The Chicago Board of Education will hold a press conference Wednesday to address “urgent concerns” about public school funding in Illinois, with officials set to speak after Chicago Public Schools revealed a projected $732.5 million deficit for the 2026-27 school year.
The new budget, coming in at $10 billion, is expected to result in cuts to staffing and “essential resources for students,” the CBOE said, including counselors, bilingual coordinators, interventionists, academic coaches, sports teams, music program sand after school tutoring.
“Like many public school districts, CPS is now faced with difficult decisions about how to allocate limited resources,” Chief Education Officer Dr. Karime Asaf in a CPS release announcing the decift Tuesday.
The press conference is scheduled to take place at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. It is expected to address the cuts along with the proposed mega-projects bill, which the CBOE says prioritizes the Chicago Bears’ potential new stadium in Arlington Heights over school funding.
“The Board’s message to legislators is clear,” a release from the CBOE said. “‘Save the Bears, yes. But save our schools first.'”
A report from the Chicago Sun-Times says the district told principals about plans to cut the number of teachers, which would mean bigger class sizes. The proposed cuts also months after teachers received a pay increase, of between four and five percent.
What CPS says about the their new budget
CPS says its preliminary $10 billion budget comes as the school says they are “navigating ongoing financial strains while working to ensure every student has access to a rigorous, equitable, and joyful daily learning experience.”
It also comes months after CPS closed a $500 million deficit with a record infusion of TIF surplus money from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
According to the release from CPS, federal and state funding has not kept up with the needs of Chicago students.
“In fact, CPS is funded at 73% of what the State of Illinois considers adequate,” the release said. It also said CPS faces higher costs for aging facilities, rising labor costs and “the Districts long-standing existing debt burden.”
As part of the FY 2027 budget process, CPS will make “targeted adjustments to school-based staffing allocation formulas that account for enrollment changes while continuing to prioritize support for high-need schools,” the release said. It wasn’t immediately clear which positions would be cut.
Overall, the budget presents a hard-to-solve math problem: how to right-size a school district that has seen a net decrease of 45,000 students over the last seven years while adding nearly 10,000 positions during that time.
CPS officials acknowledge that difficult choices lie ahead.
“While these classroom investments drove meaningful academic progress, the expiration of federal ESSER funding, combined with declining enrollment, has made it increasingly difficult to sustain pandemic-era staffing levels and interventions,” Asaf said in the release.. “Like many public school districts, CPS is now faced with difficult decisions about how to allocate limited resources.”
Budgets must be finalized by June 9, the release said, and the BOE must make approvals by Aug. 29.
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