclosures filed Oct. 15. Fine, Kreloff, Morphew, and one other attorney, Michael Kasper, were listed as representing people challenging 19 candidates.

The CTU also paid legal fees to Sorling Northrup on behalf of Dones and Jones, both of whom fought challenges to their own petitions.

The Illinois Network of Charter Schools has called the union’s spending to remove candidates from the ballot “hypocritical,” coming from an organization that has long advocated for turning decisions on who serves on the board over to Chicago residents.

Dominguez declined to comment on that spending but argued the issue is a distraction from the real problem with the board races: a massive influx in large donations from billionaires the CTU argues have little connection to local schools. The union says these donors have a shadowy, pro-Trump agenda to shutter public schools, expand charters, and boost private schools.

Andrew Broy, the head of the charter network, said claiming that candidates backed by the group are Trump supporters or pushing Project 2025 is “absurd.”

“If anyone is trying to buy the election, it’s the CTU,” he said.

Project 2025 mailers ignite misinformation charges

In the past month, Chicagoans’ mailboxes have been filled with mail from candidates running for school board — and from their opponents.

One paid for by the Chicago Teachers Union pictures a faceless puppet with the claim that “Donald Trump and out-of-state billionaires are pulling the strings” of certain candidates.

One of the candidates targeted by these mailers is District 2’s Leon, a retired human resource company executive whose campaign is entirely self-funded.

Campaign mail ad in Chicago.

Asked about evidence that the targeted school board candidates are connected to Trump, Dominguez at the CTU said the mailers are fair game. He noted that some contributors to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, such as Arkansas-based Walmart heir Jim Walton, have supported efforts to elect Republicans in the past. Walton has given $738,000 to the charter group’s independent expenditure committee in 2024.

The Waltons have a varied track record of giving, with charter schools and environmental conservation among their top causes. (The Walton Family Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat.)

Dominguez also pointed to candidate endorsements by the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute and, in a social media post the CTU has circulated, by the Chicago Republican Party. The Chicago Republican Party has said it is not endorsing any Chicago school board candidates and the post was not authorized by party leadership.

Still, Dominguez argues that some candidates’ pro-school choice message echoes the education policy proposals in Project 2025, which calls specifically for expanding tax-credit programs that allow families to send their children to private schools, like one that sunset in Illinois last year.

Carlos Rivas, a candidate in District 3, said the CTU-funded fliers targeting him — a lifelong registered Democrat who said he already cast a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris — are “shameful.”

“I am a gay Latino man who grew up in poverty, and I am being called a Trump puppet,” he said. “It’s sad how much money is being spent on these ads.”

Rivas raised about $60,000 as of Oct. 28, with about half coming from Jim Frank, an automotive fleet leasing executive who has also donated to the charter school network’s political fund. Most of Rivas’ remaining donations are less than $1,000 from individuals, including $250 from Miguel del Valle, the former Democratic state legislator and school board president.

Rivas’ opponent, Dones, has received more than $250,000 in donations and in-kind support from the CTU’s two PACs and union allies United Working Families and Grassroots PAC. He said the recent influx of money came after spending by the charter network’s super PAC in support of his opponent led to the lifting of a state campaign contribution cap.

But the totals do not include roughly $280,000 spent in the District 3 race by the two pro-school choice super PACs in support of Rivas. Rivas, a former CPS teacher, said he doesn’t control or coordinate with the charter network on its spending backing his campaign. He said he is a strong proponent of strengthening neighborhood schools — while maintaining selective enrollment and other options.

“I am someone who does believe in protecting choices for families, and that doesn’t mean just charters,” he said.

Dones said he is proud that the CTU, SEIU, which represents some support staff in CPS, and other unions rallied to keep his campaign viable. He said his candidacy has come under attack as well, in the form of text messages that said he would do the bidding of Mayor Johnson if elected to the board.

“I’m running in a district where the line is so clear,” Dones said. “Against me is someone almost entirely funded by people who support privatizing schools.”

Asked about his stance on private school vouchers, Rivas said his focus is on equitable funding for CPS.

Matt Dietrich, a spokesman for the Illinois Board of Elections, said his agency does not get involved in evaluating the veracity of political advertising. It only investigates campaign finance violations when people file complaints. He said no formal complaints have yet been filed in the Chicago school board elections.

The elections board, however, has reached out to the CTU to ask how its two separate political action committees are different; state rules do not allow separate PACs for the same purpose.

Candidates running for office in Illinois are bound by limits on how much they can raise, such as $6,900 from an individual contributor, or $68,500 from a political action committee. But as soon as the spending by super PACs, which face no such limits, exceeds $100,000 in a certain district, the caps for all candidates in that district are lifted. Those caps have since been lifted in all but one of Chicago’s school board districts.

Teachers union wants limits to out-of-state spending on school board races

At Monday’s downtown press conference, the union and its allies doubled down on ringing the alarm on charter advocates’ spending, which they described as a bid by billionaires to “buy” seats on the school board.

State lawmakers, such as Sen. Robert Martwick, one of the architects of a 2021 law that cleared the way for an elected school board in Chicago, vowed to take action to limit such spending in future elections. They did not share a specific bill but suggested legislation could be modeled on cities where local candidates only receive a set amount of taxpayer funding to campaign — or could take the form of limiting contributions from non-Illinois residents and requiring candidates to disclose their top five donors on all materials.

“This type of money pouring in our school board elections is shameful. What are they trying to do? What are they trying to buy?” said state Rep. Lilian Jiménez.

Several CTU-endorsed school board candidates also attended the event.

“CPS ain’t for sale today, tomorrow, and not forever,” said Jones, a school board candidate in District 10.

Campaign finance filings show Jones has raked in more than $300,000 in donations and in-kind contributions, primarily from the CTU — the most of any candidate in District 10. However, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center superPACs spent $250,000 to support another District 10 candidate, Karin Norington-Reaves.

Jones told Chalkbeat the influx of financial support has allowed him to send mailers and hand out fliers with the help of some 40 volunteers he said his campaign has enlisted.

Norington-Reaves was targeted with a CTU-funded flier linking her to Trump. She said the mailer was “gross” and disturbing in a highly polarized and volatile political climate in the days leading up to the presidential election.

“I am a lifelong Democrat,” she said. “I have never pulled a Republican ballot in my life, and the worst part is the CTU knows that.”

She said she is pushing back on the negative ads in community forums, on social media, and via phone-banking and door-knocking. Norington-Reaves, a nonprofit CEO, said that after decades working in public service, her campaign has drawn varied support, including from an “anti-CTU coalition” concerned about the union’s influence expanding beyond the mayor’s office.

“I have a very large network,” she said. “The people who are supporting me are doing so because of who I am.”

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 Board of Education president apologizes for antisemitic Facebook posts

2024-10-30T23:39:22+00:00

Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday his newly appointed Chicago Board of Education president is “seeking atonement” for making antisemitic comments but did not call for his removal as requested by just over half of the City Council.

The mayor’s comments came less than a day after Jewish Insider reported that Board President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson crafted more than a dozen Facebook posts with antisemitic statements following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to the death of at least 1,200 Israelis, according to Reuters. Israel has since launched a full scale offensive on Gaza, resulting in the death of 45,000 Palestinians, Reuters reported.

“I know Rev. Mitchell Johnson has worked hard as a faith leader in his interfaith work,” the mayor told reporters Wednesday after a City Council meeting. “I know he has since come forth and has apologized for his comments and how harmful that they have been to the people of the Jewish community.”

The mayor continued: “These are not sentiments that I subscribe to and I do appreciate Rev. Johnson being willing to be held accountable for statements that he has made that has caused harm.”

The mayor appointed Johnson as board president last month after the entire Board of Education resigned. He has presided over one Board of Education meeting, and the body is set to meet again for its first regular meeting on Friday, Nov. 1.

In a prepared statement, Rev. Johnson issued an apology “to the Jewish community” for his remarks, and said he has fought antisemitism throughout his career.

“The remarks I posted were reactive and insensitive, and I am deeply sorry for not being more precise and deliberate in my comments posted last year,” Rev. Johnson wrote. “Since then, I have asked for and received feedback from my Jewish friends and colleagues, who helped me be more thoughtful in the way I address these sensitive matters.”

He added that he is “committed to making sure that antisemitism and hate of any kind have no place in Chicago Public Schools.”

Since the Oct. 7 attacks, posts from Rev. Johnson — who is not related to the mayor — have ranged in extremity. Several of his posts shared support for Palestinians and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the Chicago City Council has also formally done as part of a narrowly passed resolution earlier this year.

In December 2023, he shared a video of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, stating, “And, like him, I believe that Israel has a right to exist just as the Palestinians have a right to exist. Further, Israel must retreat to the original land border which was illegally granted to them by the United Nations.”

Other posts have gone far further. On Feb. 20, Johnson wrote, “The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews.” In an apparent support for Hamas, Johnson also wrote that “people have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!”

Jewish Insider reports that posts Johnson reshared came from anti-Israel and Russian propaganda accounts, as well as a conspiracy theorist.

On Wednesday, the mayor declined to directly say whether he knew about Johnson’s Facebook posts when he picked him for school board.

Elected officials, at least one school board candidate, and some political groups called for the board president to step down Wednesday, including 27 alderpeople — just over half of the City Council.

Asked about the comments, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish, said he did not condone the remarks, and that proper vetting “doesn’t seem to have occurred here,” as reported by Capitol Fax.

“Look, can you miss things in peoples’ vets? Sure. But it feels like Facebook posts are pretty easy to find,” Pritzker said.

The board president has also faced questions about separate controversies. NBC Chicago reported earlier this month that Johnson was disbarred as a lawyer in the 1990s and that he had a lien placed on his home, in part for not paying child support.

Asked last week about those findings, Board President Johnson told reporters, “The truth is, I was suggested for this position because of my leadership capacity and my ability to get things done. That’s the truth. The good news is I wasn’t hired to be an accountant and I wasn’t hired to be a lawyer.”

School Board candidate Ellen Rosenfeld, who is running for District 4 on the north lakefront, said the “stunning lack of vetting” around the board president shows “just how far [the mayor] is willing to go to push his agenda at the expense of students and teachers.”

Chicago Democrats for Education, a political organization that opposes the Chicago Teachers Union and is backing school board candidates, said Rev. Johnson’s remarks “raise serious concerns about the safety and well-being of Jewish students and families in our city.”

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

Mayor Johnson’s budget would send Chicago Public Schools $300 million – less than what CPS wants

2024-10-30T19:12:06+00:00

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Facing a nearly $1 billion deficit next year, Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a city budget Wednesday that would send roughly $300 million to Chicago Public Schools.

That’s nearly $140 million more than what CPS already budgeted to receive from the city. But it’s still roughly $190 million short of what CPS wants to help cover critical upcoming costs that have been at the heart of leadership conflicts between the mayor’s office and CPS.

The makeup of the city’s budget could have a significant impact on the school district’s finances this year. It could also decide whether the district will cut spending or borrow money to cover looming costs.

District leaders, union officials, and the mayor have balked at the idea of CPS budget cuts.

“We are building a government that truly works for the people … no longer will the city of Chicago be dismissive about our young people and the children who are the future of the city,” Johnson said during his budget speech to the City Council.

The key to the money CPS wants from city coffers is surplus funding from Tax Increment Financing, or TIF. This comes from special taxing districts meant to fight blight and spur development.

Johnson’s $17.3 billion budget plan, which would raise property taxes to help the city close its deficit, includes $570 million in TIF surplus funds. By declaring a surplus, the mayor is releasing TIF dollars that have not been dedicated to any specific project. When that happens, by law, 52% of those funds — in this case, $296 million — would go to CPS under Johnson’s budget. Last year, the district received $226 million in TIF surplus funds, according to CPS.

In July, the Chicago Board of Education approved a $9.9 billion budget that assumed the district would receive $159 million in TIF funds from the city. But that budget did not include union contract costs or pensions for non-teaching staff. The latter is an expense the city used to cover until Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office. This year, the district has refused to cover the cost without the city’s help.

To help pay for those pensions and labor costs, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has asked for an additional $325 million in TIF surplus funds, a request he says he began making in the spring. Without such help or additional revenue, district officials say they may have to turn to cuts or borrow money to cover upcoming expenses of those contracts and pension obligations.

CPS did not immediately respond to the mayor’s budget proposal. The Chicago Teachers Union, an ally of the mayor, applauded his budget plan but called for alternatives to raising taxes. In a statement, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said that if there’s at least $500 million in TIF surplus funds, “there’s likely double that available” to be used on city services, including public schools.

Ald. Gilbert Villegas, who has criticized the mayor’s request for Martinez to resign and recent leadership turmoil at the district, said CPS should have been more responsible with its COVID relief dollars, which have buoyed the district’s finances over the past few years. The money recently expired, blowing a more than $500 million hole into CPS’s budget this year that officials closed through central office cuts and other savings.

“The reliance on the city of Chicago to help bail out CPS is really frustrating because we have no say in how they appropriate their budgets,” Villegas said Wednesday. “Basically what they’re doing is telling us, ‘We need all this revenue,’ and we have no say. This reliance on us only when and wanting to include us only when they need money is a problem for me.”

CPS has defended its use of COVID relief money, which went toward more staffing and programming for students, and says it resulted in important academic gains.

Ald. Jason Ervin, a West Side alderman who is a close ally of the mayor’s and chairman of the council’s budget committee, said the city allocates the TIF surplus funds that it is required to, and CPS always gets a chunk of that.

During Martinez’s five-hour testimony to City Council two weeks ago, Ervin sharply criticized the district for increasing its request for TIF surplus funds, arguing that such a move takes away development dollars from low-income communities like the one he represents.

“Whatever CPS needs to do to manage beyond that [money] is their decision,” Ervin said Wednesday after the budget address.

The mayor’s office has pushed the district to take out a short-term loan to cover those costs. But district leaders have so far rejected the idea, saying such borrowing would incur high interest rates, further degrade the district’s bond rating status, and saddle it with payments that will ultimately hurt classrooms.

That was one reason the previous Board of Education resigned en masse earlier this month. Johnson has appointed a new board that could still take out such a loan. They are set to meet this Friday, Nov. 1.

Alternatively, the question of how to pay for major upcoming costs could fall to the district’s new, 21-person board that will be half elected and half appointed by the mayor. The school board election is on Nov. 5, and the new board will be sworn in on Jan. 15, 2025.

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

What’s at the heart of the turmoil at Chicago Public Schools? Money.

2024-10-29T20:23:43+00:00

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The upheaval engulfing Chicago Public Schools didn’t start when Mayor Brandon Johnson prodded schools CEO Pedro Martinez to step down last month. Or when the entire school board resigned at once. Or when Johnson swiftly appointed new members “tasked to carry out the vision that I have for public education in this city.”

And the disagreements roiling the school system just weeks before voters choose the first members of a new elected board aren’t just about whether the city should take out a short-term, high-interest loan to cover pension payments.

In many ways, the conflict can be traced back to pivotal decisions made five years ago. The district agreed to an ambitious new teachers union contract after a bruising 2019 strike that followed years of struggles to balance the budget. The Chicago Teachers Union successfully made the case that more staff earning higher salaries would help students in schools that lacked the resources to meet their needs.

But even then, leaders were unsure how they would pay for all the new staff positions and salary increases over the life of the contract. Federal pandemic aid came to the district’s rescue, allowing Chicago Public Schools to cover the contract, hire more staff, and make investments that many educators and community members felt were long overdue.

Now that money is going away, leaving the district with a math problem it hasn’t yet decided how to solve.

Districts around the country are facing difficult choices about which programs to keep and whether to lay off employees, but Johnson has said he’s not interested in making cuts. And he has a narrowing window in which to push through a loan that would temporarily avoid cuts or find another solution.

This is playing out in a city where decades of fraught education politics have eroded trust. Chicago provides a stark example of the challenges many districts are facing with the expiration of federal COVID relief money, declining enrollment, and larger payrolls. How Chicago resolves the crisis could mean cuts to staff and programming now or taking on debt that could impact how much money is available for future generations.

“Right now all the key players are attacking one another and looking for the immediate battles to fight and win,” said Kenneth Wong, professor of education policy at Brown University. “But the core of this debate is about whether Chicago Public Schools are going to be better off as a result of these decisions and is the city going to benefit from a higher-quality Chicago Public Schools as a result of these decisions.”

Chicago school budget problems built for years

Struggling to pay for things is not new for Chicago Public Schools. In the 1990s, then-CEO Paul Vallas deferred pension payments to balance an anticipated $1.4 billion budget deficit.

The district also took out a series of emergency loans to deal with budget shortfalls between 2016 and 2018. According to the district, it still owes $2.1 billion on those loans, including $200 million this year alone.

Chicago Public Schools won a partial reprieve to its school funding struggles in 2017 when the state of Illinois revamped its funding formula to send more money to districts with higher needs. State funding makes up a quarter of the district’s operating budget.

But if the state continues with its current rate of annual increases, it won’t fully fund the formula until at least 2034, according to a report from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Five years ago, as the Chicago Teachers Union fought for a wide-ranging contract that led to an 11-day strike, it was unclear how the city or district would pay for all of the demands. At the time, union president Stacy Davis Gates accused then Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration of not kicking in enough city money to properly fund the district.

Thousands of educators and CPS support staff flood Chicago streets near City Hall on the fifth day of the 2019 strike.

While the deal fell short of some of the union’s biggest goals, it required the district to hire more staff, including social workers and nurses, raise salaries, and commit to lowering class sizes. In total, the contract was expected to cost $1.5 billion over its five-year lifetime.

Two credit rating agencies called the costs “manageable,” but Standard and Poor’s issued a warning: The district’s expenses could outpace how much money it actually had on hand, and that could degrade the district’s already junk bond rating status.

Five months after the contract was finalized, COVID-19 hit.

At a recent press conference, Gates acknowledged the $2.8 billion the district received in federal pandemic relief was critical to paying for the 2019 contract, which she credits with helping bring academic gains.

“We received that money from [federal COVID relief] funds because the Chicago Public Schools has never been funded at the rate in which it needed to be funded, ever,” she said.

Federal COVID relief funding helped pay for the teachers union contract, launch new academic recovery programs, and sustain current programs that otherwise may have been pared down or cut. In the spring of last school year, a Chalkbeat analysis of spending found an average 7% of Chicago’s school budgets were made up of COVID dollars.

CPS doubled the number of social workers and added hundreds more interventionists who work with students struggling in core subjects. The money also went toward a slew of other initiatives, including limiting class sizes and growing its universal preschool program. It helped the district paper over longstanding deficits that have plagued its budget for many years.

An interventionist at Chicago’s Brunson Elementary School works with a student on multiplication and division using flashcards. CPS hired hundreds of these specialists using federal COVID relief money.

Between 2019 and this fall, the district said it has hired more than 6,500 additional staffers, including 2,600 teachers and 4,000 paraprofessionals. Today, the district’s budget is roughly $10 billion – a nearly 30% increase in five years — even as the district is serving fewer students.

Paul Bruno, assistant professor of educational policy, leadership, and organization at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said Chicago is not alone. Districts around the country have added staff for reasons that need more research. Employing more people makes it harder to raise pay, and with more spots to fill, districts can struggle to hire only the best candidates or fill all their positions. Bruno said it’s not clear that it’s always in the best interests of students.

School leaders previously told Chalkbeat that the extra money helped their schools provide more after-school programs to children and beef up academic support in ways they never had the flexibility to do.

“Winning the lottery is what it felt like,” one former school administrator said. “Everything your kid ever asked for, you could give them.”

The federal dollars dried up last month, and the loss of that money helped create a more than half-billion-dollar deficit for CPS. The district closed that budget gap through central office cuts and other savings, but it did not budget for big costs coming its way in the next union contract or in pension obligations. District and city officials pressed the state for more funds, but state leaders refused.

At a recent City Council hearing, Martinez acknowledged that he’s been criticized for spending one-time money on long-term personnel expenses. Knowing that federal COVID money would expire, some districts invested in facilities or hired people on short-term contracts, while others followed Chicago’s approach of hiring more permanent staff.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez speaks at a hearing regarding the Chicago Board of Education at City Hall on Oct. 16, 2024.

Martinez argued that the additional investments helped the district see “gains we have not seen before, and we are seeing more of our students graduating with a real shot of having economic mobility.”

Chicago’s reading scores recovered faster than many other large urban school districts, according to one study from Harvard and Stanford that the district has cited frequently while making its case for more funding.

Johnson committed to avoiding cuts

Now the district and the teachers union are at the bargaining table again, with the union pushing for 9% raises for teachers, along with “common good” proposals such as affordable housing for homeless students. The district says paying for just a portion of the union’s wide-ranging proposals would create a $4 billion deficit by the 2029-30 school year. CPS has already offered 4% raises, but the two parties are now in mediation.

Another looming cost is pensions for non-teaching staff. Former Mayor Lightfoot shifted a portion of pension costs onto the district in 2020, a practice Mayor Johnson has tried to continue. But so far this year, the district has refused to pay a $175 million contribution to the municipal pension fund, putting the city on the hook as it faces its own deficit.

To cover the cost of pensions and the union contracts, Johnson’s office has pushed CPS to take out a short-term loan. The district has refused, citing concerns that such a loan would come with high interest rates and saddle CPS with more debt down the road. Martinez asked the mayor to dedicate more funds from special taxing districts, known as TIFs, to cover the pension cost.

At stake is how much money the district will have to invest in classrooms and salaries now versus in the future. The disagreement could yet cost Martinez his job.

Johnson’s presence in the mayor’s office looms large over the negotiations. Johnson is a former classroom teacher and union organizer who got his start in politics working to oppose school closures. On the campaign trail, Johnson called for fully funded schools. In an interview earlier this month with WBEZ, he was adamant that CPS should not make cuts — as most other districts in Chicago’s position are planning.

“Guess who loses when we cut schools?” he said. “Black and brown children. I don’t want Black and brown children to lose under my administration. In fact, they’re not going to lose under my administration.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, then a Cook County commissioner, kicks off his mayoral campaign, flanked by more than 100 supporters, elected officials, and union leaders near the site of the former Cabrini Green and Jenner Elementary school.

“The new mayor is probably closer to the unions than any mayor in history and he’s committed to raising salaries substantially,” said Thomas Toch, director of Future Ed, an education think tank at Georgetown University that focuses on underserved students.

Spending more on teachers helps students most when districts spend on better-performing teachers and those in hard-to-fill subjects, Toch said, strategies teachers unions generally oppose. At the same time, Chicago stands out among large, urban districts for its investments in high-impact tutoring and the academic gains students have made in recent years.

If Chicago makes major cuts now, “there is a significant risk of losing that positive momentum,” Toch said.

Sally Nuamah, a professor at Northwestern University who has studied Chicago Public Schools, said Johnson faces a decision: “Will he be the progressive, activist mayor that he ran on being? Or will he acquiesce?”

Nuamah noted that the dispute in Chicago doesn’t seem to be about whether to cut but how to find additional money.

If Chicago can find a way to fund these investments into the future, other districts would pay attention, Nuamah said. But historically, taking on debt for ongoing costs has been dangerous for school systems.

It will now be up to the new and future board members to untangle the district’s financial issues.

For the first time in Chicago’s history, voters will choose 10 elected school board members on Nov. 5. The school board will expand to a total of 21 members, with the remaining 11 chosen by the mayor. The board will become fully elected in 2027.

Related: Everything you need to know about Chicago’s 2024 school board election

Voters could choose school board members aligned with the mayor’s vision or elect people more inclined to push back.

Before the election, Johnnson’s new appointees could fire Martinez. Asked whether it plans to do that, school board president the Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson declined to answer, calling it “a silly question.”

The prospect of leadership change could be driving some of the turmoil, said Bruno, the University of Illinois professor.

“There’s an urgency from the city’s perspective to make as many policy decisions as possible before the power dynamics change,” he said. “Johnson wants to impose more of his own agenda and that sense of urgency might be exacerbating things.”

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

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Mayor Brandon Johnson appoints seventh Chicago school board member

2024-10-22T17:47:34+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson has picked a seventh member, Rafael Yáñez, to join a new school board he appointed earlier this month after the entire seven-member board stepped down.

Yáñez, a hate crimes investigator with the Chicago Police Department according to his LinkedIn profile, and the other new appointees will meet for the first time Thursday to review the board’s October agenda — a meeting that was pushed back a week. The Rev. Mitchell Johnson, former executive director of the Developing Communities Project, is expected to serve as president of the new board, and Mary Gardner, a West Side community organizer, as vice president.

The fate of CEO Pedro Martinez’ job and a short-term, high-interest loan for the district — two issues the previous board had refused to take on — will now be in the new appointees’ hands just two weeks before Chicagoans vote on a new partially elected school board.

The Thursday agenda includes a closed session to discuss personnel matters, but it’s not clear if Martinez’ post is one of the items the new board will tackle. The schools chief’s job hangs in the balance after an increasingly public clash with Johnson over how to handle the district’s budget challenges.

Johnson is also gearing up to present a new city budget on Oct. 30. To close the city’s projected deficit, he could rely, in part, on CPS taking on $175 million payment toward the pensions of non-teaching. The district began picking up some of that cost in 2020, but it was not included in the $9.9 billion CPS budget approved in July. Martinez, backed by the former board, has argued that the city, not CPS, should cover that payment.

Earlier in October, Johnson announced six new appointees to the board just days after the previous board members said they would resign. Yáñez rounds out the new slate. He ran for 15th Ward alderman as a progressive in 2019. His top donors during that election cycle were the Chicago Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union, which represents some district support staff.

The teachers union, which helped elect Johnson, a former CTU employee, has fiercely criticized Martinez as talks over a new four-year educator contract have grown increasingly tense.

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

Chicago’s deputy mayor of education is stepping away to focus on health and family

2024-10-21T19:18:33+00:00

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Chicago’s deputy mayor of education, youth, and human services is taking a leave from her role amid an ongoing conflict between Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago Public Schools.

Deputy Mayor Jennifer “Jen” Johnson told Chalkbeat late last week she would be on leave for the coming weeks. It’s not clear for how long. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said Monday he couldn’t comment on personnel matters.

“I’m gonna be taking some time to really focus on my health and family,” Johnson said, adding that she does not want her leave to be misconstrued or used for political fodder.

Mayor Johnson appointed Jen Johnson to be deputy mayor of education, youth, and human services in May 2023. Jen Johnson formerly served as chief of staff at the Chicago Teachers Union and was a high school history teacher. In addition to CPS, her focus over the past year centered on expanding youth jobs and helping migrant students.

Jen Johnson, who is not related to the mayor, said in a June 2023 interview with Chalkbeat that she expected contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union to be “less painful, more inclusive, and driven by a shared set of goals.”

But talks have grown tense, in particular, with CTU taking aim at CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who was hired under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

In an interview late last week, Jen Johnson said that the mayor’s administration “signaled all kinds of desire for partnership” with Martinez’s administration.

“We’ve really tried to operate that way, so that we can avoid the acrimony and the fighting,” Johnson said. “I don’t feel like the partnership was there.”

In recent months, the relationship between the mayor’s office and Martinez has grown increasingly tense — as the two sparred over how to cover looming costs, including a pension contribution for non-teaching staff and added expenses related to new Chicago Teachers Union and principals contracts. The conflict also comes as billions in COVID relief money from the federal government expires.

Last month, Mayor Johnson asked Martinez to resign, but he declined. The school board has the sole power to fire the district’s CEO. Earlier this month, tensions boiled over when all seven members of the mayor’s appointed school board resigned amid the turmoil. The mayor announced six of seven new members the following week.

Next month, in Chicago’s first school board election, the city’s voters will elect 10 school board members and the mayor will appoint 11.

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez asks City Council for additional $325 million in funding

2024-10-16T21:58:15+00:00

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During a sometimes tense City Council hearing Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez asked alderpeople for an additional $325 million in city funding amid an extraordinary leadership shakeup at the district that is rooted in budget problems.

During the more than five-hour hearing for the council’s Committee on Education and Child Development, Martinez also told alderpeople that no cuts are planned for this school year, but the district would have to resort to them if it doesn’t get additional revenue or doesn’t borrow money.

West Side Ald. Jason Ervin, who was perhaps the most critical of Martinez on Wednesday, asked the schools chief why the city should redirect funding that could benefit low-income West Side neighborhoods to “bail out CPS.”

“What I am asking for — for the record, alders — is to protect the investments that have went to our highest poverty schools, many schools on the South and West side,” Martinez replied.

Wednesday’s hearing was called because alderpeople “wanted to get some clarity around the budget,” said Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who chairs the education committee. The hearing was scheduled following the extraordinary resignation two weeks ago of all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education. Six of those members were appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, who last month asked Martinez to resign following budget-related disagreements.

Former and current board members were invited to attend Wednesday’s meeting but declined, Taylor said. Multiple alderpeople expressed disappointment that none showed up. Ald. Scott Waguespack said the new board “better show up here” when asked in the future.

The board and the mayor’s office described the board shakeup as a natural transition as the city prepares to vote for its first elected school board members, who will be sworn in in January alongside mayoral appointees. But sources with knowledge of the situation have said the resignations were related to the board’s unwillingness to side with the mayor on a couple of key points, including to fire Martinez for cause and take out a short-term loan to help cover some large looming costs.

By state law, the mayor’s appointments for the new school board must live in areas where someone has not won an elected seat — something the public won’t know for certain until after the Nov. 5 election.

Mayor, CPS spar over how to solve the district’s money problems

At the heart of the recent leadership turmoil – and the backdrop of Wednesday’s hearing – is disagreement between the district and City Hall on how to cover major upcoming costs for the school system. That includes a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching staff and costs related to a new Chicago Teachers Union and principals contracts.

The district closed a more than $500 million deficit for its budget this year, a hole exacerbated by the expiration of billions in COVID relief money from the federal government. But it did not budget for the looming pension and labor costs, and without additional funding, would have to resort to cuts or borrow money, officials said.

Despite the acrimony, Martinez largely declined to criticize the mayor and attempted to strike a tone of unity. He said he, Johnson, and the teachers union are “frankly in alignment of visions” for a more well-funded school system and must make that case to state lawmakers when requesting more money in the future.

For now, however, Martinez asked the City Council to provide CPS additional funding by declaring a surplus of Tax Increment Financing, or TIF dollars. These funds come from special taxing districts designed to spur new development and fight blight. Chicago has dozens of TIFs with more than $2.5 billion in property tax revenue. When a surplus is declared, money that’s not earmarked for projects goes back to the local taxing bodies, including CPS. Roughly half of any surplus goes to CPS.

Martinez publicly requested city money last week but said he’s been privately asking for that money since April. The mayor’s response, he said, was to ask CPS to take out a short-term loan.

Martinez’s request for more city funding would come on top of $159 million in TIF dollars the district is already slated to get. The additional funds would cover the pension payment, as well as 4% raises for teachers, more health care benefits, an expansion of Sustainable Community Schools, and more staff, the district said. The union’s wide-ranging proposals include 9% raises, as well as calls for more staffing and additional support for students, including affordable housing access for those who are homeless.

Additional city money would help the district avert cuts, CPS officials argue. They have repeatedly pointed to improved reading and math scores at the district since the pandemic – some of the highest in the nation, according to one study – largely because of billions in federal COVID relief dollars, and why that level of funding must be maintained to build on those academic gains.

Martinez grilled on budget solutions, short-term loan

The district has so far declined to take a loan out of concerns that it will downgrade its bond rating status and saddle the district with high interest costs that would take money away from hiring “teachers, counselors, and social workers,” Martinez said.

Alderpeople probed Martinez on a range of issues, including how the district allocates funding for schools, what his strategy is for getting more money, and what it would mean for the district to take out a short-term loan to pay for ongoing costs.

Ald. Angela Clay asked Martinez how the district would cover costs next year, when it is expected to face another $500 million deficit, if the city bailed CPS out this year. Martinez said he hopes TIF districts will expire under Johnson, potentially freeing up more money for CPS. He added that he will ask for City Council “and the mayor’s help” to advocate for more state funding.

While the state has been increasing its share of funding for CPS, its funding formula says the district needs an additional $1.2 billion to be considered adequately funded. State leaders, however, have said more money than what CPS has already received is not coming.

Some alderpeople seemed reluctant to provide more money for CPS when dozens of its schools enroll fewer than 200 students. Martinez countered that schools need more resources in order to boost enrollment.

Alds. Byron Sigcho-Lopez and Ervin, both close allies of the mayor, raised concerns about shifting TIF dollars meant to improve blighted communities in their wards to help buoy CPS’s budget. Ald. Nicole Lee said she wants to give the district more TIF money, but it’s a “short-term solution” and it’s difficult to know how much will be available.

“Can’t squeeze blood out of stone,” Lee told Martinez. “We only have so much money as a city.”

A few alderpeople who have been critical of the mayor peppered Martinez with questions about the mayor’s request for a short-term loan to help cover some of the costs.

Waguespack asked what sort of response the district would get from credit agencies if a new board comes in, approves a short-term loan, and fires Martinez. Miroslava Mejia Krug, the district’s chief financial officer, said she expects credit agencies to downgrade the district’s bond rating in response.

In a statement previously provided to Chalkbeat, Mayor’s office spokesperson Ronnie Reese said Matinez “flatly refused” to adopt a budget that included labor contract and pension costs “as covered by TIFs and additional financing.”

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

Chicago Public Schools chief presses for different fix for district budget problems

2024-10-10T00:04:26+00:00

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Amid turmoil over district leadership and a disagreement over the budget, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Wednesday that a special set of city funds meant to incentivize development could help stabilize the district’s finances.

In a prepared statement, Martinez said CPS has been advocating since April for the city to use Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, funds to help CPS pay for things like pension costs for non-teaching staff, costs related to a new Chicago Teachers Union contract, and the inaugural contract for a new principals union.

Martinez is at odds with Mayor Brandon Johnson over how to pay for the pension and union contract costs – expenses that the district did not set aside funds for in its current budget. The Johnson administration has pushed CPS for months to take out a short-term loan but district leaders have resisted, saying that it would saddle the district with high interest rates for years to come and could worsen CPS’s bond rating, making it harder to borrow in the future.

The disagreement factored into an extraordinary series of events in the past week — all seven members of the school board announced their plans to resign and Johnson swiftly named replacements, all as the city prepares for its historic first school board election. The new-look board will feature a mix of Johnson appointments and elected members in January.

The district’s proposal centers on TIF surplus funds, which haven’t been dedicated to a specific project and, according to the district, could help fund the $175 pension payment and labor agreement costs. Tax increment financing is a funding tool that uses future property tax revenue to fund community redevelopment projects.

This year’s budget, which covers the current school year, includes $159 million of TIF surplus funding – close to 40% of which is being used to cover the new contract with SEIU Local 73, which represents school support works, such as custodians. (CPS said the district has not yet received those funds.)

Martinez said “we all recognize that more revenue is necessary” to cover the pension and union contract costs.

According to CPS, more than $1.2 billion in property taxes are “diverted from CPS and other taxing bodies into TIF funds annually, depriving CPS of over $600 million in annual revenue.”

In his statement, Martinez said “government and labor partners are coalescing around this revenue source.” That, he said, means the district could pay for upcoming costs “without cuts, without taking on expensive short-term debt, and without waiting for additional funding to materialize from the State.”

In a statement, mayor’s office spokesperson Ronnie Reese said Johnson has repeatedly told Martinez that he would give CPS the maximum” TIF amount. He said Martinez “flatly refused” to adopt a budget that included union contract and pension costs “as covered by TIFs and additional financing.

“Had the CPS CEO worked collaboratively with the City and the Board of Education to pass a budget with the source of revenue being TIF and additional financing, as we and our [budget] team worked diligently to do, we would not be in the predicament we find ourselves in today,” Reese said.

Some local officials have floated the idea of providing more TIF funds to CPS, including Ald. Gilbert Villegas, WBEZ reported. That idea drew some nods, including from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and 40th Ward Ald. Andre Vasquez, who said it’s a “better recommendation” than a short-term loan.

The teachers union called this week to end all TIF districts and direct unused or unobligated money to Chicago Public Schools.

The mayor’s office has for months pushed CPS to take out a short-term loan that would help cover the union contracts and the $175 million pension payment – a cost the city used to cover until Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office. The mayor’s transition team report called for those funds to be returned to CPS, but in practice Johnson has so far asked CPS to cover that cost.

In a July 8 internal memo obtained by Chalkbeat, CPS described the idea from City Hall as a $300 million short-term loan that would incur high interest rates. CPS expressed concern that it would saddle the district with expensive debt down the road and worsen the district’s bond rating status, making it harder to borrow in the future for capital costs, such as repairing a school. A $300 million loan would cover 4% raises for members of the teachers and principals unions, the memo said.

“My team and I have specifically resisted taking out expensive short-term debt, and we have advocated against cuts, because we knew that this solution was on the table at our request,” Martinez said in Wednesday’s statement. “In fact, we developed scenarios to show how devastating each of these options would be if additional revenues were not found.”

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

Brandon Johnson scrambles to contain CPS school board turmoil, picks 6 new members

2024-10-09T15:32:41+00:00

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A defiant Mayor Brandon Johnson named six new members to the seven-member Chicago school board Monday, as fallout from the resignations of all board members last week escalated.

On Friday, the Chicago Board of Education’s current members said they would step down this month, an announcement coming after months of fiscal feuds featuring district leadership on one side and the Chicago Teachers Union and Johnson on the other. The outgoing board was appointed by Johnson but appeared to back Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez’s approach to growing fiscal challenges.

The six appointees are: Olga Bautista, Debby Pope, Michilla “Kyla” Blaise, Mary Gardner, Frank Niles Thomas, and the Rev. Mitchell Johnson. The mayor’s office had initially said the mayor would announce seven appointees Monday morning. Johnson said Monday he would fill the seventh and final board seat soon.

He acknowledged that the appointees he announced Monday are still being vetted before they are officially sworn in later this month.

At least three of the appointees have gotten involved in notable ways in this year’s first-ever Chicago school board elections.

Blaise, a former political consultant who serves as chief of staff for Cook County Board Commissioner Frank Aguilar, was a candidate in the city’s first school board election in November but withdrew in early September. Debby Pope, a former teacher who as of Monday afternoon described herself as a part-time CTU employee on her account on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, filed campaign finance paperwork, but did not run — instead, she backed a CTU-endorsed candidate in her district. A CTU spokesman later said she retired from the union in June, and her X profile has since been updated and made private.

Mary Gardner, a West Side community organizer, challenged the signatures on the ballot petitions submitted by three candidates running in the school board’s District 5 election; all three were ultimately removed from the ballot.

Over the weekend, 41 of Chicago’s 50 aldermen — including key Johnson allies — signed a letter condemning the board shakeup, which comes just weeks before voters elect 10 members of a new 21-member board that will take over in January. They also called it unprecedented and destabilizing for Johnson to pick new board members amid CPS contract talks with the Chicago Teachers Union, which helped elect Johnson; the mayor is a former CTU organizer.

The aldermen demanded hearings before the mayor appoints any new members; a special hearing on the issue is slated for Wednesday.

Some state lawmakers and organizations representing the city’s business community also condemned Johnson’s actions. And Illinois Latino Agenda, a statewide coalition of Latino leaders, hosted a press conference later Monday to voice their own concerns about the move and call for transparency in running the school district.

But on Monday, Johnson forcefully pushed back, insisting the city elected him mayor to transform public schools — not to oversee cuts to staff and programs. He argued that the criticism of the shakeup is rooted at least in part in his identity as a Black man running the city, saying his detractors are “making the same argument of the Confederacy.” He stressed repeatedly he is simply using his power to appoint board members to ensure a smoother transition to a partly elected board early next year.

“I am using my authority that the people of Chicago gave me, which is to hurry up and make sure the students of Chicago get what they deserve,” he said at a press conference at Sweet Holy Spirit Church on the South Side.

The beginning of Monday’s press conference was disrupted by hecklers chanting that the board appointments are “not legit.” Some also protested the prosecutions of protesters against violence in Gaza. Both groups were escorted out.

Protesters critical of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hold up signs during Monday's charter school ribbon-cutting ceremony that the mayor attended.

Johnson did not explain why he was only appointing six board members Monday, not seven. But he said with lots of interest in the unpaid board slots, it won’t be a problem to appoint another member.

He said the focus of all Chicago elected officials should be on securing more funding from the state. But some of his critics have argued the discord could undermine the district’s push for more funding to skeptical state officials.

Bautista, one of the appointees and the co-executive director for the Southeast Environmental Task Force, said she wants to get more funding for the city’s schools, expand staff, and fill teacher and other vacancies. Bautista said the scrutiny of the board turmoil is misplaced: “Where’s the outrage over what’s at stake if we don’t fully fund our schools?”

Johnson was already slated to appoint 11 members to join the 10 members elected in November —the new board will start its term in January. A joint Friday afternoon press release from the mayor’s office and the departing board members stated that seating some of these appointees now will give them a head start on serving on the board, making for a smoother transition come January.

That argument may be falling flat with many officials. In their letter, the aldermen cautioned against adding to the district’s already significant debt burden. They argued Johnson focused too much on obtaining funding for a new Chicago Bears stadium rather than for schools — all while he and the union criticized Martinez for failing to talk state lawmakers into giving CPS more money.

“A School Board full of lame-duck appointees carrying out only a few months of a term before residents get a chance to elect representatives is not what is in our best interest,” the aldermen wrote. “A revolving door of CEOs that cannot complete more than a handful of years before transitioning out is not in our best interest.”

One key issue with appointing new members on the cusp of the election is that mayoral appointees must live in the half of each district not represented by the member elected in November. Until those election results come out, it will remain unclear whether the people appointed by Johnson to the board on Monday meet that requirement.

During Monday’s press conference, the mayor seemed momentarily stumped when asked if any of the appointees are running for school board seats; none of them are.

Johnson fought CPS CEO over budget, pension payment

The crux of the dispute at CPS was Johnson’s pressure on the board to take on a short-term, high-interest loan to cover the cost of a new contract the district is negotiating with the teacher union. The mayor also reportedly pushed the board to fire Martinez over his own refusal to take out the loan.

The CPS leadership turmoil began this summer as negotiations between the district and the union plodded along, and Martinez unveiled a budget that did not include money for teachers raises or other union demands. His budget also did not include a $175 million payment to a city fund that covers pensions for non-teaching CPS staff.

During the term of Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, Johnson and the union argued city government should continue to cover that payment as it had historically. But this summer, in an about-face, they insisted that the district should take it on to allow Johnson to pursue his progressive agenda. Chicago is facing its own budget deficit.

The mayor has said that after running on a platform of transforming public education in the city, he cannot condone cuts to staff and programs.

The mayor balked at calling on his new appointees to weigh in on taking out a loan or forcing out Martinez. However, Mitchell Johnson, one of Johnson’s appointees and the former executive director of the Developing Communities Project, said he hasn’t seen enough dedication to transforming schools from the “corporate leaders in CPS.”

The final Johnson appointee is Niles Thomas, a U.S. Air Force veteran and a labor and political organizer who formerly worked as 21st Ward superintendent for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

Martinez has come under heavy criticism from the union in recent months.

The acrimony between Johnson and Martinez spilled into public view when the CPS CEO said the mayor asked for his resignation late last month, although Johnson has disputed that.

Martinez has said he does not intend to resign. He has gotten some support from district principals, business leaders, and some elected officials.

In a Monday statement, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the union “looks forward to collaborating with the new board members to enact the transformation of our public schools that our students and educators need and deserve.”

This story has been updated to include additional comments from Mayor Brandon Johnson, his appointees to the Chicago Board of Education, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates. It also includes a clarification that Debby Pope retired from the union earlier this year.

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

All Chicago Board of Education members to resign amid tensions between Mayor Brandon Johnson and CEO Pedro Martinez

2024-10-04T22:55:50+00:00

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The entire seven-member Chicago Board of Education will resign in the coming weeks after months of tension between Mayor Brandon Johnson and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

The resignations pave the way for Johnson to appoint new board members who could then carry out his wishes, including potentially firing Martinez. Johnson’s office said late Friday he will announce new appointments on Monday at 10:30 a.m.

Word of the resignations comes more than a week after the school board took no action to remove Martinez and about a month before the city’s first school board elections, which will create for the first time a hybrid board of 10 elected members and 11 appointed by the mayor. In three decades of mayoral control, no Chicago mayor has replaced all of their hand-picked members so quickly. Johnson hand-picked six of seven members last July.

The upheaval is also happening amid contract negotiations with Johnson’s former employer the Chicago Teachers Union.

In a joint statement Friday, Johnson and the current appointed school board announced all current members would “transition from service” later this month.

“None of the members leaving the current Board planned to continue onto the hybrid Board, and none are running for election. With the unprecedented increase in Board membership, transitioning new members now will allow them time to orient and gain critical experience prior to welcoming additional elected and appointed members in 2025,” the statement read.

Johnson said this week that he never discusses personnel issues in public. But he told reporters Wednesday, “I was elected to fight for the people of the city and whoever is in the way, get out of it.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Jen Johnson, deputy mayor for education, youth, and human services, said the mayor’s office “did not ask for resignations.”

“We knew that none of these board members were running [for election] or going to stay, and so we collaborated to ensure that there was a shepherding, a passing of the torch, as we approach this new board,” Johnson said, adding that all seven board members signed on to the statement the mayor’s office sent to the press.

Earlier this month, the mayor asked Martinez to step down — which he publicly later denied doing. Nonetheless, Martinez refused to resign and the school board has declined so far to fire him.

Board members have declined to comment publicly on Martinez’s clash with Brandon Johnson, but the board has in recent months backed Martinez in a couple of decisions that defied the mayor’s wishes. That includes adopting this year’s budget, as well as declining Johnson’s request for CPS to take out a short-term loan to cover some upcoming costs.

The board members stepping down are Board President Jianan Shi, Elizabeth Todd-Breland, who was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Mary Fahey Hughes, Tanya Woods, Mariela Estrada, Michelle Morales, and Rudy Lozano Jr.

Shi and Todd-Breland declined to comment further Friday. The other members have not returned emails or calls asking for comment on the resignation rumors this week.

The resignations will pave the way for Johnson to appoint new people to fill the vacancies on the board, who could then vote to approve a short-term loan and fire Martinez. The next school board meeting is Oct. 16, one of few remaining scheduled meetings before the new partially-elected, 21-member school board is sworn in on Jan. 15, 2025.

“The board certainly will have the same authority, to evaluate the CEO against the objectives, and they will, you know, have to certainly tackle the incompleteness of the budget,” Deputy Mayor Johnson said.

Johnson did not directly answer when asked if it is the mayor’s hope that the new board will fire Martinez and approve a loan.

The mayor “will work with this new board just as he did with the current board to ensure we are protecting investments in our schools and that we are not cutting and using the truly chaotic solutions of past administrations, which harmed students in communities for generations,” she said.

In a statement, CPS CEO Martinez commended the board members “for their steadfast dedication to ensuring greater equity in our system, emphasizing our collective responsibility to improve the quality of education for those who are furthest from opportunity.”

If the mayor’s intention is to install a new board in order to fire Martinez, it would “be a group that has never evaluated [Martinez], has never worked with him,” according to a source familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak with the press. “They don’t know any of his work, they haven’t been part of any of these conversations.”

That source also noted that new board members typically have an orientation, which could be difficult to wedge in before the board’s first meeting.

In order to conduct business, the school board must have a quorum, which board rules define as “a majority of the full membership of the Board of Education then serving.”

Deputy Mayor Johnson declined to specify the exact date of departure for each current board member, calling the latter a “personal decision” for each person.

A CPS central office staffer, who was not authorized to speak with the press, said the board “doesn’t want to undermine the mayor publicly” and feels board members were pressured to leave for not adhering to the mayor’s wishes. Another source familiar with the situation, also not authorized to speak with the media, questioned the official explanation.

“The mayor’s office will try to spin this as a transition,” the source said. “There is no credible explanation for why seven people would all leave a month or two ahead of time to facilitate a transition.”

The mood in the CPS central office was “like a funeral home” Friday as news of the resignations broke, according to the central office staffer, who said many people were sad to see the board departures.

“You could tell they really care about what’s going on at the district,” the staffer said, adding that they have worked with multiple CPS boards. “They have a sense of responsibility that I think I haven’t seen in the past.”

Multiple board members had been in serious discussions to resign as of at least Sunday, three sources told Chalkbeat.

As rumors of resignations floated earlier this week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he hoped the school board would not resign before new members are elected. Friday morning, former Chicago school board member and once interim-CPS CEO Jesse Ruiz put out a statement thanking current board members and urging them to “stay the course.”

“Despite all the pressures I know you all are under, I truly hope you continue to provide the steady leadership, governance and oversight that is critical for our public institutions to operate in the best interest of ALL its stakeholders,” Ruiz wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The school board shakeup likely won’t have an immediate effect on schools, students, and educators, said Jeffery Henig, professor emeritus of politics and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, who has studied mayoral control of school boards.

The resignations “will create a potential embarrassment” for the mayor, but also give Johnson a chance to “step in strongly” and make swift decisions that he thinks are necessary, Henig said.

The turmoil could, however, create long-term problems for the new board, which may be tasked with replacing Martinez, hiring a permanent replacement, or addressing the issue of borrowing to cover costs, he said.

“This dramatic gesture by the current board could set into motion enough turmoil and public positioning and open vying for leadership in one faction [of the school board] versus another, that it would make it harder for the new board to set an even course at the beginning,” Henig said.

Some candidates running for school board in the November election began issuing statements.

Kate Doyle, a candidate in District 2, said she was “disappointed to see leaders step away” at a critical time and that if elected, she would “work to ensure that decisions are made transparently and with the long-term success of our students in mind.”

Tensions between Martinez, Johnson building for months

In its year-plus tenure, the Johnson-appointed Board of Education has pursued and approved policies that line up ideologically with the mayor. That includes making a commitment to prioritize neighborhood schools, moving away from student-based budgeting for schools, and barring police officers from school campuses.

Martinez and his administration worked in tandem with the board to develop and implement those changes. But the school board has had some frustrations with his performance, WBEZ reported last week. According to documents related to his annual evaluation, board members felt blindsided or unprepared in certain circumstances. Still, CPS told WBEZ that the board and Martinez “have worked collaboratively throughout our tenure to have open dialogue, fostering a respectful and professional relationship.”

“It’s true that the board has been frustrated with Pedro along the way,” said the source familiar with the situation. “But I do think that, in my knowledge of the situation, there has been this relentless pressure to fire Pedro for cause and do it quickly, and the board is not comfortable doing that.”

According to Martinez’s contract, the board would need to provide six months notice before firing him without cause. If the board fired him for just cause, such as criminal activity, he would have to leave immediately. Martinez could sue the district if he believes he was wrongfully terminated.

At the heart of the tension between Johnson, his school board, and Martinez is the district’s budget, which faced a half-billion-dollar deficit before CPS made cuts to close it. That deficit existed largely because billions of federal COVID dollars that the district used to beef up staffing and invest in new programs, such as tutoring, expired this week.

The district’s $9.9 billion budget approved in August did not set aside dollars for the new teachers contract, which it is currently negotiating. It is not unusual for the school district to amend its budget once a contract deal has been reached. WBEZ recently reported that the district has outlined several options, including the “last resort” option of furloughs and layoffs.

Johnson criticized the budget plan, which included the same amount of funding for schools but resulted in other cuts, including of support staff who CPS said will be reassigned or paid for the rest of the year.

The district also did not include a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching staff that CPS began paying in 2020 when Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, was in office. Johnson opposed that cost shift before he became mayor, but has now asked CPS to continue paying it as he works to close a $223 million deficit in the city’s current budget and a nearly $1 billion deficit projected for 2025.

Johnson was expected to deliver his city budget proposal in a speech to City Council on Oct. 16, but earlier this week the mayor’s office announced Johnson would deliver his budget on Oct. 30, a week after the school board is scheduled to meet.

Over the summer, Johnson asked CPS to take out a short-term loan to help pay for the cost of the pension payment and the added expenses of contracts for the teachers and principals unions. Martinez and the board refused, in fear that taking on such a loan would saddle the district with high-interest rates and deepen its looming deficit for years to come.

The board’s departure so close to the election will likely turn up heat on school board candidates, said Henig, the Columbia professor who has studied mayoral control.

“If the candidates haven’t been forced to address this, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure on them to address this,” Henig said.

Union negotiations turn up heat on Martinez

The conflict is compounded by ongoing contract negotiations between the district and the Chicago Teachers Union, where Johnson worked as an organizer before his foray into politics. The union’s wide-ranging proposal package asks for 9% raises, more staffing, and more support for students, but the district has said its financial challenges remain – and less than 10% of the CTU proposals could create a $4 billion deficit for the district by the 2029-30 school year..

The union further turned up the heat on school district officials after saying it obtained a list of potential co-locations between 140 schools. The district, Martinez, and the Board of Education have said they have no plans to close schools. In letters to staff and families earlier this month, Martinez said the list was created as part of its analysis for the five-year strategic plan, and that it led district leaders and the board to affirm that they did not want to close schools.

The union’s House of Delegates recently passed a vote of no-confidence in Martinez.

Under state law, no school closures can happen in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025. After the union’s claims over the past couple of weeks, the now-outgoing board passed a resolution Thursday, which Martinez prompted, that calls for no school closures until 2027.

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

Chicago school board doesn’t fire CEO but does commit to no school closures until 2027

2024-09-27T02:49:10+00:00

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Despite weeks of pressure from Mayor Brandon Johnson and the teachers union, the Chicago Board of Education did not remove Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez from his post during its Thursday meeting.

The school board did unanimously pass a resolution put forward by Martinez that said it will not close schools until 2027. That vote came at the end of what was an often tense public meeting that drew many supporters and opponents of Martinez.

In a statement issued earlier this week, the district said the board — which was appointed by Johnson — would not take action on Martinez’s contract. But the veracity of that statement came into question after Board President Jianan Shi said the board had not approved it.

On Thursday, Shi did not directly comment on the mayor’s request for Martinez to resign. He said the board “cannot and will not and won’t discuss confidential or personnel matters publicly.”

Before the board adopted the resolution, Shi also addressed recent claims from the Chicago Teachers Union about school closures that have helped fuel a push to fire Martinez. Shi said there was no plan to close schools, which drew applause.

The conflict between Johnson and Martinez reflects a fundamental rift over how the district should navigate a time when federal COVID relief dollars are running out and major deficits loom.

Tensions between the two surfaced this summer when Johnson criticized the district’s new budget. The CPS budget includes cuts to help eliminate a budget deficit but does not include a $175 million payment to a municipal pension fund that covers non-teaching staff and other city workers.

The latter was something Johnson — before he became mayor — had criticized his predecessor Lori Lightfoot about. But now, the refusal by CPS to pay for some pension costs has helped inflate the deficit in the city budget that Johnson now oversees.

Johnson pushed CPS to take out a short-term loan to cover the costs of the pension payment, as well as union contracts with the teachers and principals unions. But CPS and Martinez declined due to fears about debt.

These tensions have been exacerbated by contract negotiations that began this summer between the union — where Johnson was an organizer — and CPS. Johnson remains a staunch ally of the union, which has proposed 9% pay raises, more classroom staffing, additional support for students, and access to affordable housing for homeless students, among other things.

Last week, Johnson asked Martinez to resign, and Martinez declined. In an extraordinary public move, Martinez wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune saying that he wants to maintain stability for the district and described the talk of closures as an effort to undermine him.

Rather than discuss Martinez’s job status, Shi tried to draw attention Thursday to the district’s efforts to provide more resources to schools “farthest from opportunity.”

Claims about school closures are ‘misinformation’ says Martinez

On Thursday, Martinez did not address his future. But he reiterated that the district has no plans to close schools and again described the claims about closures as part of a “misinformation campaign.”

Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, stopped short of calling for Martinez’s resignation on Thursday. But he said during the meeting that schools would be better off if Martinez “could exert a fraction of the energy and chutzpah you’ve exercised to defend your job” toward ensuring schools had more funding.

The union recently said it had obtained a district analysis listing dozens of new school co-locations. But CPS said the analysis ultimately led the district to decide against closing schools.

Still, those reassurances have failed to quell all concerns. Jitu Brown, a longtime activist and school board candidate on the West Side who has been endorsed by the teachers union, led a press conference with a few community organizations before Thursday’s meeting during which they displayed what they said was the list of co-locations. Brown said they got them from a reliable source but declined to say who. (Neither the union nor the district has shared the list with Chalkbeat.)

Brown said the list reminds him of school closures under former Mayor Richard Daley.

“Every year that Mayor Daley and his appointed school board closed 15 schools, closed 8 schools, closed 10 schools, they always told us, ‘These are just ideas,’ so they must be out of their rabid mind if they believe that we don’t think this is serious,” Brown said.

The district has said it is considering a co-location at just one school: Velma Thomas Early Childhood Center on the city’s South Side.

At least a dozen people from the Velma Thomas community, including parents and teachers, sharply criticized the district and Martinez on Thursday for not taking swift action to buy the school’s building, which they said is up for sale. The church that owns the building offered it to CPS but said the district declined to purchase it, the McKinley Park News reported in May.

Martinez did not address that claim, but said “no decisions have been made” and won’t be until they engage the school community. A teacher interrupted, “You’re letting them sell the building!”

Separately, several people spoke both in favor and against Martinez. Natasha Dunn, a CPS parent who is part of Black Community Collaborative, said “despite his faults,” she credited CPS for launching a working group to explore how to better support Black students.

Ald. Gilbert Villegas, Ald. Silvana Tabares, and Ald. Nick Sposato all spoke in support of keeping Martinez. Sposato wore a “Vote For Pedro” T-shirt — a reference to the movie “Napoleon Dynamite.”

But Ald. Byron Sigcho Lopez strongly criticized Martinez, in part because of the claims around closures.

“It is time the Board of Education holds CPS accountable,” he said.

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

Chicago Board of Education will consider promising no school closures until 2027

2024-09-25T02:31:38+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is slated to vote on a resolution that commits to no school closures until 2027 — a response to a Chicago Teachers Union assertion that CEO Pedro Martinez is planning closures, which he has staunchly denied.

The vote on the resolution, which Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointed school board will consider at its Thursday meeting, comes days after Johnson asked Martinez to resign. In an op-ed for Chicago Tribune published Tuesday, Martinez said he will not step down — and described the talk of closures as a tactic aimed at undermining him.

The resolution is worded as a recommendation from Martinez that the board will be asked to approve. But in the Tribune piece, Martinez said both he and Board President Jianan Shi are asking the board to approve the resolution. In a letter to staff and families, Martinez said the resolution has the board’s “enthusiastic support.”

Asked Tuesday night if Shi partnered with Martinez on the resolution, Shi – in his first public comments since news of Johnson’s resignation request — said Martinez proposed it. Asked if he would vote to approve it, Shi said, “As a former organizer, educator, I have no intention of closing schools.”

If passed by the board, the resolution would place a moratorium on school closures until the end of the 2026-27 school year. Currently, state law prevents Chicago from closing schools until Jan. 15, 2025, when the city’s new, partially elected school board will be sworn in.

In an email, Mary Ann Fergus, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools, said the resolution is binding, “but, of course, it could be reversed by future Boards.”

In his letter to staff and families, Martinez wrote that the resolution was an effort to “put to rest” what he described as a “misinformation campaign.”

“I’m disappointed that this misinformation campaign is out there, because I know it has caused unnecessary stress and worry for many in our school communities,” Martinez wrote.

Johnson’s request for Martinez’s resignation raised questions over whether the school board might move to fire Martinez at Thursday’s meeting. On Tuesday evening, a CPS spokesperson initially sent reporters a statement purporting to be from the district and the board that said there was no plan to take action on the CEO’s contract or to secure a loan at the meeting. The statement also said that “there have been an unfortunate series of rumors aimed at discrediting CEO Martinez and his leadership team,” and that any reference to school closures “is a tactic to provide more chaos and uncertainty, to steal precious time away from delivering a world-class education to our children.”

Soon after, Shi tweeted that he hadn’t seen the statement before it went out, and told Chalkbeat that the statement “caught me off guard. This was not a Board of Education statement.”

Minutes later, the district spokesperson sent out an email saying the earlier statement was incorrectly labeled and came from CPS only.

Shi declined to say whether he agreed with the statement and wouldn’t comment on Johnson’s request for Martinez to resign, saying he cannot discuss personnel issues.

Martinez’s reassurance fail to sway union leaders

School closures are a political third rail in Chicago, where in 2013, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to close 50 schools is still painful for many Chicago residents.

Last week, the union said it had obtained a school facilities analysis that included a list of 70 schools that could be consolidated with 70 others. Citing this document, the union’s House of Delegates passed a vote of no confidence in Martinez.

Martinez has said he would not close schools during his tenure as head of CPS. In a letter last week to staff, Martinez said the school board requested the analysis, and that the district conducted it to help create a five-year strategic plan, which places more focus on bolstering neighborhood schools. Martinez has said the analysis led the board and CPS officials to decide that closures were unnecessary.

Despite Martinez’s assurances over the past week and the planned resolution, union leaders continued to press the issue of possible closures at a public bargaining session at Cameron Elementary on the West Side Tuesday evening.

The session was focused on the union’s demand to expand the number of campuses participating in the Sustainable Community Schools program, a joint district-union initiative that gives extra funding to schools to enlist community nonprofits, beef up after-school programs, and strengthen parent engagement, among other things.

The school district has offered to expand the program from 20 campuses now to 45 within four years, a more modest expansion than the union and Johnson’s administration have sought.

At the session, union Vice President Jackson Potter held up a list of schools flagged for possible consolidation as part of the facilities analysis. He noted that some Sustainable Community Schools are on the list, and questioned whether efforts to transform them could be moot if they end up shuttered down the road.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, again categorically denied that officials are eyeing closures.

“This referenced list was never made as a recommendation nor was it ever considered as a next step or follow up by anyone,” she said, “There never was a plan to close schools.”

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates countered that staff vacancies and large class sizes in some schools were undermining them, potentially setting them up for closure down the road.

“I am looking at the schools on the list and seeing how they’ve been starved for resources,” she said.

Gates and Potter pressed officials on possible staffing cuts to help balance the district’s almost $10 billion budget, which did not include any dollars for teacher and principal contract costs when the school board passed it earlier this summer.

District officials acknowledged that staffing shortages continue to be an issue. But they argued the district — which added 6,000 positions, including about 2,500 teachers, in the past four years — is on the right track.

“The bottom line is that there are more qualified educators in CPS than at any point before,” said Ben Felton, the chief talent officer.

He said there is no plan to lay off district employees midyear, though he did not rule out the need for such cuts later as enrollments shift.

Budget issue creates rift between mayor and Martinez

Tensions between the mayor and CPS became clear after Johnson told reporters that he was unhappy with the CPS budget, which had a slew of cuts to close its deficit.

Johnson’s desire to oust Martinez came after Martinez and the board declined to cover a chunk of pension payments for non-teaching staff, a move that helped widen a city budget deficit.

When the Johnson administration pushed CPS to take out a short-term loan to help pay for the pension costs, as well as the costs of new teachers and principals union contracts, Martinez and the board balked.

In an internal memo obtained by Chalkbeat, CPS leadership said taking out such a loan would be fiscally irresponsible, could result in a further downgrade of its bond ratings, and would worsen the district’s long-term debt. Martinez publicly confirmed those concerns in his Tribune op-ed.

During the bargaining session, district and union officials joined in praising the community schools model and professing a desire to expand it. But at a press conference afterwards, Davis Gates again took aim at Martinez, calling him a “clown show CEO” standing in the way of a mayor, teachers union and school board in agreement about pumping more dollars into schools and transforming them.

“He can just sign on the dotted line and then we can work together to win more funding for our schools,” she said.

CPS officials canceled their press conference.

In a statement Tuesday, City Hall spokesperson Ronnie Reese did not directly address the resolution.

“As an organizer, Mayor Johnson fought against school closures and participated in a hunger strike to save neighborhood schools,” Reese said. “His vision for public education in Chicago calls for investments in our students — not layoffs and harmful school actions that have traumatized families and communities across the city.”

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

Mila Koumpilova is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asks CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to leave, but he won’t go

2024-09-20T23:44:21+00:00

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This story has been updated to include statements from the mayor’s office, the Chicago Teachers Union president, and Chicago Public Schools.

Mayor Brandon Johnson asked Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to resign on Wednesday, but Martinez declined, according to published reports and at least one source familiar with internal discussions.

The mayor’s request, which was first reported by FOX32, as well as the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, comes weeks after reports first surfaced that Johnson was laying the groundwork to replace Martinez. The schools chief was first appointed in September 2021 by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Martinez is “taking it hard because he loves this job,” a source familiar with internal discussions told Chalkbeat.

It is now up to the Chicago Board of Education to decide if Martinez should stay or go. Sources previously told Chalkbeat that school board members were unwilling to fire Martinez. But on Friday, the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ quoted a source close to the mayor who said Martinez has “lost the board.”

Board members, including President Jianan Shi, Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland, and others did not immediately respond to calls requesting comment. The board is scheduled to meet next Thursday.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said the office does not comment on personnel matters.

“What we can say is that Mayor Johnson has a clear vision for public education that includes fully funded schools, access to the arts, athletics and special education resources, and a nurse and social worker in every building,” the statement said, echoing some bargaining table demands of the Chicago Teachers Union, which propelled Johnson, a former union organizer, to the mayor’s office last year.

In a statement, a CPS spokesperson said Martinez and his leadership team are focused on the “positive momentum of the new school year” and implementing the recently approved five-year strategic plan. They touted post-pandemic academic gains and said “students have clearly benefited from the increased stability in our school system.”

“Our top priority has always been investing in our schools and students while ensuring long-term stability for the system. That means being true to our new school funding model which will promote more equity, and being consistent in our pledge not to close or consolidate any schools,” the statement said.

Johnson’s desire to replace Martinez comes after he pushed school district leaders to take out a short-term loan to cover a pension payment for non-teaching staff and new costs related to the yet-to-be-settled Chicago Teachers Union contract.

It also comes as school district leaders are in tense contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. The mayor is also struggling to address looming deficits to the city budget he now oversees. Those deficits are driven, in part, by the CPS administration and school board’s refusal to take out the short-term loan.

Earlier this summer, Johnson also voiced criticism about the district’s budget, which maintained the same level of funding for schools but had a slew of cuts in order to close the deficit. Most of those cuts were to central office and other expenses that did not directly affect classrooms. But they also included the positions of hundreds of teaching assistants and other support staff – prompting intense criticism from the union – even as the district guaranteed that most would get jobs on other campuses or it would cover their salaries for the next year.

In the past, the union would target the mayor for slow or tense contract talks. This year, the union directed its criticism directly at Martinez, saying Martinez is not budging or fighting aggressively enough to find more money for its proposals, which include 9% raises for teachers and a range of ideas to add staff, limit class sizes, and expand support for homeless students, migrant families, and others.

Martinez’s administration has offered the union raises of up to 5% in each of the next four years, which would bring the average educator salary to more than $110,000 by the contract’s end, according to the district, along with significant benefit increases at no cost to teachers. CPS and CTU are scheduled to hold a public bargaining session on Tuesday.

The union turned up the pressure on Martinez this week after alleging that it has documents showing that the district is considering school closures. Martinez and CPS have insisted they are not looking to close any schools, and one of the sources close to Martinez said the issue appears to be a tactic to undermine Martinez as the mayor’s office and union are pushing for his ouster.

Stacy Davis Gates, the CTU president, invoked the closures in a statement Friday. She pointed to the rumored closures and unspecified “massive cuts” she said Martinez is planning as reasons why he should step down.

“We need a leader at CPS who will be a champion for funding in Springfield and a partner with parents, teachers, and communities to actually invest in transforming the district, carry forward the just passed plan, and not use that as lip service to hide what they’re actually planning,” her statement said, referring to Martinez’ five-year strategic plan unveiled this week.

The district, which recently closed a half-billion-dollar budget deficit, is facing a challenging financial outlook and did not budget funds to cover a new teachers contract or pension costs for non-teaching staff. So far, despite some joint lobbying from the Martinez administration and the union, state lawmakers and the governor have not shown interest in a major funding increase for CPS.

Chalkbeat submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the mayor’s office for internal emails sent over the summer discussing the district’s CEO position. The correspondence received in response showed various exchanges between top officials in the mayor’s office regarding the district’s budget and related issues, but most emails were redacted in their entirety, citing a provision in the law that protects some correspondence reflecting deliberations ahead of making decisions.

About 460 district principals and assistant principals representing almost 70% of the district’s campuses recently wrote to the school board urging members to keep Martinez at the helm. They argued that Martinez has ushered in a more responsive, collaborative leadership after years of CEO churn — and that his dismissal would cause enormous disruption at a key juncture for the district and hurt students.

One principal who signed the letter and requested anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter said in an interview with Chalkbeat that reports of Martinez’s possible ouster are a grave cause for concern for school leaders.

“We have leadership in place that has started to listen to everybody — and they have a plan,” he said. “There is no smooth pathway to helping kids if the leadership is constantly changing.”

