Chicago’s steep enrollment losses hit high-poverty schools hardest
I took an interview regarding Bret Harte Elementary School's enrollment drop and its impact on the school's budget.
Chicago Public Schools employs the student based budgeting (SBB), a budgeting system in which basically money is attached to each enrolled student versus money will be allocated to a school based on its basic needs. It has been pointed out that SBB widens the gap between the resourced schools and the underresourced schools and negatively impacts on schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods which have been struggling with chronic underinvestment. For example, if a school is underenrolled, the school will receive less budget, which leads to cuts in staff and programs, such as art, music, library, etc. On the other hand, if another school is fully or overenrolled, the school will receive money to keep those programs. It is a natural consequence that parents want to have their students enroll in well resourced schools, instead of schools in your neighborhood that are stripped of programs and services, through "school choice" system, such as selective enrollment and magnet, or even by moving their address. Then the next year, underenrolled schools will face more drop in enrollment, while over enrolled schools will have an overcrowdedness problem in order to maintain those programs. Despite criticism, CPS decided to go on with SBB in April during the pandemic by claiming that SBB is the most equitable funding formula.
CPS this year lost 14,500 students from the previous year, which is the sharpest decline in two decades. If the district proceeds with the budget cut according to the SBB formula, no school can functionally keep operating. LSCs across the city has written a joint letter to the Board of Education to ask to freeze in SBB levels of funding for the next year. But seriously, SBB should be abolished, not just during the pandemic.
"At Harte, in fact, pre-kindergarten numbers remained unchanged while other grades saw drops. Aiko Kojima Hibino, a community representative on the school’s local council, said it’s not clear why enrollment shrunk after several years of stable student numbers. Officials know the pandemic pushed some of the school’s families, more than three-quarters of whom lived in poverty last school year, to leave the city.
Even before the outbreak, the school had a sizable wish list, Hibino said: It offered no music classes, and the gym and arts teachers worked part time. Last fall, Hibino and other supporters revived a Friends of Bret Harte group to raise money for those programs. Now, Hibino worries, the needs will grow deeper.
“Because the school is so small, 50 students is a big number for us,” said Hibino. “It’s really hard.”"