Chalkbeat

Illinois lawmakers pass cellphone ban in classrooms. Here’s when it goes into effect.

2026-06-01T18:50:14+00:00

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Illinois is set to join a growing number of states that have barred cellphone use in the classroom.

Just as the Illinois General Assembly reached its deadline to wrap up its legislative session Sunday, the state Senate passed legislation that would largely restrict cellphones in Illinois schools. The legislation would go into effect for the 2027-28 school year, meaning school districts will have a year to plan before the restrictions are implemented.

The bill now heads to Gov. JB Pritzker, who has been a vocal advocate for limiting cellphone use in the classroom. It’s quite the turnaround in the Illinois state legislature, which failed to pass the bill in the state House of Representatives despite unanimous Senate approval during last year’s session.

Cellphones aren’t the only devices the bill bars from the classroom — tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, and smart watches are also banned. School-issued devices are exempt from the ban.

These broad restrictions aim to improve students’ academic performance by removing the distraction of what the bill calls “wireless communication devices,” proponents say. Barring them from classrooms could also “strengthen friendships and human interactions, and minimize bullying,” said Jessica Handy, executive director of Stand for Children Illinois.

The cellphone ban wasn’t the only legislation taking aim at children’s device usage that lawmakers passed this week. Another bill heading to Pritzker’s desk outlines limitations on social media platforms’ algorithms to protect children’s privacy. Both bills received bipartisan support from state lawmakers — something Pritzker said underscored the urgency of addressing the effects of cellphones on children.

“We’re giving children more classroom focus and a better education by banning kids’ use of cellphones during the school day from start to finish,” Pritzker said at a Monday news conference.

Research on the effectiveness of banning cellphones in schools is still preliminary, but results have been largely mixed. An April study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research showed a reduction in phone usage in schools with storage pouches for phones, but also found a minimal impact on student test scores or attendance.

Thirty-five other states have enacted legislation that bans or limits cellphone use in the classroom over the past few years, according to Ballotpedia.

Some changes from last year’s version of the bill include exceptions to ensure student safety, and limits on punitive measures against children who violate the bans. For example, after members of the legislative Black Caucus and Stand for Children expressed concern that students of color could be disproportionately disciplined, lawmakers added a section disallowing suspensions, expulsions, and fines against students who violate their district’s policy.

Several other exceptions are also folded into the legislation. Devices can be exempted from the policy if:

A healthcare professional has determined it is medically necessary.
It is used for an Individualized Education Program, which outlines accommodations for students with disabilities.
The student is a caregiver responsible for a family member.
An English language learner uses it for translation.
A school staff member has allowed the use of the device.
An emergency occurs.
A school district allows usage during high school lunch breaks and periods between classes.

Over the next year, school districts must figure out how to store students’ restricted devices, because the bill doesn’t specify how schools must do so. If a device “stored in good faith” is damaged, school staff cannot be held liable, according to the bill. Some organizations such as the Illinois Federation of Teachers previously seemed hesitant about storage guidance, specifically what it might cost schools to implement.

The State Board of Education will provide a template for school cellphone policies by September. Feedback from local teachers unions is required, and student input is encouraged to help districts develop their policies.

Once the policies go into effect, parents can find their school’s rules on their district website or student handbook.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

CPS CEO King subpoenaed to appear at congressional hearing on parental rights, ‘legal abuses’

2026-05-13T23:16:14+00:00

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A U.S. House committee has subpoenaed Chicago Public Schools’ CEO Macquline King to appear at a hearing focused on “attacks on parental rights, inappropriate content, and legal abuses” in American schools.

Rep. Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican and the chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, notified King about the subpoena in a Wednesday letter. It comes about three weeks after the committee first invited King to testify at a hearing titled, “Breaking Trust: Attacks on Parental Rights, Inappropriate Content, and Legal Abuses in America’s Schools,” according to the letter.

Citing scheduling conflicts and an ongoing Office for Civil Rights investigation, King originally declined the committee’s invitation. That hearing was originally scheduled for June 3, but King is now being subpoenaed to appear on June 10.

During the second Trump administration, the district has been under federal scrutiny for compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX, as well as student privacy laws.

Chicago Public Schools did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

King’s appearance before Congress would thrust Chicago Public Schools into a national spotlight at a time of intense scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Education. The department pulled funding last year from CPS, claiming the district had violated civil rights and sex-based discrimination laws with its plan to boost outcomes for Black students and its policies supporting bathroom and locker room access for transgender students.

Superintendents from San Francisco and Loudon County, Virginia are also expected to appear at the hearing. Both districts have been under scrutiny for progressive policies.

Similar hearings have provided a platform for Republican lawmakers to grill leaders from more liberal communities and institutions. Last year, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and other Democratic mayors forcefully defended their sanctuary policies before a congressional committee. University presidents were called by Congress to testify about antisemitism on campus in 2023.

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon criticized Chicago about two weeks ago after the Chicago Teachers Union and the district agreed to let students take pre-approved field trips and learn about labor history or civics on May Day.

Walberg’s committee first reached out to King April 16, one week after news that the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS were at odds over closing schools on May 1 — something King opposed.

King responded April 20, declining the invite because of a scheduling conflict and that her testimony would be limited because of the federal government’s civil rights and Title IX investigations into CPS.

The committee then offered six other dates in June, according to Walberg’s Wednesday letter. But CPS General Counsel Elizabeth Barton again cited the ongoing investigations as a reason why King “would not be able to discuss CPS’s policies in detail or share any substantive insight into the process of creating or adopting those policies.”

“We do not believe it would be helpful or informative to the Committee for Dr. King to participate in this hearing given those constraints,” Barton wrote, per the committee’s correspondence Wednesday. “For that reason, she must respectfully decline the Committee’s invitation to testify.”

Neither reason “warrants (King) not participating in the hearing,” Walberg wrote in Wednesday’s letter.

In a separate statement, Walberg said this is the first subpoena during his one-and-a-half-year tenure as chair and does “not take this action lightly.”

“However, the constant refusal to provide testimony blocks the Committee from doing its job of conducting oversight and further deepens mistrust in our education system,” Walberg said.

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

Chicago Board of Education picks Karime Asaf as chief education officer

2026-04-23T20:25:36+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education picked Karime Asaf, who oversees English learner programming at Chicago Public Schools, on Thursday to be the district’s next chief education officer.

As chief education officer, Asaf will be responsible for overseeing the district’s academic vision for schools.

The position has been without a permanent leader since last June, when then-chief Bogdana Chkoumbova resigned. Alfonso Carmona, former chief portfolio officer at CPS, was serving as the interim until earlier this month.

Asaf, who was once an English learner student at Senn High School after emigrating from Colombia, has worked in education for more than 30 years, including as a network chief and bilingual and special education teacher at CPS, according to her biography online. She became the chief of the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education in 2023.

“I have learned how important it is to treat people with dignity,” Asaf said shortly after she was hired. “Even during difficult conversations, it’s important to me to stay respectful. As a learning leader, my role is to invite people in, open space for collaboration and innovation, and inspire their creativity and imagination.”

One of her focuses has been to open more dual and world language programs. Under her tenure, the district updated its bilingual education policy with multiple clarifications, including that an English learner’s neighborhood school must provide them with language support even if the school hasn’t provided such support before.

Asaf’s tenure has intersected with major issues that impact English learners. She began in the position about a year after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing thousands of migrant families from Central and South America to Chicago and other Democratic-led cities. She’s also been at the helm as the Trump administration has stepped up immigration enforcement and deportation campaigns. On Thursday, she said her office helped create safety protocols at schools in the face of immigration enforcement.

At Thursday’s board meeting, during a presentation on academic progress, Asaf highlighted the district’s creation of a migrant welcome center in 2023 at Clemente High School in Humboldt Park, which she said has become a hub for providing additional support to newcomer families. Board members Debby Pope and Carlos Rivas praised Asaf and the district’s work as the migrant crisis unfolded, including working to enroll newly arrived children.

But as many newcomers who were learning English as a new language enrolled in schools that historically haven’t enrolled English learners, the district struggled to educate these children adequately, Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago found in 2024.

Last year, Chalkbeat and Block Club found that while the district’s share of bilingual teachers grew by more than 20% since the pandemic, schools were still struggling to provide legally required bilingual education to students who require it.

Asaf has said her office was concerned about areas in the city without English learner services but that creating robust bilingual programs takes time. On Thursday, she also pointed to a guidebook meant to help educators serve English learners.

Under Asaf, the share of English learners who have met their growth targets toward proficiency in English increased by about 1 percentage point — from 27.5% of English learners in the 2023-24 school year to 28.3% last school year, according to district data. The graduation rate among English learners has remained largely the same at just over 76% compared with 84% of students who aren’t English learners.

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

Cesar Chavez Elementary in Back of the Yards to be renamed — and neighbors can weigh in

2026-04-16T21:21:05+00:00

Efforts are underway to rename Cesar E. Chavez Multicultural Academic Center, a Back of the Yards elementary school.

School officials and the local school council are gathering feedback and suggestions for a new name for Chavez Academic Center, 4747 S. Marshfield Ave., a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Neighbors have until Friday to submit suggestions for a new name using this online form.

Last month, a New York Times investigation revealed multiple women have credibly accused Chavez of grooming, raping, and sexually abusing them.

At the time, parents and current and former students of the elementary school said they were shocked, confused, and felt like they’d been lied to about Chavez, previously seen as a hero for his work in the farmworkers’ rights movement.

The school should not be named after someone who abused girls as young as some of the students who walk the school’s hallways, and keeping Chavez’s name sends the wrong message to young people, parents, and neighbors previously said.

On March 25, the local school council voted to start the name change process. Four public meetings were held March 30-April 2 to gather feedback on potential new names for the school, the CPS spokesperson said.

The school can be renamed after a place, thing, or person, according to CPS policy. If suggesting the name of a person, the person must have been deceased for at least six months and cannot be a religious figure nor a relative of a school employee or the local school council.

Once the period to submit suggestions closes on Friday, students and staff will vote on their favorite options before presenting the local school council with three name suggestions, the CPS spokesperson said.

The local school council will then vote on the proposed names at one of its monthly meetings. Once the council votes on the name change, it needs to be approved by CPS officials, including the school’s network chief and the Chicago Board of Education.

Pilsen’s post office, named after Chavez, is also in the midst of getting a new name, and Chavez’s likeness was removed from a Pilsen park mural last month.

This story was originally published in Block Club Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools to stay open May 1 during nationwide protest — at least for now

2026-04-09T23:01:09+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will stay open May 1 for now, despite a push from board members and the Chicago Teachers Union to allow teachers and students to join a nationwide protest that day, in part against the Trump administration.

But it’s still possible schools will close that day, since a majority of Board of Education members support the move.

In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, interim CPS CEO Macquline King — who will begin leading the district permanently July 1 — said she’s recommended that school should stay open. She added that if the board wants to cancel classes, it must convene a special meeting and take a formal vote “as soon as possible.”

“Our staff, students and families need a clear understanding of what to expect on May 1,” she said.

Union leaders have pushed for the day to be a teacher-directed professional development day — for which students are off from school — so that teachers and students could participate in the national day of “no school, no work, no shopping.” The protest is meant to advocate for raising taxes on the rich, reining in immigration enforcement, and more funding for schools, union officials have said.

The disagreement could be an early test of King’s leadership of the district, which is confronting a range of challenges.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer and close ally of the union’s, previously said he supports letting students miss school on May 1, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

But confusion over whether the day would be off began Wednesday, after a memo from King leaked to the press. King’s memo, dated Tuesday and delivered to board members, said she wanted to keep classes in session in order to “ensure continuity of instruction, maintain safe and supervised environments, and minimize disruption for families,” including providing access to free student meals, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Chalkbeat.

She also noted that in a recent survey, 113 schools — or roughly one-fifth of all schools — reported a range of activities happening May 1, including field trips, college-decision day events, sports events, and make-up AP testing, the memo said. Just over 100 schools said they had out-of-school activities planned, including prom and senior night.

Those activities, which required “months of planning and financial commitments” could be difficult to reschedule as the district gets closer to the end of the year, the memo said.

Board members are split on calling the day off.

But also this week, the Chicago Teachers Union filed a grievance against the district, claiming CPS had violated its contractual agreement when planning this school year by failing to work with the union to schedule one professional development day for the 2025-26 school year.

In a letter dated Monday, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates wrote that the contractual language was negotiated “with the express purpose of accommodating a day of civic action on May 1.”

King notes in her memo that the provision cited by the union is set to take effect next school year, not this year. The school board adopted its calendar for next school year, when May 1 falls on a Saturday.

The union has also pointed to a state law allowing middle and high school kids to participate in a civic event. But in her memo, King said the law allows those students to take one excused absence a year for such an action and doesn’t allow a district-wide day off.

The grievance and the matter of May Day came up during the board’s closed session on Wednesday, board members said. King asked board members to weigh in and presented them with multiple options, including to keep schools open. A majority of board members, who are aligned with the mayor, voiced support for canceling classes on May 1, and some of those who were opposed stated that King had switched her position after the board’s closed session.

Debby Pope, an appointed board member, said board members shared many perspectives, including concerns for working parents. Pope said she supports closing schools May 1 because the nation is in “unprecedented times” and that “education takes many forms,” including participating in or learning about protests.

Other board members have stated staunch opposition, including Jessica Biggs and Jennifer Custer, both elected board members who have announced their runs for board president.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Biggs said, “The academic calendar has been set. Key end of year activities are planned. Our teachers are working hard to wrap up the year on a focused note. And our families count on our schools to do what they say.”

Custer started a petition online calling for school to stay open.

On Thursday morning, King joined a call that included leaders from CTU, the city’s principals union, and the mayor’s office so that they could plan for different scenarios, but no final decision had been made, according to Kia Banks, president of the principals union. Banks said all parties are trying to be “aware of our civic responsibilities while preserving or protecting our learners.”

A source close to CTU said it has been in “productive meetings” figuring out plans with the district, the principals union and the mayor’s office.

It remains unclear how staff in other unions, such as those who represent custodians and other support workers, would be affected or if they were included on the Thursday morning call.

Board President Sean Harden issued his own memo to King and some of her top cabinet members on Thursday, expressing the board’s support for King to “operationalize a day of civic action” on May 1.

King responded the same day, telling Harden that she was sticking by her statement that the district’s position “is to remain open May 1.” She also reiterated her call for the board to publicly vote on the matter.

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

Chicago Public Schools new CEO King faces big challenges. How do Chicagoans want her to tackle them?

2026-04-02T22:39:32+00:00

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Interim Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King, who will become the district’s permanent leader in July, has major challenges ahead of her.

The district is facing a projected budget deficit of at least $520 million next school year. At the same time, enrollment is declining, and the chronic absenteeism rate — when kids miss at least 10% of school days — has remained around 40% for the past few years.

Another challenge will be meeting the demands of a diverse community with different ideas and needs. One Local School Council member is vehemently opposed to the closure of her severely underenrolled school, but a parent at a nearby high school wouldn’t mind if their schools combined. Many parents don’t want to see cuts at their schools, but one parent leader said she’s interested in seeing where her child’s school can pare back on staffing in order to save money.

King has said she plans to engage communities around Chicago to shape her leadership on tough issues. While the Chicago Board of Education ultimately votes on major policies and budgets, King is in charge of proposing and implementing changes, as well as a budget plan.

As she settles into the permanent role, parents and members of school leadership teams shared what they would like to see from King.

CPS again faces a budget deficit

Budget woes and how King will tackle them are a primary concern for parents and educators. The deficit could grow as large as $1 billion, King has said, meaning the district will either have to find more revenue or make cuts before approving a budget this summer for the 2026-27 school year.

Overall state funding for CPS has increased nearly $390 million over the past five years. Still, the district is $1.6 billion short of what the state considers adequate funding.

Most Chicago adults want the state to provide more money, according to a survey conducted by Kids First, an education advocacy organization. Of the 1,361 respondents, two-thirds want state lawmakers to provide more money. Three-quarters want the corporate income tax raised, and roughly that same percentage want income taxes raised on people earning more than $250,000.

But Gov. JB Prtizker’s proposed budget doesn’t do those things and would instead provide a slightly smaller increase in funding than usual for K-12 schools.

King has said she will keep fighting for more state money. Earlier this week, she told reporters “everything has to be on the table so that we don’t compromise the progress that CPS students have made.”

On the school level, parent leaders told Chalkbeat they don’t want to see cuts to meals, tutoring, extracurricular activities, and arts programming. One of those parents — Princess Shaw, who was recently elected to the LSC and has a daughter at Oscar DePriest Elementary School in the Austin neighborhood — said she wants to take a closer look at whether the school needs all the staffing it has.

Jessica Keirns, who is on the LSC at Foreman High School in Portage Park, said King should consider more cuts at the central office level and invest in efforts to prevent long-term expenses for remedial help. For example, she wants schools to be able to hire more librarians, noting some research that links librarians to growth in student literacy.

Schools that are well-resourced “should pull [their] weight in the sacrifice,” Keirns said.

The district’s relatively new funding formula has moved away from basing funding on enrollment and provides staff positions based on a school’s needs. Many selective enrollment and magnet programs with higher enrollment had aired concerns about cuts under the new formula.

“When I hear people complain that they can’t keep their four different foreign languages … they’re forgetting about schools that are only offering Spanish in a place where the majority of the students already speak Spanish fluently,” Keirns said.

The district’s growing number of small schools

Chicago Public Schools enrollment has largely dipped over the last dozen or so years, with a nearly 3% drop again last fall. That drop has resulted in dozens of severely underenrolled schools, often in aging buildings that are costly to maintain: 43 schools are at one-third capacity, and roughly half of district-run schools are considered underutilized by district measures.

A Chalkbeat investigation last year found small schools tend to have less access to a variety of courses and extracurricular activities and are more likely to see higher dropout rates and truancy.

But school closures are highly fraught in Chicago, where mass closures in 2013 under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel left many low-income, Black and Hispanic communities feeling scarred and unheard by the district — and many left the city. Political leaders have since largely avoided addressing the issue.

After the board voted to hire King permanently, appointed board member Michilia Blaise said she wants to craft a vision for underenrolled schools “without just closing doors.” For her piece, King recently told reporters that a solution will require figuring out “the challenges” and how “to ensure that all students have a high-quality student experience regardless of where their school is situated.”

At Douglass High School in the Austin neighborhood, where only 27 students were enrolled at the start of the year, longtime LSC member Catherine Jones said she is “flatly” against a closure or combining with another school, and she wants more resources for the tight-knit campus she loves, such as a performing arts program.

“I would like [King] to sit down and talk to us as LSC members and see what the community would like the school to be,” Jones said.

On the South Side, Cecile De Mello, executive director of Teamwork Englewood, a group that advocates for more investment in the Englewood neighborhood, said King should revamp the CPS facilities master plan, which in part maps out building needs, and consider with school communities how to use vacant school spaces instead of closing buildings.

Jaciel Cathey, a newly elected LSC member for a school on the South Side, said King should focus on retaining teachers within the same school. She believes having familiar, consistent faces can help build trust with families and keep them in the community, she said.

CPS has made various efforts to recruit and retain more teachers within the district, for which rates have slightly improved in the last decade, according to state data.

Still, Cathey, who transferred her son from a private school, said families often “don’t know who’s teaching third grade” or “who’s teaching fourth grade” year after year.

Chronic absenteeism remains stagnant

Before the pandemic, about a quarter of CPS students missed at least 10% of school days — known as chronic absenteeism. Today, roughly 40% of CPS students are chronically absent, a rate that’s remained stagnant in recent years. It’s a critical issue: Lower attendance among middle and high school students is linked to lower grades and test scores, according to a recent study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

John Boggs, a veteran teacher and now International Baccalaureate program coordinator at Bogan Computer Technical High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side, rattled off a few of the reasons for why kids aren’t showing up: They’re caring for siblings; they’re navigating bad relationships with parents; or they’re just uninterested by their classes.

“When you’re looking at the low attendance rate for a kid, there’s a story there, and you just got to find out what it is,” Boggs, who also serves on the districtwide LSC advisory board, said.

King told WBEZ in January that CPS doesn’t have a strategy to improve attendance but she is talking to a foundation to help fund a plan.

Boggs said under King, the district should work harder to ensure parents know how to access their child’s attendance and grades online so they know when there’s a problem. The district has a web page instructing parents how to use the student information portal, but many families may not know it exists. Several other parents told Chalkbeat that schools should work to build relationships with parents — something the research study links to better attendance.

On the West Side, sophomore Stanley Scales transferred to Austin College and Career Academy from a private school at the start of this school year. Scales said he likes his new school, but he’s noticed some kids regularly don’t show up to school, where last year the chronic absenteeism rate was 87%.

Austin College and Career Academy is pictured on the first day of the 2025-26 school year.

Scales suggested the district should fix up the building, which he’s heard people describe as “depressing.” The nearly 100-year-old building needs almost $90 million in more immediate and long-term repairs, among the costliest bills for West Side schools, according to the district’s most recent facilities master plan from 2023.

A 2016 study in New York linked poor building conditions to lower student attendance.

“Maybe if they fixed the school up and like, make it more likable for students, maybe they would want to attend school more,” Scales said.

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

Dozens of officials call for more Latino representation in Chicago Public Schools’ leadership

2026-04-02T00:43:32+00:00

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Fifty Chicago leaders and organizations, including many Latino elected officials, want Chicago Public Schools’ soon-to-be permanent CEO to fill her cabinet and other senior leadership roles with more Latinos.

The signees issued the public statement Wednesday, two days after the Chicago Board of Education voted to name interim CPS CEO Macquline King the permanent leader starting July 1.

“This is not a question of talent but a reflection of a system that has consistently overlooked highly qualified Latino educators and leaders,” the statement said. “The result is a clear and persistent lack of Latino leadership at every level.”

Several district positions are in flux and currently being filled on an interim basis, including its budget director, the chief financial officer, and the chief portfolio officer who oversees charter schools. Alfonso Carmona, acting chief education officer, is Latino but is leaving CPS.

The makeup of teachers and principals doesn’t match the makeup of the district’s students. Hispanic students make up 46% of students at Chicago Public Schools — the biggest share of any major racial group. But 19% of CPS principals are Latino, the statement noted. Meanwhile, the plurality of principals, 45%, are Black, while 34% of district students are Black. Among teachers, the plurality, or 44%, are white, while just a quarter are Latino and just over a fifth are Black.

The statement also called for King to keep partnering with community leaders to “protect every student’s right to a public education, regardless of immigration status” in the wake of aggressive immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump. Several Chicago Board of Education members have praised her response to the federal government’s deportation campaign in the fall.

Last month, Latino leaders and organizations raised concerns about why none of the finalists for the CEO job were Latino. It’s unclear whether there were Latino candidates who didn’t want to continue through the process to the finalists stage.

The signees included eight of 10 elected Chicago Board of Education members; elected members Jitu Brown and Ebony DeBerry were not on the list. Board members who were appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson also were not on the list.

The list also included Rudy Lozano, a former board member who’d been appointed by the Johnson in 2023, as well as nine alderpeople, and six state lawmakers. Other signees include people who represent community organizations that work with Latino communities, including Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides wraparound services to some district schools under the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model.

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

Macquline King, interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools, hired as permanent leader

2026-03-30T18:55:05+00:00

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The Board of Education voted Monday to name Macquline King as Chicago Public Schools CEO, ending a rocky yearlong search for the district’s permanent leader.

The board voted 18-1 to hire King, who has been the district’s interim leader since last June, when former CEO Pedro Martinez left after being fired without cause. Elected board member Jennifer Custer voted no.

The board officially picked King last week over Sito Narcisse, the former superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish schools in Louisiana who was named another finalist earlier this month.

King is poised to face a $520 million projected budget deficit. She’ll also be in place through school board elections this year and when a new, fully elected board is seated.

As interim chief, King has been forced to navigate some major issues during her nine months on the job, including closing a $734 million budget deficit that sparked a fight with the mayor’s office, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, and upheaval in the district’s charter sector.

In remarks following the vote, King emphasized that she would build relationships in government and communities and would center students in her decisions. She highlighted bright spots in the district, including more recent student achievement in math, but also acknowledged problems ahead and said she’ll be “the most vocal advocate” in pushing for more state funding for CPS.

“We cannot and we will not allow financial headwinds to jeopardize those hard won victories and our students’ confidence,” King said.

Later, during a press conference, King said that in order to close a budget deficit that could rise as high as $1 billion, “everything has to be on the table so that we don’t compromise the progress that CPS students have made.”

King hasn’t rolled out major policy changes in her time so far, though last fall she was interested in reorganizing the district’s network offices, which help manage principals.

Several board members spoke in support of King ahead of the vote, saying that she’s a homegrown candidate who has earned the full-time role by displaying calm leadership over the past nine months. Board members raised a number of issues they want to work with King on, including budgetary pressures, supporting Black students, and addressing the district’s underenrolled schools.

“What mattered most to me — the fact that there are so many pressures on you, but you’ve always centered students,” said elected board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith.

Appointed board member Ed Bannon nodded to the rocky search for a new CEO that lasted about a year — but said that “the trip was worth it.”

“The path might have seemed a little rough at times, but as the saying goes, this is what democracy looks like,” Bannon said.

In an interview following the vote, Custer told reporters that she voted no because school leaders in her community said they did not feel like King has been communicative enough with them. She said she informed King of her vote ahead of time and wants to “figure out how to move forward.”

King started in CPS as a teacher in 1994, ultimately becoming a principal in 2007 until 2022. During that time, her work was both highlighted in the news and scrutinized by district officials in two incidents, once for failing to immediately report allegations of abuse and another time for failing to do a background check for a volunteer. She has said those critiques, which did not result in formal discipline, are the result of her not having enough staffing and support at the time.

She began working for Mayor Lori Lightfoot as an education policy advisor in 2022 and stayed in that role under Mayor Brandon Johnson until taking the job as interim schools chief last summer.

Union leaders and organizations share support for King

Unions, community organizations and elected officials welcomed King to the permanent CEO role as someone who navigated major challenges in the past year, has been willing to engage with them and, unlike other previous CEOs, rose up through the district’s ranks.

During public comment ahead of the board’s vote, Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, lauded King for overseeing the unprecedented, midyear transfer of students out of two shuttering ASPIRA charter network high schools. He noted other challenges ahead of CPS, including the projected budget deficit and a federal government that has pulled funding from the district.

“We can’t stave off the harm that is on the horizon without being in lockstep in our advocacy and vision,” Potter said. “I look forward to doing more of that transformation together in a moment that requires all of us to do more.”

The city’s principals union has previously shown public support for King. That union’s president, Kia Banks, said Monday that she knows King and the union will not always agree but that King has so far “demonstrated a willingness to engage directly with school leaders,” creating a solid foundation for their relationship going forward.

In an interview last week, Dian Palmer, president of SEIU 73, the union that represents thousands of school support staff workers, said she’s most excited about stability for the district with a leader who worked her way up through the system and understands Chicago’s complexities. Palmer said King has been “patient and kind” about her union’s concerns, even when they didn’t agree.

For example, last summer the district’s budget cuts included laying off hundreds of unionized custodians. At the same time, the union supported King’s plans not to include a short-term loan in the budget in fear that future high-interest repayments would result in staff layoffs.

“I am really looking forward to her working with the union — at least that’s what she says,” Palmer said. “She wants to work with us and really have a positive atmosphere for education, for the students, not just the service workers, who we represent, the custodians, the [special education classroom assistants], but also for the teachers.”

Daniel Anello, CEO of education advocacy group Kids First Chicago, welcomed King’s appointment, noting in a statement that she “has already navigated a number of complex challenges related to the district’s finances, attendance, and more” and has shown “a clear commitment to putting students’ interests first, without yielding to political pressure.”

Anello also supported a three-year contract, which he said will mean stability for CPS as the board transitions to a fully elected body next year.

The national search process started last year with community meetings and a detailed wishlist for what the board would look for in a candidate, including “significant” experience in public education that involves working with students, a record of focusing on equity and improving student outcomes, experience working with labor unions, and financial management experience — an area King doesn’t have formal experience in but oversaw the district’s budget proposal last year.

But after finalist names leaked and one of the candidates dropped out in the fall, the board decided to conduct more interviews. By February, as the board narrowed down candidates, the board’s search firm, Alma Advisory Group, departed and six elected board members said they’d lost confidence in the search, accusing the mayor of meddling, which he’s denied. Those board members called for retaining King as the interim chief until the new board is seated.

King had applied for the job of CEO in 2021, but the board at the time, appointed by Lightfoot, picked Martinez. Then several months into her time as the interim chief, she again applied last fall for the permanent job amid the board’s search to replace Martinez but was not advanced as a finalist.

By then, at least seven board members who are also mayoral allies disagreed with her budget proposal that was ultimately approved. And separately, other board members appeared caught off guard after she pitched a plan to reorganize network offices.

In recent months, some organizations called on the board to keep King in place until at least a new elected board is seated in January. King was then added back into the mix in recent weeks.

Remel Terry, president of the West Side branch of the NAACP, said her organization is “excited” that King will stay. The organization has felt left in the dark about the search process, Terry said, and asked the board twice to pause the search and retain King permanently through next school year. It was disappointing that King was taken out of consideration in the fall even though “she has already demonstrated her ability to lead this district under pressure,” Terry said.

The group will keep a close watch on how the district’s Black Student Success Plan — which has been under federal scrutiny — will be implemented, Terry said. She also expects King to stay as communicative as she has been with organizations like hers, as well as parents, as she takes on the permanent role.

“Having access and being able to speak directly to concerns and issues is a very important piece,” Terry said.

This story has been updated to include comments from Macquline King and members of the Chicago Board of Education.

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

Chicago Board of Education to vote on hiring interim CEO Macquline King as permanent leader of CPS

2026-03-26T17:59:06+00:00

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After a yearlong national search for Chicago Public Schools’ next leader, the Board of Education will vote Monday on whether to permanently hire interim CEO Macquline King, a Chicagoan who rose up through the district’s ranks.

The board’s meeting will start at 10:30 a.m. Monday at its downtown headquarters, where it will consider approving a contract with King with a salary of $380,000, according to an agenda posted on the board’s website Thursday.

If approved by the board, the term of King’s contract would begin July 1 and last through June 2029, according to the board’s agenda. The resolution to approve a contract for King says the board has offered King the job, and she has accepted. .

The vote would also cap a rocky search process that’s been a test for how Chicago’s partially elected board could choose a schools chief differently from the past, when mayors would essentially make a pick without much public input. The board’s search process laid out last year acknowledged that it would seek the mayor’s input on its finalist candidates.

Last month, however, a group of six elected board members — including the search committee’s chair, Jessica Biggs — accused the mayor’s office of sabotaging the search, which Mayor Brandon Johnson has denied.

King has been serving as the district’s interim leader of the more than 316,000-student district since last June, when former CEO Pedro Martinez left after being fired without cause.

Martinez had received a five-year contract with a starting salary of $340,000 when hired in 2021 by a board that was fully appointed by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Martinez made about $360,000 when he left CPS.

The other finalist was Sito Narcisse, the former superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish schools in Louisiana, who has been trailed by a mixture of controversy and loyal supporters during his nearly 20 years in education.

Meisha Porter, former leader of New York City schools, was also a finalist, but she withdrew her name after the board announced the candidates’ names on March13.

Johnson interviewed King and Narcisse and called the conversations “fruitful” in a press conference earlier this week. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Norma Rios-Sierra, a mayoral appointee to the school board who sat on the board’s CEO search working group, said the mayor has given “his blessing” to hire King.

Rios-Sierra said the search process has had its “ups and downs,” but she’s excited to have King on permanently.

“I think she has shown her ability to just kind of take on the work that it is to be the Chicago Public Schools superintendent,” Rios-Sierra said. “We needed someone who understood the city, who understood the complexity of what we’re doing.”

King initially taken out of consideration for the job

King’s inclusion on the finalist list was initially a surprise.

She had applied last fall for the job, but the board did not advance her as a finalist at the time. After finalist names were leaked in November and one of those candidates dropped out, the board conducted more interviews and revealed a new list of finalists two weeks ago, which included King.

Two school board members previously told Chalkbeat they received a call from Board President Sean Harden the day before finalist names were announced publicly, saying King would be added to the list, and that Harden had garnered a majority of support from board members to add her.

If appointed, King will face mounting challenges at CPS, including a projected budget deficit to close this summer for the next school year. She’ll also be in place when a new, fully elected board is seated in January, raising questions about how she’ll build relationships with any new board members, who will have the power to keep or replace her.

But King isn’t new to some of these issues. The former principal and City Hall aide led the district through a bruising battle over how to close CPS’ $734 million budget deficit last summer, in which she opposed the mayor’s plan to take out a loan in order to balance the budget and cover a much-debated pension cost. That budget, however, also saw a slew of cuts, including hundreds of custodians and hot meals for kids.

King has also overseen the city’s schools through the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign, creating a “command center” for schools to call for extra support, the federal government’s decision to withhold millions of dollars in grant funding, and upheaval in the district’s charter sector.

In September, King had considered a massive reorganization of the district’s network offices, which operate as a sort of middle management between the district’s top leaders and schools. But she appeared to pause the plan after pushback from board members and some principals.

She has earned some public support for her leadership so far, including from the principals union and the West Side branch of NAACP.

Rios-Sierra, who voted no on King’s budget proposal in the fall, said she’s been impressed by how King has been communicative with other government agencies, including City Council and the state legislature. She also noted King’s work in overseeing the transfer of hundreds of students out of ASPIRA charter network’s shuttering high schools and her response to increased immigration enforcement.

“When we asked CPS to move with a sense of urgency when ICE was coming, I think she absolutely listened and did everything she could to communicate with parents and principals,” Rios-Sierra said.

King became a CPS teacher in 1994 at Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School following a brief stint at a private school. In 2007, King became principal at Alexandre Dumas School, and by 2013 she was principal at Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown, where she was highlighted for her participation in a leadership program for new school leaders.

Her first year as principal at Courtenay was when the school merged with former Stockton Elementary, meaning King was tasked with creating harmony between both school communities. While some acknowledged the difficult task ahead of her, others described part of the school as a “war zone” that was marred with student fights, and they accused school leaders, including King, of not doing enough, according to a DNAinfo story at the time.

King then was hired to work on education policy at City Hall under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and stayed under the Johnson administration until being hired for the role of interim CPS CEO. She had previously applied for the CEO job in 2021, but the board at the time hired Martinez.

King’s personnel records drew some scrutiny before she was hired as the interim CEO. The records did not show any formal discipline but included two memos from district officials about how she should improve her performance. The memos centered on findings that she had not immediately reported allegations of abuse and failed to conduct a background check for a volunteer. The day she was hired as interim CEO, she told Chalkbeat the criticism was fair but that those directives were the result of understaffing at her school.

Board has undergone a rocky search process

The board’s search process to find a replacement for Martinez has been fraught.

Last spring, the board created a working group to lead the process and hired the search firm, Alma Advisory Group. The district held public meetings to collect feedback on what the community wanted to see in a new schools chief.

A survey conducted last summer as part of the search process found that 42% of the more than 2,700 respondents wanted someone with “strong and clear communication.” Thirty-nine percent wanted someone with “innovation, strategic thinking, and problem solving,” and 37% want someone who seeks and responds to feedback from students, parents, and staff.

After conducting a nationwide search, the board received more than 100 applications.

But after finalist names were leaked in November, several board members soured on the process, and by February, Alma parted ways with the district. Biggs and five other elected officials decried the loss of Alma.

Those six elected members that raised questions about the process also called for the board to pause the search process until after school board elections this year and keep King until January 2027, when the new fully elected board will be seated. The West Side branch of the NAACP has also called to keep King in place through the 2026-27 school year, saying they had a “serious concern” about the legitimacy of the board’s search.

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

Sito Narcisse, Chicago Public Schools CEO finalist, drew praise and controversy in previous jobs

2026-03-25T00:06:40+00:00

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In the three years that Sito Narcisse, a finalist to be Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO, led East Baton Rouge Parish schools, he experienced a rollercoaster of support and backlash in the community.

The board there narrowly voted not to renew his contract in late 2023. His supporters praised his initiatives, including linking high schoolers to college-level coursework, while those who voted no raised concerns over spending fueled by federal COVID relief dollars and low employee morale.

Narcisse has also faced some controversy in other jobs, including criticism of his leadership of a public high school in Boston.

How Narcisse navigated his time in East Baton Rouge and other places provides clues on how he could lead the nation’s fourth largest district.

Unlike the other finalist, interim CPS CEO Macquline King, who grew up in Chicago and rose through the ranks of CPS, Narcisse has worked as an educator and administrator in at least a half-dozen cities and states, including Pittsburgh, Boston, and Washington, D.C., over nearly 20 years.

But like King, he’s had only one superintendent job.

Narcisse did not respond to a request for an interview for this story.

East Baton Rouge is far smaller and less diverse than CPS: It has 12% of the students, and nearly 70% of students are Black. But it has some similar needs: More than three-quarters of East Baton Rouge Parish students were considered “economically disadvantaged” in 2025, compared with roughly 70% in Chicago, according to district records.

Student academic results were mixed during Narcisse’s tenure, which included the pandemic and its aftermath. The share of kids in grades K-3 who scored “at benchmark” on end-of-the-year literacy screeners grew by almost 5 percentage points during his time as superintendent.

But for students in grades 3-8 in in each of those same years, the percentage of students who scored at the “basic” level on their state reading and math tests toggled between 23-24% — with a dip to 22% in math during Narcisse’s last school year, according to district data. In that same time period, CPS students in grades 3-8 who had met or exceeded proficiency in their state reading tests grew from about 21% to 30% and fluctuated from about 16% to 18% in math.

Average ACT scores were 17 during his time, with one increase to 18 — the state average — in the year before he left, comparable to CPS. Graduation rates fluctuated, landing at the same place they were when he started: about 73%. CPS graduation rate went from 79% to 80% during that same time period.

Supporters laud Narcisse’s ideas, but he faced controversy

Michael Gaudet, who was president of the East Baton Rouge Parish school board when it hired Narcisse, described the former superintendent as a “deliberate and decisive” leader who centered the needs of students. He praised Narcisse’s work to add literacy coaches for teachers in struggling elementary schools and help draft a blueprint for literacy.

”The biggest thing that he always emphasized was that to be effective, it has to be done at scale, and it has to be sustainable, and so, you know, that was kind of always one of his guiding principles,” Gaudet said.

His supporters also highlighted his “Pathways to Bright Futures” program, which allowed students to earn college credit and even an associate degree with a local community college.

Not everyone embraced the idea. Some parents and teachers didn’t want ninth graders to be limited to dual enrollment courses, arguing some colleges prefer Advanced Placement, the local newspaper The Advocate reported. District officials later said high schoolers would only be required to take one advanced class, which could include AP.

“That has been one of our landmark programs that our kids are still benefiting from through this very day,” said Dadrius Lanus, an East Baton Rouge Parish school board member and an ally of Narcisse’s who served as board president during Narcisse’s tenure.

Narcisse’s critics point to issues over school transportation and a leadership style that sometimes kept the public in the dark.

In Boston, Narcisse served as the headmaster of the district’s historic English High School from 2009-2012. Under Narcisse’s leadership, the Boston Globe reported, three-quarters of staff left and he instituted controversial changes, including same sex classrooms. The newspaper also reported that state education officials were withholding funding due to a lack of improvement at the school, which had faced academic challenges long before Narcisse.

Storm Matthews, a longtime middle school teacher and education advocate in East Baton Rouge who was previously a delegate for the Louisiana Association of Educators and is highly critical of Narcisse, pointed to an incident when board members were in the dark about Narcisse’s idea to close an alternative middle school — which Matthews discovered while looking through his proposed budget and alerted local reporters, the Advocate reported. After the revelation, Narcisse presented a plan to the school board for the closure about a month before teachers would return from summer break, and the board ultimately rejected it.

Problems with student bus transportation also dogged Narcisse during his time as superintendent. Similar to other districts, including Chicago, East Baton Rouge faced a driver shortage after the pandemic, and the district’s school bus fleet had been in disrepair before Narcisse came to town, according to Gaudet and Lanus. But those issues were compounded by bus driver concerns over pay and working conditions, such as overheated buses, leading to a “sickout” in August 2023.

In response, hundreds of people attended a special board meeting, and some called for Narcisse to resign, the Advocate reported. That day the school board rejected Narcisse’s plan to stagger school start times as a possible solution to create more reliable bus service.

District saved more money under Narcisse, but some criticized his spending

Narcisse was also charged with how to spend more than $200 million in COVID relief dollars from the federal government. Local financial audits found that East Baton Rouge, like other districts, significantly increased spending with the influx of the federal funds, and district officials said in 2023 that they would use about a quarter of the money on expenses that they typically cover with local revenue, the Advocate reported.

Despite that, those audits found that the district had set aside a record amount of money in its reserve, or rainy day, funds, though such spending couldn’t be kept up as the money ran out.

Narcisse also caught heat after some students said that an event called “Day of Hope,” billed as a college and career fair the district put on in partnership with a local organization, had religious overtones and included discussion of suicide and forgiving rapists, while transgender students said they were bullied. At the time, Narcisse said his office had made “exhaustive” efforts to verify the claims but found no evidence. Gaudet said a subsequent investigation did not find evidence, either. Two parents later filed a lawsuit against Narcisse and the board.

School board elections in 2022 brought on new officials who pushed back on Narcisse.

In May 2023, just over a year before his contract with East Baton Rouge was set to expire, Narcisse interviewed unsuccessfully to oversee Broward County, Florida schools. He told board members about the interview but said he was still interested in staying.

But in December 2023, the school board decided not to renew Narcisse’s contract by a close vote of 5-4, and Narcisse resigned the following month.

Two of the members who voted no declined to comment for this story, and the others did not respond to a request for an interview.

The Advocate reported that at least one of the board members who was previously supportive of Narcisse voted no, in part because he was concerned about how much money the district had spent using COVID dollars. Another board member, who was a longtime teacher, said she’d seen employee morale dip during Narcisse’s tenure.

Since leaving East Baton Rouge, Narcisse has launched an education consulting company called SJ Apple, which appears to be based in Florida. Narcisse also hosts an education podcast called Unlearned and Unlimited, through which he’s interviewed former superintendents and experts.

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

Chicago school board adopts calendars for next two school years

2026-02-26T22:14:26+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education unanimously adopted calendars Thursday for the next two school years after initial pushback on having the first semester end after winter break.

The calendars for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 school years will include 176 days for student attendance, four Teacher Institute Days, four school improvement days, four professional development days, and two days for parent-teacher conferences.

The first day of next school year will be Aug. 24 for K-12 students and Aug. 25 for pre-K students, about a week later than this year. For the 2027-28 school year, the first day will be Aug. 23 and 24, respectively, for K-12 and pre-K students. Students would again get a week off for Thanksgiving break and a two-week winter break under both calendars.

But unlike this school year, the first semester would end after winter break, meaning final exams would occur after break — prompting concern from some board members when the calendars were first presented in January.

“The No. 1 concern I hear from students is about mental health, and having a break as an opportunity for resetting, recovering, and spending time with their families is really important,” appointed board member Anusha Thotakura said during a January meeting to review that month’s board meeting agenda. “If you have testing for second quarter after winter break, students won’t have that opportunity to reset, relax, and come into the new year energized.”

In order to have the first semester end before winter break, CPS would have to make certain shifts on the calendar, Nicole Milberg, chief of teaching and learning at CPS, has said. CPS considered getting rid of the full week of Thanksgiving break and moving more professional development days to the second semester, but that scenario would require starting school long before Labor Day in order to meet state requirements for school days.

Board members asked CPS to reconsider the calendars and survey families again on what they wanted. At a meeting earlier this month to review Thursday’s agenda, officials said 55% of the 22,000 people surveyed preferred ending the first semester after winter break. Another 37% of people wanted the option of ending the first semester before break, and 8% wanted to start school a few days earlier and also have a shorter Thanksgiving break. It was not clear how many of the respondents were high school students, parents, or staff.

Board members did not discuss the calendars further before their vote.

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

Some board members claim ‘sabotage’ as Chicago school board and search firm tasked with finding new CEO part ways

2026-02-13T00:39:35+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is parting ways with Alma Advisory Group, the search firm tasked with helping the school board find a new CEO, according to a statement from six of the board’s 10 elected members.

The statement, obtained by Chalkbeat, does not specify when or why Alma wrapped up its work on the search. The board members who signed it — Carlos Rivas Jr., Ellen Rosenfeld, Jessica Biggs, Angel Gutierrez, Therese Boyle, and Che “Rhymefest” Smith — say they now want interim CPS CEO Macquline King to stay in the job until a new, fully elected school board is seated next January.

The end of Alma’s contract is another twist in the CEO search process, which began last spring and appeared to be coming to a close in the late fall, only to seemingly come to a halt. Former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez left the district in late June after he was fired without cause, and the district has not had a permanent CEO since.

Search firms generally remain involved until a pick for the role is announced and in some cases might help with negotiating a contract.

The statement, which praised Alma’s work with the board, claims mayoral appointees “sabotaged” the search process and the mayor and “his allies” have “started running political interference.”

After this story published, the Chicago Board of Education office said in a statement that Alma will work with the school board for the next 30 days to “ensure a seamless transition into finalist interviews,” then remain on retainer with the district for future executive-level searches. The statement described Alma offering “extensive support,” including screening more than 100 candidates, and said the board is “deeply grateful” for its work.

The statement, which said the application window for CEO candidates closed Feb. 6, did not provide an explanation for Alma’s exit.

But another elected school board who has repeatedly voted in agreement with that group of elected members said Thursday she still feels optimistic about the search. Jenni Custer said the board is on the cusp of selecting several finalists for the CEO role, though members haven’t decided how many and whether all of them will be named publicly.

“We have a lot of great candidates left in our pool,” she said. “We need to see this through before we say the process has been unsuccessful.”

Custer said that in her understanding, the board and Alma parted ways because of a mutual sense that the search firm’s work was done at this point: “Alma has taken us as far as they can, and now the ball is in our court.”

But Smith, one of the statement’s signatories, said he witnessed mayoral appointees “sideline” Alma when it recommended “best practices” for the search. Smith declined to offer more details about what exactly prompted Alma’s exit.

“Now that Alma has left, how can you trust this process? Who’s leading it?” Smith said.

The school board is currently 11 members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the 10 elected members.

Chicago Public Schools referred Chalkbeat to the Chicago Board of Education office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Board President Sean Harden and Monica Santana Rosen, the head of Alma did not respond to requests for comment.

After this story published, the mayor’s press office said in a statement that the allegation by these board members is “baseless and inaccurate.” The mayor’s office has not intervened in the CEO search or interviewed any candidates, the statement said.

The mayor’s office, in turn, accused board members of leaking names of candidates to the press — a matter that Harden hired a firm to investigate. It’s unclear where that investigation stands.

Each of the board members who signed Thursday’s statement had voted against hiring King as the interim CEO last year. And last fall, board members chose not to advance King as a finalist for the permanent CEO job before the process was halted when other finalist names were reported by Chalkbeat and the Chicago Sun-Times/WBEZ.

Later in November, school board members said they were “recalibrating” the search process. It’s unclear exactly where in the search the board is at or how close it is to choosing a candidate.

But during a board meeting Tuesday, Biggs and Smith publicly praised King’s leadership.

“I just wanted to take this time to just say thank you: Thank you for balancing the budget, thank you for visiting schools, thank you for inspiring confidence in our partners and thank you for being here and being a competent leader,” Smith said.

The board members’ calls to keep King are now in line with a broader call from the West Side NAACP and a coalition of Black-led groups, which want King to stay until at least a newly elected board is seated next year.

The question of the mayor’s role in selecting the district’s next leader has hung over the search, with some board members concerned that Johnson would exert control through his appointees. Smith said the board had at one point invited the mayor’s office to share what it wanted to see in the search process, but Johnson’s team said no.

The city’s mayors have traditionally hand-picked the district’s top leader, but there was an expectation that Johnson would play a more hands-off role amid the transition to a fully elected board.