The principal noted Martinez has presided over academic recovery in the district post-pandemic and just unveiled a five-year strategic plan that school leaders and educators can rally around. The plan reflects some key teachers union priorities, including strengthening neighborhood schools and expanding arts and other programs.

“This has nothing to do with performance,” he said. “This has everything to do with politics.”

Amid the district’s increasing financial pressures, he added, “CEO Martinez is just being set up to be the fall guy.”

The advocacy group Kids First Chicago’s parent advisory board also voiced dismay at the prospect of Martinez’s ouster.

“This decision, at the beginning of the school year, during ongoing negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union, and just months before the transition to an elected school board, could have a negative impact on Chicago’s students,” the parents said in a statement, calling on the mayor and school board to be transparent about any decisions about the district’s leadership.

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.

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

Explaining Chicago Public Schools: The types of schools

2024-09-18T10:00:02+00:00

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In Chicago, all children are guaranteed a spot in their zoned neighborhood school.

But Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s fourth largest district, also offers other choices, such as magnets, charters, and selective enrollment schools — and leaving your neighborhood to attend school has increasingly become the norm.

Explaining CPS

Roughly 44% of elementary school students enrolled at a school other than the one they were zoned for in the 2022-23 school year, while about 75% of high schoolers did the same, according to district data.

Twenty years ago, shortly after Chicago rapidly expanded school choice, only about a quarter of elementary school students enrolled in schools outside of their attendance area and 46% of high schoolers did the same.

The current appointed Chicago Board of Education — which will be replaced in January by a hybrid board made up of elected and appointed members — now wants to increase the percentage of students who go to school close to home. This new stated goal comes after the board expressed a desire last December to rethink the district’s school choice system. Board members said they want to invest more resources in neighborhood schools while also improving racial disparities at some of the district’s most sought-after schools that require applications and testing to get in.

Elected school board members will represent a varying number of different types of schools in their districts. Some have more magnet and selective schools than others, while others have a large percentage of charter schools.

Decades of policies approved by past school boards have created a school system where most students can and do attend beyond their zoned school, known more generally as school choice. District leaders, the school board, and even federal courts have also overseen the rules that govern who goes to which schools.

Today, Chicago families have a lot of options when it comes to public education: magnet schools, language academies, public Montessori, gifted centers, STEM schools, International Baccalaureate programs, and more. Students apply for different schools using an online system called GoCPS.

While hundreds of schools across the city enroll students based on where they live, dozens of schools and programs – such as the district’s 11 selective enrollment high schools – require students to take tests and meet other requirements for admission.

CPS also offers magnet programs, which often have a specialized curriculum and require an application, offering seats based on a lottery system. And then there are Chicago’s roughly 120 charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed and operate on contractual agreements with CPS. Charters also require an application to get in and also admit students by lottery.

The variety of options allows families to find the best fit for their child, but can be dizzying to navigate and has been criticized for being stressful and cumbersome.

Desegregation order paves the way for school choice

Chicago began offering public education in the 1840s, shortly after it became an official city, at just a few schools. The district officially established a board of education in the 1850s, and student enrollment rapidly grew as the city’s population ballooned.

By the 1960s, Chicago’s public schools were starkly racially segregated, due in part to racist housing policies that prevented Black families from finding housing in neighborhoods where white families lived. On the city’s South and West sides, schools serving mostly Black students were overcrowded and had fewer resources than schools in more affluent, white areas.

Families and civil rights activists protested segregation, even organizing a massive school walkout in 1963. The district’s superintendent at the time, James Redmond, attempted to spur integration by opening magnet programs.

By 1980, the federal government intervened and forced Chicago to sign a consent decree that required CPS to integrate its schools. Though some magnet and selective schools already existed, the federal court oversight prompted the district to create more. These schools were open to students from across the city and the district created racial quotas for schools in order to desegregate them.

Selective enrollment schools grew in the 1990s under then-CEO Paul Vallas, who more recently ran for mayor against current Mayor Brandon Johnson.

With the city’s pleading, a federal court ended the consent decree in 2009. The district replaced its racial quota system with a tier system, which assigns students a tier based on where they live using socioeconomic data about their neighborhood, including income, education levels, how many single-parent households there are, how many homes are owner-occupied, and how many households speak a language other than English. The district then prioritizes seats at selective schools, in part, based on each student’s tier. A decade after the consent decree ended, many of these selective schools had become more racially homogenous.

Today, school board policy stipulates that the first 30% of seats at selective enrollment schools go to kids with the highest scores on the High School Admissions Test. The rest of the seats are split up among those who scored the highest across each of the four tiers. Magnets, which do not require a test, split their seats across the four tiers.

School choice accelerates under education reform plan

In 2004, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced an ambitious plan to open 100 new schools under an effort to provide better school options. He called it Renaissance 2010.

As part of that initiative, the district began opening more charter schools, which were authorized by state law in 1997. The board approves contractual agreements with charter schools.

But in recent years, as district leaders have more closely scrutinized charter schools, boards under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Johnson have approved shorter terms for charters. For example, in January, the board renewed contracts for a majority of charters that were up for renewal by three or four years, even though state law allows extensions for up to 10 years.

Most of the schools that opened under Renaissance 2010 did not have neighborhood attendance boundaries and many had specialized academic programs.

Daley’s massive school reform effort came hand-in-hand with school closings. Annually, district officials would target schools with poor academic performance or under enrollment for closure.

Over the course of almost two decades, the appointed school board approved roughly 200 school closings, including 50 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013, as it expanded the district’s market-based system of choice with specialty schools that families could choose over their zoned school.

Today’s leaders are pushing back on choice

Many of the magnet and selective enrollment schools meant to help desegregate the district never became integrated. Some have also become more segregated since federal court oversight ended.

Others are racially and economically integrated, but serve more white and Asian American students than the district as a whole and have been enrolling fewer Black students than in the past.

Additionally, families have for years said the high-stakes process of testing and applying to high school is stressful for their children.

On the campaign trail, Johnson promised to bolster neighborhood schools and make them places families want to enroll their children in.

In December, his appointed board promised to rethink school choice, signaling potential changes to admissions or other policies governing those schools. However, in its recently released strategic plan, the board did not call for any such policy changes. It did set goals to invest more resources in neighborhood schools and grow the percentage of children attending schools within their neighborhoods or community areas.

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

CPS five-year plan aims to get more kids to attend neighborhood schools

2024-09-16T22:08:41+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools unveiled a new five-year strategic plan Monday that sets out to increase the number of students attending schools in their neighborhood and redefine what it means to be a successful student.

The plan did not call for specific changes to selective enrollment, magnet, or charter schools, a possibility signaled in December when the board first announced its intention to rethink school choice. But the plan does seek to bolster resources for neighborhood schools “with an intentional focus on disinvested communities.”

Twenty years ago, when Chicago started expanding magnet, selective, and charter schools, just about a quarter of elementary school students enrolled in schools outside of their attendance area and 46% of high schoolers did the same.

The plan outlines priorities and specific goals to reach by 2029 in three different areas — students, schools, and communities — but did not signal policy changes. Officials, however, left the possibility open for future changes as a result of the plan.

“I don’t think this document is intended to indicate new policies,” Chicago Board of Education Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland told reporters. “As engagement continues around the different topics and areas there, if a policy change is seen as necessary, then perhaps that will be the case.”

The board will vote on the plan on Wednesday at a special meeting.

Under the plan, the district set the following goals to reach by 2029:

Increase the percentage of students who attend a school in their neighborhood or community area. The district said it does not have a specific percentage it wants to reach, and that this is not just limited to a student’s zoned school.
Increase the number of students in grades 3-8 who pass the state’s reading and math exams by 20%.
Reduce chronic absenteeism – when a student misses 10 or more days of school – by 15%.
Reduce teacher vacancies by 25% in schools that serve majorities of Black and Hispanic students.
Increase funding for improving school facilities by $250 million.
Increase internet bandwidth by 400% at elementary schools and by 900% at high schools to prevent outages and slow internet connections.
Ensure that all schools will have a “robust” behavioral health team.
Decrease class sizes, with priority on schools with higher needs.
Ensure that all schools have the capacity to hire arts, P.E., and other “special instruction” staff.
Increase the percentage of students enrolled in at least one district after-school program by 8 percentage points, from 42% currently to 50%.
Transition 25% of personnel who come from the private sector, such as custodians and bus drivers, to district employees.

District wants to redefine student success

The plan also outlines specific priorities for certain groups of students. For example, the district said it wants to improve achievement and opportunities for Black students, who are disproportionately less likely to read and do math on grade level compared to their peers and are disciplined at higher rates; ensure students learn more than one language by the time they graduate and boost support for English learners; and improve quality of education and instruction for both students with disabilities and kids in pre-K through second grade.

District officials and school board leaders also want more emphasis on how students experience school.

Officials said the district will continue to track things like graduation rate and student growth and proficiency on subjects for their grade level. But it will also consider other factors when considering student and school success, such as how well schools are supporting students who are chronically absent, how many students are participating in early college and career credit programs, and if schools are providing “high quality curriculum,” according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova.

The district has also set an explicit goal to improve the number of schools rated strongly as “supportive environments” on the annual 5Essentials survey, which comes from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and is supposed to measure a school’s culture and climate.

“Social-emotional learning, student well-being, it’s not an add-on,” Todd-Breland said. “If it’s not deeply integrated into everything that we do, then learning cannot happen.”

The district also included priorities to increase funding for all of its schools.

Todd-Breland said board meetings will soon be restructured so they monitor the plan’s goals, “so that every month when you come to a board meeting, you’re going to find out something new about how the strategic plan is being monitored and how things are moving.”

But it’s unclear if that meeting structure will remain come January when the school board grows from 7 appointed members to 21 members, 10 of whom will be elected by Chicago voters on Nov. 5.

Strategic plan comes amid change, tensions at CPS

Martinez and his administration unveiled the plan eight months after the school board passed a resolution signaling the district’s intent to curtail a choice system that leaders said has undermined many neighborhood schools and bred inequities in the experience of students in different parts of the city.

That resolution was in keeping with campaign promises by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, who called the district’s system “a Hunger Games scenario” in which families scramble to flee their neighborhood campuses for spots in coveted test-in and lottery programs across the city. Chicago’s selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools are also prized by many families, and district leaders have spent the intervening months reassuring state lawmakers, parents, and others that they won’t close or severely weaken these choices.

Asked why the plan revealed Monday did not include explicit policy changes for choice schools, Todd-Breland said the board heard from people who valued schools beyond their neighborhood options, including selective enrollment and charter schools.

“What felt more important, and what continues to be the more important thing … is that the lever of change in Chicago Public Schools is to invest in neighborhood schools and our communities furthest from opportunity to make sure there are pathways that families are confident in and have high quality education provided in them from pre-K through high school in their neighborhood,” Todd-Breland said.

Still, the strategic plan says academic gaps among students and challenges have worsened because of “our current competitive enrollment policies and previous accountability policy, which pitted schools against each other and sorted students based on academic performance in an under-resourced system, reinforcing cycles of inequity.”

Martinez is putting out the plan just as reports emerged that Johnson might be gearing up to replace him following disagreements with City Hall over how to tackle budget deficits and rocky contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. Those reports raise questions about the district’s ability to see the new blueprint through, after a run of frequent CEO comings-and-goings that have destabilized CPS.

In a statement, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said the “best parts” of the plan mirror the union’s current contract proposals with the district and that, at the bargaining table, Martinez is “out of step” with his own district.

“If the district actually led with this plan, then we’d have the partner we’re looking for to deliver for our students,” Davis Gates said.

Efforts to reinvigorate Chicago’s neighborhood schools date back to the tenure of Martinez’s predecessor, Janice Jackson, who served for three and a half years. She launched “equity grants” to give campuses with shrinking enrollment a funding boost as well as a program in which schools applied for dollars to start specialized programming, such as arts or STEM, in a bid to lure families seeking distinctive learning options. Jackson’s own five-year plan also emphasized improving how the district serves its Black students, especially Black boys.

After the school board’s December resolution, Martinez’ administration disclosed few details about the development of a new strategic plan, with officials saying they wanted to first hear from community members at a series of public meetings this spring. Officials said Monday that nearly 14,000 people “engaged” with the plan by providing feedback or attending community meetings.

But for some, the wait for more details on the plan produced anxiety about the future of school choice in Chicago. Families in the district’s selective enrollment and magnet programs worried those schools would be diminished – a claim CPS officials repeatedly denied and is not a part of the strategic plan released Monday. On some campuses, those worries spiked as the district unveiled a new approach to school budgeting in the spring that district leaders said would steer more dollars to campuses with the highest needs and correct for historical inequities in how Chicago distributed resources. At some selective schools, officials and parents said newly tight budgets made it hard to staff specialized programs.

The plan released Monday calls for the district to monitor both the strengths and weaknesses of the new funding formula.

In the spring, state lawmakers introduced a bill threatening to intervene if Chicago moved to close any of its selective and magnet programs. The bill didn’t gain traction during the legislative session, but it elicited reassurance from Johnson and district leaders that there were no plans to shutter these schools.

Anxiety has also run high among charter operators and families, who felt that the December resolution was taking clear aim at their schools. Last week, charter officials and parents rallied at a school board meeting to demand more clarity on the plan and a promise that it won’t undermine the city’s charters, which serve roughly a fifth of its students.

The plan calls for revisiting the district’s renewal process for charter schools in a couple of years, but provides no additional details.

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

Four hundred Chicago school leaders sign letter backing CEO Pedro Martinez

2024-09-03T15:27:26+00:00

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More than 400 Chicago Public Schools principals and assistant principals sent a letter to the school board Thursday urging its members to keep CEO Pedro Martinez at the helm of CPS amid reports that Mayor Brandon Johnson is gearing up to replace him.

The letter praised Martinez’s leadership and said removing him at the start of a new school year would destabilize the district and hurt students. Martinez and the school board clashed with the mayor this summer over the mayor’s suggestion that the district take out a short-term, high-interest loan to cover the cost of a contract CPS is negotiating with its teachers union and other expenses. News broke that Johnson was considering replacing the CEO after a tense open bargaining session with the Chicago Teachers Union, whose leadership has sharply criticized him.

The Thursday letter from school leaders across the city said the negotiations with the CTU and the reports of a possible change at the district’s helm are fostering “an atmosphere of uncertainty” at the school year’s start.

“Every school administrator knows that significant changes at the beginning of the school year can be detrimental to the students, staff, and families we serve,” the letter said.

But Troy LaRaviere, the head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Associations, the district’s principals union, distanced himself from the letter in comments during the school board’s monthly meeting Thursday. He said the petition was the work of “two or more of our conservative principals” — “good people who are just a little bit out of touch” — and argued Martinez must do more to earn the support of school leaders.

The association came to represent school leaders last year after state lawmakers allowed CPS principals to unionize and is also bargaining over its first contract with the district.

“Principals have never had stability in this district because we have never had a contract,” LaRaviere said.

LaRaviere did echo a concern that the letter from principals alluded to in passing: He said some of the teachers union’s proposals would infringe on the ability of school leaders to run their campuses as they see fit. He held up proposals that would give educators more control over selecting classroom curriculums and evaluating principals.

LaRaviere urged Martinez not to “bargain away principals’ rights in a teacher contract.”

In their letter, the principals said Martinez and Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, have cultivated a more collaborative culture and trust with school leaders. They have made headway in improving reading achievement in the early grades, career and technical education programs and school safety, among other gains, the principals said. They cautioned against letting politics affect the running of the district.

“We need to maintain the momentum behind the initiatives already underway that have been successful due to the support CEO Martinez has gained by listening to and trusting school leaders to give guidance on what is best for schools,” the letter said.

The district employs about 1,100 principals and assistant principals. According to one of the organizers of the letter, 462 principals and assistant principals from more than 300 schools signed the letter before it was formally submitted on Friday.

A couple of aldermen, David Moore and Gilbert Villegas, also addressed the board Thursday to praise Martinez and urge members to ensure he continues at the helm.

LaRaviere argued most principals feel bogged down by district mandates and unsupported by district leadership. He berated Martinez for not responding to the association’s outreach — and urged him to help settle a “fair and reasonable contract” with principals. The association had previously released a statement calling reports of a possible Martinez ouster “an ill-timed distraction from the pressing issues facing our school leaders.”

Earlier this year, the district approved a budget for the current fiscal year that did not build in any dollars for teacher salary and benefit increases or other proposals the teachers union has brought to the bargaining table. It also did not include a $175 million payment to a city staff pension fund that Johnson and teacher union have insisted the district cover — even though the union harshly criticized Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, for passing that cost on to CPS. In a budget forecast released Thursday that projected a $982.4 million gap, the mayor’s office said that gap is partly driven by CPS’s refusal to make the pension payment.

By most accounts, negotiations with the teachers union have not yielded much progress so far, amid efforts to rein in a roughly $500 million deficit and larger ones looming in the coming years. CTU president Stacy Davis Gates told the board Thursday that the district must aggressively lobby for more funding to transform schools. Without decisive action to bring in more dollars for schools, she said, she worries about school closures and staff layoffs next year.

“How do you sustain even what you have now?” she said.

This story has been updated to include the total number of signatures on the letter.

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

It’s the first day of school at Chicago Public Schools

2024-08-26T18:49:19+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools students returned to class Monday — amid an excessive heat warning, ongoing student transportation challenges, and growing friction between district leadership, the teachers union, and the mayor’s office.

Officials touted the district’s momentum in undoing some of the academic fallout from the pandemic and welcoming a larger, more diverse teacher workforce. But the kickoff to the school year was dampened by news that almost 2,000 students with disabilities are still waiting for a transportation route.

Meanwhile, Chicago Teachers Union leaders sharply criticized district CEO Pedro Martinez over what they see as too little progress in negotiations over a new contract for educators, ratcheting up tensions over the bargaining process as the district faces looming budget deficits.

The school year began on the heels of reports that Mayor Brandon Johnson is looking to replace Martinez at the helm amid disagreements over how the district should approach its financial predicament and the costs of a teacher contract. On Monday morning, Johnson and Martinez visited schools on the West Side to greet families together, though the mayor declined to take questions from reporters.

“Getting off to a good start is so critical and this year, we’re going to make sure that our children are seen and valued and that they can experience their purpose with new heights,” Johnson said. “With all the gains that we’ve made as a district, there’s still much work to be done.”

Johnson, a CPS parent himself, joked about the joy parents feel when sending their children back to school in the fall: “To all the parents out there who have been waiting for this moment, you’re welcome. Don’t ever say I ain’t done nothing for you.”

Then, there was the heat: As temperatures climbed above 90 degrees, the district canceled all outdoor sports games Monday and Tuesday, and moved recess and sports practices indoors. The district assured families that all classrooms have air conditioning, but many CPS buildings do not have cooling systems in the hallways and other shared spaces.

Amid tense contract talks, teachers union head criticizes CPS CEO

Last year, Johnson, a former CTU organizer and ally, appeared alongside Martinez and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates on the first day of school to usher in a new era of collaboration. But that was not the case this year.

Davis Gates visited Poe Classical Elementary School Monday morning and said staff there invited her to visit.

Davis Gates told Chalkbeat that she asked the mayor to keep Martinez on during the mayor’s transition period when he first took office – something she said she had not revealed publicly before.

Asked if she thinks Martinez should be replaced now, Davis Gates, who wrote an op-ed Monday in the Chicago Tribune criticizing Martinez, said, “I think that the Chicago Public Schools students deserve to be in an environment that we are in right now at Poe Classical. And if Pedro wants to do that, we should partner and get it done yesterday.”

She said Martinez has not tried hard enough to work with the union to meet its demands — a 700-plus proposal package that ranges from increasing teacher pay and adding more staff to schools to improving facilities, such as adding air conditioning to every school gym, and addressing larger societal issues such as student homelessness.

In negotiations, some of which have been held in public, district officials have pointed to budget constraints, noting that just 52 of those proposals would create a $3 billion budget deficit for the district by next school year. Union officials have pushed the district to find a way to pay for more demands, which Davis Gates said also focus on giving more to students, including librarians at every school, more arts education, and more sports programming.

Davis Gates pointed to Poe’s celebratory atmosphere on Monday that she wished existed at every school. The school continued its annual tradition of having a DJ play energizing music as families and kids walked through the school gates. Some younger students clung to their parents. Older students talked excitedly with their classmates. Staff greeted kids and some hugged. An emcee hyped up the crowd, as “It’s Time For the Percolator” boomed in the background.

“If you wanna know what we’re bargaining for, it is this right here, where the educators and the principals are a team; it is where parents, community, multigenerational [families] feel both welcomed and a critical part of it,” Davis Gates said. “These kids are going back to school — and they are smiling.”

Staff at Poe Classical Elementary School greet students on the first day of school.

Martinez and the CPS board have rejected a request from the Johnson administration to take out a short-term loan to pay, in part, for the cost of contract negotiations. As of mid-August, City Hall had continued to press CPS to take out a loan, a source close to CPS previously told Chalkbeat.

Both CPS and the union have also pushed the state to provide more funding to CPS, but state leaders have said that more money is not coming this year.

“If Pedro’s only resistance is his checkbook, that’s pathetic,” Davis Gates said.

Back on the West Side, the mayor’s Deputy Mayor of Education, Youth, and Human Services Jen Johnson told Chalkbeat that the mayor’s office will “make sure the district stays at the table and push them to make sure they’re making progress” with the union.

Hundreds of students with disabilities still without bus rides

As of Aug. 21, 15,586 students were eligible for district-provided transportation: 10,695 students with disabilities, 4,882 general education students, and nine students in temporary living situations, according to a district spokesperson.

Chicago had been under state corrective action for the past two years to ensure students with disabilities had bus routes and were not riding for longer than an hour each way. That state oversight ended earlier this year.

A district spokesperson said Friday that 1,913 students with disabilities still did not have an assigned bus route as of Aug. 21. That’s more than 1,300 more than the roughly 600 who were not on routes at the start of last year. CPS officials said that is mainly due to an increase in students with disabilities qualifying for transportation.

The district is offering stipends of up to $500 a month to students with disabilities who are not on bus routes and live at least five miles away from school.

On Monday, Martinez said the district is trying to get those students routed “as soon as possible.”

“The good news is we’re up about more than 25% in drivers, almost 900 drivers, up from 700 last year, so we’re gonna get everybody routed as soon as possible,” Martinez said.

The district is still not offering busing to general education students, largely those who need rides to selective enrollment or magnet schools.

At Poe Classical – a selective enrollment school where children must take a test to gain admission – mother Brittany Livingston said she and her son took a bus for about 20 minutes to and from their home in Chatham to get to the school last year. The bus wasn’t always timely, especially in the winter. But taking Ubers “means I would have to work more doubles and work more shifts at work to be able to afford [that],” said Livingston, who works as a certified nursing assistant.

Livingston cut the commute in half this year after buying a used car. The “little put-put,” as Livingston calls her car, sometimes requires costly maintenance, which means she’s sometimes taking on extra shifts at work.

“It’s hard, but I’m trying to make it work so that we can at least be able to go back and forth here,” she said.

Martinez painted a more hopeful picture about transportation on Monday, saying it’s probably the best I’ve felt about transportation in the last three years.” He said he hopes to see some busing for general education students by the end of this semester.

Last year, CPS canceled busing for around 8,000 general education students, most of whom attend selective enrollment or magnet schools. This year, officials said they couldn’t guarantee transportation, but would pilot new strategies, including a “hub stop” model that will be phased in later this school year. General education students eligible for transportation can get free Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Ventra cards valued at $35 per month and a companion pass for one parent or guardian

Johnson and Martinez continue plea for more state funding

Even as school celebrated the return to class, questions continued to swirl over whether Johnson might oust Martinez, who, in addition to pushing back on City Hall demands to take out a loan, also pushed back on demands to take on a short-term, high-interest loan and a disputed a staff pension payment. But the mayor and the district’s top leader stood side by side at both schools.

And at Chalmers Elementary in North Lawndale, Johnson asked parents and staff gathered by the playground at the school day’s start to give Martinez a round of applause. Johnson served as a Chicago Teachers Union organizer assigned to the school and said he pushed back on plans to close it in that role.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez (third from left) and Mayor Brandon Johnson (far right) ring bells with students at Chalmers Elementary School on the first day of the 2024-2025 school year on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024 in Chicago, Ill. (Taylor Glascock/for ChalkBeat Chicago)

Johnson also used the occasion to make a plug for an issue he and Martinez agree on: a request for more dollars for schools from the state of Illinois. The state has markedly increased funding for CPS in recent years, but by its own calculation, it’s more than $1 billion shy of what would make adequate funding for the district.

“We need our partners in Springfield,” Johnson said on Chalmers’ playground. “Do we deserve our $1.1 billion?” Parents and staff cheered.

Johnson got the loudest applause when he brought up the prospect of the country electing its first female Black president. He got a less enthusiastic response when he argued that the first day of school is the best day of the year, “only second to Christmas Eve.”

“Listen, if it gets hard, always ask for help,” Johnson told first grader De’Andria Lofton, dressed in the school’s uniform of a green polo shirt and khaki skirt, personalized with a sparkly purple backpack.

She nodded and smiled shyly before she paused for a photo with the mayor and her parents.

“She loves school,” said Cathy Lofton, De’Andria’s mom, who also has a fourth grader at the school. “She always wants to come on the weekends.”

She hopes De’Andria will learn her multiplication table, and that both of her children will feel engaged — and, first and foremost, safe at school and in the neighborhood.

CPS touts filling more vacant teaching jobs

District officials said they have continued to make headway on reining in start-of-school-year vacancies. Roughly 4.3% of the district’s teaching positions are vacant, slightly down from the start of last school year, said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer. That marks a return to pre-pandemic vacancy levels, he said, but at a time when the district employs about 2,500 more teachers compared to when COVID first hit.

“We have more licensed educators in front of kids than at any point during recent history,” Felton said.

He said the district has 125 additional bilingual teachers and 70 more art teachers than last fall. Overall, CPS has staffed 600 more teachers and 700 more paraprofessionals.

Felton also touted a more diverse corps of newly hired educators: About 31% of roughly 2,000 new teachers are Latino, 18% are Black, and 9% are Asian American.

The district was not able Monday to provide its vacancy rate for all employees or the demographics of teachers overall this fall.

Teaira Myles, whose 6-year-old son Brandon started first grade at Poe on Monday, said she felt a mix of excitement and pride for her son. She said she hopes Brandon learns more Spanish at Poe this year, as well as more about music.

Teaira Myles and her son, Brandon, pose for a portrait on the first day of school at Poe Classical Elementary School on Mon., Aug. 26, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

Brandon showed up dressed in yellow Nike sneakers and a T-shirt with a character from his favorite anime show, “One Piece.” His circular backpack was emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, with black and red straps — also merchandise related to “One Piece.”

Brandon, who spent the summer playing football, said he was “a lot happy and a little nervous” for the start of the school year and was excited about his teachers, friends, and the classroom. He remembered the DJ party at Poe when he started kindergarten last year and thought the tradition was “kinda cool.”

Asked if he wanted to say anything else, he added, “My favorite color is red.”

Samantha Smylie contributed.

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

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 .

Is Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson trying to replace CPS CEO Pedro Martinez?

2024-08-15T01:18:58+00:00

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This story has been updated to include a comment from CPS and the Board of Education.

Chicago Public Schools staff and students could face a rocky start to the school year amid reports of a possible shake-up of the district’s top leadership.

According to WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times, Mayor Brandon Johnson is reportedly looking to replace Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, who has overseen CPS since September 2021 and recently pushed back, alongside the Chicago Board of Education, against directives from City Hall.

The news comes less than two weeks before the start of a new school year and as Chicago is about to be center stage hosting the Democratic National Convention.

But three sources close to CPS who spoke on a condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly told Chalkbeat that Martinez is focused on doing his job and has not expressed interest in quitting.

Ultimately, Chicago’s Board of Education is tasked with hiring – and firing – a CEO. Historically, Chicago mayors have selected who they want to serve as CPS CEO and then had their pick voted on by board members, who were also appointed by the mayor.

The mayor’s office declined to comment about plans to oust Martinez.

In a statement, CPS and the Board of Education said, “The Chicago Board of Education, CEO Martinez, and Chicago Public Schools leadership are focused on preparing for a smooth start to the school year on August 26. We’re excited to work together with our school leaders, educators, and parents to continue to put the needs of our students first and build on our academic growth of the past two school years.”

One source close to CPS heard earlier this month that City Hall had drafted a list of potential replacements for Martinez but was not aware of the mayor’s team conducting interviews with anyone. And another source said that while the board has been aligned ideologically with the mayor’s office, it does not seem to have the appetite to fire Martinez right now.

If this board doesn’t act, the decision could ultimately be left to a new slate of people after Chicago’s first school board elections happen this November. That board will consist of 11 mayoral appointees, and another 10 members who will be elected from across the city.

The tensions between the mayor, CPS leadership, and the Chicago Teachers Union on the eve of a new school year are a stark contrast to harmonious spirit one year ago, when Johnson, Martinez, and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates visited schools together on the first day of classes.

Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who chairs the City Council’s Committee on Education and Child Development, said she had no idea that Johnson was looking to replace Martinez until Wednesday morning when a longtime City Hall newspaper reporter called her.

“I did not know, but I understand,” Taylor said. “Did the man do what he was supposed to do? Did he do his job? Did he put CPS in a better place than it was when he got there? For me, no.”

Still, Taylor said the timing is bad with the school year about to start and it’s “not a good look” given that CPS is currently bargaining with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Ald. Gilbert Villegas, past chair of the City Council Latino Caucus, which lobbied former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to pick a Latino to lead the school district, said he felt Martinez has done a good job and has been a “voice of neutrality” during the bargaining process with CTU.

“There has to be someone in the room that’s making sure that taxpayers are being heard and their issues are being considered here, and it’s just, it just doesn’t make sense that in the middle of negotiations you want to replace the CEO because he’s providing information that you don’t like,” Villegas said.

In recent weeks, the board passed a budget put forward by CPS leadership that Johnson did not approve of. That $9.9 billion spending plan approved last month closed a $505 million deficit through cuts and other savings. But it didn’t include any funding to pay for an eventual new contract with the teachers union or with the district’s new principals union. It also doesn’t include money to pay $175 million in pension costs for non-teaching staff that the city used to cover until the Lightfoot administration. A Johnson spokesperson has previously said they expect CPS to cover the $175 million in pension costs.

The board and CPS also rejected the Johnson administration’s recommendation to take out a short-term loan to pay for additional expenses, including the cost of new teachers and principal contracts and the pension payment. City Hall has continued to push CPS to take that loan and to cover the pension payment, according to one of the sources close to CPS. That source said Wednesday’s news felt disappointing to read about “when we’re all trying to do the right thing for CPS and for the students going forward.”

Negotiations between the district and Chicago Teachers Union, a close ally and former employer of Johnson’s, have become increasingly tense. CTU leadership has directly blamed Martinez for the lack of movement, saying Martinez lacks “the vision” to make the union’s proposals possible.

The 700-plus proposal package covers a variety of issues, including 9% raises for teachers and other members, additional staff to schools, and more support for students and their families in need, such as housing assistance. During a public bargaining session Tuesday, CPS said just 52 of the union’s proposals would cause the district’s deficit to balloon to $3 billion next fiscal year, roughly $2.5 billion more than what the district is already anticipating.

After that bargaining session, Davis Gates expressed frustration about the district’s deficit analysis related to the union’s proposals. Asked if the mayor’s office should reprimand CPS for defying Johnson’s wishes, Davis Gates pointed to other situations where the board has aligned with a mayor’s will, such as the notorious “Willis Wagons” created in the 1960s under former CPS CEO Benjamin Willis to avoid integrating schools or the decision under Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close 50 schools.

“You gotta ask Pedro why he doesn’t comply with the transition report that the mayor’s team said yes to,” Davis Gates said, referring to a report outlining the mayor’s vision for schools that closely aligns with policies CTU supports. “I can’t answer why they are not subordinate.”

Martinez and the board have carried out several policy changes Johnson favors, including moving away from student-based budgeting, stripping schools of on-campus police, and committing to rethinking the school choice system.

Martinez could resign on his own, though it’s unclear if he would still be eligible to receive severance in that case. If the board fired him without cause, he is entitled to severance equal to 20 weeks of pay, or close to $131,000, and would need six months notice, according to his contract with CPS.

Taylor said paying out Martinez’s contract will be costly, but keeping him could be too.

“Our kids cannot afford for us to keep trying to figure it out and fighting amongst each other,” Taylor said. “We wonder why our city is in chaos, because we [are] in chaos.”

Mila Koumpilova contributed.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools says teachers union proposals would lead to $4 billion deficit by 2029-30

2024-08-14T02:12:05+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools estimates that a chunk of the Chicago Teachers Union’s proposals, including raises for educators, would create a $4 billion deficit for the district by the 2029-2030 school year, officials said Tuesday.

The union, for its part, made recommendations for raising more money to support the district, including increasing taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, and suing banks for what union officials described as predatory lending practices involving CPS in past years.

Their comments came during a public bargaining session Tuesday at Morgan Park High School on the city’s Far South Side, as part of negotiations between the district and the CTU over the union’s new contract. Those negotiations have not made much progress over the past few months. Tuesday’s session, the third bargaining session held in public, focused on the district’s finances.

Granting just 52 of the union’s 700-plus contract proposals would widen the district’s deficit from a projected $509 million next fiscal year, to roughly $3 billion, said Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget director. That gap would grow by another $1 billion by fiscal year 2030, he said.

Deficits are already projected for each of the next five years, without the cost of a new contract, CPS officials have said. In order to balance future budgets, the district will have to find more funding or will make cuts to staff and programs, they said.

The Chicago Board of Education passed a budget for this upcoming school year that closed a $505 million deficit through cuts and other savings, but that budget does not include funding to cover the costs of a new teachers contract.

The district did not identify the 52 proposals it considered as part of its analysis, but Sitkowski said the list included the union’s requests for 9% raises and additional staff.

“We believe our educators deserve fair raises, but we must acknowledge what is responsible and sustainable,” Sitkowski said.

Jackson Potter, the union’s vice president, told district officials that highlighting the deficit related to CTU’s contract proposals “sends the message that you can’t meet any of our recommendations,” such as more librarians or more support for bilingual students. Union President Stacy Davis Gates didn’t directly answer a reporter’s question about how much the union’s proposals would cost.

“The price tag is opportunity for Black children, immigrant children, and Latine children,” she said.

Davis Gates credited previous union demands for delivering the post-pandemic student achievement gains that the district often touts. She said she plans to end the fight for funding with this contract, “come hell or high water, and I don’t give a damn who pay.”

Concern about budget challenges has hovered over the contract negotiations this year, as the district grapples with budget deficits as federal COVID relief dollars dry up.

