Progress Illinois

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) district announced Wednesday that it will increase funding for school budgets next year by $70 million. But education experts and activists stopped short of calling it a big boost for schools.

"It's really not an increase. It's less of a decrease," said Eric 'Rico' Gutstein, faculty associate with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education.

CPS plans to reduce central office spending and use a one-time accounting adjustment so it can allocate the extra $70 million, which will be used to increase its base per-student funding amount by $250.

It looks like a good chunk of the extra per-pupil funds sent to schools would help to offset inflation and contractually-required pay bumps for teachers, CPS spokesman Joel Hood told the Chicago Sun-Times. Next year, the Chicago Teachers Union is owed a 2 percent teacher pay hike, which will reportedly come out to be no less than $50 million.

West Side education activist Dwayne Truss with the Raise Your Hand education coalition called the per-student funding increase "just a wash."

"You're not gaining much from last year other than being able to just hold on to what you already have," he said. 

The Chicago Planning Commission approved the Noble Charter School Network's zoning request Thursday, paving the way for a new high school to be built across the street from Prosser Career Academy in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood.

The proposal to develop the new charter school at 5357 W. Grand Ave., the current site of a shuttered lumberyard, now heads to the city council's zoning committee. The proposed high school would still need final approval from the school district.

Planning commission members, who are appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, approved the zoning change for the proposed ITW David Speer Academy charter school despite opposition from Ald. Nicholas Sposato (36th) and Northwest Side residents who said the new school is a risky investment for the community and bad urban planning.