Despite historic investments, parents are seeing inadequate academic returns. The new school board has a window to turn this dynamic around and there exists clear, proven roadmaps to guide the new board
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) leadership and their media scribes are doing their best to spin losing absolute control over the Board of Education, implying that the CTU actually added to its majority. The facts tell a different story: The 14–6 CTU-controlled majority has been reshaped into a 10–10 split alongside an independent board president. Furthermore, the CTU claims credit for creating an elected school board — despite having secured legislation that delayed its full implementation after Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed an all-CTU panel.
The teacher’s union’s objective was clear: Guarantee CTU control as long as Johnson remained mayor. CTU’s priority remains unchanged: Protecting and increasing their members and expanding their political power. CTU leadership already had thrown down the gauntlet reminding both the new school board and the public of their ability and willingness to strike, as the present CORE caucus leaders have done three times while threatening to do so many other times.
The outgoing CTU-dominated school board built a legacy defined by failing to prioritize students. Consider its "greatest hits:"
- Approved the most expensive contract in Chicago history: At $1.6 billion, the agreement made CTU members among the highest-paid educators in the nation — without adding a single minute to the school day or school year.
- Supported the abandonment of standards and accountability: The board demonized standardized testing as inherently racist and reinstated the practice of social promotion.
- Forced out a competent CEO: Pedro Martinez was personally attacked by both the CTU and Mayor Johnson before being pushed out for opposing pressure to take on high-interest debt to balance the district’s budget.
- Raised property taxes by nearly $1 billion: This increase was enacted despite receiving over $1 billion in additional property tax revenues diverted by Mayor Johnson from the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) surplus.
- Approved bloated, top-heavy budgets: Successive budgets maintain more non-teaching staff (over 22,000) than classroom teachers and direct only 54 percent of total funding directly to individual schools.
- Shortchanged public charter schools: Budgets systematically provide charters with roughly one-third less funding per pupil on average—discriminating against over 54,000 students, 97 percent of whom are Black and Latino.
- Expanded the "Sustainable Community Schools" initiative: This program channels significantly higher per-pupil funding into under-enrolled and chronically failing schools without delivering structural turnarounds.
- Removed Chicago Police Officers from high schools: CPD officers assigned to deter active shooters were pulled from campuses, even as Chicago leads the nation in gun violence and deaths involving school-aged youth.
- Degraded public school choice: Options outside failing neighborhood schools were systematically dismantled by capping public charter expansion and eroding support for magnet programs.
- Opposed federal funding initiatives: Union leadership resisted state participation in federal programs that could deliver up to $1 billion in direct education support grants to public and private school families alike.
Don’t be misled by CPS’s reported record high school graduation rate. It is not the outcome of quality instruction, but of a system that lowered standards and embraced social promotion. That is how CPS claims an 83.4 percent graduation rate while only one in five students meets SAT benchmarks in reading and math, and 40 percent of high school students — including 72 percent of seniors — are chronically truant.
In sum, the CTU-dominated board sacrificed the needs of children to serve the union leadership’s political agenda. Its legacy is unbalanced budgets, soaring debt, phantom graduation achievements masking dismal test scores, and runaway truancy — all while per-pupil funding jumped 44 percent. Meanwhile, students continue to leave: District enrollment has dropped by over 126,000 students since its modern peak of over 439,000 students in 2004.
The opportunity before the new board
With the district spending over $32,000 per student but only half of CPS’s $10 billion budget reaching individual school buildings, the newly configured board has a clear opportunity. It can balance the budget without hurting classrooms, while simultaneously elevating neighborhood school quality and expanding public options. Achieving this requires direct action:
- Tie future union contracts to actual revenues: The last two record-breaking contracts drove up salaries and added thousands of non-classroom positions. Tying future labor commitments to reliable revenue streams will align spending with reality.
- Decentralize CPS central and regional offices: Restructure the administration so funding directly follows the student. Currently, only 54 percent of district funds reach local schools, while more than 7,500 staff positions are not assigned to individual school sites.
- Return non-teaching staffing levels to pre-COVID counts: Rebalancing non-instructional positions back to pre-pandemic levels could free up over $600 million while still maintaining a generous overall staff ratio of one position for every 8.5 students. Full budgetary autonomy over these resources should be returned to principals and elected Local School Councils (LSCs).