In order to cover additional costs, both CPS and the union have called on the state to provide more than the $25 million funding increase it gave this year. Both parties point a finger at the state’s main school funding formula, under which the district needs an additional $1.2 billion to be considered adequately funded. That figure rose slightly this year after the district enrolled more students learning English as a new language and as the city saw a drop in tax revenue from corporate profits.

Both Gov. J.B. Pritzker and State Superintendent Tony Sanders have said more funding is not coming this year.

Beyond advocating for more state funding, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration also encouraged the Board of Education to take out a short-term loan to cover additional costs, which the board and CPS have rebuffed for now.

Asked recently if the district could still take out such a loan, Board President Jianan Shi said “everything is on the table,” declining to elaborate further.

During the bargaining session, the teachers union offered up several recommendations beyond more state funding on how the district could raise money. Apart from more taxes on the wealthy and suing big banks, they also suggested seeking more federal funding and taxing big tech corporations “profiting off our students’ and families’ private data.”

District officials said they want to advocate for more state funding, including to fully cover costs of preschool programs and teacher pensions. The state’s main funding formula already accounts for the fact that the district pays for its own teachers’ pensions.

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

Amid budget challenges, CPS and the teachers union make little movement on contract negotiations

2024-08-13T10:00:00+00:00

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When Chicago Public Schools students head back to class later this month, their teachers likely won’t yet have a new contract.

In the past, that was a bad omen, signaling that a strike loomed. This year, a strike does not appear to be on the horizon, and both sides have said the tone at the bargaining table has been more amicable.

But by most accounts, the district and the Chicago Teachers Union have made little headway in the high-stakes negotiations that began this past spring. The CTU is pushing for its most far-reaching package of proposals, which includes 9% annual raises, more school support staff, smaller class sizes, and efforts to address homelessness and the challenges migrant families face.

Those demands come as the district and city face budget deficits, with no clear path to securing extra funding for schools. Illinois lawmakers and Gov. J.B. Pritzker have balked at appeals to steer more dollars to Chicago schools. Meanwhile, district leaders and the school board have said they are wary of adding to the district’s already considerable debt burden after Mayor Brandon Johnson encouraged them to take out a short-term loan to cover some contract costs and ward off cuts.

After years of contentious relationships with mayors, the union is now negotiating with a district overseen by Johnson, a former CTU employee whom it helped propel into office. His critics had argued during last year’s mayoral race that he would readily sign off on the union’s demands, no matter the cost, even as he shot back that he would be best positioned to “deliver bad news” to his friends in the union.

Neither scenario has played out so far, according to sources on both sides.

The union has struck an increasingly combative tone. Tensions have spilled out at two public bargaining sessions; a third one focused on financial issues is slated for Tuesday evening.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board of Education President Jianan Shi, who is not involved in daily negotiations but will eventually vote to approve a deal, said he expected by now that both sides would have “made more progress.”

“I think the people of Chicago want to see us finding alignment, demonstrating that we can work together, and doubling down on things we know that improve student outcomes and the student experience,” Shi said.

Bargaining may bleed past the Nov. 5 school board elections, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the pace of negotiations. And if that happens, it could mean whatever agreement district and union leaders reach could come before the new 21-member board that will be sworn in on Jan. 15, including 11 mayoral appointees.

CPS did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions or multiple requests for an interview. City Hall declined to comment.

A 9% raise, more support staff, and less learning time

The union is proposing hundreds of substantial edits or new additions to its current contract, from more prep time for elementary school teachers and making school buildings more environmentally-friendly to providing housing assistance for homeless students and dollars for transportation, mental health services, and academic support for immigrant families seeking asylum.

In its opening proposals, the union asked for a 9% pay increase and salaries that don’t dip below $46,500, or 150% of the federal poverty level. The average teaching assistant salary — a group represented by the CTU — is now about $44,000.

The starting salary for teachers is $61,990, according to the current contract. A Chalkbeat analysis of compensation data shows a regular teacher makes about $92,500 a year on average, up from $78,400 in 2019. Teacher pay varied significantly, with head teachers, who play key leadership roles on their campuses, making almost $115,000 on average, while high school support teachers average about $88,000.

In the recent past, CPS has agreed to raises of up to 4%, and an internal district memo obtained by Chalkbeat last month contemplated 4% for the coming year, which the district estimates would cost $120 million. Though comparing compensation across districts and states is tricky, Chicago teachers are better compensated than many others. One pandemic-era study from the National Council on Teacher Quality put CPS at No. 1 for teachers lifetime earnings among 90 large districts.

But union leaders have said their main focus is on proposals aimed at beefing up support for schools and students. Those include librarians in every school, air conditioning in all gymnasiums by 2026, in-home counseling for students who have experienced trauma, class sizes of between 20 to 25 students depending on the grade, and even smaller classes for those that include at least one child learning English.

Zeidre Foster, the union’s head of grievances and member of the district’s bargaining team, said the two sides have reached several tentative agreements on low-cost proposals that likely won’t excite members, such as around professional development. The tone at the table remains collaborative, she said.

But overall, progress has been slow.

“The most frustrating part at this point is the lack of urgency,” she said. “We are looking to transform the district, and CPS is stuck in the status quo.”

The union has gotten a small number of proposals from the district and some counter offers on CTU demands, she said; there has been no response on the union’s compensation proposal.

One major issue CPS and CTU are far apart on is providing additional preparation time for elementary school teachers, according to two sources familiar with negotiations. The union has argued that elementary school teachers need more time to plan engaging lessons. The current contract allows for an hour of preparation time a day. The district says more preparation time means less learning time for students amid ongoing pandemic recovery.

The union unsuccessfully demanded a similar proposal during 2019 contract negotiations.

In a July letter to CPS families, Martinez called negotiations “fruitful.” In the most recent public bargaining session at Roswell B. Mason Elementary School in North Lawndale, district officials also opted for an upbeat tone, highlighting additional investments they’ve made in schools, as well as average class sizes of 20 students in elementary schools and 20 students in high schools.

The 330,000-student district’s payroll has grown by roughly 8,200 full-time positions since 2019, to about 46,670 positions, according to district data.

But CTU members, a student, and union President Stacy Davis Gates, who unsuccessfully pressed the district to codify those class sizes in the teachers contract on the spot, offered a dimmer view. They highlighted some of their top issues, such as a lack of librarians at every school and the need for more early childhood classes for students with disabilities.

“I’m actually struggling right now trying to understand how we are going to come to some agreement and settlement of this contract,’” Davis Gates said during the bargaining session, adding that she wanted the district to acknowledge that there are problems in need of solutions.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, center, talks to reporters after a public bargaining session with CPS in early August.

Proposals such as dedicated space for social workers and nurses are reasonable to Tyrone Palmer, a social worker at Walter Payton College Prep and one of hundreds of union delegates who voted to approve the proposals. Palmer’s biggest wish is for more staff inside buildings, including librarians, paraprofessionals, and social workers.

Palmer said he supports the union wielding its power to improve problems that fall outside of teacher pay and benefits and address broader problems, such as homelessness.

“When there are societal issues, that affects our jobs and if that comes in through the schools, it’s hard to educate a student,” Palmer said.

But he noted that contract talks are going more slowly than he had expected.

“When Brandon Johnson got elected, I remember thinking, one, we’re gonna ask for a super extravagant proposal and two, we’re gonna somehow get everything we ask for,” Palmer said. “It’s a harsh reality check of, ‘No … it’s still very slow-going.’”

Unknown contract costs prompt questions of cuts, borrowing

CPS budget will need amending once contract costs are known

The question of how to pay for a new contract looms over the negotiations as the district faces budget deficits that could approach $1 billion in the coming years.

The Board of Education would have to amend its already-passed budget once the contract is settled. Both Pritzker and State Superintendent Tony Sanders have made it clear that the state won’t be providing more money this year. Without additional dollars, the district will have to make cuts in order to pay for costs related to the new contract.

CPS is providing “budgets that do not include what we need,” Davis Gates told reporters after another public bargaining session this month. “And what we need are actual bodies in classrooms, teaching our young people. We need a sports program. We need an arts program — not a smorgasbord of things that you may or may not get.”

Asked what funding options are available and if CPS will take out a loan, Board President Shi said “everything is on the table,” but declined to elaborate further. More details could be revealed during the third public bargaining session on Tuesday.

Joe Ferguson of the Civic Federation, an Illinois-based nonpartisan government research group, questioned the district’s decision to pass a 2024-25 budget without any dollars for the cost of the new teacher contract. District officials could have estimated those costs and baked them into the document for a more clear-eyed plan to navigate the rough financial waters.

But it’s not a surprise the district did not do that, given the charged politics of attempting to guess at those costs, Ferguson said. Mayor Johnson has said he will not accept significant cuts to district programs or staff.

Ferguson noted the district significantly expanded its workforce and operations during the pandemic.

“You could be reductionist and say the governor is saying no,” he said. “Or you could argue the governor is saying, ‘We won’t come to the rescue of a system that hasn’t shown it is willing to do the work of reducing some costs firsts.’”

Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago says the group’s leadership and parent network are supportive of higher teacher pay and really like some of the proposals to beef up student support. But they are concerned about the cost of the proposal.

They also have concerns about proposals that would give new powers to Professional Personnel Leadership Committees, advisory bodies made up of educators and other staff that campuses convene under state law. The union wants these committees to have more control over curriculum, professional development, principal evaluations, and more, in some ways, potentially sidelining local school councils and school leaders.

In 2019, contract talks led to an 11-day strike, when union leaders insisted Mayor Lori Lightfoot was squarely in the driver’s seat and lambasted her for not meeting their demands. The same was true in 2012 when CTU leadership sparred with then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the length of the school day and year and teacher performance evaluations.

But this time around, the union has blamed Martinez for standing in the way of an agreement, calling him a “Lightfoot holdover” who lacks vision for CPS, though he, like his predecessors, serves at the mayor’s pleasure.

“Disparaging the CEO doesn’t make state legislators or Chicagoans for that matter interested in letting more of their money go to the district,” Woods said.

The union also changed its stance on a $175 million payment from CPS to the city’s pension fund. The union had sharply criticized Lightfoot for passing the payment on to the district, but it now says that the district should cover it, empowering Johnson to pursue a progressive agenda in City Hall.

A City Hall spokesperson said Johnson’s deputy mayor of labor relations, Bridget Early, has been involved in the talks. But Johnson has largely refrained from commenting on them publicly, and union officials said direct reports to Martinez rather than Johnson administration staffers have been on the frontlines.

Brad Marianno, an education labor expert at the University of Nevada, said the CTU remains a trailblazer in promoting the kind of expansive education and social justice contract talk agenda known as “bargaining for the common good.”

The union’s latest set of proposals is the most far-reaching and voluminous Marianno has seen in Chicago or anywhere else. But he said the pushback to taking on more debt to fund recurring expenses such as salaries is understandable because doing so would be “wildly irresponsible.”

And while support for educators remains strong in urban districts such as Chicago, Marianno believes even here, there is little appetite for a teacher strike among parents and community members on the heels of extended remote learning and other COVID-era disruptions to learning.

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 Board of Education passes $9.9 billion budget for upcoming school year

2024-07-25T21:55:04+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education passed a budget Thursday for the coming school year, following weeks of tension and opposition that reached as high up as the mayor’s office.

That budget, however, will likely be amended after the district finishes negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union and the district’s new principals union. It does not currently account for increases to teacher salaries.

The $9.9 billion budget boosts overall funding for schools, but it also includes cuts to central staff and administrative costs to help close a roughly half-billion-dollar deficit, including for central staff and administrative costs. It also includes a $611 million capital budget, which largely funds repairs and updates to school facilities.

While the district will freeze about 200 positions and cut 45 other roles, it will also add another 800 school-based staff positions, with just over 60% of those for teachers. Roughly half of those positions are for serving students with disabilities, said Mike Sitkowski, CPS’s budget director.

Sitkowski said the deficit is expected to be at least $500 million by next fiscal year, which starts July 1, 2025 – and that’s without accounting for the cost of bargaining agreements with unions.

One by one, board members praised the budget plan but also raised concerns about the need for more funding down the road and acknowledged the pushback they’ve heard, including that losing staff can feel disruptive for schools.

“Is this budget perfect? No, but in my time here, it is the budget that has most equitably distributed the funds that we do have,” said Vice President Elizabeth Todd Breland, who was also on the Board of Education under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

School communities received their campus staff allocations roughly a month ago, and some have been bracing for the impact of tighter budgets this fall. The budget includes a new way of funding schools by giving more weight to student needs than enrollment numbers. The new formula has resulted in fewer overall positions at at least 150 schools, while many others saw more positions, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

The district’s budget drew rare opposition from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who said he supported efforts to fill the deficit but did not support cuts to staff. At one point, Johnson’s office pushed the Board of Education to borrow up to $300 million to cover costs of union agreements and pension costs that the city shifted to the district a few years ago. CPS balked at that suggestion, arguing that such a move would result in a high-interest, short-term loan that could further damage the district’s bond rating.

The Chicago Teachers Union has protested the budget for weeks during multiple rallies, including before Thursday’s meeting, to push back against staff layoffs and to call on the state and federal governments to send more money to Chicago Public Schools. CPS has promised to find laid-off teachers new jobs or cover their salaries for the upcoming year.

The state increased funding for CPS this year, but the district is still $1 billion short of what the state’s formula considers adequate funding.

One of those teachers is fourth grade teacher Michelle Ludwig, who taught at Christopher Elementary School before losing her job last month, costing her students “a teacher who genuinely cares about them and with whom they’ve built trusting relationships,” Ludwig told the board Thursday. She said she has not yet found a new position.

“There should be vacancies based upon retirement and personal choice, but not because the district decided to devalue teachers,” Ludwig said.

Dozens of people in red CTU T-shirts gathered outside Jones College Prep in the South Loop, where Thursday’s meeting was being held, with multiple signs, such as “Equitable Funding,” “$1 billion short,” and multiple signs criticizing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who the union says has been shortsighted in crafting the budget proposal.

CTU Vice President Jackson Potter told school board members that this is a ripe time to pressure the state for more money, given that Gov. J.B. Pritzker is being considered as a running mate for presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, who has called for more teacher pay. And, he noted, the Democratic National Convention will be in Chicago.

“I think we can be heroes if we can get the decision-makers to the table to agree that this is a priority,” Potter said.

Kids First Chicago, an parent advocacy group, has suggested different ways to raise revenue and save money, including by advocating for more state funding, raising property taxes, and gradually consolidating the Chicago teacher pension system, which is funded by CPS, with the state’s pension fund for teachers, which is funded through the state budget, not local districts.

Those recommendations were endorsed by the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, which warned that the district does not have a long-term solution for its deficit. The deficit next fiscal year is projected to increase to $933 million if the district provides a 4% raise for teachers and principals and picks up a $175 million payment to cover the pensions of non-teaching staff.

Sitkowski acknowledged those long-term challenges, noting that the deficit for next fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2025, is projected to grow to at least $500 million. He said the district will need more funding going forward to close those gaps.

District leaders have argued that the city should step in to cover the pension cost of non-teaching staff as it has in the past. The budget approved by the board Thursday included the pension expense, but also assumes there will be revenue from City Hall to cover the cost. It’s not clear if Johnson’s office will take it on when the city puts together its budget later this year.

Separately, after months of development, the board passed a new safety policy for schools that removes police officers staffed by the Chicago Police Department from campuses. The plan, known as Whole School Safety, pushes schools staff to implement alternatives to discipline, such as restorative justice practices.

The presentation to the board was almost celebratory. Students and advocates who worked with CPS to create the plan were asked to stand up as board members praised their advocacy over the past few years to revamp how the district approached school safety.

A recent study found that schools that had already removed officers saw a slight drop in high-level disciplinary violations.

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

Union members assail Chicago Public Schools budget plan ahead of board vote

2024-07-17T21:37:04+00:00

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Tensions are flaring over the approval of Chicago Public Schools’ $9.9 billion budget, with a looming school board vote on it next week.

The district held public hearings on the budget proposal at Jones College Prep High School on Tuesday amid unusual uncertainty over its prospects. Mayor Brandon Johnson has said he does not support the proposal, which includes some cuts to central office staff and other expenditures to close a $505 million deficit.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union, which helped elect Johnson last year, has lambasted the budget since it was unveiled last week, and its members packed Tuesday’s hearing to demand that the district spend more to improve schools, rather than cut back.

The mayor-appointed school board is slated to vote on the budget a month later than usual. Notably, the proposal does not factor in raises for educators. The district is negotiating new contracts with its teachers and principals unions, and officials noted that the budget would need to be revised to account for the cost of these contracts once they are settled.

An internal CPS memo Chalkbeat obtained last week shows that Johnson pressed the board to cover those costs by borrowing money through what would likely be a high interest, short-term loan. But the board and district leaders pushed back, multiple sources said. The memo, prepared by district staff, argued that taking out a short-term loan would add to the district’s already significant debt burden, potentially weaken the district’s already poor bond rating, and merely defer its fiscal problems until next year.

Earlier on Tuesday, the teachers union also held an event calling on state lawmakers and Gov. J.B. Pritzker to provide more funding for Chicago schools. That followed a spring trip to Springfield by Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez and union leaders, who tried to make a joint case for more dollars. During that trip, they noted that though the state has markedly boosted funding for the district in recent years, CPS is still about $1 billion short of what would be considered adequate under Illinois’ own formula. But lawmakers granted only a fraction of the district’s request during the session they wrapped up in June.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jackson Potter, the teachers union vice president, argued the district must budget more money as it steps up efforts to lobby state and federal officials for more funding, including during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. He said Chicago needs to invest more in schools so it can “get away from a choice district” and reinvigorate neighborhood schools.

“We won’t accept austerity when we need expansive, bold fiduciary advocacy,” he said.

Pavlyn Jankov, another union official, suggested the district should also push for higher taxes for corporations and high earners in the city, acknowledging that raising property taxes now would be a “political flashpoint.”

Jianan Shi, the school board president, said board members are aligned with the mayor’s push for more school funding, nodding to financial pressures that the city and state also face.

“That’s not just Mayor Johnson’s north star,” he said. “It’s all of our north star.”

On Wednesday, during a meeting for the board to review its agenda for next week, neither Shi nor other board members made any comments or asked any questions about the budget. A second budget hearing is scheduled at Jones College Prep at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

At Tuesday’s hearing, more than a dozen union members addressed the board to demand that the district back union proposals for smaller class sizes, a librarian in every school, more special education support staff, updated curriculums, substitute-teacher pay increases, and other investments.

Some members decried the layoffs this spring of teaching assistants and other support staff. The district has committed to reassigning those employees to other schools or covering their salaries for the coming school year, but the union argues that the process is nevertheless disruptive for students.

Several charter leaders also addressed the board, requesting that it increase their schools’ budgets. They said that as with district-run schools, their communities are seeing an influx of English learners and other students with high needs. Overall funding for charters is up slightly, but many campuses with declining enrollment will experience steep cuts.

“Charter schools are part of the CPS portfolio and deserve to be funded equitably,” said Joanne Tanner, CEO of Civitas Education Partners, which runs the CICS charter network.

Martinez’ budget proposal includes more money for district-run campuses, extending a period of adding school staff and other spending powered by federal COVID relief dollars since the start of the pandemic. The district said a proposed $149 million increase in funding for schools is largely driven by increased services for students with disabilities, as well as modest boosts for charter schools and bilingual services.

The district is spending the final $233 million of its $2.8 billion in pandemic recovery funds this fiscal year. It is adding about 800 school-based positions — including 500 teachers — while eliminating about 40 central office and citywide support positions and freezing 200 vacant jobs in its district office.

“Despite some of our budget pressures, we are still investing in people,” the district’s chief budget officer, Michael Sitkowski, said at the Tuesday hearing. “That’s what drives our success.”

Overall, this year’s budget is slightly larger than last year’s because of an increase in capital spending, which comes after the district froze most projects and repairs last year to craft a longer-term blueprint for facility spending.

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’s Mayor Johnson suggests CPS borrow to cover pension, contract costs

2024-07-12T22:15:54+00:00

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Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration floated a plan for Chicago Public Schools to borrow up to $300 million to help pay for increased salary and some pension costs next year, Chalkbeat has learned.

But CPS leadership balked at the idea — calling it a “fictional or phantom revenue source” — and pushed back on City Hall’s request, according to an internal memo obtained by Chalkbeat and multiple sources familiar with their discussions.

The internal CPS memo, dated July 8, outlines the risks of borrowing to pay for hypothetical 4% raises for teachers and principals and cover a $175 million pension payment that was shifted to the school district by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

If the district covered those raises and pension payments, the district’s projected deficit would grow to $933 million for next fiscal year, the memo said. Borrowing $300 million to pay for expenses this year “only shifts the problem” to the following year and will mean higher costs to pay off debt down the line, the memo said.

The mayor’s office did not comment on the suggestion to borrow money, but said in a statement that the district has limited options to close its budget gap. It said the mayor supports the “cost-saving measures and operational efficiencies,” but is not supportive of cuts to critical staff and is having conversations to solve the district’s financial challenges.

Loan suggestion comes amid CPS budget challenges

CPS had roughly $9.3 billion in outstanding debt as of June 1, and its debt-service obligations already divert hundreds of millions of dollars away from classrooms every year. Officials included more than $800 million in debt payments in the district’s proposed $9.9 billion operating budget announced earlier this week. The proposal would close a $505 million shortfall — driven largely by the end of federal COVID money — through cuts at the district’s central office and staffing, as well through restructuring some existing debt and federal grants.

The proposed budget does not include any new borrowing, or factor in the costs of new bargaining agreements that are being negotiated now, including with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Johnson blasted that budget proposal Thursday. In a statement Friday, his office said he supported how the district proposed to close its budget deficit and called the new school funding formula “promising,” but said there is “still more work to be done.”

The teachers union called the budget proposal “an act of make-believe.” The Board of Education is expected to vote on the budget proposal later this month.

Johnson, the teachers union, and CPS had unsuccessfully pushed state lawmakers to provide more money to the district in order to help close its funding gap. While state funding for Chicago schools has increased since 2017, CPS would need another $1 billion to be considered “adequately funded” under the state’s school funding formula. However, the internal memo notes that in the past, CPS used deficit spending “as a strategy to increase pressure on the state for additional state funding, but it never worked.”

A district spokesperson declined to comment on the loan suggestion, except to say that CPS has not taken on a loan to balance its budget.

“We will continue to collaborate with City leaders, our labor, civic and community partners, to find solutions to the long-standing public education funding challenges so we can best support our students’ continued success,” CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus said in a statement.

The union also took issue this week with the district’s overall proposed budget.

“As we review this budget proposal, it is clear that CPS leadership has failed to take steps to guarantee our students and their families what they need to dream, achieve and thrive,” CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said in a statement Wednesday.

Earlier in the month, the union decried layoffs of at least 330 of its members amid a new approach to how the district funds its schools. Those members will likely be rehired at other schools, but the layoffs caused disruption for teachers and school communities, CTU said.

The union did not comment specifically on the issue of a loan. In a statement, Vice President Jackson Potter said CPS CEO Pedro Martinez is “shirking his responsibility” to build a budget that provides a quality education, especially for families on the South and West sides, and the union expects CPS, the city, and state “to find real solutions and work together to craft a budget that provides stability, equity, and quality.”

The principals union said in a statement that City Hall’s suggestion for a loan “is not the answer.” The union also expressed concern that officials are estimating an $8 million cost for its contract, given that negotiations are ongoing.

The union said that the current budget is partly driven by the burden of previous borrowing, and that budget obligations “should not be satisfied on the backs of our students.”

Past pension cost shift at center of disagreement over borrowing

City Hall’s suggestion that CPS borrow money is tied in part to pension payments for the retirement of CPS staff that are not teachers through the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago, according to the July 8 CPS memo. The city used to cover this cost through its own budget, but Lightfoot began shifting that cost to CPS, starting with a $60 million payment in 2020, a move that Johnson and the CTU criticized at the time.

Now, under Johnson as mayor, City Hall wants CPS to cover $175 million of the pension payments, the memo says. That’s the same amount the district contributed last year.

In addition to the pension payments, the suggested borrowing would help cover $120 million in increased costs associated with a new Chicago Teachers Union contract. Another $8 million would be for costs related to the first contract under Chicago’s new principals union, the memo says. Both contracts are still in negotiations.

In all, under City Hall’s proposed loan plan, the district would take on $284 million in new expenses to be covered with borrowed money that would be paid off over the next 20 years.

In the memo, which analyzes City Hall’s proposal for the Board of Education, district officials warned that while borrowing money could solve an immediate problem, the district is still projecting deficits in future fiscal years.

Taking out a loan could also damage the district’s already low bond ratings, the memo said. Even with recent rating upgrades, CPS is still “the largest junk bond issuer in the United States,” according to the memo.

A low bond rating is similar to a bad credit score. It makes it more expensive for the district to borrow money to fund its capital budget, which is used to improve or build new school facilities, the memo said.

“This could be thought of as putting your credit card payments that you can no longer afford on your mortgage payments,” the memo said. “It allows cash to be freed up for other expenses, but it seeds a costly legacy of future amounts of larger debt to be paid back and it does not solve the issue of being fiscally responsible.”

The memo is accurate about the impact of taking out a loan to cover operating costs, said Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog organization, who is also Chicago’s former inspector general.

Additionally, it’s not clear how CPS would balance its budget in future years, given the increased borrowing costs, Ferguson noted. The type of loan described in the memo is akin to a payday loan, where interest rates are very high, he said.

“One of the ironies here is that, CPS — long derided and criticized for irresponsible practices — in this moment is endeavoring to be the responsible actor,” by closing its deficit through various cuts and debt restructuring, Ferguson said.

Chicago Public Schools has a long history of borrowing to pay expenses, including risky bond deals during the 2000s that saddled the system with more long-term debt. The Chicago Teachers Union became a vocal critic of the district’s borrowing practices after the Chicago Tribune’s reporting on the issue in 2014.

When the district faced deficits between the 2014 and 2017 fiscal years, CPS borrowed money to cover operating expenses since administrations at the time didn’t want to cut costs. The district owes $3.7 billion in principal and interest payments for that borrowing, the memo said.

The recently proposed budget is about 75% larger than a decade ago, when CPS had a $5.6 billion operating budget. Johnson has lobbied board members to approve the loan plan, but the board “is remaining firm in their pushback,” according to one source with knowledge of the conversations.

Chalkbeat Chicago Bureau Chief Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago Public Schools and Chicago Teachers Union to hold first public bargaining session

2024-06-13T23:40:00+00:00

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Chicagoans will get a window into collective bargaining between the city’s public school district and its teachers union at a first-of-its-kind meeting Friday night.

Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union will hold a public bargaining session at Marquette Elementary in the city’s West Lawn neighborhood on the South Side. As of midday Wednesday, registration to attend in person had reached capacity, but officials said it will be livestreamed on YouTube.

But at Friday night’s session — held on the first weekend of summer break — the two sides do not plan to discuss any provisions of the current CTU contract, such as those dealing with class size limits, pay raises, or other benefits. Instead, they plan to discuss “healthy, safe, and green schools.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, made “green schools” part of his education platform last year. School facilities are typically dealt with in the district’s capital budget, which had its own series of public hearings already this year.

Tonight’s meeting is another sign of a more friendly relationship between the two parties.

The CTU’s current contract expires on June 30. Last week, CPS posted their opening proposals online and sent an email to parents sharing more information about how they will approach labor negotiations. CTU has posted their proposals online for members to access using a passcode, and the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, published a copy of the union’s ideas to their website.

While there is a lot for the two sides to sort out, one thing seems certain: Chicago’s new, partially elected school board likely won’t have much say over the teachers union contract during board members’ first few years on the job.

Though the length of the contract won’t be discussed Friday, the dueling proposals put forward by both sides would lock a new contract in place that would last through the first two rounds of school board elections.

CPS is proposing a five-year contract that would expire on June 30, 2029, while CTU is putting forward a four-year deal expiring on May 1, 2028.

Ten new school board members will be elected from 10 districts on Nov. 5, 2024. Those 10, plus 11 appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, will be sworn in on Jan. 15, 2025. In November 2026, 20 members will be elected from 20 districts and the school board president will be elected at-large.

The current contract is a five-year deal that began after a 12-day strike in 2019, but negotiations between CPS and CTU occurred multiple times during the COVID pandemic around schools returning to in-person learning. The previous contract covered three school years starting in 2016, and the one negotiated in 2012 ended up being four years.

It’s common for public sector labor agreements to extend through one or more election cycles, said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment at the University of Illinois.

“Things like school board elections, things like a mayoral and city council elections, really should not be first and foremost,” Bruno said.

“They should bring a package forward that says, ‘This will be good for the district, it’ll be good for students, and it’s affordable, and teachers, our employees will be supportive of it,’” Bruno said.

A CPS spokesperson said the district wants a five-year contract “to ensure stability and predictability” to allow the district “to more effectively plan our academic and operational programming, supports, and services.”

A CTU representative said school board elections did not factor into their proposal for a four-year contract. The representative added that the union supports giving parents and communities more say over the public school system through an elected board.

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

Bill to prevent changes at Chicago’s selective enrollment schools appears stalled

2024-05-24T22:06:39+00:00

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A state bill that would prevent changes to Chicago’s selective enrollment schools and block the district from closing schools until 2027 appears to have stalled in the final scheduled hours of the legislative session.

The lack of movement comes after Mayor Brandon Johnson sent a letter to Illinois Senate President Don Harmon asking him not to call the bill for a final vote, arguing it “seeks to solve problems that do not exist.”

The situation is a win so far for Johnson, whose appointed Board of Education is mulling changes to the district’s school choice system and recently rolled out a new budget formula.

State Rep. Margaret Croke, a Democrat representing Chicago’s north side neighborhoods, filed the bill earlier this year that would prevent the board from making changes to admission requirements or cutting funding for selective enrollment schools until a fully elected school board is in place in 2027. She later added an amendment that would extend the moratorium on school closures and prevent any school from shuttering until 2027.

Croke said in a written statement that she is “deeply disappointed” to learn that Harmon may not call her proposal to the floor for final approval. She believes that without the bill magnet schools and charter schools will not be protected and the school board will make changes to admissions for selective schools.

“The CPS school budgeting process has been hidden from both the public and from Springfield legislators, and I fully expect that disproportionate cuts will be made to magnet schools and charters will eventually be closed,” said Croke’s statement.

The bill unanimously passed the House and passed quickly out of a Senate committee. If the full Senate votes, it would go to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk. On Thursday, Harmon declined to bring the bill to the floor for debate.

“The District will not close selective enrollment schools nor will the District make disproportionate budget cuts to selective enrollment schools,” Johnson wrote in the letter.

Johnson also wrote that the board will not eliminate testing or other requirements for enrollment into selective enrollment schools or programs.

Harmon has yet to provide comment on whether he will hold the bill or put it on the floor for debate.

The board’s December resolution called on the district to move away from school choice and support neighborhood schools. The goal of both the mayor and the board is to bolster neighborhood schools, many of which have seen declining enrollment in recent years, and to make selective schools – several of which are segregated by income or race – more diverse.

The board’s resolution called for transitioning “away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”

The board said it will rely on public feedback to inform how it will revamp school choice and include those details as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, expected to be finalized this summer.

The state bill would also prevent funding cuts to Chicago’s selective enrollment schools, some of which have already seen a decrease in funding to staffing. Some Local School Council members have said network leaders have suggested that their schools could fundraise to fill in the gaps, which could exacerbate inequalities.

Johnson and the board have said that if Croke’s bill passes, it would prevent the district from balancing its budget. The district is distributing the same amount of money to schools as it did last year, officials say.

The new budgeting formula aims to distribute resources more equitably and based on need. Some campuses, including those in higher-income areas, are reporting cuts while others in less affluent neighborhoods are seeing some boosts.

Chicago Public Schools have yet to make school-level budgets available to the public, but some Local School Councils have been vocal about cuts to their current budgets.

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

Chicago is trying to improve how it funds schools. Not everyone is happy.

2024-05-23T20:45:22+00:00

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Christina Cedeño has spent countless hours helping get the word out about the bilingual gifted program at her children’s school Pulaski International School of Chicago, texting friends and acquaintances and distributing flyers at neighborhood businesses and day cares in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods.

But next year, Pulaski’s proposed budget cuts a number of positions, including including a core classroom teacher in the Spanish gifted program, forcing school leaders to consider combining the first and second grade.

Cedeño worries the cuts at the Regional Gifted Center for English Learners — one of just three in Chicago Public Schools — will deter parents who are new to the school.

“If they find out that their classes are going to be combined, they’ll get scared and they’ll pull their kids out and then we’re back to where we were five years ago,” she said.

Pulaski is one of many schools reportedly losing resources as Chicago Public Schools officials overhaul the way they allocate money to individual campuses even as they also work to close a $391 million deficit and grapple with the end of federal COVID relief funding.

District officials have said the overall amount of money dedicated to schools is not being decreased. But many selective enrollment and magnet programs and neighborhood schools in higher income areas are seeing cuts. In some cases, district officials have even suggested they fundraise to fill gaps, parents say, which could create more inequity for schools that can’t raise a lot of money.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has defended the changes to how schools are funded as an “important milestone” aimed at improving education across all schools, but especially for children “farthest from opportunity.”

“It’s a boost for communities that have been stuck in a downward spiral of disinvestment and depopulation,” he told the school board Thursday.

He added that some school leaders at high-need schools have cheered their budgets for allowing them to grow programming and dodge enrollment-related cuts. And he vowed overall funding for schools will stay stable next fall and, thanks to positions covered centrally, more people will work in Chicago’s schools.

But the public does not have the ability to see which schools are benefiting from the new formula.

CPS has twice denied Chalkbeat’s open records request for individual school budget documents, arguing the process is still ongoing. Local School Councils had to vote to approve their budgets by May 3. A district spokesperson said five elementary schools and four high schools rejected their school budgets.

Last year, the district similarly shared only limited details about school budgets when principals received them in April. Officials unveiled a $9.4 billion budget proposal in early June and the school board approved it two weeks later. The school board must approve a budget by July 1.

Meanwhile, Illinois lawmakers are considering a bill that could prevent Chicago Public Schools from implementing “disproportionate” budget decreases at selective enrollment schools and could place a moratorium on school closings until 2027.

Pulaski is in a unique situation because it’s a neighborhood school with a selective program. For budgeting purposes, it is considered one school and the neighborhood school is also facing cuts, according to parents who spoke to Chalkbeat.

The neighborhood school, which has an International Baccalaureate program, serves students from the surrounding Bucktown area, which has gentrified in the last decade. Ten years ago, 81% of Pulaski’s students came from low-income families and today about 38% do.

