How contentious have the upcoming Chicago Public School board races gotten? Consider that more than half of the 51 candidates had their signature petitions challenged; as of late July, six of them (including two incumbents) were subsequently removed from the ballot. Meanwhile, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, whose organization is backing a slate of candidates, has been exchanging testy barbs with her favorite poster boy for meddling oligarch interests, investment management titan Michael Sacks, who\u2019s funding a raft of his own contenders. \u201cWe should not have billionaires decide [elections],\u201d Gates declared. To which Sacks responded: \u201cNo one in this city is focused more on spending big money on politics \u2026 than you.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s good reason for all this acrimony. In November, Chicagoans have their biggest chance in city history to influence public schools. Three decades of strict mayoral control over the board will evaporate when voters, for the first time, elect all 21 officials. (Two years ago, in Chicago\u2019s initial toe dip into publicly electing board members, only 10 seats were up for grabs.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a pretty major fight,\u201d says Dick Simpson, former alderman and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Chicago. Adds Maureen Kelleher, who has been documenting the election in her newsletter, Board Rule: \u201cThe primary split is between the people who share the worldview of Mayor [Brandon] Johnson and the CTU and those who don\u2019t.\u201d This election is so crucial to the progressive agenda of the union leadership, it tried in the spring to push through a significant increase in dues to fund its candidates and other political efforts. (Union members ultimately rejected the measure.)<\/p>\n
Who wins\u2009\u2014\u2009particularly in the first-ever race for the president\u2019s seat, which has five contenders\u2009\u2014\u2009will heavily shape how the school system addresses several enormous issues it\u2019s facing. Let\u2019s break them down.<\/p>\n
Budget Blues<\/p>\n
Think of Chicago Public Schools as circa 1990 Donald Trump: saddled with massive debt. CPS carries more than $9 billion in long-term IOUs\u2009\u2014\u2009more than three times the average debt per capita as other big-city school districts. In late July, CPS estimated that it needs to spend about $700 million for the 2027 fiscal year (about 7 percent of its budget) just to pay a portion of that down.<\/p>\n
Some of this debt goes back a decade, to when Governor Bruce Rauner cut off state funding amid a budget gridlock. During the pandemic, federal emergency money allowed schools to expand staffing. But that funding has now dried up, and CPS operational costs exceed what it pulls in from local and state funding and tax levies. As any economics undergrad could tell you, that is not a sustainable equation.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSpringfield is not going to respond to just blanket demands without a clear strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2009\u2009Jessica Biggs, candidate for school board president<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Board president candidate Hilario Dominguez, a former CTU political organizer the union is backing, wants Springfield to pony up more dough. In fact, he argues the state owes CPS almost $2 billion, based on the formula in the state\u2019s own evidence-based funding law, put in place in 2017 to prioritize underresourced students. (The Illinois State Board of Education says the notion that CPS is owed money stems from a misunderstanding of how EBF works.) \u201cOur school system should be in a surplus, not a deficit,\u201d Dominguez tells Chicago. And how is the state going to come up with this money? He proposes progressives\u2019 favorite measure: raising taxes on the wealthy.<\/p>\n
Most candidates agree that more help from the state is critical. But those not aligned with the union are pushing for increased accountability on how that money is spent. \u201cSpringfield is not going to respond to just blanket demands without a clear strategy,\u201d says board member Jessica Biggs, who is running for president. Jennifer Custer, another current member and presidential candidate, thinks CPS needs to reexamine its spending, such as on contract work that could be done in-house. (The school system has proposed massive layoffs.)<\/p>\n
Diminishing Returns<\/p>\n
CPS is hemorrhaging students. Enrollment has fallen from a high of about 439,000 in the 2002\u20133 school year to 316,000 today, according to Kids First Chicago, an education nonprofit. As a result, enrollment-based funding gets reduced and programs get cut. If there aren\u2019t enough kids at a school, it\u2019s harder to field a sports team or offer advanced classes.<\/p>\n
Factors beyond CPS\u2019s control, such as the declining birth rate and an increase in families moving out of the city, have contributed to this drop. But so has the fact that more students are attending private schools or being homeschooled. \u201cPeople are leaving the community because they\u2019re not getting what they need,\u201d says Blaire Flowers, an Austin community activist.<\/p>\n
Neighborhood schools also must compete with charter schools\u2009\u2014\u2009and the future of those privately run public schools hinges on the elections. \u201cIf the president and the new majority of elected members are CTU allied, they\u2019ll continue to tighten the screws on charter renewals,\u201d Kelleher says. \u201cIf they are charter friendly, they might do things differently, especially in granting longer renewal terms.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Shutter or Not to Shutter<\/p>\n
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s decision in 2013 to close 50 schools led to dozens of empty buildings and an outcry over lower-income communities being undercut. Since then, talk of additional closures has become a third rail in city politics. But it\u2019s an issue the school system must address: Part of its financial burden has been maintaining 803 buildings with an average age of 85 years. And with declining enrollment, the district doesn\u2019t need all this space.<\/p>\n
Custer believes consolidation needs to occur but should be handled differently this time, with more community input and plans for how to use vacant schools. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to happen very slowly,\u201d she says. Dominguez doesn\u2019t want it to happen at all. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen that movie already. We know the sequel is never better,\u201d he says. Instead, he proposes that \u201cso-called underutilized\u201d schools could do double duty by also housing community centers or medical clinics, as has been done in other cities.<\/p>\n
Whoever gets elected, education advocates hope the new board can put aside biases and listen and learn. One complaint Emani Johnson, a policy manager for Kids First Chicago, frequently hears is that board members don\u2019t engage enough with the neighborhoods they represent: \u201cThere needs to be an intentional push for them to be in the community, with their ears on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mary Wisniewski is a freelance writer for Chicago magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How contentious have the upcoming Chicago Public School board races gotten? Consider that more than half of the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":993039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,16742,42123,398077,8988,87856,398079,5386,1818,398080,298906,398081,398082,398078,257048,36509,169571],"class_list":["post-993038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-public-schools","tag-chicago-teachers-union","tag-dick-simpson","tag-election","tag-enrollment","tag-hilario-dominguez","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-illinois-state-board-of-education","tag-jennifer-custer","tag-jessica-biggs","tag-kids-first-chicago","tag-maureen-kelleher","tag-michael-sacks","tag-school-board","tag-stacy-davis-gates"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117071323720858802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}