CHICAGO () — The Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to approve a revised Chicago Public Schools budget, clearing the way for the district to receive additional funding from the state of Illinois.
The amended CPS spending plan includes $150 million in new state funding from Springfield.
This is a breaking news update. The following information comes from an earlier report. The video in the player above is from a previous report.
Before the vote, district officials warned that Chicago Public Schools would not be able to meet September payroll if the budget failed to pass Thursday, even as union leaders pushed back against the proposal.
CPS lunchroom workers joined dozens of demonstrators outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters, protesting as the board prepared to consider a proposed spending plan totaling nearly $10 billion.
“We are fighting for higher wages, more employee in the lunchroom, rights, respect. We are one of the lowest paid positions in CPS,” said Anise Balfour, a CPS lunchroom cook.
The district is confronting a budget shortfall of more than $700 million, which officials have attributed in part to the end of pandemic relief funding, higher operating costs and declining student enrollment.
Opponents of the proposed Chicago Public Schools budget have argued that layoffs and cuts would weaken school services, lead to overcrowded classrooms and cause lasting harm to students.
“It is important that we understand that a society that does not invest in young people, betrays its young people,” Jitu Brown, Board of Education District 5 member, said.
CPS CEO Dr. Macquiline King said the upcoming school year could be in jeopardy if a budget isn’t approved writing in part in a lengthy emailed statement, “We are already on the knife’s edge. If we do not pass a budget… based on realistic and actual revenue, we will be unable to access short-term financing, and we will fail to make our first round of payroll for the school year — essentially shutting down the District as staff and students are supposed to be returning to the classroom.
And while school officials said they need an approved budget so they can make payroll in September payroll in September, the Chicago Teachers Union plans to fight the layoffs wants to amend the budget to start the school year fully staffed.
“Our school communities are being threatened from opening and operating fully because our governors tells us everything, but yes and then our school board is going to go in here and do an impossible task,” Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said.
