CTU rallies in Springfield to demand greater funding for city’s schools

SPRINGFIELD — Teachers and school employees represented by the Chicago Teachers Union swarmed the Illinois Capitol building on Wednesday to rally for full funding of the state’s largest public school system amid the depletion of federal COVID-19 relief money that has the district facing a fiscal cliff.

The union is pushing for more than $1.1 billion in state funding it says is owed to Chicago Public Schools following a 2017 overhaul of the state’s formula for funding public schools.

After a couple of hundred union members clad in red flooded the Capitol, several attended a news conference and described a shortage of English as a second language teachers and paraprofessionals who work with students with disabilities, the need for school employees who specialize in helping children who’ve experienced trauma, and a lack of resources for homeless students.

Pavlyn Jankov, CTU’s research director, noted that the city’s public schools got some federal funding through COVID relief and that brought in counselors, after-school programs and helped maintain lower class sizes. But with that money running out, he said he’s worried those gains could be lost.

“It’s important that we keep up the progress we’ve made. We can’t afford to go back. And we want to be on a path towards full funding,” Jankov said. “And right now what we’re seeing from the state legislature in the budgets that have been passed so far, we’re just not on that path. We can’t wait another 10 years or more for our schools to be fully invested.”

CPS leaders have said the influx of federal relief money demonstrated what’s possible when schools are fully funded, citing growth in student achievement on standardized tests.

Since federal funds began dwindling last year, district and union leaders have highlighted the yet-to-be-fulfilled promise of a 2017 state reform, known as Evidence-Based Funding or EBF, which pledged to provide all public schools enough state funding by 2027 to implement proven best practices, such as class sizes associated with the best academic outcomes by grade level.

CPS currently receives around 80% of the total funding that the state’s formula determines is needed, resulting in an approximately $1.1 billion gap, according to Illinois State Board of Education data. The 2017 reform mandated lawmakers to increase funding for public schools across the state by a minimum $350 million per year, which has occurred with the exception of 2021. But, by contributing no more than the minimum, the state won’t achieve adequate funding for all schools for another decade, according to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.

Lawmakers have a week and a half before a scheduled May 24 adjournment to come to terms on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $52.7 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

State Rep. Will Davis, a Democrat from south suburban Homewood who was one of the sponsors of the 2017 school funding overhaul, has repeatedly called for that spending to be increased to $550 million statewide. He acknowledged the funding demands from CPS and CTU are probably unrealistic.

“Based on what we know about revenue and (the) possibility of a budget coming together, a specific $1 billion ask is highly unlikely,” Davis, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee that oversees K-12 funding, said on Tuesday after a private meeting with other House Democrats. “Asking the mayor, presumably CTU, to support that additional $200 million would go a long way toward moving the conversation forward for CPS, as well as all schools throughout the state.”

Earlier Wednesday, Senate Republicans called a news conference to criticize CTU and its budget request. Sen. Donald DeWitte of St. Charles said for many years that CPS has received a “disproportionate share” of public education funding “through special carve-outs and unique grants.”

“Knowing how the scales have been tipped in the Chicago Public Schools system’s favor with regards to funding over the years, for the mayor, and now his minions in the Chicago Teachers Union that come down here, (to) try to bully lawmakers into more money they claim they are being shortchanged is absolutely outrageous,” DeWitte said.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and CTU organizer, visited Springfield a week ago to talk about the city’s budget priorities but did not discuss school funding in his meeting with Pritzker and barely touched on the subject during a talk with a group of progressive lawmakers.

In Chicago on Wednesday, Board of Education Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland opened a meeting expressing support for CTU’s lobbying efforts in Springfield. “We support adequate funding for all districts in the state of Illinois, not just for CPS,” Todd-Breland said.

But she said the need for more money is “acute” for CPS, which serves an outsized number of students with the greatest needs, with disproportionate numbers of English learners, low-income, homeless and Black students in the district.

“CPS isn’t getting its fair share of state funding,” Todd-Breland said.

Next school year, CPS faces a projected deficit of at least $391 million — a figure that doesn’t account for new costs that may be associated with a CTU contract, nor the tentative agreement with Service Employees International Union Local 73 that the district recently announced.

The teacher’s union contract expires in June. In unveiling CTU’s contract demands last month — which include 9% pay increases and providing every school with a social worker and nurse and fine arts and sports programs — CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the union would not cower in the face of funding challenges.

Approached by a Tribune reporter at the Capitol on Wednesday, Davis Gates declined to comment at the request of her communications team. But in April, she made clear what she wanted from lawmakers.

“We’re going to demand from you to actually fund the funding formula in Springfield,” she said.

Macaraeg reported from Chicago.