CPS is staring down cuts, the woman the city strip-searched is about to oversee the cops who did it, and a cop just got charged with pandemic fraud. Thursday in Chicago, everybody. This is The Chicago Daily Fix — the schools, the streets, and the accountability beats City Hall would rather you miss. We’ve got a budget axe hanging over classrooms, a neighborhood pushing back on bad development, and a sergeant who treated the PPP like a personal ATM. Let’s start where the pain lands hardest: the kids. 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’s got CPS school budgets dropping as early as next week, and parents in Little Village are already doing the math on what they stand to lose. Bilingual coordinators, counselors, the people who actually get kids into Jones Prep — that’s not fat, that’s bone. Saucedo’s a school holding enrollment in a neighborhood that’s been through it. And the reward for doing things right is you still might get cut? That’s how you tell communities their kids don’t matter. To be fair — and I hate being fair about this — the district is staring down a deficit that doesn’t care about good intentions. The question is whether the cuts are surgical, or just a machete swing at whoever can’t fight back politically. 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.
Look, consolidation isn’t a dirty word. But “jobs program” is a cute way to dismiss the only adults some of these kids see consistently. The extracurriculars argument lands; the contempt doesn’t. There’s a real policy case for right-sizing small schools. The problem is CPS has a long history of “consolidation” meaning South and West Side closures while the North Side gets to keep its under-enrolled buildings. Show me the map before I sign off on that logic. Here’s another 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.
The enrollment-versus-spending math is real, and it’s been real for years. But “CTU sway over elections” is doing a lot of work as an explanation for where the money went — that’s a talking point, not a budget audit. Spending went up and outcomes didn’t follow — that’s worth being angry about. But I’m not gonna pretend the solution is obvious when half the spending increase went to pension debt the state hung around the district’s neck. 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 is genuinely outperforming Chicago on reading gains, and I will not let anyone gloss over that. That one stings because it’s true. The enrollment cliff is the number nobody wants to say out loud at a board meeting. High two-hundreds by 2030 means the current building footprint and headcount cannot survive — the question is who decides who gets cut, and whether anyone’s actually accountable for the answer. 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 back in 2019, just cleared committee 14-2 for a seat on the CCPSA. Full Council votes May 20th. That is a full-circle moment. The city violated that woman in her own home, on video, and now she gets a hand in setting CPD policy. That’s not just symbolic — the CCPSA picks superintendent finalists. She’ll have real teeth. Napolitano and Tabares voted no, which — Napolitano, fine, that tracks. Tabares is the mildly more interesting dissent. But a 14-2 committee vote is not a close call. Also buried in here: a Mather High School senior is getting nominated to the same board. An intern in Vasquez’s office. I’m not mad at it — put someone on there who actually lives with the consequences. 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’s got a development story out of Avondale — vacant lot on California Avenue, proposal got trimmed from 152 units down to 105 after neighbors pushed back on density and traffic. 152 down to 105, so we lose 47 homes on a vacant lot because people are worried about parking. Meanwhile the affordable unit count is basically whatever the ARO minimum requires, and not a unit more. To be fair, some neighbors at the meeting were actually pushing for more affordable units, not fewer — so it’s not a clean “NIMBYs win” story. The tension’s more complicated than that. Sure, but the outcome is still fewer units and a parking lot that exceeds city code. The people who wanted more affordable housing didn’t win — the people who wanted less building did. 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 pocketing forty-one grand in PPP money through a bakery that, prosecutors say, existed only on paper. Hoodline had this one. A fake bakery. She couldn’t even pick a fake business that made sense — a bakery, with payroll. Meanwhile actual small shops in actual neighborhoods got shut out of that money or had to fight for every dime. And this isn’t a one-off. The city’s Inspector General flagged a whole wave of CPD members in PPP cases in its fourth-quarter report last year. The watchdog was already watching. We’ve put links to all the stories from today’s episode in the show notes, so if something sparked your curiosity, you can find the full piece there.
That’s The Chicago Daily Fix for this Thursday. This is a Lantern Podcast.