Students at the Edgar Allan Poe Classical Elementary School in the Pullman neighborhood in February. The Local School Council at Poe is among at least four schools that voted to reject their school-based budget for next year, which was sent to them by CPS central after the school district switched to a needs-based budgeting approach. These schools say that resulted in budget cuts for their students.
Pat Nabong / Sun-Times
Several elected local school councils in Chicago are either refusing to approve budgets sent by the school district or are approving those budgets with a message to let the district leaders know they don’t think they are receiving enough resources for the coming year.
“The budget that we have does not meet the need,” said Sequoiah Brown, a member of the local school council at Poe Classical School in Pullman on the Far South Side. “Our parents are adamant about the needs of our students. You should be trying to bring up the others to that standard, not taking from one to give to the other. That is not how equity works.”
Poe is a small selective-enrollment elementary school that is 85% Black, and about 40% of its students are from low-income families.
School district officials say they are aware that some LSCs rejected their budget, but they will not have a tally until later this month. The schools confirmed by WBEZ include Poe, another selective-enrollment elementary school, one neighborhood high school and one neighborhood elementary school. Selective-enrollment and magnet schools have been speaking out about being hurt by a new budgeting formula in use by the school district for next school year that prioritizes schools with the neediest students.
A no vote is largely symbolic. The school board decides each school’s allocation, while LSCs vote on the principal’s plan for spending that money. In years past, LSCs also have rejected budgets, but that didn’t result in a change in the school district’s position.
Other schools, including LaSalle Language Academy, approved their principal’s spending plan but with clarification that the approval was supporting the principal’s plan for spending the money, not that they approved of the district’s allocation.
The LSC at Sabin Dual Language Academy approved the budget after persuading CPS to provide three more positions, but LSC members said they plan to attend the next board meeting to complain they will have to exhaust discretionary funding to pay for teachers and won’t have money for anything else.
“We are just really disappointed,” said Cheryl Conner, who sits on the LSC.
The dissatisfaction by some with school budgets provides insight into how the new approach of distributing money is playing out at schools. Starting next school year, the mayor and the school board are prioritizing high-poverty schools with a lot of needs. Previously, schools were given pots of money primarily based on enrollment, though schools got extra for students with particular needs.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez defended this new approach “as an important milestone in the long, broad struggle to improve the quality of education for all of Chicago’s children, especially those farthest from opportunity.”
At the same time, CPS is staring down a budget deficit of at least $391 million after years of being buoyed by federal COVID-19 relief money. That budget hole will likely grow. CPS officials didn’t plan for any staff raises when it projected its deficit, but recently reached a tentative agreement with the union representing support staff to provide a 4% raise next year. CPS is negotiating with the Chicago Teachers Union. That contract expires this summer.
Martinez and the school board must make difficult choices, especially if it want to shift priorities with such limited resources. So far, it has not explained how it is confronting this reality, at least not publicly.
When Martinez sent principals their budgets in early April, he said overall school-level spending will stay the same as last year and that he would find cuts in other places. Last year, about $4.8 billion of a $8.49 billion operating budget was allocated at the school level.
Since early April, principals have had a chance to argue for more money, and some say they have received more positions.
Martinez then announced at the monthly board meeting in late April that the district would likely end up spending more on schools this year than last year. Again, he provided no insight into how the district plans to deal with the budget deficit.
The school district has not publicly released school-level budgets, a break with past practice. Media outlets, including WBEZ, requested them under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The district denied the FOIA request, describing the budget information as “preliminary factual information that is inextricably intertwined with ongoing deliberations and policy formulations.”
Illinois Families for Public Schools, a nonprofit parent advocacy organization, dismissed the denial as ridiculous.
“As school communities discuss their budgets in a year of major budget changes leading to LSCs holding budget votes, district-wide numbers to compare should be available to public, reporters. These numbers ARE public at school level!” the group posted on X.
The school district also has not provided any information about the number of schools seeing cuts and under what circumstances with this new funding approach. Martinez said no one type of school is being hit harder than others.
The Chicago Teachers Union said it is concerned the new funding formula does not set aside money or positions for support staff, such as classroom aides. And several schools said they will have to cut staff in this area.
Erykah Nava, a parent organizer for the advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, said she has not heard from many parents or LSC members who feel their school is a clear winner under this new approach. Some may have gotten an extra counselor, but then are looking at scaling back elsewhere.
Even those schools that have made out better are concerned about other schools losing a lot. She said people would like more information about how those decisions were made and also whether schools can make up for the cut with fundraising or school fees.
“People feel uneasy about it, especially because there is a lack of transparency,” Nava said.
She also attended an LSC meeting at a neighborhood high school where there were major concerns about special education positions. The school district has not provided any information about how it is deciding on special education or bilingual positions.
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.