Good evening, the committee on education and Child
Development will now come to order today. We will be
conducting the subject matter hearing to learn more about
some of the assets and resources available for CPS
families. This hearing is a part of a of our two-part
series to a focus on Chicago Public Schools. I hope you all
will return tomorrow for tomorrow's hearing around city
colleges of Chicago. We will begin with a roll call to
establish Quorum vice-chair Angela clay.
Not in person.
Alderman Yancey
Alderman Hall
automobile
Alderman Chico
all the womanly
Alderman Quinn
alderwoman Gutierrez
alderwoman Coleman
Alderman O'Shea
all the woman who win says
Alderman Taliaferro
alderwoman. Rossana Rodriguez
Autumn and Gardner
there are eight members present. We have a corn.
Non-members are president or vice mayor Walter Burnett.
No other members before we go to public comments we have.
Three members of the committee who have asked to join
virtually. Can I get a motion to add those?
Summer by Alderman O'Shea, we have vice-chair. Angela clay
chairwoman was on Rodriguez and Alderman Jim Gardner.
Pursuant to the city of Chicago Rules of Order and
procedures route 49 the sergeant-at-arms stuff for the
following rules of conduct to be followed during the public
comment period and the duration of all comedian city
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destructive Lang.
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Individuals or groups failing to adhere to these rules will
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the meeting by Sergeant at Arms.
We have no public comment at this time, but we do have two
written testimonies that you all should have received via
email and I are on the committee's website for public
viewing.
Can I get a motion to make sure that no, I'm sorry. I'm on
the wrong page second meeting.
Now we'll turn it over to Chicago Public Schools. I would
like to start by introducing folks to my right.
Mike sekowski
Oh, I make a motion to approve the the the rule 45 report
and I get emotional all those in favor.
The eyes have it.
Play go back to Mike. Did I say it right Mike cisowski? Who
is the chief of budget officer Charles Mayfield was the
chief operating officer. We have in the Box Kim Kim Jones
executive director of transportation, and I'm going to
allow the other members to introduce themselves started
with Chuck Chuck. I want a bunch of your last name. I
always do it.
Chuck swirsky senior advisor to the co
I'm good evening to mail chamber city council liaison for
Chicago Public Schools chief of the office of Language and
Cultural education from Chicago Public Schools.
evening Ali Muhammad deputy chief officer College and
Career Success
Looking good afternoon. Miroslava Mejia Crew Chief
Financial Officer at Chicago Public Schools Construction.
All right. Thank you Carolyn Taylor. My name is Mike
sekowski and the chief budget officer for Chicago public
schools and
Today I'm here to talk about the CPS budget. I might be
flipping around a bit as some of the orders of the slides
and changed, but bear with me there. So we're going to talk
about you things first is school funding and the second is
the big picture CPS budget and what our finances look like
moving forward.
Starting with school funding we want to set some context on
where we've been and where we are today is first light show
is going back to school year 2019 or we had thirty-eight
thousand fewer students. I'm over this period of time we've
added over 1.13 billion dollars and direct school funding
for schools despite losing 38,000 students over this period
of time another way to look at this is that we have
increased the per-pupil funding in the aggregate by 46% due
to both the loss of the students and the increase in
funding over this. Of time.
In the same. We've added over 2,300 teachers to the
district where fy19 we had 20775 teachers this year fiscal
year 24 we have over 23,000 teachers in the district.
When I went back to this line to show that over the same
period of time we have also added additional positions
outside of the classroom starting with counselors. We've
169 counselors over the last six years and 339 nurses 383
social workers 212 dedicated instructional coaches.
306 case managers 50 advocates for students in temporary
living situations 50 school-based athletic directors or
sorry 20 school-based athletic directors and then on the
operational side, we vetted 575 custodians 188 engineers
and 148 security guards to our schools.
The impact of that over this period of time as we are now
spending $595 more annually on our teacher salaries and
$190 more annually on our education support Personnel so
that everyone that's not the teacher so big increases in in
spending on those salaries.
Part of the reason we've been able to invest more is our
reduction in Reliance on enrollment based funding. So I
mentioned earlier that we've lost 38,000 students over the
last six years. I've been over this period of time we have
shifted away from funding based on student enrollment to
finding this more based on student in school level need in
FY 2024 61% of the dollars that are going directly to our
district one schools are based on need need-based metrics
rather than just looking at student enrollment. The amount
allocated just based on student enrollment has dropped to
39% of the overall pot that.
When were schools?
The way that we've done that is by relying on what we call
her opportunity index, which is a metric that measures the
overall level of need based on the student factors and
community-based factors it all of our schools and then
include things such as diverse learner population English
language Learners Community hardship Medicaid Eligibility
students in temporary living situations community life
expectancy and teacher turnover.
What this means when we look at individual School examples,
is that schools with greater needs receive more funding on
this side. We're showing to schools that were calling
School a and school be either actual CPS schools that we
could be identified for the sake of this presentation
School a is a relatively low Needs school that is serving
29% low-income students 7% you with Learners and 18%
special education students all below. Our district averages
school be on the other hand is serving 79% low-income
students 69% English Learners and 21% special education
students much higher than school and let me look at the
chart in the middle of this page that shows the respective
funding levels of each school on a per-pupil basis and what
we see is that the methods that we allocate funding based
on need lead to school be receiving twice the per-pupil
funding of school a as the factors that we included in our
opportunity index are driving the resources to school.
To meet the needs of the students there.
Another way to look at this is in terms of the student to
staff ratio at all of our schools. So I know you have this
information in front of you and on the slide, I'm not going
to go through each metric here, but we're showing here is
that our schools of different sizes have different
staff-to-student student-staff ratios because of the way
we've invested more based on need then what's the student
the student enrollment overall see what we see is that are
smaller schools, but typically lost enrollment overtime
have lower student-to-staff ratios. So more adults in the
building to serve the students that are there because we've
shifted away from just using enrollment at the metric that
we fund schools based on so that are elementary schools are
smaller elementary schools below 300 students have just
above 521 students and staff ratio or a larger students are
larger schools. Excuse me. I just above 721 same holds true
for the high schools or a smaller High School have a 421
student's death ratio.
There are larger high schools have just over in 821 students
and staff ratio.
Wanted to set some contacts around the progress we've made
in school funding a lot of this is largely due to the
influx of federal funding that we've received in the wake
of the pandemic now, I want to switch and talk a bit about
what the some of the budget challenges and what next year's
budget looks like at this point moving forward.
Looking at our FYI 25 so next year's budget. There's a few
things that I want to highlight here and we'll talk a
little bit more in detail on the subsequent slides. The
first is that rf24 but this year's budget includes $679 in
federal relief funding from the elementary and secondary
school emergency relief funding we call this answer and
I'll refer to this is ask her for the remainder of this
presentation the projections that we have. This is funny
that we began receiving in 2020 and we've received through
the duration since then and our projections show that we
expect three hundred million dollars to remain 25 budget.
So a drop of orange 370 million dollars from 24 to 8.25.
A recurring revenues are non relief funded revenues
projected increase by 102 million dollars heading into next
year. And this is due mainly to increased property tax
collections. If CPS. Once again, Texas to the cap is we
have historically done. This is offset by reduced levels
and other resources, including our personal property
replacement tax funding.
Heading into next year we expect our expenses to increase
by 123 million dollars due primarily to increases in
teacher pension costs Debt Service Healthcare and inflation
or just a basic obligatory expenses and do not include any
expense increases do CPS has control over such a salary
increases new bonds for Capital Investments increased staff
or payments to the city for pensions of anything. We do
Beyond in any of these categories will increase our
projected year-over-year increase in expenses.
2 heading into fi25. This means that we face is structural
deficit of 691 million dollars prior to any increased costs
that are directly beyond our control.
I'm in fi25 because we have three hundred million dollars
of federal relief funding remaining we protect our deficit
to be 390 $1000000.
One of the reasons we are in this situation is due to an
equitable an inadequate funding. I want to highlight some
numbers that put ar-391 million-dollar deficit into context
do the state's funding formula for districts evidence-based
funding has improved funding for Education across the state
and for CPS. We still face some significant gaps in the
funding that we received both for our district and compared
to other districts across the state.
The first is that 1.1 billion dollars would be available. If
the state was able to fully fund the evidence-based funding
formula. And this is a metric that is is based on the
state's own analysis.
Mcps is also the only District in the state that has to
provide funding for our teacher pensions. And we would
receive $700 in additional funding if we received the same
support as every other District in the state of Illinois.
Finally, we will have another five hundred forty-three
million dollars available. If CPS did not have to use
evidence base funding and other unrestricted revenues to
cover debt service costs. I'm so right now we are putting
five hundred forty-three million dollars to fund the bonds
in our existing debt under Capital Improvements that would
otherwise be able to be spent in classrooms if we had
additional Revenue source for that. So putting the 391
million-dollar deficit in context progress in any of these
areas would help us to be able to close that Gap and to
continue the progress that we made that I talked about on
previous slide.
So now we're going to talk a little bit more about the
numbers as we look it up by 25 him before we go into the
details want to talk about the key assumptions that
underlie the numbers here. The first is that this project
that property taxes due increase to the tax cap as we have
historically done which we estimate to be at 3%
We also estimate that personal property replacement taxes
will drop them historically high levels and we'll lose
about a hundred million dollars. They're your rear. We also
projected remain tier 2 in the state's evidence based
funding formula, which means that we received the projector
receive a smaller share of the pie. Then other districts
that are known as Tier 1 districts, which the state
identifies based on how far they are from overall adequate
funding levels.
As I mentioned earlier, we also protected have only three
hundred million dollars remaining in our federal relief
funding downs from 670 million in FY 2004 budget and we've
currently identified no new revenues to replace this
decrease in an s or funding that is made some of the
Investments possible that we made on the expense side, but
we've included in the subsequent numbers are only expenses
that are out of our control. And so this does not include
any new investments in school resourcing new Investments
and future collective bargaining agreements binding for New
Capital Investments or any other new Investments. That's
not to say that there won't be any of these new investments
in our FY 2005 budget. But any increases in these
categories will widen the budget deficit that we have to
solve.
So this slide shows a walk down of how we get to our 391
million-dollar deficit number essentially starting with the
one-time revenues that we do we have in our fy20 for Budget
of $679 that will be going away. We projected structural
revenues will increase by 102 million and stripped and
structural expenses will increase by 123 million which
leaves us with the structural budget gap of 691 million.
Again, we project to have three hundred million dollars in
federal funding remaining to help close this Gap, but that
still leaves us with a 391 million-dollar Gap to solve.
