Why this is a very depressing time to be one of Illinois' best schools
The Walter Payton College Preparatory High School is one of the best schools not just in Chicago, but the entire state of Illinois. By the standards of the Chicago Public Schools district, it's practically a baby - it opened in 2000. Payton is located near what used to be a dividing line between the upscale Gold Coast and the Cabrini-Green public housing development (a line that is all but done now, since most of Cabrini-Green has been demolished and more high-end housing replaced it).
Inside Walter Payton, with Cabrini-Green high-rises looming in the background (2009 (c) TiTo)
Payton is a Selective Enrollment school, which means that while it accepts kids from all over Chicago, you need to have pretty good test scores to get in. Their graduation requirements are (quite deliberately) tougher than regular CPS public school requirements. The school has good art, science and humanities programs, more AP classes that you can shake your stick at. Oh, and offers four foreign languages. Most Chicago public schools are lucky to have one.
How prestigious is this school? Current Illinois governor Bruce Rauner used his money and connections to get his daughter into it. You hear about rich parents doing that sort of thing to get their kids in private schools, but a public school...
This Monday, I attended a meeting of Payton's Local School Council. To be honest, I had an ulterior motive - a short story I'm working on is partially set at Payton, and, because I'm that kind of writer, I wanted to see what the building was like on the inside purely for research purposes. It was either sitting in on an LSC meeting or attending a school function.
I did actually sit on the meeting because, as I knew from my day job, you can learn about a school by attending one of those. And boy did I ever.
It's no secret that Chicago Public Schools district is in a pretty bad financial shape. As Payton principal explained during the meeting, back in the 90s, CPS borrowed money from its own pension funds. The problem is that paying it back hasn't been easy. The Great Recession really, really didn't help. Neither did all the money CPS borrowed (and continues to borrow) from other sources.
(That isn't the only reason why CPS is in such poor shape. Like all the other schools, it relies on property taxes to cover a pretty decent chunk of its budget. And how much it can raise in taxes is capped based on property values. And given the property values in some of the poorer sections of Chicago... you get the idea.)
We hear a lot about how this affects Chicago schools in poor neighborhoods. I've written before about how schools in more middle-class areas are affected as well. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Payton was affected, too. And yet...
I found out that all of the administrative staff (Principal, assistant principals, etc) taught classes just so they would be able to offer more classes without increasing the budget too much. And how, over the past few years, their budget was especially flat. About how they managed to hire an extra councilor to better deal with the growing caseload. And how they are looking forward to the new school expansion, which will bring in more students and, with it, more funding (number of students is one of the major factors as to how the funding is allocated throughout CPS).
I've attended plenty of board meetings in suburban schools, and they are pretty nervous about Governor Rauner's proposed budget cuts. But they are not necessarily panicking, because in terms of property taxes, they are pretty secure.
Payton LSC members are terrified. CPS is far more dependent on state funding than suburban schools, and the district's financial issues are not expected to get any better. While LSC members tried to be polite and diplomatic about it, it's clear that they are expecting sizable budget cuts, and they are scared to think of just how badly it could undercut the quality of education at Payton.
One of the LSC members suggested fundraising to at least partially offset the cuts. But the Payton principal pointed out that while some students come from wealthy Near North Side families, it's only a portion of the student body. Remember - Payton accepts students from all over the city. (In fact, according to the Illinois State Board of Education data, 30.7% of Payton students are below poverty level and 1.5% are homeless). And even the school could fundraise the money, it would lead to sad Catch-22. As the principal explained, that could lead CPS to decide that Payton doesn't need any more money and cut funds even more. Turned out it's one of the reasons why, for official purposes, the school doesn't report any funds it receives from Friends of Payton (a parent organization that tries to raise funds/get more resources for the school).
After hearing all that, it's hard not to think - if this is what one of the best schools in the state has to deal with, what chance do other CPS schools have.
The worst part is that I can't think of any obvious solution. Increasing the caps would require a voter referendum, and those tend to fail more often than they pass. Returning all the school tax revenues collected in Tax Increment Financing districts would be easier to pull off politically, but it would only slow the bleeding.