Tensions on the board rose after the names of two finalists, New York City’s former top education official Meisha Ross Porter and current Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero, were leaked to the media late last year, disrupting the search.

The Thursday statement from board members noted “names of finalists have been leaked, progress has stalled, and major decisions have been put on hold” — and it blamed interference from the mayor’s office for these disruptions.

“By making it impossible for a professional firm to see this through, Mayor Johnson and his appointed board members have shown that they are either unwilling, unable, or uninterested in finding a qualified CEO/Superintendent to lead CPS into the future,” the statement said.

Custer said she hasn’t yet seen clear evidence that Johnson’s office is meddling in the process.

This story has been updated with comment from board member Che Smith, the mayor’s office and the Chicago Board of Education office.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools inspector general’s report outlines fraud by district employees

2026-01-07T12:45:44+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools has to repay more than $1 million in federal dollars after its in-house watchdog uncovered fraud involving a staffer who had inflated student enrollment numbers in a federally funded program for years.

That’s one of the fraud cases outlined in the annual report from the Chicago Public Schools Office of the Inspector General for fiscal year 2025, including some involving federal COVID assistance programs. The report, out Wednesday, also noted that the district last year stopped using a family income form after the watchdog previously found numerous teachers and administrators who are also district parents misreported their income on it, making their children eligible for fee waivers and other benefits.

Philip Wagenknecht, the district’s inspector general, said the case of the program manager who overstated enrollment numbers stands out because his office had previously flagged her and recommended discipline and stricter oversight. Fox News previously reported that the district agreed to repay federal funds from the Indian Education Formula Grant, meant for Native American students.

“With respect to fraud and financial mismanagement, this was arguably the most egregious conduct covered in the annual report,” Wagenknecht said. “It wasn’t a clerical mistake or an accident.”

In November, the inspector general also released a special report on district travel expenses, which ballooned following the influx of federal pandemic relief dollars. Some, such as a series of overseas staff development trips that included a hot air balloon ride and wildlife safaris, were costly and of questionable value, that report said.

The program manager who the watchdog says repeatedly falsified federal grant applications had been the focus of an earlier investigation in which the inspector general’s office uncovered similar issues. In 2021, the office had recommended discipline for the program manager and her supervisor, and urged the district to increase oversight of that program. Back then, the inspector general’s office found a longstanding practice of overstating the number of students enrolled in the program, which the report does not identify.

The district did not discipline the employees at the time, but added an extra layer of oversight. Nevertheless, last fiscal year the watchdog found the program manager had continued to submit inflated program enrollment numbers. For example, the district’s 2024-25 program application listed 275 enrolled students, but the watchdog found records for fewer than 100, many of them incomplete.

The district has fired that employee and placed a ban on rehiring her in her personnel file, according to the report. It also agreed to repay almost $1.2 million to the U.S. Department of Education by the fall of 2026.

In another case outlined in Wednesday’s report, a Chicago principal got two loans worth more than $41,000 through the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program, which were later forgiven. According to the report, she claimed to be a struggling self-employed property manager, even as she made more than $140,000 in her school leader post. That principal was also the focus of a separate inspector general investigation that found she was absent from her school job for long stretches without explanation and generally neglected her duties as principal.

She told watchdog staff that she had no outside employment and that the information she submitted to obtain the loans and have them forgiven was false. The school board moved to dismiss that principal and place a ban on rehiring her.

The district watchdog does not customarily identify staffers or the schools that employed them.

The latest inspector general’s report also outlines the case of Brian Metcalf, a former CPS principal and network chief who in late 2023 was indicted on several counts of wire fraud related to a scheme to defraud an Indiana charter school network he oversaw. The CPS watchdog found that before he left the district in 2018, he also engaged in a phony billing scheme with a vendor named Kimberly Maddox that defrauded CPS of at least $88,500.

Maddox and another Metcalf co-conspirator were also indicted. Metcalf reached a plea agreement that involved paying restitution to CPS and the charter. He also admitted that he and his co-conspirators defrauded two post-CPS employers of more than $1 million.

CPS said in a statement that it’s taking the findings of the latest watchdog report seriously.

“As a district of more than 40,000 employees serving over 315,000 students, CPS remains dedicated to providing proactive, comprehensive training for employees and vendors, enforcing all policies, rules, and laws, and taking appropriate action, including implementing appropriate discipline when required, in accordance with the highest ethical standards,” the district’s statement said.

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

Chicago Public Schools finds buyers for three vacant schools

2025-12-03T22:50:42+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools has identified buyers for three former school properties on the South and West Sides, two of whom are planning to build new housing and a third who wants to open a community center.

The district is seeking the Chicago Board of Education’s approval at its next meeting on Dec. 18 to sell the old Bontemps Elementary in Englewood on the South Side for $75,000, the old Henson Elementary in North Lawndale on the West Side for $25,000, and the former Shedd Elementary, which last served as a satellite building for Bennett Elementary, in Roseland on the Far South Side for $25,000. All three buildings closed in 2013.

The proposed sales come after CPS put 20 properties on the market in May. Stephen Stults, the district’s director of real estate, said they got bids for 12 properties.

Chicago’s struggle to repurpose dozens of vacant school properties has taken more than a decade. The district has made multiple past attempts to sell them and many either had no buyers or pending deals fall through. CPS spends roughly $75,000 to $150,000 annually to maintain each vacant property, Stults said.

“We really want to put these buildings back to productive use,” Stults said. “The longer they sit there, the more they deteriorate, the harder it is to redevelop them, and the less value that we can get for them.”

School board member Michilla Blaise urged CPS officials to lean on the 21 board members elected and appointed to represent their communities to help get the old schools repurposed.

“We all have community contacts. We all have organizations that might be helpful to you. And we can also reach out to elected officials in the area,” Blaise said. “CPS is in the business of educating students, not necessarily being a landlord to derelict properties. So I understand the impetus to want to unload these properties … but we have to move thoughtfully.”

The potential buyer for the old Shedd Elementary building at 99th and Indiana Ave. is the Peace for Preston Foundation, led by Dionne Mhoon, the mother of slain Chicago Police Officer Aréanah Preston. Two years ago, Mhoon launched a GoFundMe to support the foundation and raise money for a community center in honor of her daughter. Mhoon’s bid for the old Shedd school is $25,000.

Elected school board member Carlos Rivas said Wednesday he was Preston’s college counselor in the 2015-16 school year when he worked at Noble’s UIC College Prep.

“She was such a determined young lady and graduated from Illinois State in three and a half years because of her determination,” Rivas said. “She had such a bright life ahead of her, and she did so much for her community.”

“I am so incredibly proud that we’re going to be honoring her and using this building in this way for the Peace for Preston Foundation,” Rivas added.

There was some interest in the old Shedd school in 2017 from a private Christian school and another buyer, but neither bid had the backing of the local alderperson, according to South Side Weekly.

The board resolution says Peace for Preston wants to offer youth recreational programming, educational programming, youth mentoring and counseling, mental health support, job readiness and vocational training, wellness programs, and access to health care support, as well as GED and financial literacy courses.

Both buyers for Henson and Bontemps want to demolish the old schools and construct new housing.

In the case of Henson, buyer Melvin Bailey of MKB Business Strategies told Chalkbeat that he plans to build about 27 single family or two-flat homes on the property.

At least one other shuttered CPS school property is now home to dozens of single family homes. A developer bought the old King Elementary in 2017 in Tri-Taylor and built 30 homes that came on the market in 2020.

MKB’s $25,000 bid was not the lowest received. There was another for $30,000 from Calling Water LLC. Stults said the community meeting was contentious and both proposals had supporters, but Bailey’s plan for redevelopment had the support of the local alderperson, Monique Scott.

In May 2018, the Board of Education approved a bid for Henson’s property from the Single Room Housing Assistance Corporation, which offered $55,000. The group put forward a plan to convert the school into 80 mini-studio apartments for low-income people, including veterans, single mothers, and people with disabilities. The sale never closed.

Devereaux Peters, a former WNBA player turned affordable housing developer, is offering $75,000 to purchase the Bontemps school in Englewood. According to the board resolution, the plan is to demolish the school and build two affordable housing buildings. One would have 72 units with various amenities, including a fitness center and coworking space. The second building would have 60 units for seniors “who wish to downsize while remaining in the community.”

Stults said the current Bontemps structure has no working plumbing, electric, or mechanical systems. He said there was a community meeting in October and the local alderman, Stephanie Coleman, supports the project.

In 2017, the school board approved a $50,000 bid for Bontemps from IFF, a nonprofit lender and developer based in Chicago. But like Henson, that sale never went through.

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.

Chicago Public Schools eyes colocation of 2 Brighton Park elementaries

2025-11-20T16:30:00+00:00

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A Chicago Public Schools elementary and a charter school the district saved from closure could share a building under a plan officials are considering.

The Acero Cisneros campus in Brighton Park, which the district is in the process of absorbing this year, could move to the nearby Shields Elementary building, according to a letter to the Shields community from Conrad Timbers-Ausar, CPS’ acting chief portfolio officer. He said officials are weighing the move ahead of a Dec. 1 state deadline to announce school actions, such as closures or moves. The schools would share the campus but retain separate principals, staff, and students.

The Chicago school board made the unprecedented decision last February to transform five schools in the Acero charter network into district-run schools rather than let their operator shutter them. District officials budgeted $20 million dollars this school year to fund the transition. All but one of these campuses saw enrollment losses this fall that added to earlier declines.

Enrollment at Shields has also shrunk dramatically over the past decade as slowing immigration, falling birthrates, and gentrification have put pressure on enrollment at majority-Latino elementaries in Chicago. Shields serves about 390 students this fall, down from more than 1,000 in 2015. Cisneros has roughly 230 students, down from 560 a decade ago.

A district spokesperson said in a statement that the 70-year-old former Catholic school building Acero Cisneros currently occupies has three age-related concerns, including “severe water infiltration and drainage failure” that has caused irreparable damage to the gym floor, as well as gas and water leaks and odor emissions from an underground storage tank by the school’s boiler. Some of the facility concerns at Cisneros were discussed by the school board last spring and its initial plan was to save just four Acero campuses and let Cisneros close.

All of the Acero campuses being absorbed by CPS are in buildings owned by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Earlier this year, the Acero Santiago campus was put up for sale, but has since been pulled off the market.

In his letter to families, Conrad-Ausar said the Cisneros principal and advisory council approached CPS and requested a possible colocation for the 2026-27 school year. The district zeroed in on Shields because of its proximity, he said. The schools are a five-minute drive or 15-minute walk apart.

“As part of our District’s commitment to ensuring a high-quality education for every student, CPS will review the proposal,” Conrad-Ausar wrote, adding that the district will weigh enrollment patterns, cost, impact on the school communities, and other factors.

After losing about 70,000 students over the past decade, CPS faces a growing number of aging, underutilized school buildings. In the past, the district frequently colocated district-run and charter schools in the same building. But there are fewer of these arrangements today and they have at times drawn criticism for pitting the two schools in a competition for students. Community advocates for Bowen High School, for instance, have argued that its colocation with a charter school contributed to enrollment losses at the small school.

The district is hosting a meeting with Shields families to get their input on the colocation proposal at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday on the school’s campus. It is also inviting input via email at transitions@cps.edu.

The district spokesperson said if the proposal is advanced, both schools will be notified by Dec. 1 and more community meetings and a public hearing will be held in January.

This story was updated to include more information from Chicago Public Schools about the condition of the Cisneros facility.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

Wildlife safaris, hot air balloon, camel rides: Chicago Public Schools watchdog decries ‘lavish’ staff travel spending

2025-11-12T06:05:00+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools staffers took “questionable, excessive, and even exorbitant” trips to South Africa, Egypt, Finland, and elsewhere — complete with wildlife safaris, a hot air balloon ride, and camel rides at the district’s expense, a new report by the CPS watchdog found.

Lax oversight and an influx in federal COVID aid led to the increase in travel expenditures, which more than doubled since 2019 even as budget trouble loomed, according to the district’s Office of the Inspector General.

The watchdog also found hundreds of district and school staff traveled to a series of conferences in Las Vegas and other cities, in many cases racking up high hotel and airfare costs. When the organizer of these events put on similar professional development events in Chicago or virtually, few district employees attended.

Overall, the district spent $7.7 million on staff and student travel in fiscal year 2024, compared with $3.6 million in 2019. The watchdog’s report said many trips were likely worthwhile and enriching to employees and students, but some seemed of questionable value.

“Over and over, CPS employees booked trips using CPS funds without required pre-approvals, exceeded CPS spending limits on hotel rooms and airfare, and enjoyed out-of-town activities of dubious necessity or value to students — all as CPS drew closer and closer to a budget crisis,” the report said.

Over the summer, the district laid off hundreds of custodians, crossing guards, cafeteria workers, and others and made other budget cuts to close a $734 million deficit in its $10.2 billion budget. It faces more massive shortfalls in the coming years.

In response to the inspector general’s findings, the district imposed a freeze on nearly all staff travel unrelated to student activities this fall and formed a committee this month to come up with better travel approval procedures and controls. A new financial system the district is currently rolling out will better flag travel expenses that exceed district limits or mismatches between preapproved and actual spending, the district said in a statement.

Interim district CEO Macquline King and treasurer Walter Stock announced the travel freeze in a letter to staff in late October.

“This measure reflects our continued commitment to responsible financial stewardship and to prioritizing resources that directly support classrooms and students,” they wrote.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Philip Wagenknecht, the inspector general for CPS, noted that almost 200 of the district’s roughly 500 schools had no overnight travel spending. But otherwise, his office found questionable travel expenses across the city, driven in part by the greater budget flexibility that came with federal pandemic recovery dollars.

“This is a case of systemic issues in CPS,” he said. “These abuses were widespread.”

The watchdog started investigating after receiving a complaint that one elementary school had paid more than $20,000 to a travel agency for an upcoming staff trip to Egypt without district approval, in addition to other “lavish” outings. CPS canceled that and three other trips planned by the agency. The inspector general does not generally name employees, schools, or vendors in its reports.

Ultimately, the watchdog found that eight schools had spent more than $142,000 for 15 staff trips overseas, billed as school visits and professional development but packed with unscheduled time and optional activities. Thirteen had never been preapproved as required. District officials had explicitly rejected one trip, but staff went anyway.

The inspector general’s office also got a second complaint that a CPS principal traveled to multiple conferences in Las Vegas without district approval, at one point booking a $400 a night suite for him and his wife two nights before the event began.

The watchdog later found that 600 school and district employees had traveled to professional development events by the Vegas conference organizer at a cost of more than $1.5 million between 2022 and 2024. Almost 90% of these attendees exceeded the district’s hotel room spending limit, and at least two dozen took flights from Chicago to Las Vegas costing more than $1,000.

Among other examples of questionable travel, one teacher spent $4,700 for a seven-day stay at a luxury Hawaiian resort to attend a four-day professional development seminar. The inspector general also flagged some student trips, including a 2023 college tour for 80 students preapproved at $15,000 but actually costing $72,000. One trip to South Africa for 20 students cost more than $5,200 per person.

In some cases, travel agencies charged the district up to 20% of travel costs in hidden fees.

Among the watchdog’s recommendations was to convert a vacant CPS building or a portion of an underutilized school into a professional development center for both district employees and staff from other districts seeking training.

“CPS can use its bargaining power to bring more professional development to Chicago,” Wagenknecht said.

The report said the district is looking at disciplining two employees.

The inspector general found that the travel agency that organized the overseas staff development trips violated the district’s code of ethics by offering a CPS staffer free airfare and lodging to lead a future tour while it sought business with the staffer’s school. The agency, which did not have a contract with the district, isn’t working with CPS now. But the watchdog recommended that the agency’s staff undergo training and sign a contract if it were to work with the district in the future.

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

Former NYC schools chief a finalist for Chicago schools CEO

2025-11-07T21:26:42+00:00

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A former New York City schools chief is one of the two finalists for the job of Chicago Public Schools’ next CEO, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the situation.

Meisha Ross Porter, who led New York City Public Schools in 2021, will interview with Chicago Board of Education members, a community panel, and the mayor next week.

Chicago’s selection will mark the first time its new 21-member school board chooses a new leader for the nation’s fourth largest school district. Earlier this week, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported that the current interim CEO Macquline King was no longer in the running for the top job. Chalkbeat could not confirm the identity of the other finalist. Late Friday, the outlet also reported Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero was a finalist. Marrero told Chalkbeat in a statement Friday that “my dedication remains firmly with Denver Public Schools where I am proud to continue serving as superintendent.”

Porter spent more than two decades working in New York City’s public schools, rising up the ranks as a teacher, principal, and high-level administrator. She ultimately became the first Black woman to lead the nation’s largest school system in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic after her predecessor abruptly stepped down.

She only spent 10 months at the helm of New York City’s public schools, appointed in March 2021 and replaced when Mayor Bill de Blasio left office at the end of the year.

In her short tenure, Porter oversaw two sweeping but late-breaking policy pushes under de Blasio that were subsequently scrapped by Mayor Eric Adams: a plan to eliminate separate gifted and talented classes and a $200 million proposed universal curriculum.

Porter is widely respected by many education leaders in New York and has also been floated as a possible schools chief for incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani has said he is also considering current Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos for the role.

Porter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden nor the school board’s chief of staff returned requests for comment.

After leaving her post as New York City’s schools chief, Porter became the president and CEO of the Bronx Community Foundation. The foundation was set up to help finance other local nonprofits, but was in turmoil during her time there. It failed to distribute most of the money it raised from 2019 to 2023 and spent more on consultants and overhead than charitable giving, according to an investigation by the news organization New York Focus. In 2024, the organization’s board of directors fired Porter.

More recently, Porter has served as a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Educational Innovation, an organization that works with school leaders and families, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The Chicago Board of Education is scheduled to meet Monday for a special meeting during which they plan to interview the two finalists in person, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported this week. The board plans to reconvene later in the week to make a final pick and the full 21-member board could then vote on a final contract with the new leader at a meeting scheduled for Dec. 3.

Chicago began its process to find a new leader in March, hiring the search firm Alma Advisory Group, an executive search firm known for its work helping school boards hire superintendents.

The previous CPS CEO Pedro Martinez was fired without cause in late December 2024, but remained at the helm of the district until late June. Martinez, who made about $360,000 annually as head of CPS, clashed with Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, over how to handle the district’s finances. The tensions at one point led to Johnson’s entire seven-member appointed board resigning en masse.

For the past 30 years under mayoral control, CPS’s leader has been chosen by the city’s mayor.

Earlier this year, a key lawmaker who helped pave the way for an elected school board raised the possibility that the mayor should still get the final say on who runs CPS. Legal experts and local officials disagree on whether that is still the case and the language in state law is murky.

Nevertheless, Johnson is expected to interview both finalists next week, according to a source close to the search process. He also maintains significant influence over the school board given that 11 of 21 members are his appointees.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates criticized the secrecy surrounding the finalists and the “hand-picked panel” of community members being asked for input, calling it “a fundamental failure of the democratic values this new process was meant to uphold.”

“Black and Brown students and their families will bear the brunt of this decision,” Davis Gates said. “Their voices must be at the center of this process, not excluded from it.”

But in a letter sent to the school board president late Friday night, Davis Gates said “the authority to appoint the CPS CEO resides with the Mayor of the City of Chicago” and argued that the board’s “apparent belief that it is empowered” to pick the district’s next leader is against state law.

Dwayne Truss, a member of the West Side branch of the NAACP, said the group is upset that interim CEO King has been eliminated as a finalist.

Truss, a former member of the Board of Education, said the current board should be prioritizing a local candidate. He pointed to former “outsider” CEOs, including Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was convicted of receiving bribes during her time at Chicago Public Schools, as failing to be successful.

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

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board approves controversial $175 million pension payment to the city

2025-10-31T00:29:08+00:00

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The Chicago school board voted Thursday to make a pension reimbursement to the city after 18 months of controversy and leadership turmoil stemming from the payment. But there is one catch.

The board voted unanimously to authorize the $175 million payment to the city to support a municipal pension fund that covers city workers and some non-teaching district staff — but only if the entire $552.4 million tax surplus boost for Chicago Public Schools that Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed comes through.

Chicago’s City Council must approve that record level of funding from special economic development taxing districts, known as TIFs, as part of the 2026 budget the council must pass by the end of the calendar year. The proposed surplus would provide CPS with almost exactly the $379 million in TIF funding the district’s 2025-26 budget passed in August assumed — plus an amount equal to the pension payment.

The vote on the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund marks the end — for now — of an intensely divisive chapter for the district that ultimately contributed to the departure of the previous CPS superintendent. Some hope it will build trust between the district and the mayor. Yet others worry about the timing, due to fiscal uncertainty and budget cuts. And the one-year agreement doesn’t resolve pension responsibilities in the longer term.

Some City Council members have said they think the surplus tax amount in Johnson’s proposal is too large. Before Thursday’s special board meeting, some board members said they would prefer to wait until the district actually receives the TIF money before approving the reimbursement.

The CPS budget approved in August said the district would only make the pension reimbursement payment if additional revenue from the city or the state came through.

But district officials assured the board Thursday that the agreement protects the district in the event that it does not get the full TIF amount proposed by Johnson. And some board members argued that approving the agreement now would send an important message of good faith to the mayor’s office and aldermen.

“This is something that as a board we voted on, and it’s important to keep our word,” elected board member Yesenia Lopez said.

Still, a couple of board members said that despite voting for the payment, they are concerned it would siphon away funds that could instead reverse cuts to district custodians, crossing guards, and other positions the district made this summer.

“It absolutely takes dollars away from the classroom and our school communities who need support now more than ever,” said elected board member Ellen Rosenfeld.

Rosenfeld and other board members also called for a longer-term plan to spell out responsibility for the pension payments and disentangle city and district finances.

The city is required by law to make annual payments to the municipal fund. But faced with ballooning payments in 2020, former Mayor Lori Lightfoot shifted a portion of it to CPS. That move angered the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s former employer and close ally. The union lambasted Lightfoot, accusing her of balancing the city’s budget on the backs of students.

With backing from an almost entirely Johnson-appointed school board, former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez refused to pay the reimbursement, citing looming budget deficits. The clash over the payment led to the resignation of the entire school board and to Martinez’s firing by a new board handpicked by Johnson.

But current board members aligned with the teachers union and mayor have argued that chipping in for the pension fund is part of being a reliable partner to the city.

The district has seen some added financial pressures this fall, including federal grant funding the Trump administration has withheld over the district’s Black Student Success Plan and transgender student policies.

Under the new pension payment agreement the board approved Thursday, the district can subtract the $8 million in federal magnet grant funding it stands to lose from the pension reimbursement if it cannot recoup that grant loss in another way. However, as Lopez noted, the agreement doesn’t account for other funding the Trump administration might cut or withhold.

CPS funding has been top of mind for board members this week. Some members joined the CTU on a trip to Springfield Wednesday to lobby for more funding for CPS. Some members also held a Thursday morning press conference to press Chicago City Council members to back Johnson’s TIF proposal.

“We’re trying to be good partners across the board,” said appointed board member Michilla Blaise during the meeting. “We’re trying to make friends. We’re trying to bring home the bacon for CPS.”

In other business, the board voted to table until its next meeting Tuesday a resolution to approve spending $1.4 million to ensure that the financially troubled EPIC Academy, a charter high school on the South Side, can finish out the school year. The school is then slated to close next summer.

The decision to postpone the vote came after elected board member Jitu Brown proposed an amendment to that resolution calling on the district to craft a transition plan with input from the EPIC school community that tries to keep students and staff together at a high-performing school or schools.

District officials noted that the amendment could conflict with the district’s principals contract, which gives school leaders authority over hiring on their campuses. Some board members raised concerns about the last-minute introduction of the amendment, which ultimately failed a board vote.

Brown explained that he had conceived the amendment the previous evening while speaking with the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents EPIC educators, and the advocacy group Advancement Project on the way back from Springfield.

During public comment earlier in the meeting, Andrew Escalante, a social studies teacher at EPIC, asked the board for more engagement with the school community and a plan that keeps students and staff together as much as possible.

“We are people and as people, we deserve honesty, stability and a voice in what happens to us,” he said.

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

Chicago schools considering $60 million, four-year contract to track technology

2025-10-20T11:00:00+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools wants to pay one of its biggest tech device suppliers up to $60 million over four years to automatically track the district’s tablets, laptops, and other technology.

The school board is expected to vote later this month on a contract for CDW, the Vernon Hills, Illinois-based technology behemoth that also sells the district tech equipment, for a system and services to help monitor and inventory devices issued to students and district staff.

The move comes after late 2022 reporting by Chalkbeat and WBEZ and an early 2024 report by the district’s inspector general that showed school and district officials were losing track of thousands of computers and other devices after a pandemic-era technology spending spree. That report highlighted what the watchdog deemed unacceptable numbers of lost devices and lack of accountability in safeguarding them.

In January 2024, days after that report came out, the district announced a slew of policy and other changes it said would address the findings, including training school staff and holding them more accountable.

Since then, there have been fewer missing devices as the district started electronically locating more of them, including some detected in countries around the world. More recently, the watchdog recommended that the district either resolve issues with its previous vendor in charge of tracking technology — or find a new one.

Earlier this month, Paul Valente, CPS’ facilities automation architect, told school board members the new contract with CDW would use radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already on devices and other technology to automatically track them. As a former school technology coordinator, he said, he would spend weeks scouring the building for misplaced devices to do an annual inventory.

“I would have really loved to have had this service because it would have automatically counted the devices for me,” he said.

Bart Epstein, an education technology expert and former CEO of the nonprofit EdTech Evidence Exchange, said the radio frequency identification system could be a worthwhile investment. But given the substantial price tag and the district’s previous missteps with tracking devices, the contract raises questions about how ready the district is to make the most of the investment.

“Chicago has a history of purchasing asset management technology and not using it properly,” he said. “An RFID system automates the counting of devices, but it does not eliminate the humans. Even a great technology that’s poorly implemented is useless.”

The district would still need to train staff on using the system properly and hold them accountable for doing so. CPS has roughly 150 technology coordinators, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s most recent staffing data.

That’s slightly fewer than 2020, just before the district went on a $308 million technology spending spree buying devices amid the COVID pandemic. Chalkbeat and WBEZ’s 2022 investigation unearthed a pattern of poor tracking of those devices, with many going unused or getting lost. A later investigation by the district’s inspector general found the district marked 77,000 devices as lost or stolen in 2021 and 2022.

In a statement last week, CPS officials told Chalkbeat that multiple initiatives are underway to better track the district’s more than 636,000 technology devices and cut down on losses. These efforts helped reduce annual loss to 7%, down from 11% cited in the most recent OIG report. The new CDW contract would be “a key component of this continued progress,” the district said. The system would let the district track devices that leave school buildings without permission in real time, recover them faster, and make taking annual inventories easier, the district said.

“It should be noted that this work goes beyond the recommendations outlined in the OIG report,” the district said.

At the meeting earlier this month, school board members did not question the contract’s $15 million a year price tag, despite CPS’s ongoing financial challenges. Ed Bannon, an appointed board member from the north west side, asked why the district passed on a lower bid for the job.

Valente initially said CDW put in the lowest bid. Officials acknowledged there was a lower-cost proposal. In response to a question from Chalkbeat, the district said four vendors had submitted proposals, but those would only become public once a contract has been signed.

The district’s facilities department was also looking into adopting the tracking technology offered by CDW to safeguard some of its equipment, Valente said.

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

No more networks? Chicago Public Schools considers reorganizing middle management

2025-09-23T21:46:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools leadership may restructure middle management and is considering aligning it to school board electoral districts, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the plan.

District leaders say the change could be a way to make the administration more responsive to school needs and to save money, but some principals are concerned about an organizational overhaul in the middle of the school year.

During a routine call with principals on Friday, CPS leadership said it planned to reorganize the current network system of middle management into districts, but didn’t offer additional details, according to two principals who spoke to Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity in order to avoid reprisal.

The networks organize schools based on geographic location and each has a network chief who principals answer to. Among their responsibilities, network chiefs evaluate principals, provide instructional expertise if needed, and may step in when principals need help during the year, such as for additional staff or issues with their building.

According to two school board members who spoke directly to interim CPS CEO Macquline King, the potential restructure would involve reorganizing the district’s 13 existing networks for elementary and middle schools into 10 that would align with the Chicago Board of Education’s electoral districts. The four high school networks would be kept the same. The plan would also require current network chiefs and their deputies to reapply for their jobs.

On Monday, district spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said CPS has been considering changes at central office to “strengthen teaching and learning for all students,” and that no final decisions have been made about the district’s network offices. She did not outline specific plans that CPS is considering.

“All plans remain subject to change as CPS leadership continues to thoughtfully review options and considerations moving forward,” Barragan said.

The number of students under each network varies. For example, Network 14, which covers part of the North Side, oversees two dozen schools with a total 27,000 students. But Network 5 on the West Side has 28 schools with just under 8,000 students.

Switching to the 10 districts mirroring school board electoral districts could also mean uneven distribution. For example, District 5 on the West Side has more than 100 schools, many of them charters. But just over 30 schools exist in District 4 on the North Side.

A senior CPS official told Chalkbeat that the goal of the reorganization is to make the district’s administration more nimble and responsive to school needs. It would also reduce spending on administrative positions, delivering a portion of $50 million in savings the district’s 2025-26 budget assumes it will make this year and allowing it to steer more dollars directly to schools in the longer run. The official said it is too soon to say how much the district would save thanks to the overhaul or how many administrative positions might be affected.

However, the two school board members who spoke with King said the cost savings were estimated to be roughly $2 million.

The district recently passed a $10.2 billion budget that included a slew of cuts to close a $734 million deficit, but district leaders said the plan avoided midyear cuts to classrooms. Still, CPS faces potential funding threats, including a recent threat from the Trump administration to withhold federal funding.

It’s not uncommon for new leadership to restructure the district’s central office. Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his handpicked CEO Forrest Claypool laid off hundreds of central office staffers and did an organizational restructure. Before that, former CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard also oversaw a revamp of district’s management structure that was meant to provide oversight and additional support for schools.

In addition to the 17 networks that exist for most CPS schools, there are also separate networks for options — or alternative — schools, charter schools, and schools run by principals who have been granted more autonomy than their peers.

One elementary school principal said a midyear change feels “very unfair” to school leaders. Her network chief has already evaluated her once this year, and she’s concerned about losing a supervisor with whom she’s built a positive relationship and knows her school well.

But another longtime district principal said less middle management would free up more dollars to spend directly on schools.

“Reorganizing is always an opportunity to build a better structure,” the principal said.

One of the principals who spoke to Chalkbeat said it could make sense to reorganize schools in a way that corresponds with school board electoral districts given the new structure of the board.

But two school board members who spoke to King said they’re concerned such a change could send the message that school board members have a managerial role with schools when they shouldn’t.

“I don’t want me to go visit a school, and the principal thinks this is going to affect their evaluation or they have to put a show on for me,” said board member Carlos Rivas.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools’ debt has hit over $28,000 per student. Here’s what that means.

2025-08-26T21:34:53+00:00

Data analysis by Cherry Salazar.

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Chicago Public Schools’ outstanding debt is roughly the same size as its annual budget: almost $10 billion. The district owes more per student than it spends per pupil in many of its schools.

Its massive obligations appear even more sobering compared with other cities.

Among the 25 largest school districts by student enrollment, CPS has the third-most outstanding debt, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data for fiscal year 2023, the most recent available. That data shows CPS owes more than $28,000 per student, up from roughly $17,000 in 2013.

The debt burden for CPS has risen in recent years as it has fallen in some other large districts. It is also one of only three districts among the 25 largest where the debt has consistently exceeded annual revenue — a sign of financial instability, experts say.

City and school district leaders are fighting over whether CPS should borrow more to cover costs. The Chicago Board of Education is slated to vote on a spending plan later this week that limits new high-cost borrowing. But pressure is mounting from Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies on the school board, who make up a majority, to leave open the option of taking out a short-term, high-interest loan to help cover a pension payment to the city and other costs.

Not all school district debt is created equal, experts stress: For districts with a growing enrollment and tax base, taking on debt to expand or modernize facilities makes sense. Many have voter-approved bonds that ensure a steady influx of dollars to pay off that debt.

But in Chicago’s case, CPS is spending hundreds of millions in state aid meant to educate students on paying off debt instead. At the same time, enrollment is falling, and its aging buildings are expected to cost billions to maintain in the coming years — projects that could lead to even more debt.

“It’s one thing to be highly leveraged when you are a growing district,” said Justin Marlowe, who leads the Center for Municipal Finance at the University of Chicago. “Sometimes, borrowing in that case is exactly the right thing to do. It’s a different story when your enrollment is flat or declining.”

Credit rating agencies are watching closely. Among the nation’s 25 largest school districts, CPS is the only one that has a junk bond rating from Moody’s. That means when it does borrow, the cost to pay back lenders is higher than it can be for other borrowers.

The district will spend roughly $1 billion to make debt payments this school year, or $264 million more than last year, according to the CPS budget proposal. CPS will use about $395 million in state revenue meant for teacher and staff salaries, textbooks, and more to pay off debt.

The mayor’s allies on the school board say borrowing is necessary to chip in for a municipal fund that covers CPS support staff pensions, maintain a cordial relationship with the city, and avoid budget cuts. But other board members and district leaders have countered that the payment will be too costly and place the district on shakier financial ground — a contention that several experts second.

Census data analyzed by Chalkbeat does not include CPS’s unfunded pension liabilities for its teacher pension fund. This year, those liabilities grew to $13.9 billion, and the CPS budget includes a more than $1 billion payment, about a third of it covered by the state.

Overall, experts say the district should continue work to improve its credit ratings, find additional revenues, and confront the massive needs of its aging buildings.

“There’s not an easy, fast ticket out,” said Daniel Vesecky of the Chicago-based think tank Civic Federation.

How did CPS end up in so much debt?

The district’s debt burden has swelled over the past two decades.

CPS has taken out bonds repeatedly to fix up aging buildings, including some it went on to close in past years and some operating at a fraction of their ideal capacity today.

In the years before the 2008 financial crash, district officials also engaged in risky borrowing in an effort to lower interest rates on existing debt that backfired when the economy collapsed, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

And in the mid-2010s, at a time of intense financial strain before the state overhauled how it funded public education, Chicago’s school board did what officials today call “crisis borrowing” — much of it to pay for servicing its existing debt.

Experts said debt per student is generally a more accurate reflection of debt burden. But CPS officials cite a different metric of $2,970 in debt per Chicago resident. It has also steadily risen, but officials say it remains only slightly above the national average.

An influx in additional state revenue and federal COVID relief helped Chicago reduce its debt-to-revenue ratio from more than 150% in the mid-2010s to about 100% now. But anything more than 40% is a serious cause for concern, said Oliver Giesecke, a municipal finance expert at Stanford University.

Census data shows that the total amount of debt districts across the country has risen steadily and is more than double what it was two decades earlier. Still, Giesecke said the national housing boom and the growth in the property tax base helped stabilize many school districts’ and cities’ budgets since the Great Recession — but not in Chicago.

“Chicago’s housing market and overall economy has generally underperformed in those years compared to the national market,” he said.

Marguerite Roza of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University notes two districts that owe similar amounts can be on very different fiscal footing. CPS is dealing with enrollment declines and does not have a dedicated source of revenue to cover all of its debt service expenses. That’s different from growing districts where voters backed a large bond, she said: “These districts may be financially healthy — and that’s how you build a high school.”

Marlowe at the University of Chicago said another drawback is the relatively long amount of time Chicago is taking to pay off debt compared to other districts, in the name of getting fiscal breathing room now and spreading out the impact onto future budgets.

“The tradeoff is you pay a lot more in interest and fees and other costs unrelated to the district’s mission to educate students,” he said.

Good and bad debt in the CPS budget

This summer, Chicago school district officials put forward plans to issue $600 million in new debt for capital expenses. They also spelled out plans to refinance debt from that “crisis borrowing” a decade ago in order to realize about $129 million in savings. It would have saved significantly more if it had a better credit rating.

“We’re always fighting to get our credit ratings up,” said Wally Stock, CPS treasurer and deputy chief financial officer. “We’re still in the penalty box.”

Stock said the district has become more intentional in prioritizing critical building repairs and other projects to slow down the pace of borrowing. He noted the district has also seen some credit upgrades in recent years.

District officials say nearly $200 million of this year’s $1 billion debt service expenditures will go specifically to cover costs incurred during crisis borrowing in the mid-2010s. That could pay for at least 2,000 additional teachers instead.

Some think the state should play a larger role in covering the cost of maintaining and updating school buildings. Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, pointed out that while Illinois only covered a small portion of districts’ capital expenses. That’s left districts like CPS essentially to fend for themselves, and also fueled inequities between wealthier and poorer districts, she said.

Illinois “has been just delinquent on the capital side,” Filardo said.

Marlowe said closing and consolidating buildings, many of which are aging and were built to serve way more students than they do, would rein in additional debt — even though politically “that’s very challenging to do.”

Filardo opposes that approach, saying that closures tend to affect communities that are already disadvantaged. But in Chicago and elsewhere, district leaders are often reluctant to talk about this issue and engage communities in a search for solutions, she said.

“You have to admit you don’t know what to do and are willing to listen,” Filardo said.

Vesecky of the Civic Federation said the district should focus on making sound fiscal decisions in order to improve its credit rating and on building up its reserves. That would limit the need for short-term borrowing that the district is doing again this summer to meet payroll while awaiting delayed property tax revenue, costing more than $23 million. And it would drive down interest and other debt service costs and free up dollars to serve students.

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

Chicago Public Schools students head back to class amid budget uncertainty

2025-08-18T18:48:54+00:00

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Armed with a school bell and flanked by CPS and union leaders, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and interim Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King opened the first day of the 2025-26 academic year with a pair of visits to schools on the North and West sides.

Johnson and King visited Courtenay Language Arts Center, where King served as principal from 2013 to 2022. They later made an appearance at Austin College and Career Academy, a high school on the West Side that has newly joined the Sustainable Community Schools program, a CPS and Chicago Teachers Union initiative that provides wraparound services to students and families, which the mayor has promised to expand.

At Courtenay, the mayor and King rang a large bell as kids and families cheered. At Austin, a teacher served as the morning DJ off to the side of the building, playing hits like Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” and Robin S.’s “Show Me Love” as students greeted each other and staff.

Students started school on a schedule similar to years before last year’s Democratic National Convention, when the start date was shifted to accommodate for the large-scale event. Monday was the first day for K-12 students, while pre-K students return to class Tuesday.

King was picked in June to take over the helm of the nation’s fourth largest school district six months after the school board voted to fire Pedro Martinez, who clashed with Johnson over how to balance the district’s budget.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and interim CPS CEO Dr. Macquline King smile for a photo during the first day back to school for CPS students at Mary E. Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown, where King served as principal from 2013 to 2022 when she left to work in the mayor’s office.

King and Johnson posed for pictures together, striking a more congenial tone than the mayor and King’s predecessor did during their appearance together last year on the first day of school. The two worked together in City Hall, where King was senior director of educational policy in the mayor’s office before becoming interim CEO.

King made brief remarks at Courtenay before introducing Johnson as “the mayor of education who has made so much possible,” and Johnson complimented King on her work as interim CEO before making his own remarks. Neither King nor Johnson took questions from reporters at either stop.

The two may also be at odds, however, over how to close the district’s $734 million deficit. Last week, King put forward a budget plan that does not include a reimbursement to the city to pay a portion of a pension payment that partially covers school district employees. The proposal says CPS would only contribute if it finds additional revenue. The 21-member school board is also divided over the proposal, with Johnson’s allies urging King to include the city pension reimbursement. Johnson said last week that he expects CPS to make that payment.

Johnson, who said he dropped his own kids off to school Monday morning, did not address the district’s budget situation, but rather highlighted fears that the federal government could cut funding for public education.

A former CTU organizer and an ally of the union, Johnson also highlighted several elements of the new CTU contract finalized this spring, including more staffers, smaller class sizes, and commitments to teaching Black history.

“Our workers, whether you are a [Special Education Classroom Assistant] or a social worker, they’re all here to support our families, particularly at a time at which there’s a great deal of consternation at the federal level, where dollars are being starved away from our city,” Johnson said outside Courtenay. “But we are going to work tirelessly to ensure that every single child has a high quality education.”

CPS starts year with budget uncertainty but fewer staff vacancies

CPS is starting the school year for the first time in recent memory without a budget. In 2016, facing a similarly difficult financial outlook, Chicago’s school board approved a budget in late August, but that year, the school year started after Labor Day.

The school board must legally adopt a spending plan by Aug. 29 and is expected to vote on a plan Aug. 28.

Kids walk to school during the first day of classes for Chicago Public Schools students at Mary E. Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown on Aug. 18, 2025.

Students and families may notice some changes in classrooms this year related to both budget cuts and the new Chicago Teachers Union contract. These include smaller class sizes in the early grades, additional teaching assistants, fewer hot meals, fewer custodians, and adjusted bell times at about two dozen campuses.

Custodians represented by Service Employees International Union held a rally outside of Jones College Prep on Monday to protest CPS cutting 480 full-time custodial positions.

District officials, however, also said CPS started the year with some of the lowest staffing vacancies “in recent history.” As of Sunday night, CPS had just under a 2.5% vacancy rate for teaching staff compared to 4.4% at the start of last school year, and a 3% vacancy rate for support staff, compared to nearly 7% this time last year, officials said.

For the first time in at least three years, the district has largely the same number of teaching positions as the year before — 22,671. And it has 13,267 support staff positions, down by 567 positions at the start of last school year, according to CPS data as of Friday. Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer, said not adding more positions helped the district shrink vacancies, but he heavily credited the district’s Teach Chicago effort, which has multiple programs meant to recruit and keep people in CPS, including at hard-to-staff schools.

“We know in CPS, as is true in any big school district in America, that when you have teacher vacancies they disproportionately impact students that are furthest from opportunity, whether that’s kids in some of the highest need communities or kids who require teachers in higher need subject areas, like bilingual education and special education,” Felton said.

Students and teachers share hopes and concerns about the next year

About an hour after their visit to Courtenay, Johnson and King moved on to Austin College and Career Academy High school on the West Side.

The mayor made brief remarks before joining King and other officials, who stood near the entrance and welcomed students as they walked into the building.

School staff and Chicago education leadership welcome students as they walk into Austin College and Career Academy for the first day of school on Monday, August 18, 2025.

Debra Woods, a special education teacher at Austin high school and a CTU delegate, watched as district, union, and city officials greeted students. Woods said she hopes that joining the Sustainable Community Schools program means the high school will be able to provide extra programming for kids. She also hopes the initiative will result in more parent and community involvement at Austin High.

“We haven’t had a lot of success with that so hopefully this will help,” Woods said.

But Woods’ optimism is paired with nervousness about her school’s future, given the district’s financial troubles. Woods said she was a teacher in 2013 when her former school, May Elementary, was closed with 49 others that year and merged with Leland Elementary. She left education for one year following the mass closures before a colleague persuaded her to come back to the field.

Austin College and Career Academy on Mon., Aug. 18, 2025 on the first day of school in Chicago, Illinois.

Austin high school, she noted, has the capacity for hundreds of students but enrolls fewer than 200 kids. The school has seen dwindling enrollment for the past two decades and enrolled just 140 students last year.

The district’s proposed budget includes no plans for closures and no beginning or midyear cuts to schools. But officials have projected deficits for future school years.

“There is this fear of what’s going to happen to our school? Will it be closed? Will it be combined with other schools?” she wondered out loud.

Nevertheless, Woods said “We are the ones who create productive citizens in our communities. The fact that we struggle so much to have the resources that we need and there is still a deficit, it’s so hard to figure out where that funding will come from, it’s disappointing.”

Stanley Scales, 15, felt nervous as he waited to enter the school for the first time. The sophomore used to attend Providence St. Mel, a private school in Garfield Park. But his mother, Tanya Saracco, who was with Stanley, said she isn’t working as she undergoes treatment for breast cancer and can no longer afford tuition at the private school, so they decided to enroll at Austin, which is his neighborhood high school.

As a fan of flag football, Stanley said he hopes to try out for school sports. He also has a simple goal this year: “To pass.”

Sarocco described Stanley as a “good kid” who’s smart, so she doesn’t have many concerns, besides bullying.

Staff at Austin College and Career Academy welcome a student for the first day of school in Chicago, IL on Monday, August 18, 2025.

Asked if she has any concerns about the lack of a budget, Saracco said, “As long as [Stanley does] what he has to do, and gets good grades, and doesn’t get in trouble, I’m not worried about it too much,” she said. “They’ll figure it out — they always do.”

Kaniyah Harris, 14, is starting her freshman year at Austin high school after graduating from nearby McNair Elementary School. She felt anxious about the first day but as she waited outside of the building with her parents, she grew calmer, she said.

“I’m gonna stay focused this year,” Kaniyah said. “I’m not trying to pressure myself, but I’m gonna stay focused, get good grades, and stay successful.”

She had advice for her peers who are also nervous: Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, stay positive, be respectful, and “pick your friends — don’t choose everybody.”

First-day jitters were also on display at Chalmers Elementary in North Lawndale. In the gym, some students clung to the parents dropping them off, and a staffer reassured a boy gripping his mother’s hand, “It will all be OK.” Overall, it was a more laidback vibe compared with last summer, when the West Side campus hosted Johnson and then-CEO Martinez, whose relationship had recently soured, for the first day of school.

The school — along with nearby Collins High School and Johnson Elementary — underwent extensive renovations over the summer as part of a community-led initiative to reinvent them as Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math schools. All three have grappled with declining enrollment over the past decade, and supporters hope the STEAM project will give them a boost in a neighborhood with few specialized programs.

Chalmers got a spacious new maker space, computer lab, and arts studio on the second floor — a makeover that workers scrambled to wrap up Sunday.

Many parents dropping off students Monday had not heard much about the initiative. They said the close-knit, supportive environment is what brings them to Chalmers.

One third grader, Aaliyah, and her grandmother, Angelica Smith, arrived more than a half hour before the 8:45 a.m. first bell. The girl, in the school’s elementary grades uniform of dark green polo and khakis, was ready to kick off the year, Smith said: “She wanted to get in and eat breakfast and see if she remembers any of her friends.”

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

Colin Boyle is the photo editor at Block Club Chicago.

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

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

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 Public Schools cuts 480 janitor positions as it ends all private custodial contracts

2025-08-04T21:37:39+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will cut 480 custodian jobs, end all private custodial contracts, and directly oversee the work of keeping schools clean.

The move, which comes as the district is working to close a $734 million deficit, sparked an immediate rebuke and demand for reconsideration from the two unions representing school custodians.

Starting Sept. 30, CPS will oversee 2,100 full-time custodians and end seven contracts with private custodial companies. The change will mean cutting about 1,250 private custodians and ending a longstanding practice of contracting with private companies to help clean schools.

CPS officials said the move is not only about cutting costs, but also part of the district’s goal to bring 25% of privatized positions back under direct district oversight, as outlined in the five-year strategic plan. Last year, CPS ended its agreement with Aramark, the Philadelphia-based company that oversaw management of all privately-employed and CPS custodians.

When Aramark took over management of custodians in 2014, the district also laid off 480 janitors and many schools complained of dirty conditions for many years. The cost of outsourcing went millions over budget. A decade later, unions and school principals cheered the end of the Aramark deal.

Now, some are also raising concerns about school cleanliness with these staffing reductions two weeks before the school year is set to begin on Aug. 18.

“You can’t eliminate 1,200 custodians just two weeks before school starts without any real plan for how these buildings will be cleaned and ready,” said Genie Kastrup, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1, the union representing privately-employed custodians. “Our kids deserve a safe and healthy learning environment on day one.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer said Monday he believes more CPS oversight will help ensure cleanliness at schools, even with fewer custodians. That includes improved staff training, better monitoring of cleaning supplies, and a mobile app that allows custodians to upload information about rooms they’ve cleaned, giving the district “visibility” on the work at schools, he said.

Custodians with the private companies have received a text message and email about the change and instructions on how to apply for 750 full-time custodial roles inside CPS. They’re being asked to fill out an interest form by Aug. 22 and apply.

