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The Chicago school board might try to place two questions on the November ballot asking the city’s voters if they would be in favor of new revenue for the cash-strapped district.
One would ask residents whether Illinois should impose a millionaires tax to boost K-12 education funding statewide, and the other would gauge their support for new financial penalties on owners of undeveloped city land to increase Chicago Public Schools funding. Both are nonbinding, which means neither would legally require the state or the city to enact the proposals.
In an email to school board members sent Monday and obtained by Chalkbeat, a school board staffer invoked a 2011 law she said gave the board the ability to place advisory questions on the ballot following a simple majority vote.
“The Board has a unique opportunity to utilize this authority now and make inroads for new revenue for the district,” wrote Fae Rabin, the board’s chief of staff.
The city’s Board of Elections would have to approve the referendums by next Monday to place them on the ballot, so the school board plans to discuss them at Wednesday’s agenda review meeting and vote at a special Thursday meeting.
Last month, a divided board approved a budget that reversed layoffs in the district administration’s own spending plan and addressed a funding gap by assuming an influx in additional revenue from the state. District leaders have vowed to press the state to come through on the extra dollars, arguing that despite significant funding increases in recent years, CPS remains well short of what Illinois considers “adequate” funding. But the prospects of lawmakers approving such an increase during a November veto session in the fall are murky, placing the district at risk of highly disruptive midyear budget cuts.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has argued in favor of a new tax on the state’s high earners. But efforts to pass legislation that would have placed a millionaires tax on the November ballot fizzled out in the state legislature this past spring. A majority of school board members were appointed by Johnson or elected with backing from his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union, so they might be eager to extend the push to the fall election, even though the referendums wouldn’t be legally binding.
Board President Sean Harden could not be reached for comment.
One independently elected school board member, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, said he is checking on the board’s legal authority to add the questions to the ballot and voiced concern about the rushed bid to vote on them this week, rather than during the board’s regular monthly meeting. He noted that the questions include no specifics about how the district would use the additional money to help students.
“If we’re asking the state to amend our funding formula, we have to show we can govern responsibly and connect funding to student improvement,” he said.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
