Unions keep schools open-- at very high cost: $93K per pupil at Chicago school

Chicago Public Schools, facing a half-billion-dollar budget deficit, is running tiny schools in huge buildings at very high cost, report Mila Koumpilova of Chalkbeat and Jennifer Smith Richards of ProPublica.

Douglass Academy High School on the city’s West Side spends $93,000 per student, they write. There are 28 students. Among the 27 staffers are "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 other nine staffers include two security guards, a clerk, aides and . . . Maybe a janitor?

Chicago's Douglass Academy High School is down to 28 students. It employs 27 adults.

"Flush with federal COVID aid, the district added more than 7,500 new positions over the past four years even as enrollment kept declining," write Koumpilova and Richards. "It also recently started guaranteeing a certain number of staff, including 10 teachers, at each school regardless of enrollment."

DuSable High School once educated 4,000 students. But nearby public housing was torn down, black families began leaving the city and others turned to charters and homeschooling. Now the building, which needs millions of dollars in repairs, houses one school with 115 students and another with 70. The two schools share sports teams, "but other things are doubled: two main offices, two principals, two assistant principals, two school counselors," write Koumpilova and Richards. There's a teacher for every five students -- at a cost close to $50,000 a student -- but limited courses.

Hirsch High School, built for 1,000 students, now enrolls 100. M’Kya Craig says there were few electives or extracurriculars, but lots of adult attention. A counselor helped her get into Chicago State University. (It's an unselective public university with a very poor graduation rate.)

Underenrolled schools get students who couldn't get into selective or magnet schools.

Motivated students with savvy parents apply to the district's selective schools, some of which are quite good. Others go to magnets or charters. Students who end up in the district's underenrolled schools are often way behind academically. Truancy and dropout rates are high.

Three of every 10 Chicago Public Schools is half-empty or worse report Chalkbeat and ProPublica. Forty-seven schools are operating at less than one-third capacity. "That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country’s history."

Those closures hit black and Hispanic communities the hardest, and helped fuel the Chicago Teachers Union's "rise to political power," they write. A former CTU organizer, Mayor Brandon Johnson is a close ally of the union.

No schools have closed since 2013, due to a series of moratoriums, and the board has voted not to consider closures until 2027. By then, all board members will be elected, not appointed by the mayor.

The city's birth rate keeps falling, note Koumpilova and Richards. The administration's crackdown on illegal immigration makes it unlikely that newcomers will fill the empty schools. (And Chicago has trouble educating non-English-speaking students in formerly all-black schools.)

CTU leaders think the city can attract new families by billing itself as a "a place that protects immigrants, abortion care, LGBTQ+ rights, and access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and adults," the reporters write. Opponents of downsizing say spending more to improve schools will attract more families with children.

Both scenarios seem unlikely.

In school districts across the country, enrollment is falling, buildings are half empty and school boards lack the political will to close schools, reports Linda Jacobson on The 74. The school closure rate is down, according to a Brookings analysis, even as enrollment falls, especially for low-performing schools.

Many districts are in financial trouble, but facing pushback on closing low-performing, low-enrollment schools.

• Just weeks after announcing closures, the San Francisco district halted plans to shutter any schools this fall.

• In October, Pittsburgh Public Schools recommended closing 14 schools; several others were set to be relocated and reconfigured. About a month later, Superintendent Wayne Walters hit pause, saying the district needed more “thoughtful planning” and community input.

• Last May, the Seattle Public Schools announced it would shutter 20 elementary schools next school year in response to a $100 million-plus budget deficit. They later increased the number to 21. By October, the list had dwindled to four schools. Just before Thanksgiving, Superintendent Brent Jones withdrew the plan entirely. 

Oakland Unified's school board, controlled by the teachers' union, is militantly opposed to closing any of the district's small, high-cost schools, editorializes Daniel Borenstein for Bay Area News Group.

After 22 years in receivership, the district will pay off a $100 million state bailout loan this summer, he notes. If it can't cut costs, it will face a $153 million deficit that could put the district back in bankruptcy.