Chicago Public School Case Study

It has become clear that action is required of you when it comes to the overall budget deficit of the Chicago Public School (CPS) District and in your capacity as the Budget Director. With the consideration for the potential of cutting $100 million from the district’s budget and eliminating about 1,000 jobs district wide, it is imperative to consider all options available. (The Electronic Hallway Pg. 9) Although this option was considered by yourself and colleagues, it appears clear that in your new role as Budget Director, you would prefer to strive toward initiating a budget with vision and innovation. All while avoiding deep personnel, individual schools, and service cuts or reductions. It is clear that something has to be done to eliminate …show more content…
Please find my following responses and recommendations below with supporting facts, research, and documentation.
To do so, we must first consider what are the policy options at this point? What criteria does a successful policy need to meet? What can we realistically achieve?
Consider the fact that it has been found that, through the research publication of the Thomas Fordham Institute titled, “Fund the Child: (June 2006), that “policies at the district, state, and federal level all contribute to the problem”, of making school finance “inequitable and an antiquated”. (Fund the Child pg. 17) The same report goes on to state that policymakers will have to “roll up their sleeves and commit to the hard work, and the trial and error, or developing new and creative solutions.” (Fund the Child pg. 6) To get where we need to go, we must first determine the path and budget framework that the CPS will implement moving forward. This will also require the Budget Director and staff to consider formulating changing policy, procedures, funding, and even staff allocation across the board. First, you will need to examine the size of each school within the entire district and …show more content…
That is not to say that some schools will not end up with more funds than before, while those that were receiving more could face potential reduction in this type of system. This appears to be the natural process of the WSF and according to the editor of the Chicago Catalyst, Vickie Anderson, “Per pupil funding will mean less money for schools that enroll better-off kids, unless CPS factors something into the formula to offset that effect.”(The Electronic Hallway pg. 10) The CPS is composed also of Charter schools, ran by non-profits or contractors and administered by the district that would “stand to gain quite a bit because they were almost universally underfunded.” While placing more funds in the hands of principals that might not be used to administering a larger budget. (Electronic Hallway pg. 10) This concept leads to the unavoidable situation of smaller schools seeing an overall reduction of funds due to a lessor number of students and the elimination of a blanket style funding system. Although the sight of funding increases for formerly underfunded schools seem encouraging, that comes with the potential or unavoidable action of reducing funding for the smaller student schools. In the attached Appendix A (Electronic Hall, pg. 10), you will find a potential formula currently being implemented in cites with the WSF like Seattle, Edmonton, and

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Chicago Public Schools Case Study