Chicago’s public schools will receive their individual school budgets by the end of the week, CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said Wednesday during the first of many planned “listening sessions” with parents and community members.
Individual school budgets are typically set by April, but the mayoral transition has delayed the process. The district’s overall budget is unlikely to be completed until mid-summer.
CPS is facing an estimated $820 million budget deficit. The Chicago News Cooperative obtained documents in April circulated by the previous schools leadership that showed the district was planning to push for an $80 million property tax increase to help close the deficit. Without a 2.7 percent tax increase, the documents warned, class sizes would increase and more than 2,000 teachers could be laid off.
The extent of cuts to individual schools is not known, though Brizard said the district is “trying to keep cuts as far away from the classroom as possible,” including not increasing class sizes.
Brizard was also vague about the 4 percent raise teachers are scheduled to receive per the terms of the union contract. The Board of Education must vote before June 15 on whether to honor the contract. Brizard said he and the board are discussing their options, but added, “we have a huge shortfall.”
Brizard also said he has been holding discussions with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, a former Chicago schools chief, and former CPS leaders Ron Huberman, Paul Vallas and Terry Mazany about restructuring CPS management, but would not say where administrative cuts would take place.
“The one thing you don’t want to do is walk into a system as if you know it all and begin to sort of break things and change things,” Brizard said.
The “listening session” with 13 CPS parents focused primarily on how to increase parent engagement in the district. On the campaign trail, Mayor Rahm Emanuel talked about creating a parent contract that would require parents to make a certain commitment to their child’s school. Parent contracts are popular in many charter networks and parochial schools.
Brizard said he is exploring introducing one at CPS, which he said would make Chicago the first large urban district to successfully implement a parent-engagement contract. But such an agreement could be difficult to implement and enforce across the city, parents at the session said.
“We don’t want to punish people for not being involved,” Brizard said. “There’s lots of different iterations of parent involvement. We have to be careful with how we define parent engagement.”
The parents participating in the conversation with Brizard were primarily members of local school councils and parent action committees. CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll said the district appointed a liason to connect with various organizations to find parent participants for the session.
Errica Smith, a local school council member for Dunn Elementary School in the South Side Roseland neighborhood, said she often feels disenfranchised and disrespected as a parent and noticed that, “principals and educators tend to talk down to parents.” But she is holding out hope for the new CPS leadership.
“[Brizard] sounds like he has a lot to say, but actions speak louder than words,” Smith said.