Jan Resseger hopes that Pedro Martinez, the new superintendent in Chicago, will eliminate the disastrous policy of “student-based budgeting.” The importance of the topic is not limited to Chicago. School officials in Los Angeles are considering a similar program. Everyone needs to learn the lessons that Jan describes. Schools in impoverished communities suffer most from this budgeting method and are “trapped by student based budgeting in an accelerating cycle of decline.”
She writes:
Martinez previously served the Chicago Public Schools as Arne Duncan’s chief financial officer. WBEZ’s Sarah Karp summarizes what have been some positive—and urgently needed—changes in the school district since Martinez left in 2009: “The good news for the new CEO is that CPS is relatively financially stable, at least in the short term. The school district received more than $2 billion in federal COVID-19 relief money to be spent over three years… Former CPS CEO Janice Jackson and Chief Education Officer LaTanya McDade made equity a focus. They sent extra money to schools serving poor students. They also gave schools the opportunity to apply for specialties, such as dual language or International Baccalaureate programs. In the past, the mayor and school leaders picked which schools got these special programs without any indication as to how or why they were chosen. Jackson and McDade also developed curriculum for every grade and every subject that they touted as a first for the district.”
However, enormous challenges persist. First are the politics. Karp continues: “Few people would disagree that the Chicago Teachers Union and the mayor have a toxic relationship.”
But the biggest problem is structural—at the heart of the operation of the school district: providing quality programming in a district that operates with a plan called “student based budgeting.” Karp explains: “Since Martinez left Chicago Public Schools in 2009, enrollment has dropped by some 80,000 students. This has hit neighborhood high schools particularly hard, leaving some with very few students. At the same time, the school district changed how it funds schools so they get a set amount per student, leaving low enrollment schools with limited budgets. The end result: schools with few students in huge buildings that can’t afford robust programming.”
Student based budgeting sets up a race to the bottom. Once students begin to leave, the district cuts the school’s budget, which inevitably means reducing teachers and diminishing programming. And the downward cycle accelerates.
Student based budgeting was instituted in 2014. Several years later in 2019, researchers at Roosevelt University evaluated the plan: “In 2014, Chicago Public Schools adopted a system-wide Student Based Budgeting model for determining individual school budgets… Our findings show that CPS’s putatively color-blind Student Based Budgeting reproduces racial inequality by concentrating low budget public schools almost exclusively in Chicago’s Black neighborhoods. The clustering of low-budget schools in low-income Black neighborhoods adds another layer of hardship in neighborhoods experiencing distress from depopulation, low incomes, and unaffordable housing.”
Please open the link and read it all.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Holy “semantic gymnastics” Batman, if Pedro canned
the “Student based budgeting” concept, it seems the
problem with a school-funding system that relies so
heavily on local property taxes wouldn’t change.
Until that “problem” is addressed, the clustering of
low-budget schools in low-income Black neighborhoods experiencing distress from depopulation, low incomes,
and unaffordable housing, will continue.
“Martinez’s great challenge will be to make the city’s public schools that anchor the city’s African American neighborhoods authentically welcoming and to improve the educational experience of these schools’ students.”
It seems unlikely that Martinez, a market based accountant with dubious credentials from the Broad Academy, will work to keep under funded urban schools with declining enrollment open. I doubt he will work to make these schools welcoming If anything positive happens for public schools in Chicago, I would be pleasantly surprised.
Chicago has to deal with a school system that was designed to serve many more students than now live in the city. According to Kids Count run by the Annie E Casey foundation, Chicago had about 760,000 citizens under the age of 18 in 2000 and has about 566,000 citizens under the age of 18 in the years 2015-2019. No doubt the number has dropped even further since. The school system has lost over 200,000 students and I don’t think there is any way to reduce the excess number of seats in the system that will make everyone happy. I would be very interested if folks here would make suggestions.
Figures for the Chicago population under the age of 18 from here: https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/8759-population-by-age-metropolitan-chicago#detailed/2/any/false/1983,1692,1691,133,11/4664,4665,4666,4667|381,213,2716,4741,2720,4742/17578,17579
Exactly my thought. From his credentials, Mr. Martinez sounds like the wolf in voucher clothing. Ugh. CPS is going to have a real fight on their hands.
I currently work at one of those schools Sarah K describes. Twenty five classrooms in SY 18-19 is now 18 classrooms, and the flight continues. We cannot implement our programs faithfully because now we are forced to have split level classes. At the same time the resource teachers see less HRs total and they’re the envy of the school along with the K and PK teachers that have extra outside sources of funding (a private loan that CPS must pay back with interest). Where I work, admin and Networks are plugging along as if it’s all back to normal and 3-8 classroom teachers are really struggling. My 5-6 team and I speak regularly about leaving. I’m at 22 yrs. there’s no way I am making it to 34, I’m guessing this Pandemic suits the district’s goal of offloading $450.00/day employees such as me.
Twelve neighborhood high schools with enrollments under 250? Are they continuing to operate out of bldgs that once served a much higher enrollment? If so, the costs just to keep lights and heat on are going to be so disproportionate that of course they’ll end up shrinking their largest outlay, salaries, via laying teachers off– the first ones to be laid off will be higher-paid specialists like the ones needed for disadvantaged students.
