On July 30, the Chicago Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a budget for our public schools. As the board’s vice president, I have studied the proposal closely, and my concern is not that our administrators did a bad job. They did a terrific job under very hard circumstances with what was easily available. My disagreement is with what we’ve decided to treat as available.
I want to be clear about what my disagreement is not. Reducing central office and finding savings in procurement are what good stewardship looks like, and I support those reductions. What I cannot support are the cuts that reach into classrooms. Being responsible with public money doesn’t only mean spending less of it. It means collecting what we are owed. It means delivering the school day our city’s children deserve. To do that, it means getting the state to pay its bills.
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And the state has bills. Almost 10 years ago, legislators passed an evidence-based formula to adequately fund Illinois schools and gave themselves a deadline: 2027. It is true that Gov. JB Pritzker has increased funding for public education. It is also true that those increases have sat at or below the bare minimum the law requires, and that Chicago is still operating with only 73% of the resources the state’s own formula says our students need. The deadline is next year. The bill has come due.
A budget built on classroom cuts wrongly tells Springfield our students can keep waiting. If we budget without holding our partners in government to account, they have no incentive to uphold their obligation. We were here a year ago. If we had followed the same cuts-first logic then, we would have laid off about a thousand more of our employees than was necessary. We would have taken from students before the mayor provided TIF funds in the city budget. We would have done unnecessary, irreversible harm and then watched the money arrive anyway.
There is real momentum right now. The governor has said he agrees our schools need more. The speaker has said there needs to be a millionaires tax. Cook County said recently that our district should have the same access to no-interest loans as the suburbs, saving us tens of millions this year. The mayor has said he will do his part. That is information to budget on and act on, not to ignore.
This is not a district in decline. Class sizes are going down, access to special education is improving, and language, arts and academic programming are spread more equitably across the city. We should budget for that progress to continue, not foreclose on it.
Some of my colleagues describe these cuts as a must, or as part of an honest conversation. Before I can accept that, I want an honest accounting of what alternatives have been pursued and what advocacy has been carried out. The county loan opening didn’t happen on its own. Board members went and pushed for it. The harm we’re being asked to sign off on should be a last resort, and I worry it’s being offered as a first choice.
There is another way, and we can do it this month. Previous CPS administrations balanced budgets by anticipating state and city funding at moments when it was far less likely than it is today. We can pass a budget on July 30 that keeps the central office and procurement savings, budgets for the revenue our students are owed, including the county loan money, and can be amended later if our partners in government fall short. If the state ultimately forces us to truly consider reducing our workforce, let it be after every other option has been exhausted and our constituents have seen us try to prevent it.
Students in this district deserve to know that the adults in the room did everything in our power before we took anything away from them. There are still stones left unturned. Let’s turn them.
Angel L. Velez, Ph.D., is vice president of the Chicago Board of Education and represents District 9A.
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