In a letter sent to elected officials Friday, Mayfield wrote that the district’s budget challenges made it “necessary to consolidate custodial services to ensure greater efficiency and long-term sustainability.”

CPS said the custodial changes will save about $40 million, which is part of the $165 million in savings that district officials already announced earlier this summer through layoffs and cutting down on some school-based services, such as hot meals and health services.

The seven private custodial contracts now set to end were expected to cost a total $222 million over the next two school years, according to a summary of the contracts that the Board of Education approved last February. CPS has the right to terminate those contracts with at least 30 days notice, according to district records.

Mayfield also wrote that the district is “mindful” that many of the private custodians losing their jobs have served CPS “loyally for years.”

“While CPS is proactively inviting all privately-employed custodians working within CPS schools to seek employment directly with CPS, unfortunately, due to budget constraints, not all positions will be retained,” he wrote.

The district says the changes will also “streamline” custodial operations and improve oversight and quality.

One South Side principal said she supports the shift to having CPS directly oversee custodians, but she’s concerned about the transition. However, she said it may be difficult for schools to manage with fewer positions and worries about schedule changes.

SEIU sharply denounced the change, raising concerns about job losses and the district’s ability to keep schools clean. The union demanded the district rethink the number of positions it is cutting, provide custodians with the most years of seniority the right of first refusal for new in-house jobs, and ensure that any worker who takes an in-house custodian role represented by SEIU’s Local 73 — which represents CPS-managed custodial workers — can keep the current rate of pay and minimum benefits.

CPS officials did not directly comment on those demands.

In SEIU’s press release, Maria Avila, Local 1 vice president, said she’s worked in CPS schools for more than 15 years, but the change feels like CPS is “throwing us away like we don’t matter.”

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

Chicago Public Schools official tells families budget cuts will mean changes on their campuses

2025-07-25T22:07:49+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools students may see fewer hot school meals, delays in updating technology, fewer crossing guards, and other changes at their campuses this coming school year as the district tightens its budget.

That heads-up came in a note to families from the district’s Chief Operations Officer Charles Mayfield on Friday afternoon, a time when CPS has repeatedly sent updates about cost-cutting in recent weeks.

In the note, sent roughly three weeks before the Aug. 18 start of the school year, Mayfield wrote that students and educators will feel some day-to-day changes related to the district’s efforts to close a $734 million budget deficit.

“While these adjustments will impact how some services are delivered, our priority is to ensure that every CPS student continues to receive a high-quality education in a safe, clean, and supportive environment,” Mayfield wrote.

It was not immediately clear whether the changes Mayfield detailed reflect layoffs and other budget cuts reported earlier in July, or if some represent additional cuts. CPS spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions. The district is getting ready to unveil its overall 2025-26 budget in August amid deep uncertainty about how it will address its budget gap.

Changes to custodial and engineering staff will mean adjusted cleaning schedules and likely delays in non-emergency repairs and other school maintenance, Mayfield wrote.

Fewer kitchen workers will result in simplified menus and more cold meals, even as the district continues to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all its students. After-school programs that currently serve hot meals will start providing packaged snacks.

A Chalkbeat analysis comparing staffing levels in the proposed 2025-26 school budgets to those in last year’s budgets showed the new budgets include 238 fewer lunchroom workers and 220 fewer non-teaching discretionary staff.

The district will also curtail its crossing guard and Safe Passage programs, though Mayfield stressed that no school will lose either program entirely. The city of Chicago used to cover the cost of the district’s crossing guard program, but shifted what was then a $14 million program to CPS amid the pandemic. Some of the recent cuts impacted routes serving private schools.

The email indicated that reduced funding will impact schools’ ability to offer health services, like physical exams and vaccinations. Mayfield said the district would work with families to help them access these services elsewhere. And the Healthy CPS Hotline at 773-553-KIDS (5437) would continue to provide health information and help families apply for public benefits, albeit with a reduced staff.

Mayfield also referenced changes to bell times at 22 district schools to help with providing transportation to more students, a shift the district first announced during Thursday’s school board meeting.

“We recognize that these changes may create challenges for students and families, and we will work hand-in-hand with our school communities to make the adjustments as smooth as possible,” Mayfield wrote.

He said families will hear directly from their schools with more details on how the changes impact each campus in the coming days.

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

To accommodate bus routes, 22 Chicago school bell times will change this fall

2025-07-24T23:42:37+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will tweak arrival and dismissal times at 22 schools this fall in order to address ongoing challenges with providing students with busing.

Arrival and dismissal times will be pushed back by 15-30 minutes at nearly all of the schools and families and staff at each school were notified of the changes last week, said CPS spokesperson Evan Moore.

District officials did not provide exact bell schedules for each school.

The time changes are due to a bus driver shortage, according to district officials. They’ve cited a driver shortage in recent years as a factor in why CPS hasn’t been able to provide transportation to general education students. Interim CPS CEO Macquline King said the changes are helping the district “address both our transportation crisis” and its financial challenges. The district is facing a $734 million deficit.

“Regardless of the systemwide benefits, I know this is disruptive” for parents, King said during a Board of Education meeting on Thursday.

The district had suspended transportation for general education students in 2023. That change also came after the state placed CPS on a corrective action plan for exceedingly long bus rides for thousands of students with disabilities. The district has since been taken off that plan.

As it has been in recent years, transportation will be prioritized for students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation if it is included in their Individualized Education Program, and those who are homeless and approved for yellow bus service. CPS officials say about 17,000 students, or 5% of all CPS students, are legally eligible for bus transportation.

King said the district will also again have hub stops this school year, where a group of selective enrollment and magnet schools serve as central pickup and drop off points for general education students. CPS provided busing to 700 general education students using hub stops last school year, and provided bus transportation to 15,790 students by the end of last school year, or 92% of kids who were eligible for transportation.

The district did not say how many students will be eligible to use the hub stops this upcoming school year or exactly when the program will start, except that it will be “later this year.” Families whose students participated last year have been notified that the program is continuing and will be contacted again when the district restarts it.

The hub stops will be for the same schools as last school year.

The district’s Office of Student Transportation had a roughly $140 million budget last school year, slightly lower than the previous year, according to budget records.

Correction: In the list of schools with changing bell times, we have corrected the name of Mosaic School of Fine Arts. CPS initially provided an incorrect name for the school.

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

Chicago Public Schools lays off more than 1,450 staff

2025-07-11T22:30:14+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools laid off more than 1,450 school-based staffers, including teachers, on Friday as it works to narrow a $734 million budget deficit.

The layoffs include 432 teachers, 311 paraprofessionals, such as teacher assistants, 677 special education classroom assistants, or SECAs, 33 security officers, and five parent workers.

Across district-run schools that are not alternative or specialty schools, 57% saw a reduction in positions, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school budgets that were released publicly Friday. The remaining 43% saw no change or an increase in the number of positions available compared to last school year.

However, 123 special education teachers and up to 300 SECAs will be eligible for retention pools, meaning they would be paid centrally over the next school year and can be deployed to schools with vacant jobs, according to Ben Felton, CPS chief talent officer. Staffers with unsatisfactory ratings are not eligible for the retention pools, Felton said.

The district typically adjusts staffing and announces layoffs in the summer before school starts. In the past, about 80% of those laid off got jobs at other schools, said CPS, adding in a news release that it is “working diligently to maintain or improve that rate again this year.”

School-based layoffs are happening later than usual this year amid delays in the district’s budgeting process. The new fiscal year began July 1, but CPS doesn’t expect to present a budget to its board for approval until next month.

Interim CPS CEO Macquline King also emailed teachers and principals on Friday promising that they would get retroactive raises for last school year in their checks by mid-August, according to copies of emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

Last school year, CPS laid off 1,410 staffers. CPS did not immediately say how many of these staffers were rehired.

Layoffs announced today may not be the end of staffing cuts and changes at schools.

CPS publicly pegged its budget deficit at about $229 million this spring under former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, hoping for about $300 million additional money from the city and state and not taking into account certain potential expenses. When King took office earlier this month, she said the gap is about $500 million larger, removing the assumption that additional money will come in and factoring in additional costs, including a much-debated $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

The larger deficit means additional cuts could still be on the horizon. Officials could also choose to borrow money — an option that has for months divided the school board and education advocates in Chicago. CPS officials are holding a series of public meetings next week across the city to collect public feedback on how the district should close its budget deficit.

Budget Director Mike Sitkowski said CPS is in a “tough situation” and the district has been open about its funding challenges. He said officials are “open-minded” about how to solve its deficit going forward “in a way that’s student-centered and that protects our schools.”

According to Chalkbeat’s analysis of the data released Friday, there will be 477 fewer positions across all district-run schools next year. CPS officials said they could not immediately verify that number. Sitkowski said position cuts at the individual school level are because of less need for those jobs at those specific schools.

At the same time, Sitkowski said, the district plans to give schools more positions after the academic year starts, based on need and “where students show up.”

“Anything that’s looking like a net reduction is going to be made up for in what we add back,” Sitkowski said.

District officials told Chalkbeat earlier this month that they’re changing how they staff schools with special education teachers and SECAs in order to address staffing imbalances at schools across the city. And they emphasized that those staffing changes have nothing to do with budget belt-tightening. Still, families and teachers expressed concern that the shifts could reduce the amount of support provided to students with disabilities.

The layoffs sparked frustration from the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents teachers and support staff. Earlier this week, CTU called for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to launch a special legislative session in order to find additional funding for education.

More than 740 people laid off are CTU members, and just over 700 belong to SEIU, CPS said.

In a letter to members on its website, CTU’s leadership team called the layoffs a “harmful and distressing annual ritual at CPS” but highlighted the retention pools they bargained for.

In a statement, SEIU said it hopes the city and the school board can work with state leaders “to mitigate these cuts so the workers do not bear the brunt.”

SEIU’s statement also said that CPS informed the union the SECA layoffs are because of a “philosophical position that too much support from SECAs will impact the independence of students post-graduation.” The union said district officials did not discuss this matter with the union or advocacy organizations before making this decision, which will “negatively impact students.”

The district’s funding formula has shifted in recent years, now providing schools with positions instead of dollars. Schools with higher needs — determined by a formula called the Opportunity Index — are generally provided more resources.

One principal on Chicago’s South Side said her budget, which is based on the smaller deficit figure, was down just one position compared to last year, and she’s trying to save it through “some savvy budgeting and maneuvering.”

She’s warned her staff that more cuts could be coming, and that the budget they’ve been working on since May is like using “monopoly money.” She’s advocating with her alderperson to provide CPS with more surplus money from a city pool of tax dollars to spur economic development, known as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF.

“I am concerned that the budget I worked with and put together is not a fully funded budget,” said the principal, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the press. “It’s fictitious in some ways at this point.”

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

Chicago Public Schools facing cash crunch as it works to close $734 million deficit

2025-07-09T22:59:22+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is struggling to pay some of its bills and is facing increasing pressure to avoid layoffs as it searches for ways to close a $734 million deficit.

The district’s budget challenges are the most severe in at least the past five years and have already resulted in dozens of layoffs of central office staff and crossing guards. Officials said previously that school-based layoffs would happen in July and teachers union leaders are demanding retroactive raises be sent out as soon as possible.

This year’s budget will be the first approved by the city’s new partially elected school board.

District leaders must find a way to close the deficit either by finding more revenue, making more cuts, or borrowing money. Their plan must be approved by the 21-member Board of Education, which met Wednesday to hold an hourslong closed session and review its agenda for its full board meeting later this month.

The new fiscal year is underway, but the district isn’t expected to finalize a budget until Aug. 28. By state law, Chicago’s school board can approve a budget as late as the end of August.

So far, CPS has closed just over one-fifth of the budget gap through various cuts, including through layoffs and reductions in some contractual costs, budget director Mike Sitkowski told the board on Wednesday. Big pressures on the budget include rising costs for students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to additional support, and the cost of maintaining aging buildings, he said.

By 2030, the district’s deficit could be $1.3 billion unless the district finds more permanent, long-term revenue, Sitkowski said.

CPS’s budget gap this year could grow after the Trump administration announced last week it would withhold and reevaluate some streams of federal funding, which amount to about $60 million for CPS, Sitkowski said.

Board members asked several questions, including whether they need to factor in a much-debated $175 million pension payment to the city, which is not required by state law, and whether there is wasteful spending that the district could curb to avoid cuts. Though the district’s budget challenges have been shared with the board for months, multiple board members said they’re feeling unprepared.

Interim CPS CEO Macquline King said the district will hold five meetings from July 14 to July 21 to collect public feedback on how CPS should close its budget gap.

In a statement to families earlier this week, King said CPS is “currently working with state and local partners to maximize opportunities for additional revenue, including Tax-Increment Financing (TIF) surplus funds.”

CTU pushes for state legislative session to address funding

During a rally Wednesday outside Board of Education headquarters, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter called on CPS to avoid staff layoffs. Potter pushed for more funding, including from new state taxes and a city pool of tax dollars known as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF.

A private district presentation to board members in April offered one scenario: With a deficit of $734 million, CPS could cut 10% of funding that goes directly to schools. That April presentation also suggested that in order to close a smaller $529 million deficit, CPS would need to eliminate 1,600 school-based positions.

The current deficit figure includes the pension reimbursement to the city. It also does not assume that CPS will get roughly $600 million in TIF surplus dollars — something Martinez pushed for before his departure.

Mayor Brandon Johnson provided CPS with a record-high of roughly $300 million in TIF surplus dollars last fiscal year, and some observers have described the push for more as wishful thinking.

Service Employees International Union 73, or SEIU, which represents school support staff, and CTU have also called on more TIF funding, but teachers union leaders have also supported borrowing money and finding new revenue to pay it off.

Some school board members view borrowing as a short-term avenue to avoid painful cuts at schools, while others worry about high-interest debt repayments that will take money away from classrooms.

At its rally Wednesday, the teachers union demanded that Gov. J.B. Pritzker call a special legislative session in order to allocate more state funding to education funding in light of potential federal funding cuts. Several states, including New Mexico and Colorado, are considering calling special sessions in response to President Donald Trump’s tax bill that imposes cuts to social safety net programs.

Chicago Teachers Union members rally, in part, to push Gov. J.B. Pritzker to find more funding for schools.

The state created a new funding formula in 2017 that provides more money to all districts across the state, but prioritizes additional dollars to those with higher needs. Illinois lawmakers set a goal to fully fund all districts by 2027, but projections indicate they won’t make that deadline.

The state has typically provided an annual increase of $350 million in funding for all Illinois districts — though this year, that increase was $307 million. Since 2017, Illinois has increased what it spends on K-12 education by more than $2 billion, and in that time, state funding for CPS has increased by $1.1 billion. However, the formula says CPS is still $1.2 billion short of what’s considered adequate.

On Tuesday, Alex Gough, a spokesperson for Pritzker’s office, referred Chalkbeat to a statement last year from Pritzker saying he’d like to fund education more — and noted that the state hasn’t yet fully funded its own formula — but said, “Now the question is, where do you find the dollars to do that?”

On Wednesday afternoon, Pritzker’s office issued a news release that called Trump’s budget bill “destructive” and a “major setback for students across the nation.”

“Here in Illinois, we’ll do everything in our power to protect the public education systems we’ve worked so hard to improve and continue supporting students in every way we can,” Pritzker said in a statement.

Union officials said Pritzker should consider various revenue-raising strategies, including new taxes on capital gains and digital advertising.

“For the governor to say we’ve done everything we can is patently false,” Potter said. “We need to do more — that is their own commitment.”

Gough declined to comment when asked if Pritzker is considering calling a special session.

CPS could delay retroactive pay raises for union members

Separately, Potter also said CPS must pay the union’s members retroactive pay they’re owed after getting a new contract, noting that the district said it could afford those raises when it settled its new contract with CTU.

WBEZ first reported this week that the district may not have enough cash on hand until the fall to pay CTU members retroactive raises stemming back to last July, when their contract expired. The $100 million price tag represents the annual 4% raises included in the new contract, which was finalized this May.

Sitkowski told WBEZ that CPS will get a second tranche of property tax revenue from Cook County in the fall. CPS did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about the retroactive pay issue.

The district typically provides retroactive pay “when payroll has the tax receipts to enable the payment,” Potter said. Absent those county tax dollars, Potter said all emergency funding “options need to be on the table” in order to pay CTU members in a “timely manner.”

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

Here’s what some Chicagoans want to see in a new Chicago Public Schools leader

2025-07-07T22:34:18+00:00

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The next chief of Chicago Public Schools should prioritize high-quality instruction, make schools feel safe, and have strong communication skills, said respondents in a recent survey conducted as part of the Chicago Board of Education’s search process for the district’s next leader.

Zencity — a company focused on community engagement and research — conducted an analysis of about 2,700 respondents that it recruited on its own, and separately looked at results of another 880 people who received the survey from a board member or Alma Advisory Group, the firm that CPS has hired to conduct the CEO search.

The survey, conducted between May and June, is one part of the board’s novel community engagement process as it searches for a replacement for former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who left CPS last month.

The mayor has typically chosen a CEO to lead CPS. Now, the district’s first partially elected, partially appointed board has taken over that responsibility. The board passed a resolution in April to launch a community engagement process, promising to center the public’s feedback in its choice for CPS’s next leader. It also passed a resolution requiring the CEO to hold a superintendent’s license, which has not been required since 1995 when the district went under mayoral control.

“Historically, CPS has not done a great job of involving community input and desire in a meaningful way,” said board member Jessica Biggs, who is the chair of the board’s transition team. “There are a lot of things that [the board has] disagreed on, but we were all really clear and aligned that we wanted our [CEO search] process to be centered around community engagement and dialogue.”

The board held 11 community feedback sessions and, separately, focus groups and panel discussions — resulting in conversations with more than 1,400 people, said Monica Rosen, CEO of Alma Advisory Group, which CPS hired to run the CEO search process, at a recent board meeting.

The public feedback will help the district tweak the scope of the job as Alma recruits and screens candidates, Rosen said. In June the board selected Macquline King, a former CPS principal and City Hall education advisor, as its interim CEO.

Zencity — which has worked with other big cities — said it used multiple strategies to ensure the survey “accurately reflects Chicago adults with children in public schools,” including a method called “rake weighting,” which weighs responses so that they don’t under- or over-represent the demographics of the population.

For the roughly 2,700 survey-takers that Zencity recruited on its own, just under half said they were a parent or family member of a CPS student, an educator, or a central office employee. Forty-three percent of respondents said they had no connection to the CPS community.

Zencity said 33% of respondents are Hispanic, 29% are Black, 28% are white, 6% are multiracial, and about 4% are Asian American. Overall, CPS’s student population is 47% Hispanic, 34% Black, 11% white, just under 5% Asian American, and almost 2% multiracial.

Most people took the survey in English, but it was also offered in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Polish.

When asked what student-related areas the next CEO should prioritize, the top answer, chosen by 32% of respondents, was high-quality instruction. Next was preparing students for careers. After that, 22% of respondents said they wanted to see an improvement in academic outcomes for kids, support of students from “diverse backgrounds,” and addressing inequities in learning opportunities.

Most people who responded — just over 60% — also rated current CPS instruction as positive. But among those people, CPS employees and parents were more likely to feel that way, while people with no connection to CPS were far less likely to say the same, “suggesting that first-hand exposure is more aligned with confidence,” according to Zencity.

On “operational” priorities, the top response — from 34% of survey-takers — was school safety. Thirty percent said they want the CEO to prioritize support for teachers, followed by 27% who want the focus to be CPS’s financial health.

Top survey responses varied by district, but Zencity highlighted the vast differences on safety. For example, 1 in 5 respondents from District 2B, in the city’s far Northeast neighborhoods, rated school safety as a top priority for the next CEO. But in nearby District 3, which includes Humboldt Park and Logan Square, nearly 1 in 2 respondents rated school safety as a top concern.

When asked about top attributes they want to see in the next schools chief, the top answer, chosen by 42% of respondents, was “strong and clear communication.” Thirty-nine percent said someone with “innovation, strategic thinking, and problem solving” skills, and 37% said someone who seeks and responds to feedback from students, parents, and staff.

Separately, board members and Alma distributed the survey on their own and reached an additional 880 people. Those results showed some similarities with the other responses and some notable differences. For example, most of these respondents want the next CEO to prioritize high-quality instruction for students, but also named CPS’s financial health as a top operational priority.

During the public feedback sessions, people shared pride for growing graduation rates, student achievement, and the district’s focus on equity and inclusion, Rosen said. But they also want the district to stabilize finances, expand post-high-school options, such as more career and technical education, address enrollment declines, “heal longstanding and historic harm” for different communities, particularly the Black community, and address mental health challenges.

Rosen said they heard frequently from people that “it just seems like the adults can’t get along” — a reference to the well-publicized conflict over the past year between CPS, the mayor’s office and the Chicago Teachers Union.

“Parents shared with us that the public fighting they’re seeing among adults in the system has been a distraction and perhaps worse, a bad model for their children,” Rosen said.

The CEO job was posted in April and garnered a “few dozen” applicants, Biggs said. Rosen said Alma will further refine the scope of the job based on the community feedback and begin formally recruiting people. The board’s goal is to have someone in place by the end of September.

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

Outgoing Chicago schools chief files defamation claims against teachers union and board president

2025-06-12T23:10:29+00:00

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Outgoing Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez filed defamation claims against the Chicago Teachers Union, its president, Stacy Davis Gates, and board President Sean Harden, according to court records posted Wednesday evening.

The claims were added as an amendment to his ongoing lawsuit against some current and former Chicago school board members. The amendment represents the latest escalation of tensions in Martinez’s ongoing legal battle since his firing in December.

Steve Mandell, CTU’s lawyer in the case, said the complaint “is an attempt to silence the sort of political speech that takes place in every labor negotiation.”

“If these sorts of statements were actionable, the courts would be flooded with never-ending defamation claims surrounding every negotiation,” Mandell said in a statement.

In a brief interview, Harden also denied making any defamatory comments.

The board’s law firm, Cozen O’Connor, did not respond to a request for comment. The board voted 12-7 Wednesday to increase its maximum allowed payments to Cozen O’Connor from $75,000 to $135,000.

The new defamation claims come a week before Martinez’s last day on June 18 and as he prepares to start a new job as Massachusetts’ state education commissioner on July 1.

Cook County Judge Joel Chupack will consider whether to allow the complaint to be amended next week, according to a court order issued Thursday. Bill Quinlan, Martinez’s lawyer, said he expects the judge to approve the change.

Asked why Martinez was adding defamation claims, Quinlan said Martinez “isn’t going to put up with bullies” or comply with ”the request to get him to agree to a contract that he didn’t think was fair.”

Martinez previously sued a school board in Nevada after being fired. He received a $500,000 settlement from the Washoe County School District, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal.

The defamation claims in the latest lawsuit address several social media posts and statements from both Davis Gates and the union, including comments about Martinez’s past work as the district’s chief financial officer, his current competency as CEO, his understanding of contract negotiations, and whether he was pushing to close up to 100 schools. Separately, the suit claims Harden made false statements about Martinez during an event last month with the city’s principals union.

Martinez originally filed the lawsuit in December to attempt to stop the board from interfering in contract negotiations with the CTU. He won a temporary restraining order against board members to bar them from involvement in negotiations or directing his team.

The complaint refutes statements from Davis Gates and the union that claimed Martinez is “incompetent and unqualified.” The lawsuit said Martinez “has and had every ‘qualification’ to perform every aspect of his job as CEO.”

The lawsuit also highlights social media posts last September from both Davis Gates and the union that claimed Martinez was seeking to close 100 schools. At the time, Martinez and the Board of Education denied that it planned to close schools. State law prohibited school closures in Chicago up until mid-January. Amid the controversy, Martinez proposed and the board passed a resolution to say it wouldn’t seek closures until January 2027.

Martinez claims in his lawsuit that those posts were knowingly false.

“Davis Gates and the CTU knew the schools study had been performed at the directive of the Former Board, that the ensuing list was the result of the Former Board’s own initiative, and that [Martinez] had no plan to undertake school closures on that or any other basis,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also notes a May 14 Facebook post from CTU’s page that says Martinez could have “recovered millions in charter loan debt” and “billed Medicaid” to avoid budget challenges. Martinez’s complaint argues both claims are false.

On Medicaid, Martinez’s lawsuit argues that “the highest recoupment of Medicaid” for CPS happened under Martinez. On charters, the complaint says the district can only function based on the contracts it sets with charter school operators.

The defamation allegations also cite a post Davis Gates made on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, arguing the district’s current financial difficulties “can be traced back to Martinez’s time as the district’s chief financial officer between 2003 and 2009,” citing risky loans he “blessed and structured.” Martinez’s lawyers say those allegations are all false and none of his actions as CFO more than a decade ago caused today’s financial challenges.

Separately, the lawsuit claims that board President Harden made false statements last month about Martinez’s work, including that he has been more focused on “his professional future and not on the long-term stability and success of our school district” and that his actions “have undermined our board’s ability to make the best decisions on behalf of CPS students.”

Martinez’s team claims Harden’s comments are false and are an attempt to establish legal “cause” for letting Martinez go sooner than his planned departure. Martinez was fired without cause in December and, per his contract, was allowed to stay in his role through June 19.

In a brief interview Thursday, Harden said he wasn’t aware of the defamation claims and did not say anything defamatory. He said his statements on the budget cited in the lawsuit were “100% factual.” CPS has floated a possible budget plan that assumes it will receive an additional $300 million from either the city or state, which has not yet materialized.

The budget is “incomplete and unsatisfactory, so I stand by those comments,” Harden said. “We were and we still are looking at what was put out — a $229 million budget scenario with suggestions of $300 million coming from unsubstantiated sources, so the board is not in a position to make sound decisions … That is still the case today.”

Last week, the union threatened to sue the district over a potential proposal to delay some of the union’s contract agreements next year. (The district told WBEZ that it “may need to review all additional expenditures under various labor agreements and vendor contracts to ensure long-term sustainability” and would work with unions as necessary.)

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

Chicago Board of Education chooses City Hall advisor and former principal as interim CEO

2025-06-11T23:11:24+00:00

The Chicago Board of Education picked City Hall advisor and former principal Macquline King Wednesday as the interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

King’s record at CPS came under scrutiny last week after the Chicago Tribune revealed she’d been investigated multiple times as a principal and was found to have failed to implement certain district protocols around student safety. King did not face formal discipline.

The vote was close: Eleven board members — one elected and 10 appointed — voted for King, while eight voted no. Elected board member Ebony DeBerry abstained. Asked why she abstained, she said she did not feel her constituents would support her voting for King, and that a “no” vote wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

The board also disagreed over discussing the vote in public. Elected board member Jennifer Custer called for a public discussion, but that motion failed with 12 no votes.

Board members have been split for weeks on who should lead the district as the board searches for a permanent CEO. At one point, the mayor’s chief of staff Cristina Pacione-Zayas was floated as a possibility but was not officially considered after board members said they wanted to stick to their commitment to hiring someone with a superintendent’s license.

Outgoing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez’s last day is June 18 and he will begin a new job July 1 as Massachusetts’ new education commissioner. The previous Board of Education fired Martinez in December without cause following high tensions, largely rooted in budget decisions, between CPS and the mayor’s office, as well as the Chicago Teachers Union.

The interim will serve until the board hires a permanent CEO. The board’s search for a new permanent leader, being led by Alma Advisory Group, is underway. The board’s goal is to hire someone by the end of September, according to appointed board member Anusha Thotakura.

The board appeared to whittle its choices down from five people three weeks ago to King, who has been an education policy advisor for City Hall since 2022, starting under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot; Carmona, the district’s current chief portfolio officer; and Nicole Milberg, the district’s current chief of teaching and learning. All three have superintendent’s licenses.

Thotakura said she didn’t feel King’s personnel record was disqualifying because she was never formally disciplined. She said she liked that King had relationships both in and outside of the district.

“We right now need a leader that can get us through the next few months, through passing a balanced budget and through a strong and successful opening of the next school year,” Thotakura said. “We are looking forward to Dr. King’s leadership, her experience in and outside of CPS, to provide the district with the stability and the continuity that we need to get us through the next few months.”

According to a press release from the Board of Education, King has “spearheaded interagency collaboration to facilitate migrant student enrollment and expand early childhood access. She has fostered strong relationships with labor partners and monitored legislative bills impacting public education.”

King will be immediately tasked with resolving the district’s $529 million budget deficit. Asked how she’s considering closing that deficit, King told Chalkbeat she first needs to understand the details, consider various ideas around the budget, and work with board members and senior CPS leadership to find a solution.

King said applying for interim CEO was solely her decision, not the mayor’s, but she’s not interested in the permanent job at this time. In 2020, she applied for the permanent CEO role that Martinez eventually got, she said.

“I always chose to lead in schools that were challenging, and right now the district is in a very challenging position, so I don’t shy away from challenges,” King said. “It’s been a theme of my career.”

After a brief job at a private school, King became a CPS teacher in 1994 at Robert Nathaniel Dett Elementary School, according to employee records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. In 2007, King became principal at Alexandre Dumas School. Six years later, in 2013, King became principal at Courtenay Language Arts Center in Uptown.

During her tenure at Courtenay, King was highlighted for her participation in a leadership program for new school leaders. Her first year as principal at Courtenay was when the school merged with former Stockton Elementary. Following the merger, some teachers and parents described part of the school as a “war zone” that was marred with student fights, and they accused school leaders, including King, of not doing enough to quell the fights or log incidents, according to a DNAinfo story at the time. A parent leader, however, said King had a “daunting task” in overseeing the thorny school merger that CPS was advised to hold off on but approved anyway, the news report said.

Chalkbeat filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all personnel records for each finalist.

While King’s personnel records did not show any formal discipline, the district did on two occasions write memos about how she should improve.

In April 2015, King failed to immediately report allegations of two school staffers injuring a student to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services or in CPS’s internal reporting systems, as required, according to an investigation conducted later that summer. CPS later gave King two “directives for improvement,” including reminders that allegations of abuse must be reported immediately to DCFS and CPS.

About six months later, two students participating in Courtenay’s after-school program were found in a bathroom with their pants pulled down and looking at each other’s “private parts and butt,” according to an investigative memo about the incident. The after-school provider — Youth Guidance — changed its protocols to require staff to accompany children when they went to the bathroom. But the investigation, which centered on King and several other school staffers, found that staff “did not do anything” to ensure that Youth Guidance was following its new protocols “or that the involved students were being kept separate from each other.”

In December 2015, a child fell and injured their arm at the school, but neither the school nurse nor King notified the student’s emergency contacts, and other staffers failed to ensure the student received timely medical care, according to that investigation.

In August 2019, CPS discovered that a person who had started volunteering at Courtenay the year before King became principal did not have a background check. CPS discovered the issue after that volunteer applied to be a security officer at Courtenay and a required background check found they had a criminal background, which wasn’t further detailed in the records obtained by Chalkbeat. In a formal nondisciplinary memo, the district informed King that she must always ensure employees have background checks.

King told Chalkbeat that it was “fair” for board members and the public to be concerned about the investigations without more context. She said she worked at “challenging” schools, and some of the investigations demonstrated a need for more staffing so that she and her team were equipped to follow all district procedures.

“I feel like the incidents that were reported in the news are incidents that demonstrate the need for support for principals and not punishment,” she said. “So each of the incidents that are noted, there [is] no documentation of support for schools.”

King said a lack of support for principals is why principals unionized and are currently bargaining with the district over their first contract. King has been vocal about the principals union and a desire for more support for school leaders.

Several board members have said King’s personnel history was concerning.

“There are parents on the board who have kids who go to their schools, and I am baffled that they’re willing to allow a leader with that kind of record to sit there and make some of these decisions when they have a true stake in the game,” said Custer, who supported Carmona. “I don’t know how they’re excusing it away.”

Neither Carmona’s nor Milberg’s personnel records included disciplinary or investigative memos.

Carmona has worked for the district since 2001. He was initially a bilingual teacher and eventually became a principal at Robert Healy School in 2010. In 2016, Carmona left to take a job as superintendent of a private, nondenominational Christian school in Milwaukee, according to his employee records and LinkedIn profile. He came back to CPS in 2019 to lead Network 10 schools on the Southwest Side before becoming the district’s chief portfolio officer, a role that oversees the district’s charter, options, and contract schools.

Under Carmona’s leadership, the district has recommended shorter renewal lengths for charter schools than past administrations. He also advised the board as it took the unprecedented, high-profile move this year to save five of seven Acero charter schools that Acero had planned to close.

Milberg taught in Newark, N.J. and Washington, D.C. before coming to Chicago Public Schools in 2009. She became assistant principal of Ellen Mitchell School in 2010 and eventually became the principal in 2012. In 2018, she was tapped to become chief of schools for Network 6 schools on the city’s west and southwest sides. She became CPS’s chief of teaching and learning in 2023.

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

Chicago Public Schools floats hundreds of layoffs as one option to close $529 million budget gap

2025-04-25T22:19:36+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is considering laying off hundreds of school-based staffers next school year — one of multiple scenarios being considered to close a $529 million budget gap, Chalkbeat has learned.

Between 1,600 and 1,700 positions based inside schools could be cut, according to a presentation used to brief board members obtained by Chalkbeat. However, it’s not clear if the number represents a net reduction in the overall number of CPS employees. The district currently employs more than 41,000 people.

While some of the belt-tightening could include cutting vacant positions, it would “overwhelmingly” involve layoffs, according to a CPS source who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.

The potential cuts are not yet final. The presentation suggests there are ways to lessen the blow, specifically by getting more state funding or more city money than it is already expecting from special taxing districts meant to spur development, known as TIFs. Mayor Brandon Johnson has the power to declare a surplus of those funds, and CPS is assuming it will again receive roughly $300 million in those funds next year, according to the presentation.

The CPS budget for next school year, which would begin July 1, must still go through a public hearing process and be formally adopted by the board. School budgets are typically shared with principals and Local School Councils in the spring. By state law, the district’s budget must be balanced.

The challenge ahead marks the first time in recent years that CPS has had to consider deep school-based cuts. That’s largely because the district benefitted from a windfall of nearly $3 billion in federal COVID relief money over the past four school years, which supported 7% of school budgets, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus said the district is considering multiple scenarios, including what happens if state or local revenue doesn’t change. The different scenarios don’t “necessarily reflect the district’s recommendation.” She added that CPS leaders, students, parents, and advocates will travel to Springfield next week to push for more state funding.

“CPS will continue to seek every opportunity to boost revenue and minimize cuts, particularly those that could disrupt the learning experience or impact our dedicated staff,” she said. “Our primary focus will remain on safeguarding the quality of education for our students and minimizing any disruptions to their daily learning.”

The school board’s office did not return a request for comment. Service Employees International Union local that covers school support staff also did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said the potential cuts are “evidence of a fired CEO’s failure to lead.”

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez was fired without cause in December and will leave in June. He will likely take a job as the new education commissioner of Massachusetts.

“It’s time for this board to define for Chicagoans how it will lead and show there’s no place for going backwards on the district’s commitment to quality public education,” Davis Gates said.

Closing budget gap could mean at least $200M cuts to schools

The expected $529 million gap between revenues and expenses is calculated after accounting for several new expenses, including the new teachers contract, potential raises for principals as part of their union’s negotiations, and increased costs related to SEIU and other unions, according to the internal presentation. CPS is also expecting increases in charter school funding and teacher pensions, to comply with state laws. The projection does not, however, include a much-debated pension reimbursement to the city of Chicago, which the district declined to pay this year. That suggests the district will, for now, refuse to reimburse the city for the pension payment next school year.

The projected budget gap does not include new risks to federal funding under President Donald Trump, such as Title I, which provides additional funds to about 400 Chicago schools with high shares of students from low-income families.

If the board chooses to balance the budget through this plan, it would reduce the deficit by a total $200 million to $260 million, about 6% to 7% of the $3.5 billion in funding that goes directly to schools, according to the presentation. The district also floated cutting central office expenses by $20 million to $40 million — 7% to 13% — and trimming another nearly 20%, or between $250 million and $280 million, from centralized support services and staff that work more directly with schools.

The plan could mean cuts to discretionary funding for high-needs schools, staff that provide additional support to struggling students, such as tutors, and social-emotional support, according to the presentation. However, it also said those potential cuts would keep class sizes at contractual limits in the new Chicago Teachers Union contract.

The contract lowers kindergarten class sizes to 25 students and adds a teaching assistant for any class with more than 23 students, the union previously told Chalkbeat. In first through third grade, class sizes would be 28, and in fourth through eighth grade, the cap is 30 students.

Cuts could also impact support staff, such as custodians, security guards, building engineers, lunchroom staff, and crossing guards paid for under the Safe Passage program. The internal presentation also mentioned trimming transportation costs that are not legally mandated. That could impact recent increased efforts to restore transportation to general education students who largely attend magnet or selective enrollment schools.

However, in its presentation, the district foreshadowed that there could be cuts even if new revenue comes through. For example, if the district received $300 million in additional funding through either state or city funding, it could mean a $70 million to $110 million cut to direct school funding.

Despite the potential cuts, the presentation said CPS is “committed” to maintaining teaching staff that prioritizes “reasonable class sizes” and “differentiated support for high-needs schools,” as well as support for kids with greater needs, such as students with disabilities and English learners.

According to the CPS source, the district does not prefer instituting a hiring freeze to address cuts because high-needs schools are typically where vacant positions exist. That means a hiring freeze would impose greater burdens on the schools that likely need the most staffing. Cuts would more likely impact larger schools.

School board members look to city, state for help

School board member Jitu Brown said while the presentation was “thorough,” it wasn’t a surprise. District officials have publicly shared for months that CPS expected at least a half-billion-dollar deficit.

He argued that there hasn’t been a solid legislative strategy from CPS to convince state lawmakers to send funding help. He also thinks CPS’s resistance to taking out a loan in order to reimburse the city for some pension costs was a misstep.

District officials worried that taking out such a loan would result in high-interest rates that would become difficult to pay back down the road.

While CPS is not legally required to pay the city back for those pension costs, it had done so under Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Brown worried that by not paying the city back, City Council has lost interest in sending more TIF surplus to the schools. Aldermen and city officials warned the school board in March that they could hold back on funding help for CPS if the district did not reimburse the city for the pension payment.

Brown said he and other board members plan to press state lawmakers for more funding and more relief on certain costs, such as teacher pensions that other districts don’t pay. Those are issues that district staffers have also previously highlighted.

“To me this whole piece has been due to a lack of leadership,” Brown said. “I’m not in favor of any budget cuts.”

Board member Carlos Rivas said he supports pushing the city for more TIF surplus funding to help make an “absolutely terrible” cut “much more manageable.” He placed more blame on city officials for not developing a strong state advocacy campaign and doesn’t believe the state is going to bail out CPS. But he believes there’s political will on the City Council to support the public school system, despite the tension around the pension payment.

“I believe we all want great schools so I don’t believe the City Council will hold that against us,” Rivas said.

Financial issues can be tied to the end of the COVID relief money

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, CPS spent nearly $3 billion in federal COVID relief funding on many school-based investments, primarily staff, including a cadre of new academic interventionists. The district touts those investments as helping students perform better than some of their peers nationwidef after the pandemic.

However, those were not one-time costs, and the money dried up last year. The district had to close a roughly half-billion-dollar deficit this year, too, as it tried to hold on to many of those new investments.

The district’s internal presentation outlined possible cuts that include many of those post-COVID investments: cuts to professional development, after-school programming, curriculum support, and academic interventionists — a position that has already been pared down since last school year.

Martinez appears to be leaning toward pushing for more TIF funding. At Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, he said after conversations with state legislators, he isn’t confident more state funding is in the cards. Illinois is working to close a $3.2 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year.

The internal presentation also outlined scenarios where the CPS deficit could grow — and require even deeper cuts. For example, the pension reimbursement would increase the district’s projected deficit, as would about $30 million in costs to begin the planning and transitioning of five Acero charter schools into district-run schools by the fall of 2026. Those are separate from the costs related to eventually taking over the schools.

The board voted in February to take over the five Acero campuses previously slated for closure. Asked why the Acero transition costs weren’t included in the district’s deficit projection, a CPS source said “doing that would require significant cuts” and district staff wanted to ensure the board knows “what the consequences are.”

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez picked to lead Massachusetts schools

2025-04-22T19:34:42+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is one step closer to becoming the top education official in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted during a public meeting on Tuesday to recommend Martinez to be the next commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Nine of 11 members of the Massachusetts board voted for Martinez. The other two abstained. Both said earlier in the meeting that they supported candidate Lily Laux, the former deputy commissioner of school programs at the Texas Education Agency.

The board will now send its recommendation to the Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler, who must give final approval and is also currently serving as the department’s interim commissioner. However, Tutwiler, who also sits on the board, said he supports Martinez and voted yes for him.

Martinez, who was fired from CPS without cause in December, was one of three finalists for the Massachusetts job and one of 42 people who had applied. If he takes the job, he will be responsible for overseeing and providing state support for Massachusetts’ roughly 400 school districts. He would also become the first Latino to have the job, according to a press release from Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“This is someone who has had progressive experience in increasingly larger and more complex organizations with significantly increased, let’s say, political situations that they have to balance,” said Matt Hills, the board’s vice chair, during the meeting. “But at the end of the day, this is someone who has been able to lead large organizations to get pretty significantly positive results in key education priorities that we have.”

Several board members said they were impressed by Martinez’s leadership experience — with some generally noting controversy he’s faced — as well as his interest in students from low-income households and those learning English as a new language. Another noted she was impressed that he was able to raise teacher salaries in Chicago, which most recently came after a tense, yearlong bargaining process with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Martinez’s firing was fueled in part by a tense disagreement with Mayor Brandon Johnson over how to pay for labor contracts and a pension contribution.

Board member Martin West said he was concerned about Martinez’s lack of state experience relative to Laux, but he found through Martinez’s interview that district leadership is “in some ways more similar to the state role in terms of the levers available for driving change.”

Board member Ericka Fisher said she felt Martinez was the sort of candidate who “can stay standing and continue fighting the good fight” in the face of the education climate both in Massachusetts and under the Trump administration.

The board’s decision comes after it interviewed Martinez and two other finalists at an hourslong public meeting last week. Martinez attended that meeting in person and spoke about a variety of topics, including serving English learners, students with disabilities and efforts to expose students to early college programs.

In a statement, Martinez said he is “honored” to be selected for the job and that Chicago and CPS will “always hold a special place in my heart.”

“I am committed to finishing the school year strong here and will leave CPS in mid-June with a deep sense of pride and optimism for its future, knowing the district is in strong hands and moving in the right direction,” Martinez said.

Once the education secretary finalizes the board’s recommendation, Martinez plans to accept the job after negotiating terms of his contract, according to a source close to the CEO.

The Massachusetts board chair previously said she hoped to have a commissioner in place by July 1, according to Jackie Reis, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Per his CPS contract, a firing without cause allows Martinez to stay at the district through June.

Before CPS, Martinez was the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District and held various education roles in Nevada.

This story has been updated with comment from CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

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

CTU and Chicago Public Schools reach tentative contract deal

2025-04-01T17:51:47+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement Monday night that would reduce class sizes in some grades, add hundreds of new positions, and give elementary school teachers more preparation time while many students get more recess.

The deal would also grant teachers a 4% raise retroactively to cover the first year of the contract, which is the current school year, and 4-5% for each of the next three years.

The deal secures significant wins that the union left on the table during a bruising, lengthy strike in 2019 and comes after it pushed hard for its most ambitious, costliest slate of demands to date. But the tentative deal is far more modest than the union’s initial proposals, which included adding thousands of new staffers and 9% annual raises.

Teachers union members and the school board still need to vote to ratify the new contract, which would be retroactive to last June.

After helping propel Brandon Johnson, a former union employee, to the mayor’s office, the CTU expressed confidence heading into negotiations. But the union and CPS leadership clashed fiercely for nearly a year over what to include in the contract and how to pay for it.

The conflict led to the October resignation of the entire school board of Johnson appointees last October. A new board handpicked by the mayor fired CPS CEO Pedro Martinez without cause in late December, though a clause in his contract allowed him to stay on for another six months.

A partly elected, 21-member school board has pressed the Martinez administration to settle the contract since it took over in January. Johnson appointees and CTU-endorsed candidates hold a solid majority on the board.

The district said the agreement is a financially responsible and fair deal in line with other public unions. The union hailed the agreement as a victory for teachers and students.

“I have never seen a document before that has win, win, win, win, win, win for every stakeholder,” CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said in an interview. “Our young people win, the people who provide their education win, the families that send them to the Chicago Public Schools win, principals win, the Board of Education wins, the CEO wins, the mayor of Chicago wins.”

In a briefing with reporters, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the agreement maintains autonomy for principals, gives teachers fair wage increases, provides a “joyful experience” for students, and balances all of that “with being responsible to our taxpayers.”

The deal would expand the union’s membership ranks with additional librarians, clinicians, and teaching assistants. It would also cement CPS teachers’ position among the best paid in the country, with an average salary poised to surpass $110,000 by the contract’s end. An entry level teacher would earn nearly $69,000, and median teacher pay would be more than $98,000 next school year, district officials said.

District officials estimated the tentative four-year deal would cost a total of $1.5 billion over the life of the contract. District leaders said they can cover the cost of the first year, but questions remain about how the district will afford future years while holding onto a structural deficit. Martinez, who leaves the district in June, said it will be important to advocate for more state funding and shifting certain pension obligations.

The agreement would avert the possibility of a teacher strike, which CTU leadership had invoked in recent weeks. It could also relieve pressure on Davis Gates and CTU Vice President Jackson Potter, who are being challenged in an election by colleagues who question their leadership’s transparency and approach to politics.

Days after Johnson convened a meeting between CTU and CPS leaders that reportedly gave negotiations a boost, Board of Education President Sean Harden postponed a high-stakes vote to amend the district’s budget to pay for the CTU contract and a pending principals contract along with a controversial $175 million pension fund reimbursement to the city that was a source of tension between City Hall and CPS.

Here’s how the two sides resolved several sticking points that snarled the talks.

Additional teacher prep time and more recess for kids

The tentative deal would increase the amount of preparation time elementary school teachers get to 70 minutes every day, up from the current hour. Students in many schools would get an additional ten minutes of recess to meet a state requirement, union and district officials said.

But the two additional weekly 15-minute preparation periods that are currently provided would be eliminated, according to the district.

Schools will implement this differently and will get guidance from CPS on how to add the instructional time, said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. For example, a school could add to its recess time, and additional teacher prep time could be added then. Another school that already has 30 minutes of recess time could decide to add more time to specialty classes in order to give homeroom teachers more prep time.

If the deal is approved, elementary teachers would also get additional preparation time throughout the year, which union and district officials said would be achieved by adjusting principal and teacher-directed days of professional development. Currently, there are 12 such days, nine of which are directed by principals. In the tentative agreement, six would remain directed by principals, and six would be teacher-directed.

The issue of prep time was the “single stickiest” because it involved changing the school day, Davis Gates said. Both district and union officials agreed on Monday that teachers should have more preparation time. Still, district officials pushed back vehemently on adding the 30 minutes that the union initially asked for, which would’ve restored prep time eliminated when CPS lengthened the school day in 2012 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The union reduced its ask to 20 minutes in the final weeks of bargaining.

Chkoumbova said cutting down on instructional time for students, many of whom are still recovering from the pandemic, “was not an option.” District officials noted that Chicago teachers get more prep time than counterparts in most large urban districts.

“No one’s happy with this,” Davis Gates said of the prep time compromise.

Still, it was more progress than what the union won in 2019, when prep time was also a thorny union proposal that largely didn’t materialize.

Smaller class sizes

For the past three decades, Chicago Public Schools officials were not required to bargain with the Chicago Teachers Union over class sizes due to changes in state law in 1995 that limited the scope of what they could bargain over to primarily pay and benefits.

But the Illinois legislature restored those collective bargaining rights to CTU in 2021, making this round of contract negotiations the first since Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed that bill into law. Although the union did secure wins around class sizes in 2019, there were limits to enforcing them.

