All summer long, Chicago Public Schools have faced a massive budget deficit of $734 million for the current school year. The budget deficit before August 1st came down through $165M in job cuts that impacted 500 custodians, 250 lunchroom workers, 102 crossing guards, and 67 central and network office workers. On Aug 14th, the district released their proposed budget to the Board of Education. The proposed budget includes $29M from debt refinancing that shifts savings to this year rather than next year. The proposal makes an additional $126M cut through cutting central office staff and invoking a hiring freeze, delaying IT projects, eliminating food and travel budgets, and increasing health care contributions for employees making over $90,000. The district is also expecting some one-time funding of $90M from a debt stabilization fund and a major donation to CPS. They also expect an additional $149M from a combination of TIF surplus and from the state through the reevaluation of the Evidence-based Formula (EBF).
The most controversial and uncertain portion of this proposal is that the district has stated that it will be skipping the city’s municipal pension fund unless CPS receives extra revenue from the state, TIF surplus funds, or other local sources. The majority of the board members, 11 out of 21, sent a letter to the district expressing their opposition to the proposal stating that it should include the pension payment without any conditions and take out a loan to cover the pension payments. This municipal pension payment has been a topic of long debate, having caused the dismissal of former CEO Pedro Martinez and of the entire formerly appointed Board of Education members resigned as they refused to take out the loan. The municipal pension fund is the legal responsibility of the City of Chicago to pay for as two-thirds of the employees under the pension fund are city employees, not CPS district employees. Board members opposed to the proposal shared that if the district refuses to pay the pension fund, they cannot expect the city to provide the $379M funding from TIF surplus that the budget proposal relies on. CEO King has yet to respond to the letter of opposition from a portion of the Board of Education.
The district has already received a response from J.B Pritzker that he will not provide additional funding, stating that “it’s not because we shouldn’t. We should. We should try and find the money, but we don’t have those resources today, and we’re not going to see the resources from the federal government level either.” The state chose to only fund EBF at $305M, much below the $550M advocates and Alternatives have been pushing for. Last Friday, CTU members passed out flyers outside Dearborn Elementary that asked JB Pritzker and the democratic majority in Springfield to fully fund the district and refuse to accept the no. The need for more state dollars will not directly impact this budget but will impact next year’s budget.
In order to gather public opinion on the budget proposal, the district and Board held two Budget Hearings, both last Tuesday during the work day, when most parents would need to take time off of work to participate in. During the hearing, the CTU vice president warned the Board that it must plan for a contingency within the budget in case we see cuts from the federal level from Trump’s administration in the middle of the school year. He warned that cuts in the middle of the school year require a higher level of lay offs, up to 2000 cuts, and will result in a greater impact on students and schools. The district will vote on Thursday 28th for a finalized budget. As the city and the state discuss that there is a need for more funding but that they cannot find the money for this funding, we must look at our city and state’s budgets spent in policing and imprisoning our students rather than educating them. Our state spent $100M on facilities costs alone to imprison less than 100 students across 5 youth prisons. The police department budget remains unchecked. The police department received $170M this year to hire about 1,400 new police officers. As of June 2025, they’d only hired 15 new police officers, and this has been happening for years. The city and state cannot keep clearly prioritizing policing and imprisoning our students over educating them.