These next few slides detail some of the numbers behind the
projections. And so this slide shows on what goes into our
102 million dollar projected increase in our structural
Revenue. Again, this is primarily attributable to the
increases in property taxes under our tax cap and also
includes the other factors seen here. I want to highlight
that our share of evidence-based funding the reproductive
received includes only a 23 million-dollar year-over-year
increase based on an estimate of 350 million dollars in New
State funding for education.
Similar this slight here shows the increases in expenses
that underlie our 123 million dollar increased expenses
sumption. These are expenses that are out of our control
including pensions Debt Service Healthcare proportionate
share increases for charter schools and other operational
inflationary costs, totaling 123 billion dollars.
So to summarize some of the key points on what we are
facing going forward CPS faces a structural budget deficit
of approximately 691 million dollars in by law. We must
have a balanced budget with our operating revenues matching
our operating expenses that we projected retained three
hundred million dollars of Esther funding as that funding
carries over into a 25 in expires in September of 2024 and
said that's going to close our gaap to 390 $1000000 at that
point. We'll need to find either additional revenues or
reduce expenses to balance the budget and any additional
costs for expense increases beyond our mandatory
obligations will add to this projected deficit that we
still need to close.
That wraps up my lights here and think we're going to take
you said that we lost 36,000 students weren't those
students. Do we have a clue? We have a way of tracking and
then what are we doing to increase enrollment?
Thanks for that think the question. We don't have that
information in front of us, but we can do is because I
can't provide that information with to you.
So what is the plan to increase enrollment because 36,000
students you can say maybe 5,000 graduated if we just like
did they move out of town like and then what is what is CPS
altimate go when it comes to advertising and bringing young
people back to these institutions.
Again will take that that back to us on our portfolio team
takes up at look at that information and we can get that to
you in writing.
we do have some Kris Roman individual schools, and we
either work with them to connect them with marketing or the
school's know how to reach Mark and the row so weak, but we
do have a pretty
wake me up in Martinsburg.
Explain to me. What does per pupil versus / need look like
on a skull level? So you're telling me the schools are more
needs you more money. What does that look like a old school
level? That's correct. So when we talked about per-pupil
funding this is these are dollars that are going to school
is just based on the number of students at the school has
as I mentioned before we've shifted heavily in the
direction of funding based on need or we are using metrics
such as our opportunity index or other need-based factors
that helped us understand where resources are needed and
help us allocate resources in that direction one example, I
have his dad we have allocated over 130 additional
counselors to schools that's based on both our opportunity
index and our community balanced index. So, I understand
where they
Resources are needed and to make sure we're putting those
resources in the right places.
For the record, I want to add all the women Gutierrez for
Corum my last question before I go to Alderman Taliaferro
is how are you going to work with us where we're at a
different word a different moment in this time where you
got the 5th floor CPS the union all trying to work
together. How are we helping to a get rid of this deficit
and be really advocate for schools to really get the
resources cuz I hear you saying and I like that you all
have moved away for people budget because it really hurts
who's in black and brown communities cuz we just don't we
don't have the people there. We're just starting to but us
really having a real plan on how we go after your federal
and state dollars.
I think you probably heard me say this before while
shooting the same basket now and it's the majority of the
city council the union Administration and CPS. So we're
working together right now with a State Legislative agenda
or board to approve it before that happens. We will be with
other people State leaders and the unions and bringing
Thanksgiving approach to work together to achieve our goals
on the Federalist side.
More complicated obviously that's going on in Washington.
You know that the GOP wants to cut put a 1 by 80% So, you
know, no one's rushing to help us and Washington. Our
delegation has been very supportive of us with your mark
rants. We've been very active in the competitive Grant
space. And also we're in touch with the Department of
Education. I need that we have and hopefully we'll have
some good news on that shortly.
Farrah I don't care just a quick question or two. How does
the new arrival impact of CPS is Budget Inn, and I see that
from a perspective of is there a need to hire English as a
second language more English as a second language teachers.
How does that impact the resources that you provide the
schools on whereby we have students that are enrolling that
are new arrivals but don't have the resources available. So
if you can explain how that impacts your budget and how
that's been accounted for in your budget. I'd appreciate
it.
Yes, thank you. For the question. I can't speak to the
Staffing component of it, but I can speak to the funding
piece of it. We've done a few things to to make sure that
the schools that are taking in our our our newcomer
students have the resources that they said is that all
schools that are taking in or just certain schools that are
taken in new arrivals?
Most of the students that we enrolled from the office of
Language and Cultural education in CPS.
My office is in charge of collaborating with network cheese
and principles to determine the seat availability. We are
monitoring 18 schools that have received.
A different number of eels that have not historically serve
that yell population. So we are monitoring also for
transfers. We're monitoring in a soon as they meet the
numbers that are required to receive additional.
Bilingual coordinators we make the request and they receive
the additional positions. There are other resources that we
also provide to them the environment that we execute
through all say is very intentional and it and it goes into
schools that have
This programs. We do have a number of students that maybe
we're at Police District or in different shelters where
they were not services around but I think that we're going
to continue to monitor where the students are in provide
transfers when needed
Do the chair. Can we get those numbers Awards and schools
that are in our different wards?
Yes. Yes. Thank you for the response back to your you know,
your budget presentation. Are you going to be hiring
English language assistant or assistance to help with with
teachers that don't necessarily speak of Spanish. Is there
a increase in your budget for those types of resources that
are schools are going to need cuz I can only imagine we
have students that are sitting in classrooms and I'm not
getting an education that they deserve because there is not
resources available to them and in so I would hope that we
are providing our teachers with some type of assistance in
their classroom more than just once or twice a week. So is
that being accounted for in the budget?
Sure. I can I can speak to a few different things that we've
done in that space 1st is when we gave schools their
budgets for this current year and we really give schools
there but his back in the spring we proactively adjusted
budget supper for schools that we knew tooken newcomer
students over the course of the previous school year and
then this fall when we looked at what's going on with look
like on the 20th day of school. We made Bud his adjustments
up Fords up boards for schools that have received new
students including our newcomer students as far as the
different support that were for not providing for teachers
specifically have to get to answer to the chair. If you can
give me a comparison of what those new hires look like in a
in a school. I'm just give me one school one. That's in the
29th Ward that that are taking in a new arrivals in their
classrooms with their teacher their sister.
We'll just give me an analysis of their resources last year
and what they have this year. Thank you madam chair, that's
all I had time. So just a just a few questions and sort of
somewhat of a lying about his questioning. So I heard you
say that the you're not
You're not budgeting schools based on per pupil right how
much they how much you get per poop pupil, but do you get
money still get money? I thought that you got money from
the federal government in order State based on per pupil
population.
So the funds that we received from the state and the
federal government are based on different factors when I'm
talking about yours how we're Distributing it to our
schools. And so we have a pretty wide degree of flexibility
and how we distribute the funds from both the state and the
federal government. And so what we've done in this space is
shift away from purely counting the number of students in
each school and allocating resources based on that are
really looking comprehensive. Look at what the needs of the
school are in taking the resources from both local state
and federal taxpayers and and and using those in that way,
but do you still but if you have more students do you get
more money from the state and federal government.
Enrollment is a component in the state's funding formula in
terms of how much we receive we receive overall in new
money from the state. So as we have declined enrollment
that you know has the potential to impact how much new
money we're receiving from the state's evidence base
funding formula federal grants are often reliant on things
like census data and are not quite as bad as not tied as
closely to the
Only in our school buildings that that's a little bit of how
the dollars get to CBS. So the question similar to his is
in regards to the migrants approximately how many migrant
young people are coming to see PS now since we started
getting migraines, how many have we gotten in Pinterest?
We have a system internally that is beginning to track the
newcomers.
We have an approximate number of about 4,000. We took a
loss on how many thousands.
School from CPS fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2024
current fiscal year. We we've seen a drop of 38,000 still
we just trying to catch up so
so I liked it that you all have a marketing team. I think
that's important, you know.
schools are
tools are a potential economic engine for some communities,
right if you get a good school and you start getting new
population, then people start buying houses and businesses
start to come on and so on and so forth which at 4 which I
think that you all should work a lot closer with the
Department of Planning and Development to look at those
things, but
You know, I've always said and in marketing, I think that
with our schools are some of our schools get labels right
My Places. I went to Wells High School graduation as well
as proud of it, right but because of the label that Will's
have from, you know from years ago or tinted. Choosing
right, but the crazy thing is if you met Wells Whitney
Young to
Everybody will go to Wells.
You know what I'm saying? Just like I got Franklin. I have
Marshall's. I have a linear around the corner from Franklin
right around the corner. Everybody cross go right past
munir to go to Franklin. If you name munir Franklin to
everybody will go to Franklin.
2
I think that's marketing right it is cuz it's all
psychological and it reminds me of back in the days. I
remember I used to go to the nightclubs. Then they change
the name then you went to the nightclub with the new name,
right? Even though it's the same nightclub. It was the
same. It was the same night club you it was the same night
club used to go to but they just changed the name and added
some lights and whatever and everybody wanted to go.
But but but that's a spend on marketing. I think we need to
Market these schools. I know the folks get stuck on names
right people get stuck on the name. That's my school. Now,
they can't change my school name. Well name in Franklin two
women are you know what I'm saying? I think we need to
really think about all these things about marketing man. We
really need to think about
cuz cuz somebody schools I know have just as many if not
more resources than some of the other schools that have the
that have the popular reputation, you know what I'm saying?
So so I've been mentioning this to CPS for 100 years, but
got to take advantage of this opportunity to mention it
publicly. So and I Charles Mayfield is going to do a
presentation on efmp after that and I will be
The process also so we can have the whole engagement
process on a couple presentations away but more information
on that soon.
82nd SS stereo Charles Mayfield Chief Operating Officer. So
we'll use the the educational facility Master planning to
be able to have Round Table conversation with the community
just about things like this specifically when we talked
about the the 600 plus schools that we have. We really want
to engage the community about
enhancing the student experience and how does that
correlate to the facilities? So there will be a programming
element in there that will be discussing with the community
to see maybe we have some missteps you have these five
neighborhood schools and you know, maybe one or two aren't
getting it getting as much and roll in as the other three
and how can we increase the enrollment? There are what are
the opportunities there that we need to look at? Both of my
programming and facility standpoint?