The new tentative agreement reduces the class size caps in kindergarten and middle school and includes provisions to automatically add teaching assistants to classrooms that exceed the limits.

The tentative agreement would lower kindergarten class sizes to 25 students and add a teaching assistant for any class with more than 23 students, according to the union. Both are down from the previous limit of 28.

The class size cap in first through third grade would remain at 28, and in fourth through eighth grade, it would drop from 31 to 30 students, according to the union and CPS.

The new agreement dedicates $40 million to enforcing these class sizes — $5 million more than the previous contract.

More school nurses, librarians, and teaching assistants

A key union priority was significantly increasing district staffing across a wide range of positions the CTU represents. The union argued that the influx of employees would be transformative in stepping up services for students, but staff increases are the costliest for the district to implement.

CPS hired about 7,000 new teachers and staff since 2020, using the $2.8 billion wave of federal pandemic relief money. District officials have said they want to protect those positions even as federal COVID relief dollars have dried up.

The new tentative contract deal adds hundreds more employees over the course of the next three years, union officials said. The district projected between 800-900 new positions, which will be “indexed and targeted into the highest needs schools,” said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer.

According to both the union and the district, the tentative agreement adds 24 centralized fine arts positions and 68 technology coordinators. The union saids it would add roughly 90 new librarian positions, but the district said the agreement would give schools the flexibility to replace current positions with librarians.

The union said it will also boost teaching assistant positions by 50%, though district officials said staffing increases will depend on enrollment and school needs. The number of teacher assistants has dwindled in the last decade, while the number of Special Education Classrooms assistants, or SECAs, grew. The union’s fight to increase the number of teacher assistants eventually drew a wedge with its sister union, SEIU Local 73, which represents the SECAs.

The union has argued boosting those jobs will help reduce class sizes and increase support for kids. As of the latest public staffing data, the district had opened just over 1,000 teacher assistant positions and had filled all but 100 of them.

The new contract would also add 215 additional case managers by 2028 who are supposed to ensure children with students with disabilities are receiving legally required services, according to the union. However, after this story published, CPS said it estimates the number of new case managers would be 124.

The addition will help reduce case loads for case managers, Davis Gates said.

The contract would also codify the district’s new budgeting model that largely provides staff positions instead of dollars to schools.

The union’s current contract requires a social worker and nurse in every school. Under the new agreement, schools will be required to have a nurse and a social worker in every school every day, which is not currently the case, union officials said.

More salary steps, less frequent evaluations for veteran teachers

While the two sides found themselves in general agreement over the broad strokes of a pay and benefits package earlier this year, the union continued to push for changes that would benefit more veteran educators.

The first would add additional pay bumps for teachers with more than 14 years of experience. CPS officials had resisted the union’s proposal, arguing that retention of those teachers is already high. But the tentative proposal would add $30 million in pay increases for the longest-serving teachers, the district said.

CTU also pushed for changes to the district’s teacher evaluation system, which union officials said has tended to give educators working at high-needs schools consistently lower marks. This is partly due to a state requirement to connect at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation to student performance. There’s a bill making its way through the legislature that would make that optional.

But apart from that, in recent weeks, the union continued to ask that the district agree to evaluate highly rated tenured teachers once every three years instead of every two, which is already allowed under existing state law. The district had balked, saying that would affect the quality of teaching.

Now, under the terms of the tentative deal, two types of teachers will be placed on three-year evaluation cycles: teachers with 19 or more years of experience with higher evaluation scores, who are currently rated “proficient” and earn the same designation again, and other teachers who are currently rated as “excellent” and earn the same designation in the next evaluation cycle.

This story was updated with additional data from CPS on the proposed increase to case managers.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

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

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’s school board is hiring a new leader. A superintendent’s license is now a job requirement.

2025-03-21T01:40:07+00:00

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The Chicago school board unanimously passed a resolution Thursday requiring the next leader of Chicago Public Schools hold a superintendent’s license.

CPS is one of relatively few large districts that have a CEO rather than a superintendent at the helm. The Illinois law that gave control of the city’s schools to the mayor in 1995 renamed the position and lifted the requirement that its leader hold a superintendent’s license as required of all other school districts in the state. The resolution says the board will push Illinois lawmakers to change state law.

Board member Che “Rhymefest” Smith introduced the resolution, arguing that the district needs someone with an education background and knowhow to lead it.

The district is gearing up to begin a national search for its next top leader after enlisting a Chicago-based search firm to run it earlier this month. The previous school board fired CEO Pedro Martinez without cause late last year amid a clash with the mayor’s office over how to handle the district’s rising financial pressures.

Under a clause in his contract, Martinez, who served as the superintendent in San Antonio before taking over CPS in 2021, will stay on until the end of June. Replacing him is a crucial job for the partly elected school board that took over in January.

“A superintendent will put schools first as we move forward,” Smith said. “That’s why this is so important.”

A superintendent generally has an advanced degree and a superintendent endorsement from a university, which requires additional training in education. The approved resolution says Chicago’s next leader “shall hold a valid Illinois Professional Educator License, with a Superintendent endorsement as issued by the Illinois State Board of Education or an equivalent credential from another state.”

Historically, under decades of mayoral control, Chicago’s mayors have appointed the district’s CEOs — often close allies with a financial or business background and little or no experience running a school district.

Smith’s resolution also applies to interim top leaders for CPS as well — an administrator the school board might have to appoint if it doesn’t find a permanent replacement for Martinez by his departure in June.

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

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 City Council members pressure school board to pay up — or risk losing other financial support

2025-03-14T20:14:22+00:00

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Chicago aldermen and City Hall officials suggested the city could withhold other funding for Chicago Public Schools if the new school board doesn’t reimburse the city $175 million to cover a portion of a pension payment for some school staff.

Ald. Jason Ervin, who represents the West Side and is chair of the powerful committee on budget and government operations, said that while CPS has no legal obligation to reimburse the city, City Council also has no obligation to provide the school district with funding for school construction projects or waive water and sewer fees, as it currently does.

Those and other entanglements between the city government and the school system were laid out in a 2023 report required under the state legislation that paved the way for Chicago’s transition away from mayoral control to a fully elected school board in 2027.

The scene highlighted the complexity of the shift in governance, but also foreshadowed the political conflicts that could play out in the years to come.

“There’s an old African proverb that says: When the elephants fight, the ground gets trampled,” Ervin told school board members at the second of two public hearings Friday. “We share constituencies. If one loses at the expense of another, we’re both losers in that calculation.”

The city must close its books for 2024 by March 30 and officials have said they’ve already made a full payment to the municipal pension fund. If the Chicago Board of Education does not come through with a $175 million reimbursement, the city risks ending the year in the red. Facing that prospect, the city’s chief procurement officer has asked vendors who do business with the city for a 3% discount on services, WGN reported.

A letter urging the district to pay up was circulated by Ervin and Ald. Jeanette Taylor, chair of City Council’s committee on education and child development Thursday and had been signed by 28 aldermen as of Friday.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, an ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson, told school board members Friday that “every dollar spent on this pension payment is coming out of money for public safety, infrastructure, public health, and sanitation.”

Jill Jaworski, the city’s chief financial officer and a parent of a CPS high school student, said aldermen have asked her about canceling some or all of the roughly $319 million in city financing for ongoing school capital projects.

“They feel the commitment was made to make this payment, and if it is not made, they are concerned about why we continue to support CPS in the manner that we do,” Jaworski said.

Yesenia Lopez, one of the elected school board members, said it’s important for the school board to “continue those relationships and build trust” with the City Council as the two become separate government entities.

“What does this set precedent for moving forward? What in the future is the city going to be asking us to also help contribute to — the many items that the alderman stated that the city is already contributing to,” Lopez said.

City Hall suggests CPS refinance debt

The budget amendment that the new 21-member, partially-elected school board is scheduled to vote on next Thursday would add $139 million in unexpected revenue from the city in surplus dollars from special taxing districts. But it includes three possible ways to spend the new money: Reimburse the city, cover the costs of a new Chicago Teachers Union contract, or cover the potential costs of the principals’ first union contract. Both labor contracts are still being negotiated.

All of those expenditures would cost more than $139 million, but CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said cuts, furloughs, and layoffs are “off the table.”

The amendment requires a two-thirds vote to pass, meaning if seven school board members were to vote no, the amendment would fail.

As a potential solution to afford both a reimbursement to the city and looming labor costs, the Johnson administration has been pushing CPS to take out a short-term loan or refinance existing debt, which it floated earlier this week.

Jaworski laid out the refinancing option to school board members Friday, but acknowledged it would be “a bridge scenario.” She said her team’s analysis indicated a refinancing could free up about $250 million immediately, but cost the district about $50 million in interest down the road.

Elected board member Therese Boyle, who represents the far south side, raised concerns that state lawmakers would frown upon CPS doing any refinancing or borrowing. She noted that earlier this week state Rep. Curtis Tarver (D-Chicago) filed a bill to reinstate financial oversight of Chicago schools.

“We already have so much debt, and our debt payment every year is so much of our budget,” Boyle said. “What kind of a message does this send to the state? That bill that was filed last week saying they want to reinstate the School Finance Authority. Does it look like we can not handle our budget ourselves, and we’re just borrowing, borrowing?”

CPS’ Chief Financial Officer Miroslava Mejia Krug said the school district would need to wait and see what the market conditions are if it were to try refinancing.

As the nearly four-hour hearing wound to a close, appointed board member Michilla Blaise urged everyone to work together to find a solution.

“It’s way political, I guess, because of history, for lots of reasons, but I really do believe that … everybody here cares deeply about children and schools,” Blaise said. “I just want to say I’m really glad we’re having this conversation.”

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

Chicago school board approves nearly $4 million in legal settlements

2025-03-03T18:25:11+00:00

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This story has been updated with a statement from Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Board of Education approved nearly $4 million in legal settlements Thursday, including a $2.7 million payment to the family of a boy who was beaten by an adult in the bathroom of a West Side elementary school in 2018.

A federal jury ordered the school board last September to pay $750,000 to Asia Gaines, the mother of the victim. In addition to the court settlement, $2 million will go to cover Gaines’ attorneys fees, a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said. The agenda item approving the settlement said the district’s legal team reached an agreement to accept the court’s settlement recommendation and resolve Gaines’ “anticipated petition to recover her attorneys’ fees and costs.”

“Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is committed to providing all students with safe and supportive learning environments, and it takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously. CPS investigates and addresses all complaints in accordance with District policies and procedures to foster safe and secure learning environments in all schools,” the CPS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “CPS believes that students who are harmed as a result of a legally acknowledged failure on the part of the District should be provided with compensation that is both fair and reasonable.”

The lawsuit — filed in federal court in 2019 — details how the boy’s teacher at Tilton Elementary allowed her adult friend to beat Gaines’ son in a school bathroom before class. The boy, identified in documents as J.C., was 9 years old and in fourth grade at the time.

According to the CPS spokesperson, the teacher, Kristen Haynes, was “immediately removed from her position” at Tilton after the district became aware of the incident. She is currently suspended without pay, pending a ruling from an Illinois State Board of Education hearing, the spokesperson said.

According to court records, Haynes was well-known at Tilton for being a disciplinarian and kept two leather belts in her classroom closet with which she would threaten students. Students knew the belts by the names “Mr. Brown” and “Mr. Black,” according to testimony at trial.

The school board also approved an $800,000 settlement for a Jane Doe in a sexual assault case filed in 2023. That case involved two students, but one was an adult and one was a minor. The victim, a minor, was allegedly assaulted on school property in an unlocked room with a broken alarm at South Shore International College Prep that students used for sex and recreational drug use, according to a copy of the complaint.

In addition to these two large settlements, the school board on Thursday also approved two more settlements worth around $200,000 and 42 others under $100,000.

Correction 3/3/2025: A previous version of this story misidentified the Jane Doe case as another one involving sexual abuse at a different high school a decade ago. That case is not yet settled.

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

Chicago school board to consider saving 4 of 7 Acero charter schools slated for closure

2025-02-26T00:36:17+00:00

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After months of uncertainty for hundreds of families and teachers who are facing closures at seven Acero charter schools, Chicago’s Board of Education will vote this week on keeping four of the schools open — backtracking from a plan to prevent the closures altogether.

According to Chicago Public Schools officials, the funding needs for all seven Acero campuses on the chopping block exceed a legal state limit on how much money the district can provide to charter schools.

A resolution included on the board’s agenda for its Thursday meeting calls for CPS to provide financial help to Acero in order to keep the Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo, and Santiago campuses open next school year. It then calls for CPS to figure out “the viability” of absorbing those campuses and turning them into district-run schools after next year.

Charters are privately run, publicly funded schools and are allowed to operate under a contract with Chicago Public Schools. Acero announced in October that it would close seven of its 15 campuses due to financial problems.

Under the resolution for Thursday’s board meeting, the Paz, Cruz, and Cisneros campuses would close at the end of this school year.

In a statement, Helena Stangle, chief culture officer for Acero, said Acero has been “cooperative, transparent, and open to all remedies,” and it’s “essential” for CPS to cover all operational and capital costs, as well as deficits, “so students get the educational experience they deserve in a safe building.”

“We await CPS BOE action to determine the next steps for our impacted scholars, families and colleagues,” Stangle said.

State law requires districts to fund charters by at least 97% and up to 103% of what it spends per student at district-run schools, which CPS said it would exceed under a plan to save all seven schools. A “per capita tuition charge” is calculated annually and this year’s budget set it at $19,339.34 per student enrolled.

The new plan would walk back the previous seven-member Board of Education’s directive to keep all seven Acero schools open by helping cover any deficits for Acero. That directive also called for the district to create a plan to turn five of the schools — Cisneros, Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo, and Santiago — into district-run buildings by the 2026-27 school year and explore whether it could do the same for Paz and Cruz, which CPS previously said contributed the most to Acero’s debt.

Parents and union leaders celebrated that resolution when it passed in late December on the same day the school board voted to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Plan would leave future uncertain for 4 Acero schools

Not only would the new resolution keep just four of the schools open next year with CPS’s financial help, but unlike before, it leaves open the possibility that those schools could also close by the 2026-27 school year.

Alfonso Carmona, CPS’s chief portfolio officer, had originally endorsed a plan to keep five of the seven schools open because it was the least expensive option CPS, which is facing at least a $500 million deficit next fiscal year. In a Feb. 4 email that Acero sent to schools staff, the network said its senior staff had met with CPS leadership to “reach agreement” on how they would keep the seven campuses open. Both parties also had additional meetings about “critical funding and liability matters,” the email said.

Board of Education member Carlos Rivas Jr. said district leaders have been meeting with board members to explain their options. He was not provided specifics of the problems that would need to be fixed at the Acero schools if CPS took over. The resolution appeared to be the only legal and financially viable way forward, he said.

CPS did not immediately say how much it would cost to keep the four campuses open; multiple board members said they didn’t know. CPS plans to provide an update on Acero at the meeting Thursday.

“This is obviously very damaging to our school communities and our families, especially [from] an organization that serves Latino families,” he said. “We can’t have Acero doing this willy-nilly. We need to figure something out in order to hold charters accountable for things like this.”

Carmona informed Acero parents in a Tuesday letter of the pending resolution.

“If the Board approves the amended resolution, the district will inform the affected families by Friday, February 28th, to begin the transition process and will provide information regarding options for families for next year,” Carmona wrote in the email obtained by Chalkbeat. “Throughout this process, CPS will continue to work in good faith to carry out the Chicago Board of Education’s vision.”

Acero Schools, once known as the UNO Charter School Network, opened the Paz campus in 1998. It was the network’s first and one of Chicago’s first charter schools after state law authorized the publicly-funded, independently-run schools. It ran into trouble about a decade ago with the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding bondholders, and CPS threatened to end the network’s charter in 2015 amid the fallout. But the school board ultimately renewed their agreement. In 2017, the charter network separated from the neighborhood organization and rebranded as Acero.

Acero announced in October it would close half of the schools it operates before the start of the 2025-26 school year due to a $40 million budget shortfall. Closing all seven schools would impact more than 1,800 students and about 200 staff members. Families and the Chicago Teachers Union — which represents staff at those schools — launched rallies and began attending board meetings to press CPS to prevent the closures.

But since then, parents say they’ve received no updates from Acero or CPS on what would happen next. At a board meeting earlier this month to review its agenda, several Acero parents and teachers pressed the district for more answers.

When Martinez told board members that CPS was “working diligently” on the issue, an audience member shouted back, “We’ve been hearing that for 126 days. There needs to be more.”

‘They kick us while we’re down'

Micha Thurston, an academic interventionist at Paz, said she felt blindsided when she learned that Paz was once again slated for closure. She’s taught at Paz for about a year. Despite hearing that families at other Acero schools on the chopping block were transferring out, just one family at Paz had left, she said.

“We’ve had parents that now have kids at our school, that went to our school, their siblings went to our school, their uncles and aunts went to our school,” Thurston said. “So they’re making it very clear that, like, they’re waiting it out with us.”

In its Feb. 4 email to staff, Acero said staff could enroll families for next school year, and that Acero would provide a disclosure to those families saying the network was still working with CPS on how it would keep the campuses open next year, according to an email obtained by Chalkbeat.

Thurston said the Paz campus just enrolled two students who had previously attended Acero schools, and their first day is Wednesday. Paz staff was planning a meeting this week with parent leaders to discuss strategies for boosting enrollment next year, she said.

It used to feel like CPS was on their side, Thurston said. Now it feels like Acero and CPS are teaming up.

“It just feels like every turn they kick us,” she said. “They kick us while we’re down, they kick us some more and then they stomp on us.”

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez out of Clark County superintendent search

2025-02-19T17:54:00+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is out of the running to become the next superintendent of Clark County Public Schools in Nevada.

Martinez was one of six candidates to make the shortlist, but the Clark County Board of School Trustees voted Tuesday night to advance only four to the next round of interviews scheduled for next week. That school board is hoping to hire a new superintendent in March.

Chicago’s appointed school board voted to fire Martinez without cause in December after growing hostility with Mayor Brandon Johnson. His contract allows him to stay on as CEO until June and he is currently suing the Chicago Board of Education over his ouster.

The new 21-member partially-elected school board will be in charge of appointing a new CPS CEO — after 30 years of the mayor doing so. Although Chicago is shifting away from mayoral control, Johnson could hold significant sway over who the school board selects to lead the nation’s fourth largest school district. He recently made his 11th appointment to the 21-member board and is aligned ideologically with at least three elected members.

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

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez one of six candidates for superintendent job in Clark County, Nevada

2025-02-12T21:18:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez is one of six candidates in the running to become superintendent of Nevada’s Clark County Public Schools.

The school board voted to fire Martinez without cause in December after growing hostility with Mayor Brandon Johnson. His contract allows him to stay on as CEO until June and he is currently suing the Chicago Board of Education.

But according to an agenda for a special meeting posted online, Martinez was one of 46 people to apply for the job leading the Nevada district, which is the fifth largest in the nation after CPS. The Clark County Board of School Trustees will meet Feb. 18 to discuss the slate of six candidates vying to be the next superintendent.

CPS declined to comment for this story.

In Martinez’s online application for the job, Martinez said Nevada is a state “I know and love.”

“It’s where my children were born and spent their earliest years,” Martinez wrote in the document included on the Feb. 18 agenda items. “To return to such a personally and professionally formative place is a unique opportunity I am excited to explore.”

Martinez adds that Clark County’s “commitment to fostering student success in one of the most dynamic and diverse educational environments resonates deeply with my values and my personal background as a first-generation student growing up in poverty.”

His application includes former Chicago Board of Education president Miguel Del Valle and former CPS CEO and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan as references.

Clark County’s previous superintendent resigned last February after what the school board described as an “amicable separation,” the Las Vegas Sun reported.

Clark County School District serves nearly 300,000 students. Forty-nine percent of Clark County’s students are Hispanic; 19% are white, nearly 16% are Black, and 6% are Asian American, according to district demographic data. Just over 16% of its students are English learners and just over 14% have Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, which outline services for students with disabilities.

The presentation outlines a slate of six candidates, which includes Jhone Ebert, Nevada state superintendent; Jason Glass, former commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Education; Joshua Starr, former superintendent of Montgomery Country Public Schools in Maryland; Jon Anzalone, superintendent of Camas School District in Washington; and Ben Shuldiner, superintendent of Lansing schools in Michigan.

The first round of interviews will be from Feb. 24-25, according to the Clark County presentation. The school board can choose to interview all six candidates for the first round but may forgo some of them, meaning it’s possible Martinez will not get a formal interview, according to the presentation.

The second round of interviews would happen from March 10-11, which include community forums. The Clark County school board is expected to hire a new superintendent at its March 13 meeting, but a spokesperson said that timeline could change.

Martinez’s firing from CPS followed months of disagreement between him and Johnson over how to alleviate the district’s financial pressures, including how to pay for upcoming labor contracts. Since the fall, the district has been mired in a leadership struggle that included the mass resignation of Johnson’s first appointed school board.

Martinez, who served as superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District before taking the helm at CPS, is no stranger to Nevada. Earlier in this career, he was the “superintendent in residence” for the Nevada Department of Education, where he was an education policy advisor for both the governor’s office and the state superintendent of instruction, according to his biography. At one point, Martinez was briefly deputy superintendent of Clark County schools, according to his online application.

Before then, Martinez was the superintendent of Washoe County School District in Reno from 2012-2014. The Washoe County school board fired Martinez for allegedly misrepresenting himself as an accountant, then claimed it only wanted an administrative leave, Reno Gazette Journal reported.

Martinez filed a wrongful termination lawsuit and said he did not misrepresent himself. Martinez settled the lawsuit for $500,000, the newspaper reported.

Correction: This story misstated the date in which the Clark County school board is expected to a hire a new superintendent. A spokesperson said the expected hire date is March 13.

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

Chicago Public Schools, teachers’ union turn to arbitrator to help reach new contract

2025-01-22T21:26:44+00:00

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A third-party labor arbitrator is hearing arguments from Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union Wednesday and Friday in an effort to reach an agreement on a new contract.

This fact-finding process involving an arbitrator has been used three times since it was established in state law in 2010. Twice, teachers still ended up going on strike. Under the timeline required by the law, the soonest a strike could now occur would be mid-April.

Once arbitrator Martin Malin reviews materials from CPS and CTU and issues his recommendations, which are nonbinding, both could accept his recommendations or either of them can reject the proposal. If one party rejects them, Malin’s report will be made public and after 30 days, the union can issue a 10-day strike notice.

The teachers’ contract expired last June. While the two sides have tentatively agreed to a host of issues, such as additional social workers and class size limits, key sticking points remain. The negotiations have taken place amid some of the most volatile moments for CPS leadership in the district’s history.

The slow pace of negotiations at the start of the school year picked up after the union requested fact-finding last October. The two agreed to instead keep working to get a deal done without the help of an arbitrator.

CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said talks then slowed to a halt in late December after the school board appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson took a dramatic vote to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who then filed a lawsuit requesting an injunction. A judge ruled that Martinez— who will remain on the job until June — is in charge of the contract negotiations, and that school board members cannot attend talks without his permission.

CPS officials disputed Gates’ comments. They said negotiations continue to progress, including over the past month, and that they “will continue to meet our labor partners at the negotiations table and bargain in good faith.”

But on Wednesday, Davis Gates expressed dissatisfaction with entering fact-finding and said starting this process shifts “what we talk about in bargaining only to finances, not what children need.”

Nevertheless, the union’s legal team filed an 80-page pre-hearing brief with Malin on Monday and outlined what they want him to consider when making his recommendations.

In a statement, the school district characterized its approach to bargaining as “fully student-centered” and aimed at preserving and building on “robust programs that have supported CPS’ impressive academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The district hired more than 7,000 additional staff using federal COVID relief money over the past four years, and there’s evidence that CPS students benefited from the district’s approach to using the aid with respect to reading. District officials have said they are committed to maintaining those positions even though the federal dollars are now gone.

CPS released its own pre-hearing brief asking Malin to consider the district’s financial position, current salaries and benefits, and its position on teacher prep time and evaluation procedures. The district continues to post additional updates about labor talks on its website.

Thad Goodchild, the CTU’s deputy general counsel, said Malin is expected to issue his recommendations for a settlement by mid-February.

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

Chicago Teachers Union alleges paycheck errors, asks new school board to help reach contract deal

2025-01-15T22:28:29+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union is calling for a systemwide audit of Chicago Public Schools’ payroll processes after reporting Tuesday that multiple union members are being underpaid this school year.

The union filed a grievance over the issue with CPS Tuesday, amid heated negotiations between CTU and CPS over the union’s new contract.

The grievance claims at least five unnamed staffers have not been paid according to their seniority with the district. In all five cases, the union alleges, employees have reached out to the district for help in correcting the issue, but CPS has not fixed their pay.

The examples include:

A school counseling office assistant, who has worked for a consecutive 19 years with CPS, should be paid at three levels higher than she is currently and should also receive more sick days, based on her seniority, the grievance said. The union estimates this employee is being underpaid by at least $8,000. She hasn’t heard back from the district since October, the grievance said.
An elementary school teacher should be paid $101,593 based on his seniority but his listed salary is $99,005, the grievance said. He has not heard from the district since reaching out in September.
A second elementary school teacher is being paid about $2,000 less than she should be, the grievance said. She reached out to CPS in September.
A high school teacher is in her 22nd year teaching for CPS but is being paid at a lower level. She reached out for help in September.
An elementary school counselor who earned her master’s degree should be placed at a higher salary level because of her additional degree, the grievance said. However, despite providing “relevant documentation” and sending multiple follow-up emails, she has not yet received a “substantive response,” according to the district.

Ben Felton, chief of talent for CPS, said the school district has run into “minor payroll mishaps” in the past, but he doesn’t have “any reason” to believe it’s a widespread issue.

“In a system of more than 45,000 employees, sometimes there are payroll errors, but of course we’re committed to looking into any issues or pay discrepancies,” Felton said. “We certainly would never deliberately shortchange our employees, and we appreciate the union bringing it to our attention.”

Asked why payroll representatives have allegedly not addressed employees’ complaints, Felton said the district has “not had the chance to look into it,” and Tuesday was the first time CPS leadership became aware of the complaints.

During a news conference Tuesday, Alex Rodriguez, a union delegate and middle school social studies teacher at Lasalle Language Academy, said he began hearing from colleagues in December that they were being underpaid, then realized his own pay was shorted. Rodriguez said he and his coworkers reached out to CPS for help, but the issue hasn’t been fixed.

Rodriguez was not one of the employees listed in the grievance, the CTU said.

“As an early career educator and father, every dollar counts as my family and I budget for our mortgage, groceries, and student loans,” Rodriguez told reporters.

The union has asked CPS to correct the reported salary issues and give them back pay. It is also asking the district to “perform a system-wide salary audit” and “review and implement changes” to the payroll and staffing services departments so that concerns about pay are “responded to and resolved within contractual timelines.”

Separately, the union urged the new partially-elected school board sworn in Wednesday to help the two sides reach a settlement.

Outside CTU headquarters Wednesday afternoon, union leaders walked through the outstanding sticking points laid out in a document they published last Friday.

Notably, the document shows the union reduced its proposal on annual raises to 4 or 5% each of the next four years, which is what CPS put on the table last September. But the union also wants guarantees from the school district that there will be no layoffs or furloughs.

The union continues to push for an agreement on issues it says are no-cost, such as adjusting the district’s teacher evaluation system and giving elementary school teachers more prep time.

CTU vice president Jackson Potter said the longer the negotiations drag on, there’s a risk of “reputational damage to both the school board and the schools themselves.”

“We need the school board to step in, use its advocacy, its power, its ability to, you know, make sure students get what they need and bring the parties together,” Potter said.

CTU also released a letter Stacy Davis Gates, the union president, sent to Board of Education President Sean Harden asking for “the opportunity to present to the Board in a public meeting a direct update” on the outstanding issues at the bargaining table. She acknowledged a court order barring school board members from negotiations without CPS CEO Pedro Martinez’s permission and wrote that the union “does not seek a negotiation session.”

Asked Wednesday about the state of negotiations, Felton, who is part of the district’s bargaining team, said both sides are making progress, including on bilingual education.

“This indecision, this back and forth, isn’t good for anybody — it’s not good for our teachers, it’s not good for our students, families,” Felton said. “So we’re at the table working relentlessly to try to get a deal that’s fair for our educators and fiscally responsible to the district.”

The two sides are also scheduled to engage with a third party fact-finder next week.

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.

Meet the new Chicago Board of Education

2025-01-14T22:29:28+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is changing. After the city held its first school board elections in history, 10 people elected by their communities will join 11 mayoral appointees to serve for the next two years.

The 21-member hybrid school board will be sworn in Wednesday, Jan. 15 — marking an historic shift in governance as 30 years of mayoral control in Chicago comes to a close.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer, will maintain significant influence for the next two years. Although he advocated for an elected school board alongside his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson has struggled with the move toward a more independent board as he pushes to transform the school district with the control he still maintains.

On Dec. 16 he announced 10 of his 11 appointments, and last week, told Chalkbeat that his final pick would be made soon.

Here are the people who will serve on the Chicago Board of Education.

Sean Harden will serve as Chicago Board of Education President.

Sean Harden, President of the Chicago Board of Education (appointed)

Serves at-large and represents all 77 community areas

Sean Harden, a South Side native, was picked to serve as school board president by Mayor Brandon Johnson in December. Harden worked for the city and Chicago Public Schools in the 2000s, before launching consulting firm, Harden Wright Consultant Group.

Harden worked under former CPS CEO Ron Huberman as deputy CEO of community affairs. Before that, he held a position as executive assistant for former Mayor Richard M. Daley, then moved on to deputy commissioner of human relations.

Harden is also chairman of three nonprofit organizations: Inner Voice, an organization focused on supporting people who are homeless; Friend Health, a health center that serves low-income and uninsured Illinois residents; and the Revolution Institute, which offers assistance with job training and placement for those in marginalized communities.

Ed Bannon and a map of District 1a.

Ed Bannon, District 1a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Edison Park, Irving Park, Dunning, and Norwood Park

Number of CPS schools: 22

Mayor Brandon Johnson announced on Dec. 16 he would appoint longtime community organizer Ed Bannon to serve the other half of District 1 on the far northwest side of the city. A resident of the Dunning neighborhood, Bannon currently serves on the Dever Elementary Local School Council as a community representative and ran for 38th Ward alderman in 2023 against incumbent Ald. Nick Sposato. His campaign fundraising committee is still active.

Bannon formerly served as the president of the Six Corners Association, according to Block Club Chicago, and organizes an annual family-friendly bike ride, called Tour de Dunning. According to the mayor’s office, he is the parent of three CPS graduates.

Jennifer Custer and a map of District 1b.

Jennifer Custer, District 1b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Montclare, Portage Park, Mayfair

Number of CPS schools: 20

A mom of two with a third on the way, Custer is an educator who worked as a teacher and dean of students in suburban school districts before taking a break to raise her children. A resident of the Montclare neighborhood, Custer will represent subdistrict 1b after winning a two-way race 51% to 49% against Michelle N. Pierre, a former charter school leader, district official, principal, and teacher.

Custer was supported by multiple labor unions and endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, though she has spoken out against the firing of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and short-term borrowing pushed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, an ally of the CTU, to pay for pensions and added contract costs for teachers and principals.

Ebony Deberry and a map of District 2a.

Ebony DeBerry, District 2a (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Rogers Park, West Ridge

Number of CPS schools: 18

In November, Ebony DeBerry won 42% of the vote in a four-way race to represent the far north lakefront on Chicago’s school board. The lifelong Rogers Park resident is the manager of educational initiatives at ONE Northside and a former CPS student, teacher, and parent.

DeBerry was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union and shares many of the same progressive views on education policy. On the campaign trail, she said she wants to increase parent involvement, expand after-school programming, and strengthen tutoring and counseling in CPS. She’s also a supporter of Sustainable Community Schools, a model in which schools partner with community organizations to provide wraparound services.

Debby Pope and a map of District 2b.

Debby Pope, District 2b (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Andersonville, Edgewater, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood

Number of CPS schools: 19

A retired CPS teacher, Debby Pope formed a campaign fundraising committee last spring, but decided not to run in the crowded District 2 race, telling Chalkbeat she would instead support DeBerry’s candidacy. In late October, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced her as one of his new appointees after the mass resignation of his first group of school board appointees amid tensions with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

Pope is a former member of the Chicago Teachers Union and has served in their House of Delegates. According to her bio on the Board of Education website, she is the parent of two CPS alumni and a grandparent of a current CPS kindergartener.

Norma Rios Sierra and a map of District 3a.

Norma Rios-Sierra, District 3a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Logan Square, Avondale, Kelvyn Park

Number of CPS schools: 23

Rios-Sierra is an artist and cultural events manager with Palenque LSNA, a neighborhood community group serving Logan Square that also works in schools helping provide after school programming and parent mentors.

According to the mayor’s office, Rios-Sierra is a CPS parent. She also runs a stained glass art studio in Logan Square where she teaches classes for kids and adults.

Carlos Rivas Jr. and a map of District 3b.

Carlos Rivas Jr., District 3b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Humboldt Park, Hermosa

Number of CPS schools: 32

Born and raised in Humboldt Park, Rivas graduated from Lowell Elementary, his neighborhood school, and Northside College Prep, one of the district’s top selective enrollment high schools. He taught through Teach for America and worked as an alumni counselor for the Noble Network of Charter Schools.

Rivas won a two-way race against another Humboldt Park native with 56% of the vote. He was endorsed by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and was part of the Democrats for Education slate of candidates.

Rivas Jr. currently serves as the director of public affairs for the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability and worked on the city’s response to the influx of migrants arriving from Texas as part of Operation Lone Star. He still lives in Humboldt Park and serves as a transitional foster parent, fostering unaccompanied migrant children who need to be placed in Spanish-speaking households before they are sent to an adult sponsor.

Karen Zaccor and a map of District 4a.

Karen Zaccor, District 4a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Uptown, Buena Park, Lakeview

Number of CPS schools: 15

Karen Zaccor, a longtime community organizer and Uptown resident, is one of the mayor’s appointees to the new school board. She was a CPS teacher for 28 years and most recently taught at Uplift Community High School in Uptown, a school she co-founded, before her recent retirement. She also raised a daughter who graduated from CPS.

Zaccor has used her advocacy efforts to push for an elected school board, establish full-day kindergarten, and stop school closures. She ran unsuccessfully for school board and was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union as well as 46th Ward Ald. Angela Clay.

Ellen Rosenfeld and a map of District 4b.

Ellen Rosenfeld, District 4b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Lincoln Park, Lakeview

Number of CPS schools: 18

Ellen Rosenfeld, a former teacher and mother of four, held various education-related roles before running for school board.

Rosenfeld, originally from St. Louis, taught for five years on the city’s South Side. She later joined the Local School Council at Bell Elementary School, where her children attended. For the past seven years, she worked as a family and community engagement specialist at CPS, which involves communicating with families at forums or public meetings.

Rosenfeld has since quit that job in order to serve on the school board.

Rosenfeld beat her five opponents with 41.6% of the vote. She raised the second largest amount of campaign cash in her district, with close to $187,000, as of late October. Rosenfeld was endorsed by state lawmakers Rep. Ann Williams and Sen. Robert Martwick, who were behind legislation to create the elected school board, as well as multiple Chicago alderpeople, Cook County commissioners and U.S. Rep. Jan. Schakowsky. She was was part of the Democrats for Education slate of candidates.

Jitu Brown and a map of District 5a.

Aaron “Jitu” Brown, District 5a (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Austin, Ukrainian Village, West Town

Number of CPS schools: 38

Aaron “Jitu” Brown, who grew up on the South Side, lives in Austin. His son attends Kenwood Academy High School.

As the only person on the ballot for District 5, Brown won 100% of the vote. He was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union and got an early vote of confidence from Mayor Brandon Johnson, who Brown considers a friend. Brown raised about $55,000 in campaign funds.

Brown is a longtime community organizer who, over the past two decades, has advocated for many school-related issues, including creating an elected school board and fighting school closures.

Since the 1990s, Brown said he helped run school youth leadership programs on the South and West sides. He also volunteered for and eventually oversaw the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, a progressive advocacy group focused on several issues, including education.

Brown is the national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, a progressive coalition of organizations that advocates for improving schools through “community-driven” approaches and is against privatization.

Michilla Blaise and a map of District 5b.

Michilla “Kyla” Blaise, District 5b (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: West Town, West Loop, Garfield Park, North Lawndale

Number of CPS schools: 62

Michilla Blaise, who was appointed to the board in October after the entire previous board resigned, grew up in Chicago and attended Catholic schools. Blaise used to live on the North Side but said she moved with her children — who attend Kenwood Academy High School — to her mother’s apartment building in East Garfield Park.

Blaise launched a career in politics when she went to work for former 46th Ward Ald. Helen Schiller.

She later started her own political consulting firm. She is currently chief of staff for Cook County Board Commissioner Frank Aguilar and is also board secretary for Westside Justice Center, a legal services nonprofit organization.

Blaise ran for school board last year against fellow board member Aaron “Jitu” Brown before dropping out of the race.

Anusha Thokatura and a map of District 6a.

Anusha Thotakura, District 6a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Streeterville, River North, Wicker Park

Number of CPS schools: 14

Despite finishing second in the November election, Anusha Thotakura is one of Mayor Johnson’s picks to serve on the school board. As the recently-promoted executive director of Citizen Action/Illinois, Thotakura leads a coalition of progressive organizations advocating on a number of different areas, including education.

Thokatura grew up in Chicago’s northwest suburbs and worked as a middle school math teacher in San Jose, California through Teach for America before returning to Illinois. A resident of River West, she was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union and said on the campaign trail she would be focused on early childhood education, expanding after-school programming, and improving school facilities.

Jessica Biggs and a map of District 6b.

Jessica Biggs, District 6b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Englewood, Greater Grand Crossing, Woodlawn and Hyde Park

Number of CPS schools: 37

Former CPS principal and current CPS parent Jessica Biggs won a three-way competition with 45% of the vote in November. She ran as an independent candidate and raised the least amount of money in her race. Still, Biggs got the endorsement of progressive alderwoman Jeanette Taylor.

Biggs left CPS after serving as principal for six years at Burke Elementary in Washington Park. According to a report by WBEZ in 2018, she was fired for directing staff members to mark students tardy when they would have been marked as absent for half a day. Biggs said her departure from the district should not color her time as a leader in CPS.

During her campaign, Biggs said she would prioritize working with state lawmakers to fully-fund the state’s evidence-based funding formula and work to ensure strong neighborhood schools.

Emma Lozano will represent District 7a.

Emma Lozano, District 7a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Little Village, Pilsen, Near West Side

Number of CPS schools: 46

A pastor and long time immigration rights activist, Emma Lozano has fought for sanctuary policies in Chicago and elsewhere. Mayor Brandon Johnson named her last month as one of his picks to serve on the school board and called her a “champion for bilingual education and immigrant rights.”

Yesenia Lopez and a map of District 7b.

Yesenia Lopez, District 7b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Gage Park, Brighton Park, McKinley Park, Bridgeport

Number of CPS schools: 33

A former Latino outreach director for Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s campaign, Yesenia Lopez now works as an executive assistant for the Illinois Secretary of State. A Gage Park resident, Lopez graduated from Pickard Elementary School and Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen and earned a degree in political science and gender studies from DePaul University.

Lopez won a three-way race to represent the south west side with 56% of the vote. She had the early endorsement of Congressman Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, a longtime progressive politician in Chicago and one of the first Latinos elected to the City Council. Lopez does not have children, but has volunteered and worked in several schools in her community.

Angel Gutierrez and a map of District 8a.

Angel Gutierrez, District 8a (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Garfield Ridge, West Lawn, Marquette Park, Clearing, Midway Airport

Number of CPS schools: 29

A resident of the Garfield Ridge neighborhood, Angel Gutierrez handily won a two-way race in November against Felix Ponce with 63% of the vote. A non-profit consultant, Gutierrez has experience in governance, fundraising, strategic planning, and management. He worked in fundraising roles at Chicago Hope Academy, a Christian high school on the west side, and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

On the campaign trail, Gutierrez said he would advocate for financial stability, school choice, and campus safety. He was endorsed by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and was part of the Democrats for Education slate of candidates.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has not yet appointed someone to serve District 8b.

TBD, District 8b (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Back of the Yards, West Lawn, Bridgeport

Number of CPS schools: 36

The mayor has not yet selected an appointee to serve in this position.

Frank Niles Thomas and a map of District 9a.

Frank Niles Thomas, District 9a (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Auburn Gresham, Englewood, Canaryville

Number of CPS schools: 47

A Johnson appointee last October, Thomas is a CPS graduate, a U.S. Air Force veteran and the father of four CPS graduates. He led the Department of Streets and Sanitation in the 21st Ward and the local school council for Dunne Elementary, where he also founded a mentoring program.

In coming onto the board, Thomas touted his experience handling contract negotiations and other labor-management issues.

Therese Boyle and a map of District 9b.

Therese Boyle, District 9b (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Beverly, Morgan Park, Pullman, Roseland

Number of CPS schools: 46

Boyle is a retired educator with 35 years of experience as a CPS school psychologist and teacher. An independent candidate in the school board race, she also ran unsuccessfully to lead the Chicago Teachers Union in 2019. In November, she won a four-way contest with 36% of the vote.

Boyle, a mother of two CPS teachers, has said the district should step up efforts to recruit and retain seasoned educators — and strike a balance in supporting both neighborhood and selective enrollment or magnet schools. She also wants to focus on improving students’ academic achievement and mental health and on balancing the district’s budget.

Che 'Rhymefest' Smith and a map of District 10a.

Che “Rhymefest” Smith, District 10a (elected)

Neighborhoods served: Kenwood, Oakland, Hyde Park, South Shore, Woodlawn

Number of CPS schools: 33

Smith is an award-winning musician, community activist, and former aldermanic candidate. Smith, who largely self-funded his school board bid, has said his priorities are boosting arts, science and mental health programs in CPS, growing partnerships with nonprofits and other local organizations, and weeding out waste in the district’s budget. He won a competitive four-way race in November with 32% of the vote.

Smith, who co-founded a youth outreach nonprofit named Art of Culture, also would like to see more student involvement in district decision-making. Late last year, he spoke out forcefully against Martinez’ firing.

Olga Bautista and a map of District 10b.

Olga Bautista, District 10b (appointed)

Neighborhoods served: Avalon Park, Altgeld Gardens, Chatham, East Side, Hegewisch, Pullman, South Chicago

Number of CPS schools: 56

Bautista, an environmental activist on Chicago’s Southeast Side, was one of the board members Johnson appointed in October following the previous board’s resignations. The mother of two CPS students and a former aldermanic candidate, she is the co-executive director of Southeast Environmental Task Force. She has also served as a mentor in the youth organization Rebel Bells and as community leadership director for Our City Our Voice, a civic engagement nonprofit.

She has said she is passionate about fully funding the district’s schools and promoting more environmentally friendly school buildings through the Green New Schools initiative.

This story has been updated to clarify Jennifer Custer will represent subdistrict 1b.

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.

Here are the remaining sticking points in contract talks between CPS and CTU

2025-01-04T00:34:45+00:00

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After eight months of contentious talks that cost CEO Pedro Martinez his job, Chicago Public Schools teacher contract negotiations are entering a decisive phase.

The union and the district provided separate bargaining updates late Friday afternoon suggesting they are making some progress — and both sides said they agreed to pause a neutral fact-finding process that started in October.

The district and union both said they have reached tentative agreements to expand the number of Sustainable Community Schools to 70 over the next four years, hire more English learner teachers and other staff, and jointly look for ways to offer housing help to homeless students.

But many sticking points remain, and union leaders this week accused Martinez of standing in the way of a final deal, saying progress at the bargaining table stalled after a judge ruled on Dec. 24 that the CEO remains in charge of negotiations during his six remaining months on the job.

“The fact that we don’t have a yes now is because of one person, and only one person,” said CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, citing alignment between their proposals and the district’s new five-year strategic plan.

On Friday, Martinez and other district leaders forcefully rejected the idea that the district has blocked progress, countering that in fact much headway has been made.

Martinez had accused school board members, appointed by former CTU employee turned Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, of trying to hijack the process after they voted to fire him without cause late on Dec. 20, the Friday night before the district’s two-week winter break.

CPS officials stressed again that they are pushing back against proposals that the district simply cannot afford amid massive looming deficits — or ones that would hamstring school leaders or affect the amount of time students spend learning core subjects.

“If we overextend ourselves today,” Martinez said at a Friday evening press conference, “it will be our children and our staff who will pay for it tomorrow.”

Here’s a look at some of the remaining disagreements.

Prep time for elementary teachers

For months, the two sides have clashed over a union proposal to give teachers more time during the school day to prepare lessons while students spend extra time in enrichment classes. Davis Gates said Friday there was finally movement but not a formal proposal.

“We are engaged in a discussion that may hopefully get us closer to an elementary school day that provides our young people with a more rounded school day that includes art, music, physical education, instrumental music, choral music, just a wide variety of opportunities,” she said.

CPS officials have said the district is already a leader in providing significant preparation time, with 330 minutes per week on average compared with 240 minutes in New York City and 90 in San Diego. They say they are unwilling to cut back on core instruction, especially at a time when students are still recovering from the academic toll of the pandemic.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, stressed that shortening time for core instruction remains a no-go for the district, and the two sides are exploring new ways to add more prep minutes, including the possibility of lengthening the school year.

In some ways, the disagreement harkens back to 2012, when the district lengthened the school day to seven hours for elementary schools and seven-and-a-half for high schools — a key campaign promise and significant win for former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The change was possible because the district and union agreed that elementary teachers could start their day when students do — removing 30 minutes of prep time that they previously had. The union pushed for getting those 30 minutes back in 2019 but were unsuccessful.

Amount of annual raises

The union opened negotiations by asking for 9% raises annually. CPS countered with 4% to 5% per year. The district says that thanks to these raises, the average teacher in the district would make $115,000 or more a year by the end of the contract in four years. The district has also agreed to health coverage increases at no cost to teachers, whom officials have stressed are the highest paid among colleagues in large districts, except in New York City.

A union update to members this week called the district’s counterproposal “a decent initial offer.” But they are still pushing for additional pay improvements that they argue will help keep veteran educators in the district. And they are upset CPS won’t guarantee that paying for the raises won’t trigger layoffs or furloughs.

CPS officials have noted that the district is once again facing a structural deficit of roughly $500 million, which was papered over the past four years with federal COVID relief money and is slated to balloon to almost $1 billion in the coming years even before teacher contract costs are factored in.

Martinez said Friday that the CTU is still demanding 6% raises in the first two years and 5% the second two years of the contract, but he said, “We need to maintain our current proposal for the fiscal health of the district.”

Additional staff and class size limits

The union’s latest email said they have come close to reaching agreements on staffing social workers, librarians, tech coordinators, and bilingual teacher assistants, but the two sides are still bargaining over additional hires and job security for them. Davis Gates said Friday the two sides appear close to an agreement on class size caps in the early grades and high school, but remain stuck on what the limit should be in the middle grades.

In an email to parents, district officials again touted that they created roughly 7,000 new positions during the pandemic, even as enrollment dipped — an investment that officials say helped spur academic recovery and a return to relative normalcy for schools. They say they are concerned about maintaining that higher level of staffing without the federal COVID aid that helped power it — even before adding more jobs in response to union demands.

“Protecting those investments as we move into a tough budget season is a top priority for our CEO and our bargaining team,” said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer.

The district said it has agreed to add several hundred positions that reflect an increase in the number of students with disabilities and language needs, including English learner teachers, case managers, social workers, and more.

Teacher evaluations and curriculum autonomy

How teachers are evaluated changed in the CTU contract under Emanuel’s administration more than a decade ago — at the height of a national conversation about the issue. Emanuel and many pro-education reform leaders pushed for teachers’ performance evaluations to be tied to student performance and the federal government under then-President Barack Obama incentivized districts and states to do so. What resulted was a new CPS system for evaluating educators called REACH, based in part on a test that students take at the start and end of each school year.

