Current Issue

School closings

As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.

Veronica Anderson

August 10, 2006

What does Texas have that Illinois does not? Several freshly signed tax and school finance reform laws that will inject billions of dollars into the state's public education system. The long-overdue solution relies on a tax-swap—more taxes on business and less on property—and an increase in cigarette taxes.

Some of the money is earmarked to pay for raising teachers' salaries and policy initiatives such as higher graduation requirements that Illinoisans put in place long ago.

June 19, 2006

La ronda del próximo año de recortes presupuestarios está en la mesa y según un grupo de perro guardián, Escuelas Públicas de Chicago ha rebajado su déficit gradualmente a 45 millones de dólares. Hace unos meses, el déficit proyectado era más de 300 millones de dólares. Se espera que un aumento de la financiación de nivel baja del estado gane neto el distrito 100 millones de dólares.

May 11, 2006

Next year's round of budget cuts are on the table and according to one watchdog group, Chicago Public Schools has whittled its shortfall down to $45 million. A few months ago, the projected deficit was over $300 million. An increase in base level funding from the state is expected to net the district $100 million.

The rest is a combination of raising lunch fees, reducing costs at central office, tapping cash reserves and, the worst part, cutting programs in reading, math, special education and early childhood education.

April 20, 2006

School closings never go down easy. When Chicago Public Schools announced it would be closing three elementary schools and phasing out one high school at the end of the school year—the fifth round of closings in as many years—it again ignited a firestorm of community protest and controversy.

But this time, the backlash extended to black and Latino state lawmakers, who are demanding to be part of any future discussions on school closings.

April 20, 2006

On the frontlines of public education, three new teachers are singing the praises of those who helped them learn the ropes. Derrick Kimbrough, a new 5th-grade teacher at Tarkington Elementary, credits a teaching coach who visits and keeps in touch regularly for helping him do a better job teaching language arts and reading.

At Castellanos Middle School, 7th-grade teacher Julie Voynovich says she relies on her "troubleshooter"—a retiree with 23 years of teaching experience—whenever she needs to know anything.

February 21, 2006

A recent survey of voters in Chicago found more than half saying Richard M. Daley is doing a good job as mayor, despite their misgivings over a spate of City Hall hiring and contracting scandals. One bright spot Daley points to regularly is the city's public school system.

The Legislature gave him control of the system in 1995, including the power to hand pick School Reform Board of Trustees and chief executive officer.

Daley chose his chief of staff to head the school board and his budget director for CEO. The new team set to work, and immediately, things began to happen.

February 21, 2006

The balance of teacher talent and experience in the city's public schools is often mixed, but for some, the scales are more likely to tip in one direction or the other. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of teacher salary data found that certain types of schools—catch-up high schools for kids left behind and schools with the highest poverty rates—tend to have the lowest-paid teachers on staff. By comparison, selective high schools and elementary gifted centers and magnets have more higher-paid teachers.

December 27, 2005

Taking office under new financial and labor rules, Mayor Richard M. Daley's school leadership team abruptly reversed more than a decade of program cutbacks.

December 08, 2005

Life isn't easy when you're a financial guinea pig. Take Tarkington Elementary, for instance. It is one of three so-called performance schools—district-run schools with special privileges—that are doing a test run of a new funding formula, one that is supposed to make sure that money follows kids. Called per-pupil budgeting, or sometimes student-based budgeting, the formula allocates dollars to schools based on their size and needs of their student populations.

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