I would agree with union, these lay-offs are precipitous considering much of the ’20-‘21 disenrollment in poor black nbhds is almost certainly about covid. They should have been hanging tight and using covid aid to retain teachers, meanwhile making an actual PLAN to deal with two decades of declining enrollment [rate of decline increased significantly in the 4 yrs prior to covid].
Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 “plan” obviously consisted of nothing more than counting heads and letting privatization pick up the slack: children had the choice between 2-hr public bus rides to charters on the outer ring vs crossing gang territory to walk to a farther-flung nbhd school. 2014’s “student-based budgeting” sounds no different from “backpack full of cash.” Wonder if Martinez has anything better up his sleeve.
Bethree5,
Given that the population of people under 18 living in the city of Chicago declined by about 200,000 between 2000 and 2018, I think much of this has little do to with any covid impact.
I’m referring to the specifics pointed out about this year, like 15% staff layoff at a school that has gained enrollment for two yrs running, and was planning to add staff—in a very poor nbhd, and the comment that “the layoffs hit small schools in high-poverty areas disproportionately hard.” How do they justify layoffs as they go into a year where they’re getting fed funds for covid aid that should be used for smaller groups to help kids hit hardest by pandemic, who’ve missed a year of school?
Bethree5,
My point is that the specifics of this year are likely to be part of this much larger trend. The 25% drop in the number of children in Chicago over the last 20 years would seem to require a minimum of 200 schools closed (assuming the average school serves about 1,000 students) and corresponding reduction in teachers and staff.
This reduction in the size of the district takes time and is probably not complete. Even an individual school that might have experienced an increase in enrollment might still be overstaffed today because it was very very overstaffed three years ago.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think California has always used “student based budgeting” meaning schools only get paid on a per-student basis based on attendance. When a student isn’t in class for one day, the district doesn’t get paid that student’s allotted amount for that day.
That assumption on my part is based on what we were told and heard for thirty years of teaching in California from 1975 – 2005. Daily attendance was very important and often audited by the state for accuracy.
Still, federal money was not part of that California student-based budgeting method.
And, since I worked in schools with 70% or higher child poverty rates, those schools got a lot of federal money beyond California’s funding based on student attendance.
I am no expert in how California funds it’s schools, but LAUSD just engaged in a pitched battle about whether to adopt student based funding. Added to choice, it kills the loser schools
Basically, California funds its districts not its schools.
My Los Angeles district receives per pupil funds from California. The district budgets the funds from the state for schools, with fixed amounts for my school depending on class size requirements, physical plant maintenance requirements, type of school, etc. My school does not receive funds from the district based per pupil.
If the district changed to per pupil funding for each school from the district’s budget, as the billionaire-bought board is likely to attempt again, gone would be all the requirements to maintain class sizes, libraries, nurses, counselors… pretty much everything we walked in the pouring rain on strike, with support from well over 80% support from the community, to win for our students and us, for all Los Angeles.
I think you have the same experience I have had in Tennessee. For my thirty-five years I have been made to understand that our enrollment during the first thirty days of school defined our apportioned funds from the state
Yes, the per pupil funds from California are attendance-based, I forgot to mention. And Title 1 funds from the U.S. government are separate, and based on meal applications.
I thought Pedro was still pitching.
This seems like a pretty serious problem: “The end result: schools with few students in huge buildings”
When a school district goes to backpacks full of cash funding of its schools, it adopts the same destructive, segregationist ways as Betsy DeVos and vouchers for public schools. Their goal is to blow up the public system, and student based funding is a powerful weapon in the plutocrats’ arsenal.
Bob Schaffer, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, recently wrote, “…testing advocates persuaded the Biden administration to require all states to administer standardized exams at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year. Officials claimed that the scores were necessary to see the impact of covid-19 on school closings — and they promised that the results would be used to allocate resources to students who most need additional academic help.”
There’s no evidence of that happening anywhere. I have heard distant echoes of the idea recently, however, at school board meetings. The testing advocate board majority passed a motion to use test score based data to determine the definition of students in need of academic help. They did so in the meeting before the Student Centered Funding motion failed. The plan seemed to be to allocate funds based on test scores.
In L.A., wealthier neighborhoods have had the wherewithal to better subdue the onslaught of charter school takeovers than struggling neighborhoods. It’s been said you can’t take two steps in any direction in Southeast L.A. without bumping into KIPP, for example. Green Dot/Animo operates a large proportion of schools in South L.A. There are a myriad of district affiliated charters with “students in need of academic help.”
Student based funding is not an isolated event. There appears to exist a connection between charter schools, standardized testing, and the backpacks scheme. One can see test scores used to divert more money to charters in South and East L.A., draining public schools in the areas further, and adequate funding levels dropping in West L.A. and the Northwestern Valley — more opportunities for charters in West L.A. and the Northwestern Valley.
Corporate, self-anointed reformers do NOT make a single move to help students. Not ever. Everything they do is connected to their mission: ending public education.
My friend who teaches in rural Amish country says local schools won’t implement mask mandates because too many Amish would pull their kids out and the schools can’t afford the funding loss.
Maybe they will change their minds if their children get sick.