As we learned in earlier posts (and see here), Chicago Public Schools cuts the central office budget every year. It is ruthless with the central office budget. No one works at headquarters except possibly Barbara Byrd-Bennett.
This reader has studied the budget and offers an overview:
“Since 2008, CPS has claimed $1.3 BILLION in central office budget cuts. That’s based on an annual budget of somewhere between $5 billion and $6 billion.
To think of it another way, CPS has lowered total budget expenses at least 22% by making cuts to central office. Central office accounts for only about 5% of the overall CPS budget.
Or, think of it like this: in the last six years CPS has completely eliminated central office 5 times over.
Still, according to CPS, “The General Operating Fund ended FY2012 with a surplus of $328 million, which compared favorably with the budgeted deficit of $241 million.” Amazing!
The rough numbers I came up with are based on a quick and dirty review of CPS budgets, press releases, and mainstream news media reports.
FY2013: $600M
FY2012: $107M
FY2011: $161M
FY2010: $100M
FY2009: $90M
FY2008: $114M
It was only six years ago the Board of Education said this in the FY2007 final budget report: “CPS ended last fiscal year in strong financial condition, with revenues moderately higher and expenditures less than budgeted.”
Oh, wait. That’s not old news. CPS finished the most recent school year with a surplus of $344 million. And then closed 50 schools and laid off thousands of teachers because they couldn’t afford them.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As the saying goes, everything out of the mouth of CPS is a lie, including “a”, “and” and “the”.
Thank you for posting. Thank you for all you do to bring light to the mare’s nest of lies and dissimulations that is CPS.
They cut almost $1.2 billion out of central office. How was there that much there in the first place? How do they run it now? That budget is in the budget.
On page 20 of the 2013 Chicago Budget I added up the obvious central office expenses and have $205.7 million. They state in the same budget they cut $10 million. Does this add up to you? Not to me. Do they have some new energy force there, oops, I forgot, Gates can make it happen, sorry, for the error. Just good PR and a lot of hot air. I just looked into my detailed Chicago budget for real for those numbers.
I think they might be referring to all of the other offices across the city as well. There were 24 Area/Network Offices last year, 18 this year and I read they’re being cut to 11. Lots of people have been work out of those offices on accountability issues–administrators and secretaries, instructional officers, teacher coaches and mentors, etc. However, they’ve added a lot of new administrative positions and departments, too, related to portfolio and new (charter) schools, so it’s difficult to figure out how that doesn’t cancel out the cuts.
The new math according to the Cagebusting Achievement-Gap Crushing Edubullies and their Accountabully Underlings.
Main purpose? To make it impossible to follow $tudent $ucce$$ from point A to point B.
I may be presumptuous, but I think KrazyMathLady might agree with me…
🙂
How one Chicago elementary school fights back.
Please join us:
Dear Parents and Staff-
Please join us Friday, July 19th at 10am to deliver the signed petitions to Alderman O’shea.
We will meet at Beverly Park (103rd and Maplewood) to deliver the petitions and send a clear message that our proposed budget is unacceptable and our students deserve better!
Please bring your children, wear Cassell shirts, and make signs if possible.
Thank you to everyone for their help with getting petitions signed at Cassell, walking their block to get signatures, and for coming to the school to sign the petition Monday.
As of today, we have 492 Cassell Community signatures and 513 19th Ward Community signatures!
If you have any petitions to turn in, please bring them with you to Beverly Park Friday or to the school at 9am Friday.
If you have not done so already, please take a minute to call Alderman O’Shea’s office at 773-238-8766 to voice your concern with the $451,000 reduction in our budget and demand that it be restored!
We need to be united in this fight to get funding restored to Cassell and your continued support Friday will help send a strong message.
Thank you and see you Friday at 10am-
LSC
And how another school is protesting the cuts in Chicago Public Schools.
Hannah G. Solomon Elementary School
6206 N Hamlin Ave Chicago, Illinois 60659 Phone: (773) 534-5226
Tuesday July 16, 2013
To: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett
From: Solomon School
Re: Request for additional funding
Solomon Elementary School has proudly served the children of the Peterson Park neighborhood for over 50 years. Solomon is a high performing school. Our students thrive because they are offered high quality instruction in a supportive, nurturing setting. We are a small school of approximately 400 students, nearly 25 percent of whom are students with a wide range of disabilities. We are a cluster site so we also provide an education for students with significant disabilities. We have a population that is 57 percent from low income households. We are a school in which 93 percent of our students meet or exceed state standards on ISAT scores. Our students and all other stakeholders at Solomon are facing a deficit of $456,000. Every year we are required to make our students more college and career ready. This includes increasing the number of students that exceed Common Core state standards. This is the expectation of all stake holders including CPS. With such a deficit this is not possible. We respectfully ask that you fully restore funding to Hannah G. Solomon School by working together to identify funding sources at the city and state level so that we can offer the programs outlined below to our students. With only six weeks left until the first day of school, we also ask that CPS immediately release a timeline of its budgeting process.