Parents said the proposed budget, which was rejected by the Local School Council, would cut three core classroom teachers from the neighborhood program, two specialty teacher positions, a tech coordinator, a reading specialist, and one of two clerks that staff the school’s two-building campus.

“We’re not asking for bells and whistles,” said Nicole Wood, a Pulaski parent who has two children in the neighborhood IB program. “We understand that some of our extras that we had in the past are going to go away. We understand that there will be cuts given the deficit in the budget. However, what we expect CPS to provide us are classroom teachers for all of our classrooms.”

‘If you don’t like your budget, fundraise your way out of it’

At Harriet Tubman Elementary School, parents raised concerns to their CPS network officials when they found out that the proposed budget could mean losing three core teachers and other staff next year.

The surprising suggestion: Fundraise money to fill in the gaps.

Other schools, network officials tell them, use “Friends of” money to pay for positions, said Illeana Inserni, the chair of Tubman’s Local School Council and a mother of third-grade twins.

The school, which has an International Baccalaureate program that draws in students from other parts of the city, is also slated to lose a part-time teacher who works with students with disabilities and their interventionist, a staffer who works with struggling students, whose salary was covered by the district through federal COVID dollars.

Tubman sits in a higher-income area of Chicago and 35% of students come from low-income families, less than the 73% at schools districtwide. But the school’s enrollment has also swelled by about 15% since September and is serving more English learners, according to preliminary enrollment records.

“What we’re asking the network and district … is to maintain our current roster,” Inserni said. “We’re not even asking for more at this moment.”

The school received $140,000 in discretionary funding, which is the minimum amount provided to all elementary schools. Inserni said they plan to pay for another core classroom teacher, leaving the school with about $30,000 for basic operations, materials, and supplies, such as copy paper or recess monitors. The district said the average budget for a teacher position is $123,000.

At Skinner North, a selective enrollment elementary school, according to LSC chair Danielle Capilla, whose daughter is in fifth grade, network leads have also suggested parent fundraising to fill budget gaps.

“Principals are also being asked by network leaders and the folks above them, ‘Well, how much does your ‘Friends Of’ raise? How much is in those bank accounts? What can we use that for?’ Essentially, what can the parents and community pay for so the district doesn’t have to?” Capilla said.

“There has also just been an underlying premise of: ‘If you don’t like your budget, fundraise your way out of it,’” she said.

A district spokesperson said decisions made with parent fundraising resources are made at the school level.

In Chicago, parents can fundraise to pay for staff, which isn’t the case for all big cities. In New York City, PTAs cannot use funding to pay for core subject teachers but can use it toward supplemental staff, such as art teachers or teaching assistants.

Capilla, who also has a son enrolled in a different magnet school, said she doesn’t want to alienate families that can’t afford to contribute to fundraisers. “That would be the last thing that we would want to do.”

She’s heard of other schools, like LaSalle Language Academy in Old Town, using outside fundraising to fill gaps. At LaSalle, LSC parent representative Jason Emeott said next year’s budget does not provide funding for seven of their eight language teachers. But the language program is core to the school’s identity, he noted, with students in kindergarten through eighth grade able to take classes in Spanish, Italian, French, and Mandarin.

Emeott is passionate about LaSalle because it is a National Blue Ribbon School that serves students from around the city of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Now, he worries programming cuts could hurt future enrollment.

At Thursday’s school board meeting, some parents voiced concerns about their school budgets to board members.

Several parents from Sabin Dual Language Magnet said its proposed budget will erode its ability to provide the language services that have made the campus a model as one of the oldest dual language programs in the city. They said the school is losing three teachers and its dean of students, who has gotten recognition for presiding over the largest decrease in student suspensions of any district elementary school.

Parents said the budget apparently fails to account for a large influx of migrant students to the campus, which has helped push enrollment from 240 to more than 360 students since last summer.

“By losing these teachers, we are losing our dual language capacity,” said parent Debra Gittler.

“With so many new arrivals, the trauma and the issues going on are quite severe,” she added.

Are neighborhood schools getting more resources?

Not all schools are seeing cuts. Although all school budgets are not public yet, many neighborhood schools are gaining multiple new staff positions and additional resources.

Under the proposed budget, Jamieson Elementary, a neighborhood school in West Ridge, would add a second school counselor, a restorative justice coordinator, another art teacher, and an additional core teacher that the LSC hopes to hire as an English as a Second Language teacher, according to Annette Stenner, a parent representative on the LSC.

Stenner said the additional positions will be helpful as the school’s needs have increased. Jamieson serves over 800 students and almost 60% of students come from low-income families, according to Chicago Public Schools enrollment data. Over the last couple of years, the school has seen an uptick in the number of migrant students, many migrating from Venezuela and other countries around the globe, Stenner noted.

Many migrant students have “a lot of trauma,” she said. “Teachers and our administrators, they’re seeing a lot more issues addressing that and dealing with that in the classroom.”

While the increase in staff would be helpful to the school, Stenner’s not sure if it will be enough since classroom sizes are large. But overall, she feels that the district is going in the right direction with budgeting to address some of the inequities in funding neighborhood schools across the city.

One principal said her school, which almost exclusively serves students from low-income families and more than half who are learning English as a new language, will see more teachers and some smaller class sizes next school year.

However, the school will not have the funding for their second office clerk – someone the school had for many years who helped with attendance and purchasing, said the principal, who asked to remain anonymous because she was not authorized to speak to the press. While she doesn’t believe student-based budgeting worked well, she said she had become accustomed to having a lot of power over her budget – and cutting the longtime school clerk is a “hard decision.”

But “in what world could I argue that I would rather have 33 first graders in a room together than not have this second clerk?” the principal asked.

Abigail Vences is on the Local School Council at Swift Elementary School in Edgewater and Mather High School in West Ridge. She said next year’s budgets at both schools will see more resources, including several more teacher positions.

“There are kids that want to excel academically and you should let them go for that challenge, but at the same time, you shouldn’t let your neighborhood schools fail,” Vences said.

New funding formula stabilizes shrinking schools

When Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration announced the new school funding formula in late March, they said it would be more equitable and boost neighborhood schools in disinvested communities where enrollment has been declining for years.

That’s been the case at Hirsch Metropolitan High School in Chatham for the past decade.

Maria Owens has served on the Local School Council since 2014. She said, in the past, Hirsch’s budget did not provide enough to staff all the courses required for graduation so the school had to get creative with online classes and partnerships with nearby schools. Now, they’ll have the basics covered, Owens said.

“We’re not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, but it’s really not sufficient to do what it is we really need to have done,” Owens said. “If you’re trying to give your child the best possible options, it’s not going to be sufficient for most parents who want to see their child excel.”

Like most schools, about 7% of Hirsch’s budget the past few years was covered by federal COVID relief money, which will run out in September. Owens thinks there’s a “shell game” going on where the district is taking from some schools and giving to others.

Really, Owens said, more money needs to be put into education from the federal and state government and equitably distributed.

“The best resource we have is our young people,” she said, “and if we continue to act as if they don’t matter, we’re going to reap what we sow and we’re not going to like it.”

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

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.

What’s going on with Chicago’s Near South Side High School plan?

2024-05-20T17:35:24+00:00

This story was originally published by Block Club Chicago.

A controversial plan for a new Near South Side high school appears to have stalled.

Families on the Near South Side and Chinatown have been asking for a dedicated community high school for years, as many families say students are forced to travel across the city to attend selective-enrollment schools that offer classes and extracurriculars nearby high schools lack.

In 2018, plans to convert National Teacher’s Academy, 55 W. Cermak Road, into a high school were scrapped after outcry from families and NTA staff. Instead, a $150 million school was proposed for the former Harold Ickes Homes site near 24th and State streets on the Near South Side.

That plan was met with criticism from Bronzeville and Chinatown neighbors who opposed building the school on public housing land. It has also drawn accusations of backroom deals and prompted backlash toward Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Housing Authority, and City Hall leaders.

Now, officials are being quiet about the status of the school, and a website that served as an information hub for the proposed high school has been taken down.

“We’ve been given no update yet, but as far as I know, everything is pretty much still status quo. I’m still committed to making this happen,” Ald. Nicole Lee (11th) told Block Club.

A Board of Education vote to approve a capital budget for the project was originally set for June 2023 but was pulled pending further review, sources said at the time. It’s unclear what the next steps are.

In a statement, a CPS spokesperson said the website was “currently paused,” but more information would eventually be shared.

“The Near South High School proposal is still under review as the District develops long-term strategies and objectives through work on the CPS Educational Facilities Master Plan and Five-Year Strategic Plan,” district officials said in a statement.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment. During his campaign, Johnson pledged to enforce a moratorium on building anything on public housing land, but it is unclear whether he supports the school proposal.

A month after the stalled school board vote, Johnson replaced all but one board member and named Jianan Shi school board president. Shi, previously with parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand, was part of a coalition of residents calling for the high school to be built elsewhere.

The proposed site for a new CPS high school is a vacant lot at 24th and State Streets, where the former Harold L. Ickes Homes sat.

The story so far

Near South Side neighbors and elected officials have long fought for a community high school in the area, saying the lack of options for the growing population has forced students to travel up to two hours to other neighborhoods.

But many of those proponents have pushed CPS to consider other sites for the school. They suggested The 78 megadevelopment, or a plot between 17th and 18th and Canal and Stewart Avenues. They also suggested repurposing Jones College Prep into a neighborhood school.

The Illinois Answers Project reported last year that CHA, CPS, and city officials had homed in on the Harold Ickes Homes site by July 2021, maintaining to the public there were no other viable locations for the school.

School board members narrowly voted in September 2022 to buy the land at 23rd Street and Wabash Avenue for $10.3 million for the school. They also approved a land swap deal with the CHA: The district would lease land at 24th and State for the high school, and the housing agency would get the deed for the Wabash land to complete the Southbridge residential development, allowing some of the families displaced by the demolition of the Ickes Homes to return.

The school would accommodate 1,200 students from the community, 30% of them Black. It would be a feeder school for nine surrounding elementary schools: Armour, National Teachers Academy, Drake, Healy, Ward J, Holden, Smyth, Haines, and South Loop.

An ad hoc committee consisting of parents, community leaders, and district staff was formed in November 2022 to guide CPS families through the process. The following month, the City Council approved $8 million in tax-increment financing dollars to buy some of the land involved in the swap. The ad hoc committee launched a series of virtual meetings in January 2023 to get community input and was to meet twice a month ahead of the scheduled board vote.

People Matter co-founder Angela Lin talks ahead of a 2022 protest opposing the controversial proposal to build a new $150 million high school on Chicago's Near South Side.

Following the land swap, Rep. Theresa Mah vowed to withdraw the $50 million in state funding she helped secure because of the city’s refusal to compromise with neighbors who wanted to explore alternate sites.

Mah told Block Club earlier this month she hasn’t had a chance to speak with Johnson’s administration on the issue, but she remains firm on finding a compromise that doesn’t involve using public housing land.

“I want to revisit it, and I still believe we should consider another site because it doesn’t make sense to stick with a site so many are opposed to,” Mah said. The funding for the school will be reappropriated in the meantime, she said.

Other opponents were concerned about the siphoning of resources from other nearby high schools, including Wendell Phillips and Dunbar Vocational Academy — two predominantly Black schools that have suffered budget cuts in recent years.

Organizers from the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, Lugenia Burns Hope Center, People Matter, and the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community held a series of City Hall protests and town halls after the land swap agreement, some of them calling on former Mayor Lori Lightfoot to do away with the plan altogether.

“We have not heard any news,” said Grace Chan McKibben, executive director of Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community. “We are in the process of trying to figure out who in CPS we should talk to about this. It is unclear who is leading the planning of the Near South high school, or if anyone is.”

Chicago Public Schools pitches safety plan calling for restorative justice, no police in schools

2024-05-15T22:38:13+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools pitched a new school safety plan Wednesday that would get rid of campus police, call for more training for educators on alternative discipline practices, and require locking classroom doors.

The proposed plan, which is on the agenda for next week’s board meeting, comes three months after the Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution to remove school resource officers, or SROs, by the start of next school year. At the time, the board directed CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to create a new safety plan by June 27 that focuses on restorative practices.

Thirty-nine high schools still have on-campus police officers staffed by the Chicago Police Department. At 57 other schools, Local School Councils, or LSCs, voted to remove SROs.

The board’s plan to remove police could be reversed. State lawmakers have filed a bill that would allow LSCs to contract with the Chicago Police Department to staff SROs. That bill is still being negotiated, according to a spokesperson for Rep. Mary Gill, the bill’s sponsor who represents Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.

The district’s new proposed safety plan, however, extends beyond campus police. The plan builds on existing district efforts to teach kids about social-emotional skills and restorative justice practices, which are alternatives to discipline meant to resolve conflict and understand the root of student behavior, according to the proposal. All schools would be required to have a safety plan based on these new guidelines by 2028.

The plan covers “physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust, which drives the development of a holistically safe environment,” said Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security, during a board meeting Wednesday to review the board’s agenda for next week.

Chou said the plan was developed with community organizations and considered feedback from a survey about school safety that drew 9,000 responses. The board will vote next week to open a 30-day public comment period on the proposed plan and would vote on the plan after that.

Among the proposed plan’s highlights:

All schools would be required to have at least one security guard. Schools would get more guards based on a formula that considers multiple factors, such as the size of the school building, the number of students, and neighborhood crime.
All schools would be required to have an emergency management plan that’s updated annually.
All schools would have to teach social-emotional learning and must implement restorative practices.
Schools would include training on “climate, trauma-responsive, and social and emotional learning” in professional development plans
All schools would be required to have behavioral health teams, which are charged with supporting students who are in crisis, those who have experienced trauma, or are in need of mental health assistance. Most CPS schools – 460 – already have such teams, according to a district spokesperson.
All interior and exterior doors must be locked at all times, except for bathroom doors. Staff would have keys to doors.

This fall, all schools would receive data from the district to “conduct a baseline assessment of their safety, culture and climate” and would be required to develop safety plans based on that assessment.

After brief remarks from Chou on Wednesday, board members applauded the proposal. Board member Rudy Lozano said it signals a shift from discipline to a “healing-centered equity frame for students.”

Board’s approach to school safety draws mixed response

The board’s recent actions on school safety drew praise from advocates who had long pushed CPS to invest money in more social workers and other resources, and highlighted how Black students were more likely to be arrested. The decision drew opposition from some Local School Councils and elected officials who felt that LSCs should decide whether to keep police on campus.

Most research shows that schools with police tend to have higher arrest and suspension rates but doesn’t clarify whether police are the cause or if officers are more likely staffed at schools with more challenges, according to a Chalkbeat review of research in 2020. Nationally, students have generally positive views of SROs but those views tend to worsen among Black students, who are more likely to get arrested. Another study last fall found that Chicago schools implementing restorative justice practices saw fewer student arrests. Students also reported feeling safer at school.

David Stovall, a UIC professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice, said the district’s proposed safety plan reflects what many community members have asked for.

However, Stovall said, the plan will work only if officials can ensure all schools are meeting requirements, such as creating behavioral health teams with mental health professionals.

“It can’t be just one office operating out of central [office], right? You have to have teams of folks in order to do that work we’re talking about,” Stovall said.

The plan seems to require more resources at a time that CPS is projecting a $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1, he said.

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which works with the Chicago Police Department to train Chicago’s SROs, said he was “deeply disappointed” in the board’s decision. Canady said officers are trained to “build positive relationships” with students, parents, and staff.

“We recognize that in some communities, there’s strained relationships with law enforcement,” Canady said. “If we’re ever going to get that right, we’ve got to get it right with the next generation [and] the next generation just happens to be adolescents that are going to become our next adults in society.”

The movement to remove SROs came into focus in 2019, when the U.S. Department of Justice placed the Chicago Police Department under a federal consent decree and raised questions about the role of campus police. Then in 2020, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep their SROs after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of Geroge Floyd.

On the campaign trail, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he supported getting rid of campus police, but later said he supports letting LSCs make that decision for their schools. Johnson flipped again earlier this year when he supported the board’s decision to remove officers.

Correction: May 15, 2024: This story previously said the incorrect number of days this proposal will go out for public comment.

Samantha Smylie contributed.

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

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pushes education agenda with ‘urgency’ during first year in office

2024-05-14T11:00:00+00:00

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On a recent Tuesday morning, Mayor Brandon Johnson visited classrooms at Kelvyn Park High School in Hermosa to present certificates of recognition to teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Flanked by an alderman and the chief of finance for the teachers union, Johnson posed for photos and created a scene rare to find before last year: The mayor standing side-by-side with teachers, some wearing bright red Chicago Teachers Union shirts.

The scene was an indicator of the pivotal role education has played in Johnson’s agenda in office.

When Johnson, a former middle school teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, was elected last year, it was no surprise education would be a central priority.

The union catapulted Johnson into office, and his win was the result of a decade of CTU organizing against how previous mayors approached public education. Instead of a system in which schools compete for students and parents choose the best option no matter how far they may have to travel, Johnson promised to focus on bolstering neighborhood schools, many which have seen declining enrollment and fewer resources.

As Johnson hits the one-year mark in office, his appointed school board has overseen a change in the district’s funding formula and directed district leaders to come up with a new five-year strategic plan, to be voted on this summer, that would rethink the city’s school choice system, which includes charter, selective enrollment, and magnet schools that require applications for admission.

“We have to fund our schools based upon the need,” Johnson said in a February 2023 video interview with Block Club Chicago. “Every single school should have a social worker, counselor and nurse as the bare minimum.”

But Johnson faces a big challenge in carrying out his education agenda: Chicago Public Schools is facing a projected $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year and has provided little detail on how it will close the gap. Federal COVID money is running out and he must bargain a new contract with the teachers union.

Johnson’s agenda also called for free public transit for students, housing for the district’s 20,000 homeless students, and creating up to 200 more Sustainable Community Schools – a partnership with the CTU that provides wraparound services at needy schools. None of these promises have seen any progress.

Still, education may be the one area where Johnson has made progress during his first year in office, said Dick Simpson, professor emeritus of politics at University of Illinois at Chicago and a former alderman.

“In comparison to, say, his other problems — solving crime, for instance — he is much further along on the school agenda,” Simpson said.

The speed with which Johnson can deliver on his education promises is important because he will soon lose exclusive control over the Chicago Board of Education, as the school board begins to transition to a partially elected body this November.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Johnson said his focus on education “has more to do with the urgency that families are calling for.”

“We’re talking about decades upon decades of school closures, the defunding of our schools, the attack on veteran educators, particularly Black educators,” Johnson said. “So our urgency is really centered around the needs of our young people and the needs that our families have.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson visits the classroom of English teacher Noe Castro at Kelvyn Park High School with Principal Keith Adams and Ald. Felix Cardona Jr. (31st) in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

Bolstering neighborhood schools, but not without backlash

Johnson’s plans to bolster neighborhood schools kicked into gear last December.

Just before winter break, the board of education passed a resolution aimed at boosting neighborhood schools and rethinking Chicago’s school choice system, which encourages kids to enroll in public schools outside their attendance zones. Half of all elementary students go to schools that are not their zoned neighborhood schools and more than 70% of high schoolers do.

Johnson has described the choice system as a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces schools to compete for students and resources and results in less investment in neighborhood schools. The resolution said the choice system “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Though many selective enrollment and magnet schools were created under court-ordered desegregation, many still lack the diversity of the city and are largely segregated by race and class. A couple dozen are integrated, but serve more white and Asian American students than the rest of the school district.

The board’s resolution did not change any current policies or suggest the closure of any schools. Board members emphasized that public feedback would drive any changes, such as to admissions policies. Board members have, however, said they plan to scrutinize charter schools more.

The resolution was praised by advocates who have long pushed for more investment in neighborhood schools and the Chicago Teachers Union.

Johnson “ran on equity,” said Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. “He said that our school district had to be more equitable, and the resolution that came from the Board of Education is speaking to the inequity and their efforts to ameliorate inequity that are often disproportionately experienced by neighborhood schools.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson meets students as he tours Kelvyn Park High School in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

But the resolution also sparked backlash from families whose children attend schools of choice, including those already frustrated that CPS was not providing bus service to general education students, largely those attending selective and magnet schools.

Those concerns pushed state lawmakers to file a bill that is up for a final vote this week, which would prevent the district from changing admissions policies for selective enrollment schools – something the current board signaled it may do. The bill would also prevent CPS from cutting funding for selective enrollment schools or closing any school until 2027, when the school board will be fully elected. The bill is supported by powerful state lawmakers and Gov. J. B. Pritzker.

Johnson said the bill would prevent the board from taking actions to help create “real equity” and would prevent the district from balancing its budget. He began rattling off the relatively small percentages of Black students at some of the city’s most sought after selective enrollment high schools and noted how those figures were higher about two decades ago.

“What I’m troubled by is that you have a school district that is hypersegregated and that stratification has continued to grow because you haven’t had leadership like mine directing the school board and the Chicago Public Schools to commit to real equity,” Johnson said. “So is Springfield intervening to protect segregation?”

Simpson noted that Johnson has “a more strained” relationship with the legislature and Pritzker, meaning he doesn’t have a lot of clout to fight for what he wants.

Mayor Brandon Johnson pats the head of kindergartner Triston during a back-to-school event at Jackie Robinson Elementary School in Bronzeville on Aug. 21, 2023.

CPS changes funding formula

In March, CPS announced it would change how it distributes money to schools, delivering on another major promise Johnson made on the campaign trail to end student-based budgeting, which provides schools a set dollar amount for every child enrolled.

The new funding formula will now give every school a base level of staff and discretionary money based on need, which principals can use flexibly. This “needs-based” formula is meant to break a cycle in which underenrolled schools in underinvested neighborhoods lose money because they’re losing students.

That change, too, has drawn a fresh batch of concerns.

Parent leaders at selective enrollment and magnet schools said their budgets provide for fewer staffers next year under the new formula. Some Local School Councils are voting against their budgets for next year.

CPS officials have said that overall funding to schools remains the same as last year but individual schools could see changes. The district is looking for cuts at the central office to address the $391 million deficit, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said. CPS has not yet released school budgets for next year to the public.

The union also raised concerns about the formula, saying it lacks guaranteed positions, such as teacher assistants, and said some neighborhood schools have also seen cuts. Davis Gates blamed Martinez – not the mayor – for those flaws, because she said he is not explaining the changes well to the public or lobbying the state legislature hard enough for more money to prevent staffing cuts to some schools.

Mayor Brandon Johnson hugs art teacher Meredith Kachel at Kelvyn Park High School as he surprised her for Teacher Appreciation Week. Johnson visited the school with Principal Keith Adams and Ald. Felix Cardona Jr. (31st) in Hermosa on May 7, 2024.

Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools, said “multiple staff members” have visited Springfield throughout the session to advocate for more funding, and Martinez has pushed for more funding “for well over two years in Springfield, at our Board of Education meetings and beyond.”

CPS officials have said that no type of school is being disproportionately impacted. But Martinez has acknowledged that they are working to fix concerns at individual schools.

Mayor inconsistent on police out of schools

Some education-focused organizations have criticized the mayor’s administration for pushing big changes through or flip-flopping on commitments without properly engaging the public.

Hal Woods, director of policy and advocacy for Kids First Chicago, shared some examples. For one, the board publicly posted its resolution stating its intent to rethink school choice two days before the board voted, leaving little time for the public to digest it, Woods said. The district is currently holding hearings to collect feedback for the next strategic plan.

Parents and schools have also demanded more information about why the district is changing its funding formula, Woods said. He added that the former formula wasn’t working for many schools, but the district hasn’t shared enough about the new formula or its impact on schools.

Woods also said the mayor could be more clear with communities on his position to remove police from schools. Johnson supported getting rid of campus police on the campaign trail but later said local schools should have the power to choose whether to have school resource officers. Then in February, the mayor backed the school board when it voted to unilaterally remove officers from all campuses by next school year.

School police officers in the hallways of Lane Tech High School in Chicago.

“There’s plenty of data that shows how police in schools impact youth mental health, right, and the disproportionate impact on Black students and Latino students, but … they’re kind of making a decision based on their values without kind of educating the public on why they’re making that decision,” Woods said.

Johnson said “he will talk to anyone” and rejected the idea that his administration isn’t transparent enough. He pointed to the handful of board of education meetings that have been held at high schools in the evening instead of downtown during the day. He believes some of that criticism comes from people who “have had unfettered access” to previous mayors, and there are “people who now have access who were shut out before.”

“I’ve said all along,” Johnson said, “there’s plenty of room at the table for everyone.”

Fulfilling other promises before school board shifts

There are several promises Johnson hasn’t made progress on, including expanding Sustainable Community Schools, a CPS partnership with the teachers union that pairs needy schools with community organizations that provide wraparound services to families. Each program costs about $500,000.

While Johnson has shifted focus toward neighborhood schools, his administration is struggling to support the 8,900 migrant students and families who have arrived in Chicago from the southern border since at least August 2022.

As a candidate, Johnson promised to invest more money in bilingual education. Between August 2022 and last August – five months after he was elected – the number of bilingual-certified educators grew by 90, according to CPS. Between last August and the end of April, that figure grew by another 106 teachers.

CPS and the city also opened a welcome center to help migrant students enroll in school and access other resources. CPS said it helps direct families to schools with the proper resources when they are struggling with enrollment.

Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks at a press conference at Roberto Clemente Community Academy before the opening of a pilot CPS welcome center for newly arriving families on July 17, 2023.

Still, the union, lawmakers, and families have reported that many schools are struggling to meet the needs of migrant children, most of whom are learning English as a new language and are homeless. Those challenges include lacking enough staff to help children with specialized English instructions.

Johnson again blamed state lawmakers for their efforts to protect selective enrollment schools, saying it would “prevent us from having the type of budget, autonomy, and flexibility to invest in those schools” that lack resources to help English learners.

Johnson also hasn’t gained ground on providing the district’s 20,000 homeless students with housing — a bold promise tied to a signature campaign promise to pass the Bring Chicago Home referendum. That ballot measure, which would have used a tax on property sales over $1 million to help fund housing for homeless families, failed in March.

Ultimately, Johnson’s education legacy and the fate of his preferred policies will depend on what the future elected school board does, Simpson said.

“I do think the new school board, as it begins to take shape, will revisit these issues and either move forward with the general direction of Johnson and the current school board, or will roll them back to an extent,” he said.

It could also depend on the ongoing financial challenges for Chicago Public Schools. Asked how he will achieve his goals in the absence of more money from Springfield, Johnson said he’s exploring other “measures and steps that we can take as a city.” When pressed for details, Johnson’s office declined to elaborate.

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

Chicago’s low-income families of students with disabilities eligible for new $500 grants

2024-04-23T19:00:41+00:00

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The city of Chicago is using pandemic relief money to offer $500 grants to students with disabilities who come from low-income families, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday.

Families need to apply for the one-time grants, which will be awarded to up to 8,000 people.

The Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities is partnering with Ada S. McKinley Community Services to distribute $5 million through the new Diverse Learners Recovery Fund, supported by American Rescue Plan dollars, which the federal government distributed to help cities and states recover from the pandemic. Chicago received nearly $1.9 billion in those funds, which must be allocated for spending by December 2024, according to the city.

Most of the dollars in the Diverse Learners Recovery Fund will go toward grants to families, while $1 million is reserved to cover administrative costs for Ada S. McKinley Community Services, according to a spokesperson for the mayor’s office.

Sherry Henry, the mother of a child with autism, speaks with Mayor Brandon Johnson during an event announcing $500 grants for low-income families of students with disabilities.

Sherry Henry, a Hyde Park mother of a 12-year-old boy with autism, said her family had spotty access to the internet during remote school, which made it difficult for her son to log onto virtual classes, leading him to fail a math class.

She did not have to pay for services out of pocket, but she says she could use the grant to buy supplies to help him with dealing with his sensory integration, a disorder that impacts his ability to process his senses, such as touch. Because of that, Henry buys special shoes for her son and recently purchased tennis rackets to help with his grip.

“When I hear about things like this, I always come out to see how I can support my son for my household,” Henry said.

Parents and guardians of students with disabilities can apply for up to two grants per household. Applicants must be residents of Chicago and must earn a household income equal to or less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $93,600 at most for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They must also have documentation proving their child receives services at school, such as an Individualized Education Program or 504 plan, or certification from a doctor that their child has a disability.

At an event announcing the grants, Johnson acknowledged the challenges that young people with disabilities faced during the pandemic, when “typical support systems” were cut off as schools shut down.

“Many families have had to make difficult financial choices to ensure that their children remain on track with their education, and I want to honor those families for all of their hard work and the extra hours that it took to provide for and nurture and raise a family of a child, particularly one with a disability,” Johnson said.

Students with disabilities are legally entitled to school services that are outlined in an Individualized Education Program, or IEP. Those services are meant to provide accommodations for students or give them extra help or therapies in school, but school closures forced by the pandemic separated many students with disabilities from those critical supports.

Like other districts, Chicago Public Schools fell behind in evaluating what support students with disabilities needed. In the 2019-20 school year, when the pandemic hit, more than 10,050 reevaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews of student IEPs were incomplete, according to a Chalkbeat investigation. That’s triple the number from the previous school year.

Bridgeport mother Shareia Ramey, whose 15-year-old son has a seizure disorder, said she’s spent a lot of money out of pocket to meet his needs for services not provided by his school, such as a walker to help him balance himself and other medical costs.

Ramey thinks the grant will be helpful for many families but she’s hoping for more support from the city and public schools, noting that “this is a continuous lifetime that our children with disabilities have,” Ramey said.

Josh Long, the new chief of Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Diverse Learners, saw the pandemic’s impact on students when he was a principal at a school that provides specialized support to older students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Those students had suddenly lost “repetition and consistency,” which they critically need in order to learn, he said.

“What we saw across the board with all of our students was gaps just in their learning,” Long said.

Long applauded the city’s idea of offering grants, which could provide relief for families who are paying out of pocket for medical costs, food, or even transportation to and from therapy services or doctor’s appointments, he said.

Families will be chosen for grants through a lottery system. Those interested can apply online at www.AdaMOPD.com or can text “AdaMOPD” to (877) 478-1359.

Applications will be open through Oct. 30.

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

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson visits West Side high school to advocate for more Sustainable Community Schools

2024-04-19T18:15:00+00:00

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Sitting in a circle with dozens of students at Collins Academy on Chicago’s west side, Mayor Brandon Johnson asked a straightforward question: “What do you need?”

Melvin Hines, a soft-spoken junior in purple track pants and a black zip-up jacket, chimed in: “More resources, better opportunities, and more exposure.”

Answers from other students ricocheted around the room like a pinball: a law program, more connections to businesses, a grocery store in their neighborhood.

“Sometimes it feels like the only thing that’s available for us are leftovers, right?” Johnson said, nodding.

The roundtable discussion — organized with the local, state, and national teachers union, including American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, as well as district leaders — gave the mayor and his allies a moment to advocate for expanding Sustainable Community Schools. The concept provides up to $500,000 a year to a school to partner with a local nonprofit on before- and after-school programming, community outreach, parent engagement, and other wraparound services.

Johnson has promised to grow the number of Sustainable Community Schools from 20 to as many as 200, possibly including Collins. It’s one of the ways he wants to invest more in neighborhood schools.

“This is about making sure that every single child has a library or librarian, wraparound services, class sizes that are manageable,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but unfortunately, because of a long history of systemic racism, disinvestment has left our communities in despair.”

But Chicago Public Schools faces a $391 million shortfall in its $9 billion-plus budget next school year. The district is about to begin contract negotiations with the teachers union and officials recently sent principals individual school budgets using a new formula that provides set staffing levels and extra money based on need. Officials say the total amount distributed to schools is not decreasing, but individual campuses could see cuts.

Stephen Mitchell, the local school council chair at Bronzeville Classical Elementary School, a selective enrollment school that opened in 2018, said their budget is seeing reductions. He said it’s possible the school has to either let staff go or cut other resources.

“I think this is kind of pitting one against the other, which I don’t think is right,” Mitchell said. “I think we need to adequately fund our neighborhood schools and continue to fund selective enrollment schools.”

State lawmakers are moving legislation to block Johnson and his hand-picked school board from making “disproportionate” budget cuts at selective enrollment schools and also extend a moratorium on any school closures until 2027, when a fully elected school board is in place.

The bill passed out of the House late Thursday and is headed to the Senate.

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates characterized the bill with a handful of strong words — racist, disengaged, silly, an abomination — because it targets an issue “that does not exist.”

“There was a resolution that said that the Chicago Board of Education was going to finally prioritize Collins High School … and then you get a bill that says you can’t do that,” she said. “Everyone who votes for that bill needs to go into that room and engage with the same group of students that we just engaged with and explain to them why they cannot have more.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson poses with students at Collins Academy after a roundtable discussion about school funding and expanding the number of Sustainable Community Schools in the city.

Johnson, Davis Gates, and Mitchell, the Bronzeville parent, said Springfield should be focused on fully funding all public schools through the evidence-based funding formula approved in 2017.

That formula promised to get all Illinois school districts, including CPS, to “adequate” funding by 2027 by adding $350 million in new money for K-12 education every year. Since that time, the amount of state money allocated to Chicago schools annually has grown by more than a billion dollars. But the formula says CPS is still another $1 billion short of “adequacy.”

During the roundtable discussion with the students at Collins, Johnson and others, including the local alderwoman Monique Scott, whose dad and brother both served on Chicago’s school board, told the students they were advocating for more money from the state.

As the conversation wound to a close, Collins senior Marshall Douthard Jr. raised his hand.

Everyone has been talking about “the resources and the money problems,” Douthard Jr. said. “I would like to know when they come through: How do you plan to fulfill these requests?”

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

Chicago Teachers Union reveals some key contract demands

2024-04-16T21:20:12+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union wants its next contract to include raising the salary floor for paraprofessionals, more dual language programs, sports and fine arts programs for every school, and more Sustainable Community Schools, which provide wraparound services for students, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said Tuesday.

The union also wants bargaining sessions to be open to the public, Davis Gates said at a press conference at Richards Career Academy on the Southwest Side, a Sustainable Community School where she was flanked by teachers and other union members.

Davis Gates said having more Sustainable Community Schools is just one area that the union agrees on with Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher and former CTU organizer. That commonality is different from contentious negotiations of the past that led to two strikes, she noted.

That changing dynamic is coupled with the union’s desire to open bargaining sessions up to the broader public, such as through livestream, because the contract is meant to benefit everyone, Davis Gates said.

“When I say that this contract is about the common good, I am saying that in the front yard of this city, we will be inviting families to participate, our students to participate,” Davis Gates said. “We will be inviting Chicagoans who believe that this is the greatest city on Earth, to participate in building the greatest school district on Earth.”