Okay, bentastic. So appreciate appreciate all of that has
something else but it slipped my mind. But yeah, I think we
should do more working out it without the other thing. I
was going to say around all of our areas and we have public
housing that we had public housing and they tore down the
building and we ended up with bacon schools cuz we lost
population because folks moved out and of course, he haes
been taking a long time to put houses back but houses are
coming back, right and houses are coming back, but you
didn't took the schools and you don't close them down and
all of those things and then we're going to end up with a
population and we going to need school. I think I need to
really look at your schools.
That you have surrounded by a public housing. And will you
have a potential of a lot more population coming back to
those communities and reconsider what you do with those
schools, you know for the future. Are we going to be you're
going to be like a dog chasing its tail you going to be
like now we got population back, but we don't got rid of
all the schools that will have no place for kids to go to
school at and also just a just a thought.
Thank you all for the Quorum. She hold a person went to his
was just in here. She walked out what we want to add her to
call them.
how to make where you want to pick up or you you start a
left off Madam chair on the the the thirty-eight thousand
students or 36,000 students to one thought that I've been
thinking about is
working through three year old preschool and that that
would be a way to enhance enrollment.
Be a way to get students in an early age into the system. I
think studies been indicate that the earlier you start more
opportunities. You won't finish and then you think about
what this council is done in the last 6 months whether it's
a tip credit and how does that impact sick leave? Cuz the
reality is child care right now is really expensive and
when you think about the holistic nature similar what
Walter is talking about starting students at an early age
like three as opposed to 4 and make it full day. I think
that investment on the front end would would be very
fruitful on the back end and check a lot of the
The boxes that this Council has been intentional about the
last 6 months. So wanted to pass that along. I think I may
have mentioned to you that's you and pass check but
something that I really want to do. I have to Early
Childhood centers that taken 4 year olds, but I'd like to
have pulled a three year old.
So that's one, and I wanted to pass along the second is
Tiff and I would be interested in understanding how much
CPS has realized saying 20 23 2022 from this Council and
Tiff and what I didn't see and maybe I missed it is on your
presentation of this Council just passed a record Tif
Surplus. How does that impact your bottom line for 2024?
That's been so we can for the outside funding that we do
with our Capital planning there so we can provide that
information as a follow-up. Okay, I have the chip number,
but I'll get it to you. I'll give it back to the church
every week. We see you guys quite a bit and we'd like to
think that we're really good partner to CPS. You guys were
never a partner when we try and do as we try and match the
ones too. So
The exit to get more bang for your buck. Yeah, I think is
his work. We're talking about numbers that that's also good
to recognize. I mean on the flip side just two for contacts
the state for the dco process and we have a hundred and
ninety-one million dollars of unappropriated state of
appropriated in the budget stay cramped. I'm going to
receive the funding. We appreciate the money we get from
the city through the tough process and after that it's it's
really helpful to especially when I get to the efmp portion
the educational facilities master plan. We're also facing
some significant challenges. We have a 14.4 billion deficit
that we're looking at based on their infrastructure. We got
a ride eighty-three-year-old infrastructure. So, you know
that it really helps in a sense where if we're trying to
make up repair or an upgrade to a particular school that if
we don't have the fun in that
Supports that initiative. So that's a really good point
because that all too often we do give presentations about
the new roof for a new boiler. What have you so maybe that
could be parceled out in the report is that how much tip
goes to that horses? Whatever the other funds would be
I appreciate the conversation manager. Thank you. I'll do
I'm in Rosana Rodriguez.
Oh, she's going to want me to leave.
Thank you madam chair and thank you all for being here in
for the presentation. I was fortunate enough to attend one
of the round tables a few weeks ago. So I had a little bit
of a little bit of a preview to this and I think I'm just
as worried as you are about how we're going to make up this
deficit not just next year. But in the years to come. I'm
going to kind of bounced around from some of what my other
colleagues were talking about earlier, but just so I
understand there is base level funding for all schools that
is generally pupil based as a as a foundational Baseline
and then you look at the the needs with a different indexes
to supplement interested actual needs of the school at that
point. Just wanted to say that for the record and we so
there is still some level of students based budgeting
that's happening from a baseline percent, correct.
Enrollment numbers in the what? The migrants are. The new
migrants is the new arrival students. What impact they're
having on on us as well. And I know just because I sat in
that LST, you know, if they that matters more than any
other day when it comes to student counseling what that's
going to do for my bottom-line perspective for funding so
as we've gotten more and more students that's essentially
put a strain on a further strain on CPS. Correct? Cuz we're
dealing with the funds that we already have and now we've
got more students than we thought we were going to have
significant significantly more but not as much as we've
lost over the last five years. I'd like to say to you that
I think part of what we're seeing in terms of the number of
students that were losing is just fewer and fewer kids
living in the city of whether that's people choosing not to
have children or choosing to move out of the city for
whatever their own reasons are. So it's not I know it's not
necessarily going to private schools in making those
choices, but I really like
my colleagues idea about getting kids earlier. I think you
know anything that we can do to attract people earlier
really win them over with the quality of schools and we
have good schools. I'm a product of CPS. I think less
people here are as well. We didn't we did. Alright we're
here. How do we how do we get past some of the stigma as
Alderman Burnett was talking about
There's a real there's a real challenge there an iPic it in
in the 11th ward, you know, we're still interested in the
near South High School. I think that's one of the things
you know. I talked to parents about their choices and
neighborhood schools where they can go the choices that
they have they do unfortunately come with some some
historical stigma. I think that it's a worthwhile
conversation to try to think about how we can reimagine
some of these schools. I think it gets Beyond marketing
though, you know, because you put lipstick on a pig doesn't
mean that it's not a big anymore. I know that's a really
terrible. I didn't mean it that way. Let me just say that
right so we can't just you can't just put a new lady want
something and not do what it takes to fundamentally improve
a school if there's an opportunity that I'm going to be
hoarding all the newspapers are saying that
but you get where I'm coming from and nobody else Aaron if
you heard me over there just forget that that I said that I
know I'm turning. All right. Now that I've said that I
definitely did not mean it that way it at all but the point
being we got to I think we have to think about how we
improve neighborhood schools how we have better choices for
people to go nearby Edward night. It just a couple weeks
ago. I had a parent come in and say, you know my my student
my my hardworking student.
False just a little short. We don't see her possibility of
getting into her top three choices all selective-enrollment
schools. And now he is thinking that they either have to
send her private school or they have to move out of the
neighborhood and there's lots of other reasons why they're
talking about moving out of the neighborhood that has
nothing to do with the school's necessarily either. So I
think we have to as a council think about this in a very
holistic sort of way, but I think a focus on improving
neighborhood schools and not necessarily, you know taking
away or not taking away but eliminating a
selective-enrollment. I think we need both. I think we need
to both for a long time. I think we need opportunities for
neighborhood schools to be equality where parents feel good
and safe about sending their kids because I think it's a
much better experience when you don't have to travel 90
minutes in each Direction you do a kid living in Bridgeport
going to Lane Tech is a 90-minute commute.
On the CT. Hmh Direction on kids are doing it. I mean we
did it when we were younger, but I think that it does take
away a lot from The Experience. How can we help you from a
lobbying perspective because I think he know obviously
there's only so much we can do from a tax perspective you
already kind of laid out. The max that we could do is 3%
Nobody's going to like that of course, but it's still not
going to be enough. How do we how do we do this where we
Get the state to look at us a little bit differently. And I
know the federal government's a different challenge, but it
has seemed pretty unfair that the that CPS has gotten the
short end of the stick as far as you know, the equity and
fairness of funding I think with our Union partners with
older people with seabios. I think we're going to need to
get on buses and go to Springfield and advocating and be
heard. Sometimes they treat us differently. Sometimes they
treat us the same. I mean, so we we just we're going to
have our legislative agenda and we're going to go all in
and we're finalizing that right now, but we will very
shortly. I do three things on it.
In a couple weeks and I'll need a second starts in January
and we're going to be in Springfield and we're going to be
it's a new day. I mean we were at work side-by-side beseech
you in Springfield been here while we've never done this
before that way. I think it's a really powerful Testament
to the leadership and what's going on in the city and I
think we can be successful. You have a plan and we can
execute it going to get more money. What will we have to if
we want to continue to make the improvements and build on
the things that we've done and I think that you know, we
can at the local level to just what the parents that I've
talked to these other people that I want to go back to an
okay. We're getting on the bus and we're going to
Springfield. Here's where you write to your state route.
Here's where you start making those calls because there is
only so much that we can do at the city level, but we're
going to need our partners at the state legislature to
also, you know, how about with us and we need to make sure
that
We understand that the need from the community's
perspective understand our new arrival issue or homeless
issue can separate those two are connected. So we've laid
the groundwork. So who's going to come up with a plan and
execute it? I just want to also point out. Our board are
newborn has been very active on this too. So we're going to
they're going to vote on the legislative agenda and we're
all going to Rally around that agenda and go to Springfield
and bring back the resources we deserve
Willie on men for the song everytime a circle back.
Thank you. So all the women Rodriguez dies in her question
and she says through the chair can CPS send the detail of
all this restorative justice initiatives and CPS. That was
her question. And the mayor has held a press conference
today was faith-based organizations that are system with
housing education Hills Asylum Seekers Etc. Is CPS involved
with this faith-based organizations to Aid in this Edition.
Yes, I would assume I'm not personally aware of it, but I
would imagine we are but I will get the answers to the
trip.
Thank you Cheri. I wanted to kind of circle back to what
the chairwoman alderman Burnett in Alderman lie. Touch tan
and that is the wrong moment our unique opportunity right
now as far as Illinois ending tax credit for the private
schools are presumably going to be tough choices or some of
these parents.
There has to be a game plan. As far as I was trying to
reach those parents attract them back into the system has
there been any discussion how we're going to handle that
our approach the situation cuz it could have been doing at
the end of the year.
I would imagine we will I'll get back to you on that. But
I'm sure we will have a plan for that. We also did a really
bad job just to get back. There is no question that the
chairwoman ask changed it and I think that are we hold
demographic Department that is analyze this so we can get
that information to you to the projections through the next
bunch of years.
Sorry, I didn't love you.
Good night. I appreciate that. I just think you know, the
students are going to be out there more than swords last
couple years and with marketing and the ability to the kind
of reach him like never before I think it's incumbent upon
us to to figure out a way. We're going to touch you in any
kind of bring it back in because they're going to be having
a tough choice like it. Like I said, no matter what the
other save our schools are doing really well. We record
scholarships right high schools are doing great numbers are
getting better. So the numbers and our previous are
speaking for itself and we will get that information out
there and bring those kids back just to follow up with
that. We just really have to reimagine what education looks
like
With these are supposed to be buildings of information and
inspiration and that's not what they are right. Now. Let's
let's just be honest. And so we at we have a unique
opportunity to work together and I said this to you all on
the call. We are going to have to get in the room because
our young people as fake the students are there. They are
just not coming to these buildings. That's it. They don't
feel welcome. We haven't done everything that we could do
to make sure that they are open to this family is so it's
not enough just to be a school where you reading the book.