$78,000 – Math Instructor. Without this position, we will be losing our accelerated math program as well as our valuable math support. This position allows for smaller group instruction and more differentiated learning. The Accelerated Math program better prepares students for high school. It allows eligible students to learn high school algebra and take a test at the end of the school year to place them in geometry their first year in high school. This year 15 out of 15 students took the algebra test and passed! In the 6 years that this program has been in place many of our students have been accepted into selective enrollment high schools. This program attracts many dedicated families to Solomon and the benefit of this program is reflected in our consistently high math test scores. Without this teacher, our students will fall behind and face the reality that they will not have the test scores they need to gain admittance into Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools.
$79,000 – Special Education instructor. Solomon is a school that serves a large number of students with disabilities. These students make up nearly 25 percent of our student
population. This position is used to provide support to students with disabilities in the general education classroom so they can be educated in a least restrictive environment. The Special Education Instructor works hard to make sure these students are getting all the support that they need so that they can progress along with their peers. By keeping these students in their least restrictive environment, alongside their classmates, it creates an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion. We are very proud of this aspect of our school and we know that the loss of positions in this area will be a detriment to all of the students at Solomon.
$196,000 – Para-professional Support. We are losing 4 of our 12 Para-professionals and the need for all 4 of these positions is critical. We currently have 28 students who require fulltime Para-professional support and 22 students who require part-time
Para-professional support. This would be impossible to accomplish with only
8 Para-professional positions. These members of our staff provide support to our students with disabilities whose IEP’s require that they legally be provided this invaluable Para-professional support. The loss of these positions will create an unsafe environment for our students. It will also be a violation of the rights of our students who are receiving these services.
$52,000 – Music Instructor. This funding will pay for a music curriculum delivered by a certified music educator with an extensive background including, but not limited to – 15 years as a Soprano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Grammy Award winner, ISBE-Certified REACH Evaluator, REACH Performance Task Team, Chicago Public Schools Framework Teacher Specialist, DRIVE Award Finalist, and a Professional Development Provider. All of Solomon’s 400 students in grades Pre-K through 8, as well as the 4 self-contained special education classrooms, see Mrs. Stirling each week for music. Music is no longer a luxury; it is an essential element of a curriculum that helps children with memory recall and concentration-based tasks, including many other skills.
We can’t imagine the loss of such a highly credentialed educator.
$51,000 – ESL. At Solomon 22 percent of the students do not live in homes where English is spoken. Without the needed ESL instruction, these students will lose more than most others. By restoring the funding for this position, Solomon can continue to support these students and allow them to reach goals that would otherwise be unattainable. Therefore we can ill afford to lose this position. It will make at risk students further at risk.
We look forward to a response to our request. Please do not hesitate to contact LSC Chair Tammy Stams at 773-307-9307 or email at tammystams@sbcglobal.net for additional information.
Another excellent Chicago public school — Audubon — has rejected the Central Office budget cuts twice now.
http://www.suntimes.com/21384999-761/north-side-school-council-rejects-its-chicago-public-schools-budget-for-second-time.html
A comment by an Audubon parent from the Sun Times story: “They told us, ‘There’s no more money,’ and then they say ‘Here’s $100,000,’” said frustrated LSC chair Alex Pramenko, who has two kids at Audubon.
With the standards of the highly rated school in the balance, Pramenko said he must consider private schools for his children.
“If everything that you achieve for a public school is going to get beaten down, then maybe you should go private,” he said.
The “surpluses” that school districts like CPS report are basically an accounting gimmick. The quirks can differ among districts, but basically the “surplus” is a number that immediately gets rolled into the next fiscal year as revenue. So if there’s a $100 million surplus in year 1, that surplus is baked into the anticipated revenue for year 2, and so on. And if a surplus of $100 million gets reported for 10 straight years, you don’t end up with a total surplus of $1 billion, you end up with the same $100 million. It’s a snake eating its tail. Or like having a bank account balance of $1,000 on the last day of the month but your rent check of $1,000 is due on the first of the next month. Do you report a month-end surplus and go shopping?
The details are obviously a lot more complicated than that (there’s a lot of playing around with when revenue is recognized, trying to push it into one fiscal year or another, and certain expenses can be unpredictable in terms of which fiscal year they pop up in) but the point is that these so-called surpluses are not real money in the way many seem to think.