Budget 2024

Dear Friends and Colleagues, 

Following months of collaboration with our families, educators, and community partners, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) released our Three-Year Blueprint during the 2022-23 school year. The Blueprint details our strategies to help students continue recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and outlines key areas of our District that we will reimagine to better meet student needs in the long term.

Our FY2024 budget is aligned to the goals set forth in the Blueprint, sustaining and enhancing the investments that have guided our students’ recovery, helping them build on the progress made over the last school year, and setting them up for success in the future.

This budget, which totals $9.4 billion, includes an increase of $243 million in school-based funding — for a total of more than $450 million in new funding for schools over the past two years. As a result, per-pupil spending at the school level will increase by over $1,000 next year; 93 percent of traditional District-run schools will see an increase in per-pupil funding, with 90 percent seeing an increase in overall funding next year.

At the school level, this funding will go to support:

• New teaching positions across the District, with additional positions going to schools rated high on the CPS Opportunity Index.
• Increased teacher professional development District-wide and the hiring of more instructional coaches.
• District-funded counselors to serve high-need schools.
• Resources to support schools that are experiencing major changes in enrollment.
• More bilingual instruction programs and staff positions to serve our English learners.

This budget also continues our shift away from enrollment-based funding and toward needs-based funding. Student-Based Budgeting (SBB) makes up just 40 percent of FY2024 school budgets — six percentage points lower than the previous year. The FY2024 budget also increases funding for Equity Grants from $50 million to $55 million to ensure that our District’s smaller and under-enrolled schools can provide the same quality programming, academic rigor, and robust student supports as their larger CPS counterparts. And to ensure that our diverse learners have the supports and resources to achieve their full potential, CPS is investing an additional $128 million to support staffing needs for these students.

The FY2024 budget will continue funding the academic priorities that our principals and school communities have let us know are critical to their success. These include reasonable class sizes, limited split classrooms, access to high-quality arts education, and intervention supports. We will also maintain our investments in out-of-school-time and summer programming to keep students safe and engaged, and will continue prioritizing early childhood education by bringing free, full-day pre-k to virtually every neighborhood in Chicago next school year.

And because the safety of all CPS students remains our absolute top priority, our District will continue funding programs and resources that protect our students' physical safety while also addressing their mental health and emotional well-being. This funding is rooted in the tenants of the Comprehensive Whole School Safety Plan that we introduced this school year, which calls for building out our mental health support system and bolstering social-emotional learning (SEL) resources for students and staff through curriculum, professional development, targeted interventions, and partnerships.

The CPS FY2024 capital budget will follow a different trajectory than in previous years. To ensure that all schools are ready to receive students on day one of the new school year, CPS will pass a scaled-down capital plan in June of 2023 to address all immediate facility needs, including any emergency repairs. However, because our District is currently undergoing a comprehensive review of all facility needs, a supplemental capital plan with funding identified for priority projects will be released later in the school year once this process is complete.

I thank the members of our CPS community who have engaged in our budget planning process thus far, especially our principals, whose feedback has allowed us to shape a budget that will better support each school’s unique needs while remaining aligned to our District-wide priorities. We look forward to receiving additional feedback from our stakeholders at upcoming budget hearings, the details of which can be found at cps.edu/budget.

Thanks to the vision of our school leaders, the dedication of our educators, and the partnership of our families and community partners, CPS students made great strides during the 2022-23 school year. The FY2024 budget includes investments that will help our students build on this momentum, moving them closer to recovering fully from the COVID-19 pandemic and going on to achieve success in college, career, and civic life.

Sincerely,

Pedro Martinez
Chief Executive Officer
Chicago Public Schools