Davis Gates later said that the public sessions can only happen if CPS agrees. A CPS spokesperson said the district “looks forward to learning more” about CTU’s request to publicly bargain. A representative for City Hall did not immediately return a request for comment.

“Although contract talks between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) have not yet commenced, the District looks forward to negotiating a fair contract that balances the interests of the hard working educators with our budget constraints,” said Evan Moore, district spokesperson, in a statement.

There is some precedent. In Colorado, state law requires teachers’ contract negotiations to be done in public. In Chicago, with a union-friendly mayor who drew heavy support from the CTU on the campaign trail, contract negotiations this year may not result in a long battle or lead to a strike, as they have in past years under former mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot.

However, bargaining will occur as the district is deciding how to close a $391 million budget deficit as federal COVID dollars run out. That challenge raises questions about how many costly demands CPS can commit to.

In an interview last week with Chalkbeat, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district’s structural deficit — when expenses exceed revenue — preceded the pandemic and, in recent years, was due in part to the 2019 CTU contract agreement that will expire this June. Budget watchdogs have noted that this financial situation prevents the mayor from agreeing to every union demand.

Asked about the economic implications of the contract, Davis Gates did not provide more specific details but said the union will ask for “substantial amounts of investment into our school community,” and emphasized that schools still don’t have enough staff.

However, CTU and the district already agree on at least one thing: Both believe the state should provide more funding to CPS to help alleviate its financial pressures and have said they are pushing lawmakers to do so. The state has boosted funding for CPS since overhauling its funding formula in 2017. But that new formula indicates that CPS would still need $1.1 billion to be considered adequately funded.

There are no signs yet that more money is coming. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed a budget that would increase K-12 funding by the same amount as last year.

CTU delivers demands across the city

After the press conference Tuesday, union leaders rode a trolley to deliver its demands to Pritzker’s office, as well as Johnson’s office and some of its critics, such as the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. The trolley also stopped at the offices of White Sox and Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who has sought $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build a new Sox stadium. Asked why the union approached him, a CTU spokesperson said, “because he loves Chicago as much as we do.”

Before the trolley took off, various school staffers took the microphone at Richards to discuss different contract demands.

Christel Williams-Hayes, the CTU’s recording secretary, highlighted the work of paraprofessionals who provide additional support to schools and can include special education assistants, teacher assistants, school clerks, and parent advocates, among others. The union plans to demand a higher salary floor for paraprofessionals, Davis Gates said. Their pay can range based on the specific paraprofessional job title and years of experience.

One of the lowest paid paraprofessional positions is a teacher assistant, which has a starting salary this school year of $36,259, an increase from $30,862 in the 2019-20 school year, according to the CTU’s current contract.

Charese Munoz, an English teacher at Spencer Technology Academy in Garfield Park, said the city must expand dual language programming to more Black students who can benefit from learning a language other than English.

Rolando Perez, a restorative justice coordinator at Brighton Park Elementary School, which is also a Sustainable Community School, said the union wants “each school and each student” to have a restorative justice coordinator who oversees an alternative form of discipline that focuses on resolving conflicts. The Board of Education recently directed the district to create a new safety plan by removing school resource officers from campuses and implementing alternative disciplinary practices, such as more restorative justice.

“Simply put,” Perez said, “how can a student be ready to learn when they come into a school if they are not feeling fully supported socially and emotionally?”

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

Election results show Chicago voters reject ballot measure aimed at helping homeless

2024-03-22T15:15:21+00:00

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A city ballot measure aimed at reducing homelessness and increasing affordable housing failed Tuesday, a setback for efforts to serve the growing number of Chicago Public Schools students facing housing instability.

The “Bring Chicago Home” initiative was voted down 54 percent to 46 percent, according to unofficial results released Thursday.

The measure backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former school teacher and union organizer, would have raised a one-time tax on real estate transfers for purchases over $1 million.

Chalkbeat reported last week that 21,855 students currently enrolled at CPS were considered Students in Temporary Living Situations, or STLS. That’s up from 14,317 such students last February. The district’s homeless student population has been around 5% for the past decade, which is twice the national average.

While the vast majority of those students are classified as “doubled up,” living with another family temporarily, the number of students living in shelters or out of a car, park, or other public place more than tripled in the last year — from about 2,000 last February to nearly 8,000 this February.

Backers of the ballot initiative estimated the increase could have generated roughly $100 million annually for the city to fight homelessness.

Chicago Public Schools would not have directly received any of the increased revenue, but advocates and the mayor said the money could fund homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and other city-run housing assistance programs that would benefit students and their families.

Supporters of the initiative called the results disappointing and vowed to “keep fighting for housing justice.” Opponents said they also want to make Chicago a better place to live and support solutions that boost the “supply of naturally occurring affordable housing.”

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

Chicago Public Schools ending student-based budgeting in favor of set staffing levels at all campuses

2024-03-21T22:08:53+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to do away with a decade-old system in which school funding was largely based on student enrollment. Instead, starting next year, each school will get a set number of staff and additional funding based on need.

The change, announced Thursday at a Chicago Board of Education meeting, is part of a revamp of the district’s funding formula and delivers on a promise Mayor Brandon Johnson made during his mayoral campaign to end student-based budgeting.

The district had already started to move away from a student-based approach in the previous two budget cycles, as it funded more positions – such as social workers – centrally. The current formula also accounts for student needs, such as how many students with disabilities need additional support.

Under the new formula, every school will have certain guaranteed staff, including an assistant principal, a counselor, and core classroom teachers. It would guarantee “a baseline level of resources for every school, regardless of enrollment,” then add more based on need, according to a district presentation.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, welcomed the move away from student-based budgeting, calling it an inequitable approach “because not every student has the same needs and doesn’t generate the same resources.”

It will, however, likely be challenging for the district to roll out a new funding model when schools already have “a certain funding expectation” they rely on to pay for contracts or programming. The district should try to hold schools harmless, meaning schools shouldn’t lose money under the new formula, Martire said.

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools switched from using a budgeting system that funded a set number of staff at each school to one that allocated money per student. As schools lost enrollment, their budgets often tightened. But budgets have also grown over the past few years with the influx of $2.4 billion, so far, in federal COVID relief funding.

The district’s enrollment declined significantly over the past decade, losing more than 75,000 students since 2013. Enrollment stabilized this year with about 323,000 students enrolled. At the same time, the number of employees has grown. District staffing data shows CPS employed roughly 43,500 people as of the end December, up from around 37,000 as of December 2018.

District officials and school board members did not immediately share more details about the formula. It remains unclear exactly how funding will be allocated to campuses or how much autonomy a principal and Local School Council would have over their school’s budgets.

Schools will also receive discretionary funding, but it is not clear how that will be calculated.

A school’s need will be determined by something called the “opportunity index,” which considers several factors, such as the percentage of students with disabilities, those who are homeless, those learning English as a new language, those who come from low-income families, the number of teachers a school was able to retain, and whether a school is segregated by race or ethnicity. The index also considers data about the surrounding community and how a school has been funded historically.

“Maybe it’s just more striking because I’ve been here for a while now, but this is a major shift and it’s important,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, vice president of the Chicago Board of Education.

The funding formula shift comes as the district is also facing a projected $391 million deficit, as federal COVID relief funding runs out. That gap must be filled by revenue that has not yet been identified, Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget director, told the board Thursday.

District officials are projecting an additional roughly $25 million in K-12 funding next year under the state’s Evidence-Based Funding formula, or EBF, which makes up the largest portion of state funding for CPS. That would bring total EBF funding for Chicago to nearly $1.8 billion. State officials have gradually provided more funding to Illinois school districts under the formula, but CPS officials are advocating for a larger increase, arguing that the district is still owed more than $1 billion.

When accounting for all state funding, Illinois gave Chicago Public Schools nearly $2.5 billion for this current fiscal year, up from $1.5 billion in 2017, the year before the state reformed how it was funding school districts.

Even with the budget challenges, the district is working to keep several of the new investments it made using federal COVID dollars, including high-dosage tutoring, additional counselors, and extended learning time, such as the expansion of summer school, as well as before- and after-school programming.

Officials defended those investments by highlighting a recent study that showed Chicago’s reading scores have bounced back from the pandemic at a greater rate than most big school districts.

“It should not take a crisis for us to fully fund our schools,” Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said during her presentation Thursday.

In an interview earlier this week, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district may also have to make “hard decisions” this year. That could include pausing “critical” repairs for buildings, he said.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago student homelessness is rising. Could a tax change backed by the mayor help fix that?

2024-03-14T19:55:36+00:00

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Derrianna Ford lived with her grandmother on Chicago’s north side growing up, but when the older woman lost her home, Ford and her siblings had to relocate to the south side for about a year.

They moved from the city’s West Ridge neighborhood to the South Side during her freshman year at Mather High School. Ford said she had to wake up at 4 a.m., take a bus to the southernmost stop on Chicago’s Red Line, ride almost the entire 26-mile route north, and then get on another bus in order to get to school by 8 a.m.

During the week, she would occasionally stay with a friend closer to school to avoid the long commute.

“This is so normal to us,” Ford said. “You don’t see yourself as struggling because you’re used to it. You don’t see it as homelessness.”

These days, Ford, now 20, is searching for a place of her own. But she has another goal. She’s knocking on doors to help pass a ballot referendum in Chicago on March 19 that advocates say could put a real dent in reducing homelessness.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer and middle school teacher, promised in his education platform and transition plan to house the city’s homeless, with a focus on more than 20,000 students in Chicago Public Schools currently facing housing instability. In the last year, the number of CPS students in unstable housing situations — which can disrupt or derail students’ academic progress — has risen by roughly 50%.

To address that, Johnson and his allies are pushing to increase a real estate transfer tax on sales of property sales worth more than $1 million to generate an estimated $100 million annually to fund services for the homeless and affordable housing.

Some progressive groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union which helped propel Johnson to office, have been advocating to increase the city’s real estate transfer tax to help the homeless since Rahm Emanuel was mayor. The effort — dubbed Bring Chicago Home — is something Johnson emphasized often on the campaign trail last year.

“The people of Chicago voted for me because I said that I’m going to address homelessness,” Johnson said Wednesday. “Bring Chicago Home is an opportunity to address homelessness.”

A document obtained by Chalkbeat outlining Johnson’s first-term goals suggested his administration hopes to help house 10,000 students and their families.

But opponents of the initiative challenged the ballot question’s legality in the courts, even asking the Illinois Supreme Court to block the measure, which the court declined to do Wednesday. Still, some groups, including the nonpartisan budget watchdog Civic Federation, are concerned the mayor and City Council have not been specific enough about how the money would be used.

“This is the mayor’s signature item,” said Ald. Brendan Reilly, who represents much of downtown and opposes the referendum because it lacks specifics and could have unintended consequences on rental property and commercial real estate. “He’s put a lot of political capital into it and right now the Chicago electorate gets to give him a report card. I think this is as much about the policy as it is about a commentary on his agenda.”

Chicago Public Schools would not directly get any of the estimated $100 million in revenue that a change to the real estate transfer tax would generate. CPS officials did not comment on the ballot initiative, but said the district will continue to support homeless students and protect their rights under federal law.

More Chicago Public Schools students identified as homeless

The number of students in temporary living situations enrolled at Chicago Public Schools has hovered around 5% for at least the last decade — twice the national average. Recent data indicates the problem is getting more acute as the numbers climb.

District data shared with Chalkbeat from the end of February indicated 21,855 students currently enrolled at CPS were considered Students in Temporary Living Situations, or STLS. That’s up from more than 14,317 such students last February. CPS data includes any student categorized this way at any time during the school year, and once a student is marked as such, they keep that status for the remainder of the year.

The vast majority — around 16,000 students — are classified as “doubled up,” meaning they are living with another family temporarily, like Ford was while a freshman in high school.

But the number of CPS students listed as living in a shelter, hotel or motel, or living out of a car, park, or other public place more than tripled in the last year — from about 2,000 last February to nearly 8,000 as of Feb. 29. The jump has coincided with the ongoing influx of migrants arriving from the southern border.

Chicago grappled with students facing homelessness or housing instability long before the COVID pandemic and recent wave of migrants. A 2021 study from the University of Chicago Inclusive Economy Lab analyzed nine years of district data between 2009 and 2018 and found that, over the course of their K-12 experience, about 13% of CPS students experienced housing instability.

The report noted that research shows homeless students come to school less often, have lower academic achievement, and are more likely to drop out. At the same time, school districts like CPS “have limited capacity to connect students to housing supports.”

Cook County Commissioner Tara Stamps, the daughter of a longtime housing activist, saw this “heartbreaking” reality up close during the more than two decades she spent as a classroom teacher, including working alongside Johnson at a school serving the Cabrini Green public housing complex.

One time, she said, a single mom of one of her students had no place to stay, so Stamps and the school’s security guard “called and called and called around” to help them find housing.

Stamps, who now also works for the Chicago Teachers Union, said past administrations have emphasized academic achievement and improving test scores without prioritizing the conditions students faced that affected those scores: “There is no [academic] progress … if a baby doesn’t know where they’re going to sleep at night, if they don’t know where they’re going to eat.”.

Federal law requires school districts to support students facing housing insecurity. Some districts also get money through competitive grants to support homeless students. Students identified as such are entitled to transportation, the right to enroll without a permanent address, and the right to continue attending the same school through the end of the academic year even if they move.

But few districts have been directly involved in finding families housing.

With the help of federal COVID money, some schools across the country have added staff to help families with housing, others have provided emergency hotel stays and even propped up shelters inside schools.

Alyssa Phillips, an education attorney with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, which has been advocating for Bring Chicago Home for several years, said the city needs a consistent revenue stream to tackle homelessness, along with input about what works from people experiencing homelessness and service providers.

“I think the most important thing is having that continuous funding,” Phillips said.

Federal COVID money for homeless set to expire

During the COVID pandemic, housing instability rose across the country. Homeless students were disconnected from schools and districts struggled to identify how many students were entitled to additional support and resources.

Chicago Public Schools received about $10.1 million in federal pandemic aid to serve homeless students, as part of roughly $800 million distributed nationally to states and school districts.

The city and school district created a program to give $500 stipends to families in Students in Temporary Living Situations, using money from the initial 2020 wave of federal COVID relief dollars. It’s not clear how many families received the money, and district officials deferred to the city, which administered the program.

Ald. Maria Hadden, who represents Chicago’s north lakefront and is a supporter of the Bring Chicago Home initiative, said the city also used some of its share of federal COVID dollars to provide rental assistance to thousands of people. She recounted helping one family in her ward with a CPS student with epilepsy avoid an eviction because they were able to get six months of rental assistance.

But soon, federal COVID money is drying up. Expenditure data obtained by Chalkbeat shows most of the school district’s share of federal COVID money has been spent, primarily for school staff.

If the ballot initiative to raise the real estate transfer tax on property over a $1 million is approved, Hadden said, the city could revive, continue, or expand pandemic-era programs, like rental and mortgage assistance and rapid rehousing efforts for people living in tent encampments.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is greeted by supporters after he spoke while dozens rally for the Bring Chicago Home resolution outside the Thompson Center before a City Council meeting on Nov. 7, 2023.

Political ‘slush fund’ or nimble revenue stream?

Ford and others continue to knock on doors to garner support from voters who will ultimately decide whether Chicago should have a graduated real estate transfer tax.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Teachers Union is gearing up for another round of contract negotiations with a mayor more amenable to their views than his two predecessors. During contract negotiations in 2019, the union pushed to include provisions around affordable housing. But then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the union contract was “not the appropriate place for the City to legislate its affordable housing policy.”

Leaked contract proposals for upcoming contract talks include two focused on affordable housing: mortgage and rental assistance for teachers, and a vocational program that would have students build affordable housing.

Whatever happens with the teachers union contract, Johnson is forging ahead with a plan to borrow $1.25 billion dollars to fund affordable housing and other development. On Wednesday, the mayor said he’ll soon name a new chief homelessness officer. And he directed the city’s Department of Family Support Services to work with CPS to match the district’s most vulnerable students with housing. The two agencies meet weekly, a spokesperson confirmed.

If voters approve the ballot initiative, the City Council would still need to pass an ordinance spelling out how to appropriate the revenue.

Reilly, the downtown alderman, said that “anyone who has a soul” cares about the homeless and wants to find solutions. But he worries that if the tax is approved, the revenue could quickly turn into a “slush fund” for political allies of whomever is mayor.

“There’s no guarantee that any of this money lands with helping the homeless people,” Reilly said. “It’s just going to be a big stack of money that a whole lot of people are gonna wanna fight over.”

Emma Tai, campaign director for the Bring Chicago Home Ballot Initiative, said the revenue would be legally dedicated to fund affordable housing and services for the homeless. A draft ordinance for implementing the change to the transfer tax would create a 15-member panel appointed by the mayor and approved by City Council to make recommendations annually based on the “most pressing needs.”

“The idea is for the funds to be nimble,” Tai said, noting that during the height of the pandemic, there was a critical need to provide housing to domestic violence victims, whereas now that pandemic-era eviction moratoriums have ended, there’s a need for emergency rental assistance. The idea is that the panel’s recommendations would take such shifts into account.

For young people like Derrianna Ford, who experienced housing insecurity as a student and is searching for an affordable apartment now, the issue boils down to one thing: “stability.”

This story has been updated to more accurately characterize Tai’s comments about how housing needs have shifted in Chicago.

Chalkbeat reporter Reema Amin contributed reporting.

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

Chicago Public Schools is in new era for negotiations with the CTU. What could it mean for schools?

2024-03-06T22:24:06+00:00

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When former Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey thinks about the dynamics between City Hall and the union, he flashes back to 2011. That’s when then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended a decision to cancel pay raises for teachers by saying they got other types of salary boosts, while “our children got the shaft.”

The stinging quip illustrates how contentious contract negotiations and the relationship between the CTU and city officials were back then, ultimately leading to a weeklong teachers strike in 2012, said Sharkey, who currently sits on the union’s executive board.

After years of thorny relationships with district officials and mayors who did not align with the union on how to improve or support schools, the CTU is expected to begin bargaining this spring over a new contract with a district that now answers to Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher who rose to power as a CTU organizer.

“This is going to be a struggle because the culture in Chicago with the public schools and the teachers union is a culture of ‘No,’ and ‘Make me,’ and ‘OK,’” current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said during a City Club speech Tuesday. “That’s different from what we are embarking on this time. We’re saying, ‘How might we?’ That’s a different question.”

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Damen Alexander said the district “looks forward to negotiating a fair contract that balances both the interests of the District’s hard-working educators and our duty to be fiscally responsible.”

A City Hall spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

The latest contract talks will come amid massive change for Chicago Public Schools. The first-ever school board elections will take place this fall and a 21-member partially elected board will take office next January. And bargaining will happen as the district attempts to fill a projected $391 million budget deficit for next year, after four years of being buoyed by $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief dollars that will soon run out.

Amid those challenges, the union has a strong ally in office.

The CTU was Johnson’s largest campaign donor, and Davis Gates introduced him at his victory party.

Before the union propelled one of its own into the mayor’s office, the teachers union regained some bargaining power in 2021 when state legislators passed a law that restored its right to bargain over a broader set of issues — such as class size or the length of the school day — which had been restricted since 1995.

Still, Johnson signaled on the campaign trail that he would face “tough decisions” as mayor in negotiations with the CTU and wouldn’t be able to meet all of the union’s demands.

“So who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?” he said during a mayoral forum last year.

But the Johnson administration has already overseen policy changes the union counts as victories, including expanded parental leave for CTU members, a promise to remove school resource officers by next school year, and a commitment to rethink school choice policies.

The union’s House of Delegates, made up of hundreds of educators across the city, is scheduled to vote Wednesday on proposals crafted by the union’s various committees and developed as a response to what CTU members said they wanted to see in the next contract, according to the union.

Those proposals include a wide range of ideas, from pay raises and housing assistance for teachers to providing affordable housing and support for homeless students and their families.

While union officials acknowledge that things are different this time around, they have also emphasized that Johnson does not “have a magic wand” and pushed back against the idea that the union will get everything it asks for.

“I think it is ridiculous for anyone to think that the Black man on the fifth floor who comes from the progressive movement has fairy dust to sprinkle to end this quickly,” Davis Gates said in an interview with Chalkbeat last month. “There is an entire bureaucracy that has been hired and trained to tell the Chicago Teachers Union, ‘No.’”

Joe Ferguson, president of Civic Federation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, said the mayor can’t meet all of the union’s demands because “the money isn’t there for it.” He said the public deserves to hear from the board and the mayor on where they’ll draw the line.

“Where those boundaries are, nobody can say,” Ferguson said.

Past tensions between CTU and City Hall prompted strikes

Over the past decade, contract negotiations between CPS and the CTU have resulted in two strikes that garnered national attention and inspired education labor fights around the country.

In 2012, after months of simmering disagreement and the city skipping a raise for teachers, the union went on strike for seven days at the start of the school year. Emanuel had pushed for a longer school day and embraced education reform ideas sweeping the country at the time, including a new way to evaluate teachers, which the union strongly opposed. He also refused to bargain over issues like class size, which at the time, state law did not require CPS to do.

An 11-day strike happened in 2019 under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who the union had initially expected to align with more than Emanuel. The union was fighting for “common good” ideas that exceeded the scope of a teacher’s daily duties but were meant to improve students’ and families’ lives, such as ensuring that every school had a nurse, social worker, and librarian. The contract ultimately locked in some of those demands, as well as other wins, such as a $35 million fund to help reduce class sizes, but ultimately, the long strike left many teachers and families frustrated.

Those sour dynamics appear to be gone with Johnson’s election, said Robert Bruno, professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who co-wrote a book about CTU’s 2012 strike.

“Both parties believe that the other party understands and would be respectful of each other’s perspectives, which certainly wasn’t the case with the two previous mayors or even the previous CEOs — and we’ve gone through a few of them in Chicago,” he said.

Sharkey noted that Johnson’s priorities include many ideas the union agrees with and gave rise to, such as creating more sustainable community schools that provide wraparound services to families. His campaign platform also closely mirrored a document CTU first put out in 2012 titled “The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve,” which was updated in 2018 and most recently, in 2022.

In general, the union has found that working with the district has been easier and more receptive since Johnson has taken office, according to Sharkey and Davis Gates.

But Davis Gates said she expects plenty of disagreement because she still feels that the agency has a bureaucracy “that cannot collaborate, that does not say yes, and has a difficult time understanding how to partner with us.”

Union again pushing ‘common good’ demands

The union is expected to push for cost-of-living raises that keep up with or exceed inflation and a more uniform overtime pay policy, according to proposals leaked to conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute, which a CTU spokesperson confirmed are real. The union also wants changes to the teacher evaluation process, including to codify that evaluations cannot be used for layoffs.

Proposals also include codifying health care policies, such as gender-affirming care, paid parental leave for employees, abortion coverage, and access to weight loss medical care, such as bariatric surgery.

In a more novel demand, the union will also push for housing assistance for its members, but the leaked proposal doesn’t include more details on how that would be done. Under Emanuel, the city offered assistance to police officers who wanted to buy homes in the areas they worked in, but few officers took advantage of the program.

In the classroom, the union is expected to renew a push to give elementary school teachers more preparation and collaboration time during the school day, Sharkey said. That was a major demand in the 2019 contract negotiations that largely did not come to fruition – and could again be difficult to secure this time around given the complicated logistics of tweaking a school day.

Union officials also expect proposals around bilingual services for students, including on attracting staff and expanding access to bilingual training for teachers, and retaining more special education staff. Both bilingual and special education are teacher shortage areas.

Davis Gates said they’ll continue demanding a librarian and nurse be staffed at every school.

Separately, union officials are expecting to push for more common good items, Davis Gates said. This will include creating a career and technical education program that would involve building houses for homeless students and their families, according to the leaked proposals.

Common good proposals will also include creating more sustainable community schools, Davis Gates said. The union is also interested in pushing for more “green” – or energy efficient – schools, such as by installing more solar panels. The district is already planning to purchase 50 electric school buses.

CPS’s budget deficit could complicate negotiations

Contract talks will begin as the district plans for its budget next year, which is projected to be $391 million in the hole. That could make costly union proposals a tough sell for the district.

District officials have for months publicized the budget deficit as federal COVID relief dollars run out. The district can either cut programming or find more money, which officials want to do by demanding more funding from the state.

Bruno, the labor expert, said it is a good sign the union agrees that Springfield should provide more money, because that means all negotiating parties agree on a solution to a significant problem.

However, Ferguson, from the Civic Federation, has little hope that more money is coming, in part because of what appears to be a “frayed” relationship between City Hall and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office. Pritzker recently proposed a budget that provides the same increase to K-12 funding as last year. And because CPS’s deficit is driven by the loss of COVID relief dollars, this year’s negotiations are “a fairly unique stew,” he said.

“There have been deficits being faced in the past [and] constraints on funding sources, but none that have come in this particular context, where not only is there a question of, where is more money coming from, but it also comes at a moment when we all know that recent existing streams are going to end,” Ferguson said. “And it has also been made abundantly clear by Springfield, by the governor, that there is no money to be gotten from the state.”

Union officials said they don’t yet know the price tag of their proposals, and they don’t expect to propose “money-saving” ideas. But Sharkey said they’ll have ideas on how the district can fund their proposals “and would expect the board to try to work with us on that.”

Asked how the district’s financial picture will impact its approach to negotiations, a CPS spokesperson pointed to the district’s budget deficit and said the district must be “fiscally responsible.”

Even with financial challenges, Sharkey said he expects the union and the district to work out disagreements in a more timely manner, unlike past negotiations that were “unproductive for months.”

Davis Gates said CTU continues to see its contract as “leverage for the common good,” has “high expectations” for upcoming negotiations, and is hoping for more agreement that will finally deliver on the CTU’s push to get schools more resources.

At the City Club speech this week, in a room full of business leaders, educators, and philanthropists, Davis Gates said she expects people to be skeptical that the mayor is going to “give CTU everything it’s asking for.”

“I hope he does,” she said.

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

Chicago Board of Education votes to remove police officers from schools

2024-02-23T03:12:51+00:00

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During a meeting in which tempers flared and community members argued over the merits of school police, Chicago’s Board of Education voted Thursday to eliminate all school police officers by the next academic year and create a new “holistic” school safety policy.

The board approved a resolution that directs Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to draft a school safety policy by June 27 that explicitly bans school resource officers, or SROs, from campuses. These officers are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but the district covers their salaries.

The district’s new school safety policy must instead emphasize more “holistic” approaches to student discipline, such as restorative justice practices, the resolution said. Such practices, which focus on conflict resolution instead of punishment, have replaced sworn officers in some schools over the past few years. The resolution approved Thursday will directly impact the 39 high schools that currently have a total of 57 SROs.

The board’s decision — which drew dozens of public speakers, including 20 elected officials — addresses a yearslong grassroots movement that has pushed the district to remove SROs from school campuses. Advocates instead want the district to spend more money on social workers, mental health resources, and practices focusing on conflict resolution. A recent study found that schools implementing restorative justice practices saw drops in student arrests. Students also reported feeling more safe.

But the decision drew significant pushback as well, including from several city aldermen, who argued that schools in their communities feel safer when officers are on campus.

At one point during Thursday’s meeting, former school board member and community activist Dwayne Truss sparred with audience members over his criticism of the board’s decision — causing advocates to chant “SROs, we want you out.” Truss was on the board when it decided to let Local School Councils vote on whether to keep their officers. He argued that was the most “democratic” solution at the time and still is today.

Truss, who is Black, accused the Board of Education of “telling Black folks, ‘We know what’s best for you.’”

In defending the board’s decision, Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said it was fulfilling a 2020 promise from the previous board, which committed to phasing SROs out of schools. The board’s goal is to reduce disparities among those who are disciplined at school, she said. Calls to police disproportionately involve students with disabilities and Black students, who are also disproportionately suspended, compared to their peers, according to the resolution.

The board has discussed the policy change for several months with the district and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, Todd-Breland said, noting that it’s “about more than just SROs.”

“This is a shift, and this shift to a model of holistic safety is really necessary for all of our schools, not just schools that currently have SROs,” Todd-Breland said. “Continuing the district’s progress in moving from a more punitive approach to a holistic, healing centered approach is evidence-based work.”

Board member Rudy Lozano Jr. said the district will still rely on the Chicago Police Department to help with arrival and dismissal and to respond to emergencies. In response to criticism about pulling power away from LSCs, board member Tanya D. Woods said state law requires the district to “deal with discipline disparities.”

Makayla Acevedo, a junior at Hyde Park Academy and a member of Southside Together Organizing for Power, or STOP, said officers at her school don’t stop the many fights that break out. She wants to see the funding for SRO salaries go toward more career programming at her school, such as for nursing training, as well as restorative justice programming.

“I just feel like we just really need those funds, to invest all of that money to get the programs in order for all students … to be successful in life and reach their dreams,” Acevedo said.

The district has spent nearly $4 million on “alternative safety interventions,” such as restorative justice, at 14 schools where SROs have already been removed, according to the resolution.

After the meeting, Martinez said, “We actually have not paid for any of these services for CPD for the last three years. We weren’t even going to pay for this year.” A district spokesperson later confirmed that although money was allocated, no payments have been made to the police department since 2020, when schools went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longstanding tensions come to a head

The movement to remove SROs grew in 2019, when the Chicago Police Department was placed under a federal consent decree. The next year, after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep SROs.

But the resolution has exposed long-simmering tensions.

At Thursday’s meeting, arguments erupted between Truss and audience members from organizations that have long pushed for the district to remove SROs. Those organizations include Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Good Kids Mad City, and STOP.

As they yelled at each other, the board called a brief recess and cleared the room for several minutes.

Truss cited recent shootings outside three Chicago schools that left four students dead, and argued that some communities may feel the need to keep police at schools in order to feel safe. That sentiment was echoed by several other speakers.

“The fact is that Black folks are tired of getting disrespected by folks who don’t live in our community,” said Truss.

Ald. Monique Scott, whose 24th Ward represents North Lawndale on the West Side, said the decision needs to be made by local communities. Scott’s brother and predecessor, Michael Scott Jr., replaced Truss on the school board in 2022 and served until the end of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term last summer.

“Every school doesn’t have to have them, but some schools need them and I think that it should be based on the LSC to determine that,” Scott said.

The district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, charged with advising the Board of Education, “overwhelmingly” approved a resolution Feb. 12 that called for leaving decisions about campus police to LSCs, according to Froy Jimenez, a member of the advisory board and a teacher at John Hancock College Preparatory High School.

The advisory board members were concerned that stripping LSCs of that power chips away their right to make decisions about their schools, Jimenez said. Jimenez noted that his own LSC voted to get rid of the school’s campus police. However, Jimenez said he represents a part of the city “where some schools would want to have [them].”

The board’s decision was celebrated by several advocacy organizations that have rallied for years to stop staffing police in schools, as well as the City Council’s progressive caucus. Several speakers asked the district to spend more money on social workers and boost restorative justice.

Kennedy Bartley, executive director of United Working Families, a progressive political organization, credited Thursday’s vote to the years of advocacy from students and educators, which “built enough political power to elect a mayor with a mandate for transformative change.”

The Chicago Teachers Union, which also supports the change, has submitted a request with the district to bargain over the new school safety policy, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter told the board Thursday. Potter said the union wants several things to be considered in the new policy, including more “trauma supports” and training on restorative practices.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago’s school support staff have been working without a new contract. Union leaders say talks have stalled.

2024-02-20T23:11:14+00:00

During Aaron Jemison’s 35 years as a custodian for Chicago Public Schools, he has had to work overtime or pick up other part-time jobs such as driving an Uber or Lyft to make ends meet.

As a member of the bargaining committee for SEIU Local 73, the union representing school support staff, Jemison said he is fighting to get more retirement benefits, higher wages, and better working conditions under the next contract between the union and Chicago Public Schools.

However, it’s unclear when the next contract will be finalized since the union contract expired on June 30, 2023 and negotiations have been ongoing since May. Union leaders say contract negotiations have stalled.

Jemison, who said he makes a good salary, worries about other custodians whose pay starts off around $16 an hour. “We’re being treated like we’re nobody,” he said.

Union leaders say only one bargaining session is scheduled for February and the district has not provided them with economic proposals. SEIU Local 73 is hoping a new four-year contract will be finalized as soon as possible — or at least by the end of the school year.

SEIU has a powerful ally in the mayor’s office. The union endorsed Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, during his run for office in 2023. SEIU affiliates donated more than $2 million to Johnson’s campaign, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat Chicago.

A spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools said the district is working with SEIU to reach an agreement, with the goal of finalizing a contract before the end of this school year.

SEIU Local 73 represents about 11,000 support workers, including custodians, special education classroom assistants, bus aides, security officers, crossing guards, and parent-workers. These workers are often paid lower in comparison to educators and school administrators. On average, many of these school employees make about $40,000 a year. The average Chicago teacher’s salary is over $88,000,

In addition to waiting for economic proposals from the district, the union says it is waiting for responses from the district on proposals already talked about across the table.

Here are some of the key issues SEIU is bargaining for in its non-economic proposals:

Getting a centralized new hire orientation for school-based employees to understand their job responsibilities.
Allow special education classroom assistants to attend Individualized Education Program meetings to support students with disabilities and their families.
Prevent schools from using special education classroom assistants for other jobs such as teaching assistant or school clerk.
Transparency on how the district uses evaluation for school support staff. Evaluations determine layoffs and the amount of time a school employee works during the day.

Stacia Scott Kennedy, executive vice president of SEIU Local 73, said the union proposals come directly from rank-and-file members.

“Most of our proposals have come from our members; issues that they face in the workplace and then solutions that would help them to be able to better do their jobs,” said Scott Kennedy. “but to, ultimately, be able to better serve students.”

Shirley Shelton, who has been a special education classroom assistant for 11 years, said her experience working with students has been the most rewarding. She said she can see the fruits of her labor in the development of her students.

Shelton said she often sees her co-workers are struggling to make ends meet.

“My co-workers, some of them are single parents working two jobs. That’s taking them away from their families,” said Shelton. “In this next contract, I’m looking forward to a nice pay raise, where they could be able to spend more time with their families in the afternoons and evenings.”

Scott Kennedy said the union has secured tentative agreements for proposals regarding custodians, bus aides, and custodians.

Last week, Chicago Public Schools announced it does not plan to renew a multi-million dollar contract with Aramark for custodial services and management. The district has contracted with Aramark for a decade. For the past three years, school janitors have voiced concerns about the lack of cleaning supplies and families have complained about the lack of cleanliness in school for years.

Chicago’s Board of Education will vote on seven new contracts to help manage school custodians on Thursday at the monthly board meeting.