We got to be so much more to a lot of what goes on in our
communities and always say I 5:42 all the time because
those are our kids other pair.
Like who spends more time with my child than me my child's
teacher and so I do this thing every year and I thank God
my baby is 19. I don't have to do this no more but a thing
of making sure that the beginning of the year if it's Tide
Pods if it's hell if it's a bottle of liquor don't say all
the 12 Taylor said the teacher should get drunk cuz that's
not what I'm saying. If it's cards whatever it is. I want
us to be able to get those supplies to teachers and you
know, it's beginning to hear the ice ax in the middle of
the year. We want to be able to add that the schools. This
is no different when it comes to facilities and what's the
news of the district Alderman Hall?
About to leave you want to wait. Okay, all the woman who
Leah.
I am sorry Helu.
Thank you, sir. Woman. Just wanted to Echo what my
colleague said about the Pre-K 3 your know I used to work
at CVS tomorrow. Also, two little ones and I see the
importance of also expanding those programs in the entire
city write full-time. It's important it needed for all so
we know in our communities a lot of our parents work
different shifts morning if it's nice, and I think we're in
a deficit, but we also need to continue to expand before
and after school program in in order for kids be in the
school. Well taken care of.
To eat something as well breakfast and lunch and snack and
everything or maybe dinner if needed because it's better
for them to be at school then being with the neighbor or
would we don't know who right and maybe not being taken
care of properly and something else to happen to them. So I
think the importance of spending those programs. I know a
lot of our community organizations are doing great out with
our community schools bringing those programs, but I will
switch important within CPS in our teachers and staff to be
able to spend those programs before and after school.
I want to name one of my schools that got renamed and it
was really good process with the community. I were talking
about branding and marketing and and recoat auntie. I was
the name that nobody knew who he was now that it's call
Monica Gage Park Community feels more identified with the
school and it's like they own the school and they feel
proud of it right for the kids to go to so maybe also
researching about the different schools in the whole city
and maybe we can continue to do that in order for have the
community input in community feel part of it. I think it's
a good strategy we can continue to do it and in the whole
city also the importance of continued to train and engage
parents and community members for LSD, but also for them to
understand the power that they do have by being part of
that LLC.
Unfortunately, we've seen some cases were administrators
that had to be already be gone right and not renew their
contracts their continued their harming our communities
because the LLC is not doing their part. So for me to want
to continue to raid raid importance of having a committed
and trained local school council and have them understand
the power that they have are also continued to I'm
interested of knowing if there's any expansion on program
and also for bullying is also like that. I know it
For my CPS days to now I've seen an increase and those kids
if they do just don't want to go to school. It's going to
be home because they're facing bullying and sometimes
school counselors endings of discipline with their hands
tied and there's no more they can do so I'm interested of
knowing what else can we do in order to help out our
students are facing bullying and their families as well.
Sometimes that expands the neighbors and their parents and
grandparents facing the whole family, right? They have to
move out from the community sometimes so I'm interested of
knowing all so, how are we spending those programs? And how
are we helping our kids and students questions. Thank you
so much.
Oh, yes. Thank you so much. My lunch. A question is you you
are projecting a deficit of close to well over three
hundred million in 2025. I know you don't have you know,
I'm not going to wait till December 31st what some of the
tendency of ways to bridge that Gap that you all see
because one of the things on the sly said that you all are
you looking at cutting costs rather and then the second
thing is they've been a identifiable a metric financially
on equipment and reason why I mentioned this equipment in
translation of languages because I've been jamming maze do
I did receive help it was a shortfall of equipment and what
could have been resolved knowing the Border as long as it's
open. We will have children especially in black
neighborhoods and brown neighborhoods with his language.
So, what's your strategy that cause cause for 2025 that you
only tentatively looking
so I can speak to the 2025. Peace and I wanted to clarify
the terms of what we presented when we present and have our
2025 budget approved by law. We have to balance the budget
start revenues have t-ball our expenses for the reason
we're talking about this now. And the reason we're talking
about the progress that we've made in being able to add
over the years largely due to the federal funding is
because we see this as a revenue issue not an expensive
shoe. And so we know that need based on the state's own
analysis that we are underfunded and that all of our
need more
We want you know, we want to be able to solve this on the
revenue side of the equation where we can go out and get
get more dollars rather than your road some of the progress
that we've made and investing in any tours. So that's our
focus at this point is figuring out how we can get
additional dollars to make sure that we can support the
games that we made it.
Target equiptment peaceful that they will need to
have you made yourself just to kind of share that they are
a different systems to support English Learners and
bilingual programs have different trajectories.
But basically the idea when there are not native language
instruction programs. It's that we do something called
shelter English or English as a second language in the
goal. Although initially is to support with native
language. The goal is to help the students transition into
English theme. There are other Prague programs that
That we have in 43 of our schools that I intend to.
Promote by literacy to dual-language programs, but most of
the programs that we have throughout the district are
transitional bilingual programs.
And the goal is to have the students reach English
proficiency. I don't know if that helps but
baby German, I wanted to follow some of the comments from
some of my colleagues, but I think the first thing to point
out something that you just mentioned chuck if we look at
the data what we've seen the last year-and-a-half the
significant strides that are CPS students have made after
2 1/2 years of
I don't even know what we caught the pandemic of of these
poor kids Weatherby the red rotational losses of
socialization lost at the maturity losses. I think it's
important to note the strides that have been made and a
credit should go to Pedro Martinez and then everybody here
in a particularly those teachers out in those classrooms
across our city. We were talking about that that
Production enrollment. It's no secret. We seen a significant
loss in population particular on the South and West sides
here in our city and speaking from my community of
frustration with many families that could explore and
afford other options with the instability that we saw
during the pandemic was a contributing factor when we
talked about that loss of a population that didn't start
last year the year before those of us that have been in
this Council remember after the 2010 census. We we already
received significant losses and population again for
checking on the south and west side and if you look at the
data, and I know that you guys have that I've I've seen
other studies.
The students coming up in the next 10 to 15 years our
families continue to see significant. No one's having three
four five six kids anymore, like many of us grew up with
and an even larger families. Deadpool's can it continue to
be smaller? I think another issue we have is we have
quality private schools in communities all across the city
and when families can afford it that they're looking for
that.
I want to piggyback on what my colleague for the 13th Ward
mentioned and I've been I've been better but it is recent
is this year's investment in early childhood to fold one.
We got to get to these kids earlier at a younger age and 21
a family does experience has a positive experience with
Early Childhood those children that family will remain in
CPS throughout Early Childhood elementary school high
school at cetera. I've got to
public high schools in my community
What is my Community High School that's been a part of my
community for more than 100 years and one of them is a
magnet school.
By Community High School, since I've been Alderman has seen
a 25% decrease in enrollment during that time. They won
multiple state championships in multiple Sports. There's
been more investment and at high school, then the other
eleven schools. I have significant investment by CPS and
yet we've got a 25% reduction in enrollment High School.
I seen a more than 30% increase. In fact, we raise the the
enrollment level because there was such a demand for this
magnet school for many years there more than three thousand
applicants. I should point out 65% of the 19th Ward is
white.
98 and 55% of those schools are not white. So this isn't a
case has the neighborhood. This is people coming and
wanting to attend this school more than three thousand
applicants every year for what amounts to 200 spots. So we
talked about Brandon we talked about marketing. That's
that's real and that's an easier thing to just mention them
to solve that problem.
I don't want to mention those schools name cuz I don't want
to come off that I'm being negative, but
I think moving forward another thing that hasn't been
mentioned is.
A lack of Parental involvement a lack of LLC involvement of
our 600 plus schools. How many when the deadline hits do we
not even have enough people to fill the Slate for local
school councils. It's like 50% of the school's you got
schools with three four five hundred kids. You can't get
for parents to sign up to be on the local school council.
That's unacceptable. I don't know how we saw that in. This
pandemic has made a lazier world even more lazy.
But I just want to say I appreciate the leadership in the
work that's been done during what has been an extremely
difficult few years and I can say that on a personal level
because my wife has been teaching the Chicago public
schools for more than 20 years.
Based on how much time you got about the local school
account, but we also have to make give our school some
autonomy and we have to make those buildings inviting to
our parents that we don't sit. So that's a longer
conversation. But those are the things that we have to work
on. We got a re-imagined these schools and that's something
we should be having at our Roundtable discussions about how
we re imagine these buildings, but that's just not just
done on a principal level and that's been the problem
though the principles in the network Chiefs then y'all know
I go get my tire. But those have been the people who have
been making decisions and not the school as a whole is the
equivalent to everything that we got going in the city and
I'll use the police as an example. We come up with rules
about what we want the police to do but they're not at the
table. We're making those rules and that is the problem
that we have an education. We don't have Real and True
educator to a making those decisions.
And I want to go into y'all into CPS is history cuz ya'll be
my Nemesis was 20-something. He is at his if it's honestly
hard to sit in this space and say hey, let's turn over a
new Leaf but you do that because we only took the young
people in our community to do that. And so nobody gets a
pass nobody. There is no hiding space for any of us and
there's just work that we're going to have to do together.
So I say that to you all I want to leave. Is there
something about this or
Just a quick follow-up. So the numbers that you weren't
over are all about school funding does this include capital
projects to know that's separate. Okay, completely separate
separate money separate so
May I ask where are we going to deficit there to that will
be part of the register since you don't have a whole
different compared to other years was small because you
only did an emergency fixes and projects with external
funds fifth or d c o g o v extra sieved and we did those
projects. We kind of a bit of a smaller planet. We usually
have more hopeful that we get to the spring we can have a
normal Capital plan in place. So that funding is primarily
the same the same resources that are going into our
classrooms.
We're using the same dollars to fund the debt. It's funny
our Capital program. So while it's not included in those
numbers that is coming from the same overall pie, and
there's
That is what Russell you'll be school district in the state
that use if you have to have to pay for our Capital plans
to have a principal forwards we're going to get her a woman
was saying, you know, we do owe it to the to the students
and to all the families and let you know. Thank you for
clarifying that because in a week we have to make tough
decisions about where we invest that the funding and you
know, we also have one of the oldest us who don't have the
oldest school building in my word James Ward Elementary
School and I'm not there a lot of older buildings that
require a lot of expensive fixes and you know, we we see
Tif funding use for that very regularly and I know we've
asked about to funding as well. We just wanted to for my
sake you don't ask that question. I'm going to be half of
my constituents because we are still interested in this
conversation about a near South High School, but we also
have to understand the realities of what we're dealing
with. So more than anything I just asked.
