Solutions differ for Chicago Public Schools’ potential $1B deficit

By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – The Chicago Teachers Union says the city’s public schools could face a $1 billion budget deficit if Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Democrats don’t provide more funding, but the union also said more tax increment financing dollars from the city could help.

A Chicago Public Schools parent and former Republican candidate for Congress says the districts needs to cut spending.

The Chicago Board of Education said this week that Chicago Public Schools are looking at a $732.5 million deficit next school year. Attendees at the board’s Agenda Review Committee meeting on Wednesday said schools were considering teacher, staff and service cuts.

Several board members said more state funding was needed and reiterated their desire for what they referred to as progressive revenue.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said the CPS budget as announced on Tuesday is “unsatisfactory and dead on arrival.”

Gates called out the school board for not allowing CTU members to lobby at the Illinois Capitol on Wednesday and said everyone in CPS should go to Springfield together and push for more funding.

“How about that? How about we show the might of the city and School District 299 in Springfield?” Gates said.

A CTU spokesperson told The Center Square that the union would be mobilizing members for a lobby day in Springfield at the end of the month, before the end of the current legislative session.

CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said in a statement that CPS is facing the deficit for one reason, because “the governor and the General Assembly have refused to enact the evidence-based funding formula that Illinois law demands.”

CPS’ preliminary budget proposal is $10 billion.

Chicago Public Schools parent and former U.S. House candidate P Rae Easley, R-Chicago, said CPS needs austerity.

“We have a district that has significantly contracted [in student population] while significantly adding positions, and so the spending per pupil has gone up astronomically,” Easley told The Center Square.

The school board’s budget proposal is $10 billion.

In April 2025, the board and the teachers union agreed to a four-year contract that will raise the average CPS teacher’s salary to more than $114,000 per year before it expires.

In addition to demanding more money from the state, Gates suggested that CPS could ask Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city council for more TIF money.

“So that minimizes where we have to go to Springfield and look at numbers. In fact, tell the governor and the General Assembly we’re coming down here for what we need because the mayor can give us this other half of it,” Gates said.

Last December, the city council approved a roughly $1 billion sweep of TIF funds to CPS.

Easley said any new TIF money should not be used for CTU’s pet projects when CPS’ reading and math rates are not where they should be.

“It has to go directly to curriculum and classroom things rather than jobs,” Easley said.

Earlier this year, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza told The Center Square that the mayor’s TIF sweep was a big problem because TIF dollars are intended to revitalize neighborhoods.