- Consolidate and repurpose severely under-enrolled buildings: Consolidating near-empty facilities saves roughly $100 million in operational overhead. Unused facilities could be leased to public charter schools — over 90 percent of which operate outside standard CPS buildings — to generate district revenue, or repurposed to serve broader community needs.
- Expand high-demand specialized models: Expand public school options like magnet schools, neighborhood school based magnet programs, and charter options while repurposing under-utilized high school buildings into adult education and career-technical training centers eligible for state and federal workforce funding.
- Empower local parents and school communities: Grant LSCs and principals full control over site budgets, staffing configurations, and academic models. Local ownership makes neighborhood schools more competitive and appealing to neighborhood families helping retain and attract students.
- Make state pension equity Chicago’s top legislative push: Springfield covers roughly 98 percent of downstate and suburban teacher pension employer costs, but only about 32 percent for Chicago. Correcting this imbalance at the state level would free up well over $700 million annually for CPS classrooms.
- Advocate for tax credit scholarship access: Urge state leaders to participate in federal tax credit scholarship frameworks. Entering into this program could bring up to $1 billion in direct support — helping low-income families not only cover private school tuition but providing all families with direct funding for after-school tutoring, early childhood care, special education services and other support.
Recalling the forgotten era: 1995–2002
This period is deliberately ignored by CTU’s CORE leadership or misunderstood by younger union members. It began with the Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act of 1995, which gave the mayor direct authority over CPS. What followed was a period of labor stability, balanced budgets, credit rating upgrades, and expanding educational options. During this time, enrollment reversed a decade-long decline — growing from 407,241 students in 1994 to a modern peak of 438,589 in 2002.
It was a period of genuine labor-management collaboration. Consecutive four-year contracts were negotiated on time, yielding no strikes and zero major union grievances. Teacher pay rose raising by 27 percent while teachers earned extra pay in the nation's largest expansion of after-school and summer school programs. The district achieved consecutive balanced budgets, accumulated healthy reserves, fully funded pension obligations, won GFOA financial awards, earned credit rating upgrades, and drew praise from three presidential administrations.
This period also saw zero school closings and the construction of 78 new schools and major annexes relieve severe overcrowding and eliminate the “Willis Wagons" and the prefab schools that had long plagued the South and West Sides. Dozens of under-enrolled high schools were transformed into specialized magnets or fortified with neighborhood-based programs like International Baccalaureate (IB) dramatically improving their performance and boosting their enrollment.
This is not to suggest that mayoral control is inherently flawless. Subsequent mayoral policies — such as Renaissance 2010 and various initiatives during the Emanuel administration — caused real damage to neighborhood schools and created the conditions that swept the CORE caucus into union leadership. However, the new board would be wise to re-examine the specific fiscal and operational practices from 1995 to 2002 that earned national recognition.
CPS does not suffer from funding shortages
Since Illinois enacted the Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) model, cumulative state aid increases for public schools have exceeded $4 billion annually, including more than $3 billion distributed directly through EBF. State lawmakers have also increased non-formula spending for career technical education, student transportation, and mandated categorical programs. This brought total General Revenue Fund spending on Pre-K–12 education to approximately $11.2 billion this fiscal year.
Under this model, Illinois jumped from 18th to among the top 10 states nationally in per-pupil funding, outpacing neighboring Midwestern states by wide margins. Data indicates that Illinois spends between 16 and 64 percent more per student than nearby states, while Chicago on average spends over $2,000 more per student than the Illinois state average, placing it second only to New York as the nation’s best funded system.
Spending the equivalent to $32,000 per student annually, the district budget funds one full-time staff position for every 6.8 students. Since 2018, CPS has seen a 24 percent increase in total state funding, a doubling of local property tax revenues, and a 16 percent increase in permanent state formula aid — even as student enrollment dropped by 14 percent over the same window. This funding surge is on top of $2.8 billion in emergency federal COVID relief and $1.3 billion in TIF surplus revenues redirected to the district since 2019.
Families are not leaving CPS because of funding shortages; they are leaving because they no longer trust the system to deliver high-quality instruction, safety, discipline, and meaningful opportunities. Many families endure significant financial hardship to send their children to private schools, while others leave the city entirely. Despite historic investments, parents are seeing inadequate academic returns. The new school board has a window to turn this dynamic around and there exists clear, proven roadmaps to guide the new board.
