CPS budget cuts hit special education students
July 29, 2015
WBEZ/Becky Vevea
Parents, teachers and students gather in Logan Square to protest the latest round of budget cuts at Chicago Public Schools
Phillip Cantor got called into an emergency meeting last week at the school where he teaches—North-Grand High School on Chicago’s West Side. The district’s central office had just sent over the budget for the coming school year.
“We had some cuts at our school, but seemed to be doing better than other schools in our area,” Cantor, who's chair of the Science Department, said. “And then we realized when we got further into the budget, we were losing $318,000 specifically for special ed services.”
It would mean the school would have to cut about three special education teachers or six full-time aides.
Cantor said there’s no way it would work.
“We’re barely meeting the kids’ requirements now,” he said.
Earlier this month, Jesse Ruiz, the vice president of the School Board who at the time was leading the district interim CPS CEO, announced that more than 500 special education teachers would be laid off districtwide. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the cuts, which included special ed, “unconscionable and intolerable.”
The move, he said, came after Chicago Public Schools conducted an 18-month review of services and staffing for students with special needs and found that even as enrollment in special ed was declining, the number of staff was increasing.
“The long-term goal is for more students with unique learning needs to be able to receive services at their neighborhood schools,” he said.
But the district has kept pretty quiet about how it’s going about making changes to how special education is delivered.
“When we looked more closely, there was a line in the budget that said All Means All pilot,” Cantorsaid.
If you haven’t heard of All Means All, you’re not alone. The district made no formal announcement about it and some of the 102 schools now in the pilot didn’t know they would be part of it until their budgets came. Last year, about two dozen schools were part of the program.
Internal district documents provided to WBEZ outline how the All Means All program is designed, and it’s complicated, but boils down to what some call “student-based budgeting for special education.”
Principals get a lump sum amount for special needs students instead of specific staff positions. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the way the rest of Chicago schools have been funded for the last few years. Principals get a lump sum for each student and then they decide what to do with it.
The internal document about All Means All did not list the actual per pupil amounts for students with special needs. CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner provided the following chart to WBEZ.
*CPS refers to students with special needs as “diverse learners”. They get a base amount under Chicago Public Schools budget cuts hit special education students | WBEZ 91.5 Chicago: