Taxpayers shell out $93,000 per student at some schools in Chicago, where many of the schools are failing, according to a new report from Chalkbeat and ProPublica.
The report stated that 47 Chicago schools are operating “at less than one-third capacity, leading to high costs and limited course offerings.”
Chicago Public Schools has about 325,000 students enrolled. This is 70,000 less from a decade ago (via ProPublica):
District officials project that three school years from now, there could be as few as 300,000 or, in a best-case scenario, as many as 334,000 students. Those estimates are based in part on the city’s sharply falling birth rates. Citywide, from 2011 to 2021, the number of births dropped by more than 43%.
The school district received federal funding during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed it to add more than 7,500 new positions over the past four years. This occurred as enrollment steadily declined.
Additionally, now, the district guarantees a certain number of staff per school regardless of enrollment (via ProPublica):
Williams and Bronzeville, which used to share an assistant principal and a gym teacher, each hired their own. Douglass High School on the city’s West Side now has 27 employees for 28 students.
That includes six regular education teachers, six special education teachers, a school counselor, a college and career coach, a conflict resolution specialist, a restorative justice coordinator, and an assistant principal and principal. The cost to run the school is $93,000 per student.
“Is a Douglass student getting a $93,000-a-year experience? No,” said Woods of Kids First Chicago. “We can confidently say that. CPS pumps extra dollars into these schools so they can offer the bare minimum."
ProPublica and Chalkbeat’s report found that since 2017, the district’s 47 severely underenrolled schools — ones that sit more than two-thirds empty — have cost more than $213 million to maintain and renovate. The emptiest building costs $400 million to renovate out of the district’s $3.1 billion budget.
According to Illinois Policy, “highest reading proficiency recorded at any community school in the 2022-2023 school year was 28%. That means 72% of students at every sustainable community school in CPS cannot read at grade level.”
“The highest math proficiency recorded at any sustainable community school in the 2022-2023 school year is 13%. That means about 87% of students at every sustainable community school in CPS cannot perform math at grade level,” it added.