Though many educators and administrators find the new system helpful, some have worried it’s too punitive and can turn teachers away from the profession. The CTU is pushing to curb REACH now, including less frequent evaluations, pointing to research showing that Black educators and even white teachers in predominantly Black schools tend to get lower marks.

CPS says REACH remains an important way of holding schools accountable and ensuring educators improve their work, though the district is open to changes such as providing more mentoring to educators in high-poverty schools. It has also pushed back against a union proposal that would allow teachers to select their own curriculums. Some principals and the district’s principals union have also spoken out against that and other proposals they say will hamper school leaders’ ability to set a unified vision for their campuses.

“Strong schools are only possible with strong leaders,” Chkoumbova said.

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.

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 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.

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 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 .

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 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 buildings

2024-09-19T10:00:00+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education owns more than 800 school buildings, annexes, and other property.

The average age of a Chicago public school building is 83 years and 70 schools operate in facilities built before 1900. The oldest building — James Ward Elementary — was built in 1874 and is 149 years old.

According to the district’s most recent Educational Facilities Master Plan, it would cost $14.4 billion to update and repair all of Chicago’s public school buildings, and of that, $3 billion is considered critical.

Across the nation, school buildings are considered public infrastructure owned by the community and decisions about facilities upgrades and construction typically filter through elected officials who sit on the local school board.

Explaining CPS

Aging buildings can be a major challenge, especially in urban school districts with large real estate portfolios. In Chicago, decisions about what schools to repair and rebuild each year have been voted on by the school board, but are developed and proposed by district officials, the mayor, and other elected officials, such as city aldermen and state representatives. In the past, the process has been criticized for being inequitable and lacking transparency.

Decisions about what schools to repair and rebuild each year can be fraught and in Chicago, the process has been criticized for being inequitable and lacking transparency.

For decades, the mayor and to some extent other elected officials, such as local aldermen or state lawmakers, have controlled the purse strings when it comes to when and where to build new or repair old schools. Still, the Chicago Board of Education must vote to approve school construction projects and the financing that makes them possible.

That means school board members who will be elected by communities starting this November could influence decisions around school construction. Some school board candidates have already made updating school facilities a core part of their platform.

How does student enrollment impact CPS facilities?

Chicago Public Schools calculates how much each school’s building is being used and labels them using one of three categories: underutilized, efficient, and overcrowded.

Of the roughly 500 school buildings CPS labels with a utilization rate, 287 are tagged as underutilized, 179 are deemed efficient, and 26 are considered overcrowded.

Some have argued that 70% is not a fair cutoff for efficiency and overstates how much of a building is being used. Still, 172 schools are considered less than 50% utilized and 35 are less than 30%.

The district’s utilization data is seen by some as a lightning rod because it was used to inform which 50 schools would close in 2013. Chicago has not closed schools since then, with the exception of four high schools in Englewood, which were replaced by a new $85 million state-of-the-art STEM school in 2019.

Despite an effort by state lawmakers to extend a moratorium on school closings in Chicago to 2027, the school board will be allowed to shutter buildings beginning Jan. 15, 2025 when the new, 21-member, partially-elected school board will be sworn in.

Chief Operating Officer Charles Mayfield said “a conversation needs to happen” with communities regarding enrollment and school facilities because “everything has a cost to it.”

Low enrollment is more of a challenge facing neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. District data indicates many school-aged children in those areas travel to other communities for school, leaving their local neighborhood schools with fewer students. Under the district’s old budgeting formula, this created a cycle of disinvestment where schools losing students would have to cut staff, which would lead to more students leaving.

For roughly a decade, Chicago’s appointed school board approved closing a handful of schools annually and opening new ones at the same time as it created a school choice system with a variety of specialty schools families could choose in lieu of their zoned schools.

How do school building repairs happen in Chicago Public Schools?

In 2011, state lawmakers passed a law requiring Chicago Public Schools to develop an Education Facilities Master Plan every five years. The district issued its most recent plan in 2023, with an interactive map that allows the public to search school utilization and facility needs.

These reports provide a snapshot of the district’s overall real estate footprint, deferred maintenance, and enrollment patterns. But they do not spell out which schools might be prioritized for capital upgrades.

Chicago’s school board members approve capital projects and the borrowing that often makes them possible.

A Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s facility needs data found that some school board districts are facing much higher facility needs than others.

Where does CPS get school infrastructure money?

Chicago Public Schools develops a capital plan every year to determine which building construction and improvement projects it will undertake.

These capital projects are supported mostly by tax dollars collected by the school district or state, but several other sources of taxpayer money get dedicated to school projects every year. The two most notable sources of funding are tax-increment financing — or TIF — districts and the Chicago School Building and Improvement Fund tax levy.

The tax levy has been authorized by the state legislature since 2002, but it wasn’t until 2015 that it was proposed by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and approved by the City Council. It funded nearly $1 billion in capital projects beginning in 2017. Annual revenue collected by the levy continues to pay off the bonds that paid for those projects.

City Council also routinely dedicates money from special tax-increment financing districts to school infrastructure projects. This money regularly pays for new playground equipment, athletic fields, and critical building repairs.

Aldermen control where TIF money – sometimes referred to as a ”slush fund” or “shadow budget” – gets spent and areas with more development tend to have more TIF money available to spend. This can lead to inequities across the city, leaving schools in some areas waiting longer for new playgrounds or updated school facilities. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of TIF money and plans to end most of these special taxing districts over the next several years.

A report issued in 2022 flagged the financing of school construction projects as one of several financial entanglements the school board has with City Hall.

Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Modern Schools Across Chicago program issued bonds backed by city and school district funds to spend $1 billion building 17 new facilities and renovating two others, mostly on the South and West Sides.

In 2013, then-mayor Emanuel closed 50 schools and mothballed or sold off school facilities in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods. In 2015, he passed an annual $45 million property tax levy for school construction to bankroll building new annexes in overcrowded areas. The district is still paying off debt from these projects using the school capital improvement tax levy.

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot allocated more than $215 million in special tax-increment financing dollars to fix up aging buildings. Her CPS administration focused their capital spending on adding pre-K classrooms, technology upgrades, and building accessibility required under the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA.

Johnson has yet to take on any major school capital projects. Chicago Public Schools put forward a relatively small $155 million capital budget shortly after he took office and a $611.1 million capital budget for the 2024-25 school year mostly focused on critical repairs and updates.

On the campaign trail, Johnson promised a “Green Schools Facilities Plan” that would focus on making school buildings more energy efficient, installing solar panels, and expanding composting and community gardening at schools. But there’s not been much movement on such a plan.

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

Explaining Chicago Public Schools: The employees

2024-09-17T10:00:01+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is one of the state’s largest employers — with more than 41,000 people on staff as of June 30, 2024.

On top of that, the city’s more than 100 public charter schools, which operate on contracts approved by the school board, employ thousands of additional workers.

Explaining CPS

Although student enrollment has declined, the number of teachers, principals, school support staff, and central office administrators directly employed by the school district has increased — growing from around 36,000 staff five years ago to more than 41,000 in the 2023-24 school year.

As of June 30, 2024, more than 47,000 positions were budgeted. However, not all of these positions are filled each year and often schools operate with vacancies and long-term substitutes instead of full-time teachers.

The mix of school staff has also shifted.

Last school year, there were about 19,500 teachers, more than 7,500 teaching assistants, 1,500 counselors and social workers, 1,200 school security guards, 1,000 custodians, and 1,000 principals and assistant principals.

While the number of teachers and school leaders has remained relatively flat over the past decade, the number of school social workers and counselors increased in recent years after the Chicago Teachers Union bargained for more of these positions in its 2019 contract negotiations.

A Chalkbeat analysis of district staffing records also found an increase in Special Education Classroom Assistants, or SECAs, from around 2,500 in 2014 to more than 6,000 at the start of last school year. In addition, the number of school nurses roughly doubled in the past decade — from around 300 to just over 600 — and the number of custodians jumped recently from around 700 to more than 1,000.

Most Chicago schools do not have a full-time librarian and haven’t since their ranks dwindled a decade ago. The Chicago Teachers Union has said this is a position it intends to advocate for in contract talks.

Which unions represent Chicago Public Schools’ employees?

The Chicago Board of Education has 10 active collective bargaining agreements with various unions representing school district employees.

CPS principals are also taking steps toward bargaining a contract with the district after Illinois lawmakers passed legislation to allow school leaders to unionize.

The three largest unions that CPS employees belong to are:

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which represents more than 24,000 teachers, counselors, social workers, and nurses.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, which represents about 11,000 school support workers, including custodians, special education classroom assistants, bus aides, security officers, crossing guards, and parent-workers.
UNITE-HERE Local 1, which represents more than 2,000 lunchroom workers.

The CTU is one of the largest and most powerful unions in Chicago – and one of the most influential teachers unions across the country.

After 15 years of organizing around broader progressive social issues, a former CTU organizer is Chicago mayor, paving the way for a potentially less contentious relationship with district management.

The shift comes after CTU went on strike twice — in 2012 for seven days under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel and again in 2019 for 12 days under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot — after acrimonious public disagreements over the future of the city’s public schools.

In the past, district leaders and their lawyers would work to reach a tentative agreement with the union and their lawyers. Once that happened, it would go to union members for a ratification vote and then the school board would vote to approve the deal.

School board members have sat at the bargaining table in the past. Under Emanuel, school board president David Vitale participated in contract talks and provided updates to the public. However, the district’s bargaining team under Lightfoot did not involve anyone from the school board.

Elected officials have also, in the past, weighed in publicly about the prolonged cancellation of classes or in support of the teachers.

Once a deal is made, the school board typically has to amend the budget to account for the cost of promises made in the bargaining agreement, such as salary raises or additional staff.

The CTU contract expired on June 30 and the school board approved a $9.9 billion budget for the 2024-25 school year in July. By August, talks between the district and union had made little progress after a series of public bargaining sessions over the summer.

Earlier this year, the district reached an agreement with SEIU Local 73 after more than a year of bargaining on behalf of school support staff, including custodians, special education classroom assistants, bus aides, security officers, and crossing guards. The deal includes 4-5% pay raises each year of the agreement and is set to end June 30, 2027.

Charter schools and other third party contractors

Thousands of workers also work in public schools in Chicago, but are not captured in the district’s staffing data.

This includes the staff at more than 110 charter schools serving nearly 55,000 students.

Charter schools are publicly funded, but privately managed. The school board evaluates and votes on whether to renew or award new charter school agreements, but these schools otherwise operate independently from many of the school district’s rules and policies, including union contracts.

However, many charter school teachers are unionized and represented by the CTU, though each charter network has its own contract.

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

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, 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

Explaining Chicago Public Schools: The students

2024-09-16T10:00:00+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is responsible for the education of about 323,000 students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools, currently the nation’s fourth largest school district.

The vast majority are students of color, with 47% identifying as Hispanic, 35% as Black, 11% as white, and 4.5% as Asian American. About 70% come from low-income households, 16% are students with disabilities, and 24% are learning English.

These demographics shifted over the past decade — as Black families left Chicago, birth rates declined, and new immigrants arrived.

The 2023-24 school year was the first time since 2011 that CPS saw an increase in student enrollment with 323,251 children enrolled as of the 20th day of school, when the district takes its official count. That was 1,185 more students than the year prior.

What’s more, Chicago’s public school enrollment as of mid-April 2024 rose by more than 5,000 students to 328,971, according to district officials and a Chalkbeat analysis of preliminary enrollment data from the spring.

The proportion of Black students has declined, while the number of Latino, white, and Asian American students has grown. Chicago has also seen a large decline in students who come from low-income households. Although still a large majority of the CPS student body, low-income students now make up 71% of enrolled CPS students as opposed to 86% in 2011 – a decline of 15 percentage points.

As the Chicago Board of Education shifts from being appointed by the mayor to elected by voters, the demographics of each school board district can be a window into what elected representatives advocate for and what matters to CPS families.

Although each school board district represents 275,000 Chicagoans, the number of schools and students attending those schools varies significantly. For example, District 5 has 105 schools within its boundaries, while District 4 has just 34. And the racial demographics of students enrolled in the schools within each can vary widely.

CPS enrollment changes over time

The number of students in CPS has been declining steadily for years. Thirteen years ago, 400,000 students were enrolled in CPS, but in recent years that number has hovered around 320,000, according to district enrollment data. In 2022, Chicago became the nation’s fourth largest school district after decades as the third largest.

Demographic shifts have sometimes coincided with major events.

In the wake of Chicago closing 50 schools in 2013, enrollment dropped. But the sharpest declines occurred between 2016 and 2018, when the district lost approximately 10,000 students each year. Between 2019 and 2020, when the pandemic shut down in-person schooling, enrollment decreased by nearly 15,000 students.

In 2020, with the emergence of COVID and virtual learning, total enrollment in the U.S. dropped by 3% in the first year of the pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 2021, nationally, enrollment numbers stabilized, but in Chicago, the decline continued, with another 10,000 students leaving CPS.

Declining enrollment seems to have stopped in the past school year, as waves of new migrant families have arrived from the southern border.

How student racial demographics have shifted

Chicago Public Schools serve mostly Black and Latino students, but the share of each racial group has shifted over time.

In 2010, Black students made up 43% of CPS and Latino students were 44%. Today, Black students are 35% of CPS students and Latino students are 47%.

Chicago’s overall Latino population has also edged out Black Chicagoans as the second largest ethnic group in the city, making up 29% of the city’s population in 2023, according the U.S. Census bureau’s estimates.

The number of Latino students in CPS steadily increased from 2010 to 2013, but despite the city’s growing population of Latino residents, Latino enrollment numbers began to decline in 2014, just after 50 CPS schools were closed primarily in majority-Black areas on the South and West sides in 2013.

Latino student enrollment dipped by its largest margin — about 2,700 students — in 2016 as well. But since then, the number of Latino students enrolled in CPS had steadily declined by about 3,000-5,000 students each year.

That is, until the 2022-23 school year, which saw an increase of 1,959 Latino students.

There have been less dramatic increases in the number of White and Asian American students, except during the pandemic years when enrollment across nearly all ethnic groups declined. The number of Asian American students, who make up 4.5% of CPS students today, increased by 1,704 students overall since 2010, with little variation over the past decade and a half. Asian Americans are about 7% of Chicago’s population.

The number of white students in CPS also increased by 1,291 students since 2010, steadily increasing until 2020 and now inching back towards pre-pandemic levels. Although white Chicagoans are the largest ethnic majority in the city, white students only make up 11% of CPS students.

Fewer CPS students from low-income households, more English learners

Chicago Public Schools is serving fewer low-income families than it did a decade ago — in part due to gentrification in some neighborhoods and less public and affordable housing.

The number of CPS students who have Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs – programs and services for students who require extra support – has also seen an overall increase of about 2,500 students. However, the number of students with IEPs has bounced back and forth between 49,000 and 52,000 for the last decade and a half and that trend continues with the 2023 enrollment numbers at 51,910.

The group with the largest increase in enrollment since 2011 is English language learners. Even as enrollment has declined overall, the number of English language learners has increased by nearly 16,000 students since 2011.

Students who speak multiple languages now make up 25% of CPS students. With plans to expand dual-language programs, the district is working to keep up with the influx, but designated bilingual educators working with students who are recent migrants say they’re overwhelmed and need resources beyond staffing.

Except for dips in enrollment in 2016 and 2020, that number has steadily increased every year since 2011. The largest increase occurred just last year, when nearly 8,000 additional students were identified as English language learners.

These factors can play a role in a school’s performance and most of these designations also drive funding and policy decisions. Chicago’s Board of Education announced this spring that it is moving away from a system of budgeting where dollars mostly follow students, in favor of a new needs-based model that considers factors such as the number of students who are homeless, low-income, English language learners, or have IEPs. The new model also takes into account a school’s diversity and the socioeconomics of its surrounding community.

Birth rates decline as pre-K expands

Chicago has been seeing fewer babies born every year since the early 1990s. The city’s decline matches a national downward trend in birth rates that began in 2007 around the time of the Great Recession.

Declining birth rates showed up roughly five years later in schools, as the number of incoming kindergarteners decreased annually, replacing a larger group of graduating seniors.

But while school enrollment has steadily declined overall, the district has spent millions on expanding its free public pre-K programs since 2020 and it seems to be paying off.

Pre-K enrollment reached a peak in 2019 at 14,300 students, before declining to 9,540 during the pandemic. Now, with 13,097 pre-K students enrolled during the 2023-24 school year, pre-K enrollment numbers are nearly at the same level they were in 2016.

Preschool enrollment has also seen an increase of about 2,578 students since the pandemic, but there’s still a way to go before reaching pre-pandemic preschool enrollment levels of just over 7,000 students.

Crystal Paul is a freelance reporter and editor.

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

Who are the Chicago school board candidates for the 2024 election?

2024-09-07T00:23:41+00:00

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Chicago school board candidates have submitted petitions for the city’s first school board elections on Nov. 5.

School board hopefuls need 1,000 valid signatures from residents of their district in order for their name to be printed on the ballot. The deadline to submit signatures was June 24 at 5p.m.

To learn more about the new school board districts and find out which one you live in, Chalkbeat created an interactive map.

Many candidates have also begun fundraising for their campaigns, reporting contributions to the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Here are the candidates running in each district, according to the Chicago Board of Elections.

This list will be updated.

District 1

Jennifer Custer, a CPS parent and former teacher, union leader, and school administrator in the Chicago suburbs
Michelle N. Pierre, a CPS parent and Local School Council member, executive director at New Leaders, a training program for school leaders, former charter school leader, and former district administrator in Cleveland

District 2

Ebony L. DeBerry, director of educational initiatives at ONE Northside, former CPS teacher, parent, and Local School Council member
Kate Doyle, a former special education teacher, co-founder and CEO of youth career development nonprofit KindWork, and Vice President of the Greater Rockwell Organization
Margaret “Maggie” Cullerton Hooper, a CPS parent, Local School Council member, and senior consultant for the Alliance for Black Equality PAC
Bruce Leon, founder of human resources firm and 50th Ward Democratic committeeperson, and a board member of Arie Crown Hebrew Day School

District 3

Jason C. Dónes, chief of people operations at non-profit Beyond 100K, former teacher and leader at Teach for America
Carlos A. Rivas Jr., a spokesperson for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and former alumni counselor at UIC College Prep, a Noble charter school

District 4

Kimberly Brown, a marketing professional, adjunct professor, and CPS parent
Andrew A. Davis, a nonprofit leader, CPS parent, and former LSC member
Thomas Day, a CPS parent, co-founder of Illinois Veterans for Change
Carmen Gioiosa, a CPS parent, Local School Council member, adjunct professor, former CPS administrator, and former CPS teacher
Ellen Rosenfeld, a family and community engagement manager at Chicago Public Schools, a CPS parent, and former CPS teacher
Karen Zaccor, a teacher at Uplift High School and former LSC member

District 5

Aaron “Jitu” Brown, a community organizer with Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, and a Dyett hunger striker

District 6

Jessica Biggs, a CPS parent and former teacher and school principal
Andre Smith, an entrepreneur and recent candidate for Illinois House 5th District
Anusha Thotakura, a deputy director at Citizen Action/Illinois and former teacher

District 7

Raquel Don, a CPS parent and Local School Council member
Yesenia López, a Latino outreach director with Gov J.B. Pritzker’s campaign
Eva A. Villalobos, an accountant and private school parent

District 8

Angel Gutierrez, chief advancement officer at Chicago Hope Academy, a private high school, and a former leader at Catholic Charities of Archdiocese of Chicago
Felix Ponce, a CPS music teacher and professional trombonist

District 9

Therese Boyle, a school psychologist and former candidate for CTU president
Miquel Lewis, acting director of Cook County Juvenile Probation & Court Services and former appointed member of Chicago Board of Education, current member of Special Education Advisory Committee
La’Mont Raymond Williams, chief of staff and general counsel to Cook County Commissioner Bill Lowry
Lanetta M. Thomas, a community activist

District 10

Robert Jones, a pastor at Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church and a Dyett hunger striker
Karin Norington-Reaves, a CPS parent and consultant, former candidate in Illinois’s 1st congressional district
Adam Parrott-Sheffer, a CPS parent, adjunct lecturer at Harvard, author, former principal in CPS and the Chicago suburbs, former district administrator in New York City
Che “Rhymefest” Smith, a Grammy-award winning songwriter, rapper and community activist

UPDATE: As of Friday, Sept. 6, the following candidates have voluntarily withdrawn or been removed from the ballot:

Chuck Hernandez, Republican committeeman of the 38th Ward on the city’s North West side and retired detective with the Chicago Police Department (District 1)
Daniel Steven Kleinman, community organizer and Local School Council member (District 2)
Kirk J. Ortiz, vice president of a private security company and former candidate for Illinois House District 4 (District 3)
Michilla “Kyla” Blaise, a CPS parent, chief of staff for Cook County Commissioner Frank J. Aguilar, political consultant, and public relations professional (District 5)
Anthony Hargrove, an associate director of the Back To Our Future program at nonprofit Breakthrough Urban Ministries and former dean at Chicago Public Schools (District 5)
Kernetha Jones, a retired CPS teacher (District 5)
Jousef M. Shkoukani, an attorney and founder of an education nonprofit Unified Under Hope (District 5)
Brenda I. Delgado, a CPS parent, vice president of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, and former Local School Council member (District 6)
Danielle Wallace, a community youth advocate and non-profit leader (District 6)
Felipe “Phil” Luna Jr., a management systems specialist for the Illinois Department of Public Health and Local School Council member (District 7)
Jesus Ayala Jr., chief of program and strategy operations at Metrosquash (District 7)
Darius Dee Nix, interim impact director for City Year Chicago, former CPS charter school teacher, former candidate in Illinois’s 1st congressional district (District 8)
Brittany Bailey Preston, a construction manager and Local School Council member (District 9)
Rosita Chatonda, nonprofit founder and teacher advocate, former CPS teacher and former teachers union organizer (District 10)
James M. Walton, a former school principal and administrator in CPS and the Chicago suburbs (District 10)
Nathaniel “Nate” Ward, director of community outreach & engagement for City Colleges of Chicago, CPS parent, and Local School Council member (District 10)

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

Chicago Public Schools inspector general departs

2024-08-28T15:48:02+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools Inspector General Will Fletcher resigned earlier this month, leaving an opening at the top of one of the nation’s largest school district watchdog agencies.

Over the past four years, Fletcher’s office investigated thousands of sexual misconduct complaints, among other high-profile cases. He stepped down to take a new position two years before his contract was due to expire in 2026.

Fletcher, who started a job this week at the Gateway Development Commission — a public transit agency run jointly by New York and New Jersey — said he had felt no pressure to find a new job and left the district only reluctantly.

“This job was especially important to me because I had a personal commitment to CPS as a former student and a CPS parent,” he said.

On Thursday, the school board is slated to pass a resolution acknowledging Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointment of Amber Nesbitt, Fletcher’s deputy who led his office’s sexual allegation unit, as acting inspector general while the mayor decides on a permanent replacement.

Fletcher’s departure, first reported by WTTW, came about four-and-a-half years after he was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He oversaw a number of inquiries that exposed significant misconduct in CPS and drove changes in the district.

His office cracked down on federal Paycheck Protection Program loan abuse by district employees and led district officials to keep better track of hundreds of thousands of laptops, tablets, and other devices bought during the pandemic.

His office also investigated automatic enrollment of all students into JROTC, or Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, at some high schools serving primarily Black students. This practice was brought to light in a 2021 Chalkbeat article. The district ended the practice after Fletcher’s investigation.

After taking over the inspector general’s office in 2020, Fletcher expanded the sexual misconduct investigation unit the district had launched two years earlier, following the publication of a Chicago Tribune series that exposed district mishandling of sexual harassment and abuse of students.

The unit opened more than 2,180 cases since its creation and fielded more than 400 complaints in fiscal 2023 alone. It has substantiated hundreds of complaints, resulting in discipline and criminal charges. The unit’s investigations included inquiries into a dozen employees at Marine Leadership Academy and the former head of Urban Prep Charter Academy, which along with other factors led the district to pull that school’s charter.

He came to oversee a team of 58 people with a $7 million budget, though some positions are now vacant or frozen as part of the district’s efforts to address a growing budget deficit.

Fletcher said overseeing the sexual misconduct and abuse unit has been one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

“It’s a truly unique office that gives students a voice,” he said.

He said his successor must continue the work of making the office more efficient and responsive to the public.

If the mayor’s office does not appoint a replacement to serve out the remainder of Fletcher’s term by Jan. 1, Chicago’s new, partly elected school board could approve a new inspector general when it takes over on Jan. 15, 2025.

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 .

CPS won’t guarantee busing for general education students this school year – but is piloting new strategies

2024-07-25T22:10:02+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t guarantee busing for general education students next school year, but officials are trying two new strategies to help more kids get to school.

Those strategies, officials said Thursday, include plans to adjust bell times at 36 district schools and piloting a program where buses pick students up at “hubs,” officials said.

The efforts are meant to help free up more buses to serve more students after the district cut service last year for about 5,500 general education students who were largely attending selective enrollment and magnet schools.

The district’s decision resulted in a constant drumbeat of criticism over the last school year from families who had lost busing. The policy even led some families to transfer out of their school.

CPS officials cited a bus driver shortage when it decided to only bus students with disabilities and those who are homeless, groups entitled to transportation under federal law. But CPS had been working to comply with a state corrective action plan imposed in 2022 that called for shorter bus rides for students with disabilities. The state closed that corrective action plan in April.

The district’s bus vendors transported just over 9,300 students last school year, with most of them students with disabilities. Another 3,600 students received a stipend to cover transportation costs. The district budgeted $146.3 million for student transportation last fiscal year, which ended on July 1, according to budget records.

CPS announced Thursday it will still offer stipends of up to $500 to students with disabilities who are eligible for transportation, but will now limit these to students who live at least five miles away from their schools. Officials said they made the change to save money and get more of these students on bus routes.

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, said the district is forecasting to enroll more students with disabilities next school year, which starts Aug. 26. CPS said the district intends to provide bus routes to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, or 504 plans call for busing, as well as students who are homeless who qualify for busing before launching the new efforts for general education students.

Last year, about 1,900 general education students who were previously eligible for busing also received Ventra cards upon request.

The bell time adjustments will allow bus vendors to cover more routes and increase the number of students they carry, according to CPS. For example, a bus could drop off kids at a school where the start time is 7:30 a.m., then pick up and drop off students to a school that starts at 8:45 a.m., a district official told the board.

The timeline for the “hub stop” pilot program was less certain. Officials said they hope to launch it during the first quarter of the school year. Under the model, students would get on buses to their school from another school. It was unclear how close these hubs would be to students’ homes.

Once the hub pilot program starts, students in “underserved communities” will be given initial access to the hubs, officials said.

It is “the district’s goal” to provide access to the hub stops to “all general education students who are eligible,” said Mary Ann Fergus, CPS spokesperson, in a statement.

Natasha Haque, a leader in the CPS Parents for Buses group, said parents are thrilled that the district will at least try to provide rides for general education students though families still face uncertainty weeks before the school year’s start. The group, which formed last year to advocate for more transportation options, had pushed for the idea of hubs as a way to make school bus routes more efficient.

“This is a vastly different message from CPS,” Haque said. “They are trying to fill all those empty seats on school buses, which they refused to do last year.”

Haque’s husband drove their sixth grade daughter from their Lincoln Park home to her gifted program on the South Side last school year, picking up another student bound for the same school on the way and logging as much as three-and-a-half hours on that commute every day. The husband, who works multiple jobs, had to adjust his work schedule to make the trips possible.

This fall, Haque’s daughter will start seventh grade on a campus much closer to their home, largely because of how tough commuting to school was on the family.

“It was a real struggle last year, with families taking many different modes of transportation,” she said.

Over the course of last year, the district said it held multiple hiring fairs and increased driver pay to attract more drivers, but saw little movement with those efforts.

“It is too early to say how one strategy, such as adjusting bell times or establishing the hub stops, will increase student bus riders as it is contingent on other factors, including the hiring of sufficient drivers,” said Fergus in a statement.

Mila Koumpilova contributed.

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

State ends scrutiny of Chicago Public Schools over long bus rides for students with disabilities

2024-07-22T21:35:01+00:00

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Citing the district’s progress, Illinois state education officials are no longer formally monitoring Chicago Public Schools to ensure that students with disabilities don’t have overly long bus rides to school, Chalkbeat has learned.

The state notified the district in April that it was ending a corrective action that required the district to “make every effort” to keep commute times for students with disabilities to less than an hour. The state imposed the monitoring in fall 2022, after district leaders acknowledged that roughly 3,000 students with disabilities had longer bus trips than that, with 365 of those students on trips longer than 90 minutes.

In its effort to comply with the state plan and deal with a bus driver shortage, the district cut busing for general education students at the start of last school year, and reserved seats for students with disabilities, as well students who are homeless — groups that are entitled to transportation under federal law. It offered free Ventra transit cards to general education students who would have previously been eligible for bus service, largely those attending selective enrollment and magnet programs.

The district was able to shorten bus times for most students with disabilities, but the ride lengths edged up over the course of the school year as more students with disabilities applied for bus service.

At the start of last school year, 47 students with disabilities were on commutes longer than an hour. By March, that number grew to 130 students; a district spokesperson did not immediately provide more recent data.

“As ISBE has noted previously, there are various challenges involved in limiting travel times in a large, urban school district,” state officials wrote in an April letter notifying CPS that ISBE closed the corrective action.

Even so, they wrote, CPS “made sufficient progress” and “substantially corrected this issue on a systemic level.”

A spokesperson for the ISBE did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Evan Moore said the district provided transportation to 9,356 students last school year, with a “vast majority” under an hour.

Federal mandates require public schools to serve students with disabilities, but not every Chicago public school has supports or resources to do so, especially for students with particular disabilities, such as those who are blind or deaf.

Whether or not a student with a disability gets bus service is determined in their Individualized Education Program.

Miriam Bhimani, one of the two people who filed the complaint that sparked the corrective action, said she doesn’t believe CPS has done enough to ensure students with disabilities are just as valued as other students.

“Without really addressing student assignments head on, we can still end up in situations where students are assigned a school that is very far from where they live,” Bhimani said.

The district remains under a separate corrective action plan focused on improving how students with disabilities are assigned to schools.

Moore said CPS is “continuing to explore and implement a comprehensive set of strategies” to provide transportation for students next school year, and that CPS will provide an update on busing later this summer. Officials announced in March that busing is not guaranteed next year for general education students.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@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 proposes $9.9 billion budget for next school year

2024-07-11T01:21:07+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is proposing a $9.9 billion budget for next school year that closes a roughly half-billion-dollar deficit mainly by cutting central office expenses — but does not yet include raises for teachers and principals whose unions are negotiating new contracts with the district.

The proposed budget includes a $149 million increase in funding for schools, driven by a $62 million increase for services for students with disabilities, as well as increases for charter schools and bilingual services, according to a district news release.

A spike in the capital spending plan — to $611 million — accounts for nearly all of the overall budget growth over last year’s $9.4 billion budget. In last year’s budget, district leaders budgeted an unusually low $155 million for buildings and put most projects on hold while they developed a long-term infrastructure blueprint.

CPS said it closed its budget gap by cutting $197 million at its central office departments, including for academic and operational costs. It also tapped additional federal and other grants, restructured its debt and reduced its short-term borrowing costs, and cut central office staff.

Budget data shows the district is proposing to eliminate 37 positions it describes as “citywide student support,” seven central office employees, and a school administrator. A central office hiring freeze will affect 200 positions, according to a spokesperson. Meanwhile, the district is adding another 800 school-based positions for the fall, including about 500 teachers.

“This budget very clearly puts teaching and learning front and center where it belongs,” said CPS CEO Pedro Martinez in a statement.

In a strongly worded statement, the Chicago Teachers Union criticized the draft budget, calling Martinez’s leadership “inadequate.” It faulted him for prioritizing a “fiscally responsible” image and for passing up on “opportunities for partnership and transformation presented by ongoing bargaining” with the union, though it did not specify what these opportunities might be. This past spring, Martinez and union leaders traveled to Springfield to jointly lobby state lawmakers for additional funding, but the push delivered only a fraction of the dollars CPS requested.

The details released by CPS Wednesday mark the first time the district has shared dollar amounts and comparisons to previous spending for its proposed budget. The proposal comes at a time when the district faces growing financial and political pressures. And it will likely need to be amended once district officials reach new contract agreements with the Chicago Teachers Union and the principals union, and the costs of educator salaries and benefits are finalized.

The district revised its deficit projection from nearly $400 million to $505 million due to rising health care costs and expenses on students with disabilities.

For the past four years, CPS benefited from $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief dollars. A Chalkbeat analysis earlier this year found roughly 7% of school budgets were supported by federal COVID dollars. The proposed budget released Wednesday spends the remaining $233 million in COVID aid.

And earlier this year, CPS unveiled a controversial new process for allocating money to each of its 500 campuses. It’s replacing the previous student-based budgeting system with one that focuses on baseline staffing positions. It used an Opportunity Index — a metric that combines student demographics, neighborhood characteristics, and other factors — to calculate these extra dollars.

Officials said that the approach resulted in more equitable budgets across the city. However, some magnet and selective enrollment programs said they ended up with tighter budgets that will make it hard to continue providing their distinctive programming.

The budget unveiled by the district Wednesday comes roughly a month later than usual in the cycle, and after the start of the fiscal year. Martinez has said that because of the new approach to budgeting for schools, officials wanted to take extra time to double-check their work and communicate with campuses and others.

The district said Wednesday that its student enrollment grew by more than 4,700 students during the course of this past school year to about 328,000 students. Enrollment grew slightly last fall amid the arrivals of thousands of migrant families after a decade of sharp declines.

The district noted Wednesday that compared with a year ago, it’s serving 12,000 more students who don’t have a stable place to live, 10,000 more English learners, and 4,000 additional students with disabilities.

The district released data on school budgets in late May, but it only included numbers of staff positions instead of dollar amounts as in previous years, making comparisons to the 2023-24 school year difficult.

District leaders had vowed to keep school funding steady or even increase it, saying that’s crucial to keep the momentum on a post-pandemic academic recovery, especially in reading, for which Chicago has gotten some national recognition.

The union negotiations mark another wrinkle for the budget proposal.

In the past, the school board has voted on an amended budget after a contract agreement was settled. Earlier this month, the union held a press conference to decry layoffs of about 330 support staffers it represents, even as the district vowed that it would rehire them and another 270 or so laid-off employees for positions on other campuses, or pay their salaries during the coming school year.

In an email update to parents this week, Martinez said CPS is reviewing more than 700 proposals submitted by the teachers union in April. But he pointed to no specific agreements so far, aside from a memorandum of understanding guaranteeing support staffer positions or pay. The district’s previous contract with educators expired at the end of June.

The district said Wednesday that it would adjust the budget to reflect added personnel costs after it reaches contract deals with the teachers union and a recently formed principals union.

The school board is slated to vote on the budget at its regular July 25 meeting. The district will host hearings on both its overall and capital budget next week.

Reema Amin contributed reporting.

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

Chicago schools that removed police officers saw slight drop in high-level discipline violations: study

2024-06-26T05:01:00+00:00

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Chicago high schools that removed police in the last few years saw a slight dip in the most serious types of student disciplinary violations, according to a new study released Wednesday.

The study, from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, comes as Chicago Public Schools plans to launch a new safety policy for the upcoming school year that will unilaterally remove school resource officers, or SROs, from all campuses.

The study’s authors looked at the district’s more than 80 CPS-run high schools, and focused on those that removed officers after the summer of 2020, when the Chicago Board of Education directed Local School Councils to decide if they wanted SROs on campus.

As of last school year, 39 high schools had on-campus police officers staffed by the Chicago Police Department, while 44 other schools had none, according to the study. Fourteen schools had voted since 2020 to remove them. The Board of Education plans to remove the remaining officers starting this fall.

The study’s authors examined different data points, such as discipline and how kids and teachers felt about their schools, before and after those campuses got rid of police officers.

“On average, on the whole, there weren’t that many changes or differences between schools that had removed SROs and schools that didn’t,” said Amy Arneson, senior research associate with the consortium. “And so the significant changes we did find were improvements.”

The authors found that schools that shed SROs saw small drops in high-level disciplinary infractions compared to the 2018-19 school year, when they still had officers. These incidents include student actions that are “very seriously” or “most seriously” disruptive or are illegal, such as threats or actual violence and anything involving alcohol, drugs, and weapons. High-level infractions generally rose across CPS between the 2018-19 and 2022-23 school years, the study said.

While schools without officers now had fewer high-level disciplinary violations compared to before the pandemic, those more serious incidents rose between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years — but not as much as schools that still had officers, the study found.

That drop could be the result of the district pushing schools to embrace alternative disciplinary practices and work on building a positive culture in school, said Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security. She acknowledged that it’s hard to know for sure, since the study did not explore why these changes happened.

When schools first began removing police officers, the district gave them funding to use toward things such as restorative justice and hiring security guards. A separate University of Chicago study last year found that schools that implemented restorative justice practices saw fewer student arrests.

At the same time, the study notes, schools that got rid of SROs already had a relatively low number of disciplinary infractions, while schools that kept their officers had higher such incidents.

There were no significant changes, however, when considering all types of discipline or suspensions at schools that got rid of campus police, according to the study. Less serious disciplinary violations can range from running in the hall to displaying a gang affiliation or getting into a fight that results in no injuries.

Also, there were no notable differences in police notifications, which are calls made to police when a student does something that warrants police involvement, per the Student Code of Conduct. Those notifications are typically not the same as 911 calls, Arneson said.

While students across all schools reported feeling less safe after the pandemic, there were no notable changes at schools that got rid of SROs, the study found. There also were no significant differences in how safe teachers felt, as well in how much students trust their teachers.

Implementing the new plan won’t ‘be a light switch’

Earlier this year, the Chicago Board of Education directed CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to create a new school safety policy that would ban SROs from campuses, effectively stripping LSCs of the power to decide. State lawmakers proposed a bill that would allow LSCs to contract with the Chicago Police Department in order to bring officers to their schools, but that bill was stalled.

The new school safety policy, which the board is expected to vote on in July, will require teachers and staff to get more training on restorative justice practices, which are alternatives to discipline and are meant to resolve conflict. That policy also emphasizes pairing students with more mental health resources.

Chou, the CPS chief of safety and security, said the study signals that “many other things” beyond the presence of police define what makes a school feel safe and CPS will have to work to understand what those factors are as officials implement its new safety plan.

At some schools, that could simply mean improving traffic around the school. At others, it could mean partnering with the Chicago Police Department to help with arrival and dismissal because of concerns about violence in a particular neighborhood, Chou said.

“This is not going to be a light switch, turn it on and everything will fall into place,” Chou said. “We realize that we’re going to have to do a lot of community engagement to understand what those needs are, and that’s one of the biggest components of whole school safety, is the engagement aspect.”

The new policy would require every school to make its own safety plan that follows some broader guidelines, such as removing police officers and getting training in alternative discipline practices.

Dwayne Truss, a former member of the Chicago Board of Education who advocated for giving LSCs the power to make decisions about their on-campus police, said there hasn’t been enough engagement with school communities. The board should have waited to make changes to the safety policy until after this study was conducted.

“I just want to be very, very clear: I’m not pro-SRO, anti-SRO; I’m just going to be against usurping the rights of Local School Councils,” Truss said. “And this is data that you share with people and have discussions with people to help educate them on what’s the best path forward, what are some of the best practices.”

For the district’s part, it collected about 9,000 responses to its proposed new safety policy, which it created in partnership with community organizations.

There were also some distinct characteristics about schools that chose to keep their SROs versus the ones that didn’t. In the 2018-2019 school year, before the board decided to let Local School Councils remove SROs, a similar share of students across different races attended a school with at least one officer, ranging between 87 to 93%.

By the 2022-23 school year, two years after schools started removing SROs, nearly two-thirds of Black high school students attended a school with at least one SRO, while the same was true for just 29% of white and Hispanic students and 22% of Asian American students. Students with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students who were native English speakers were also more likely to be enrolled in a school with an SRO.

High schools that had more reported disciplinary infractions were more likely to choose to keep their SROs, the study found. Also, smaller schools and those that enrolled smaller shares of students from low-income families tended to keep their SROs.

Arneson said the study released Wednesday is the first of a series that will examine the district’s approach to school safety. This first piece of research looks at the impact of removing SROs, but doesn’t explain reasons behind the findings, she said. Those questions will hopefully be answered in future studies related to school safety that the team plans to publish in the future.

Arneson wasn’t surprised by the findings, which she said followed the trends of some other national studies. There are still lots of questions to explore, she said.

“Now that there’s no SROs across CPS starting next year,” she wondered, “what are the differences that we’re seeing in schools that didn’t opt in to removing them up front?”

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

Here are Chicago’s new school board districts

2024-06-17T15:45:02+00:00

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This November, Chicago voters will elect school board members for the first time to govern Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s fourth largest school district.

The change will end 30 years of mayoral control.

Activists and parents started pushing for the ability to elect Chicago school board members roughly a decade ago, after years of education reform that changed how schools were funded, how teachers were evaluated, how many schools were opened and closed, and who operated them.

In 2021, state lawmakers passed legislation to create a half-elected, half-appointed 21-member elected school board in Chicago by 2025 and a fully-elected board by 2027.

Explore more in this interactive map.

Could ‘newcomer liaisons’ help migrant students struggling in Chicago schools?

2024-06-11T11:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with Block Club Chicago.

A couple months after enrolling, a few dozen migrant students were struggling to adjust to life at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

The teens had landed in a school where few people speak Spanish, their native language, and the classrooms they were put in were “a mess,” teacher Maggie Ritthaler said.

“Kids were throwing things, punching each other, playing around — and the teacher was barely speaking Spanish,” Ritthaler said.

Ritthaler and another teacher, Zachary Hill, made it their mission to help: The two Spanish-speakers moved their schedules around to teach classes of migrant kids and got their principal to hire part-time student teachers.

Still, about 85% of Kenwood’s students are Black, and the school hasn’t historically served many students whose first language isn’t English. So the newcomers still aren’t getting the language help and emotional support they need, the teachers said.

“We provide a safe home base for them in school, but at the same time, the needs they come in with are more than we are prepared for or licensed for, or that we have resources for,” Ritthaler said.

In May, a Block Club and Chalkbeat investigation found many migrant students are landing in segregated schools like Kenwood with few if any bilingual resources. The so-called “language deserts,” concentrated on the city’s South and West sides, have left many migrant kids feeling lost in school while teachers scramble to meet their needs.

Gabriela Ruiz, 12, — from Venezuela — sets off for school from her South Shore apartment in April. She and her family were featured in a Block Club and Chalkbeat investigation into challenges faced by migrant students and their families.

But experts and teachers union leaders say the district could help the migrant students with a different approach: hiring “newcomer liaisons.” As envisioned by the Chicago Teachers Union, the liaisons would help ease the burden on teachers and other school employees who, in addition to their regular duties, are managing newcomer students’ behavioral and emotional needs while also helping them find health care and clothes.

The liaisons would also provide language support to migrant students who are enrolled in schools where few people speak Spanish, such as Laura S. Ward Elementary School in West Humboldt Park, where a kindergarten teacher and two custodians are translating for the whole building, Block Club and Chalkbeat found.

School districts across the country have been able to help migrant students with liaisons, said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, who leads the National Newcomer Network, a coalition of educators, researchers, and advocates that works to address newcomer student inequity.

While it will take a lot more to overcome the Chicago Public Schools’ long history of failing English learner and immigrant students, the liaisons would be a step in the right direction, she said.

“You get these newcomer liaisons in sooner rather than later and they can help,” Vázquez Baur said. “Students can at least get in the best programs for them, [they can be] aware of their options, their rights are upheld, things are translated and interpreted for them so they can make the best decisions for their futures.”

A go-between for migrant families and schools

Under the Chicago Teachers Union proposal, “newcomer liaisons” would be in charge of migrant student enrollment, programming, communication between families and teachers, and other duties that require bilingual services, like translating Local School Council meetings, union leaders said.

Those duties currently fall to teachers like Ritthaler and Hill who have a myriad of other responsibilities. Ritthaler is a Spanish teacher who chairs Kenwood’s world language department, while Hill is the school’s English language program teacher.

“What usually happens is [those teachers] are trying to do that either in their off time or they’re not providing the required services to kids because they’re doing those things,” said Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 Education Research at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

A class at Erie Elementary Charter School in Humboldt Park, a dual-language school with nearly 50 newcomer students.

In other school districts that use the approach, liaisons are “local folks, maybe parents, maybe community advocates” who can communicate with new families and explain their rights, but don’t necessarily need teacher certifications, Vázquez Baur said.

Other districts have used a patchwork of funding — local, state, and federal dollars — to cover the program, experts said.

Union leaders didn’t answer specific questions about their proposal.

CPS officials also didn’t respond to questions, saying only that the district has received the union’s proposals and is reviewing them.

A list of the district’s initial proposals does not include “newcomer liaisons.”

The district needs ‘more bilingual support on every level’

“Liaisons” alone won’t be able to fix all the problems faced by under-resourced schools serving newcomers.

As of April, nearly 9,000 migrant students — many of them fleeing turmoil in South and Central American countries — had enrolled with the Chicago Public Schools. The vast majority of the new students don’t speak English and are living in temporary housing. Many have spent limited time in school and are grade levels behind for their ages.

Thousands of migrant families are getting apartments in historically Black neighborhoods like South Shore and Austin through a state rental assistance program. From there, children are enrolling at schools that haven’t historically served students whose first language isn’t English.

In addition to a lack of language support, many families are struggling with long commutes and are unaware of their rights and options, Block Club and Chalkbeat found.

All of this comes after the district has struggled for years to fully comply with state and federal laws around bilingual education.

Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said newcomer families are experiencing “what it feels like to be a Black family in Chicago public schools.”

Segregated Black schools on the South and West Sides, where many migrant students have landed, have for years faced declining enrollment and a dearth of resources, the union said in a written statement. Meanwhile, some Latino schools have seen their budgets slashed in recent years as a lack of affordable housing has led to declines in enrollment.

“This is the context for the influx of newcomer students — a reflection of how CPS has lacked funding and support for Black and Brown students, and why this is so key to our contract negotiations,” union leaders said in their statement.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates introduces Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson after he won the mayoral runoff on April 4, 2023.

Those negotiations are the CTU’s first since the election of Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former organizer for the union. Adding resources for migrant students is one of the union’s key demands.

The union is asking for “more bilingual support on every level,” the union statement said.

On top of “newcomer liaisons,” the union is pushing for more bilingual and multilingual teachers; more dual-language programs, which offer English learners and native English speakers instruction in Spanish and English; and an expansion of the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model.

Launched in 2018, that initiative enlists community organizations to bring programs and services to high-poverty schools struggling with low enrollment.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez 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.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said the district wants to expand dual-language programs, and Mayor Brandon Johnson named growing sustainable community schools as a top priority for his administration.

The union also wants “staffing and support for language access needs around early education, IEPs, guest teachers, clinicians, access to Pre-K and other high-needs areas,” along with “training and support from the Board of Education for migrant students on a yearly basis, including funding for immigration support,” according to a list provided by the union.

Union leaders didn’t respond to questions asking for more information about these proposals. The union’s current contract expires at the end of June.

‘The most traumatic journey they’ll ever go through’

Calls for more support for migrant students come as the district faces a large budget shortfall for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

With pandemic relief dollars drying up, the district is facing a nearly $400 million budget deficit while the state has its own financial challenges.

Lawmakers recently approved a state budget with an increase of $350 million for K-12 funding, the minimum under the law and $200 million less than education advocates had asked for. And the General Assembly didn’t approve a proposal that would’ve sent more money to school districts that have received an influx of migrant students.

CPS officials have said they’re trying to cut expenses at the district’s central office, but Martinez recently told reporters they’re still figuring out how to close the deficit.

Kenwood Academy on April 24, 2024.

At Kenwood, Ritthaler and Hill are wrapping up the school year exhausted and demoralized.

They spent the year “in survival mode,” scrambling to find Spanish-language activities and assignments, distributing donated clothes and food and providing counseling.