Which goes to the heart of my frustration with CPS. Even when schools are pretty successful, they have to struggle to stay successful, for reasons that have nothing to do with anything they can actually control.
Inside Walter Payton, with Cabrini-Green high-rises looming in the background (2009 (c) TiTo)
Payton is a Selective Enrollment school, which means that while it accepts kids from all over Chicago, you need to have pretty good test scores to get in. Their graduation requirements are (quite deliberately) tougher than regular CPS public school requirements. The school has good art, science and humanities programs, more AP classes that you can shake your stick at. Oh, and offers four foreign languages. Most Chicago public schools are lucky to have one.
How prestigious is this school? Current Illinois governor Bruce Rauner used his money and connections to get his daughter into it. You hear about rich parents doing that sort of thing to get their kids in private schools, but a public school...
This Monday, I attended a meeting of Payton's Local School Council. To be honest, I had an ulterior motive - a short story I'm working on is partially set at Payton, and, because I'm that kind of writer, I wanted to see what the building was like on the inside purely for research purposes. It was either sitting in on an LSC meeting or attending a school function.
I did actually sit on the meeting because, as I knew from my day job, you can learn about a school by attending one of those. And boy did I ever.
It's no secret that Chicago Public Schools district is in a pretty bad financial shape. As Payton principal explained during the meeting, back in the 90s, CPS borrowed money from its own pension funds. The problem is that paying it back hasn't been easy. The Great Recession really, really didn't help. Neither did all the money CPS borrowed (and continues to borrow) from other sources.
(That isn't the only reason why CPS is in such poor shape. Like all the other schools, it relies on property taxes to cover a pretty decent chunk of its budget. And how much it can raise in taxes is capped based on property values. And given the property values in some of the poorer sections of Chicago... you get the idea.)
We hear a lot about how this affects Chicago schools in poor neighborhoods. I've written before about how schools in more middle-class areas are affected as well. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that Payton was affected, too. And yet...
I found out that all of the administrative staff (Principal, assistant principals, etc) taught classes just so they would be able to offer more classes without increasing the budget too much. And how, over the past few years, their budget was especially flat. About how they managed to hire an extra councilor to better deal with the growing caseload. And how they are looking forward to the new school expansion, which will bring in more students and, with it, more funding (number of students is one of the major factors as to how the funding is allocated throughout CPS).
I've attended plenty of board meetings in suburban schools, and they are pretty nervous about Governor Rauner's proposed budget cuts. But they are not necessarily panicking, because in terms of property taxes, they are pretty secure.
Payton LSC members are terrified. CPS is far more dependent on state funding than suburban schools, and the district's financial issues are not expected to get any better. While LSC members tried to be polite and diplomatic about it, it's clear that they are expecting sizable budget cuts, and they are scared to think of just how badly it could undercut the quality of education at Payton.
One of the LSC members suggested fundraising to at least partially offset the cuts. But the Payton principal pointed out that while some students come from wealthy Near North Side families, it's only a portion of the student body. Remember - Payton accepts students from all over the city. (In fact, according to the Illinois State Board of Education data, 30.7% of Payton students are below poverty level and 1.5% are homeless). And even the school could fundraise the money, it would lead to sad Catch-22. As the principal explained, that could lead CPS to decide that Payton doesn't need any more money and cut funds even more. Turned out it's one of the reasons why, for official purposes, the school doesn't report any funds it receives from Friends of Payton (a parent organization that tries to raise funds/get more resources for the school).
After hearing all that, it's hard not to think - if this is what one of the best schools in the state has to deal with, what chance do other CPS schools have.
The worst part is that I can't think of any obvious solution. Increasing the caps would require a voter referendum, and those tend to fail more often than they pass. Returning all the school tax revenues collected in Tax Increment Financing districts would be easier to pull off politically, but it would only slow the bleeding.
Which goes to the heart of my frustration with CPS. Even when schools are pretty successful, they have to struggle to stay successful, for reasons that have nothing to do with anything they can actually control.