Editorial: A reality check for CPS: How to make up $215 million?

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It is not as if they were not warned.

From May through August, as the Chicago Public Schools put together a new budget that relied on an extra $215 million from the state, skeptics came out of the woodwork to say this is no way to make ends meet. Bond agencies, which had already dropped CPS’ credit rating to junk-level status, said it’s a bad idea to count on money that might never come. The Civic Federation said the same and wondered why CPS had no Plan B or, as they phrased it, “no plan of recourse.”

In an August editorial, we noted that CPS was counting on money from a governor and Legislature who could not even pass a state budget. We asked how the school district could call this a “balanced” budget.

And now here we are. Gov. Bruce Rauner on Thursday vetoed a bill to give CPS that additional $215 million, punching a hole in the district’s budget big enough to let Chicago’s winter wind, the hawk, blow through.

Whatever else CPS does now, it had better get to work, finally, on drafting Plan B because Plan A is on life support.

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The Illinois Senate voted to override Rauner’s veto on Thursday, but the House is unlikely to do the same. Speaker Michael Madigan would need the votes of all 71 House Democrats, including Downstaters who voted against the original bill. Rauner has called it a Chicago “bailout,” and Downstaters just hate Chicago bailouts.

Claypool says he might even go to court, now making the argument that Illinois’ school aid formula violates federal civil rights protections because schools that serve kids from poor families get much less overall funding than schools that serve kids from better-off families. Claypool is exactly right and, maybe it’s about time CPS took this to court. Our state’s school funding disparities are disgraceful, and the Legislature has never seen fit to rectify the situation except for tenacious efforts by Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, to make the formula more equitable.

More than half of Illinois’ spending on education goes to school districts regardless of wealth, shortchanging poor districts that have students with the greatest needs. A new report by the respected school advocacy group Advance Illinois concludes that for every dollar Illinois spends on a non-low-income student, it spends only 81 cents on a low-income student. That is the greatest disparity in school funding in the nation between the rich and the poor.

But nothing that CPS might do in the future should be an excuse to keep from doing what must be done right now: Budget according to the current ugly reality. Find the necessary cuts and efficiencies. Eschew another round of self-defeating borrowing, even if you can find new willing lenders. Balance CPS’ budget honestly, with no wishful thinking.

We understand the danger in that. Though not widely appreciated, Chicago’s public schools have made significant academic gains in the last decade. Math and reading scores have climbed steadily. School expulsions are down. More kids are graduating from high school. More are going on to college. Nobody wants to compromise this progress with crude cuts in staff and resources.

But ducking budget realities, as CPS has done for a generation, serves school children just as poorly.

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