Transparency. Thank you.
musical chairs
Are we eating yet? Almost so I'll touch base on student
transportation to give an update. I also have my colleague
here Kim Jones our executive director Transportation. So
we'll be around to answer questions once we get up and go
in there.
It's not working.
white oval
So let's do old-school. You all have the paper
presentation.
When you get it.
I'll go ahead and start and if once we get up, I'll start
to click through looking at that first slide it in 2016.
That's when we really started to experience the national
bus driver shortage.
And you know it it was it was just validated by an
organization that were involved with the National
Association of Pupil Transportation. There's a survey that
they did that showed the the history and and some of the
fundamental issues of why we were experiencing a loss of
drivers as a follow-up will share that survey with you.
Also you have it but even started in 2016. We really we
really weather the storm without a direct operational
impact. So we kept moving along as a status quo and when
we've been experienced rrccu CPS strike in 2019, we got an
additional loss of drivers those those 11 days that drivers
were off. They just they just started to migrate elsewhere.
Then on top of that we experienced covid-19 in 2020 and I
don't know if you know the history about our driver
population, but they're mostly retirees and saw those
retirees either transition of the jobs or they they really
transition over to to elsewhere. So they just added another
layer of complexity to our challenges of what we have with
the transportation and despite the shortage you no
lingering it really gained significant media attention.
Once we turned return to in person Marnie and it wasn't
just us that experience Chicago public schools that
experienced driver shortage of a nationwide driver
shortage. So you had other school districts that even to
this day who are seeking out drivers to be able to to build
Transportation routes that they are are lacking.
So what we done. That's far as our our transportation team
once we started to see that driver shortage up taken.
Oh, we really had a to make some difficult decisions and we
got we got our board involved because we were seeing you
know, our routing difficulties. We saw prolong routes. We
saw we were seeing is be complaints from the state that
we're coming in from from angry parents and are both bored
took really bold action to change our policy where we
prioritized our transportation population where we
basically signified are most vulnerable.
Rooms are diverse Learners and then our students in
temporary living situations who were the first priority and
then it was a tiered process of tiered look later on.
So we're using that process today and what I want to show
you is that you know, this slide shows a comparison of last
year's student count and travel times as it's really
highlighting the significant rise in our diverse Learners
students who are top priority. And so last year we saw
3,000 students traveling over 60 minutes and 365 students
over 90 minutes. And then when I say the 60 and 90 minutes,
I'm talking both ways. That's 60 Minutes to school and
returning from school.
90 minutes to school and from school that is that is just
completely absurd and and that is how difficult this this
was last year when we try to Route every single student
that qualify for transportation these numbers drastically
decreased, you know, we have a state mandate that kept us
at 60 minutes and despite, you know our Improvement, you
know, we've had some students who still currently travel up
to 38 miles, you know, that's how far we actually have to
get some kids to school at 38th Mi and so, you know, that's
roughly 50 minutes direct travel time to school from the
school each way and that's 50 minutes on a good day.
That's with Mater traffic and no construction. The district
is operating right now at a 54% capacity with the number
drivers that we have and we weave assistant, you know, our
vendor partners by giving them a $5 increase. It was a $3
increase last year in a $2 increase this year to try to get
some Traction in and bring drivers back out to do the work
that we need important to know that we're completely out
sourced for our transportation. We do not have any source
of transportation and as we continue to explore all avenues
with our recruitment efforts, we continue to lose drivers
to competitive wages. I mean, we're still fighting with our
neighbors UPS Amazon S-Type drivers and Uber S-Type drivers
because it allows more flexibility then probably what we
have a CPS transportation drivers.
This slide shows you what the beginning of the school year
where Transportation received really over 4,000
Transportation request and that's after school started. And
so we often get feedback from the community saying hey ucps
communicated to us three weeks before school started saying
you wouldn't provide transportation. That was a couple
reasons why we did that we didn't do that intentionally the
transportation team. They really look at the number for
Quest at that are received once we receive those requests.
Start to route and obviously way before school starts when
you just start the route 6 weeks if not more before school
starts. And what we noticed that is that we just did not
have enough or or enough Transportation request coming in
and we predicted that we would have more so we paused and
we send another communication out the family to say hey
hurry up and please turn in your transportation request
forms all so that we can get this process going and we can
start the route and we can communicate effectively in time
we so you can know you know, what what Transportation
Company you using what's route will look like by the time
we got enough forms and they gave us a bit of comfort we
didn't communicate at what the world of possibility was and
that possibility was unfortunately, we could not route
every single student and so we shared that communication in
and this number just shows you the number the high number
of requests that came in just after the fact
so that really impacts us in a way because we have to we
the routes need to settle. So if we keep consistently
getting request and we have to reroute change route times
get drivers to be able to route and it is constantly
resetting.
Besides Lowe's of who we we work with our agency. So we
partner with obviously a lot of conversations with CTA
early on as we could not provide transportation to everyone
that qualified. We were able to provide alternative
transportation to our general education families. What we
provided a CTA Ventra card for not only the student but
also one companion to be able to get them to and from again
like I mentioned earlier we partnered with the National
Association of Pupil Transportation. They helped us
Benchmark kind of what's going on with the driver shortage.
Another organization that we partner with is a council of
great City Schools where we Benchmark with other school
districts to see what else is going on in their world from
the Transportation perspective than I can tell you
basically every single School District that my team is that
a conversation with has struggled with transportation in
itself where they made some significant changes. They've
you two had to change route times the original pick up
change belt.
Number different things that they're they've done that
we're looking at as of today.
Since we've had the the shortest, we really launched a
campaign to recruit more drivers. So you'll see CPS signs
up for a driver recruitment around the city on the buses on
the else. We've had some radio ass and and we do a monthly
hiring fair to be able to try to get more Drive.
Our next step now is a couple things one. We need to send
an update to families before the end of the second quarter.
We sent a communication out earlier in the first quarter
letting families know that we would not be able to provide
transportation to our general education families, and we
would we look at it will take a second look at it in for
January and in so that update will be sent this month in
December next month. The next thing that we're also doing
this. We also work with city colleges specifically on
recruitment efforts to be able to as soon as if someone
gets their CDL door right in front of them hates ETA has
CPS has jobs available to be able to sign up and sign up
and last but not least we're working with the Secretary of
State. There was some components there that that they could
use from a CDL testing perspective to be able to simplify
the process and we're hoping
could be able to speed up the process if we can have more
testing also the test in Spanish also known as before.
With that, I'll take questions before we happen to the
educational facilities Nest point.
If we ever looked at doing Transportation ourselves, cuz we
love Outsourcing. We we can't get enough of it here, but we
are not getting our own people to counter in the city who
actually need jobs to work. And anybody has that that 16221
group. What's the first thing they want to learn to do is
to drive and so are we talkin about or thinking about
piloting programs for juniors and seniors to become bus
drivers cuz it's a skill. It's the we we got to think about
the side of the box and have you all in the city. We do our
fees and are accused for folks to start Transportation
companies. It's a way to do business in our city. Is there
some conversation at CPS around any of that?
So we're right now before I turn it over to our executive
director of Transportation Kent Jones. We're looking at
insourcing a portion of Transportation. There was a a grant
that we apply for for the buses that's on the table. We're
hoping to get some positive feedback for those electric
buses. And what we'll do if we are awarded the opportunity
to build out the ecosystem that will help a line to be able
to supplement services will be able to take everything on
at once but we
Supplement in a couple ways. We would pick up, you know the
difficult routes. We will pick up field trips things of
that nature in still build that ecosystem of having
mechanics on hand drivers. So on and so forth. I'll turn it
over to Kim that anything I miss before you taking Miss
Kim. I want to say we're in our communities the gifted kid
to went through all this craziness to get tested actually
can't get to their schools cuz we're not providing
transportation and I got an autistic kid who is 19 Michael
used to have to get up at 5 in the morning to get on the
bus at 6 to get to his school at 8. And so y'all have
gotten better, but it has been worse. And so they're just
some steps that I feel like we could make and I like that
you said that we are thinking about doing some insourcing
but thinking about young people not being able to go
schools not being able to go on field trips cuz those buses
are 250 $300 and a lot of times I students can barely
afford.
I need to go on those trips. They definitely are not paying
for buses. And so we need to really think about a strategic
plan and that's working with us as usual. I'm always going
to play that to work with us to say how do we ensure we
have bus service that's not just for for school. But a lot
of young people don't attend our after-school. We lose a
lot of money because they are not providing that service
for after school. And so I want us to have a real
conversation. Go ahead.
Kimberly Jones is that the director of student
transportation? Thank you. So, yes, we are looking to
insource a portion of it. But the truth of the matter is
the national school bus driver shortage, it will impact us
and house or external and so we're looking for ways on how
we can mitigate the the driver shortage in general. So if
that means of getting smaller dancer transport or you no
getting away from some school buses all together. So the
prices of the the vehicles are increased drastically and so
we just had a shortage of chassis. And so when we think
about the increases of the field trip, you're absolutely
right, but the price of the school buses now you're looking
at close to a million dollars. They price Galaxy S4 covid.
I'm just going to be honest when it came down to the
mechanics of it. We have to go some of our contractors have
to go to Indiana to find parts to Source parts for their
vehicles. And so they're quite expensive is like re with
you wholeheartedly about the the prices.
Of the field trip for us not being able to offer the
services. We are working around the clock to figure out how
to mitigate this Transportation shortage. We reacted to a
crisis and so it wasn't a good feeling that we had to
inform our family that we couldn't provide transportation 3
weeks before school started, but with the priority of the
diverse Learners that number continues to grow right now,
we're staying at 20% increase of diverse Learners students
over last year. We're not even halfway through the school
year. So my prediction is that number will continue to grow
to at least 28 it so that's where we have to start looking
to get even at the next couple years. You know what we're
going to do it next school year. So I'm collaborating with
school districts that are comparable to Chicago to see how
their mitigating the school bus driver shortage. It's rough
everywhere and so here in Chicago I can tell you what's
happening with the wages Amazon UPS Uber.
Drastic bonuses that I put out here the the industry that
we are operating and we just can't you know, we can't stay
afloat. So we're trying to as a district to assist our
contractors and that's where she's Mayfield stated that we
assisted the our vendors with a $5 increase. We've never
done that before and so we are what I say, we are
collaborating with them as partners on how we can get our
students to and from school. We're doing that every single
day if I do want to I'm sorry.
