Money is the real source of City Hall, CPS drama

Network television already produces Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med. It now looks like we’ve got a new, live-action drama to add to that line-up: let’s call it "Chicago Ed."

This latest entry to the Chicago franchise features passionate, fiery and headstrong characters, all butting heads on how best to lift the city’s public school system out of a deep financial hole, while also providing the resources necessary to adequately educate roughly 330,000 of the city’s children.

Tensions had been simmering for months, but things reached a boiling point after all seven members of the CPS Board of Education announced their resignations more than a week ago. And the drama has been playing out practically nonstop ever since.

The clashes between personalities and ideologies has made for good theater, but the true source of the conflict remains: money.

The city’s public schools don't have enough money to provide every student with a world-class education. Leaning on the state, borrowing money and kicking the can down the road on pension payments are temporary band-aids that prolong the structural deficiencies in how public education is funded.

Even if the district somehow climbs out of this year’s budget hole with the help of tax increment financing dollars or some other creative financial magic, there’s another budget deficit waiting next year. That’s the real status quo that has to be disrupted.

Deeply entrenched funding inequities

Mayor Brandon Johnson's passion and commitment to not leaving Black and Brown children behind is laudable, but his plans are risky and many have questioned his tactics.

But attention needs to be focused squarely on crafting a sustainable funding model that provides the resources needed to keep the city and the district from falling into panic mode when it’s time to pass a new budget or to ratify a new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union.

Our city and state education funding woes are deeply entrenched, inequitable and infuriating. Relying heavily on property taxes as the basis for funding public schools just translates economic inequity into educational inequity.

Higher-end properties on the North Shore yield well-funded public education systems — often at lower property tax rates than those in the south suburbs, where property values are much lower. Many south suburban communities have taxed themselves to the hilt to provide as much as they can for their schools, a strategy that has damaging ripple effects for their economies.

In Chicago, the city’s overall property wealth brings in more resources per student than in many suburban communities. But Chicago Public Schools itself has its own version of the haves and have-nots. The city’s top-tier selective enrollment schools look and feel like they’re in a different city than neighborhood schools serving lower-income children, which lack basic necessities in terms of staffing, academic programming, arts and athletics.

The problem is incredibly complicated and has many layers. Remedies won't come easily. Regardless of the approach, it will require a firm commitment from all to pay more for public education. A 2018 study of education funding nationwide showed that the poorest children in Illinois needed an additional $7,800 a year to reach the nation’s average for academic performance.

Education is ‘building block’ for equity

In theory, the state is supposed to help school districts provide, through its evidence-based school funding formula (EBF), the money needed to pay for best practices that research has tied to better student achievement. But the state simply doesn’t have the money to meet what the formula prescribes; the EBF is currently underfunded by over $2 billion.

As for federal funding, it doesn't go far enough to close the gap.

Some people are fortunate enough to not be affected by this dilemma and can pay for a world-class education at a private school. Others are fortunate because their children have earned seats in the few public schools that are providing a high-quality education. The rest of us are scrambling. Some have given up altogether. The city’s dramatic loss of Black residents over the past 40 years has been largely driven by families with school-age children.

There’s so much at stake with how public schools are handled.

As a nation, we only need to look back at history to see the power of a good education and how it has helped generations overcome poverty, discrimination and terror. Education has always been the primary building block for equity.

Ridding public schools of the gross inequities that have existed for decades is perhaps the best tool to rid ourselves of inequities in other aspects of life, from wealth to housing to employment to the criminal justice system.

Digging deep into our collective pockets to pay the price for a world-class education for all children is a down payment on all the things Chicagoans say they want in this city.

It's a matter of being willing to pay for it.

Alden Loury is data projects editor for WBEZ and writes a column for the Sun-Times.

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