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After being laid off from his teaching job this summer and not hearing back from schools with competitive open jobs, Andrew Feigenbaum did not expect to be rehired by Chicago Public Schools.
Then a divided Chicago Board of Education narrowly passed a budget in late July that required the district to reverse hundreds of school-based layoffs like Feigenbaum’s, relying on additional state funding that has not yet come.
Feigenbaum is one of the 350 people CPS has rehired so far under the complex budget mandate, or about one-third of the school-based staffers eligible to have their layoffs reversed. But it’s unclear how long those jobs will last if CPS doesn’t receive an additional $100 million this fiscal year.
His new assignment is co-teaching a fifth-grade class at Fernwood Elementary on the Far South Side, which he described as an academically focused and pleasant school where he’s already memorized his new students’ hobbies, favorite books, and strongest subjects.
But besides a photo of his kids and some artwork and cards from his former students, Feigenbaum has hesitated hanging up more of his personal items in his classroom because he doesn’t know how long he’ll be there.
“Some kids are like, ‘We really hope you can stay for a while,’” Feigenbaum said. “For me, it’s like, you don’t want to open up too much because the more you open up, the more you get hurt if you do have to leave quickly, so I’m kind of trying to find that middle ground.”
Many staffers have returned to their old schools in similar positions, while others have been placed in new schools or in different roles, according to the district and records obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request.
“No one knows what the ultimate resolution will look like,” said Nelson Gerew, chief of internal and public affairs at the Chicago Public Education Fund. “If that money isn’t available, will these positions go away in December, in January? I think there’s a big question hanging over this as well.”
At the same time, some principals told Chalkbeat they didn’t really need the rehired staffers, and they would have preferred to fill specific roles their schools needed but CPS had not funded.
Neither the Chicago Teachers Union nor the principals union responded to requests for comment for this story.
Where CPS has placed rehired staffers
CPS placed rehired staffers at more than 200 schools across a range of positions, such as teachers, assistant principals, security guards, and school clerks, according to the staffing records.
About 45% of these rehired staffers were placed at their old schools in similar positions, and another 37% were placed at new schools with similar job titles. The remaining almost 18%, about 62 people, were placed in roles they did not have last school year, according to the records and a CPS spokesperson.
In late July — less than a month before the first day of school — 11 board members aligned with the mayor’s office and the Chicago Teachers Union supported amending the district’s proposed budget to assume an additional $150 million in state money, with $100 million earmarked for reversing layoffs.
Supporters view the maneuver as a way to pressure Springfield to provide more money, pointing to how CPS is funded at 70% of what the state considers adequate. They’ve also described how painful it is for schools to lose trusted staff and cited statements from key state lawmakers who said they will push for more school funding during the state legislature’s veto session in November.
CPS CEO Macquline King and her team, along with seven board members, opposed the move, warning that it risked midyear budget cuts and disruption for schools if the money doesn’t come. It remains unclear whether additional funding is coming. It’s also possible that the city of Chicago will send more special taxing district dollars to CPS, known as TIF surplus, than expected, as it did last year.
Asked why the district has rehired just one-third of the staffers who are eligible to come back, CPS said it is “actively addressing” the budget’s staffing mandate and will keep hiring “when funding and student needs warrant.” A spokesperson also emphasized that the district is not obligated to rehire everyone it deems eligible to come back.
“The number of returning employees will depend on available vacancies, school-level needs, employee eligibility, and the District’s capacity to adequately fund those positions,” said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for CPS, in a statement.
How rehiring is playing out in schools
By the time the board directed CPS to reverse layoffs, school budgets and schedules were largely set. CPS decided to rehire staffers centrally so that principals didn’t have to reopen their budgets. To determine who to rehire and where to send them, the district’s Talent Office surveyed principals and teachers roughly two weeks after the budget vote and 12 days before the start of school.
Feigenbaum, the new Fernwood teacher, filled out the survey and had hoped to get rehired at DePriest, his old school on the West Side, where he taught third-grade math and science. Still, despite his minimum 40-minute drive from his Northwest Side home to Fernwood and uncertainty about the future, he’s “extremely thankful” to have a job.
As a co-teacher in a new school, he’s been figuring out how to be “worthwhile and helpful” in his classroom while not overstepping what the existing teacher does well or has planned.
The students are “just happy that they have more people who can give them attention and give them the stuff that they need,” which can be difficult in a class of 30 with just one teacher, he said.
Some school leaders told Chalkbeat that their class sizes are already manageable as enrollment has dropped again across CPS, and the district sent them people their schools didn’t really need.
One principal, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, said their South Side high school needs a Spanish teacher. When the principal got the district’s staffing survey, they asked if they could have a Spanish teaching position opened in their budget. District leaders said no — they were focusing on bringing back displaced staffers who have not yet found other jobs, the principal recalled. The survey sent to principals asked them to rank positions they wanted that were previously cut from their school.
Ultimately, the principal requested an art teacher they had laid off this past summer, and CPS reassigned her to the school. But an hour after the teacher arrived for her first day, she informed the principal that her parents had retired and left her the family business, so she would be taking a leave of absence, the principal recalled.
The principal had not yet changed class schedules to account for this teacher, so the school was able to “keep going as we had planned,” the principal said.
On the Northwest Side, one high school’s biggest need was a second interventionist, who provides more intensive academic support to students. But CPS did not allocate that position to the school over the summer, and the rehired staffer the district sent is not an interventionist, according to the school’s principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press about this issue.
Instead, the school made class scheduling changes so that another staffer could take on the interventionist role. The rehired staffer — someone who is new to this school — acts as a substitute and fills in where necessary or provides some extra support in classrooms, but they’ve been absent more often than other teachers at the school, the principal said.
“If our enrollment is down — which most schools, it is — my class sizes are OK,” the principal said. “I’ve got enough teachers for all my classes.”
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