Is CTA or Pace involved in any of these conversations?
Because young people are normally would be have access to
bus card if they cannot but there is why I get there is a
safety issue. So we used to kid. You got a bus card you pay
half. Are you got on the bus you didn't have
transportation, but I do understand with covid-19 some
safety issues. What conversation are you having with all
say about the price gouging is y'all don't tell us that
y'all that's what we got to stop doing is working in silos.
Cuz if they are these some of these people who are price
gouging you are the same people who come to us and ask her
for money for for what they're doing. They go to the state
or they go to the federal government and say can you help
fund it so we need money for this but then they will turn
around and price gouge out of it. So it's why we got to
work together. That's why I can't be there but it's it's
all hands on deck and you ain't really got to respond to
it. I just had to say it all the way clean.
head CPS looked into rideshares
So I think in California that was hopskipdrive.
So two things one. I wanted to talk to respond to the
chairwoman one. We talked to CJ and we've looked at
different ways where we can partner with CTA not only from
a standpoint on providing the bus cars which we've closed
the loop on but to see if they can help us with routing to
see if they can help us with transportation in itself. They
have some restrictions within their CBA that that won't
allow them to be able to provide routing specifically for
CPS. So we closed the door on that to address your question
about Rideshare. We looked at it for backwards upside-down
all of it. We had conversations with both Uber and Lyft
they were initially interested especially at the peak of
covid-19 train to get them on to it to help us transport
our most vulnerable students. They they would not comply
with our
text and as we have our own background checks during his
dad must be compliant in conjunction with the state for
driver's and and so about that. They did not want to comply
with that. So hopskipdrive week. We had a conversation with
them that I think that's a little bit still ongoing. I
think Chuck asked him if we work is on the state
legislation that got passed last year. I don't know where
we are.
It knows where I was talking with them now, but we've worked
with them. I just been over this right now. I can follow up
with you gone. Cuz lifting Lyft and Uber will be right at
the city council asking for support asking us to give them
money asking us to support the initiative and they can't
follow the background checks for the safety of our
students. We got a real problem here. It's supposed to be
one more thing about the ETA Grand that we applied for. I
think it's just a good thing to know if the spirit of
camaraderie that we've been talking about earlier on the
legislative agenda that one of the first things we did in
May cuz we worked with CT you a bunch of green energy
groups applying for the EPA Grande and if we are successful
the application we're going to go get 50 green buses out of
that.
If you don't do the buses, I was speaking of her earlier
that so fingers crossed that if we get that passes will be
in good shape and build our ecosystem to be able to
supplement Services. Why not usual your people never heard
of it. First time. I'm hearing of it. It's like you all
come to us. One of my co-workers said earlier. I'll come to
us for $10. They're all just say we apply for everything
under the sun. We could give you the list and we have a
Tracker live track of you apply for everything. We've been
very successful and too. If you want to see a list of all
the G be happy to share that to Madame cheddar something
unsettling about
The ride shares not being collaborative here specially when
you're talking about many of these students are students
with special needs. Can you specifically sit and speak to
what it is? They were compliant with do we have a
background check requirement and in that background check
requirement. They have to go through our process Uber and
Lyft both said that we do our own background check. So if
we do our own background check then why do we have to go
through yours? And then one. There was a second barrier
with the with the insurance that we were asking for various
Insurance standard that we have when you're transporting
our most vulnerable students. Also, you're on the hook for
that and I just think and I don't know if it was was timing
but we did talk to him a few times. They just didn't have
an appetite for the an increase of or an influx of services
that nature with that cost that was associated with it and
the liability that's tied to it.
If I may add Uber doesn't require the driver to go through
a drug test.
It's all very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure.
I don't want to leave them share.
I've talked to you guys are quite a bit about bus
transportation. Obviously, I think you know many of us have
had constituents call us about the lack of bus
transportation for their students and a lot of people felt
very Innovative and switched and I think you don't look we
understand that. There is a bus to Ridge. I just wish that
we were we were in a better position to be a little bit
more ahead of the game in terms of being able to manage
expectations as we're going into next year knowing the
position that we're in now are there plans to manage that a
little bit more especially with Selective enrollment
schools. I have kids that go to the far south side from
from Chinatown and Bridgeport people coming to me asking me
to get bus contracts with an organized and I wish I could
have been the fact is there aren't drivers available. So,
you know makes me makes me wonder like what other
approaches are we taking to, you know, I think we have to
look at this.
The other side too, but you don't like how how far people
are traveling to go to school. He said there was one
student that travels 38 Mi to get to school like why is why
are they going to a school 38 miles away? Why isn't there a
school that can provide the same level of service within a
10 mile radius something that that is a little closer so I
can see it's a rhetorical question to say. No, you can't do
anything about it now, but we have to start thinking about
in this is I'm going to continue that the plug for
improving neighborhood schools so that there are better
local options. I'm so that people don't have to travel this
far especially because we don't have the means to get
people there. We got a lot of working-class family to you
don't work very hard and do the extra steps and everything.
They need you get the best education for their kids. Now,
they found it at the, you know, when our classical now that
they don't have jobs that they can leave to get to school I
get to work late for or have somebody
Take them on a bus and they have found a way now, but it is
a very big and position on these families. Not everybody
has the ability to just show for their kids to school every
day. So if you can talk a little bit about you know, it may
be other conversations that you all are having to think
about. How how we address this on the other side of the
equation, you know, one of the challenges that you know to
your point school choice and
Those choices are made there were policies or decisions that
were made in the past that committed us to transportation
for number of different reasons. I'm not saying that
they're right wrong or are they what they are. We are we
are and in this case, I think with our efmp that is the the
first start of many to really have engage in conversations
on how we can really improve our community schools custody
of point where you shouldn't have to travel, you know, 10
plus miles to be able to quote on quote say that you're
going to a better school. We need to make that available
within the neighborhoods in each neighborhood from both the
student program and standpoint and from a standpoint of a
facilities could so that I can compliment with with the
right amenities, you know, every school should have a
playground every school should have a number of things
that's a two and a half does the student experience and
that's what those conversations are really about the second
piece. I'd like to add is we're looking at this right now
for next year.
Can delete that will be some decisions that will need to be
made because we're not seeing that driver population come
back. We need 1300 drivers to be able to transport all
qualified student right now and then Kim can help me quote
on this were a little bit above 700. So we were at around 6
79680 in July before school started. So we just haven't
seen much traction with being able to build a pipeline
back.
Drivers and so when we Benchmark with other school
districts and there's always a focus on the neighborhood
school so which is one reason why we're looking at that but
I obviously just looking at it for the right reasons
schools. Also, you know have more influence on adjusting
bell times and so we'll go have that under consideration.
Obviously, we have to get our labor Partners involved. This
has to be a collective decision. This will not be a soul
decision by CPS. I want to make sure I reiterate that and
that's going to be really important that's going to help
Drive how we can be more efficient with our transportation
and in lastly I will have to take a look specifically at
maybe Regional pickup sites and and we've heard a lot from
the community in regards to this will you know, what if I
drive 2 or 3 miles out I'm willing to do that to be able to
get my child on the bus. So we're looking at all those
scenarios for the next year. It's very difficult to make a
a pivot within that.
Here to be able to add Transportation now. Thank you for
that night. I love the idea that that's meeting people
literally in the middle. When you say 1300 drivers to
provide transportation to all of the students are required
to what can you talk about the what the mandates are like
what those populations the 13th at the drivers ass for all
students that qualify for transportation.
So that students that are in selected program. So I give
their magnetic classical schools and our diverse Learners
who has Transportation written into the IEPs are homeless
students that qualify under a hardship and then art
students that have a 504 so that's temporary of those which
ones are or mandated by law. I know some of these are you
know, you've offered it in the past, but it wasn't
something that you're mandated to do my lost.
So the mandated is this us students with IEPs stls students
are homeless students and then the temporary so the 504 if
they fall in the same category as as soon as I pick up
students except for the ones that are selective enrollment
gifted magnet Regional Schools. Be sure I understand that's
basically all of the groups except for the selective
enrollment students are the ones that are mandated by law
programs, correct? So, how are we doing with those eating a
lot right now?
for everybody that needs them so for our students are
diverse Learners are qualified and our students homeless
situation stems interpreted living situations that
qualified so yes, and we're under 60 minutes cuz one of the
state actually has a
Requirement to be 60 minutes or less to and from that that
is in tactical stands. So in some cases like the example
that I gave the student travel to sort students traveling
to 38 miles is no way to do that. But yes, we're meeting
the requirements now and we're on the 60 Minutes for our
most vulnerable students questions are related to our new
arrival are migrant students. They are the qualify under
the 504 correct for homelessness. They do not do they do
that now so they have to bake qualify under Selso it have
to they qualified they have to apply for the hardship. So
because they're homeless doesn't mean they qualify for
transportation. Okay, so they have to apply for the
document and you can you tell me what is PLS stand for
again. There's also a one pager that you have that that has
a component of a transportation on there.
I'll let camera Muhammad Ali speak to sjls what questions
you have.
so your question about we related to migrant children that
are
that are stupid are actually students that are in the
temporary living situation. I didn't realize there was an
application had to be filed. So that's in height of this
homeless all SLS students. You have to meet the
qualifications for a hardship for transportation to you
eligible for transportation, which means a CTA card for you
or your parents for a certain age children, which is odd
identified in this one pager. If you receive Transportation
because you're spls it has to be due to hardship and that's
for pre-k through sixth grade children and students with
IEPs who made the sels there is both
didn't answer your question sort of question. So it's a CTA
card. It's not necessarily bus transfer it. So it's one or
the other is that that meets the qualification for that
from a legal perspective. I'm sorry. I'm asking if I'm
asking you ignorant questions. I'm just trying to
understand it. You meet the qualification. If you you don't
get the hardship you get the CTA card. If you do get the
hardship date or you have an IEP then you get the bus
yellow bus transportation.
I should have had two more cups of coffee today. I don't
know if you don't get the hardship you get the CTA card if
you have a I just I got a concern because I don't have a
migrant shelter in my word. But I have a lot of folks that
are staying at the police district now and in some cases
are staying there for upwards of a month. I'm so some of
those children are now enrolled in schools in my community
and then they get assigned to a shelter that may be farther
away, you know, so I can talk to you about one case in
particular where the family was moved on to other Nancy's
word on to the shelter in Hyde Park use me and they are now
they're they're using the CTA card that they're able to and
they're driving there or taking the bus back and forth
because they like the school and we know you aren't the
priests this to you the school provides stability. It's the
one place we
That's watching them all day long are being cared for in a
lot of these families don't want to lose that the mayor has
announced that 60 day limit on shelters and then staying in
shelters. And if you haven't been moved to more if you have
been removed a temporary housing at that point, there's
going to be yet another move on the part of some of these
children and families. I'm wondering what how you're
preparing for.
