It’s been a lousy year for the local public schools—even by Chicago standards.
“How was my summer? Oh, don’t ask,” says one north-side principal I’ll call Jackie. “I’m like a juggler with these budget cuts. If people only knew.”
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It’s a neighborhood school, which means it accepts any child within its boundaries. The student population is almost evenly divided between Hispanics and whites, and much of it is low-income. The parents aren’t rich enough to supplement the budget with lucrative fund-raisers, like some of the wealthier magnets and north-side neighborhood schools.
That means she has just enough money to hire one teacher for the arts—all of them. She decided to go with a music teacher, which means the school has no one teaching drama or visual arts.
“I think we need a longer day,” she says. “But any principal will tell you it’s only as good as what we have for resources. Otherwise, you’re just asking everyone to work longer for less.”
“With what? I told you—I’m using the technology fund to pay for the playground supervisors that I have to have because we need someone to watch the kids at recess. The mayor tells everyone, ‘I made them have recess.’ But he doesn’t tell you that we had to take money from the computers and furniture fund to pay for it.”
Last year her budget was about $5 million. This year it was cut by around $400,000.