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

Chicago’s school board wants to remove police from all schools starting next school year

2024-02-20T19:32:03+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education wants to remove police officers from schools starting next school year, according to a resolution included in the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting.

The resolution directs CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to come up with a new policy by June 27 that would introduce a “holistic approach to school safety” at district schools, such as implementing restorative justice practices, which focus on resolving a conflict instead of punishment.

That policy “must make explicit that the use of [school resource officers] within District schools will end by the start of the 2024-2025 school year,” the resolution said. (Find the resolution on page 15 of your PDF reader.)

The resolution nods to the district’s shift in student discipline to more restorative practices, which has led to “significant progress” in reducing suspensions. However, the resolution notes that disparities in suspension rates are disproportionately higher for students with disabilities and Black students, compared to their Hispanic and white peers.

Most CPS schools don’t have school resource officers who, unlike security guards, are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but are stationed in schools full-time. If passed, the resolution would directly impact 39 schools – all high schools – that have a total of 57 officers on campus, according to the resolution and district officials. Fourteen schools voted to remove a total of 28 officers and instead received a total of $3.9 million for “alternative safety interventions,” including for restorative justice and social service coordinators, the resolution said. CPS also employs more than 1,400 security guards at schools, according to staffing data from the end of December 2023.

Schools that have voted to keep their officers have cited a variety of reasons for doing so, including that in some cases, school resource officers have strong relationships with students. Opponents of police on campus argue that the presence of officers can lead to more punitive student discipline and can leave children feeling unsafe.

Last month, Nadig Newspapers and WBEZ reported that the board was planning to remove Chicago Police Department officers from schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson later confirmed to WBEZ that he’s in support of such a plan.

The resolution, which the board is slated to vote on Thursday, represents Johnson’s hand-picked school board’s clearest statements on removing police officers from Chicago schools. As a mayoral candidate, Johnson had said police officers “have no place in schools,” WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reported. However, last year, he told the outlet he would leave the decision up to LSCs.

The resolution said the district would continue to partner with the Chicago Police Department, but district officials did not immediately explain what that relationship would look like.

Having police stationed inside Chicago schools came under scrutiny in 2019 as part of the police department’s federal consent decree. In 2020, amid protests and the racial reckoning that swept the country after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, Chicago schools began voting one-by-one on whether or not to keep their school resource officers.

Driven by similar issues, Denver Public Schools removed police from schools in 2020 and 2021, but its work to implement a new school safety policy, as Chicago’s board is seeking, was derailed by the pandemic. The Denver school board reversed its decision last June after a shooting inside a high school.

In 2022, the Chicago school board reduced its contract with the police department from more than $30 million to roughly $10 million and allocated money for schools to implement alternatives to police, such as restorative justice counselors. The contract was renewed last summer for $10.3 million and about $4 million to improve school climate was separately allocated to schools that had removed their officers.

Research from the University of Chicago released last fall found an improvement in student engagement and a decline in suspensions at schools that had implemented restorative practices in recent years.

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

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

Chicago is getting an elected school board. What questions do you have?

2024-02-06T22:22:30+00:00

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Less than a year from now, Chicago Public Schools will swear in its first elected school board members.

Chicago’s elected school board is coming soon. Here’s what you need to know.

But even with a firm swearing-in date of Jan. 15, 2025, many unanswered questions still remain about the election on Nov. 5 that would usher in those new board members — and how the board will function once in place. State law says 10 members will be elected this year, but lawmakers are debating whether to elect all 21 now. (Mayor Brandon Johnson recently asked the legislature to ensure that just half are elected this year, the Sun-Times reported.)

The state legislature must also finalize district boundaries for school board members. Lawmakers appear to have agreed on a third draft of the map last November.

Once members are sworn in next January, what’s next? How will the board work in comparison to the appointed board it will replace?

Chalkbeat Chicago wants to hear your questions about the upcoming school board elections and the elected school board. We’ll aim to answer your questions through our reporting as we follow campaigns and elections this year.

Answer the survey here or fill it out below. We will not use your name in our reporting without your permission.

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

Chicago Board of Education renews contracts for 49 charter schools

2024-01-25T23:01:29+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to renew agreements with 12 charter networks, impacting 49 schools. The decision followed months of pleading from charter school leaders, educators, and students.

The board extended contracts for all of the schools up for renewal. It renewed most of the contracts by either three or four years, starting this July. The maximum extension allowed under state law is 10 years.

Each renewal came with a set of conditions, ranging from monitoring services for students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language to improving facilities, financial compliance, and accuracy of teacher licenses. Those conditions were a result of “issues that were identified during our comprehensive review,” said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management.

The vote represented the first round of charter renewals under the current board. In the months leading up to Thursday’s vote, Chicago’s charter school community worried that the board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would make it more challenging for charters to get renewed. Johnson, who rose to power as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, has long been critical of charter schools, but has also said he doesn’t oppose them.

More recently, the board passed a resolution stating its intention to move away from school choice and focus on sending more resources to neighborhood schools. The resolution does not call for the closure of schools of choice, such as charters, but board leaders said they would be more closely scrutinizing charter schools.

The board’s vote to renew all contracts isn’t surprising: State law has barred school closures in Chicago until 2025. In July, a Cook County judge overturned the previous board’s decision not to renew its contract with Urban Prep Charter Academy after ruling that the state’s school closure moratorium applies to charters.

Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she appreciates the improvement she’s seen in some charter schools, but said that others have failed to keep up finances or follow federal laws.

“I still maintain that as a private operator getting public money, there should be a higher level of scrutiny,” Todd-Breland said.

District officials said they evaluate charter schools based on performance in three criteria: academics, finances, and operations, which focuses on 13 areas related to state and federal law, requirements in their charter contract, and CPS policy. Five-year extensions are awarded to schools that meet or exceed academic and financial standards and receive the highest rating for operations. Extensions beyond five years go to schools that exceed all standards.

Board President Jianan Shi said he wanted the district to continue focusing on the student experience portion of the operations category for charter evaluations. He said he was concerned to see schools not meeting expectations focused on students with disabilities, students who are learning English as a new language, and student discipline. No school met standards for all three of those categories.

“‘I’m elated that we have schools that are doing well academically and financially, but I want kids to enjoy going to school every day,” Shi said.

During several board meetings since the summer, charter school leaders have asked the board to renew their contracts for the maximum 10 years. While it was previously common for schools to receive five-year extensions, district leaders have more recently renewed charters for shorter terms. Last January, the previous board – appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot – handed out two-year extensions to nearly half of the charter schools up for renewal, while another two got five years.

On Thursday, no school received five years. Just over half were extended for four years, and just over 40% were extended for three years. The board approved a one-year extension for Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy Charter High School and a two-year extension for Chicago High School for the Arts.

Ebonie Durham, executive director of Great Lakes Academy, a charter school that received a three-year extension, asked the board to provide schools and families with more clarity on what it takes to get a 10-year extension.

Great Lakes met academic and financial performance standards, but did not meet benchmarks for operations, including for student discipline, students with disabilities and students learning English as a new language.

As conditions of Great Lakes’ extension, the board called for the school to implement the district’s recommendations for serving students with disabilities. The conditions also call for monitoring how the school is serving English language learners, its disciplinary practices, and how it tracks repairs to facilities.

“If the CEO’s recommendation is accepted and we receive three years, in two years I will be back in front of this board again pleading to be renewed,” Durham said.

Before the board vote, some teachers raised concerns about Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, which serves students ages 16-21 who became disengaged with school. The teachers at the school, who are part of the Chicago Teachers Union, have voted to strike Feb. 6 in response to concerns over several issues, including staffing levels for students with disabilities, “sanctuary protections” for immigrant students and employees, and compensation, according to the CTU.

Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, highlighted the fight at Instituto as one reason the renewal process should reflect “what the people, the stakeholders in that school community deserve.” One of her recommendations included creating Local School Councils so that charter parents have more of a voice.

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

Chicago charter school advocates urge Mayor Brandon Johnson to back school choice

2024-01-18T04:31:09+00:00

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Charter school advocates delivered 2,000 letters to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office on Wednesday, urging the mayor to keep school choice alive, after his hand-picked school board signaled they may try to shift more resources toward neighborhood public schools.

Charter proponents are concerned about the future of their schools under a new mayor who campaigned on a pledge to boost neighborhood public schools — just as dozens of charters are up for renewal and a city moratorium on closing schools ends next year.

For roughly two decades, Chicago Public Schools has operated a system in which families can apply to myriad charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run schools.

Having options for school was critical, said Myisha Shields, a parent of three former charter school students, during a news conference Wednesday at City Hall.

“My five babies, my Black babies — they’re gonna go where I choose for them to go, because that’s the choice that I was given,” she said. “I really don’t need Mayor Johnson’s help in choosing anything for my children.”

Shields, who lives near Marquette Park on Chicago’s South Side, said she has three children who attended charter schools and are now all pursuing nursing degrees.

She credits Noble Schools for the success of her eldest, who pushed through “severe learning disabilities” to get straight A’s at Alabama A&M University, where she’s a senior. Shields said her other two daughters are in their freshman and sophomore years at the University of Illinois Chicago. Shields said her kids wouldn’t have had the success they’ve enjoyed if they’d gone to traditional public schools.

“Her self esteem at one point was so low, but now it’s as big as City Hall,” she said of her eldest.

Myisha Shields, far right, delivers thousands of letters to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's office from parents, administrators, and alumni in support of school choice programs on Wednesday.

Noble Schools is one of 47 charters up for renewal during the 2023-24 school year. More than half of Chicago’s roughly 51,000 charter school students are enrolled at one of Noble’s 17 campuses across the city.

“We are calling for Mayor Brandon Johnson and his CPS board to demand a fair charter renewal term that protects school choice,” Shields said “If charters are not treated fairly, please believe: We will be at your door every day. This is not the last time you’ll see this face.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the mayor said: “The Johnson administration believes in investing in neighborhood schools so that all of Chicago’s families have the choice to send their children to fully-funded, well-resourced, and celebrated schools in their community. As a former public school teacher, Mayor Johnson knows first-hand the harm that sustained disinvestment has on Chicago’s communities and youth. Furthermore, as the father of three CPS students, the Mayor is personally invested in ensuring the success of Chicago’s public school system.”

During the renewal process, district officials scrutinize charter schools’ academic performance, financial practices, and compliance with other standards. Chicago Board of Education members vote on the final renewal terms.

CPS spokeswoman Sylvia Barragan said in a statement that district leadership and the Chicago Board of Education “do not make charter renewal or revocation decisions lightly.”

The board voted last month on a resolution to move away from school choice and ensure “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” according to the resolution.

It was the first time the board formally stated it wants to move away from its embrace of selective admissions and enrollment policies, because it “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity,” according to the resolution.

In response to worried charter and school choice advocates, Chicago Board of Education President Jianan Shi said during an Agenda Review Committee meeting on Wednesday that the resolution “is, again, about prioritizing neighborhood schools, creating pathways from K-12 and (helping) schools and neighborhoods farthest from opportunity, so that we are not sorting our children and favoring those with more means.”

He added that it’s “not directing us to close selective enrollment schools.”

Even before Johnson took office, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration started a trend of shorter charter renewal periods. Johnson, a former educator and organizer for the teachers union, historically opposed charter expansion and said during the mayoral election runoff campaign that charter school expansion “forces competition for resources and ultimately harms all schools.” But he also has said he does not oppose charter schools.

This story was updated after publication to include a comment from the Chicago mayor’s office.

Chicago gets $20 million federal grant to buy 50 electric school buses

2024-01-09T22:05:09+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is planning to purchase up to 50 electric school buses to operate its own fleet with a $20 million federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The additional money comes as the district continues to struggle to provide students with transportation. The district has not operated its own bus fleet for more than a decade. It contracts with outside vendors to provide bus service and has been grappling with a driver shortage since the pandemic hit.

CPS announced just before winter break that it would not be adding bus service for general education students, many who attend selective or magnet schools, for the remainder of the year. They cut service to those students at the start of the school year in order to ensure students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation, were being routed and weren’t riding the bus more than an hour.

But the federal grant and new buses will not immediately fix those issues. For one, 50 buses “will not be enough to provide service to the entire district,” a district spokesperson said. The process for buying and deploying the electric buses will start on April 1, 2024 and happen over a three-year period, the spokesperson said.

The Chicago Teachers Union applauded the grant and said the news was a sign of better collaboration between the union, the district, and the mayor, who is a former CTU organizer. The statement issued by the union said the award would “allow CPS to hold private bus vendors accountable for another 140 electric buses that will replace their current diesel-powered fleets.”

About $81 million is being awarded to private bus vendors that serve Illinois and other states, according to the EPA. First Student Inc. – which operates yellow buses in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin – is getting $39.4 million to purchase 100 electric buses; Student Transportation of America Inc is also in line to receive $12.2 million to purchase 32 buses in Illinois and Wisconsin; and Highland CSB 1 is expected to get $29.4 million to purchase 98 buses in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

A news release from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office said the goal will be to deploy the new buses in communities “most impacted by poor environmental policies and practices, and historic disinvestment.” Johnson ran on a promise to update school facilities to be more environmentally friendly and energy efficient.

In all, the federal government is doling out more than $1 billion to fund electric buses across 280 school districts.

In Philadelphia, the school district is in line for $8 million to add 20 electric buses to its fleet, doubling the current 20 it operates. Detroit Public Schools is expected to get nearly $6 million to buy 15 electric buses.

The move comes as districts nationwide are looking to shift to clean energy buses. Colorado also announced plans last August to expand electric buses in more than a dozen school districts using state and federal funding. New York state announced in 2022 it wants all new school buses to be zero-emissions by 2027.

The federal Clean School Bus Program also provides rebates to districts that use electric buses. Thirteen school districts in Illinois, most of them downstate, got more than $46 million in those rebates last school year to operate electric buses, according to data from the EPA.

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

Three things to know about the Chicago Board of Education’s resolution on school choice

2024-01-03T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education made waves last month when officials revealed a vision to move away from its school choice system and boost neighborhood schools.

The declaration, included in a resolution the board passed in December, lays out priorities for the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. Any resulting changes will depend on feedback from the community, board members said.

But the board’s new vision immediately sparked misinformation. Here are three things to know about the board’s resolution.

Will schools close?

No. Not yet, at least.

The resolution does not say anything about closing schools. State law put a moratorium on school closures in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025, the same day a new 21-member, partially-elected school is set to be sworn in. The current seven-member school board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, would not be able to close schools of any type – charters, magnets, or neighborhood schools – until that time.

School board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland did indicate the board is scrutinizing charter school performance through the usual renewal process and questioned whether poor-performing operators should “continue to exist.”

But even a recent board decision to revoke a charter agreement with Urban Prep did not ultimately mean those schools closed. First, the district proposed operating the two campuses as district-run schools. But after a court order, the board extended Urban Prep’s charter until June 2024.

Will I have to go to my neighborhood school?

No. The resolution does not say anything about requiring families to attend their neighborhood schools.

The closest it comes to addressing enrollment policies is a bullet point about a “reimagined vision” that includes a “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”

Any school-aged child living in Chicago is guaranteed a spot at their zoned neighborhood school. Additionally, board policy amended as recently as last summer, allows families to apply to a myriad of selective, magnet, charter, or other speciality programs that admit students from across the city. Some schools require a test for admission, while others are a straight lottery.

These policies have not changed, but could after community feedback sessions.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed,” Todd-Breland said. “The admissions and enrollment policy is on the table.”

Data shows half of elementary school students attend their zoned neighborhood school and only a quarter of high school students do. These numbers shifted over the course of the past 20 years, when roughly 75% of elementary school students went to their local school and half of high schoolers did.

What do parents and students think?

It varies greatly.

Chalkbeat Chicago asked readers for their thoughts on school choice and got nearly 80 responses from families across the city about how they’ve navigated the system. Five families shared more about how — and why — they chose their schools.

The wide range of responses could be a bellwether for the kind of debate or disagreement that could emerge during community feedback sessions.

The Board of Education was awarded a $500,000 federal grant to create socioeconomically diverse schools. The district said it plans to use the money to engage the community on how to draw more families into neighborhood schools. Their application included a goal to reduce the percentage of families attending a school outside of their regions by at least 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

The district is already collecting feedback on the next five-year strategic plan through an online survey and community meetings for the next Educational Facilities Master Plan. Officials have said they will host in-person and online meetings in February to gather feedback on the strategic plan.

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

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

How do families use Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories.

2023-12-20T22:53:13+00:00

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One mother in West Pullman on Chicago’s South Side sends her daughter to a charter school even though there are two neighborhood schools down the street.

Up in Albany Park, a mother is for the first time confident in her daughter’s neighborhood school after two decades of sending her older children to magnet and test-in programs.

A high school student attends one of the district’s most coveted high schools — but wants the city to undo the system she used to get there.

There’s a lot that goes into how families choose a school in Chicago.

Last week, the city’s school board made waves by announcing they want to move away from that system of choice and build up neighborhood schools, especially in areas that have lacked investment from the city. The board passed a resolution last week stating its intent, but does not call to close any schools or change specific admissions policies.

Originally established to help desegregate schools, the system has recently earned a reputation for stressing out students, who are competing for seats at a limited number of sought-after schools, many of which are segregated by race and income.

Despite that, students have increasingly chosen schools they’re not zoned for. Last school year, 56% of students attended their zoned neighborhood school, or roughly 20 percentage points fewer than in the 2002-03 school year. A quarter of students attended their zoned high school last year, compared to 46% 20 years ago.

The district also won a federal grant in October that they will use to collect community feedback on how they can make neighborhood schools more attractive. In the grant application, Chicago Public Schools said its goal was to reduce the percentage of families attending school outside of their regions by 3%. The district did not answer questions to clarify their definition of region or why 3% was their goal.

How much the district will try to change the city’s school choice system will depend on feedback from the community, board members said. Already, a mix of reactions have emerged. Some community groups praised the board’s support of neighborhood schools. But former CPS CEO Janice Jackson wrote in an op-ed to the Chicago Sun-Times that moving away from school choice would ultimately hurt Black and Hispanic children.

“Trying to do anything in a district that large is going to take a long time if you’re going to do it right,” said Jack Schneider, a professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst who studies education policy. “It’s going to turn quite slowly and particularly so if your effort is rooted in engaging communities and really listening to them and trying to respond to what you’re hearing.”

Chalkbeat asked readers for their thoughts on school choice and got nearly 80 responses from families across the city about how they’ve navigated the system. We spoke to some of those families to understand how — and why — they chose their schools.

From left to right: Tiffany Harvey walks her dog, Mila, alongside her daughters Isabel Harvey, 21, and Amalia Harvey, 10, as they walk to Haugan Elementary School in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Amalia is a fourth grader at Haugan Elementary School.

Preschool sells mom of four on neighborhood school

About 20 years ago, when Tiffany Harvey was deciding where to send her firstborn to school, she kept hearing that aside from some gifted and magnet programs, Chicago’s schools were “terrible.”

Harvey applied to magnet schools and had her son tested for gifted programs. She also toured a kindergarten classroom at the neighborhood school, Haugan Elementary, a couple blocks away from their Albany Park home. But at the time, Haugan didn’t have before- or after-care programs to accommodate her work schedule, while magnet and gifted programs came with busing. And Haugan’s test scores seemed low to her, she said.

“I honestly felt like I was a bad parent if I didn’t explore all the options and find the best option,” she said.

Over the next two decades, Harvey would send her first three children to magnet, gifted and selective enrollment schools outside their neighborhood.

A few years ago, that changed.

In search of preschool for her fourth child, Harvey applied for the district’s full-day pre-K program and saw that Haugan had seats. She didn’t want to pay for preschool again, and after so many years in Albany Park, she wanted to invest in her neighborhood school as someone who was better-off than some of her neighbors. Her daughter got a seat at Haugan, where 89% of students come from low-income families.

Some research shows public pre-K programs can “attract a more integrated group of families” to schools, while some districts notice families flee after preschool, said Halley Potter, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, who has studied school segregation.

Harvey, who had low expectations, found Haugan was “phenomenal,” she said. Her daughter’s teacher was creative and kind. There was a good combination of play-based learning and introduction to academics. Her daughter was meeting kids from all kinds of families. The next year, she enrolled her daughter in a nearby lottery dual-language program, but they missed Haugan. Her daughter returned for second grade and is now in fourth grade.

“We never looked back,” Harvey said.

Harvey supports families having the ability to choose a school for their child. However, she wishes more parents would realize that schools can’t be measured by test scores alone, and more-advantaged children, like hers, can flourish alongside peers who are different from them. It’s also easier for parents to get involved at schools that are nearby, she said.

As district leaders consider how to invigorate neighborhood schools, they should add more services, such as pre-K programs or after care, as ways to draw in more families, she said.

“I don’t know what the right balance is,” Harvey said. “I do want our neighborhood schools to be celebrated and promoted and have the resources they need, where parents don’t feel like they have to drive across town to find a better option.”

A mom who chose a charter school

Charity Parker lives a couple of blocks away from two neighborhood schools in West Pullman. But her daughter, Aikira, attends a Chicago International Charter Schools, or CICS, campus that’s a roughly 15-minute walk from their home.

Parker, who attended Catholic and charter schools growing up in Chicago, said the neighborhood schools close to her — Curtis and Haley — are “poorly funded” and don’t have good test scores. At both neighborhood schools and Aikira’s charter school, more than 90% of students are from low-income families. But CICS is designated as “commendable” by the state, the second- highest designation out of five. Haley and Curtis have lower designations.

Charity Parker, left, and her daughter Aikira Parker, 8, right, smile as they pose for a portrait together outside of CICS Prairie Chicago International Charter School, where Aikira is a second grader, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023.

Aikira is learning more advanced topics than other neighborhood kids Parker knows, she said. She placed fifth in the school’s science fair for a solar panel project, Parker noted.

“An 8-year-old doing engineering work — I’m not getting that at my local CPS school,” she said.

Another selling point for Parker, who is Black, is that about one-third of Aikira’s peers are Hispanic, so she’s exposed “to another culture besides her own.” At Curtis and Haley, more than 90% of students are Black, which is common in Chicago’s segregated neighborhoods.

Parker said all parents should have the right to choose where their children go to school, and the district should never mandate attending neighborhood schools. While Parker loves some things about CICS, she has some issues with the school.

Aikira “loved” kindergarten at CICS, but the next year, Parker had some disagreements with Aikira’s first -grade teacher over coursework. This year, Parker has some concerns about behavior issues in Aikira’s classroom and has considered transferring her out.

But other charters are far away, and she doesn’t have a car. Private school is too expensive.

So, she’ll stay at CICS, she said.

“I’ll admit there are some things about my daughter’s school that rub me the wrong way, but the education is awesome,” Parker said.

Dad sought out selective schools for his son

Since kindergarten, Clyde Smith’s son, Kadin, has exclusively attended selective public schools located 5 to 6 miles south of their Bronzeville home.

Kadin tested into McDade Classical School, a selective enrollment elementary school in Chatham. Then, he tested again in sixth grade and got a seat at an accelerated middle school program located inside Lindblom Math and Science Academy, a selective enrollment high school in West Englewood. Kadin, 16, is now a sophomore at Lindblom.

The stressful nature of admissions never felt “unhealthy,” Smith said. His son has always been surrounded by peers who aimed for similar programs, so he was used to the competition.

“It’s always been in the air,” Smith said. “It’s almost like asking a fish, ‘How’s the water?’”

Kadin Smith, left, stands with his father, Clyde Smith, at their Bronzeville home.

A simpler option might have been to attend his neighborhood school where he’s guaranteed a seat: Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts. District officials closed Dyett in 2015, but the school was revived in 2016 after protests and a hunger strike that Mayor Brandon Johnson participated in as an activist.

The district hosted a press conference in October at Dyett about the school’s rising graduation rates, and officials noted that the school’s 86% graduation rate had surpassed the citywide average.

Smith said he “understood the activism” that brought back Dyett, but it wasn’t enough to win him over.

“The test scores, the classes offered, the colleges they get accepted into overall, to me, doesn’t lay proof that that’s the strongest academic environment like some of these selective enrollment schools are,” Smith said.

Smith complimented the district’s desire to boost neighborhood schools, adding that segregation and “racial inequities” have left many schools under-resourced. Neighborhood schools need “strong teachers,” challenging courses, and more internship opportunities, he said.

Paul Hill, an architect of the idea that districts should create a mix of school options for parents, said the district could risk driving away parents like Smith.

“If the district is really serious about working hard on the neighborhood schools and trying to figure out what would keep people in them… that’s responsible,” said Hill, the founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education. “On the other hand, if they really attack the schools of choice that probably will drive down enrollment.”

Smith agrees. After all, if Kadin didn’t get into a selective enrollment high school, he and his wife would have sent him to private school.

Mom is daunted by high school admissions

Laura Irons loves Logan Square and their neighborhood school, where her 7-year-old daughter is in first grade. But the thought of choosing a high school is so daunting, the family is considering leaving Chicago by the time their daughter finishes eighth grade.

Irons’ daughter passed up a seat at a magnet school to attend her zoned school, Brentano Math and Science Academy, because the family liked walking to school and didn’t want their daughter to lose friends.

“Being nearby the school, I think, has tremendous social-emotional benefits,” Irons said.

For the future, her family would consider the neighborhood high school. But other parents tell Irons it’s dangerous, with lots of fights and nearby shootings. Irons doesn’t know whether to believe them.

Laura Irons, far right, poses for a photo with her husband and two children at the Logan Square Blue Line stop.

Irons worries about the impact of the competitive application process on her daughter. Through friends and community Facebook groups, Irons hears about kids being “so tremendously stressed out” by the application process. She hates that some schools are considered good or bad without any clarity about why.

“I don’t like [the idea of] making such a big decision at such a young age,” Irons said. “It feels like the college process, which is hard already in itself.”

Even though Irons and her husband love city life, they’re leaning toward leaving unless there is more clarity and transparency around how the choice system works, she said. And she doesn’t know where to find accurate information.

“I do value choice in certain situations so I’m not anti-choice,” Irons said. “I think the system that we have, though — to sound so cliche — it’s just a broken, very opaque system. I wonder if kids would even be stressed if the parents weren’t so stressed.”

Selective enrollment student sees problems with the system

One of Tess Lacy’s earliest memories of discussing school choice was in fourth grade. Her physical education teacher told her class, “I want you to go to good high schools,” Tess recalled.

Comments like that were common throughout Tess’s elementary and middle school years. Teachers talked often about applying to sought-after high schools. Many of her friends felt they’d fail their parents if they didn’t get into those schools. While her own parents didn’t care where she went, the stress around Tess conditioned her to focus on selective enrollment schools, she said.

Tess Lacy poses for a portrait in front of George B. Swift Elementary School, which she used to attend, in Chicago on Dec. 18, 2023. Lacy is currently a sophomore at Jones College Prep.

She took the High School Admissions Test and got into her top-ranking: Jones College Prep in the South Loop.

Now, three years later, Tess wants to see the selective enrollment system abolished.

Selective enrollment schools tend to have more resources, not just from the district, but also from families who can fundraise, sometimes millions of dollars, Tess noted.

“If you intentionally, institutionally, structurally create schools that have more resources, parents with more resources will send their kids there,” Tess said. “I feel like a lot of people are able to realize that’s not normal, but there’s a lot of people who would rather forget about the tens of thousands of students who don’t have that privilege.”

Tess doesn’t regret attending Jones, where she has made friends from all over the city. She enjoys doing technical work for the school’s drama department.

But her decision to attend Jones now feels like it was influenced by everyone around her. She regrets not ranking Edgewater’s Senn High School higher. Senn was not her zoned high school, but is a neighborhood school closer to home that has a good arts program — one of Tess’s interests.

She would encourage eighth grade students to “really, truly think about what they as a student want.”

“Now I look back, and I see how my decision was so not my own decision,” Tess said.

Correction: This story orignally stated that McDade Classical School was a gifted program. McDade is another type of selective enrollment elementary school in Chicago.

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

After court order, Chicago Public Schools extends contract with Urban Prep charter schools

2023-12-14T22:36:49+00:00

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Forced by a court order, the Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to extend charter school contracts run by embattled Urban Prep Charter Academy.

The board approved an extension until June 2024 for the network’s Bronzeville and Englewood campuses.

The extension comes more than a year after the board voted not to renew the contracts, with plans to take over those schools. The board’s decision was based on allegations that Urban Prep mismanaged finances and failed to comply with special education laws, as well as allegations that the school’s founder, Tim King, sexually abused a now-former student. King has denied those allegations.

Urban Prep appealed the board’s decision to state education officials, who sided with CPS. The charter network then filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging that their agreement couldn’t be revoked because of the state’s moratorium on closing schools until 2025. In July, the court ruled in Urban Prep’s favor.

“That is why we are here — to be in compliance with the court’s order even as it may be contrary to previous actions by the board,” Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said last week at a meeting to review the board’s agenda.

CPS has appealed the court’s decision.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who currently appoints the school board, is critical of the charter sector, but he has also stressed that he doesn’t oppose charter schools. The board recently passed a resolution signaling that it wants to boost neighborhood schools and move away from the district’s school choice system, which families use to apply to magnets, charters, and test-in schools and other programs.

Several teachers and families from other charter networks have pleaded with the board to renew their contracts over the past several months, including on Thursday. Christian Feaman, director of district advocacy for Illinois Network of Charter Schools, suggested the board’s new resolution attempts to “claw back the basic rights” of school choice for “Black and brown families.”

The resolution — which doesn’t create or get rid of any current policies or schools — isn’t intended to signal a closing of all charter schools, Todd-Breland said Thursday. Rather, the board wants to “hold charters accountable to the promise that was made at their founding,” she said.

The Urban Prep agreement approved Thursday comes with more than a dozen conditions, including cooperation in district investigations and complying with financial oversight. Those conditions are generally the same that Urban Prep has had to follow in the past, most of which Urban Prep has not attempted to comply with, said Zabrina Evans, executive director of the district’s Office of Innovation and Incubation in the Office of Portfolio Management, last week.

In remarks to the board Thursday, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer at Urban Prep, said the district is spreading “lies and propaganda” about the charter failing to meet nearly all the requirements CPS has asked of it. Lacewell said Urban Prep has complied with eight of ten previous conditions and submitted evidence to the district.

Separately, a few public speakers raised concerns about the board’s resolution, specifically saying the board shouldn’t be moving to close any selective enrollment or gifted schools. Todd-Breland emphasized that there is no current plan to close any schools.

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

Chicago Public Schools leaders want to move away from school choice

2023-12-12T18:45:13+00:00

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Chicago school leaders want to move away from the district’s system of school choice — in which families apply to a myriad of charter, magnet, test-in, or other district-run programs — according to a resolution the Board of Education will vote on this week.

The move puts in motion Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to reinvigorate Chicago Public Schools’ neighborhood schools. On the campaign trail, Johnson likened the city’s school choice system to a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces competition for resources and ultimately harms schools, particularly those where students are zoned based on their address.

District leaders’ goals include ensuring “fully-resourced neighborhood schools, prioritizing schools and communities most harmed by structural racism, past inequitable policies and disinvestment,” the resolution, which was released Tuesday, said.

The board wants to pursue that policy goal — and several others — as part of the district’s five-year strategic plan, which will be finalized this summer. In an interview with reporters on Tuesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, Board President Jianan Shi, and Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland declined to specify changes or say how far they want to move away from the choice system. That’s because they want to collect community feedback on how far the district should go, which would be outlined in a final five-year strategic plan this summer, they said.

The board is expected to vote Thursday on the resolution, which doesn’t create or get rid of any policies; rather, it formalizes and publicizes the district’s goals.

The district wants to “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools,” the resolution says.

This marks the first time the board has formally stated it wants to move away from selective admissions and enrollment policies. It says the school choice system, as it exists today, “reinforces, rather than disrupts, cycles of inequity” and must be replaced with “anti-racist processes and initiatives that eliminate all forms of racial oppression.”

Some selective enrollment and magnet schools lack the diversity of the city, enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students, while others remain largely segregated by race and class.

Martinez said it is painful to hear of students traveling far distances to attend school, or when parents ask if they should get their 4-year-old child tested for gifted programs. He said he can “scream as loud as I can” about all that he believes neighborhood schools can offer to families versus highly sought-after magnet or selective enrollment schools — but “it’s not going to be enough.”

“We see this as an opportunity to, again, build trust, because I want to keep calling that out — that is a huge challenge for us,” Martinez said.

Any number of big changes could be on the horizon, Todd-Breland said.

“There likely will be policies that need to be revised and changed, so the admissions and enrollment policy is on the table as something that through this process of engagement, likely there will be some changes to it,” Todd-Breland said.

Todd-Breland and Shi said they’ve heard many pleas from the community to overhaul the choice system. The board’s goal to move away from school choice is framed in the resolution as a response to the district’s ongoing challenges, such as budget deficits and academic disparities between students citywide and Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, those who are homeless, and children learning English as a new language.

District leaders imagine prioritizing neighborhood schools to receive more resources and programming. Martinez said universal preschool is one example of an initiative that can draw families into a school.

The system of school choice in Chicago grew over many decades.

Data shows around 56% of elementary school students attended their zoned neighborhood school last school year and 23% of high school students did. Twenty years ago, during the 2002-03 school year, 74% of students attended their zoned elementary school and 46% of high schoolers did.

Many of the district’s most popular magnet and selective schools were created in the 1980s and 90s under a court-ordered federal desegregation consent decree that officially ended in 2009. In the 2000s, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley opened 100 new schools under an initiative known as Renaissance 2010. Most of those schools did not have neighborhood attendance boundaries and many were charter schools run by third-parties.

The expansion of school options also contributed to the mass closure or shakeup of nearly 200 schools, including 50 schools in 2013. Enrollment has further declined since then, but under state law, the district cannot close schools until 2025. Officials would not say if the five-year plan would eventually include closing schools and emphasized their plans to engage communities.

However, Todd-Breland did signal that the board might move to close charter schools.

“If you are a privately-managed school, taking public dollars from our taxpayers that would otherwise go to the other schools that we know need to be invested in because they haven’t [been] for years, and you are not performing at a level that we find to be a high quality educational experience for young people, then why do you continue to exist in this system?” she said.

Nearly half of the charter schools authorized by the Chicago Board of Education are up for renewal this year and dozens more will be next year. If a charter is not renewed, it most likely would close, though operators can appeal to the state.

The previous administration, under the leadership of former CPS CEO Janice Jackson, also tried to reinvigorate underenrolled neighborhood schools. In 2018, the district offered additional funding for specialty programs to local schools looking to attract more students.

