On July 30th 2026, the Chicago Board of Education approved a $10.1 billion budget for the 2027 fiscal year. Although the approved budget largely mirrored the budget proposed by Chicago Public Schools’ CEO Macquline King, it contained one major deviation. Before passing the budget, the Board voted on the adoption of an amendment that restored existing the CEO had cut to balance the proposed budget. Many of these cuts have already been implemented. The amendment’s proponents assumed additional…
This report is a 2026 update with numbers through 2025. The original report with numbers from FY2014-2023 is published here. The Chicago Public Schools District (CPS, or the ‘District’) has over 45,000 employees, all of whom are guaranteed a pension after retirement if they have met service time requirements. The teachers and some administrators participate in the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, while most non-teacher employees of CPS are members of the City of Chicago’s Municipal…
The Chicago Public Schools (CPS, or the ‘District’) is lacking the cash that it needs to meet operating costs. The crunch has become so bad that CPS’ finance team has voiced concerns about an inability to make payroll in September if a FY2027 budget is not passed by the end of July. This piece will explain what this cash shortage is, how it came about, and what CPS can do to alleviate it.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS or the ‘District’) introduced a proposed $9.88 billion budget for fiscal year (FY) 2027 on July 15, 2026. Much of the discussion in the week since has surrounded how the District proposes to address ongoing fiscal uncertainty and the degree to which it continues to rely on uncertain revenues. Given the volatility and uncertainty associated with Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District surplus dollars, CPS has moved to reduce its total TIF surplus assumption for the…
Join us as we break down the CPS FY2027 Budget through a moderated discussion in partnership with Kids First Chicago!
Debt is an essential part of every local government’s budget, but often a confusing one. In the Chicago region, many local governments are overburdened by debt, often citing it as a high “legacy” cost that constrains discretionary spending. This report will serve as a basic primer on how municipal debt works and how it is meant to be used, using the debt load of one local government as a case study: the Chicago Public School District (CPS or ‘the District’). The report is grounded in widely…
Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, is one of the most widely used—and often misunderstood—economic development tools in Illinois. With approximately 1,488 active TIF districts across 511 municipalities in Illinois as of 2025, TIF plays a significant role in shaping local investment, property tax dynamics, and public finance. This primer explains how Tax Increment Financing (TIF) operates in Illinois, including Chicago; assesses its fiscal impacts on taxpayers and overlying taxing bodies; outlines…
Charter schools are publicly funded, privately operated schools that provide alternatives to neighborhood public schools for Chicago students and families. The Chicago Public School District (CPS or the ‘District’) has 108 charter schools, which in 2025 accounted for an enrollment of 50,326 students. As CPS, as a district, faces continued enrollment decline and rising per-student costs, the structure of charter school funding and oversight will remain central to broader conversations about…
Illinois’ Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL) was enacted in the 1990s to slow the rate of growth of local property taxes by capping the annual increases in property tax extensions for non-home rule governments, such as school districts and park districts, to the lesser of 5% or the rate of inflation. In reality, property taxes have grown much faster than inflation, and PTELL has not achieved its intended purpose of limiting property tax growth. This joint report from the Civic…
The Local Pension Dashboard is intended for use as a resource and educational tool to increase the accessibility of local pension fund data. The dashboard reports metrics for the ten major local pension funds within the City of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, with data from 1996 to 2024 (2024 CTA data is not included as that data has not been released as of publication). Using this tool, dashboard users can create custom visualizations and comparisons of up to ten funds.