“We’re receiving these kids who’ve just gone through the most traumatic journey they’ll ever go through, and we’re kinda just plopping them into biology class,” Ritthaler said.

“This isn’t just getting 30 new students. This is 30 new students who are coming from a completely new world … and we’re not equipped to serve them the best way they need to be served.”

Mina Bloom is an investigative reporter for Block Club Chicago. Contact Mina at mina@blockclubchi.org.

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

CPS did not violate state law in moving to take over Urban Prep, appeals court rules

2024-06-06T23:02:08+00:00

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An Illinois state appeals court ruled Thursday that the Chicago Board of Education was within its rights when it tried to revoke the charter for embattled Urban Prep Charter School’s two high school campuses — raising questions about what’s next for Urban Prep’s students.

The court in Illinois’ First Judicial District reversed a ruling by the Cook County Circuit Court and said that a state law preventing school closures in Chicago until Jan. 15, 2025, does not apply to charter schools. Urban Prep had argued that Chicago Public Schools violated that law when it moved to revoke Urban Prep’s charters in October 2022.

The court’s decision is the latest twist in a nearly two-year battle between Chicago Public Schools and Urban Prep, which has fought to stay open amid allegations of financial mismanagement, violation of special-education rights, and sexual misconduct.

The appeals court’s decision comes as charter schools face greater scrutiny under the new board of education appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and union leader. In January, the board renewed contracts for 49 charters, most by three or four years. State law allows extensions up to 10 years.

Urban Prep has operated in Chicago for more than two decades and currently runs two high schools — one in Englewood and the other in Bronzeville — serving exclusively Black boys. State officials closed another one of its campuses in 2022 due to enrollment declines.

After the circuit court’s decision, the board agreed to renew Urban Prep’s charter in December 2023 until this month, while it pursued an appeal.

In its decision posted online Thursday, the appeals court sided with the district, and said the closure moratorium is included in a section of state law, Article 34, that applies only to district-run schools. A different section, Article 27A, applies to charter schools, the order said.

“The circuit court erred when it concluded that the moratorium temporarily stripped the school board of its statutory authority to vote against a charter school’s renewal,” the order said.

The court noted that when the Legislature has wanted any additions to Article 34 to apply to charter schools, such as laws around COVID-19, lawmakers have expressly referenced charter schools and also added that language to 27A.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said the ruling “has no immediate impact” on Urban Prep students. The district, which had originally planned to take over the schools, did not offer further details about what happens to Urban Prep students when school starts again in the fall.

“District officials and the Chicago Board of Education will review this ruling and determine a path forward that best supports our students,” said CPS spokesperson Mary Ann Fergus. “The district will take all necessary steps to ensure clear communication and engagement with impacted families prior to bringing forward any possible recommendations regarding this charter to the Board of Education.”

Urban Prep did not respond to an email or phone call seeking comment. Rulings by the state’s appellate courts can be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

The Chicago Board of Education voted in October 2022 not to renew Urban Prep’s charter’s contracts, citing several financial and legal allegations, as well as accusations that Urban Prep founder Tim King had groomed and sexually touched a student, then hired that student as part of a quid-pro-quo scheme. King has denied those allegations. Other school leaders previously said they had complied with most of the district’s requirements; district leaders said the opposite.

Urban Prep appealed CPS’s decision to the State Board of Education, where a hearing officer sided with CPS. The school then sued in Cook County Circuit Court, arguing that their charter could not be revoked because of the state moratorium on school closures. The circuit court sided with Urban Prep last summer.

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

CPS principal, staff stymied police investigation of mass shooting at Pilsen high school, emails, interviews show

2024-05-31T19:18:00+00:00

This story was originally published by the Illinois Answers Project.

For three critical hours after four students were shot, two fatally, at Benito Juarez High School, the school principal and some staffers threw up roadblocks to the police investigation and weeks later had to be threatened with grand jury subpoenas to spur their cooperation, the Illinois Answers Project has learned.

Detectives on the scene of the mass shooting that happened just before Christmas 2022 quickly learned the four victims and the suspected shooter were all current or former CPS students and asked to view school surveillance video, to interview a student witness who’d given information to school officials, and sought access to other records relating to the students involved.

But at most every turn, according to public documents and police sources, school principal Juan Carlos Ocon and other administrators told detectives that cooperating would violate CPS policy, and they insisted on checking with their legal department.

The delays — which have never been previously reported — cost investigators invaluable time to interview witnesses and gather physical evidence, law enforcement sources said. Police arrested a 16-year-old about eight weeks later in connection with the mass shooting after they saw him leaving a stolen car with a rifle. But between the slayings at Juarez and his arrest, he is suspected of taking part in another shooting, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty in the Juarez shooting, and his defense attorney pointed to the delay in his arrest to question the strength of the case. Illinois Answers is not naming the teen since he was a juvenile at the time of the shooting.

Interviews with Chicago police and CPS sources and a review of thousands of pages of police and school records and emails, many of them heavily redacted, paint a scene of chaos at the site of the Juarez shooting and show how sharp disagreements quickly developed between officers and the school’s award-winning principal, Ocon.

Police told Ocon and CPS’ chief of safety and security, Jadine Chou, that the emergency of the shooting warranted their cooperation, and the disagreement set off a back-and-forth between high-ranking officials in both agencies that would stretch over months.

While police discussed having Ocon charged with obstruction of justice, they eventually decided not to, and CPS never disciplined Ocon, records show.

Benito Juarez High School Principal Juan Carlos Ocon

In an interview with Illinois Answers, Chou disputed the duration of the delays in cooperation, as outlined in emails at the time from the CPD’s chief of detectives and investigators on the scene. She argued police eventually got access to the surveillance video and information given to the principal that day by a school employee.

“It is incomprehensible that anyone would think that we, anyone else, me, anyone around me, would want to do anything to block … would block or delay or forestall progress on an investigation,” Chou said.

A CPS spokeswoman said there’d been no findings of wrongdoing, but records show the agency never conducted a comprehensive after-action review of what happened.

“It’s because when we sat down to talk about it, it was this: (CPD had) the information, you had the camera, you had access to the camera,” Chou said. “What’s … the after action? You know what, we could both do better on the clarification of the guidelines.”

Tension between the police and CPS has existed for years over the reporting of violence on school grounds and how and when police can arrest students involved in violent crime. One investigator described CPS as viewing itself as a “non-extraditable Vatican within the city of Chicago.”

But even among police officials accustomed to dealing with CPS during investigations, the degree of resistance they encountered at Juarez stood out, law enforcement sources said.

The dispute spurred CPS to consider changes in how it deals with police when violent crimes happen on school grounds, involving students. And it appears as if cooperation between the two agencies has improved in recent months, through an informal agreement, with police quickly getting access to critical information in two Chicago school shootings. But 17 months after the Juarez slayings, CPS officials have not created any formal policy or update but say they expect to have one finalized before the 2024 school year — about 21 months after the shooting.

At least some of the disagreement stems from an apparent misreading of federal and state law governing the release of student records.

Chou said in the interview that she spoke to CPS counsel from the scene of the shooting. A high-ranking CPS lawyer, Ruchi Verma, recounted in a CPS email that she told Chou: “if there is an active shooter situation … information could be disclosed. No one informed us that there was an active shooter situation.”

But district policy, state law, federal law, and training documents circulated within CPS all allow school officials to cooperate with police during “health and safety” emergencies, and none set the threshold for cooperation as high as active shooter situations. Verma, who is now the district’s general counsel, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A national expert on the applicable federal law said in an interview with Illinois Answers that school officials should have cooperated with police.

“What you just described would clearly be a health safety emergency exception. If there’s a shooter, they don’t have him apprehended, give them whatever they want. I don’t know if they didn’t understand that at the school,” said LeRoy Rooker, who served for 21 years as director of the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office. “It doesn’t matter what it was — they can give any of that stuff to law enforcement if it’s a health or safety emergency.”

A CPS spokesman said CPS officials on the scene provided information to police on “an ongoing basis.”

After about three hours, the school’s principal shared information about the former student suspected in the shooting, and police were eventually able to get video from the city’s 911 center. By the time Chicago police started getting at least some information, top brass scheduled a news conference at the district police station nearby. Police sources described this news conference as an attempt to present a unified front between CPS and the police despite the conflicts.

Much remains unknown about the afternoon of the shooting because CPS, CPD, and other city agencies have either denied access to records detailing the investigation or have released only heavily redacted versions. Sources in each agency spoke on the condition they not be identified, citing agency rules forbidding media interviews and fearing retribution.The Chicago Police Department declined to make any of its officials available for interviews and declined to answer questions about the mass shooting investigation.

Even that night, after some of the disputes were resolved, police had doubts about CPS continuing to provide what they needed. A timeline of the investigation shared among homicide division supervisors shows police still were uncertain whether video existed from a CPS camera near the shooting.

Those doubts proved well-founded. Ocon didn’t respond to detectives for weeks after the shooting, and other CPS staff ignored requests for interviews, records show. Frustrated with the pace of cooperation, detectives resorted to running parts of their investigation through the police department’s chief attorney, who sent requests for evidence to her counterpart at CPS.

In early January, a sergeant in the detective division told the department’s top attorney, Dana O’Malley, that some CPS staff continued to ignore detectives and that the principal still hadn’t turned over a school document detectives had been seeking for weeks. At one point, a homicide detective, John Korolis, sent Ocon an email telling him he could get a grand jury subpoena if Ocon didn’t start returning his voicemail messages.

An email from the lead detective on the Juarez shooting, John Korolis, to the Juarez High School Principal Juan Carlos Ocon.

Almost three weeks had passed since the shooting.

Afternoon of the shooting

At 2:35 p.m. on Dec. 16, 2022, the dismissal bell rang at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen. Dozens of students and staff lingered in a courtyard outside the school near a pedestrian overpass, according to prosecutors at the initial court appearance of the teen charged in the shooting. Informally, it’s near an area known as “the rock.”

A few minutes after dismissal, a girl was standing with some students lingering outside. She walked over to another group of teens nearby where she ran into a 16-year-old boy who’d been expelled from Juarez for attendance and behavior problems, according to prosecutors. Someone mentioned that there were La Raza gang members in the group she had been standing with.

The girl returned to those teens and warned them that the former student was there “to cause trouble” and that they should leave.

At 2:38 p.m., the former student asked one of the victims if he was a La Raza gang member and then fired at least eight rounds from a .357 handgun, hitting three boys and a girl described as an “unintended target,” authorities said.

Students scattered. A security guard witnessed the shooting and briefly ran after the gunman while a passing motorist tried to point the guard in the right direction. At least one witness took a photo of the armed teen standing over a victim and then chased the gunman before losing sight of him.

At 2:40 p.m, police arrived to find the four victims. The two students who died, Nathan Billegas, 14, and Brandon Perez, 15, were both shot in the head, records show. Billegas was a student at Bulls College Prep, and Perez a student at Juarez.

A 15-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl were also shot, and both survived. The girl had a graze wound to her thigh. The boy had a gunshot wound to his shoulder and thigh. The witness — who’d walked between the groups — wasn’t wounded.

Perez died at 3:06 p.m.

At 3:10 p.m., a teacher emailed the principal and other administrators to let them know 25 students and two other staff members were taking shelter in his classroom.

“I know you are all busy right now but just wanted to let you know. The staff and I are doing our best to take care of them,” he wrote.

Billegas died at 3:17 p.m. At 3:27 p.m., police lifted the school’s lockdown.

Nathan Billegas, 14, left, and Brandon Perez, 15, were shot and killed just after dismissal on Dec. 16, 2022, outside Juarez High School in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The moments after shootings are often when they are solved — or not. It’s when memories are fresh and when witnesses are most likely to talk. The longer it takes for detectives to track down witnesses, the more difficult it can be to get them to cooperate.

Time is critical, too, in gathering evidence for an arrest and prosecution before it can be altered or destroyed: the gun involved in the crime, clothing to compare to security footage, gunshot residue tests, a cell phone.

Detectives expected cooperation because they were investigating a school shooting that resulted in two dead students and two wounded students. It didn’t appear to be an “active shooter,” but police operated under the belief that someone who shoots four people in a school courtyard remains an ongoing threat because they haven’t been arrested.

The police department’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, outlined difficulties detectives encountered in an email to police department attorneys the next morning.

While detectives were at the school, they believed a student witness “provided a name of the shooter” to a school staffer. Detectives saw the staffer give a CPS photo of the named shooter to Ocon, according to the email.

Police investigate the crime scene outside Juarez High School on Dec. 16, 2022, where four students were shot, two fatally.

Chou said that after the shooting, the witness and a guardian were in the room where police would have been able to view surveillance footage, and the guardian had told CPS they didn’t want to talk to police. Chou said no detective ever told her they wanted to speak with the guardian. But law enforcement sources said officers did ask CPS staff to speak to the guardian and were denied access.

Police weren’t allowed inside the room because the guardian and witness were in there, and school officials didn’t want to let the family leave the room because the police were outside, Chou said.

Eighteen hours after the shooting, detectives were still trying to identify the student witness and the CPS staffer who gave the principal the piece of paper with the named shooter’s photo, according to the email sent by Deenihan. ”Efforts are on-going to identify and interview both the student who may [have] witnessed the incident and provided the offender’s name and the faculty member who provided this information to the (principal),” Deenihan wrote. In the following days, detectives spoke to the witness, who was cooperative.

As for the paper handed to Ocon, he “continually refused and resisted in providing this information to the (detectives) citing it was against CPS policy. After several hours the (principal) subsequently forwarded this information to the assigned personnel,” Deenihan wrote. Chou said a CPS attorney told her not to release the record, because it was from the school’s record keeping system, but said it would be OK to write down the information and share it with detectives, which she did. Chou said detectives left but later returned and said they needed the actual record for evidence.

And it was only after weeks of back-and-forth and a threatened subpoena before detectives got the document, according to emails.

Detectives also were unable to get video from the school, Deenihan wrote.

“Initially the school faculty (principle and CPS Security personnel) refused to provide the assigned personnel any video surveillance of the incident,” Deenihan wrote.

Deenihan wrote detectives were able to view the video after “three hours” and pulled video from the city’s 911 center that night. Chou said detectives should have just gone to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in the first place, which is how detectives often pull video from incidents at or near CPS property because they can pull from nearby cameras that aren’t part of the CPS system.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, whose 25th Ward encompasses the high school, was at the scene of the shooting early on and said he recalled CPS officials telling him and detectives that CPS couldn’t show them the video because legal counsel advised against it. His account mirrors that of police sources familiar with the investigation, who said CPS denied officers access to the video.

Sigcho-Lopez said he didn’t see a sense of urgency from CPS in giving police access to video and information for their investigation. And though he’s one of the most vocal critics of the police on the City Council, he said that “has to be put aside on this.”

“Look, it’s an emergency, we need to see that video footage, you know. And look I got my own perceptions here,” Sigcho-Lopez said in an interview with Illinois Answers. “Politics aside, at that point to me, that was a priority right? To say, look, we need to solve this immediately.”

Within about 30 minutes of police beginning to get information, police and district officials announced a news conference at the Near West district police station. Before it started, someone from the police department’s News Affairs office told Supt. David Brown that he might be asked about issues with CPS cooperation. “Yeah, I’ll handle it,” Brown said. Brown didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Sure enough, a reporter soon asked about the quality of cooperation from CPS. Brown dismissed the question and did so again after the reporter asked him to clarify.

Jadine Chou, center, CPS’ chief of safety and security, speaks at a news conference after the Juarez shooting in 2022. She is joined by then-Chicago Police Supt. David Brown, left, and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

Reporter 1: Speaking of video we’re hearing from sources that the school has not turned over video. Is there any comment on that or the reasoning why there might be?

Brown: So again speculation and just, just not appropriate.

Reporter 1: But there is not — you all said POD and private video — there is not the video from the school, correct ?

Brown: So again you talk about your sources, I don’t know who those people are. We’re just starting our investigation so I think it would be irresponsible to, to …

Reporter 1: But to confirm there is ...

Brown: No, we’re not confirming your source information. We, what we’re saying is we’re just starting this video gathering, and we’re just starting the investigation any speculation would just be inappropriate.

Reporter 2: These are kids leaving school on a Friday who just got shot, two of them killed. I mean – this should never happen.

Brown: We haven’t confirmed any information about the victims, so it would just be conjecture on your part, or your sources’ part, that the victims are students. As soon as we know that we will share that information.

Contrary to Brown’s statements, police knew the victims were students and that there was a dispute over access to CPS video.

A Chicago Tribune reporter later asked a CPS spokesperson about “rumors” he had heard of the district’s failure to cooperate. An agency spokeswoman insisted that CPS was “cooperating with CPD, as always. ”By about 10 p.m. the day of the shooting, CPS provided a photo of the former student. Detectives warned other officers that the suspect “should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Video surveillance footage released by Chicago police shows the alleged gunman fleeing Juarez High School after the shooting.

As it turned out, the boy was well-known to the police; one officer had encountered him at least four times.

Detectives also asked the crime lab to rush its comparison of shell casings recovered from the Juarez shooting with casings from another murder scene earlier in the year since they suspected the same weapon was used in both crimes.

Amid chaos, CPS braces for new school week

The week following the shooting was chaotic. School officials had to find counselors for students because at least a few dozen of them witnessed or were within earshot of their classmates being murdered, and dozens more knew the victims.

School officials needed to assure students and their parents that returning to school was safe. Some students didn’t return until after winter break. Others never returned.

One student emailed a student advocate and said they wouldn’t be coming to school because they feared for their safety. Another student emailed a teacher, who removed the student’s name from the email and shared it with Ocon:

“I got told that one of the kids who got shot was part of a gang and apparently they’re going to show up tomorrow for ‘revenge.’ I’m just saying so that there can be extra security. I don’t know if this is true but either way I wanted to let you know since you’re someone that I can trust. But please, don’t tell anyone that it was me who told you.”

One of the concerns shared by students: Social media posts threatened retaliation for the shooting and warned kids not to wear colors of the La Raza street gang that at least one of the four victims was affiliated with. School and police officials soon learned of the threat, and CPS asked for extra officers near the school during the week and adjusted dismissal time.

On the morning after the shooting, a Saturday, Deenihan emailed two CPD attorneys about issues he was having with CPS.

About the same time, he asked detectives to forward what they found about CPS policy and said he’d raise the issue with CPD’s attorneys.

“I thought you mentioned you reviewed CPS policy (online) which stated there is an exception to sharing information for a Public Safety incident. If any of you have the policy, can you please share? I am going to set up a meeting with the Lawyers next week, and move on this topic ASAP,” Deenihan wrote. “We will eventually have a school shooting inside a school,” Deenihan wrote. “CPS can’t out a 3 hour delay with sharing information.”

A Dec. 17, 2022 email from then-Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan to officers involved in the Juarez shooting investigation.

A detective supervisor responded to Deenihan with a summary of state and federal law, and of CPS’ own policies. Deenihan thanked them and said he’d raise the issue with the police department’s lawyers.

“This does help. I will share with Legal Affairs and have them review case law,” Deenihan wrote. “Thanks to all for being professional even when our counterparts may not have done so.”

Email from then-Chief of Detectives Brendan Deeniham to officers involved in the Juarez shooting investigation.

On the following Monday, Chicago Police Department General Counsel Dana O’Malley followed up on Deenihan’s concerns, emailing CPS General Counsel Joe Moriarty, to discuss “an issue with CPS and CPD.”

O’Malley later asked her counterpart at CPS what they tell principals about sharing information with police.

“As we discussed, CPD’s immediate concern is what happens if we have an active shooter and need information on the spot to save lives,” she wrote.

Moriarty shared the powerpoint presentation that CPS’ law office provides to principals. It shows the principal and other CPS administrators could have shared information at the scene.

One slide said: “Federal and state law allow the disclosure of student information in connection with an emergency, to appropriate persons if the knowledge of such information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other persons.”

An informal resolution

The problems came to a head, and then a resolution, in January. On Jan. 1, a supervisor in the detective division compiled a list of student and faculty witnesses for the chief CPD attorney and a detective division commander.

“Some staff have also not provided responses to our questions citing a need to contact CPS Legal or have ignored our requests for interview,” the sergeant wrote. “Some of these staff members are witnesses and others have never been interviewed. Additionally, as of this date the principal, Juan Ocon, has not turned over the evidence containing the directory information given to him the day of the incident.”

One day later, Korolis, the lead detective in the case, emailed Ocon threatening him with a subpoena if he didn’t begin to cooperate:

“I have left numerous voice messages for you and have received no response to date,” he wrote. " With the tragic homicides of these two young Chicago Public Schools students, it’s imperative that we have cooperation from your Juarez High School team. My partner and I need to interview you and your staff at your school post-haste. I have contacted the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and they are involved with this investigation. If you are more comfortable with a subpoena to appear, let me know.”

On Jan. 5, about three weeks after the shooting, Chou, CPS’ chief of safety and security, emailed Korolis and provided records of student attendance for the date of the shooting and mentioned that she spoke to the principal, who was “able to locate the folded paper you were asking about and he indicated that he made you aware.”

Chou said in an interview with Illinois Answers that the dispute over interviewing Ocon and other staff didn’t take into account that he and staff were on Christmas break, and that Ocon may have turned off his phone when going out of town.

“He left the city, he was on time off, and he’s entitled to that. I don’t know when they were calling him. I asked him myself … did you avoid returning phone calls? Did you ignore phone calls? He said he did not ignore phone calls,” Chou said.

“There was a big block of vacation time in between there where, a principal who witnessed this and … and needed time and again … a lot of people took off their work phones and I don’t think that should be held against him.”

Ocon declined to comment.

More than two weeks after Korolis emailed the principal, subpoenas were issued for three CPS staffers. Detectives met with Ocon and other school officials just after school resumed in January, more than three weeks after the shooting.

As detectives were arranging grand jury testimony for the three CPS staffers, Chou, the school district’s chief of safety and security, pushed an effort to address what happened at Juarez.

Chou circulated a document described as “draft guidance” that pertained to school-level sharing of information.

“We would like to provide clear guidance to school leaders on info sharing and other interactions with CPD,” Chou wrote. “Based on feedback from Principals and recent experiences in the field, there is a need to codify and clarify this guidance … due to the urgency, if possible, would ask for your feedback (by tomorrow).”

The document, Chou said, will include examples of what constitutes an emergency and other clarifying information. As police and school officials were trading input on the policy in February, the 16-year-old suspect in the shooting was arrested at home. Police working in unmarked cars saw the boy run into his home with a rifle and called the department’s SWAT team and told them he was “the possible offender from a homicide.” He surrendered after the SWAT team’s Bearcat truck arrived, about 3:40 p.m. His family declined to let officers search the home, and a judge signed a warrant about 9:40 p.m., and officers cleared the home and turned it over to a search team about an hour later.

After weeks of working on a fix with input from the Chicago Police Department, progress stopped, except for Chou checking back with Chicago Police into the fall of 2023. It appears police officials never responded to her requests to finish drafting the policy.

Police sources said the two agencies have come to an informal arrangement. Detectives encountered no resistance after shootings at two high schools in late January where students were victims at Senn and Innovations high schools.

Still, 17 months after the shooting, Sigcho-Lopez said it wasn’t appropriate that CPS never conducted any broad internal review of the way its employees responded to the shooting.

“There has to be an evaluation,” he said.

“What went wrong, internally here? Why [did it take] so long? Why? Because, you know, time is of the essence, right? So, I don’t think that CPS can say, in my opinion, that they did everything they could,” Sigcho-Lopez said.

Peter Nickeas joined the Illinois Answers Project as an investigative reporter in 2023. You can reach him at pnickeas@bettergov.org.

Candles light up a memorial site outside Juarez High School on Dec. 16, 2023, one year after the shooting.

At least 150 Chicago schools set to lose staff next school year

2024-05-28T23:40:25+00:00

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At least 150 Chicago Public Schools will have fewer staff positions next school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school budget documents released by the district Tuesday.

The shifts in school staff are coming despite a new funding formula meant to more equitably fund schools and provide set staffing levels, as district leaders work to close a major budget deficit and grapple with the end of federal COVID relief money.

Still, district leaders said Tuesday that they’re optimistic about the new budget formula, and that CPS will guarantee a job elsewhere in the district for teachers who are losing their current positions due to budget cuts.

“The new budget model accomplishes what we set out to do: To provide more to our high needs schools with foundational resources that they haven’t had before,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters during a press briefing on school budgets.

Officials have said the new formula is meant to support schools with more needs and those that have suffered for years from a vicious cycle of dwindling enrollment leading to less money and support.

The changes come as the district is projecting a $391 million deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1. District officials had hoped for more money from the state. But a state budget deal passed by the Illinois Senate over the weekend does not provide the windfall to CPS that Mayor Brandon Johnson, district officials, and the teachers union lobbied for.

District officials have cautioned against comparing budgets year over year because of the new changed formula. They did not share dollar amounts associated with each budget.

Instead, the district released data showing how many staffers each school would get next year under the new formula, which provides a guaranteed number of staff — such as core teachers, principals, and assistant principals — and discretionary funding for all schools. The new formula then increases those resources based on a school’s need depending on multiple factors, such as the number of students from low-income backgrounds or the surrounding community’s characteristics.

District officials said they could not yet confirm Chalkbeat’s analysis. Mary Ann Fergus, a CPS spokesperson, said final spending amounts at schools will depend on who schools are able to hire and how staffing will change throughout the year. She added that the district expects to add a total of 200 more teachers next school year and will add several new positions, such as restorative justice coordinators for high-needs schools.

New budget formula’s impact on schools varies

The formula’s impact on school budgets depends on how you look at the data.

When comparing the new budget information for next year to staffing levels from last June, when the current school year budget was approved, 68% of district schools — or 339 — would see an increase of at least one part-time staffer. Another 32% — or close to 160 schools — would lose at least one part-time position.

But when comparing the newly proposed budgets to the latest staffing rosters as of March 30, more than half of district schools — 269 schools — would lose at least one part-time staffer, while another 41% — or 207 — would gain staffing. Another 27 schools would experience no change.

Martinez said budgets can change throughout the year as schools add and subtract positions.

When looking at March staffing levels — the most recent numbers available — Richard T. Crane Medical Prep High School on the city’s Near West Side would lose the most. Crane, which enrolled 264 students at the start of the school year, would lose about 14 of its nearly 60 staffers next year compared to this past March, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

On the flip side, Douglass High School in the west side neighborhood of Austin — where just 35 students were enrolled this year — would get the largest increase. It’s slated to add nine people to its staff of 23.

The budgets have been made public one month before the Chicago Board of Education is scheduled to vote to approve them. It also comes almost two months after Local School Councils started voting on individual school budgets — and after CPS denied multiple open records requests from Chalkbeat and other news outlets for school-by-school budget information.

The budget numbers the district released on Tuesday did not include information about the city’s roughly 120 charter schools, which serve about 50,000 students. It’s not clear how the district’s new approach to budgeting will affect those campuses and their staffing levels. Charters have long been funded through a per-student allocation.

The district’s shift to a new funding formula is “years” in the making, officials said. The old student-based budgeting formula was more squarely focused on student enrollment, with some increases for schools serving more students with high needs. Under that formula, schools received funding that principals could use flexibly to hire staff or pay for extra programming.

Now, schools will instead be allocated specific staff positions, plus additional discretionary funding that principals can use flexibly.

Martinez said the budgets for schools with “very low poverty rates” that have had many elective classes are “definitely tighter.” He said some of those schools had “very small class sizes” that were scrutinized sizes in order to “be responsible to our taxpayers.”

“It is those schools that have higher poverty, higher needs, they are definitely getting a lot more resources, but it’s not even just more resources,” Martinez said. “It’s actually frankly, finally setting the next best standard and a foundation that we have never had before.”

William Klee, CPS’s deputy chief of schools, said he’s heard from several principals at schools with “historic enrollment declines” that can “for the first time in recent memory” avoid cuts and increase programming. Klee added that principals “like that they can hire the best teacher for any position without worrying if they can afford the salary.”

School leaders share new formula’s pros and cons

Schools, including those in higher income neighborhoods, have reported losing staff for next school year. Others are anticipating more teachers and smaller class sizes, but are also seeing cuts to support staff, such as additional clerks. Thirty-seven schools that appealed their budgets ultimately received more teachers, district data shows.

One principal, who serves on a district school leader advisory group, said the district’s new formula left that leader’s school a few educators short of the number needed to avoid excessively large classes in some grades. But the principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously because the district had not authorized the interview, also said district officials provided extra positions once the school alerted them to the issue.

The principal said overall the new formula brings more clarity to the budgeting process. For instance, the approach clearly spells out the amount of discretionary dollars from a federal fund schools can use to recruit teachers and reduce class sizes — and how the district arrived at it. In previous years, the principal said that number sometimes wildly fluctuated from year to year.

“No one knew where that number came from,” the school leader said. “There was no rhyme or reason to it.”

But the proposed budgets have also come under criticism from some school leaders who say a loss of funding and positions will hurt distinctive programming.

In a letter sent to Martinez and other district leaders last week and shared with Chalkbeat, Kathleen Murphy, the head of the local school council at LaSalle II Magnet School, said the campus is slated to lose four out of its six foreign language teachers even as the school is still expected to offer four different language programs. That means the campus has to either significantly increase language class sizes, Murphy said, curtail its language offerings, or steer resources away from core classes such as math and reading.

“Decimating those language programs now, by taking away two-thirds of their funding, is doing untold damage to the educational programs LaSalle II and the other magnet world language academies have developed over the last 15-20 years,” Murphy wrote.

Correction: May 29, 2024: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of CPS’s deputy chief of schools. His name is William Klee.

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.

Lost in translation: Migrant kids struggle in segregated Chicago schools

2024-05-21T11:00:00+00:00

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This story was reported and published in collaboration with Block Club Chicago. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Leer en español.

Gabriela Aquino Ruiz relies on a translation app to learn, but some of her teachers talk so fast in English, the software can’t keep up.

The soft-spoken 12-year-old, who speaks only Spanish, loves to read, but her school — Isabelle C. O’Keeffe School on Chicago’s South Side — doesn’t have books in her native language, and she’s struggling to make friends, she said.

Gabriela misses her school in Venezuela, where she and her family emigrated from in October.

“I want to learn,” she said in Spanish through a translator. “I feel frustrated when I get home.”

Gabriela is one of nearly 9,000 migrant students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools as of April. Many of those students are leaving shelters and finding housing that provides them much needed stability.

Gabriela’s family moved from a shelter in Little Village to an apartment in South Shore, the top neighborhood where families have resettled in Chicago through a state program that helps cover their rent, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago through a Freedom of Information Act request.

But the promise of housing comes with a cost: Families are moving to more affordable neighborhoods that also are some of the city’s most segregated. As a result, students are landing in schools with little to no bilingual staff or support, according to data obtained through open records requests and more than 50 interviews with families, teachers and experts.

That has resulted in some students falling further behind in their studies, custodians taking on translation roles, and school leaders struggling to comply with a state requirement that they provide bilingual education if student enrollment meets certain thresholds.

The surge of new students, many of whom fled political and economic turmoil in Central and South American countries, is exposing the cracks in a school system that has for years struggled to fully comply with state and federal laws around bilingual education.

Even before buses carrying migrants began arriving in waves from Texas in 2022, Chicago’s public schools failed to fully comply with multiple internal and state audits related to bilingual instruction, documents show.

CPS schools that already had bilingual programs have fallen short of a range of requirements, such as providing bilingual instruction in core subjects to all students who need it, having properly certified teachers, and teaching students about their native country and culture. Now, a crop of additional schools that have enrolled waves of migrant students need to bolster staff.

“We are very concerned about those language deserts in the city … where there are no English learner services,” said Karime Asaf, the chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education, which oversees instruction for English learners.

As of March, at least 72 K-12 schools across the district had vacancies for bilingual staff or teachers certified to teach English as a new language, at least a quarter of which are in the top 10 neighborhoods where asylum-seeking families are moving.

District officials said creating bilingual programs and complying with audits require finding properly certified teachers, which has been a nationwide challenge. They pointed to newer efforts, such as recruiting existing CPS students to become teachers, but added that CPS needs more funding.

“There is always a need for additional support and improvements in the process, and we are working to secure more funding from the state and federal governments to support all of our students,” said CPS spokesperson Sylvia Barragan.

Asked why the district and city are still struggling to provide support to migrant students, Mayor Brandon Johnson told Chalkbeat and Block Club that asylum-seeking families are settling in “neighborhoods that have been historically disinvested,” which puts “pressure on that system that is already weighted,” referring to neighborhood schools that he believes lack adequate resources.

As a former middle school teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, Johnson has called for investing more money in neighborhood schools.

Students at Erie Elementary Charter School in Humboldt Park.

In response to the rapid arrival of migrant students over the past two years, CPS opened a “welcome center” at Roberto Clemente High School and is working with the city and shelter staff to help families with school enrollment, officials said. The district is also trying to attract more bilingual educators and is prioritizing extra support for schools that have traditionally not served English learners, officials said.

But teachers say the district’s efforts haven’t translated into more resources on the ground, and migrant kids are missing out on vital instruction. At Laura S. Ward Elementary School on the West Side, which has gained dozens of English learners, a kindergarten teacher and two custodians are translating for the whole building.

“They were dropped at our doorstep, and we’re supposed to keep it moving, accept these children, educate them and keep it moving,” said Dewanda Watt, first grade teacher at Ward, one of dozens of schools CPS identified as lacking enough staff for English learners.

“There should’ve been a plan. There was no plan from Chicago Public Schools.”

Migrant families resettle on South and West sides

Like many migrants, Gabriela and her family left Venezuela for Chicago in October to escape the country’s socioeconomic and political turmoil, said Gabriela’s mother, Yennifer Ruiz.

The family lived in the Englewood Police District station for a few months before moving into a shelter in Little Village, a historically Mexican neighborhood. Ruiz enrolled her son and daughter in schools with Spanish-speaking staff: Eli Whitney Elementary School and Richards Career Academy.

But when the family moved about 13 miles southeast to an apartment in South Shore, Ruiz decided to switch her daughter to O’Keeffe, a mostly Black, low-income school that lacks bilingual resources but was close to home.

Like the Ruizes, one in 10 families seeking asylum have landed in the South Shore area through a state resettlement program called the Asylum Seeker Emergency Rental Assistance Program, according to data obtained by Block Club and Chalkbeat.

Gabriela Aquino Ruiz, 12, getting ready for school. Gabriela goes to Isabelle C. O’Keeffe School in South Shore, near where her mom got an apartment through a state rental assistance program.

Run by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the Illinois Department of Human Services in partnership with Catholic Charities, the rental assistance program covers three months of rent for people migrating from the southern border who are seeking asylum and arrived in the city’s shelters before Nov. 17, 2023. It is the city’s main strategy to get families into permanent housing once they leave shelters.

Data show nearly 60% of the roughly 5,000 families using the program to resettle in Chicago are finding housing in predominantly Black, low-income communities on the South and West sides — historically neglected neighborhoods with schools that don’t serve many English language learners and often don’t have staff certified to teach those students.

Through the state program, families can choose where to live, and “ultimately, low rental cost is what drives selection,” said Daisy Contreras, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Human Services.

State law requires schools to launch bilingual programs — instruction in English and a child’s native language — when they enroll 20 or more English learners who speak the same native language. Schools must also teach students about their native country’s history and culture.

But as families leave shelters and find housing in relatively cheap, segregated neighborhoods, they’re encountering segregated schools that suffer from years of declining enrollment and inadequate resources, much less fully-staffed bilingual programs.

This was the case for Nathaly Garcia when she recently moved out of a downtown shelter to a three-bedroom apartment in South Shore with rent covered by the state program. Her 11-year-old son, Santiago, had enrolled at Ogden International School in the Gold Coast and moving meant their commute time would triple.

But Garcia didn’t want to enroll her son in the school near the new apartment because she had heard bad things about it and felt the school’s reading and math test scores were not high enough, she said.

Venezuelan migrant Nathaly Garcia cooks eggs in her South Shore apartment. Like Ruiz, Garcia got an apartment through a state program. But instead of sending her kids to schools nearby, she opted to keep her children at schools near their old shelter.

Even after families leave shelters, their children are legally entitled to stay in the school where they originally enrolled because the district’s guidelines classify those students as homeless, providing them with certain federal protections.

So Garcia and her son now take two buses an hour and a half each way to continue at Ogden. Garcia said no one told them they could apply for yellow bus service.

In Yennifer Ruiz’s case, no one explained that her daughter had a legal right to stay at Eli Whitney, the school the girl went to when they lived in the Little Village shelter, she said. In fact, when Ruiz showed Eli Whitney staff where she was moving, they said she would be “too far” outside of the attendance boundaries, she said.

District officials said they help families enroll in or transfer to other schools that are not in their neighborhood, but may have better resources, such as bilingual programs. Asaf said migrant families, like all Chicago families, can choose where to send their children to school.

“They’re individual, independent residents of the city,” Asaf said, adding that the district gets in touch with principals “the moment we hear school calls for support.”

O’Keeffe’s principal has requested help from the district, and Gabriela has recently started learning English through an after-school program, Ruiz said.

The school district spokesperson said O’Keeffe recently enrolled enough English learners to warrant a bilingual program, and the school has been approved to hire a part-time teacher to work with those students.

Still, Yennifer Ruiz is saving up so the family can move out of the neighborhood and closer to a school that better serves her daughter, she said.

‘We have to build a program from the bottom up’

Ward Elementary School is in West Humboldt Park, a neighborhood that has affordable housing and sees a high number of drug and gun crimes. Nearly all of the school’s students are Black and come from low-income families.

Data show nearly 140 families have resettled in the Humboldt Park area through the state program.

After years of declining enrollment, Ward’s numbers stabilized this school year as migrant families found apartments near the school, said Watt, the school’s first-grade teacher.

Watt now has nine new students from Venezuela and Ecuador. But like other adults at Ward, she doesn’t speak Spanish. The elementary school has dozens of English learners, but no bilingual teachers or bilingual program, according to Watt and preliminary enrollment data.

It’s an “overwhelming” predicament, Watt said. Before this year, Watt, a teacher for 25 years, had never taught non-English-speaking students.

Laura S. Ward Elementary School, 646 N. Lawndale Ave., in Humboldt Park on May 13, 2024.

A CPS audit of Ward last April found the school, which had about 20 English learners at the time, wasn’t providing required instruction to all kids learning English and lacked enough certified staff, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat and Block Club.

Ward is one of 72 K-12 schools CPS identified with vacancies for staff certified to teach ESL or bilingual classes as of April, according to district data. That excludes the district’s Virtual Academy. An ESL certification doesn’t mean the teacher speaks another language — just that they’re certified to teach ESL classes.

Those schools have seen the number of English language learners increase by an average of more than 40% this school year, according to a Chalkbeat and Block Club analysis of preliminary enrollment data.

Earlier this year, Ward enrolled enough English language learners to warrant a bilingual program and is now working to establish one, according to a district spokesperson. The school was approved in October to hire a part-time teacher position to work with English learners and can hire for a full-time position next year now that the school has enrolled more than 50 English learners, a CPS spokesperson said.

Currently at Ward, Watt and other teachers rely on Spanish-speaking staff who don’t have bilingual credentials — the kindergarten teacher and two custodians — to help them communicate with migrant students and families seeking help with school applications.

For a while, the kindergarten teacher was getting pulled out of her classroom up to five times a day to translate, she said. The district gave teachers translation devices, but Ward teachers said they don’t always function properly and are not a substitute for speaking the language.

The kindergarten teacher, who did not want to be identified because she wasn’t authorized to speak to the press, said she’s torn between her teaching responsibilities and her unofficial job as school translator. Watt said some of her migrant students are progressing academically, but others are struggling to understand their classwork and learn English.

“Some [teachers] are in schools where the [bilingual] program is already up and running; they’re just continuing on. As opposed to us, where we have to build a program from the bottom up,” the kindergarten teacher said.

Asaf, the head of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education, said CPS has been opening teaching positions for schools that are enrolling many more English learners. She acknowledged that help may not come right away, and it takes time to build bilingual programs.

“It’s not always easy and it’s not always immediate and it’s not always fast,” Asaf said. “This is a big district, and we are constantly paying attention to the number of [English learners] we have.”

A history of failing bilingual students

This is not the first time Chicago has been under scrutiny for how it serves students learning English.

In 1980, a federal consent decree forced CPS to come up with a plan to desegregate schools and to ensure English language learners were receiving an adequate amount of support. The decree had to be updated twice, in part because the district was failing to provide enough staffing and materials for English learners.

Schools are responsible for screening their students to determine which of them are learning English as a new language. Those students are legally entitled to additional support, such as specialized English instruction.

In addition to state requirements for bilingual programs, schools with 19 or fewer English language learners must have a program known as Transitional Point of Instruction, which teaches students in English. It’s not clear how many CPS schools are now required to have bilingual programs but don’t have them yet.

A classroom at Erie Elementary Charter School in Humboldt Park. Erie is one of 43 dual-language schools across the city, which means it offers English learners and native English speakers instruction in Spanish and English.

Segregation can play a large role in whether schools have bilingual support for students.

Chicago’s immigrants have always settled in neighborhoods with people who share their ethnicity or native language, said Jim Lewis, senior research specialist for Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has studied segregation.

But some of Chicago’s recent Latin American newcomers, such as Venezuelans, do not have enclaves, Lewis said. Also, many historically Latino neighborhoods have become unaffordable for families who don’t have a stable income, potentially driving today’s newcomers to segregated neighborhoods that have been long ignored.

To get an apartment under the state program, families have to find a landlord who will participate in the program or get matched with one through Catholic Charities. The only stipulation is rent must be affordable, said Catholic Charities spokeswoman Emily Dagostino.

Catholic Charities is not involved in the school enrollment process, Dagostino said.

District officials said CPS works with the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, shelters and principals to help families enroll in school, and Asaf, the head of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education, emphasized that families have options.

But the district’s practice of helping families enroll in schools outside their neighborhoods doesn’t “follow the spirit” of what CPS says it aims to provide: equal access to quality neighborhood schools, said Jesse Ruiz, former interim CPS CEO and Chicago Board of Education vice president.

Santiago Orozco, 11, attends Ogden International School in the Gold Coast, an hour and a half away from his family’s South Shore apartment. Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Ruiz led the charge to audit all of the district’s bilingual and ESL programs in 2015. That school year, 71% of schools audited were in serious violation of state requirements for bilingual education, the Chicago Reporter found at the time.

The issues have persisted.

During the 2021 school year — before buses from Texas began arriving — the Illinois State Board of Education put CPS on what’s called a “corrective action plan” after officials determined the district was out of compliance with bilingual education requirements, said Lindsay Record, a spokesperson for the board.

In a follow-up visit last year, the state found several improvements. But the district still failed to have bilingual programs at all schools that were supposed to have them, as well as enough certified teachers, according to corrective action plan documents.

Ruiz, also a former chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education, said he understands why under-resourced schools haven’t had bilingual programs if they didn’t historically serve English learners.

“But now they have these students, and that’s what the law says, that you have to provide bilingual education services to those students,” Ruiz said. “The district is going to have to provide those resources.”

‘It was a long journey’

Maria, a Venezuelan migrant who came to Chicago last summer, moved from a downtown shelter this February to an apartment in South Shore through the state’s rental assistance program. Block Club and Chalkbeat are using a pseudonym for Maria out of concerns for her family’s safety.

After the move, the family struggled to enroll their 8-year-old daughter in school. The first school noted that it lacked bilingual staff, and they were turned away from a second school for living outside of attendance boundaries, Maria said.

Desperate for another option, Maria’s family sought help from the Welcome Center at Clemente High School, where a staffer directed them to Erie Elementary Charter School, a dual-language school in Humboldt Park 90 minutes away via public transit from their South Shore apartment.

The long commute to Erie wasn’t easy, but Maria said it was worth it because her daughter was learning more English and “engaging in conversations.” Her daughter left Erie recently when the family moved to the suburbs.

Many of Erie’s 49 newcomer students are coming from all over the city, said Carlos Perez, the school’s executive director.

A class at Erie Elementary Charter School in Humboldt Park, a school that has nearly 50 newcomer students.

Erie is better-equipped than other schools to serve native Spanish speakers learning English. As one of 43 dual-language schools in the city, Erie teaches English learners and native English speakers in Spanish and English. Eight of Erie’s teachers are from Latin American countries, Perez said.

“It was a long journey that a lot of them have gone through to get to us. This was their target: to bring their kids to a school in America ... There’s a weight and responsibility that comes with it,” Perez said.

Even with those resources, teachers face big challenges. Most migrant students come to Erie more than two grade levels behind, and some haven’t attended formal school for up to two years, Perez said. In 2022, Erie was out of compliance with bilingual and ESL program requirements, according to the school’s most recent CPS audit.

Multiple principals questioned whether the audits are effective. Perez said one teacher who they consider effective is not certified to teach English learners — one reason the school is out of compliance.

“Are we aiming for compliance, or are we aiming to get good people in front of students who can educate them?” Perez said. “Oftentimes, those are not interchangeable things.”

According to CPS, it has about 7,500 teachers who are certified to teach bilingual classes, ESL or both — a figure that has grown in recent years. Many teachers certified to teach those classes are in regular teaching positions, a spokesperson said.

District officials said they’ve tried to attract more bilingual teachers by subsidizing the cost of earning bilingual or ESL endorsements and extending early job offers to teachers who are completing their requirements. But it’s difficult to fill teaching positions midway through the year, said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer.

Felton said “we simply don’t have the talent” for every school to have big bilingual programs “because historically there haven’t been as many bilingual students in these schools.”

One child is thriving, another is ‘just stuck’

While Yennifer Ruiz switched Gabriela’s school after moving to South Shore, she opted to keep her 16-year-old son, Gabriel, at Richards Career Academy, which has a bilingual program.

After just five months in Chicago, Ruiz said she has seen how those bilingual resources have helped Gabriel thrive — he is rapidly learning English and even joined the school’s baseball team — and how the lack of services has left Gabriela feeling lost at school.

Gabriela wishes she could go back to Eli Whitney, where she liked being able to communicate with her teachers and other kids, she said.

“I feel really bad because all the objective of moving here was to get quality of life,” Ruiz said in Spanish through a translator. “I know how my son is getting to his maximum potential, but she is just stuck.”

Interviews with Spanish- speakers were conducted with translation help from Yoha Salmeron Chaparro, an intern at the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Accompaniment at Loyola University, and Alex Hernandez, a reporter for Block Club Chicago.

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

Mina Bloom is an investigative reporter for Block Club Chicago. Contact Mina at mina@blockclubchi.org.

What does it take to be a school board member? New Chicago leadership program offers a guide.

2024-05-03T15:21:29+00:00

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In a classroom normally filled with teenagers, 16 adults sat at desks arranged in a U-shape on a recent Saturday afternoon at Roosevelt High School on Chicago’s North Side.

Behind the group, there was a small table with a box of red, green, and yellow wristbands. Green meant you were fine with hugs; yellow OK’ed high fives and fist bumps; and red meant “no touching, send vibes!” according to a sign taped to the table. Next to the wristbands were a stack of packets that said “Effective School Boards Framework.”

At the front of the class, a projected slide said in big letters, “Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”

It was time for lessons on how to be on a school board.

AJ Crabill, an author presenting to the group that day, asked the class: Who is at the top of the organizational chart of a school system?

It’s not the school board, he said.

The superintendent, someone wondered.

“It is 1,000% not the superintendent,” Crabill said.

The mayor?

“It’s definitely not the mayor.”

Students?

That would be “beautiful,” Crabill said, but that’s not how it works typically.

The correct answer: The community.

Crabill, director of governance for the Council of the Great City Schools, was explaining to the class of education advocates, parent leaders, and prospective school board members that any school system exists to serve the public — but sometimes policymakers forget that.

“The moment you realize the community is at the top of the org chart, and then you realize, ‘That seems completely incongruent with my lived experience,’” Crabill said, drawing some laughs.

AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, speaks to the inaugural class of Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows during School Board School held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

The students are the inaugural class of a new, eight-month fellowship launched by National Louis University to prepare people for Chicago’s first elected school board, said Bridget Lee, the fellowship’s executive director. The fellowship is funded by Crown Family Philanthropies, The Joyce Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, and Vivo Foundation (Crown, Joyce, and Vivo also support Chalkbeat. Learn more about our funding here.)

Known as the Academy for Local Leadership, or ALL Chicago, the fellowship is happening at a critical time. Chicago voters will begin electing people to the city’s school board this November, and candidates are building campaigns. But Lee said the program is for advocates as well as potential candidates.

Fellows had to apply to join the program, which began in March and will last through November and are hosted across the city, said Lee, who added that they are still figuring out the timing for the second cohort of fellows. Fellows are given a $400 stipend to help cover transportation costs — an amount Lee hopes will increase in the future, she said.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellow Mary Nikoo takes notes during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Over about two sessions a month, the group will learn the basics of Chicago’s school system, the district’s finances, and how to make an “action plan” for creating change in school communities.

Towards the end of the program, fellows will flesh out their actual action plan and present their vision for change during their graduation ceremony. By then, some of the fellows who are running for school board may have won their elections.

The first group of fellows includes a handful of people running for office and many with close ties to the district. It includes Sendhil Revuluri, a former board member; Danielle Wallace, a school board candidate running in District 6 on the South Side; and Mykela Collins, a mother with two children in Chicago Public Schools who serves on a Local School Council.

Wallace, a former teacher and nonprofit leader in Englewood, was on the fence about running for school board until she started the fellowship.

“One of the most valuable things for me is becoming really clear on what my thoughts and values and positions are on different topics,” Wallace said. “That just gives me a lot of confidence on making the right decisions from that seat.”

Fellows Jesus Ayala Jr. and Carlos Rivas have also filed campaign finance paperwork to run for school board seats in District 7 on the South West side and District 3 on the North West side, respectively.

Collins said she applied for the fellowship because she wanted to know how to be a better advocate.

“I wanted to know who is important for me to go to, the type of questions I can ask and needed to ask and how I can go about getting those answers,” Collins said.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows Mykela Collins, right, and Christina Jensen, left, laugh during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Lee’s idea for the fellowship formed three years ago, when Illinois lawmakers first passed a law creating the elected school board. As a former teacher and CPS employee who worked in the central office, Lee wondered how the public would learn about the complicated new governance system. Lee then visited a program in Cincinnati called School Board School, which educates school board candidates and advocates, and decided to bring the model to Chicago, she said.

Lee said “plenty” of organizations help political candidates navigate politics. ALL Chicago focuses instead on learning about the school system and how to work with people who may not agree with you — just like a school board.

For example, this first batch of fellows sees eye-to-eye on about 80% of things: They care about children, and they want all students to succeed regardless of their backgrounds, Lee said. She wants the fellowship to be the place where people can have “productive civil discourse” about the 20% of things they don’t agree on.

“I think that fellows are sort of learning from each other, like how their own stories and their own experiences have shaped their viewpoint and how the system should run and are learning how to talk about that in a way that moves things forward,” Lee said.

Since the program began in March, the group has already heard from some experienced policymakers, including former Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, Lee said. They’ve also started to create their plans for how they want to impact the school system.

On the Saturday afternoon when Crabill was there, however, the fellows went back to the basics.

He asked the group to ponder some big questions, such as, “Why do school systems exist?” Answers varied. One person said the goal was to prepare children for the workforce. Another said school systems also help students socialize.

Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellow Cory Cain asks a question to speaker AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

After learning that the community is at the top of the organizational chart, Crabill, who wrote the book, “Great On Their Behalf: Why School Boards Fail, How Yours Can Become Effective,” emphasized another basic fact of being an elected official: Your job is never over.

“You gonna be sittin’ up in the grocery store trying to find a non-squishy avocado, and somebody gonna come up to you and complain about, how come their kid didn’t get a part in the play?” Crabill said, igniting laughter across the room.

But, seriously, he said: “This becomes your life. People will roll up on you at any moment when you have put yourself in the position to be their representative — and I think it’s perfectly appropriate for them to do so.”

The fellows’ knowledge of Chicago Public Schools varied. One person talked about the district’s school bus crisis. At one point, one fellow informed another that Chicago Public Schools had scrapped its old school rating policy last year. The second fellow replied, “Thank God.”

Materials used by Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago fellows are seen on the desks during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

Other times, fellows had some universal experiences with CPS. For instance, during a discussion about public feedback, the class started talking — and commiserating — all at once about the process of signing up for public comment during monthly Chicago Board of Education meetings.

“You gotta sign up two days in advance and it finishes in two minutes,” one fellow said.

“Yes!” another replied.

School board members should never only consider public feedback during a meeting, Crabill said, given that most people in the community won’t be represented there.

Crabill also covered the murky line of when board members should step in to solve a problem or delegate to someone else.

He asked the group to imagine a class of 26 students where six of the children have higher needs and get more attention from the teacher. Now imagine that a father of one of the other 20 children calls a school board member he knows, asking for more attention for his child. The board member then calls the teacher to fix the problem. What is the teacher going to do?

One fellow’s answer stood out: “Spend more time with that one kid,” she said.

That’s probably what would play out – but Crabill warned the group to never let that happen. School board members should be pointing the parent to the proper channels for expressing their concern instead of giving them inequitable access to power and frustrating their employees in the process.

Fellows in the inaugural class of Academy for Local Leadership (ALL) Chicago listen to speaker AJ Crabill, Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools, during a session held at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Illinois on April 19, 2024.

“We’ve created a hostile work environment for our staff that pressures them to no longer do what in their judgment is the best interest of children but instead do what is in the best interest of the power that be that showed up,” Crabill said.

This lesson was enlightening for Collins, the mother and LSC member.

“Learning that the roles and the responsibilities and accountability of the board is so much different from what I ever thought,” Collins said. “I thought that the board is supposed to do everything…anything goes wrong in the school, it’s the board’s issue, but learning that’s not how it is and they delegate different folks throughout the district to make those changes.”

During the session, fellows had a meta moment. They realized that so much of what they’re learning about the school system isn’t common knowledge to the general public. Was there a way that the system or a future board could spread what they’re learning?

Crabill challenged them.

“This is a new scenario for Chicago,” Crabill said, “so write a new script.”

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

Chicago Public Schools kicks off community forums on upcoming strategic plan

2024-04-16T03:57:48+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is mapping out its goals for the next five years and wants feedback from the public.

The plan — which will be finalized this summer — will focus on three priorities: how to improve students’ daily experiences in the classroom, staffing and funding, and collaborating more closely with school communities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told a crowd of about 40 people at Crane High School on Monday night for the first of seven community forums. Many of the attendees were district staff. Others were parents, community advocates, and representatives from outside organizations.

The plan gained some attention in the winter when the Chicago Board of Education announced it would move away from the school choice system. The board said it would outline a new approach in the strategic plan, and specific changes would depend on community feedback.

But school choice didn’t come up at Monday’s session. Martinez told Chalkbeat the district will ask families their opinions on school choice and capital planning in May, because those are “big topics.” The next three meetings this month will focus more on the daily school experience and funding, though parents also can share their thoughts about school choice, he said. Martinez said he’s already heard from Spanish-speaking parents who have struggled to navigate the GoCPS system.

As Martinez went over the district’s priorities, he highlighted some successes, including a recent growth in reading and math.

“We are building a five-year plan so this continues, and we continue to accelerate,” Martinez told the crowd.

Martinez, who was hired in 2021, established a three-year blueprint in the fall of 2022. The district is developing the next five-year strategic plan at a moment of big change.

Chicago is holding its first school board elections this fall and candidates are starting to emerge. In January 2025, a hybrid board with 10 elected members and 11 members appointed by the mayor will be sworn into office.

Since taking office a year ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointed school board has voted to remove police officers from schools in addition to passing the resolution to shift away from school choice. Both moves prompted a response from state lawmakers who are debating bills that could prevent those changes.

District officials have also rolled out a new budgeting formula that provides set staffing levels to all schools and additional discretionary spending based on need. They’ve also cut bus service for general education students and struggled to comply with providing transportation to students with disabilities who are legally entitled to it.

Martinez and other district officials spent the first hour of Monday’s meeting talking about the vision for the district over the past few years, as well as the feedback officials have collected so far through other community meetings and focus groups, such as on how to ensure the success of Black students. So far, that feedback has run the gamut, Martinez said, including asking the district to better prepare students for life after high school, focus more on supporting students’ mental health, provide more funding for building repairs and transportation, and include families in decision making.

In the second hour, attendees rotated between three tables. At each, CPS staff talked about their work — such as changing the funding formula for school budgets or their desire to expand dual language programming — and then took questions from members of the community.

At one table, which focused in part on funding, most of the roughly 15 people seated were CPS staff. One of the few community members was Catherine Jones, a longtime education advocate on the West Side who asked if the district was still considering enrollment under its new funding formula. Budget Director Mike Sitkowski told Jones that the new formula would “guarantee that even the smallest school has a baseline” of staff.

“Which is good,” Jones responded.

At another table, parent Alexandra Beltrand, a mother of three CPS kids, asked if the district could expand dual language programs.

By 8 p.m. — the scheduled end of the meeting — attendees had only rotated tables twice, and attendees at at least two of the tables had just a few minutes to ask questions after hearing from CPS staff. Attendees were encouraged to write down their questions and feedback so that staff could review and record it later.

“We’re going to see what worked today, what didn’t — so for example, we didn’t have as much time to have more rotations,” Martinez said. “We’re even wondering, do we start having even more groupings instead of three?”

Still, Beltrand said the meeting was helpful. After the meeting ended, she chatted one-on-one with staff from the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education.

“I felt heard,” Beltrand said.

People interested in attending the meetings can register online here.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago Public Schools wants ideas for how to improve outcomes for Black students

2024-03-12T21:27:04+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will host a series of meetings over the next two weeks to hear about how it can improve the school experience for Black students.

The first of eight meetings is taking place at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Uplift Community High School in Uptown.

The public meetings are part of the district’s new Black Student Success Working Group, which CPS created in the fall to provide district leaders with recommendations for its upcoming “Black Student Success Plan.” That blueprint will then be folded into the district’s overall five-year strategic plan, which is expected to be finalized this summer.

CPS, like other districts across the nation, has long reported academic disparities between Black students and their peers, who make up 35% of the school system. In Chicago, 79.7% of Black students graduated on time last year, a rate that has gradually improved but is still behind the graduation rate for all other racial groups, according to district data. And 12.6% of Black students dropped out last year, the highest percentage for any racial group.

“We’re meeting as a working group because historically and today, Black students are situated furthest from opportunity,” said Fatima Cooke, CPS’s chief of equity, engagement and strategy.

“There is so much more work that still needs to be done to create those holistic systems that foster environments where Black students are empowered, that they feel seen, and that they have a sense of belonging.

The working group is made up of more than 60 members, including parents, students, educators, district employees and other community members, according to a CPS press release. The group has been meeting since December and has also convened focus groups of students, families, and staff, Cooke said.

While the working group has already drafted some recommendations that that focus on academics, the members don’t want to present those ideas to the community yet because they want “authentic” input, said Ayanna Clark, a CPS parent who is a member of the working group and also serves as assistant chief of staff to the City Council’s education committee under Ald. Jeanette Taylor.

“We don’t want to go into a space where we’re once again telling people what to think and giving them a set of options and telling them to choose from the set of options,” Clark said.

State legislation that paves the way for Chicago’s first elected school board creates a “Black Student Achievement Committee in response to advocacy from longtime community advocates. Cooke said this work “is parallel to that” and won’t “impede” a committee.

The district working group is focused on three priorities. These are Black students’ daily school experience; “adult capacity and continuous learning,” which focuses on workforce diversity and professional development to ensure teachers are meeting student needs; and how community organizations can support Black students’ needs that “can’t be met by the school-based budget,” said Christopher Shelton, a former science teacher who now works for the district’s central office and is helping to facilitate the group.

The group has also discussed ideas to better support Black students, including providing teachers with more professional development; focusing on conflict resolution practices; diversifying the teacher workforce; and to “leverage corporate, government, and community partnerships to bridge resource gap,” according to a presentation posted on the district’s website.

‘Focusing on what the students need’

The group’s first meeting in December included a history of how city policies have impacted Black families and students. Some of the topics that members highlighted during that meeting were the Great Migration, the practice of redlining that drove racial segregation, and the closing of 50 schools — most of which were majority Black schools — under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The group also reviewed data on academic disparities. At the beginning of this school year, 62% of Black students in grades kindergarten to second grade were behind one grade level in reading, while 66% were behind in math, according to iReady data presented to the group at the December meeting. That’s higher than most other racial groups except for Hispanic students, who are behind in both subjects at the same rates, and the 76% of Haiwaiian or Pacific Islander students who were behind in math.

Chicago’s Black students are the least likely to earn early college credit, which can help offset college costs. And outside of academics, the group looked at data showing that Black girls received more than 7 out of every 100 out-of-school suspensions last school year, while Black boys received more than 10 — the highest rates for any racial group, which grew from 2022.

One bright spot that the group has heard about: Over the past six years, more Black eighth graders have enrolled at schools that offer algebra.

Then there are factors that can place an additional burden on Black students outside school buildings. For example, roughly 20% of Black students travel six or more miles to school compared with 11% of all students.

District officials have previously highlighted how students should not have to leave their neighborhoods to attend a school that fits their needs. In December, the Board of Education made waves when it announced that, as part of the creation of that strategic blueprint, it was planning to rethink the district’s school choice system and invest more in neighborhood schools. That system includes schools that require an application, including charters, magnets, selective enrollment schools, and gifted programs.

Jahnae Roberts, a junior at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts and a member of the working group, said she hears the need for more support around mental health and social emotional learning for Black students. Her peers have also shared with her that they don’t feel some teachers know how to work with or teach them.

The working group is “focusing on what the students need, not just education-wise, but what are they receiving at school that they might not receive at home to make it a better place for them?” Jahnae said.

The working group and the ensuing community meetings are one component of the district’s development of a new five-year strategic plan. The district hosted meetings over improving school facilities, and it will have more community meetings around the broader strategic plan.

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

Chicago Public Schools plans to end Aramark cleaning contract

2024-02-13T01:41:10+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools said Monday it is not planning to renew a multi-million dollar deal with Aramark for the management of school janitors and cleaning services after a decade.

The move comes after years of concerns and complaints over school cleanliness from staff, parents, and students.

The school board’s latest agreement with the Philadelphia-based company is set to end June 30, 2024. According to a school board committee agenda posted Monday, the district is asking board members to increase the current contract, which started Aug. 2021, from $369 million to $391 million “due to unforeseen expenditures associated with overtime, custodial supplies and custodial equipment.”

A district spokesperson confirmed Monday the district is not renewing the contract with Aramark and the school board will vote on seven new contracts at its Feb. 22 meeting.

Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer at CPS, said the district is looking forward to more direct oversight of janitorial services and supplies and allowing principals to have more say on school cleaniness. Mayfield said the district will contract with seven vendors for custodial services. He said he doesn’t anticipate any job losses with this change.

CPS employs more than 1,000 custodians, according to staffing records updated at the end of December.

“We had an opportunity to renew at Aramark and we opted not to,” said Mayfield. “There were some challenges there, but they’ve also been great partners over a number of years. Sometimes change happens.”

A spokesperson for Aramark wrote in a statement that the company was disappointed to not be selected to continue providing facility services for CPS.

“We are proud of the efforts of our dedicated employees and are committed to ensuring a smooth transition to the school district’s new provider,” said Chris Collom, Aramark’s vice president of corporate communications.

Chicago Public Schools first contracted with Aramark in 2014. Budget officials at the time promised that outsourcing the management of school cleaning would save money and ease the burden on school principals.

But the deal backfired in the first school year when staff returned from summer break to dirty classrooms and, in some buildings, fewer custodians. Then-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett admitted the shift to privatized management of custodians was not going smoothly and the board reversed nearly 500 planned layoffs. By the spring of 2015, the contract with Aramark had gone millions of dollars over budget, WBEZ reported.

The union representing school janitors called the move a victory for its members. SEIU Local 73 — the union that also represents school employees such as special education classroom assistants, bus aides, and crossing guards — has been meeting with the district’s facilities department for almost three years to raise concerns about Aramark’s management of equipment and supplies for custodial staff.

Stacia Scott Kennedy, executive vice president of SEIU, said she is thrilled the contract is over.

“I feel hopeful that this change in management will improve the outcomes of cleanliness,” said Scott Kennedy. “I also feel hopeful that it’ll improve the working conditions of our members who have suffered under private contract with management for the last 10 years.”

SEIU Local 73 has been in contract negotiations with Chicago Public Schools since its contract ended June 30, 2023. One of the union’s economic proposals was to ask the district to get rid of the contract with Aramark. Scott Kennedy said they will keep the proposal as negotiations continue.

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.

As Chicago gets its first elected school board, Local School Councils may become a proving ground for candidates

2024-02-08T16:32:48+00:00

Updated: This story has been updated to reflect an extension to the deadline for candidates to file paperwork to run for LSC. It is now Wednesday, Feb. 14.

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In the halls of Uplift Community High School, Karonda Locust is known as “Mama T.”

“If you need help, go tell my mom,” her daughter Tiara, now 23, would tell her friends when she was a student there.

“That’s how I got stuck here,” Locust said with a laugh on a recent Monday.

For four years while her daughter attended Uplift, Locust served as a parent representative on the school’s Local School Council, the governing body of community members, parents, and school staff that make decisions about the school’s budget and academic plan and evaluate the school’s leaders. Locust has also served on the LSC at Willa Cather Elementary school, where her youngest daughter still attends, for nine years.

For Locust, the LSC was a gateway to more involvement in the school.

“That’s how it should be,” said Locust’s sister Taschaunda Hall, who is also an active member of the Cather’s LSC and briefly served on the LSC at Uplift as well.

Chicago’s LSCs are unique and powerful. There’s nothing quite like them in other school districts across the U.S. The Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 established that every CPS-run school would have a Local School Council. Today LSCs are made up of six parents, two teachers, one non-teacher representative, two community members, one to three students, and the school’s principal.

But while the first LSC elections in 1989 had over 17,000 candidates, those numbers have plummeted over the years. The last LSC elections in 2022 saw just over 6,000 applicants, but voter turnout was at its strongest in a decade, with students making up the majority of the 110,700 voters.

Still, LSC members have successfully advocated for change and improvements and many believe the councils are the key to better schools across the city.

Now, with Chicago’s Board of Education adding elected seats for the first time this year and transitioning to a fully elected board in 2026, LSCs may become a sort of proving ground for positions with a broader reach.

“I do predict many of our LSC members may put their hat in the ring,” said Kishasha Ford, director of the CPS LSC Relations office. “Our LSC members [are] very well-equipped to do this work because they have some experience being on a kind of a board, because if you think about it, LCSs are like mini school boards for their local school.”

Elections for these “mini school boards’' are happening again this spring. The deadline to run for LSC is 3 p.m. next Wednesday, Feb. 14 and election day for elementary schools is April 10 and April 11 for high schools, with new two-year terms of office beginning July 1, 2024.

As of Feb. 1, 1,902 people had filed to run for LSC, according to district officials. At the same time last election cycle in 2022, 852 people had applied.

Over the decades, LSCs have changed the names of schools named after enslavers, removed controversial leadership, won capital improvements, even helped open new schools. Others have sat mostly empty, served as little more than a rubber stamp, or been rendered ineffective by infighting and conflicting interests.

It depends on who’s running the ship, says Kendra Snow, the lead parent organizer for grassroots organization Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.

Studies showing that parent involvement in schools can have a major impact on student outcomes are abundant, but for LSCs to be effective, Snow argues, parents have to do more than just show up, they have to be informed.

But the “showing up” part is still a major part of the battle.

After elections in 2022, over a thousand LSC positions were unfilled and according to CPS data, 311 schools still have vacancies on their councils. Still, according to CPS, 97% of LSCs had enough members to meet “quorum,” which requires that seven members be present for the LSC to vote and conduct business.

Chalkbeat caught up with four parents who have served on LSCs, where they called for improvements and guided their schools through challenges. Their experiences demonstrate what LSCs are capable of, some of the reasons parents may be opting out, and how the role of LSCs may shift as Chicago gets an elected school board.

The mom who wants to open LSCs to more people

Karonda Locust (right), a current LSC parent representative at Willa Cather Elementary School and former LSC parent representative at Uplift Community High School, stands with her sister, Taschaunda Hall (left), on the playground outside Cather.

Karonda Locust is decked out in the red and black of Willa Cather Elementary school on a recent Monday morning. Today, she’s helping out at the security check-in at the front doors before heading to work, but “I’m always there, everywhere,” she says.

She chats easily with staff and students and no one questions her presence as she walks the halls. They all know who she is.

Locust has served on the LSC at Cather alongside her sister Taschaunda Hall for nine years. When her eldest daughter moved on to Uplift Community High School in 2019, she joined the LSC there as well. For four years, she served on both LSCs at the same time.

Her time on the LSC at Uplift helped her forge relationships with the staff and kids and she continues to volunteer there even though her daughter has graduated. That’s the point of LSCs, she said, to invest in not just your own kids, but the school community as a whole.

That’s why in 2022 when her daughter was a senior at Uplift, she and her daughter (who sat on the LSC as a student representative) advocated for a bus service to bring in more students from the West Side. Her own daughter would never benefit from it, but other kids would.

Now, a bus picks up kids from Cather Elementary to bring them to Uplift, giving West Side kids a chance to attend the school without leaving parents to figure out the hour-and-a-half commute.

“That’s one of the things that I’m most proud of – that we were able to bring kids from other neighborhoods to Uplift and they can have that experience as well,” said Locust.

With the first Chicago Board of Education elections happening later this year, Locust said several friends and community members have asked her to run for a seat, but she doesn’t have the time.

Instead, now that her daughter has graduated – she earned a scholarship to study education at Truman College and plans to become a teacher – Locust is shifting some of her focus to advocating for changes to the structures and rules of LSCs.

Some of the requirements for serving on LSCs, she says, are keeping people out.

When Locust herself was a teen mother, she had a hard time making it to her daughters’ school events. In her stead, she often sent grandparents or aunts or uncles, any way to make sure her kids felt supported. But none of those family members could run for the LSC as a parent representative – and none lived within the school’s neighborhood boundaries, making them ineligible to serve as a community representative.

Family structures have changed in the past three decades, said Locus, and she wants to open up LSCs to more family members outside of the traditional parent-child paradigm.

“We’re actually losing out on opportunities for family members that could support the school because of the structure that was created over 30 years ago,” said Locust. “This is a non-paid position, so if somebody wants to serve and help my kids’ school, God bless ‘em.”

She also hopes to end the fingerprinting and background check requirements for LSC parents, saying it alienates parents with criminal records and scares off parents who are undocumented, though, barring convictions for certain offenses, both are legally allowed to serve on LSCs.

The veteran LSC leader who built a new school

José Quiles, a community representative on LSCs at Mary Lyon Public School, Steinmetz College Prep, Belmont-Cragin Elementary School in Belmont-Cragin, speaks inside of a classroom on Fri., Jan. 25, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

José Quiles has served on LSCs since they were first created in 1989. In his 35 years as a parent representative and then as a community representative, he’s seen it all.

The stories roll out of him with ease on a recent Thursday as he leads a Local School Council information session at the Belmont-Cragin not-for-profit organization he founded in 2015, the Education Community Committee (ECC).

He currently sits on LSCs at three schools – Mary Lyon Public School, Steinmetz College Prep, and Belmont-Cragin Elementary School – and when he’s not conducting LSC business, he’s teaching other people in the neighborhood how to join their LSCs and get things done on them.

In the workshops at ECC, they talk about things like how to read a budget and the rules and expectations for LSC members.

But what he hones in on and repeats over and over in the workshops is that the LSC is about the kids. All of the kids, not just their own.

That’s what sustained the eight-year movement he helped lead to get a new school built in Belmont-Cragin, he said – knowing that it was what the kids in the area needed.

“Belmont-Cragin started because Mary Lyon had 1800 kids,” said Quiles.

Initially, to address the overcrowding, some of the Mary Lyon kids were sent to a nearby site on Mango St. that was formerly the Catholic school St. James. When it became clear that the principal at Mary Lyon was struggling to oversee both school facilities, the LSC requested a separate principal and LSC to separate the school from Mary Lyon altogether, thereby creating a new school.

“Basically, we gave birth to it,” he said with a laugh.

Amid the swath of school closures in 2013, the St. James facility was closed and the students were relocated to a site on Palmer St., but the LSC found that there were not enough bathroom facilities for the students.

The LSC and other community organizations began pushing for a new school to be built at Riis Park.

In January 2023, the new Belmont-Cragin Elementary School officially opened in the park, offering 32 classrooms with park views, a black box theater, library, music room, and access to the connected park fieldhouse.

Quiles’ own children and foster children have long since graduated from the schools where he currently serves as community representative on the LSCs.

At 68, he says he wants to retire, but he’s worried that the LSCs aren’t ready for him to do so.

“A strong council moves mountains,” he told participants in Spanish during a recent LSC workshop. “But a weak council goes in no direction. And when you don’t move in any direction, there is no progress.”

That’s what his work with ECC is all about – educating parents so they know what questions to ask and how to push for change, whether on LSCs or as members of the new elected school board or as the voters who put people on those governing bodies.

Despite his insistence that he needs to retire, Quiles still has his ear to the floor at his local schools.

Right now, he says the biggest issues his LSCs are working on are the social emotional impacts of the pandemic on the students and supporting immigrant students and parents.

Advocating for the South Side

Kendra Snow is running for LSC at Christian Fenger Academy High School in Roseland. She is a former LSC member at Harvard Elementary School in Auburn-Gresham.

Back in 2002 when Kendra Snow sat on her first Local School Council at a school in Auburn-Gresham, “it was like a puppet show,” she said.

The principal “hand-picked” the parents she wanted on the council and ran the meetings, quickly going over budget lines. No one asked any questions or knew what anything meant.

“We were just bodies here to put a signature to something,” she said.

Then, Snow began to learn on her own.

“I had to learn this for myself, it’s the parents with the power, and if you want to know something then you read into it the same way she did,” said Snow. “So now I’m the troublemaker, because I challenged things.”

CPS supports LSCs with trainings and office hours, as well as 13 specialists supporting 511 LSCs, according to the department’s director Kishasha Ford.

There is a 300-page manual for LSC members and online modules as well as in-person trainings, said Ford.

“That’s the biggest part of our job is the education piece.” she said. “Because it is a lot to know and we can’t expect every single LSC member to know every single nuanced thing. That’s why we’re here to help support and to guide them.”

Snow read the manual and did the online modules, but she says, it’s not quite enough.

“You got to just do more than just watch these videos,” she said, suggesting that CPS incorporate questions into the modules to make sure viewers understood the material before moving on to the next video.

She supplemented her CPS training with resources and workshops from community organizations. Now, Snow works to empower other parents so they can have a voice on their LSCs. She is the lead parent organizer with Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.

The mother of seven, Snow has been entrenched in public education since her eldest son, now 31, first attended school. In fact, it was when her son was accepted into a school on the North Side that Snow was able to compare his experience there to the schools her other children attended on the South Side.

The biggest difference?

“Resources,” she said. “We’re not fighting the same battles. The resources that are in those schools, we don’t have in our schools.”

In her experience, Snow said parents are angry about the lack of resources and come into the schools shouting about it. She sees it as her job to give them a more effective way to get things done.

“You’re not getting results that way. So now let’s fight a different way for what we need in the school,” she said. “You hit them with policies. You hit them with facts.”

Snow has concentrated her efforts specifically on the South Side where she grew up and where most of her children have attended public schools.

In her work as a CPS-certified LSC trainer, she hopes she can not only encourage more South Side parents to run for LSC seats, but help make sure they are informed and therefore empowered to help improve their schools – one parent at a time, one school at a time.

“Know your power. Know that this is for your kids,” Snow said. “You have to fight for your kids. Just be there. Just show up. It’s a couple hours out of the month. Just show up. That time is worth it for public education.”

Educating fellow parents, ousting a principal

Vanessa Espinoza is former LSC member at Orozco Community Academy in Pilsen.

Vanessa Espinoza has been volunteering in Chicago Public Schools since before she had kids.

When she became a mother and began making friends with other parents, it opened her eyes to some of the inequities and challenges in CPS. Espinoza, who is bilingual, became particularly interested in supporting English language learners as well as students with IEPs, or Individualized Education Programs, to help students with special needs.

She soon joined the LSC at Orozco where her kids were enrolled and was surprised that few of the parent representatives understood the documents and policies they were supposed to be making decisions about.

“Why are you expecting the parents to approve something that they don’t understand totally?” she said. “You gave them the power just to say yes and no, but not do anything else.”

The trainings offered by CPS to parent representatives, she said, were superficial. For example, they teach the names of the budget lines, but not that each budget line can only be used for certain purchases.

“None of that was taught to the parents who were going to make this decision on the budget” she said.

However, Espinoza’s background as a support worker at another school gave her a leg up in this area. And her knowledge of finances turned out to be particularly important on Orozco’s LSC in 2014.

Because she knew how to read the budget, Espinoza soon discovered that the principal at the time was transferring large sums of money between budget lines, something that required approval from the LSC.

So she asked to see all of the reports on the budget and the school’s internal accounts. The principal refused and Espinoza requested an audit. The LSC tried to work with her, Espinoza said, but the principal was not amenable.

“This money’s for the kids. You don’t want to tell us where the money is and how you’re going to use it, then that’s it,” she said. " So we requested her removal.”

The council voted unanimously to remove Principal Nancy Paulette-Aguirre in November 2014.

But it wasn’t an entirely popular decision.

Most of the teachers at the school supported the decision, raising issues about turnover among other things and other LSC members said Paulette-Aguirre refused to work with the council, but non-LSC parents were split. On the day of the vote, 12 parents protested outside the school. Paulette-Aguirre was later removed from a second school in 2019.

“Even though the parents have the power to make significant changes, you have to be able to educate the parents with the information needed to make educated decisions, and [CPS] is not. In my opinion, they’re not.” said Espinoza.

She worries that these same issues might bleed over into the newly elected school board but is still hopeful that parents will gain some of the 10 elected seats this year.

“To have an elected school board that is going to be successful you have to have parents involved,” she said. “They know what their kids need.”

Espinoza’s children have graduated out of CPS, but Espinoza remains an advocate for education and serves as the bilingual communication specialist with Kids First Chicago and as the president and co-founder of Amigos de Gunsaulus, a parent-led non-profit that supports Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy in Brighton Park, where one of her children graduated.

Despite her challenging experience on Orozco’s LSC, she’s hopeful things can change as long as LSCs are filled with people who put the kids first.

“To be honest with you, it’s a lot of responsibilities, and it’s not well rewarded in a sense, not a monetary reward. Sometimes you get enemies,” but, she said, “If in your mind and your heart is the best for the kids’ education, I think you should run.”

Chicago proposes later start date for 2024-25 school year due to Democratic National Convention

2024-02-01T19:58:07+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools has proposed calendars for the next two academic years, pushing next year’s start date back by a week to avoid overlapping with the Democratic National Convention.

The Board of Education is slated to vote on the proposed calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years at its Feb. 22 meeting.

The first day of school for the 2024-25 academic year would be on Aug. 26, about a week later than recent years. The move avoids starting school the same day Chicago is set to begin hosting the Democratic National Convention from Aug. 19-22. The convention is expected to bring in about 75,000 visitors, according to a news release from CPS.

“This shift not only accommodates the city’s logistical needs as they relate to the influx of Conventiongoers, but it also allows time for students to attend, volunteer, and participate in the civic process of hosting the Convention,” district officials said in a press release.

Because of the later start, the first semester next year would also end after a two-week winter break on Jan. 17, 2025. School would end on June 12, 2025, about a week later than this year.

For the 2025-26 school year, the first day would return to the third week of August – on Aug. 18, 2025 – and classes would end June 4, 2026.

Both proposed calendars would continue the recent practice of taking a full week off at Thanksgiving.

The district is asking parents, staff, and students for their feedback. A survey for parents, staff, and other community members will close at 5 p.m. Feb. 7. while a survey that CPS distributed Tuesday to students in grades 6-12 ends at 5 p.m. Feb. 2.

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

Many of Chicago’s migrant students may be entitled to bus service. But are schools telling them?

2024-01-19T19:06:28+00:00

After six months in a downtown shelter, Daniela and her 11-year-old son, Luis, faced a dilemma: The city had given them until Feb. 1 to find another place to live, which would mean moving farther away from the school the fifth grader was attending.

The family, which migrated to Chicago from Venezuela, secured an apartment in South Shore with the help of Catholic Charities. Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms in this story out of privacy concerns for the interviewed families.

But their new apartment is more than 13 miles south of Luis’ school, Ogden International School of Chicago’s Jenner campus — which could mean an hour-plus commute by public transit for Luis and his mother, who had planned to look for a job.

Daniela’s predicament is one many parents could face as Chicago enforces a new rule requiring migrant families to leave shelters after 60 days. She is one of about 3,000 migrants who arrived between January and July 31 of last year and began receiving 60-day eviction notices in early December 2023, according to a press release from City Hall. If families haven’t secured permanent housing, they must get back in line for a spot at a city shelter.

But many migrant families in shelters might not know the rights their children have to district-provided transportation — or even that they can remain in the same school despite moving — if schools are not informing them, or there’s no one to help translate conversations between school staff and families.

Every school has a liaison for homeless students who is supposed to inform homeless families of their rights, a district spokesperson said. Those liaisons, along with principals and staff with the district’s Office of Cultural and Language Education, tell newcomer families how to apply for transportation services, the district said. Each school also posts a list of homeless students’ rights in English and Spanish near the main office, the district said.

Until Daniela spoke with a Chalkbeat reporter, she didn’t know that the federal McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Act allows homeless students to stay in the same school even if they move, such as to another shelter, and requires school districts to provide transportation. It also allows students such as Luis, who have found permanent housing, to stay at the same school until the end of the school year. No one at the school had told her, she said.

In fact, federal law says that districts “shall presume” that keeping homeless students in their original school is in their best interest unless that’s against their parents’ or guardians’ wishes.

After publication of this story, CPS provided Chalkbeat additional details about how schools are informing families of their rights under the law. They said every newly arrived family gets an enrollment packet, both in English and Spanish, that includes information about the rights of homeless students, according to the district.

Staff at the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education also help these families fill out an application for homeless students, which “provides families with the first opportunity to review the process and ask questions,” the district said. Schools have a 24/7 translation line that staff can use to communicate with families who don’t speak English. CPS said it fulfills its legal obligation to provide transportation to homeless students by providing them with CTA cards.

The goal of the federal law is to provide stability for homeless students. One 2015 study found that New York City students who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent, and of those students, those who were also homeless were more likely to repeat the same grade.

Daniela also didn’t know Chicago Public Schools allows parents of younger homeless students like Luis to apply for yellow bus service if they can’t accompany their child on the commute. Or that CPS policy requires schools to inform families who are homeless of their transportation rights and options.

“We’re not, as a district, transporting any newcomers,” said Kimberly Jones, CPS’s director of transportation, in late November during an interview with WGN. On Tuesday, a district spokesperson said the transportation department does not see students’ immigration status, but still called Jones’ statement accurate, in that she’s unable to identify any students on bus routes based on their immigration status.

But district officials have indicated they are tracking immigration status internally. At a City Council Education Committee meeting in late November, a district official testified that CPS had enrolled at least 4,000 migrant students.

This year the district is exclusively busing students with disabilities and homeless students due to a driver shortage and as it’s under state watch to shorten commutes for students with disabilities. District officials have said migrant students are largely homeless, meaning they’re living in shelter, doubled up with others, or in public places.

Of the roughly 8,700 students the district is currently busing, just 128 are homeless, the district said. Another nearly 4,000 students who would typically qualify for transportation this year are receiving stipends, with just 18 of them homeless.

The school did give Daniela and her son free CTA cards for the school commute to and from their shelter, a service it is providing as part of its legal obligation to provide homeless students with transportation. But, “they did not provide the option for yellow bus service,” she said.

Ogden-Jenner did not respond to Chalkbeat’s request for comment. The district also declined to comment specifically on Daniela’s experience.

Schools must inform families of their rights, advocates say

CPS policy also allows families of young children who are homeless to apply for “hardship” transportation, which provides yellow bus service for children who are in kindergarten through sixth grade. Caregivers must fill out paperwork to prove they have a conflict that does not allow them to assist their child in getting to school. Examples of “hardship” include work, job training, schooling of their own, a conflict with shelter rules, court orders, or another “good cause,” according to CPS’ website.

The 60-day shelter rule is “going to require families to move more often, and it makes it more challenging to get to the school of origin and stay stable in their school of origin,” said Patricia Nix-Hodes, director of the Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “If they are eligible for hardship transportation, they should be getting it.”

“The onus isn’t on the family who is newly arrived to Chicago to figure out what services might be available for transportation,” Nix-Hodes said.

School liaisons for homeless students often have other duties in schools, which may make it difficult for them to keep homeless families adequately informed, Nix-Hodes said.

In addition to informing families of their rights, the liaisons should also help families figure out if they’re eligible for bus service and with filling out any required paperwork, Nix-Hodes said.

Other families are in the dark about transportation rights

Edgar, a friend of Daniela’s who is also getting ready to move from shelter, also did not know he could apply for bus service so that his 8-year-old daughter could travel without him from their new home to her current school, Ogden Elementary.

Edgar is moving from the same shelter as Daniela to the same South Shore apartment building with his family. When he informed Ogden about their upcoming move, staff offered to find a school close to his new home — but they didn’t mention that he could apply for bus service to help get her to Ogden, he said.

Daniela's son, Luis, left, poses with Edgar's daughter, right, on Wed., Jan. 3, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

After learning the information from a Chalkbeat reporter, he went back to Ogden to ask about bus service. The school confirmed that service was available but “these are things that take time to approve,” Edgar explained in Spanish.

Instead, with Ogden’s help, he plans to enroll his daughter at a school that’s a 12-minute walk from their new home. While his daughter is OK with leaving Ogden, she’s sad about leaving her English class, he said. Ogden did not return a request for comment, and CPS didn’t respond to questions about Edgar’s experience.

Schools shouldn’t encourage homeless families to “move schools when their living situation changes,” Nix-Hodes said.

The law allows homeless students to stay in their same school because school stability is good for children’s academic performance and social-emotional health, especially when they’re coming to the United States from another country, Nix-Hodes said.

Gwen McElhattan, a social worker with nonprofit Chicago Help Initiative, which provides meals, clothing, and other services to homeless families, has received questions from many migrant parents on how to enroll their child in school. The city has created a “welcome center” for migrants at Roberto Clemente High School, which is supposed to help families with school enrollment and other resources. But McElhattan said that many people don’t know it exists — and doesn’t sense that many designated people are informing families of how to navigate school enrollment.

“They don’t know about it because they’re migrants — they don’t always know everything that’s happening,” said McElhattan, adding that their primary concerns are food and shelter. “They’re just trying to survive. They have children – they’re just trying to keep going.”

Luis, Daniela’s son, said he likes his teachers at Ogden-Jenner and he’s made some friends. But he’s had a tough time understanding lessons because there’s often no one who can help translate, he said. Because of the language barrier, there are days that he doesn’t want to go to school, his mother said.

Still, Daniela would prefer to keep her son enrolled at Ogden-Jenner if she can get busing because she senses it’s a good school. By state standards, it is: The school earned the Illinois State Board of Education’s second-highest rating for academic performance.

Daniela has not yet talked with the school about what happens next or what her options are.

It’s difficult to communicate with staff, she said. “En la escuela allí no hablan español” — At the school, they don’t speak Spanish.

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

Inspector general’s report prompts Chicago Public Schools to propose changes to device tracking policy

2024-01-17T23:39:41+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is working to improve how schools keep track of electronic devices and other items, in response to an inspector general’s report that found the district had lost more than 77,000 devices.

The proposed changes — some of which were outlined at a school board committee meeting Wednesday — include disciplining staff for failing to abide by the district’s policy for managing school assets, such as devices, and updating policy language to say that training is “mandatory” for staffers who are responsible for keeping track of devices. The district’s asset management team would also create an annual report about theft and loss of devices, according to the proposed changes.

Last week, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher released his annual report which, in part, found that the district had marked more than 77,000 devices lost or stolen in the 2021-22 school year. The district has found 12,000 of the missing devices, nearly all inside schools, district officials said.

Fletcher’s report cited a lack of training and an unreliable tracking system as some reasons for why so many devices were missing or unaccounted for. He also said staff and students were not held accountable for devices. Last year, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ investigation also found that the district didn’t have a structured system for tracking down devices and lacked a clear plan or vision for how to best use the technology in the classroom.

“The [policy] has been amended to reflect a more accurate description of the current process, eliminate sections of the policy which are obsolete, and overall improve CPS asset and inventory management practices,” said Rolando Hernandez, assistant deputy controller for CPS’ finance office, during Wednesday’s meeting.

The district’s asset management policy doesn’t just cover technology. It applies to any item that is not real estate, that is purchased by or donated to CPS, is valued at more than $500 but less than $25,000, and has a lifespan of more than a year. The current policy applies to schools, central offices, and network offices, which are responsible for managing their devices.

Each school and district office should have an “accountable official” who is responsible for keeping track of devices, the existing policy says.

Other proposed changes include:

All devices must be entered into CPS’ electronic inventory system once they are delivered – not just purchased – within 30 days.
Each person designated to track devices within their school or office will be responsible for complying with their annually required inventory and ensuring its accuracy.
Schools and offices will report potential loss, damage, or theft to the district’s asset management team. That team will share an annual report on such loss or damage to the district’s Risk Management team, the Department of Facilities, and Safety & Security team.
If a student or staffer transfers to a new school or department, any devices they’ve received from the district will follow them, which their old school or department must log into the district’s asset management system. Once students or staff leave the district, they must return devices and other “assets.”
Broken computers must be disposed of through a special process created by the Information and Technology department, though that process was not spelled out in the proposed changes. Items that are not computers will be disposed of by the Department of Facilities, including through contracted salvaging companies.

The board is expected to vote on the proposed changes in March after a month-long public comment period, which is slated to begin Jan. 26.

Separately, the district is also working on several other changes “to more accurately represent” what devices are in schools, district officials said Wednesday. That includes automating the process of recovering computers, which would involve freezing and sending notifications to devices that would ask students or staff to return them. The district is also considering replacing its current asset management system because of “functionality and data issues” that must be improved.

On Wednesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez disputed Fletcher’s estimate that the missing devices were worth $23 million. Martinez said many of those devices were old, bringing the total cost to about “a tenth” of Fletcher’s figure. However, he added that’s “not an excuse” to explain the lack of tracking at a time when the district added hundreds of thousands of devices to its inventory.

“It’s been great that now all of our children have access to devices [but] it is easy for us to not prioritize how we get rid of old devices, and it’s not always clear even to staff, and so I just want to call that out,” Martinez said.

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

Inspector General urges overhaul of Chicago Public Schools’ ‘flawed’ tracking system for tech devices

2024-01-09T06:01:00+00:00

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The Chicago Public Schools inspector general is raising red flags about potential waste and fraud — particularly in areas where the district has spent more than $2 billion in federal COVID recovery money.

In his annual report out Tuesday, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher also outlined eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students, and recommended more consistent training on sexual misconduct for vendors who provide services to schools.

The report — which details the inspector general’s work from the previous fiscal year, or July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 — highlighted the office’s investigation into lost or stolen laptops and other technology valued at at least $23 million and, for the second year in a row, detailed cases of fraud and potential mismanagement of extra pay for staff.

The OIG found that CPS marked at least 77,000 devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, often with little or no effort to find those devices, according to the report.

The OIG’s review comes after Chalkbeat and WBEZ found the district spent tens of millions of federal COVID relief dollars on technology without a reliable system for tracking those devices.

“CPS spends a couple of million dollars on software and other assets that try to monitor and keep track of their assets, and we found out that that system is just very flawed,” said Fletcher, in an interview Monday with Chalkbeat.

District officials are “concerned about the loss of any public asset,” and are working to improve their tracking systems and hold staff accountable to district policies in how to manage devices, a CPS spokesperson said.

At three dozen schools, all of the devices assigned to students were listed as lost or stolen, according to the OIG’s review of audits schools submitted of their technology inventory during the 2021-22 school year.

“When we followed up with the schools, we would talk to people who had an asset or a laptop or a Chromebook that was issued to them that was marked as lost or stolen — that in fact wasn’t,” Fletcher said. “There were a few interviews with people who reached into their desk and said, ‘Hey, I got this laptop, no one ever asked me for it.’”

Incorrectly labeling devices can lead the district to purchase replacement devices “at taxpayer’s expense,” the OIG noted.

During the time period the OIG investigated, the district spent $2.6 million on services meant to keep track of and recover the technology, the report said. Fletcher described the district’s tracking system as “very flawed,” mainly because there isn’t enough of an effort to find devices. In July, the district sent messages to 50,000 reportedly lost or stolen devices in order to recover them. As of Monday, the district has recovered more than 12,000 devices, a district spokesperson said.

Almost all of them were “in schools and were simply missed in the previous inventory cycle,” the spokesperson said.

There isn’t enough training for how schools should track their devices, leaving the district with flawed or incomplete data that’s not credible or enough to use to determine if criminal activity, such as theft, might have taken place, Fletcher said.

Between March 2020 and August 2023, Chalkbeat and WBEZ previously reported, the district spent more than $308 million on computers and other technology from its three main vendors — Apple, CDW, and Virtucom. The amount was roughly as much as these companies got paid during the previous two decades combined.

District officials said they bought nearly 311,000 laptops and tablets during that time, but more than 41,000 of the devices were sitting in a warehouse or yet to be shipped by a manufacturer. They also cited a lack of dedicated staff at schools to do inventory as an issue. According to district data, roughly 35% of schools had a technology coordinator.

The OIG’s office has recommended 16 changes to the district’s technology tracking system, including making principals accountable for their inventory audit results, making students and staff accountable for their devices, and requiring students and staff to be notified that they’re supposed to be in possession of an item that’s gone missing.

The district is now working to automate the process in which devices are recovered, a spokesperson said. Schools will be able to send messages to devices that are marked as lost or stolen, “urging people to return them.”

Devices that are not returned “promptly” will be disabled, the spokesperson said.

The district ultimately wants to create sensors in schools that would track mobile devices “and other high-value assets,” the spokesperson said.

‘Systemic problems’ tracking extra pay for staff

In addition to new technology, Chicago has spent millions in federal COVID recovery money on support for students beyond the normal school day — such as after-school programs, summer school, and tutoring — that existing school staff often help run.

As he did last year, Fletcher’s office raised concerns about how the district is tracking the recent spike in extra pay, which employees receive for working outside normal hours, such as to run an after-school activity.

According to the report, 67 employees each made more than $15,000 in extra pay in the 2021-22 school year, an amount that district officials consider excessive. The report says district officials plan to ask principals in late January to verify amounts for all employees whose extra pay was 50 percent or more of their normal work hours.

The OIG’s office noted a 74% increase in extra pay from 2017 to 2021. The district has since received $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief funding. The report notes that last school year, about $100 million of that funding was allocated to summer school, after-school programs, and professional development.

The OIG has pressed the district to monitor those payments more closely after detecting seemingly unchecked approvals of extra pay, such as pay granted without timesheets or without “supporting swipes” in the timekeeping system.

The district plans to create “new processes to ensure that payment reports are accurate and validated,” a spokesperson said, but did not provide more details.

Fletcher’s office highlighted two cases of fraud connected to programs operating outside the school day. Though both schemes allegedly began prior to the pandemic, Fletcher notes that they illustrate the “systemic problems” with how extra pay is tracked.

In one case, an elementary school assistant principal allegedly stole $195,000 over two years by diverting fees paid by parents for after-school programs into her personal bank account. Fletcher’s office first reported the alleged fraud, which dated back to 2011, in 2021 and referred the case to local authorities. In July 2023, a 17-count indictment came down against the former assistant principal, alleging she stole a total of $273,364.