Though the current system has long been criticized for stressing out students and families as they compete for spots at the most sought-after schools, many families value having options outside of their assigned neighborhood school. Student admissions to gifted programs rely on a test, while admissions to selective enrollment high schools are based in part on the High School Admissions Test and previous school performance.

The board’s policy priorities come less than a year before Chicago will for the first time elect school board members. State law currently says 10 members will be elected and the mayor is to appoint another 11. That shift is one reason the board is focused on getting a lot of community feedback on their vision, so new board members “understand this is the direction that the district is moving in,” Shi said.

Political shifts, such as this transition to an elected school board, could upend what the current board wants to do, said Jack Schneider, an education policy expert and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“The last thing you want is to put all of this effort into something like promoting neighborhood public schools and then have a massive change in the composition of the board that then leads to a 180 in priorities,” Schneider said.

The resolution also highlights several other policy goals under the district’s next strategic plan, including creating more community schools over the next five years. These schools provide wraparound services to students and families, another priority for Johnson. It also includes adding staff, ensuring culturally relevant, anti-racist lessons for students and similarly framed professional development for educators, and prioritizing collecting feedback from students and the community.

The board also wants to ask the community’s help in creating plans for “previously closed and currently ‘underutilized’ schools,” the resolution says.

Read the full resolution on page 21 of the board’s agenda posted online.

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

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

A medida que entra en vigor la regla de refugio de Chicago para familias migrantes, aquí hay tres derechos de los estudiantes que deben conocer

2023-11-29T19:50:01+00:00

Esta historia fue traducida por Claudia Hernández de la Revista Borderless. Suscríbase al boletín de Borderless aquí.

Los educadores y defensores de Chicago están preocupados por cómo el nuevo límite de 60 días del alcalde Brandon Johnson de las estadías en refugios para familias migrantes afectará la asistencia y la estabilidad de los estudiantes migrantes.

La nueva regla llega en un momento en que la ciudad ha tenido problemas para albergar a los migrantes. Más de 22,000 personas han llegado desde la frontera sur desde agosto del 2022, muchas de ellas huyendo de la agitación económica y política en los países de Centroamérica y Sudamérica. Los funcionarios de la ciudad y el estado han prometido aumentar los esfuerzos para ayudar a las familias a reasentarse y encontrar una vivienda más permanente, un compromiso que se da justo cuando un programa de asistencia para el alquiler operado por el estado ya no se aplicará a los inmigrantes recién llegados que ingresan a los refugios, Block Club Chicago informó.

Unas 50 familias ya han recibido los avisos, y otras 3,000 los recibirán el 4 de diciembre.

Los defensores dijeron que perder el refugio podría significar más ausencias entre los estudiantes migrantes que no tienen hogar, formalmente conocidos como estudiantes que viven en situaciones de vivienda temporal. Esa designación incluye a los niños en refugios, que viven con otra familia o que viven en un lugar público. A partir del 31 de octubre, las tasas de asistencia promedio este año escolar para los estudiantes sin hogar son 5 puntos porcentuales más bajas que sus compañeros con vivienda permanente, según datos de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago compartidos con la Coalición de Chicago para las Personas sin Hogar.

La estabilidad escolar está relacionada con el éxito académico. Un estudio del 2015 que examinó a estudiantes de la ciudad de Nueva York encontró que los niños que se cambiaron de escuela tenían más probabilidades de ausentarse crónicamente o perder al menos el 10% de sus días escolares. Los estudiantes crónicamente ausentes que también se encontraban sin hogar tenían tres veces más probabilidades de repetir el mismo grado que los estudiantes sin hogar que faltaron menos de cinco días a la escuela, encontró el informe.

“Estamos hablando de niños que han estado aquí durante dos meses, que han entrado en una rutina, tal vez han hecho algunos amigos, tienen una sensación de control finalmente, donde pueden obtener dos comidas calientes al día, estamos hablando de enviar a esas familias de regreso al lugar de su llegada en autobús”, dijo Gabriel Páez, un maestro bilingüe en el West Side, sobre la nueva regla del alcalde.

Sesenta días es un “tiempo muy corto” para encontrar vivienda, especialmente para los recién llegados con barreras lingüísticas que están lidiando con casos de asilo o que aún no han sido autorizados a trabajar, dijo Patricia Nix-Hodes, directora del Proyecto de Ley de la Coalición de Chicago para las Personas sin Hogar.

Si las familias no tienen una vivienda permanente en puerta, pueden regresar a la “zona de aterrizaje”, el área del centro de la ciudad donde la mayoría de los autobuses dejan por primera vez a los recién llegados, y pueden solicitar una nueva ubicación en un refugio. Las familias pueden permanecer en su refugio bajo “circunstancias atenuantes”, como un problema médico, si hay frío extremo o si han obtenido un contrato de arrendamiento con una fecha de mudanza que comienza más tarde de cuando deben abandonar el refugio, dijo la oficina del alcalde.

Un portavoz del alcalde declinó hacer comentarios. En un comunicado, un portavoz del distrito dijo que está trabajando con la ciudad y las escuelas para “garantizar que los estudiantes recién llegados, la mayoría considerados estudiantes en situaciones de vivienda temporal (STLS), puedan tener acceso a una educación de Pre-K-12 dentro de nuestro sistema que ofrece los servicios adecuados, incluidos los servicios para aprender inglés”.

Los niños sin hogar tienen ciertos derechos consagrados en la ley federal destinados a mantener su estabilidad en la escuela, incluida la capacidad de permanecer en la escuela a la que han estado asistiendo.

Aquí hay tres derechos educativos que las familias que viven en viviendas temporales deben conocer a medida que entra en vigencia la nueva regla de refugio de la ciudad:

Los estudiantes sin hogar tienen derecho a permanecer en la misma escuela

Los estudiantes que viven en refugios temporales y que se han inscrito en la escuela local o en una escuela cercana tienen derecho a permanecer en la misma escuela, incluso si se ven obligados a abandonar el refugio después de 60 días.

Esto es cierto para cualquier estudiante que se quede sin hogar. La ley federal protege su derecho a permanecer en su llamada “escuela de origen”.

Al igual que cualquier otro estudiante de las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago, los estudiantes sin hogar pueden inscribirse en la escuela local del vecindario en su nueva comunidad simplemente entrando. Además, como cualquier otro estudiante, pueden aplicar a escuelas selectivas o magneto, pero la fecha límite para aplicar a estas escuelas para el próximo año académico ha pasado.

Los estudiantes migrantes también pueden ser referidos por otras agencias de la ciudad, como el Departamento de Servicios Familiares y de Apoyo, para recibir ayuda para la inscripción de la oficina central del distrito, incluso en el Centro de Bienvenida Piloto de la ciudad en Clemente High School en el West Side.

En ese caso, el distrito inscribirá a los estudiantes en función del lugar donde viven, las necesidades de los estudiantes, como los servicios del idioma inglés, y “la capacidad y los recursos existentes en la escuela”. Si hay problemas de espacio en una escuela, el distrito “puede ayudar con una asignación escolar alternativa”, dijo un portavoz.

Una vez que 20 o más estudiantes con el mismo idioma nativo se inscriben en una escuela, la ley estatal requiere que inicien un programa de Educación Bilingüe de Transición. Dichos programas requieren instrucción tanto en inglés como en el idioma nativo, como el español.

El distrito ha presupuestado $15 millones para contratar más maestros bilingües, coordinadores de programas bilingües y “otros recursos para apoyar a los estudiantes de inglés”, dijo un portavoz.

Los estudiantes sin hogar tienen derecho a transporte

Los estudiantes sin hogar también tienen derecho a recibir transporte a la escuela, incluso si se mudan. Y, de acuerdo con las pautas de CPS, su escuela debe informar al estudiante y a los padres sobre los servicios de transporte. Si un estudiante encuentra una vivienda permanente, todavía tiene derecho a transporte hasta el final del año escolar.

De acuerdo con las pautas de CPS, los estudiantes sin hogar que necesitan transporte deben recibir una tarjeta CTA dentro de los tres días posteriores a la solicitud. Los niños de preescolar a sexto grado pueden recibir una tarjeta adicional para que uno de sus padres pueda acompañarlos en el transporte público.

Los estudiantes sin hogar no necesitan papeleo para inscribirse

Las escuelas deben inscribir a los estudiantes que no tienen hogar, incluso si no tienen los registros que normalmente se necesitan para inscribirse, como la vacunación o los registros escolares anteriores, prueba de tutela o prueba de residencia, según el distrito.

Es posible que las familias que huyen de la violencia doméstica o la agitación política no hayan traído documentos importantes, dijo Nix-Hodes.

Depende de la escuela identificar “sensiblemente” que una familia que busca inscribirse no tiene hogar sin violar su privacidad, agregó Nix-Hodes.

Reema Amin es una reportera que cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Chicago para Chalkbeat Chicago. Ponte en contacto con Reema en ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As Chicago’s shelter rule for migrant families takes effect, here are three student rights to know

2023-11-27T12:00:00+00:00

Chicago educators and advocates are concerned about how Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new 60-day limit for shelter stays for migrant families will impact attendance and stability for migrant students.

The new rule comes as the city has struggled to house migrants. More than 22,000 have arrived from the Southern border since August 2022, many fleeing economic and political upheaval in Central and South American countries. City and state officials have promised to boost efforts to help families get resettled and find more permanent housing, a commitment that comes just as a state-operated rental assistance program will no longer apply to newly arrived immigrants who are entering shelters, Block Club Chicago reported.

About 50 families have already received the notices, and another 3,000 will get them on Dec. 4.

Advocates said losing shelter could mean more absences among migrant students who are homeless — formally known as students living in temporary living situations. That designation includes children in shelter, living doubled up with another family, or living in a public place. As of Oct. 31, average attendance rates this school year for homeless students are 5 percentage points lower than their peers with permanent housing, according to Chicago Public Schools data shared with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

School stability is related to academic success. A 2015 study that examined New York City students found that children who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent or miss at least 10% of their school days. Chronically absent students who were also homeless were three times more likely to repeat the same grade than homeless students who missed fewer than five days of school, the report found.

“We’re talking about kids who have been around for two months, who have gotten into a routine, maybe made some friends, have some sense of control finally, where they can get two hot meals a day — we’re talking about sending those families back to the bus landing spot,” said Gabriel Paez, a bilingual teacher on the West Side, of the mayor’s new rule.

Sixty days is a “very short time” to find housing, especially for newcomers with language barriers who are dealing with asylum cases or have not been authorized to work yet, said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

If families don’t have permanent housing lined up, they can return to the “landing zone” — the downtown area where most buses first drop off newcomers — and can request a new shelter placement. Families can stay in their shelter under “extenuating circumstances,” such as a medical issue, if there is extreme cold, or if they’ve obtained a lease with a move-in date that starts later than when they must leave shelter, the mayor’s office said.

A spokesperson for the mayor declined to comment. In a statement, a district spokesperson said it is working with the city and schools to “ensure new arrival students, who are nearly all considered Students in Temporary Living Situations (STLS), can get access to a Pre-K-12 education within our system that offers the appropriate services, including English Learner services.”

Homeless children have certain rights enshrined in federal law aimed at maintaining stability for them at school, including the ability to stay at the school where they’ve been attending.

Here are three education rights that families living in temporary housing should know about as the city’s new shelter rule takes effect:

Homeless students have the right to stay in the same school

Students living in temporary shelters who have enrolled in the local school or a nearby one are entitled to stay at the same school even if they’re forced to leave the shelter after 60 days.

This is true for any student who becomes homeless. Federal law protects their right to remain in their so-called “origin school.”

Just as any other Chicago Public Schools student, homeless students can enroll in the local neighborhood school in their new community by simply walking in. Also like any other student, they can apply to selective or magnet schools, but the deadline to apply for these schools for next academic year has passed.

Migrant students may also be referred by other city agencies, such as the Department of Family and Support Services, to receive enrollment help from the district’s central office, including at the city’s Pilot Welcome Center at Clemente High School on the West Side.

In that case, the district will enroll students based on where they live, the students’ needs — such as English language services — and “existing capacity and resources at the school.” If there are space issues at a school, the district “can assist with an alternate school assignment,” a spokesperson said.

Once 20 or more students with the same native language enroll at a school, state law requires they launch a Transitional Bilingual Education program. Such programs require instruction in both English and the native language, such as Spanish.

The district has budgeted $15 million to hire more bilingual teachers, dual-language program coordinators, and “other resources to support English learners,” a spokesperson said.

Homeless students have the right to transportation

Homeless students also have the right to receive transportation to school even if they move. And, according to CPS guidelines, their school must inform the student and a parent about transportation services. If a student finds permanent housing, they are still entitled to transportation until the end of the school year.

According to CPS guidelines, homeless students in need of transportation must receive a CTA card within three days of requesting one. Children in preschool through sixth grade can receive an additional card so that a parent can accompany them on public transit.

Students in those grades can also apply for school bus service if a caregiver can’t accompany them to school because the parent has work or education conflicts, a mental or physical disability, or the shelter won’t allow parents to leave during the hours of dropoff and pickup.

Citing a driver shortage, the district this year has limited school bus service to students with disabilities and those who are homeless. As of October, 113 homeless students qualified for busing, but it’s unclear how many of them opted instead for a financial reimbursement.

Homeless students don’t need paperwork to enroll

Schools must enroll students who are homeless even if they don’t have records normally needed to enroll, such as immunization or previous school records, proof of guardianship, or proof of residence, according to the district.

Families fleeing domestic violence or political turmoil may not have grabbed important documents, Nix-Hodes said.

It’s up to the school to “sensitively” identify that a family seeking enrollment is homeless without violating their privacy, Nix-Hodes added.

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

What do you think of Chicago’s school choice system? Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

2023-11-20T20:13:53+00:00

Chicago’s system that allows families to apply for magnet and selective enrollment schools — often outside their neighborhoods — traces back decades. It was initially seen as a tool for desegregation.

But, in recent years, many of those schools have since been criticized for enrolling a larger share of white and Asian American students, even though those students make up a minority of the district, compared to their Black and Hispanic peers.

In addition, the emergence of charter schools in the late 1990s presented families with options outside of their local district-run school.

More recently, officials have seen Chicago’s school choice system as a way to offer families more choices, allowing them to enroll their children in a school they like, instead of being tied to a neighborhood school that may not have the resources they’re seeking.

Still, the admissions process, accessed through an application called GoCPS, has built a reputation for being confusing, cumbersome, and stressful.

Since his election earlier this year, Mayor Brandon Johnson has expressed a desire to boost investments into neighborhood schools, so families don’t feel like they need to leave their communities to get a good education for their children.

We want to know from Chicago Public Schools families: What has been your experience with the city’s school choice system? Tell us here or in the short survey below. (We will not use your answers or your name in our reporting without your permission.)

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

Chicago Public Schools graduation rates hit record high, data show

2023-10-31T19:01:51+00:00

A greater share of Chicago Public Schools students graduated last school year than in 2022, reaching a new record, officials announced Tuesday.

The graduation rate of 84% — representing students who graduated in four years — was 1.1 percentage points higher than the graduation rate for the Class of 2022, when 82.9% of high school students graduated on time. The dropout rate for the Class of 2023 was slightly higher at 9.4% than it was for the Class of 2022, which saw 8.9% of students drop out between freshman year and graduation.

Chicago Public Schools’ five-year graduation rate for the Class of 2022 — which includes students who take extra time to finish their diploma either at a traditional or alternative school — was 85.6%, 1.6 percentage points higher than for the class of 2021 when it was 84%.

District officials announced the numbers with fanfare at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson and joined virtually by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Martinez said the rising graduation rate was a sign that the district is continuing to recover from the pandemic, reminding the audience that the students in the Class of 2023 were freshmen as the pandemic started in 2020, followed by two school years of remote and hybrid learning.

“When you think about their last year, their senior year, was probably their most normal year, I want you to take these results and put them in that context,” Martinez said.

Cardona described the graduation rates as “promising signs for the future of education in Chicago.” He highlighted the district’s use of federal COVID relief dollars, which CPS has put toward several purposes, including covering teacher salaries and hiring more instructional staff.

The announcement came one day after Illinois state education officials released statewide data, including graduation rates that had also increased across Illinois. (The state and Chicago Public Schools calculate graduation rates differently, so Chalkbeat is unable to provide direct comparisons.)

Chicago’s graduation rate has steadily increased over time, hitting a record high in 2022 even as students have faced academic challenges connected to the pandemic. Tuesday’s announcement comes on the heels of another report that found a rising share of CPS students are enrolling in college.

Racial disparities among graduates still remain, though they are narrowing. Graduation rates increased for Black, Hispanic and Asian American students, while dropping slightly for white students — by .4 percentage points — compared to the Class of 2022. Rates also dropped for multiracial students by 5.7 percentage points.

Nearly 75% of Black boys graduated in four years, up from roughly 65% five years ago, according to district data.

Despite higher graduation rates, SAT scores dipped for the Class of 2023, to an average composite score of 914. The average score for the Class of 2022 was 927, according to district data. Separately, the district also saw slightly fewer ninth graders — 88.7% — who were on track to graduate by 2026. That’s compared to 88.8% of the class that’s one year older than them.

As the pandemic set in, the district relaxed some grading policies, as did other school systems across the nation — raising questions about how such policies may have contributed to CPS’s rising graduation rates. Martinez argued that an increase in students completing college-level credits was a sign students were held to a high standard. Just under half of the Class of 2023 earned early college credits, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the district.

One of those students is Zaid Orduño, who said at Tuesday’s press conference that he took college-level courses at Daley College during his time at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, through the district’s Early College Program. His classes at Daley included English, math, sociology, and psychology, and he ultimately earned an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma.

Taking those classes, he said, inspired him to pass up his original plan of joining his family’s construction business and instead pursue a civil engineering degree at Illinois Tech, he said.

A wall at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts is dedicated to remembering a hunger strike held in 2015 to demand for the reopening of Dyett, which was closed at the time.

Dyett, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, saw its graduation rate tick up by more than 3 percentage points, to 86%. Johnson noted how far the school had come since he and other community members participated in a highly publicized hunger strike in 2015 to demand that Dyett, then shuttered, reopen. He also recognized fellow hunger striker Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who now represents the neighborhood nearby in City Council and serves as the chair of the Committee on Education and Child Development.

“A hunger striker can turn into a mayor and an alderman, and more importantly, a hunger strike can lead to the success that we are experiencing with our students right here at Dyett High School,” Johnson said.

He also used the moment to once again advocate for expanding the Sustainable Community Schools Initiative that Dyett and 19 other schools are a part of. The program partners schools with a nonprofit that provides wraparound services for students and families.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The analysis of the past decade also found:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

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

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

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

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

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

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

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

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

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

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

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

Meet the teens advising Chicago’s mayor on education

2023-08-28T11:00:00+00:00

In many places, young people are shut out of governmental decision-making. But in Chicago, a group of teenagers have a seat at the table, advising the mayor on issues ranging from public safety to neighborhood development.

The 32-member Mayor’s Youth Commission was started by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in the fall of 2019 and became a formal advisory body before she ended her term. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition team recommended creating a youth department in the long-term.

Commission members, who range in ages from 14 to 19, can serve up to two years and meet at least once a month to discuss policy with city leaders and community groups. They receive a yearly stipend of up to $500.

This year, the commission released a New Ideas report, detailing project proposals from each working group — education, neighborhood development, public health, and public safety. The education working group recommended creating a database of postsecondary and employment resources. The group plans to implement this database into the city of Chicago’s My CHI My Future app.

Some members of the mayor’s youth commission ended their terms this August. With a new mayor in office and a new round of members joining the commission, Chalkbeat talked with the previous chair and vice chair of the working group centered on education.

These interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Debbie Mojekwu

Debbie Mojekwu, the education working group’s chair for 2022-23, ended her second term with the commission this month. She hails from the Beverly neighborhood, graduated from Jones College Prep earlier this year, and will be attending Yale University this fall.

What are some issues in the education system you feel motivated to change?

I’ve come across a lot of students who don’t have as much academic confidence as they should, and I feel like that’s mostly in minorities. It has to do with schools not having enough funding and just not as many resources.

I genuinely feel like if someone took these children and truly believed in them and showed that they believed in them through having adequate resources, having teachers, having counselors and more spaces for them to talk — if we had all these things across schools in Chicago, academic confidence wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

It’s never just the child, it’s also on the system.

What specifically made you want to choose the education working group?

I also had a lack of academic confidence throughout elementary school. I truly believed that my intelligence was tied to my skin color.

There was a time where I wouldn’t do any of my work, I just genuinely wouldn’t try at school because I didn’t see value in it. And I think also I had this sort of fear that if I tried and failed, then it would have confirmed my beliefs at the time.

Later on finally finding that academic confidence, I realized how powerful that could be. And I found that in representation, in my family and other Black leaders that I’ve seen in social media. I would say that that happened sophomore year of high school. So I feel like it took a long time to find that.

I began tutoring students with this program called Chicago Teen Mentors … I came across a lot of students that – you can hear it in just the language they use, that there’s some insecurity there, and hesitance, and fear of being wrong.

Being in that space, it kind of made me want to do more within education. These students primarily came from underfunded schools, and they were predominantly Hispanic and Black. And a part of me just felt, like, I wanted to change that.

What has your experience being chair of the education working group been like?

It’s genuinely been such a transformative experience. We’ve gotten to meet with so many community leaders, the mayor being one of them.

At the end of the day, I learned they’re just normal people. They have the same fears and anxieties that we all share. And they all have some common goal in bettering Chicago.

And working alongside the mayor’s youth commission — I see this group being some of Chicago’s greatest leaders. I’ve never met more educated people in my life than in the Mayor’s Youth Commission. And they made me want to learn more about the problems we have in our city and ways to change.

What’s next for you?

I’m going to Yale. I haven’t planned out all my extracurriculars, but I think I’m going to continue with hosting workshops for kids. I’m part of this program called Innoverge, we host STEM workshops. I am a molecular biology major, so I think a lot of my work will be with STEM.

I’ll probably find out more about New Haven, Connecticut and see what I want to help with there. One of the extracurriculars that interests me at Yale is you can work in a prison, and basically teach courses to prisoners who want to learn.

What is your advice for the next group of people on the education working group or on the Youth Commission in general?

I would say, just don’t be afraid to speak up. I feel like a large part of my first term, I never really spoke during our meetings and I didn’t speak during our roundtable discussion because I still had fears about public speaking. But when you’re in that space, no one judges you. Everyone values every single opinion, no matter how insignificant you think it may seem.

Also I would say, even though the meetings are once a month, you definitely should make this program a priority for you. I think when commissioners don’t really show up to meetings and they don’t really contribute to the work we’re doing, you’re also missing an opportunity. So I would say use this opportunity as best as you can, and stay on top of things.

Norah Al-Hallaj

Norah Al-Hallaj served as the vice chair of the education working group for the 2022-23 term. She will spend another year advising the mayor in her second term, though she does not yet know her title. Norah is from Bridgeport and is a senior at St. Ignatius College Prep.

What made you want to join the education working group?

Education has always been a big part of my life. I love to learn. And I’ve been pretty blessed – I attend private school and I have for all of my life. I know that the CPS system is not the greatest and there’s a lot of areas in Chicago where education is not as full as other places.

I wanted to be able to address that and look for solutions and work towards allowing people to have the same resources that I had. So it was more about extending the privileges I’ve had.

What work on the commission are you most proud of so far?

This was the first year we published the New Ideas booklet, and we recently were able to get a physical copy of it, and I felt such pride.

It’s one thing to talk in these meeting rooms about plans and hear everyone else’s ideas, but to see the whole commission come together and publish this was just a really cool process.

I read the New Ideas report and I saw the education working group released a push for more postsecondary resources. Can you tell me what brought you to want to focus on that?

We all kind of realized that a lot of resources exist, especially in a big city like Chicago. And what I mean by resources is internship programs, scholarship opportunities, testing for ACT/ SAT, Common App help, financial aid, that kind of thing.

And they exist, but the problem was they were so scattered – especially on the Internet – that students and parents who weren’t familiar with the process had a lot of trouble finding and accessing this plethora of resources. So we wanted to find a way to consolidate and create a detailed but very accessible platform for these resources.

What are your priorities for the next year?

My priority is definitely getting this platform for the resources up and running. I want to see that in the next couple months. And I also want to focus more on having town halls for youth voices.

I would love to see (a town hall) for the college application process. A lot of CPS students really freak out, because there’s so many kids in a lot of these schools – you become lost when it comes to getting help and getting your questions answered. So I would love to see town halls or panels and actual events where people can go and feel a lot more confident in themselves walking out.

What is the importance of having youth voices connected to the city government?

I’m 17, so I can’t vote. And I know plenty of people have very intelligent opinions and perspectives and ideas for city government, and how to make it more effective and better serving for underage individuals.

And the problem with that, is that we can’t vote. We can’t attend most city hall meetings that are held during the school day. And that is where I see the mayor’s youth commission come in, where we can go into our communities and round up these opinions and bring them to central government.

Max Lubbers is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org.

Postponed outdoor sports, water bottles, indoor recess: Chicago Public Schools outlines plan to deal with extreme heat

2023-08-23T15:43:08+00:00

No outdoor sports games or practices. Indoor recess. Full water bottles.

Chicago Public Schools sent an email to parents and blitzed them with robocalls Tuesday to outline how the district would deal with an extreme heat watch issued by the National Weather Service for this week.

Temperatures are expected to get close to 100 degrees on Wednesday, with a heat index of 109.

The district said in the letter that all outdoor sports games and practices will be postponed or moved inside on Wednesday and Thursday.

The move comes as districts around the Chicago area are canceling or shifting sports practices and games in response to the heat, ABC7 reports.

The Illinois High School Association, which governs high school athletics across the state, has a heat policy that requires districts to cancel outdoor workouts when temperatures exceed 89.9 degrees and postpone them until temperatures cool off.

On the first day of school Monday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said all classrooms have air conditioning, but not all hallways. Many of the district’s aging buildings have had to be retrofitted and do not have strong cooling systems. The district said in the letter that staff will be available this week to fix any broken or malfunctioning air conditioning.

The district also urged students and staff to bring water bottles and keep them filled throughout the day. Officials noted that not every school has bottle fillers, but said students and staff can use sinks and water fountains.

Schools are also being encouraged to turn off the lights and pull down the shades in order to keep rooms cool.

In a statement released late Tuesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the district “has spent a lot of time adjusting resources and personnel” to address concerns and make sure buildings are cool enough to work and learn in. He noted that 12,000 water bottles have been donated by the private sector to students and staff.

On Monday, during visits to schools to mark the first day of classes, the mayor fielded several questions about how the looming hot temperatures would impact the district and pointed to his administration’s focus on “climate justice”. He also talked about the fight for air conditioning in classrooms during the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike. In 2014, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel spent $100 million to install window units in classrooms.

Window air conditioners typically last five to 10 years. The district said it has 225 window units on hand if any currently installed in classrooms stop working. Officials could not say how many buildings rely on window units or have central air. Many newer facilities likely have more advanced cooling systems.

In a statement, a district spokesperson said improving school buildings is “a District priority.”

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

First day of school: Chicago Public Schools reopens under a new era of leadership

2023-08-21T21:28:02+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is officially back in session.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the first Chicago mayor in recent history to send his children to public schools, kicked off the first day of classes by joining educators, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates outside Beidler Elementary School on the West Side.

Under a sweltering sun at 8:30 a.m., Johnson greeted parents and children in front of a chorus of reporters and cameras, before ringing the ceremonial bell to start the school year.

The joint appearance with Davis Gates, Martinez, and other district and union officials was unsurprising for the union-friendly mayor who came up through the CTU’s ranks, but still a break from the past when the union and City Hall officials would visit schools separately.

Despite the district facing a number of challenges ahead, including unreliable bus transportation, ongoing enrollment shifts, and an influx of immigrant students, Johnson focused on a new era of collaboration at the city’s public schools.

Later in the morning, after touring two other campuses, Johnson visited Kenwood Academy, where his son is now a sophomore.

Speaking to a history class, he likened the first-day icebreakers the teacher was doing to what he’s doing as the city’s new mayor.

“I hope that you will lean into the collaborative approach that your teacher is taking, because that is what we’re doing as a city,” Johnson told the students. “We’re building relationships, we’re collaborating so that we can make collective decisions together that ultimately can help transform people’s lives.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and other city hall, school district, and union officials pose for a photo inside a classroom at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

CPS claws back from enrollment losses

Visiting Beidler was a symbolic choice for the mayor. The school narrowly escaped closure about a decade ago and is now part of a program Johnson wishes to expand: the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, which aims to provide wraparound services and more programming for students and families.

But Beidler is among several other schools in the program that have lost at least a quarter of their enrollment since the initiative started.

The official enrollment count will not be known until after the 20th day of school in September. But last year, 80,000 fewer students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools than there were a decade ago and it is now the nation’s fourth largest school district. Chicago’s declining enrollment predated the emergence of COVID-19, but continued during the pandemic.

And for many parents and kids arriving at Beidler Monday morning, more pressing thoughts — like wishing for a great year — were at the forefront. Dondneja Wilson hoped that her daughter, who started preschool, would “grow, and learn, and have fun.”

“She likes kids a lot, so I feel like that’s going to be her favorite part,” Wilson said.

Dondneja Wilson and her daughter pose for a picture outside of Beidler Elementary School.

Last year, data from the last day of school in June obtained by Chalkbeat showed little change in overall enrollment. However, the number of English learners grew by more than 5,000 students. District officials have pointed to the increase as an approximation of how many migrant students have arrived on buses in the past year.

Chicago is seeing an influx of newcomers, many of whom are seeking asylum, arriving by bus from the southern border in Texas.

The number of bilingual teachers in CPS has dipped since 2015, even as the English learner population has grown, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis. While 6,900 teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements — more than ever before, according to the district — it’s unclear how many are actually assigned to teach bilingual education.

Educators and immigrant advocates have expressed concerns about whether schools can properly support these new students. Jianan Shi, president of the Board of Education, said the city’s new welcome center for migrant students on the West Side has enrolled “hundreds” of newcomer students. He’s requested more information on the system’s overall strategy for supporting newcomers.

A classroom door welcomes students in Spanish at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park.

Outside Beidler, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that “the biggest challenge” is ensuring that all newcomers are registered in school, but he said the district is well-positioned to serve them, noting that Chicago has one of the largest bilingual and dual language programs in the nation. About one-fifth of the city’s students are English language learners.

“The challenge we have right now is, again, keeping up with all the new asylum-seekers that are coming in, going to them, making sure that we’re able to register them, assess them,” Martinez said. “But we’re doing that as we speak now.”

Transportation woes continue on first day

Transportation woes that have plagued the district for the last few years also cropped up on the first day, as parents reported problems with bus routes and trips that took more than an hour.

Laurie Viets, a CPS parent of three children – two of whom have transportation written into an Individualized Education Program – said the district promised to have all transportation issues resolved by last Friday.

However, Viets found out on Friday that one of her children, a seventh grader, was not going to have transportation and another child, a first-year high school student, would have a long bus route. Today, it took 70 minutes to get to school; it’s normally a 12-minute car ride, Viets said.

Viets said she wished Chicago Public Schools would have given her more time to prepare for changes in the transportation plans. Now, she won’t have transportation for one of her children for up to two weeks and she is concerned that her other child will be on the bus without air conditioning in extreme heat until they shorten his route.

The district’s bus problems stem back to 2021, the first year back to full-time, in-person school after COVID forced CPS to close buildings in March 2020. Students were left waiting on the first day and beyond for buses that never showed. In emergency mode at that time, the district began offering $1,000 stipends for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. But the transportation troubles continued well into the school year.

Last year, some 365 students were waiting for bus routes the first week of school and in September, district officials said they were still working to reduce 90-minute rides for some students.

The district has blamed and continues to point to a nationwide bus driver shortage as causing the transportation troubles. It signed a $4 million contract with a longtime vendor and bus-routing software company to try to fix the issues.

But last month, on July 31, district officials announced that it would not be able to transport roughly 8,000 students on the first day of school. They offered $500 monthly stipends to families of CPS students with disabilities or those in temporary living situations. Both groups are legally entitled to transportation. The district said at the time that 3,000 students had chosen the stipend option.

Davis Gates called the transportation troubles “a disaster” and a “failure of privatization.” CPS contracts with private bus companies to provide students with transportation. Davis Gates said she would like to see the district bring busing “in-house” and experiment with having its own fleet of buses that could start small by covering field trips and sporting events and then grow.

“These are Band-Aid approaches. I have not seen anything transformative or revolutionary in this space. And again, three strikes you’re out,” she said. “This isn’t a good way to start the school year with respect to transportation.”

The district has previously increased pay rates for bus driver companies, and is hoping to do so again this year. Martinez said he hopes that will help fill the driver shortage.

Viets, the parent worrying about her children’s transportation, said more needs to be done.

“Next year, if CPS is going to start by Aug. 21, by Aug. 1 they should know what the routes are,” said Viets.

If Chicago finalizes plans the Friday before the start of school, she said, the district is “not giving parents any kind of respect at all. They’re not giving us an opportunity to make other plans when they mess up.”

As Viets noted, the extreme heat also adds to worries about long bus rides. The weather also raises concerns about conditions inside buildings once students arrive.

Air-conditioning, aging buildings prompt push for green schools

With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees this week, Martinez said his team worked “around the clock” to ensure classrooms are equipped with air conditioning this week.

Martinez said every classroom has at least a window unit, a key union demand during the CTU’s 2012 strike that was implemented a couple of years later by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Still, in some cases, hallways are not air-conditioned, Martinez said.

Johnson has touted “climate justice” as a key focus of his administration and reiterated Monday that includes schools.

“Having buildings that are retrofitted, as well as an economy that’s built around green technology, some of that is top of mind,” he said.

Davis Gates used this week’s weather forecast to illustrate climate change’s impact on the city and why it underscores the urgent need for a new CPS facilities master plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2018. She added that building greener schools will be one issue the union will bargain over ahead of its contract expiration in 2024.

The school calendar’s pre-Labor Day start is an issue Davis Gates would immediately bargain over, she said. The late August start date began in 2021, matching up with many suburban districts.

The union was not able to bargain over the school calendar in 2019, Davis Gates said. But the passage of a 2021 state law reinstating some of the CTU’s bargaining rights could allow the calendar to be back on the table. The union’s contract expires next June and it’s likely the district and new mayor will begin negotiations with the teachers this winter.

The larger issues that officials highlighted were likely not top of mind for many students, such as 5-year-old Pierre, who started kindergarten at Beidler.

Asked what he was most excited about this school year, Pierre replied, “Playing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A fiscal cliff is approaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Student academic needs persist

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

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

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

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

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

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

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

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

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

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

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

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

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

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

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

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

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

No district maps yet for the elected school board

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

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

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

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