This eventuality when you know, there could be hundreds of
families that are being moved out of shelters if they don't
have housing.
Turn to cremate a purple dress that CPS.
We are working really closely with the FSS and at the
moment they make the decision of where to decompress or
where to transfer a family. We are informed and in many
cases we are consulted. So it makes it a lot easier for us
to make a determination of or give a suggestion word that
the family should be transferring to depending on the
shelter availability. Also, that's what we're doing right
now. We have not yet experienced the 60-day notice. We're
coming up on its own.
So I did and I'm also wondering, you know, I know gfss
isn't here. But I also think you know to your point, you
know, you're you're having conversations with the FSS in
the family is about perhaps where to transfer students to I
also think that's really disruptive to the students of
giving all of the traumas. They've already gone through
with their with their, you know journey to get here and I'm
wondering, you know on the flip side of that. What's
whiskey FSS doing with Catholic Charities to try to place
them in housing that's closer to the school that they're
enrolled in.
Suggestion as a you know, let's try to look yet. I asked
that question to the chair to see that would be wonderful
because I do think you know that the school is the one
place that's offering the children and definitely these
family some level of stability and support and whatever we
can do to keep those students at those schools on from a
transportation perspective from a housing perspective. I
think we should be really focused on time. It's time to
clarify
Do parents do have the right to stay at the original school
where we enroll them? They should be comes when it is. It's
at really far away like the sample you provided but they do
have the right to stay where they were they're comfortable
but I think that might just be something that we only have
so many shelters in shelters are where they are. And if the
choice is between sleeping in a tent in front of police
district in a brick-and-mortar with heating, you know
functioning Plumbing that's where they should be but we
should continue to do whatever we can to to provide support
that helps to set them up more for 6s.
Are we still offering reimbursements for parents when it
comes to Transportation? I know at one point special needs
students. My kid could do was not available. There was not
a bus that was going to come pick him up for a while and I
was able to apply for these reimbursements and let me say
for the record. It wasn't enough but it helped to get him
in bed Rideshare that I was Taking a Chance of sending him
in every day. And so is that still something that's
optional for parents or family? It is for a diverse
Learners students.
We typically wear out the sels students. So the diverse
students that with both families to reply. Thank you.
You painted a rather dire picture of our driver situation.
And I know that you're having these recruitment fair is but
it sounds like with other alternatives for driving jobs
that these recruitment bears are not going to be enough and
you kind of alluded to some tough decisions that are coming
down the pipe.
Not harping on the tough decisions. Like are there other
incentives that are available to encourage people to you
know them seek these driver jobs out of War pitting to the
sort of dire warning. What kind of changes are we looking
at? Potentially?
Let me take a step back and I can tell you what we did at
the you know, during the pandemic and and then I'll turn it
to Kim 2 to talk to a little bit about our current state of
what some of the vendors are doing to incentivize to to
build driver recruitment set the peak of the pandemic. We
were intimately involved with our vendor partners and doing
all kind of things. We were doing attendance bonuses
sign-on bonuses. You name it? We did it in conjunction like
later down the pipeline. We did the increase up of the
wages that the $2 and then a $3 what we learn from our our
vendor Partners is is some of that work but not it didn't
have a significant effect because what we were hearing
globally not just for my partner's but even just looking
Beyond is that the the everyone's doing a competitive wage
if you are driver in some form or fashion.
Somebody was given a bonus and in most cases that bonus was
probably a little bit higher than then what CPS was
offering and so I know we just had our budget just just
give a sense of our financial State and so right now we're
not we don't have the bandwidth to be able to do our own
bonuses, but I'll turn it to come in and she can talk to
you a little bit about what I've been to Partners are doing
today.
Thank you Chief. So some of the vendors they've added an
increase on top of our increase. So we do have drivers out
there that I'm making up to $30 an hour, which is great. So
we're competitive up to $30 an hour.
So it may sound small considering the dynamic but it's a
great success to me considering we only brought in 20
drivers the entire school year last year and we are at 26
and we're not even through the entire school year. So I'll
take that when they're offering additional benefits. So we
have vendors that have opted to give out 401K they giving
medical and dental. So they're being creative as far as
well around this time. I didn't Alice is around this time
last year. We lost about a hundred and thirty drivers to
Uber and Walmart and Amazon because they were running those
bonuses and it tapers off right after the holiday.
And they end up coming back to us this school year so far
the same time. We only lost 13 drivers. So I take the small
wins and I think their recruitment efforts are working so
will continue to collaborate with them. What we're doing is
we're offering the schools were working with the schools to
put up the bus companies the banners. So we're going to
hang those at some of the school. So the communities can
see that we're hiring we're going to have a bus we're going
to say the bus in some of the schools where we can lock the
bus up with a badass and they were hiring for drivers and
how to apply so we were getting quite creative on our own
and as cheap as mentioned in some of the campaign's the
things we're doing he failed to mention that we had the
Billboards the Billboards with this my heart. So since I've
been sitting in the seat, I've been trying to get us up on
the billboard. But now we're they are you going to sign
said that's on poles next to the bus stops on benches. So
we're trying to just get it out there that you know to the
community that helps CPS continue to move forward and on
time to get a
cancel
There's ever remember a time where the same like school bus
drivers were kind of on the lower range of the pay scale
and it seems like this is much more closely connected to a
but living wage in this work, but it's also difficult work.
I was just doing it poked classical in the eighties and
call the school bus from 87th Street. You would like to
hear poker and I'll just know that my kids today offer
challenge.
the school bus drivers that many folks are not interested or
equipped to deal with have you considered recruiting from
either like veterans or uniform incarcerated folks who are
nonviolent or who's
Indiscretions don't meet the threshold that prevents them
from driving a school bus for a Chicago public school. They
don't have an appetite no longer have the appetite. So our
audience used to be the veterans the retired fireman, the
retired nurses retired police even retired teachers and
unfortunately after the pandemic, they just do not have an
appetite so we gain some back but at least 60% was not
interested.
So sounds like a tough problem overcome. I don't have any
any other suggestions, but I do thank you all for sharing
your presentation and your your worse today. Thank you. And
you talk about the connection with dfssf Catholic charity.
It was a conversation about that earlier when it comes to
the Meijer students and back and forth.
Eddie Meza from CBS
So just to give you an idea every morning at 8:30, I join a
team from the mayor's office and all of this sister
agencies are there discussing?
the efforts that are being made to find families of
resettlement and to do decompressions from the O'Hare from
police districts and the collaboration we have is very firm
and is constant is actually throughout the day now as soon
as as as I share as soon as there's a there's availability
of beds in shelters, they and their families moving there,
they'll contact us and ask for suggestions on where to go
now when it comes to more formal resettlement where the
parents or the families get to sign a lease and all of that
it is it is
It has not been a direct conversation. But I know that the
Air Force says and Catholic Charities are all the
conversations and the meetings and also during the mayoral
briefings on Tuesdays. So we all come together to share the
concerns. I share the CPS map with the locations of the
shelter's there's a seat availability where there are
English learning programs and we share with them in all of
this areas or in this particular areas were running out of
seats. So there's an awareness of I don't know if that
makes them. I don't know if that goes along with wherever
they find this housing that they can offer the migrants for
resettlement.
And you get us that in writing so that we're sending it out
to Sin City Council Members in US kind of having a
conversation about it. Cuz all the women leave that's kind
of what she was asking. She just didn't say it in that way.
It's all us getting there.
And I'll touch base on educational facilities master plan
on time.
So this is this is not just some with you every five years.
And so essentially we look at each neighborhood to be able
to to help students learn and grow and with star efmp most
importantly is to figure out
how to make the student experience better and
In the case here, we've separated our efmp through our
planning area. Now it's report and this report covers 16
different sections of planning areas. You see it in the in
the map to your right here in the efmp has a ton of a ton
of stuff in the in in its report itself. And then with this
planetary analysis. What it does is it gives you an
overview of each area. It talks about a school buildings is
info about how we're using the space in the school talks
about our capital investment and it is packed with a lot of
details about each School.
Here I want to show you when we talked about that capital
investment. We do a checkup with each of our school as we
use of what we call our facility condition assessment. It
happens every two years and it helps us understand what we
need to fix in both the short and long-term and
This is just a Breakout by percentage of what we need to do
for our schools and UC in blue 21% We got to mediate
critical needs an end. These are fixes, like leaky roofs
and windows or heating and cooling system needs a fix that
need to happen. Like right away those cost over $50 / 3
billion dollars for a long-term critical needs. These are
the same repairs, but they can wait a bit longer. So where
the first one is immediate I can probably wait 6 to 10
years for these repairs because essentially with that
facility condition assessment report, it gives me out my
run rate of how long I can wait before I make a repair to a
roof for a window or heating and cooling system. So that's
an orange and gray. I have the Ada accessibility and this
is really about making it accessible for everyone to be
able to get around right now. We
Most schools that are ADA Compliant just on the first four
bases but not every school is 88 compliant everywhere. And
so we want to make all floors ADA Compliant and yellow are
building upgrades. This is really about maybe a Fresh coat
of paint or some better lighting. And in this case it helps
to save energy it helps us with our air quality. So on and
so forth.
With everything that has just explained their this is a a
spreadsheet or table for each planning area and my bottom
line is a SS 14.4 billion for the district and where you
can see you got over three billion that's earmarked for the
Urgent immediate fixes 5.5 billion earmarked for a
long-term fixes 600 million for Ada accessibility and more
than five billion for building upgrades. It's important
that this does not include any programmatic appraised. This
doesn't include any stem programs that doesn't include
adding a trade program. It doesn't include any solar panel
or environmental upgrades. This is just to get our
buildings of the code into a basic standard.
Here's where I need your help. So we're having a efmp
Roundtable sessions within each of these planning areas and
I got to two slides hear that your mark location date and
time. They're all between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. These are
hybrid meetings. So your constituents people from the
community parents teachers any stakeholders from the public
can participate in these either online or an importer in in
person, and it's really not just for us.
Just to talk. It's really for us to have a collaborative
conversation about the current state of the student
experience how we can dance, how we can enhance it and how
that is complimentary complementary heat to facilities cuz
we need to figure this out together. So the feedback that
will use from these sessions. I will use it towards two
things a five-year strategic plan and also to influence our
Capital plan that this happening for next year with that.
