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“Public school enrollment is declining all over the country,
especially in big cities,” King said.
CPS Deputy Chief Education Officer Annise Lewis told the board
that 20th day figures are used to make decisions about staffing
and resource allocations to schools.
Chicago Teachers Union Recording Secretary Vicki Kurzydlo said
declining enrollment numbers do not exist in a vacuum.
“They are the result of what happens when a school system and
the community it serves are repeatedly stripped of resources,”
Kurzydlo said.
Kurzydlo said the answer to underenrollment cannot be to close
or divert resources from schools. Instead, Kurzydlo called for
action from the governor of Illinois.
“J.B. Pritzker owes our district $2 billion,” Kurzydlo said.
In July, the school board approved a $9.96 billion budget for
CPS.
Juan Rangel, president and CEO of The Urban Center, said the
district is getting more funding than ever at more than $30,000
per student, but test scores keep going down.
“Parents are very much aware of that, and they're not going to
continue to sacrifice their children to a poorly-run school
system,” Rangel told The Center Square.
Rangel said it’s no coincidence that the steep decline in
student population coincides with the CTU’s rise as a major
political power. He said the union opposes the federal tax
credit scholarship program that could bring millions of dollars
to the public school system.
“And they are opposed to that simply because that scholarship
program also happens to help out other types of school systems,
including private and parochial schools,” Rangel said.
Over the last 15 years, CPS has lost nearly 100,000 students.
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