“I mean, $200,000 is a lot more than a rounding error for an after-school program,” Fletcher said. “For that to go missing without any curtailment of the programming or anything like that raises concerns about what the parents are getting charged.”

In another case highlighted in the report, Fletcher’s office found a school clerk approved close to $70,000 in extra pay for hours she didn’t work. The alleged fraud took place at two separate schools dating back to 2017. She was able to log the payments for herself and an additional $15,000 for another clerk because “supervisors did not check to see whether they earned the extra pay they were claiming,” the report said.

CPS timesheets now have new language that says employees must swipe in and out of the timesheet system to receive extra pay for extended day and summer school programs. Because of pressure from the OIG’s office, timesheets detailing extra pay now also require employees to sign an attestation saying that they can be disciplined or fired for submitting false timesheets, the report said.

Sexual Assault Unit tackles 20% of all complaints

The OIG’s Sexual Assault Unit was created in the wake of a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found schools failed to protect students from sexual abuse. It has opened more than 2,188 cases since its creation and fielded more than 400 complaints in the past year.

The annual report includes details of eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students and dozens of other sexual misconduct cases that led to discipline, all of which the unit closed in fiscal year 2023.

One case led to criminal charges for a now-former security guard who the OIG found had sexually abused a 16-year-old student for five months, often inside the school building during school hours. The guard was charged with multiple counts of criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County Criminal Court, the OIG’s office said.

While sexual misconduct-related complaints made up one-fifth of more than 2,000 complaints filed with the OIG last fiscal year, most of those complaints — about two-thirds — are about allegations that don’t rise to sexual abuse or harassment. These “other concerning” allegations could represent grooming of students and involve allegations of staffers texting students or “liking” their students’ photos on social media, for example.

Separately, the OIG’s report raised concerns about inconsistent training on sexual misconduct and professional boundaries for outside employees who work with schools, such as vendors contracted to work with the district. The office found that some vendors and volunteers said they were trained on CPS policies while others weren’t. Of the 157 complaints reported to the Sexual Assault Unit about vendors or volunteers, about one-third were substantiated, according to the OIG.

The district has started training at least one subset of volunteers, the OIG reported.

Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago Public Schools won’t bus general education students for the rest of the school year

2023-12-21T22:54:15+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the school year, officials said Thursday.

In a letter to parents, the district said a driver shortage persists and is preventing it from providing busing to general education students — largely those in magnet and selective enrollment programs. The district will continue to provide free CTA cards, valued at $35, to those roughly 5,500 families; about one-third of those children are using the passes, according to a CPS spokesperson.

“We fully understand how frustrating this news will be for many of our families, and sincerely empathize with the challenges and inconvenience that this situation has caused,” the letter said.

The update comes after the district announced in late September that it couldn’t provide busing to general education students this semester but would share an update with families before winter break regarding the second half of the school year. In November, the district cast doubt that it would be able to expand bus service this year.

Citing a driver shortage, the district announced in late July that it would limit busing to students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, call for transportation, as well as students who are homeless. Both student groups are legally entitled to transportation — and the district is on state watch to improve commute times for students with disabilities.

The district left open the possibility that general education students could get busing later in the year.

The district is currently busing 8,133 students with disabilities and another 146 students who are homeless, according to a CPS spokesperson.

Thursday’s busing update comes a week after the school board passed a resolution saying it wants to bolster neighborhood schools and move away from a system of choice where families travel outside their neighborhood for school. Asked if the district’s desire to move away from school choice informed their decision to sever busing for general education students, a spokesperson said the district is following state law and board policy by prioritizing students with disabilities for transportation.

Parents of children in selective enrollment and magnet programs have repeatedly shared frustrations with the Board of Education about the difficulties they’ve faced without busing to schools that are far from their homes, including difficulties balancing the school commute with their work schedules. Some parents have transferred their children to other schools.

Aria Haque, a sixth grader at Keller Regional Gifted Center in Mt. Greenwood, lives 20 miles from her school, and transferred to her neighborhood school after “so many hurdles and almost no time” to figure out the commute, Haque told the board at its meeting earlier this month. Her new school, however, was teaching material she said she’d learned two years ago.

Haque decided to re-enroll at Keller “even with the killer commute.” Her father now drives Aria and another Keller student whose family doesn’t have a car and lives 15 miles away from the school.

“That has been our routine ever since: An hour-and-a-half on the road for me, which isn’t bad, but over three hours for my dad, which is horrible,” Haque said.

Natasha Haque, Aria’s mother, said she’s been advocating with a group of parents to get busing reinstated for general education students in magnet and selective enrollment schools. She worries that students from low-income families at Aria’s school, Keller, will lose out on the chance to attend a great school. Roughly a third of Keller’s students were from low-income families last year.

“If the message to families is: ‘You cannot rely on us to transport your child to a selective enrollment school,’ it’s the lower income families that will be the first to say, ‘Yeah, I cannot afford to take my child to school. I cannot quit my job,’” Natasha Haque said Thursday after the letter to parents was sent out.

Limited busing has also helped the district comply with a state corrective action plan to keep commutes under an hour each way for students with disabilities. Last school year, about 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour. As of October, the district was busing an average of 7 students with disabilities per route, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

Commute times had improved this year as the district has limited busing, but have worsened in recent months: In August, 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour; that’s grown to 111 students as of Thursday, a slight dip from late November, according to the district.

CPS said another 115 students with disabilities are in the process of getting bus routes. The district has received 4,649 requests since the start of the school year, close to 900 more requests than last year. It is also continuing to hold job fairs to hire more bus drivers.

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 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.

Chicago Public Schools is tapping principal Joshua Long to lead its special education department

2023-12-11T20:31:00+00:00

Joshua Long, currently the principal of Southside Occupational Academy High School, has been selected to lead Chicago Public Schools’ beleaguered special education department, according to district officials.

The department — known as the Office of Diverse Learners Supports and Services — serves nearly 52,000 students with disabilities and has been without a chief since June. That’s when Stephanie Jones stepped down amid fallout from Chicago’s violations related to the use of restraint and timeout of students. The department has also struggled in recent years to ensure students with disabilities are getting services they’re legally entitled to under federal law.

Long sent a letter to families whose children attend Southside this morning announcing “with mixed emotions” that he accepted the role and would start after winter break, pending confirmation by the school board this Thursday.

“I am excited to continue working for students with disabilities and look forward to new opportunities to engage with all stakeholders as we move to positively impact each student’s experience in every school,” he wrote.

Ben Felton, chief talent officer at Chicago Public Schools, said the district used an external search firm and input from city officials, local advocates, educators, and other staff in its search for a new department head.

“We approached this differently than we had in the past given how critical this role is to CPS and how deeply invested many of our stakeholders are in special education and in this position,” said Felton.

Representatives from Access Living, the city’s Office of People with Disabilities, district principals, the Dyslexia Collaborative, and the Chicago Teachers Union were among the community groups that had a conversation with finalists and provided feedback, Felton said.

CEO Pedro Martinez made the final recommendation; the school board, which meets on Thursday, must approve the appointment.

Long would be inheriting a department beset with problems. The district is under state watch on multiple issues, including providing timely transportation to students with disabilities and for how it physically restrains students in the classroom.

Long has been the principal of Southside since 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2019, he won the prestigious statewide Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Leadership.

Joshua Long, second from left, speaks with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson in Sept., 2023 in Chicago, Ill.

Before that, Long worked in various positions, including as a speech pathologist in a dozen schools, he told Chalkbeat in 2019. At the time, when Chalkbeat asked Long how the district should help students with disabilities, Long said he saw classes that “were not being run effectively” and weren’t “as rigorous” as other schools he’d been in. With that in mind, Long said “that the biggest thing is establishing equity for all students no matter which school or neighborhood they are in.”

Some district leaders have known Long for years. Board of Education member Mary Fahey Hughes, a longtime advocate for students with disabilities, sent her son to Southside. During a school visit with Mayor Brandon Johnson in September, Hughes praised the school and its model, which is designed to help those with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world.

“The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at,” she told Chalkbeat at the time.

Long was a proponent of changing the timeline for when students with disabilities could transition out of public schools. Previously, under state law, some students with disabilities could receive services until the day before their 22nd birthday. In 2021, state law changed to allow students who turn 22 during the school year to remain eligible for services through the end of that year.

Long has also advocated for improving funding and availability of services for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities once they graduate from CPS. In an interview with Chalkbeat during the September school visit with Johnson, Long said the state has a yearslong waiting list for people with more challenging disabilities who want to access state-funded adult services, such as for community-based living or day services, that are meant to provide people with more independence. One of his former students accessed such services eight years after she graduated from Southside, he said.

“Our students do best through routine and through daily interactions,” Long said. “Now, she sat home for eight years and likely lost a lot of skills that she learned here with us.”

Long’s appointment comes after the district leaders signaled this fall that they were interested in expanding the school model Long oversaw. Southside is one of a handful of so-called specialty schools that focus on teaching students with intellectual and developmental disabilities about work and life skills. Southside, for example, has classes that teach students how to work in retail, food service, and auto mechanics. Unlike most schools, the district assigns students to these schools.

The district is under state watch regarding multiple issues for how it supports students with disabilities. Last year, the state launched a corrective action plan requiring the district to cap bus commute times for students with disabilities to 60 minutes each way. About 3,000 students with disabilities exceeded that limit at the start of last school year, according to the district.

Under state watch, those travel times have vastly improved this year, after the district decided to stop busing general education students, largely those in magnet and selective enrollment programs. In September, the state launched a new corrective action plan to ensure the district is providing transportation to all students of disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, call for bus service.

This spring, documents obtained by Chalkbeat revealed the district had been under state watch for failing to follow state law on physical restraint and timeout for students. The state board said that Chicago was not notifying parents of incidents, staff and faculty were not trained in how to properly restrain and seclude students, and untrained staff were using outlawed methods of restraint.

The state board named Jones for failing in her role as a designated official to look into restraint and timeout incidents. In that role, she was required to maintain copies of incidents, be notified of incidents that occurred during the school day, and receive documents of physical restraint and timeout incidents that went on for a long time.

Prior to Jones’s time as chair, the district’s department responsible for supporting students with disabilities had been in trouble with the state before. A 2017 investigation WBEZ found Chicago Public Schools secretly overhauled the special education department in 2016, resulting in students losing access to vital services. The State Board of Education placed the district under a corrective action plan in 2018, which lasted until 2022. During the 2022-23 school year, the state placed Chicago under a general supervision plan to continue to watch how the district handles special education services.

Now, Long could play a key role in ensuring that the department is delivering services to students with disabilities, monitoring physical restraint and timeout incidents, and helping students catch up after the coronavirus pandemic disrupted education.

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.

New data shows hundreds of Chicago Public Schools bus routes with fewer than 10 students

2023-12-07T20:36:30+00:00

Data analysis by Thomas Wilburn.

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Four months after Chicago Public Schools significantly cut back bus service to meet the needs of children with disabilities, new data indicates hundreds of routes are carrying fewer than 10 students.

New data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago details more than 1,000 bus routes for 7,350 students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, require transportation services. It offers a glimpse into how the district is attempting to shorten bus travel times for these students, as required by the state under a corrective action plan issued last year.

The bus routes included in the data are carrying students to 540 different schools.

The data was captured on Oct. 23 and filed by CPS with the state just before Thanksgiving, as part of the corrective action plan. It outlines the number of students with IEPs per route, their schools, pick-up times, and the third-party company that operates each route.

However, the data does not include students who have 504 plans — another type of legal document for students with disabilities — or homeless students, who are also entitled to transportation. District officials said the routes may include those students. One week before the data was captured, the district said it had routed a total of 8,105 students.

Chalkbeat’s analysis of the route data for 7,350 students with IEPs found:

There are an average 6.9 students with IEPs per route
785 of the more than 1,000 routes have 10 or fewer children with IEPs
59 routes — or 5.4% — transport one child with an IEP
The maximum number of students with an IEP per route is 26

The data does not clarify what sized buses travel on each route, how many routes include adult paraprofessionals who are assigned to assist students who have IEPs, how many other children who do not have IEPs might ride on the route, or how many empty seats there are on each bus route.

The new information raises questions about how students with IEPs are assigned to schools — often far from where they live — rather than provided services at schools in their communities. It also comes as parents of students whose bus service was cut earlier this year continue to put pressure on the district to provide transportation to their students, most of whom attend magnet and selective enrollment schools.

District officials continue to cite a national bus driver shortage as the core reason for its transportation troubles. CPS currently has 715 of the roughly 1,300 drivers it needs, officials said.

“This is an evolving non-stagnant situation with new requests and availability,” a district spokesperson said in an email.

Advocates for students with disabilities cautioned that the data does not necessarily mean there’s room on school buses for more students. Students with disabilities are legally owed transportation under federal law, and adding general education students to their existing routes “muddies the waters” of those legal rights, said Miriam Bhimani, a CPS parent and advocate whose complaint placed the district under state watch regarding transportation rights for students with IEPs.

CPS has struggled to provide bus transportation

The scope of busing provided by CPS has contracted significantly in recent years. As recently as 2019, the district budgeted $120 million to bus nearly 20,000 students, according to budget documents. This fiscal year, the district planned to budget $146 million as it pared down the number of students it was serving.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, CPS has been struggling to provide reliable bus transportation. Last year, about 3,000 CPS students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour. The state put the district under corrective action last year to reduce ride times to less than an hour, which Illinois requires districts to “make every effort” to do.

In July, officials announced CPS would only bus students with disabilities and those who are homeless — groups legally entitled to transportation — and offered CTA passes to about 5,500 general education students and their parents. They also offered families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover their own transportation costs.

In October, district officials said about 8,100 students, most of whom have IEPs, were routed for busing to and from school. Another 3,948 families of students with disabilities opted to take the monthly reimbursements, CPS officials told the state in a letter dated Nov. 17.

Chicago is not alone in struggling with a shortage of bus drivers. U-46, Illinois’s second largest school district, has also experienced a driver shortage affecting students with disabilities, the Courier-News reported last month, but a U-46 spokesperson said it is currently providing busing to about 22,000 students.

After reiterating its bus driver shortage, CPS officials wrote in the Nov. 17 letter that it “paused providing transportation to families of general education students in magnet or selective enrollment programs” this year “in an effort to ensure” all students whose IEPs require transportation “are routed in a timely manner, and every effort is made to prevent students from riding longer than sixty minutes.”

After bus service was cut for general education students, district officials reported in late September a vast improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, with 47 children on rides longer than an hour. But those travel times have since worsened: As of last week, 116 students with disabilities were on routes longer than an hour, according to a CPS presentation to City Council members.

As recently as last week, district officials cast doubt on whether they would offer transportation to general education students.

But families of general education students in magnet and selective enrollment programs continue to show up at Chicago school board meetings to advocate for busing.

At a Wednesday meeting, a student from Kenwood Academic Academic Center said he and his brother used to take the bus to school together. This year, however, his brother takes a paratransit vehicle that doesn’t have other students on it and “wishes he wasn’t alone in the car.”

That student directed a question to transportation officials and board members at the meeting: “Why are they not routing as many students as possible into empty seats?”

But it’s not that simple, according to some advocates for students with disabilities. Adding many more students to existing routes could again worsen travel times for some students with disabilities, who have a federally protected right to transportation.

Adding students to routes isn’t simple

Advocates for students with disabilities said the data from October raises questions about how students with disabilities are assigned to schools — sometimes far outside their communities. Some of these children, advocates noted, are traveling far distances to therapeutic day schools, which provide more specialized instruction.

An example is Soaring Eagle Academy in suburban Lombard, located roughly 21 miles west of the downtown, where eight CPS students arrive each morning using three different bus routes, the data shows.

Terri Smith-Roback, a CPS parent who co-filed complaints with the state regarding transportation rights for students with disabilities, said she’s worried about long and “inefficient” rides for students traveling to therapeutic day schools. She’s heard from parents of these children who are riding the bus more than two hours each way and knows of one instance where a large yellow bus was transporting six kids to one of the schools.

District officials said some routes have fewer students “due to distance, medical equipment, and/or required bus aides that will require less students in the vehicle.” They also said that many routes use smaller vehicles, which have less space than a traditional yellow school bus.

About one-third of the more than 1000 routes detailed in the data are paratransit, which are usually smaller vehicles that provide individualized routes for students with disabilities, district officials told the state in a letter obtained by Chalkbeat.

Bhimani said the data highlights a larger problem with how the district assigns students with disabilities to schools. All students have the right to attend their assigned neighborhood school. But students with disabilities are often assigned to schools outside of their communities that the district believes can better serve their needs, as laid out in their IEPs, Bhimani said.

“The student assignment decision we’re making in the district is to say students with disabilities are actually not owed services at their zoned school, and we will place them wherever we think those services should be offered inside the district,” Bhimani said.

Instead, Bhimani said, the district should create more services for students in schools closer to where they live so that they don’t have to travel far.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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

Chicago district official says adding busing this year will be tough as driver shortage persists

2023-11-29T03:16:15+00:00

Chicago Public Schools officials expressed doubt Tuesday that they will be able to provide busing to general education students for the rest of this school year.

“It’s very difficult to make a pivot within midyear to be able to add transportation now,” Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, said during a hearing of the City Council’s Committee on Education and Child Development.

Mayfield’s comments come as the school district is still working to shorten bus rides for more than 100 students with disabilities to comply with state law.

In response to questions from aldermen about the state of student transportation, district officials cited a shortage of drivers as the core reason they’ve limited bus service so far this year to students with disabilities whose individualized education programs require transportation and those who are living in temporary housing. Both groups are legally entitled to receive bus rides to school.

About 5,500 general education students who were previously eligible for bus transportation were not offered busing this year — mostly those who attend magnet and selective-enrollment schools. The district is instead offering those families CTA passes, including a companion pass for a parent or guardian. Many parents have complained about the change, with some saying it’s hard to meet their work obligations and get their kids to school. It has led some families to transfer children out of their schools.

The district had already announced that it wouldn’t be able to expand busing to general education students for the rest of this semester. Officials have promised an update on transportation in December, before the new semester begins.

As of mid-October, the district said it had created bus routes for about 8,100 students, mostly children with disabilities.

Mayfield told aldermen that the district has now hired 715 drivers, compared with about 680 in July — meaning it has 54% of the drivers it needs. That’s only a small increase, he said, even though the district has held dozens of hiring fairs and worked with its bus vendors to increase hourly driver pay rates by $5 since last year.

“We just haven’t seen much traction with being able to build that pipeline back for drivers,” he said.

Officials added that the number of students with disabilities has grown by about 20% from last year, and the district is regularly receiving new transportation requests.

Chicago Public Schools has been under state watch since last November for failing to get students with disabilities on bus rides shorter than an hour each way. Last year, the district reported that 3,000 students were on rides longer than an hour, with 365 on rides lasting more than 90 minutes each way.

This year, with transportation for general-education students sharply limited, the district has touted an improvement in travel times for students with disabilities. As of Monday, 116 students with disabilities were commuting more than an hour to school, according to Mayfield’s presentation. That is, however, an increase from August, when 47 students with disabilities were on routes longer than one hour.

The state opened another investigation in September after advocates and parents complained that students with disabilities whose individualized education programs include transportation are being denied their federal right to a “free appropriate public education.”

The complaint alleges “widespread … delays and denials” across CPS and an “unnecessary administrative burden,” because families have to request transportation even after they’ve already been deemed eligible, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by Chalkbeat.

Looking ahead to next year, Mayfield said the district will be discussing various strategies to make bus transportation “more efficient.” The options could include creating regional bus pickup sites and adjusting school start and dismissal times. He emphasized that those decisions would be made in collaboration with unions.

“Candidly, there will be some decisions that will need to be made, because we’re not seeing that driver population come back,” Mayfield said.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

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.

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

2023-10-13T18:14:26+00:00

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Mónica Meléndez spent the first half of the last school year driving her three kids at least an hour each way to Inter-American Magnet School in Lake View.

She felt she had no choice after the district said it would not provide transportation at the beginning of the year for two of her children.

By the time all her kids got bus service in the second semester, Meléndez was exhausted — especially on days she spent another hour driving to work.

So shortly after Chicago Public Schools announced this summer that it wouldn’t provide busing to about 5,500 eligible general education students, largely those in gifted and magnet programs, Meléndez and her husband pulled their two youngest children out of the school. It was a wrenching decision: The Spanish dual language school felt perfect for the couple, who are originally from Puerto Rico and want their children to be bilingual.

Meléndez recalls telling her husband: “Sweetie, I can’t do this anymore.” Their oldest, a seventh grader, now takes a CTA bus two hours each way.

The family’s decision illustrates one way Chicago’s school bus crisis could impact enrollment and the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the city’s magnet and gifted programs. Many of these schools were created under a federal desegregation consent decree, but have been criticized for lacking diversity and enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students since federal oversight ended in 2009. As working-class families find it difficult or impossible to take their children far distances to school, the absence of a transportation option could segregate the schools even more.

Parents at Inter-American are looking for solutions, as other gifted and magnet programs have also sought their own alternatives to the lack of busing.

Inter-American is already seeing the impact and some families have left.

“I would be really worried about what this change would mean for the demographics for these schools and for the goals of magnet schools in Chicago more generally,” said Halley Potter, an expert on school integration policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Parents share transportation challenges

Citing a severe driver shortage, Chicago Public Schools announced in late July that it would limit bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are homeless, both groups which are legally required to receive transportation. The district is currently under state watch to make sure it’s meeting those legal requirements.

The district said it has pursued several solutions to hire more drivers, including boosting driver pay rates by $2 – to $22 to $27 an hour – and hosting hiring fairs. But as of late last month, the district still had only half the number of drivers on hand and announced that busing would not be extended to more families for the rest of the semester. The district offered CTA cards to the 5,500 children who lost busing, but as of late last month, just about 1,600 took that option.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Samantha Hart said the district is “acutely aware” of the challenges families are facing with longer commutes.

“We are committed to continuing to work with our vendors, City partners and our families to identify solutions and ensure every eligible student has safe, secure, and reliable transportation to and from school,” Hart said.

The transportation crisis has already had a small impact on enrollment at Inter-American, where nearly half of the school’s 641 students come from low-income families. Fifty-three families were eligible for transportation at the school. As of Oct. 2, six children have transferred out of the school due to the lack of transportation, according to the district.

At least two more children transferred out after Oct. 2 because of transportation issues, said Maria Ugarte, chair of Inter-American’s Local School Council. Ugarte has also heard from many parents who are considering leaving, and she wonders how lack of busing will impact next year’s enrollment.

At a meeting last month with the school’s principal, one parent said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the commute to school. A mother shared that her commute involves taking the CTA with her three children, including a 2-year-old, every morning and evening— and doing that daily is becoming stressful.

Alexis Luna, who lives in Belmont Cragin, splits dropoff and pickup responsibilities for her third grade daughter with the girl’s father. But her daughter may have to miss school on days that the girl’s father is out of town for work, since Luna’s work schedule is inflexible and she can’t take days off.

Luna “lost everything” when her business closed during the pandemic, so she cannot afford to miss work or quit. She said she is struggling to pay for the increased gas costs.

For Rocio Meza, the lack of transportation means she can’t search for a job this year as she handles the hourlong pickup and dropoff each way at Inter-American for her 12-year-old daughter. She’s also responsible for driving her older son with disabilities to doctor’s appointments on some mornings, which sometimes makes one of the children late.

She and her husband have discussed transferring their daughter out of Inter-American – two other schools are within a few blocks of their house – but the family loves the school.

”Do I really want to do this and give up the education and experience she’s getting at Inter-American to go to another school?” Meza said.

Some attempts to find solutions at the school level haven’t come to fruition.

The school’s principal, Juan Carlos Zayas, launched a voluntary task force with parents to look for ways to ease the transportation issue. Ideas included a rideshare app and hiring a bus company on their own, according to recordings of the meetings. Both options would likely be too costly for parents, task force members said. For example, one parent found a company that would charge $158 per child this month — if the bus was full with just a couple of stops.

The district granted the school $157,000 in funding to host before- and after-school programs to accommodate more flexible pickup and dropoff times. The principal recently surveyed families for their interest and expects programming to start Oct. 23, a district spokesperson said.

Last month, Luna tried to distribute a survey to arrange carpooling for interested parents. The survey asked for information such as where their child’s old bus stop was and how many children they had. Zayas emailed Luna and several other parents that the “attempt to collect personal information” was a “clear violation” of district policy and that it was circulated to teachers without his knowledge.

District officials pointed to a CPS policy that prevents anyone from circulating ads, subscription lists, meeting invitations, books, maps, articles, or other political or commercial materials among school employees or students without approval from the principal or other district officials.

Still, some parents are trying to figure out carpool arrangements, Luna said.

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

During CPS board meetings, parents at magnet and gifted programs have said they are worried that the lack of transportation will most greatly impact children whose parents don’t have flexible work schedules to take young children on lengthy transit commutes or the money and time to drive them. That could force less-resourced families to transfer out of magnet programs or gifted programs or choose not to apply for them for next school year.

Once seen as a solution to the city’s segregated schools, the city’s magnet, gifted, and selective enrollment programs have been criticized for failing to achieve their diversity goals. A 2019 WBEZ analysis found that just 20% of these schools met the definition of racial diversity embedded in a now-lifted court order for Chicago to integrate its schools.

CPS uses a lottery for enrollment in magnet programs like Inter-American. Seats are offered based on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood a student lives in. Sometimes priority is given to siblings or to students living close to the school.

Inter-American lacks racial diversity — 85% of its students this year are Hispanic, and 10% are white, according to district data. However, the school is more socioeconomically diverse, with 47% of its students coming from low-income families, still far below the district’s average of about 71%.

During one of the task force meetings, one parent expressed concern that working-class families would leave, and more local families from the surrounding affluent Lake View neighborhood would get seats — changing the face of the school.

At the same time, less transportation for magnet and gifted families could mean more students enrolling in their neighborhood schools. Bolstering neighborhood schools is a priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After pulling her daughter and son out of Inter-American, Meléndez enrolled them in her local neighborhood school, Canty Elementary. There, about half of the students are Hispanic, 44% are white, and about 2% are each Black and Asian American. Just over 43% come from low-income households.

Her daughters like the school so far, Meléndez said. Canty, which is not a dual-language school like Inter-American, is just a five-minute drive away from home. But the outcome of their story is likely not the norm: In a city as segregated as Chicago, more integrated neighborhood schools like Canty are a rarity.

Potter, from The Century Foundation, said Chicago Public Schools has done “really important work” in finding ways to spur diversity in selective and magnet schools. The district’s lotteries that try to enroll students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often result in more racial diversity, too, she said.

But, Potter said, “without transportation support, a lot of that can fall apart.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those wishing to attend should register here.

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

Chicago Public Schools enrollment grows by nearly 1,200

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicago Public Schools won’t bus general education students for the rest of the semester

2023-09-27T19:41:03+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the semester, officials said Tuesday.

District officials informed families of the decision Tuesday morning, said Charles Mayfield, CPS’ chief operating officer.

“We really wanted to give parents an early notice to let them know that you don’t have to come back and keep asking and hoping,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield said district officials will re-evaluate the decision in December before winter break and update families then on the state of transportation service.

Blaming a driver shortage, CPS has restricted bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are living in temporary housing, groups that are legally entitled to transportation. District officials say they have just 681 drivers — similar to figures last month and half of what they need, Mayfield said.

At the start of the school year, Mayfield said the district would try to provide busing to more children if it could hire more drivers, but the needle hasn’t moved on new hires since August.

“We’re continuing to do more outreach,” Mayfield said.

Over the past year, the district has hosted roughly two dozen hiring fairs, raised driver pay rates by $2, to $22 to $27 an hour, and added more bus companies in an effort to ease the driver shortage, officials said. Mayfield said it may be too soon to try new strategies, given that boosting hiring can take a while, and some of the steps, such as increasing pay, went into effect only recently.

The limited bus routes have enraged many families of general education students who have relied on busing in the past, including those in magnet and gifted programs, and they have expressed their concerns at Board of Education meetings. These families are eligible for free CTA cards, including a companion pass for parents. But of the roughly 5,500 children who are eligible, just under 1,600 have used that option, Mayfield said. (The district mistakenly said in July that 8,000 students were eligible.)

Some parents of young children have said they can’t send their kids alone on buses or trains and also can’t accompany their children because of their work schedules.

Alexis Luna said the lack of transportation could force her to keep her third-grade daughter out of school occasionally. Because of Luna’s inflexible work schedule, the girl’s father usually drives her to Inter-American Elementary Magnet School in Wrigleyville in the morning, about 45 minutes from her Belmont Cragin home. Luna typically picks her up.

But if her father has to travel out of town for work, Luna won’t be able to cover the morning drop-off. In that case, Luna said, “I will have to put her in day care, and she’s probably going to have to miss school.”

Tuesday’s decision comes in the middle of the district’s school application season, during which families apply for gifted and magnet programs. The application period ends in November.

Last year, bus transportation was available to any eligible student. But the district has struggled since 2021 to provide timely and reliable service. For example, thousands of students with disabilities last year had commutes longer than an hour — a problem the district has nearly eliminated this year as it has restricted bus service.

Currently, the district is providing bus service to 7,300 students who have disabilities or live in temporary housing. It has also offered stipends to families of these students who prefer other modes of transportation. The first round of those are expected to be mailed out this week.

As of last Friday, 324 students with disabilities were waiting for routes, Mayfield said, adding that new requests continue to come in.

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

A dozen Chicago Public Schools employees ousted over federal PPP loan fraud

2023-09-06T18:05:00+00:00

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A dozen Chicago Public Schools employees have resigned or been fired after the district’s inspector general found they fraudulently obtained federal Paycheck Protection Program loans.

The loans — most of which did not need to be repaid — were available to businesses during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to help them stay afloat. Federal officials have since said the PPP loan program lacked controls and was “susceptible to fraud.”

All but one of the ousted CPS employees earned six-figure salaries and worked year-round positions.

“We’re talking about people who have full-time, year-round jobs with CPS,” Inspector General Will Fletcher told Chalkbeat Wednesday. “How they were able to have fully fledged side businesses was obviously going to be a question.”

The inspector general’s report does not name the employees. According to the report, one of them was a central office administrator who inflated how much they made on a side business in 2020 in order to get a PPP loan and also did not report that secondary employment to CPS.

Other cases include:

A district regional administrator making $165,000 a year created a fake business in order to get a $20,000 PPP loan. The money was deposited in their personal checking account and spent within two months on “expensive luxury items” and a trip to Las Vegas, bank records obtained by the inspector general showed.
A school administrator with a side business selling clothing admitted to inflating its income in 2019 in order to get two PPP loans totaling $40,000. The clothing business earned “at most $7,500,” but they claimed it earned $100,000.
An administrator making more than $120,000 a year got a $20,000 PPP loan by paying someone to fill out the application and report they made $100,000 as an independent contractor in 2019.

The inspector general’s report cites two additional employees whose dismissal cases are pending. The district said it has filed dismissal charges against them, but both cases are being litigated.

In a statement, a CPS spokesperson said the district is reviewing a recommendation by Fletcher that future employees be required to report any PPP loan they’ve received as part of the onboarding process.

“We take seriously our responsibility to serve students and families with integrity and we will hold accountable individuals who breach CPS policies and the public’s trust,” the spokesperson wrote.

Fletcher said his office opened a broad investigation into PPP fraud in 2022 and started by searching a public database that lists all PPP loan recipients. In all, 780 district employees showed up in the data as having obtained PPP loans, the OIG report said.

“We’re not presuming that all 780 loans were fraudulent,” Fletcher said, noting some CPS employees do have legitimate side jobs outside of school and during the summer. There may also be cases of identity theft. While the investigations are continuing, the report released Wednesday focused on cases involving higher-level employees and those who worked year-round positions.

“We’re looking at employees who have some level of supervisory authority or who are in positions where they have some kind of control over sensitive information, financial information, dealings with the contractors and vendors,” Fletcher said. “People who are in positions of trust in the district.”

Other investigations have also turned up evidence of misused funds related to the pandemic. The inspector general found most bus companies that were given “good faith” payments to keep paying drivers during the switch to virtual learning in March 2020 laid off their workers despite taking the money.

“PPP fraud is just one facet of what has concerned us related to pandemic fraud,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher said his office has the capacity to continue investigating these and other pandemic-related fraud and waste allegations, but noted there is a “lack of information” around much of the COVID relief money distributed by the federal government in the past few years.

Chicago Public Schools has received more than $2.8 billion in COVID recovery money from the federal government under three Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief packages passed by Congress.

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

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

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

Chicago shortens bus routes for most students with disabilities, while others wait for service

2023-08-24T22:14:56+00:00

Just 47 Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, an improvement over last year when that figure was roughly 3,000 and 365 children had trips lasting longer than 90 minutes, district officials said Thursday.

“We are working to get that number down to zero,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The progress comes after more than 8,000 students who may have been eligible for bus service in the past, including those in selective and magnet schools, were told in late July they would not receive busing, but can instead receive free Ventra cards, including for one companion, such as a parent.

Martinez said again Thursday that the district was focused on providing busing to students who are legally entitled to it, such as students with disabilities and those in temporary housing.

CPS officials did not immediately share how many students are waiting to be routed as of Wednesday. As of the first day of school, 7,100 students were on bus routes, and another 3,100 chose the stipend, according to a Monday press release from CPS.

The district has blamed an ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. In late July, officials said they had just half of the roughly 1,300 drivers they needed.

At Thursday’s meeting, some parents whose children could not get busing, including Patricia Rae Easley, blasted the district. Easley lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side and has a daughter enrolled at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park on the South Side — a route familiar to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also lives in Austin and has a son enrolled at Kenwood.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” Easley said. ”Maybe we can get in on their carpool.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, suggested CPS is not far from shortening long rides for students with disabilities. Three-quarters of those remaining 47 students who are on rides longer than an hour are on routes that are 61-66 minutes long, he said.

The district’s recent transportation struggles stretch back at least two years. In order to spur more hiring of bus drivers, Mayfield said the district has hosted several hiring fairs and is planning to work with bus companies they contract with to raise driver pay by $2.25. Currently driver pay ranges between $20-25 an hour.

The district was able to accommodate all students with disabilities or those living in temporary housing who requested transportation by the end of July, after extending the sign-up deadline twice, officials said at the time. But they could not guarantee immediate service for families who signed up after that.

Families can opt for stipends of up to $500 a month until they get routed. On Thursday, responding to criticism from some families, Mayfield described the transportation changes this year as a “tough decision that we all needed to make.”

Easley, the parent whose child attends Kenwood, said she pulled her daughter out of a private school so that she could attend the sought-after South Side school as a seventh grader this year.

She was caught off guard with CPS’s announcement three weeks ago that she wouldn’t get bus transportation. Easley said she has no use for the free Ventra card because she doesn’t feel public transit is safe enough for her daughter. That commute would involve two buses and a train, she said.

So she drives her daughter 40 minutes to Kenwood.

“It’s definitely not only an inconvenience but an expense,” Easley said. “An unexpected expense when we’re paying for gas that’s $4.57 a gallon.”

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

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

2023-08-03T21:55:39+00:00

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.”

Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

The analysis looked at 44 elementary schools that joined ISP between 2016 and 2018. Those schools saw pass rates for state reading and math tests grow, on average, by about 4 percentage points more than similar schools that weren’t part of ISP, according to the study. (Comparison schools were chosen based on things like demographics and test scores.)

The findings suggest that schools can benefit from more empowered principals, who are “closer to the ground” and may have a better sense than district leaders of what their students need, said C. Kirabo Jackson, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern who conducted the study.

But there are some caveats, Jackson said. The ISP schools with the best test score results were also run by principals who are considered “highly effective,” as determined by teacher ratings and other evaluations. Less effective principals saw test scores grow at a slower rate. Other studies have found mixed results when giving schools more autonomy, Jackson noted in his study.

The benefits of such a policy depend on “the capacity of the leaders to manage on their own,” said Jackson.

Test scores don’t show the full picture of how well students are doing, Jackson said, and his study found mixed results in other areas. For example, ISP schools on average had better ratings for school climate. But he found no evidence that these schools saw better student or teacher attendance.

The ISP initiative was launched under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of an effort to pair principals with “more leadership and professional development opportunities,” according to the district.

Currently, district leaders identify veteran principals to apply for the program and then evaluate them based on several criteria, including their school’s test scores, their “five essentials” survey data and a series of interviews, according to the district.

A spokesperson did not respond in time for publication on whether there were minimum test scores that schools had to meet in order to be eligible.

Jackson noted that nearly all of the elementary schools he evaluated were highly rated by the state. In all, 86% of the city’s current 63 ISP schools — which also include middle and high schools and one early childhood education center — were rated either commendable or exemplary by the state, according to the most recently available Illinois Report Card information.

In addition to less oversight and more budget flexibility, ISP school leaders also have more power over professional learning for their staff and more flexibility over principal evaluations. In exchange, principals must meet several requirements, including maintaining or improving school performance, remaining compliant with district wide policies, and remaining as the school’s principal for at least two years.

Having more power over professional learning was among the biggest boons for Patricia Brekke, principal of Back of the Yards High School, who joined the ISP program in 2016. Her school, like others, used to spend time addressing student needs in ways that district leaders recommended.

While she considered those good strategies, her staff didn’t have extra time to focus on other issues they believed to be important, such as drilling down on students’ analytical and essay writing skills.

For the past seven years, she and other teachers have created their own professional development sessions to, in part, improve kids’ analytical skills. Her team draws on good examples from their own classrooms, including taking videos during the school day, so that teachers can see how their own colleagues are approaching instruction, Brekke said.

“I’ve got a lot of brilliant teachers, and their ideas really pushed me, I think, to be a better principal, you know?” Brekke said. “And it was really important for me to have them around the table and identify our problems of practice.”

Jackson only studied elementary schools, so he doesn’t know the program’s impact on high schools.

SAT scores at Brekke’s school were within five percentage points of the district’s. But Brekke said she’s noticed her students demonstrating “elevated” writing skills that go beyond a classic five-paragraph essay response.

“They’re really starting to think more deeply about text,” Brekke said.

Jackson found another bonus of the program: Principals “tend to remain in their schools” even after the two-year requirement. That is by design, said Jerry Travlos, a former ISP principal who now works as a district leader.

Travlos conducted a study, which Jackson cites, and found that ISP principals largely preferred the autonomy they got under the program. Extending more power to veteran principals is also a “retention strategy,” he said, at a time when school leaders are heading for the door.

Brekke, who has been an educator for 32 years, said she sometimes misses the camaraderie that comes along with a traditional network like most of Chicago’s public schools. But she loves being able to “geek out” and customize instruction for her students.

“Having those kinds of conversations are really just so refreshing and encouraging and motivating,” Brekke said. She paused and added, “Maybe it’s contributed to why I’m still here.”

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

8,000 Chicago Public Schools students won’t have bus service on first day of school, district says

2023-07-31T23:43:11+00:00

More than 8,000 Chicago Public Schools students will not have bus service on the first day of class on Aug. 21, a problem the district blames on an ongoing bus driver shortage.

With only half of the 1,300 drivers needed to transport students who require bus service, Chicago said it will instead prioritize transportation for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Both groups are legally required to receive transportation to school.

For some students with disabilities, bus service is a requirement on their Individualized Education Programs. More than 7,100 such students have signed up for bus service so far, officials said. (Siblings of students with disabilities can still receive bus service if they attend the same school.)

This is the third year in a row in which the return to class has been marred by transportation woes that have left thousands of students without transportation or with long commutes. The district, which contracts with outside companies to provide transportation, has attributed bus service snarls in previous years to nationwide driver shortages.

In an effort to help fix ongoing transportation problems, the district in March approved a $4 million contract with Education Logistics Inc., known as EduLog, to schedule bus routes, determine start times for summer school and assign bus vendors during the school year. The contract is set to run through June 30, 2026.

This year, in the face of continued bus service troubles, the district will instead offer Ventra cards to general education students and one companion, such as a parent, “for as long as they are without school bus transportation,” according to a news release from Chicago. These families may have the option to get bus service “at some point” in the school year but the timing for that is not yet clear, said Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer for Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, Chicago provided bus service to 17,275 children, or about 5% of students.

“There’s been a nationwide shortage, and I think that is not an easy thing for any K-12 [district] right now,” Mayfield said Monday in an interview with Chalkbeat. “Even if you Google search bus driver shortage, you get a number of school districts that have the same issue that we’re having today and they are making adjustments similar to where we are, to try to provide alternatives.”

As of Friday, the district said it could guarantee bus service on the first day of school for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness, after Chicago twice extended a sign-up deadline this summer, Mayfield said. But it can’t guarantee immediate service for families who sign up now. The district is required to link those families to bus service within two weeks of their request for transportation.

As an alternative, CPS is offering families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover transportation costs. So far, 3,000 students have chosen this option, officials said.

The continuing transportation issues have Chicago parent Laurie Viets bracing for yet another chaotic start to the school year. Two of her three children have district-provided bus service written into their Individualized Education Programs.

This year, she said the district has been more proactive since parents have raised concerns about bus services issues over the past few years. Over the summer, Viets received a couple of phone calls from the district asking if she would like to take the $500 stipend, but she declined. She said she prefers that the district provide bus service for her children.

Viets only learned the district had yet to figure out routes for students when she talked to a district representative last week.

“I have no hopes at all that transportation will show up,” said Viets. “I’ve got three kids, three separate schools in three different parts of the city. We’re going to be scrambling to get the two that need transportation to school because I guarantee we will not have transport on that first day.”

It is a familiar scenario for Viets – last year, she said she couldn’t get transportation for one of her children for about six weeks – and for thousands of other CPS families.

In the 2021-22 school year, when students returned to classrooms after COVID shuttered buildings, the district did not have bus services for 2,100 students on the first day of classes. At the time, the district provided families with $1,000 to help with transportation and even reached out to ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft for support.

At the start of the next school year, the district was able to route 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students to classes but hundreds of students with disabilities dealt with long commute times. At the time, the district reported that 365 students with disabilities had to deal with commute times of 90 minutes or longer and could not arrange transportation for 1,200 students.

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

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

Chicago swears in new members to city’s last fully appointed Board of Education

2023-07-19T19:58:21+00:00

Chicago’s Board of Education ushered in a new era of leadership Wednesday by swearing in five of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointees.

The new members, who include vocal critics of the system, took an oath of office during a meeting to review agenda items ahead of the board’s full meeting next week. They will be part of the last fully appointed board before it shifts to an elected body in 2025.

As board members introduced themselves, Mariela Estrada, director of community engagement at the United Way of Metro Chicago, recounted being a “fierce” parent advocate. New board president Jianan Shi, former executive director of influential advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, noted that he is the first educator appointed as board president.

“I am used to sitting on your side of the glass fence,” new board member Mary Fahey Hughes told the audience at the meeting. Fahey Hughes formerly worked for Raise Your Hand as a parent liaison for special education and is an outspoken advocate for students with disabilities.

The inclusion of board critics at the decision-making table is in some ways similar to Johnson’s path, who rose to power through his teachers union ties.

Earlier this month, Johnson nearly cleaned house by appointing six new board members, who come from advocacy, philanthropy, and business backgrounds. In addition to Shi, Estrada, and Fahey Hughes, the mayor also tapped Michelle Morales, Rudy Lozano, and Tanya Woods (read more about each here). Lozano and Morales were not present at Wednesday’s meeting; a spokesperson for CPS did not explain why but said they will be sworn in at the board’s July 26 meeting.

The only holdover from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is Elizabeth Todd-Breland, who will be the board’s vice president.

All seven members’ terms end Jan. 1, 2025, when the city’s partially elected, 21-member school board will be seated. Several members highlighted that shift. Todd-Breland called her term a “bridge” to that elected board with “so much hope and optimism for Chicago Public Schools.”

Wednesday’s agenda review meeting was the third of its kind, allowing board members to publicly ask questions about agenda items ahead of the meeting where they’ll vote.

During the meeting, members reviewed and asked questions about a slew of agenda items expected to come up for approval next week, including a new agreement for marketing services, the opening of a comment period for a new parental leave policy for CPS employees, and a renewed contract for math tutoring.

One agenda item — about X-ray machines in school — signaled a possible shift in approach that Johnson’s appointees may bring to the board.

Shi asked a school safety official whether there is research that such machines, which are meant to detect weapons, make schools safer. The official said it’s hard to determine exactly what makes schools feel safe, but that such machines have found weapons in the past. Last month, the old board approved a slightly costlier contract for campus police.

Shi asked that district officials engage in “actual community dialogue” on school safety policies as the district continues work on its Whole School Safety initiative. The CPS official said it’s the district’s goal to get more “buy-in” from the community.

Board members like Shi have also previously expressed interest in making meetings more accessible to the public, such as working parents who can’t attend the meetings that are held downtown during weekday mornings.

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

Chicago Teachers Union chief of staff named city’s deputy mayor of Education, Youth, and Human Services

2023-05-11T18:55:11+00:00

Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union organizer, has named chief of staff at the Chicago Teachers Union and former high school history teacher Jennifer “Jen” Johnson to be the city’s next deputy mayor of Education, Youth, and Human Services.

Jen Johnson replaces Jaye Stapleton, who was appointed to the job last year after outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot promoted Sybil Madison from deputy mayor of education to chief of staff.

Johnson taught at Lincoln Park High School from 2003-2013 and left the classroom around the same time as Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who will be sworn into office Monday. The two are not related.

Both were part of a grassroots movement led by the teachers union focused on social justice, community organizing, and pushing back against top-down school reform policies, including the closure of public schools and the expansion of privately-run, often non-unionized charter schools.

“These appointments reflect our policy priorities and strategic goals as we set a bold agenda for the next four years,” Mayor-elect Johnson said in a statement. “Together we can achieve our vision for sustainable, thriving communities, responsive services for our children and most vulnerable, and a budget that illustrates our values as a city.”

Chicago Teachers Union chief of staff Jennifer “Jen” Johnson has been appointed to be the city’s next deputy mayor of Education, Youth, and Human Services.

Jen Johnson’s appointment is a signal Chicago Public Schools could enter a period of labor peace with the teachers union for at least the next four years. At the bargaining table, she has sat across from past deputy mayors, who have historically served as the mayor’s representative in negotiations.

On the campaign trail, Brandon Johnson faced repeated questioning about how he would handle contract talks with his former employer, to which he replied during one debate: “Who better to deliver bad news to friends than a friend?” The current CTU contract expires in 2024.

A spokesperson for the mayor-elect declined Chalkbeat’s request to interview the new deputy mayor Thursday.

As CTU chief of staff, Jen Johnson supports and represents 30,000 rank-and-file educators and union leadership. Recently, she spoke with Chalkbeat about the district’s rollout of a universal curriculum bank called Skyline. She applauded the effort, but said the union does not believe it should be mandated as that would take away teacher autonomy.

Jen Johnson has been at the bargaining table multiple times over the past several years and gave updates to the press and the public during the negotiations over virtual and in-person learning in 2020 and 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic and during an 11-day strike in 2019.

Chicago remained fully remote longer than many school districts, returning in-person on a hybrid basis in the spring of 2021.

During talks in the summer of 2020, Jen Johnson said the district’s proposal for a six-hour virtual school day was not age-appropriate for the youngest students and lacked an infrastructure to serve students with disabilities and English learners.

“You have too much screen time and not enough prep time,” she said at the time. “You can’t impose in-person school on at-home learning.”

In a speech at a labor conference in 2012, Jen Johnson called herself a “born Michigander” whose dad also taught high school history for 34 years in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She said her grandfather taught high school English in Winnetka, a wealthy suburb north of Chicago, and mentioned that her mother wrote a book in 1970 “about her experience being the only white student in an all-Black public high school called Marshall on the West Side of Chicago in 1966.”

“I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be a history teacher and that I wanted to work in public schools,” Jen Johnson said at the time.

According to a press release from the Mayor-elect’s transition team, Jen Johnson has sat on the boards of the Illinois Federation of Teachers Executive Board, Grow Your Own Illinois, and the Illinois State Board of Education State Educator Licensure and Preparation Board.

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