The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) released its annual financial report late last week. The report showed significant further deterioration in its financial position in fiscal 2016 (ended June 30, 2016), and warned that the system’s future sustainability depends on new revenue sources and/or spending cuts.
This year, the “Future Sustainability” note (Note 17) in the financial statements included a discussion of the CPS budget for fiscal 2017, noting that “The Board approved on August 24, 2016 a balanced budget for fiscal year 2017. The budget contains estimated resources of $5.5 billion for operations which is .6 billion greater than actual revenue for 2016.”
Similarly, in last year’s financial report (for fiscal 2015), CPS reported that the Board of Education had adopted a balanced budget for both fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015. But CPS spending exceeded revenue, fees and grants by over $1 billion in both of those years.
In other words, they keep saying they are going to balance the budget, but keep spending more than they take in.
What are we to make of the latest claim to the balanced budget for fiscal 2017? Particularly amidst the financial uncertainty for the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago?
The report showed another annual decline in total CPS enrollment. Here’s what CPS enrollment looks like since 2006.
Let’s compare that to CPS expenses over that same time frame. (CPS expenses are on the right hand axis, in the billions of dollars.)
Since 2006, CPS enrollment has fallen 6%, while expenses have risen over 30%.
The latest annual financial report for CPS can be seen here. I’ll be trying to find more hopeful signs, as well.