School Board Approves Property Tax Hike

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 CPS board approves tax hike and budget for next year, but challenges remain

August 24, 2011|By Joel Hood and Noreen Ahmed-Ullah,  Tribune reporters

Chicago Public Schools' governing board on Wednesday unanimously approved a tax increase to support a $5.9 billion budget for next year amid growing concerns about the district's long-term financial health and an escalating public battle with the teachers union over longer school days and pay.

Despite $400 million in cuts in 2011-12, a property tax increase that will cost an average homeowner roughly $84 a year, and potentially hundreds of layoffs, the school district remains in financial peril. CPS staff says rising pension and health care costs will contribute to an $860 million budget deficit in 2014, and that's assuming all other expenses remain flat.

Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley told the board that solutions are hard to come by, but that they will almost certainly include help from state legislators to lift some of CPS' pension obligations, assist in recovering millions in late payments owed to CPS and establish an entirely new framework to fund public education in Chicago.

"I have to tell you, I'm tired and embarrassed of responding to questions on this, saying, 'I don't know how we're going to close that $860 million gap two years from now,'" Cawley told board members. "We've got to develop a plan and share it with you soon. We've got to talk to the folks in Springfield about structural changes."

Until that blueprint surfaces, Cawley said, CPS is focusing on slashing costs. Over the next several years, this will surely mean more school closings and consolidations, more layoffs and further cuts to the central office bureaucracy, district officials said.
None of that will matter, he warned, without a complete rethinking of the public school model at the state level.

"That $860 million is more than four times the entire central office expense," Cawley said. "So you could close this place down entirely and fire everybody in the building four times over and you'd still have a deficit. So we cannot save our way to success here."
In the short term, district officials are still trying to wrestle with how to implement a longer school day, perhaps beginning in January, without a significant pay raise to teachers. CPS rescinded the 4 percent raises owed teachers in next year's budget to help close a record $712 million budget deficit.

But CPS Chief Executive Jean-Claude Brizard floated a plan late Tuesday that would return a 2 percent pay raise to elementary school teachers in January if they agreed to work an additional 90 minutes each school day and an extra two weeks. The district says the proposal would cost it an extra $15 million, which administrators say they would pay for with further cuts.
Chicago's school days are among the shortest in the country. Brizard and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have fought for longer school days and a longer school year, saying they're critical to improving student performance in a school district that chronically lags behind those in other large cities.
"We're not only looking to benchmark to the rest of the country, we're looking to lead," Brizard said. "Understand that this is a priority for us."

The Chicago Teachers Union, while not outright rejecting the proposal, is unenthusiastic about the idea. Union President Karen Lewis said Wednesday that a 2 percent raise would be very small compensation for a 90-minute-longer school day plus two weeks added to the school year. She said she had fielded calls from teachers upset at the proposal.

"Teachers plan," Lewis said. "We just don't jump into things."
Early this week, CPS negotiators rejected an offer by the union to raise teacher salaries by 2 percent this year and an additional 2 percent next year. Lewis, who was invited to participate in a committee exploring a longer school day, said she declined because the panel did not include other teachers but people she characterized as politically connected.

CPS and the union will
soon begin negotiations on a new four-year teachers contract, trying to reconcile the issues of a longer school day, teacher salaries and performance evaluations.
CPS' new leadership acknowledged at Wednesday's meeting that the budget, while comprehensive, was cobbled together in just three months. But some still criticized the document for errors, including inaccurate enrollment numbers, failing to report total district staff, and unrealistic future projections by assuming pension and health care costs are the only ones that will rise.
"That's not the way to do long-term planning," said Rodney Estvan, education policy analyst with the disability advocacy group Access Living.
Access Living and the independent Civic Federation supported the need to raise property taxes but raised concerns about CPS' overall financial outlook. The district shares those concerns.
"This organization has become bloated, inefficient and overcomplicated," Cawley said.