There’s an impending financial crisis looming within the school district. Much like the mayor’s sanctuary city allies, Stacy Davis Gates and the Chicago Teachers Union are also clamoring for a blank check of their own, and if the mayor’s past actions are any indication, it will be granted. The financial repercussions for the city’s finances and taxpayers will be devastating.
CPS receives nearly 56% of all Chicagoans’ property taxes and 25% of all state K-12 funding — yet it is crying poverty. Projecting a $628 million budget deficit in 2025 when the COVID-19 relief funds run dry, the district claims it only has 75% of the public funding it needs to adequately serve its students. That’s a staggering $1.4 billion budget hole.The district also projects $14billion in capital needs.
Meanwhile, the CTU insisted in a recent post on their website that the district will actually require $30 billion to fund a plan that, according to them, addresses “racial justice and districtwide educational and programmatic needs.” They say the district is”focused on building out additions and expanding selective enrollment schools, while ignoring the systemic needs of struggling severely under-enrolled South and West Side schools.”
The CTU seems to believe that it’s impossible to improve student outcomes unless the entire city’s treasury is funneled into the schools. And in this, they have an ally in the mayor, who in his first six months has capitulated to the CTU even when not publicly asked, to the tune of a $271 million infusion for CTU-dominated schools, comprised of a $226 million windfall from the TIF surplus and the city absorbing an additional $45 million in school district pension costs.
Meanwhile, Davis Gates repeats tired rhetoric, claiming that the driving force behind the negotiations is “inequity and injustice that Black and brown students and their families experience in this city.” With the current contract set to expire next summer, Davis Gates is demanding smaller class sizes, more bilingual support staff to serve asylum-seekers’ children and building time into the school day for teachers to collaborate. In other words more CTU members and less instructional time and of course higher salaries, as expected.
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Building more time into the school day for teachers to collaborate essentially means reducing instructional time for children. Meanwhile, full-time positions have increased by 18.7% in the last three years, with 45,159 full-time positions budgeted for 2024 despite enrollment that only in the past year stabilized after years of decline. The district now has one full-time employee for every seven students.
As negotiations for a new teachers’ contract commence, the CTU appears poised to insist on more of the same. The last contract, which cost the school district a staggering $1.5 billion and made CPS teachers among the highest-paid big district teachers in the nation, did not extend the school day or year by a minute. Furthermore, it failed to prevent the union from engaging in three work stoppages and limiting public school choice by capping both the number of public charter schools and their enrollment.
The harsh reality is that Chicago Public Schools, even before COVID-19, have not improved despite spending a staggering $30,000 per student. In the 2023 standardized tests, only 26% of all students met or exceeded reading standards, and a mere 17.5% of students passed math. The CTU-dominated school district’s response? A return to the soft bigotry of low expectations, abandoning standards and accountability for students, schools, and teachers, all while clamoring for more funding.
Meanwhile, the CTU is tirelessly working to stop the legislature from renewing the state’s tuition tax credit scholarship program, which primarily benefits low-income working families and costs the state nearly 0.5% of what it spends on K-12 education, incurring no cost for the city.
The city can not long survive a school system that is such a drain financially and a failure academically. Addressing these issues will require the following: Decentralizing the school district so the money truly follows the children. Allowing for the consolidation of underenrolled schools. Embracing high academic standards and accountability. Empowering the community to shape their local schools. Incorporating work study into the high school experience. Removing the obstacles to expanding public school choice. Extending and dramatically expanding the scholarship program.
These are the actions that will help address the inequality and injustice that Davis Gates and the CTU leadership decry and for which they’re primarily responsible. The union will stand in the way of all these actions. They will oppose any measure that impacts their members, increases their workload, or strengthens accountability. They will oppose any program that diminishes their ranks or outsources their work, even to other unions that have the expertise. Their agenda is more pay, more staff, less work, less accountability and no competition.
Paul Vallas is an adviser for the Illinois Policy Institute. He ran for Chicago mayor this year and in 2019 and was previously budget director for the city and CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
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