The Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved a controversial $9.9 billion budget Thursday amid concerns from the Chicago Teachers Union, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a fiscal watchdog group and some board members themselves.
The budget filled a $505 million deficit by cutting administrative costs, laying off central office staff and assuming hundreds of vacancies will go unfilled. Chicago Public School leaders said that the measures won’t cut classroom resources, but the budget was sharply criticized by the teachers union, which said hundreds of aides were laid off to the detriment of students. Mayor Brandon Johnson had also said he would not accept cuts of critical support staff, but it was unclear whether his administration would intervene.
The budget also raised property taxes by the maximum amount CPS can in one year — bringing in $193 million in revenue — and took out $614 million in debt to renovate and repair schools.
“This budget includes more school funding overall, as well as increased funding for our highest-need populations including special education, English learners and our students in temporary living situations,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said at Thursday’s monthly school board meeting, touting a new funding formula that prioritizes students’ needs rather than enrollment numbers. “I am proud that we are able to close that gap without significant impacts to school funding and protect those investments that lead to amazing gains.”
The vote represented the culmination of weeks of private disagreement — which at times has spilled out publicly — between CPS, the mayor’s office, the CTU and the board over how to approach the district’s shortfall and efforts to secure more state and federal funding.
In a seemingly choreographed series of comments, board members Thursday touted the district’s budget proposal, saying it maintained important resources for students, provided new ones and got rid of a long-criticized funding formula. They added that CPS needs more funding to address other concerns and said they remain “united and aligned around Mayor Johnson’s vision” for the school system.
“Is this budget perfect? No,” board vice president Elizabeth Todd-Breland said. “But in my time here, it is the budget that has most equitably distributed the resources that we do have. … Unfortunately our funding is not keeping up with what students need.”
The mayor, who oversees Martinez, had demanded the district keep on its books a $175 million pension payment covering non-teacher staff. Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot initially shifted that expense from the city’s budget, which is separate from the CPS budget, in a highly criticized move. But, in a major rebuke of the mayor, the budget approved Thursday did not include that payment.
In order to help make that payment and cover new contracts for the teachers union and recently formed principals’ union, which haven’t been calculated in this budget, Johnson urged CPS to take on a short-term, high-interest loan. CPS officials and some board members pushed back on that idea, fearing it would undo years of work to strengthen the school system’s financial health.
Jianan Shi, the board president, acknowledged that the school district will have to find a way to pay for these expenses. He called the budget “unfinished.”
“We recognize that this budget and future budget will require new sustained streams of revenue and will require all of our partners to work together on that goal,” he said. “Everything is on the table. We are all responsible.”
Dozens of CTU members showed up to the meeting to call on the board to reject the budget because of the number of staff laid off. Even though CPS said it would enter the new school year with more staff overall than last year, the union said aides are crucial to student success.
On the pension payment dispute, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter implied the school board should consider paying the $175 million. The CTU had harshly criticized Lightfoot for saddling CPS with the payment, chiding her for “ripping off CPS” and “robbing students.” But Potter touted Johnson as a new type of mayor who needs resources in the city budget to invest in affordable housing and mental health services.
“We have to deal with the conundrum of robbing Peter to pay Paul on the city side,” he said.
Potter said the district should instead prioritize more strongly lobbying state and federal lawmakers for more funding, pointing to the Democratic National Convention’s arrival in August as a good time for CPS, the CTU and City Hall to put on a coordinated pressure campaign.
The Civic Federation, a government finances watchdog, also raised serious concerns about the budget for not planning for teacher and principal union contracts. While negotiations are ongoing, teachers will likely get salary increases and other provisions that could cost more than $100 million annually. It’s unclear how much a first-ever principals union contract could cost.
“At the end of the day, this is a moment-in-time budget that meets a technical legal requirement but utilizes fuzzy math to do so, cognizant of the fact that it does not account for the greater operating costs that will be embodied in the new collective bargaining agreement with CTU likely to be finalized in the weeks ahead,” said Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation.
School district officials said it is common practice to amend the budget mid-year once a union contract is settled. But the amount and source of funding for the contracts will be a major dilemma in negotiations.