I'll take the questions. We've emailed at all. These dates
will resend it a couple more times before they start but
you all have these dates and locations get a commitment for
somebody from CPS to actually be making calls the automatic
office the problem with this is just gets lost in an email.
I can send emails a day. I know you don't think that well I
look at my kids but not all of my co-workers get that
opportunity. And so these meetings
Important for folks to be with and so I want you all to
make a real effort to make sure that you're getting yours
your state your county getting us to these meetings, but we
not actually here with same but when it comes to budget
season, we know we're advocating for we know where we are.
We're kind of just told us there's always this thing of we
dropped the ball they drop the ball. We didn't know we know
that there has to be some communication among us to really
pick up the phone and say hey we sent you this is a sum.
You can come to we need you to make it so that we're
hearing.
Questions for become in Autumn answer. Is there a way we
could get a break down of our schools and the needs based
on what you just shared I'll have to look now that's enough
in the report and it can actually give you a breakdown per
School within that planning area which will correlate to
just do neighborhoods with you.
Emily
Thank you madam. Chair. Sorry I missed the front end of
your presentation. But I think I caught that the that this
master plan really is to bring everything up to code on
we're talking about James Ward Elementary School earlier.
One of the oldest ones this
the plans going to address getting everything up to to code
in these round tables are going to be discussions just
about learning environments and Facilities that we we want
to see in the future.
Partially so it it it's really about Community engagement
to understand a couple things one the current state of our
facilities to the budget situation that were in in 3 our
space utilization and last but not least. How can we have
engage in conversations to enhance that student student
experience that correlates to our facilities?
For your knowledge, we have about half our schools that are
underutilized. So it did how can we use what we have today
to give the best possible experience to make sure we help
support the increased map reading scores graduation rates
do the amenities correlate to that as well Community
purposes potentially cuz you don't cross funding is a thing
to write. So you got something from you know, a different
sort of community Grant there maybe, you know some use for
the building after school hours where it's more of a
community center that serves a family more families than
just students are absolutely right. We we have over I'll do
we have over 600 District Ryan and you know Charters
contract school as we have about eight hundred buildings.
So we got a lot of real estate in the city. So it's really
an opportunity to also start to think about how
we partner with some of our community-based organizations
or other firms to be able to utilize that space more
efficiently as a as a fully, you know, utilize school. And
that's a that's a reality that we're facing and nobody
wants to talk about school closures. But those are the
difficult conversations, you know, and that's why I think
every imagining
Keep I might be imagining these buildings in these schools.
I'm in looking at them as more Community institutions
rather than just something that you know, PPS is running.
It would be great. I think you have sent me invitations
before that's how it got on my calendar in Outlook
invitation to a distribution list is probably really
effective way to make sure we get this but if you have
marketing material that we can then we all have newsletters
that we do we have social media. I'd love to really promote
that these are happening. Like I have one in the ward at
Sealy Elementary School of one nearby you National teachers
Academy with the number of parents. I know who are
interested to have young kids now and we're thinking about
high school and I'm going to be like a broken record. Ye
would like to see it be a reality. But I also think that
you know parents need to be involved in this conversation
to they can't just you know, you can't just leave it up to
other people. So if you if we want something you got it, we
got it.
what is able to engage about real solutions that are
actionable so you got to get these out and also if it's
feedback on height weight how you think we should
Issues, we should bring up in the meeting. I know Charles
is going to meet and so am I with all the people to get
your ideas on how to do this to me perspective you guys do
a great job of that meeting that I've been a part of
targets my own Community. There is a Chinese translator
that is available. I would just remind you to do that cuz
you'll you'll get more much more effective engagement. And
for the for the hybrid of people don't want to go in
person, but we can certainly I can open up my own office
and have people come into my life and everyone gets a 21st
century means like we're doing today but it also gives
folks an opportunity who who have to work who may not be
able to travel to that particular school to be able to jump
online and purchase when you have plenty. So this is great.
Thank you very much before we go to all the women
Gutierrez. Can you talk about is there a plan for us
between CPS and the city about the
It was a so I'm building something of course in my own
communities where there is a process, but that's another
funding stream for us what I usually don't see and through
the chair. Can you all get that? We also ran out of space.
We going to talk them out of churches and programs that are
actually using our schools. And so there needs to be a sub
count ability of what happens to those dollars. Do those
stay with school do those go to CPS and the bigger bucket
and you don't have to give it to me now but through the
chair we would like to see that but there has to be a
strategic plan and that's something I always say I will
complain about the problem but also will come up with a
solution about what we do with these vacant CPS building
and a real plan to all the woman leaves point about before
we go into school closures cuz we're in a moratorium right
now. It ain't going to last forever. And so we need to have
a real plan and state law says that you can close the
school without doing a laundry list of things and
we haven't even started that conversation. If so, I want us
to be there. We we have an opportunity. This is a I say it
all the time. We're in a different space. We're all working
together now, so I want us to be strategic and come back
sooner than later about those plans Auto on Military and
chairwoman. I'm just drained when you send that list in
order for us to learn. What do you have consider for our
schools in our communities talking about Monocacy
Elementary they do
Have a cafeteria. They have to pull up some tables, you
know, those foldable ones in the gym. So then they're
taking off time for kids to exercise when you have p e e in
order for them to eat. So we need to totally built a
cafeteria and a better space for that school. But also
talking about schools being rented from Catholic churches,
which used to be Catholic schools before I have also Talman
Elementary that they do have a classroom where you used to
be the stage at the at the gym. So they have just some pull
up some stuff just to cover from the basketball down there
the gym having a classroom in the stage. So then
We can have the type of spaces in their school since our
kids. So I will be really interested in looking at the list
of you'll be shared with us. Ok, Google stupid. I can
totally Point some others in the end of the day my ward as
well as any other schools that I visited it before in the
whole Cook County 7th District that I used to work at so
I'm really interested in bed. And just how are you going to
really going to tackle that issue? And how are we going to
build better spaces for kids in Juice? Thank you.
Regarding the bacon schools. I'm already 16 is currently
working on a bid process to formalize a big process for
some of those bacon schools. I know we've had some
conversation and some older men with some inquiries
regarding some vacant properties in their Wards so we can
so we can follow up with 18 to get that one loss process
once it's completed to make sure with you. Yes, I want to
touch your mail is going to acknowledge two things that the
school closures in 2013 hurt and you know, we know families
were impacted and there were a ton of Lessons Learned in
regards to that we have about I think about 15 schools
approximately that are are still on our books. I think two
of those are annexes and $13 or four buildings, but working
out right now is to build those out to the public for sale.
We have a contract with our broker that were working on we
should be wrapping it up soon. So the first couple of ones
that you will see are probably go back that and
Calhoun that will be on the market soon. We always work
with the altars before we release that bid to get their
Insight. What do they want in their Community? Obviously,
we use you guys as resources in as partners to be able to
to help us have that influence before we put the bed out to
Market. Also. I want to address, you know, we 83 on
infrastructure. So we got a bunch of schools of that have
Antiquated equipment or or no equipment in some cases. So
you will you'll see some schools with multipurpose rooms
that they use for Jim's cafeterias. Some schools have this
some schools don't have that and that's what the sessions
these efmp round tables will really be all about. It's a
real opportunity for the community to come out provide
their feedback and then will synthesize that information to
make informed decisions based on that Community feedback or
labor partners and with you all so we'll pass the marketing
materials out. If you can pass that out to your to your
sister, that would be great for us.
I'll take you back. I'm sure the last committee meeting we
had an education. We talked about bringing the Chicago Park
District in today question.
I think it makes really good senses were talking about ree
prioritizing buildings and programming and I heard about
extracurricular activities after school. So I would love to
see this community bring chicagoparkdistrict into the
equation to you made a comment earlier about working in
silos. That would be another Edition. I have had an initial
conversation with them. Just figure it out how we bring
them to the table and anti me I think the only other
pressing thing that we have is this redistricting that
that's going on in the war that we're going to have to have
a conversation about
Cuz we still don't know who who is drawing the maps. I
haven't gotten any rear clarity about it. That is the next
conversation with her. Cuz why we get this year is over we
got to prepare for what's going to happen this summer. I'm
very concerned about us having a different summer and I
think if we got all hands on deck with CPS and the park
district, we could have some different results, but we can
have our young people off the streets and into these
programming it so that's a conversation that I'm having
with the deputy mayor. Hey Jen about us convenient at
meeting with fire district. And that's a conversation. I'm
having with the park district to because we seem to have
programs that they've had for 20-30 years then nobody
attend and so us having a real look at how we utilize our
Park District, but also looking at program at least do
that. That's still is in the works it just
It made more sense for us to have these initial
conversations with CPS city colleges tomorrow. And what I
wanted to do is just to be honest about the data. That's
all I will say the CPS. Thank you. This was it wasn't as
hard as I thought it was going to be but it definitely
makes it a lot easier for people who ain't got time to go
look at a thousand different parts of the website to don't
even have access and so are we talkin about these things in
public is also I'm hoping that this committee comes
together and say hey this is what we're going to do and I
thank you for putting this this conversation. Just Chuck it
in the team. Thank you very much.
I guess one final comment is is utilize this Council as a
resource that it's so important. We are Partners in many
different ways. So if there's one takeaway use us we're
here to help but we're going to
Any more questions from committee members?
Just picking up on this last conversation here about the
sale of the of the real estate in working to break down
these silos. It would be great if we can include the
conversation about what a community benefits agreement with
look like for whoever's Behind these buildings. These are
big big pieces of real estate in each of these communities.
I think it's going to be really important that the the
community have a voice and I appreciate that you're going
to come to the altar people first cuz there's no one will
be able to tell you, you know, what sort of things we need
and would like to see I know we're not going to get
everything but I think we have to think it has to be part
of the conversation. We've been working on it and my ward
since I got into office and so we're getting ready to come
sit with CPS and also the department of planning to talk
about how do we change these buildings? It's a spaces at
the community wants to see but also honoring with these
buildings are used to be some of your people are never
going to be able to go back to the elementary school that
they graduated from it. So he wants to be able to honor
that. I like that you said wheeler.
Some lessons from school closings that we made some
mistakes and now we have the opportunity to fix them as
they say in the black church. Your whole hearts and minds
are clear. The committee on education has been that you
all. Have a good evening.
Why will you make a motion that we end the meeting so
moving all the one we Gutierrez?
Is what happen when you don't have knees?