The Chicago Board of Education made the unprecedented decision to reject the budget proposed by Chicago Public Schools’ superintendent Thursday and instead approved a revised plan that cancels more than 1,000 layoffs.
To do that, school board members are counting on the state to provide $150 million in state money that has yet to be committed — a move school district officials said was illegal and in violation of board members’ duties.
The board passed the amended budget 11-7. Board member Yesenia Lopez was the lone abstention. Board members who supported the amendment said that mass layoffs would be harmful to children and the warnings were overly severe. All the board members who voted in favor of changing the budget are aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union.
Meanwhile, board members Angel Gutierrez, Ellen Rosenfeld, Therese Boyle, Carlos Rivas, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, Jennifer Custer and Jessica Biggs voted no.
The vote came after a day of drama that included an unheard of two-hour recess. Board members said school district officials pressured them mid-meeting to abandon their plan to change the budget.
Emila Zoko, the district’s acting chief budget officer, issued stark warnings in her presentation to the board about the consequences of approving a budget that includes more money from the state than has yet to be appropriated.
She said the budget would not be seen as balanced, which is required under state law, and could result in a credit downgrade. That could, in turn, make it more expensive for the district to borrow money and pay off debt.
And, if state lawmakers don’t come through soon, the school district would have to cut spending midyear.
“If we count on this revenue and it fails to come through, it will be a disaster,” Zoko said.
Wally Stock, the acting chief financial officer, also said he is worried that if the district passes an unbalanced budget it may not be able to get the short-term loan needed to cover payroll in September. Supt. Macquline King echoed that concern and said it would be “catastrophic” not to get the loan, as staff who have not gotten paid all summer would continue to go without.
But board member Jitu Brown took issue with the warnings, calling them “fear mongering.” He looked at King and said he felt “disrespected and profoundly insulted” by the day’s conversations.
He said that there was political will now to increase funding for CPS. Illinois House and Senate leaders both said on Wednesday that they supported providing more state money to CPS, though there was no mention of specific figures.
Board member Michilla Blaise put forth the amendment that reversed many of the district’s proposed cuts, saying that CPS leaders and her colleagues always talk about not making cuts to classrooms.
“These are real people in real schools,” she said. Blaise urged her colleagues not to “give the state a pass” because it “owes us money.”
And board member Debby Pope said she was “baffled” by the threats. The original budget proposed by district officials called for five furlough days and a spending freeze. All of these were to happen after January. If the state funding doesn’t come through, these drastic measures could be back on the table, she noted.
Much of the discussion centered on whether CPS should count on more state revenue, as the district is also counting on the city to pull funds from special taxing districts called TIFs. The city doesn’t decide how much money it can take out those TIFs until the fall, but King’s budget included $285 million from these special taxing districts.
King increased the TIF assumption on Monday and removed the possibility of furloughs after SEIU, which represents support staff, sent a letter demanding it.
Brown and others said it was hypocritical to do that with no real commitment from the city, and not to extend the same logic to the state.
Yet Board Member Che “Rhymefest” Smith and school district officials said they had good reason to believe that Mayor Brandon Johnson would come through with at least $285 million.
Before the vote, Supt. Macquline King publicly implored the board not to alter the budget so drastically. She reminded the board that 10 years ago the school district included shaky state revenue projections in the budget and wound up having to impose cuts in February.
At the time, she was a principal who had to tell staff they no longer had a job.
“This was extremely disruptive to my students,” she said. “Those are the faces that I still see… We need to learn from our mistakes instead of repeating them.”
But board members also heard from a long line of teachers who told them how the layoffs of more than 1,600 staff would hurt students. They said they would rather keep school staff in place and fight for more state funding.
The vote marked the culmination of a tense budget process that kicked off with King’s announcement this spring that the school district faced a $732.5 million budget shortfall.
The deficit, which is about the same as last year’s, is the result of increasing costs to repair aging buildings, pay down debt and cover pensions and union contracts. The cost of special education has also shot up, as more students need services, while the state and federal government are falling short on their contributions.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates backed the budget changes and urged board members to approve them. She noted that the budget already includes an assumption that Mayor Brandon Johnson will pull $285 million out of special taxing districts called TIFs, even though decisions about how much money could be available to taxing bodies like CPS are not made until the fall.
“You know what else is a safe assumption? That the governor follows the law and funds the schools,” Davis Gates said.
Everyone, from King to board members to union leaders, agreed that the long-term solution to CPS’ financial problems is more state funding. Time and again, speakers pointed to the 2017 state law that established how much school districts need to offer an adequate education to students.
Under that, CPS gets about 73% of what it needs from the state to provide an adequate education. To reach the adequacy bar, the state would have to increase CPS’ funding by about $1.6 billion a year, according to the state’s own formula.
Initially, state lawmakers set a goal of fully funding schools under the new formula by 2027. But at the rate the state is going, experts now say it will take another decade for that to happen.
King and several board members said it was too risky to assume that the state will come through with more money this year.
Dian Palmer, the president of SEIU Local 73, which represents CPS support staff, was not in favor of the board passing a budget that assumes the state will come through with more money because that could reopen the door to furloughs, she said.
Earlier this week, CPS removed five unpaid work days from the budget at the behest of staff unions who said the resulting pay cut was too deep.
“Waiting on Springfield is the risky path, and our children’s education is not the place to take that risk,” Palmer said. “Every day this budget is delayed or built on a foundation that is not real money yet is a day of uncertainty for the workers that are trying to plan their lives and the families who are trying to plan their school year.”
Meanwhile, teachers spoke out at the board meeting about how staff cuts would affect their schools and urged the board to reverse teacher cuts.
Elizabeth Lundeen, a second grade teacher at DePriest Elementary School on the West Side, said her school lost several educators and was considering a drastic increase in class sizes.
“DePriest lost first, second, third and fourth grade teachers with no plans on how to fill these positions,” Lundeen said. The remaining fourth grade classroom would have 45 students, while the other grades would each have over 30 students, she added. “Not only are these class sizes untenable, the loss of these particular teachers is devastating.”