CPS is staring down cuts, a cop's in court for COVID loan fraud, and City Hall's reform machine is grinding along anyway. Welcome to a Thursday in Chicago. This is Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily — schools, oversight, development, and a sergeant who thought the PPP was his personal slush fund, all in one show. Budget cuts for classrooms while we're arguing over police oversight boards — yeah, those aren't separate stories. It's the same fight about what this city chooses to fund. We'll see how much of the reform stuff is real and how much is just a nice press release. Let's get into it. Here's Mila Koumpilova at Chalkbeat:
Chicago Public Schools is gearing up to unveil school budgets as early as next week amid deep financial uncertainty. After roughly a decade of largely holding the line or even boosting school budgets with now-expired federal COVID aid, the district could be forced to send less directly to its roughly 500 campuses. In recent weeks, CEO Macquline King has floated a worst case budget deficit of up to $1 billion.
Chalkbeat has a deep look at what's coming for CPS campus budgets, and it's rough. Schools like Saucedo in Little Village are looking at cuts to bilingual coordinators, counselors, the people keeping kids on track. Bilingual coordinators at a school with 920 mostly low-income Latino kids? That's not some extra. That's the school. You cut that, you're not trimming fat — you're cutting bone. And CPS still hasn't even released the budgets yet. So principals and LSC chairs are doing the math in their heads, which is a special kind of cruelty. Over on r/chicago (113 upvotes):
Consolidation should be inevitable. Some of these schools are just too small and have little to no extracurricular activities, elective classes, or AP/IB classes. Schools like that do a disservice to the student and serve as little more than a jobs program.
Consolidation is the word people reach for when they mean close schools on the South and West Sides. We've seen where that road goes. Communities do not forget. Here's one from r/chicago (73 upvotes):
I mean yeah? We’ve had around a 20% reduction in enrollment and spending has increased by 70% in the last decade. And it’s not like we have anything to show for this massive increase in spending other than the CTU having more sway over elections.
A seventy percent spending increase against a twenty percent enrollment drop — those numbers are real, and CPS has not had a clean answer for them in years. Sure, CTU's political sway is a legitimate debate. But don't use that as an excuse to dodge the harder question: where did the money actually go, and did any of it reach classrooms? r/chicago (35 upvotes), weighing in:
Enrollment was close to 400k a decade ago and by 2030 it will be in the high 200k range. While employment headcount is nearly at all time highs and CPS has gotten max tax increases almost every year for the past 10 years while test scores and reading levels are getting worse So yeah, there should be layoffs. Burn CPS down. Mississippi is kicking our ass now. Fucking Mississippi. How?!?
Mississippi outperforming Chicago on reading gains is the kind of stat that ought to end careers and start investigations. Instead, here we are. 'Burn it down' is a mood, not a plan. But the enrollment freefall is real, and nobody at Ogden and Madison has given a straight answer for why staffing kept climbing while kids walked out the door. From Heather Cherone at WTTW:
A key city panel on Wednesday advanced Mayor Brandon Johnson’s nomination of Anjanette Young, a social worker who was handcuffed while naked during a botched 2019 Chicago Police Department raid, to serve on the city’s police oversight board. The City Council’s Police and Fire Committee voted 14-2 to send Young’s nomination to serve a four-year term on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to the full City Council for a final vote on May 20.
WTTW's Heather Cherone has this one — Anjanette Young, the social worker who was handcuffed naked during a botched CPD raid in 2019, just cleared committee on a 14-2 vote to join the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. Full Council vote is May 20. That's a lived-experience appointment, not a political one. If you're going to have someone help shape CPD policy, it matters that she knows what happens when the department gets it catastrophically wrong. Napolitano and Tabares voted no — Napolitano, sure, that's expected, but Tabares in the 23rd is worth watching. Also notable: a Mather High School senior got advanced to the same board, 13-3. And that commission oversees COPA, the Police Board, and the superintendent search. That's real power. A high schooler interning in Vasquez's office helping weigh CPD policy — people are going to clown that, but I'd take a North Side neighborhood school kid over another retired cop who's never had a bad stop. Here's Block Club Chicago:
The first proposal, which was unveiled in October, included 152 family-sized units spread out over a series of townhomes and two five-story apartment buildings.
The revised proposal brings the unit count to 105, with 40 townhomes and 65 apartments. The $60 million plan replaces the northernmost apartment building included in the first proposal with 14 three-story townhomes.
Block Club Chicago is on an Avondale development story — a vacant lot on California Avenue that's been through the community-meeting wringer. The first proposal was 152 units; now it's 105. Density concerns win another round. One-fifty-two down to 105. That's 47 fewer homes on a vacant lot in a neighborhood that needs housing. And the trade-off is more parking than city code even requires. More cars, fewer people. Great deal. To be fair, the affordable-unit count is still pegged to the ARO minimum — 21 below-market units — and some neighbors at the meeting were pushing for more. So it wasn't just anti-density. They want density to work for them. Right, and that's the part that gets buried. The neighbors asking for more affordable units don't make the headline. The folks worried about traffic do. Every time. Richard M. Sullivan, writing in Hoodline:
According to criminal information filed Monday, prosecutors say Wright submitted two false PPP applications in 2021, claiming the bakery had earned $99,989 in gross income the previous year and needed help covering payroll. Those filings allegedly brought in $41,662 in PPP money that, instead of going to workers, prosecutors say Wright planned to spend on herself, including paying off credit card debt, personal purchases, and cash withdrawals.
A CPD sergeant is facing federal wire fraud charges for allegedly collecting more than forty grand in PPP loans for a bakery that — spoiler — never existed. Hoodline has the story, credit where it's due. A phantom bakery. She invented a whole business, claimed a hundred grand in gross income, and the money went to credit card bills and cash. Meanwhile, actual small businesses in actual neighborhoods were getting denied or waiting months. And this isn't isolated. The city's OIG flagged a wave of these CPD PPP cases in its fourth-quarter 2025 report, so the watchdog's been on it and the feds are moving now. The question is how many more are in that pipeline. Got a correction, a tip, or a story idea about Chicago politics and urban life? Send it our way at chicagodailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read every note, and your feedback helps shape the show.
If any of today's stories deserve a closer look, you'll find links to all of them in the show notes. Take a minute there for the reporting, the documents, and the context behind what we covered.
That's Chicago Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.