Fingers point over CPS enrollment drop
(The Center Square) – Student enrollment continues to fall at Chicago Public Schools, but the reasons for the decline may depend on who you ask.
CPS Superintendent/CEO Macquline King said at a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week that the district’s enrollment on the 20th day of the school year was 304,687, a decrease of 11,537 students from last year.
“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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