Hundreds of teachers and support staff assigned to students with disabilities could be laid off by Chicago Public Schools as the district cuts $200 million to deal with a massive budget deficit.
The district says it can save about $42 million by modifying services for the roughly 50,000 special needs students it serves. About 540 educators, most of them paraprofessionals who assist special education teachers, could lose their jobs under the plan. Another 200 or so vacant positions would not be filled.
Advocates, parents and principals say they’re concerned about the effects that cuts could have on students with special needs. The cuts also raise questions about how CPS will be able to adhere to complex federal and state regulations that govern special education funding and services.
But CPS officials say an 18-month review by the district’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services concluded that the district exceeds state standards for special education staffing because hiring has outpaced the enrollment of disabled students.
At Beard Elementary School on the Northwest Side, a school designed for special needs students, the principal has warned parents of job cuts. The school stands to lose about $1.8 million in special education funding, according to Laurie Viets, a member of Beard’s local school council.
“It’s just unbelievable what they’re going to do to our school,” said Viets, whose autistic son is about to start first grade at Beard. “As it stands right now, they’re going to more than double our class sizes.”
If that is the case, her son’s classroom would have 13 students supervised by one teacher and a paraprofessional, Viets said, an increase that would violate his individual education plan.
According to district statistics distributed last year, more than 50,000 CPS students had individualized education plans required for students with a range of disabilities.
The anticipated job losses in special education are among nearly 1,400 positions the district says it will eliminate while it continues to press state lawmakers for relief from its most urgent financial obligations.
A CPS spokeswoman said the district would continue to provide resources beyond what is mandated by the state to its “most vulnerable” students.
In addition, “CPS will provide all children who have individualized education programs with the services in their plans, and we will continue to work toward our long-term goal of delivering services to more students with unique learning needs at their neighborhood schools as appropriate,” spokeswoman Emily Bittner said.
Rodney Estvan, an education policy analyst with the Access Living advocacy group, said CPS may be forced to rehire teachers and staff through the course of the year “because they’re just going to find the situation untenable.”
“How many, I don’t know. But this has been the tradition of these kinds of cuts,” he said. “When you do the initial cuts, it all looks good for cost savings and constraint, and then over time those positions fill back up.”
At John F. Kennedy High School in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood, Principal George Szkapiak received a special education budget of about $3.5 million for the year, a cut of nearly $393,000. The school expects to enroll only three fewer students with disabilities in the fall, he said.
“If you do the math, we have three less kids than we did the year before. Only three, but we were reduced by $393,000,” Szkapiak said. “I don’t understand the math.”
Szkapiak said he will have to use discretionary funds to preserve special education teaching and staff positions, which will lead to cutbacks in other areas.
Those discretionary dollars “could fund anything from classroom supplies to transportation costs for our sports teams, or for our students to go on college visits,” he said. “That funding is essential in many ways; it’s stuff our kids will not be able to experience because of the losses we’ve experienced.”
Twitter @PerezJr
