Gov. J.B. Pritzker won’t confirm or deny his place in the vice presidential vetting stakes. But there’s no mistaking the blunt message he recently delivered to Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union: No, the state of Illinois doesn’t “owe” Chicago Public Schools $1.1 billion.
Pritzker called the bluff on Johnson and his CTU friends.
Parent J.B. isn’t coming to the rescue. The city will need to solve its school budgeting crisis — most of it self-created — itself.
Pritzker has been chiding CPS for squandering the federal bailout it got in the wake of the pandemic. Just to underscore how profligate the district has been, CPS has spent a mind-boggling $2.6 billion in federal bailout funds to date, according to the Civic Federation. In the current year budget approved Thursday by the Board of Education, CPS tapped the last bit of federal money available — $233 million. After this year, pandemic aid is gone.
“I don’t think that that’s the job of Springfield, to rescue the school districts that might have been irresponsible with the the one-time money they received,” Pritzker said to statehouse reporter Rich Miller.
The governor is 100% correct.
The federal infusion has enabled CPS to boost its budget by $1.5 billion, or 18%, to $9.9 billion since fiscal 2021, even as its student population has fallen 5% over that time. To call this trajectory unsustainable is to understate. A major change in approach is desperately needed.
Demanding a similar bailout from the state of Illinois, which unlike the federal government can’t put a big chunk of its budget on a credit card, is a nonstarter. Even as CPS has struggled to balance the current fiscal year’s budget, Pritzker is giving the mayor and the union that doubles as Chicago’s new political machine early warning, all but slamming the door on what is expected to be another major CTU and mayoral push in Springfield next year for more cash.
The governor’s clear statement won’t stop them from trying, of course, but they’re on notice and any reactions of surprise when they fail again won’t be taken seriously. Johnson will still control the Chicago Board of Education via a majority of board appointments, even after the city’s first-ever publicly elected board members take office next year. That board will need to produce an alternative plan to address a budget gap currently projected at $700 million or more.
Johnson is essentially out of painless budgetary answers when it comes to CPS. Does he know or acknowledge that yet? We don’t see any evidence of that. Eventually — likely as soon as next spring — he won’t have a choice.
If this were any other mayor, we’d be predicting they would pivot in light of these realities to hard-headed and pragmatic solutions. We’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: CPS is a system built and operated for far more students than it either currently serves or is likely to serve in any kind of near-term planning horizon. About a third of neighborhood public schools in Chicago are half full or less. The district needs to be made more efficient. That means closing and consolidating schools. That means fewer union workers.
The ideology — and, frankly, self-interested motives — of CTU won’t allow for the consideration of such obvious and practical steps. That means it’s up to Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and the board to begin working on behalf of the entire city — more specifically, the taxpayers who bankroll this bloated system — rather than a union hell-bent on bolstering its membership rolls regardless of need or taxpayer-funded cost.
The Board of Education on Thursday took a solid first step in acknowledging realities by approving the CPS budget for the fiscal year that began July 1 despite the opposition of CTU and the mayor. Johnson had advocated the board take out a high-interest loan to help cover this year’s deficit in order to prevent the layoffs of several hundred CTU members to help close the gap, a mayoral request that thankfully was rejected.
As to that repeated mayoral assertion that the state “owes” CPS $1.1 billion? As Pritzker said, the state is adhering to the 2017 law that set up a new funding model for public schools all over Illinois. That law requires the state to ramp up additional funding each year to eventually achieve 90% of what the law says the state should be contributing in an ideal world. Johnson’s $1.1 billion demand reflects 100% of that ideal contribution today. State law doesn’t require the state to produce that at all.
In addition, Chicago’s schools aren’t the only public schools in need in Illinois. By no means. And many of the other districts have been superior financial stewards with more pragmatic sensibilities. Paying CPS $1.1 billion now would mean the state would have to give other schools in Illinois another $3.75 billion.
That can’t happen. Kudos to Pritzker for delivering the hard truths.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
