The CPS Excellence Agenda: A platform for Chicago school board candidates

Voters will soon pick the first fully elected school board in Chicago history. Those leaders should be ready to govern on Day 1.

Chicago Public Schools has produced some of the world’s brightest stars.

But candidates for the November school board elections—the first fully elected school board in Chicago history—face a raging storm within the nation's fourth-largest school district.

On Nov. 3, Chicagoans will elect 20 school board members and a citywide board president. Consider:

• CPS has a junk credit rating, and is the largest junk-bond issuer of any municipal government in the nation.

• Math and reading outcomes for CPS fourth graders declined faster than any peer district from 2017-2024.

• When asked to grade Chicago schools on how well they prepare students, just 17% of Chicagoans give the district an A or a B.¹

• CPS serves 316,000 students today, down from a peak of nearly 600,000.²

All Chicago families deserve to enjoy the highest-performing big-city school district in the nation. But that requires a school board capable of governing with conviction and confidence on Day 1.

Thankfully, CPS board members don’t have to invent a turnaround model from scratch. Drawing lessons from school districts across the country, the Chicago Policy Center compiled the CPS Excellence Agenda, built on three pillars:

1. Academic excellence

2. Financial excellence

3. Board excellence

Candidates should begin with the question that matters most: Are students learning?

Academic excellence at CPS

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he would grade school performance on spending, not outcomes. But 78% of Chicagoans believe the main goal of public schools should be preparing students to be good citizens, to go to college, or to get a good job. Student outcomes are the defining measure of a thriving school district.

Board members should:

1. Require CPS schools only use instructional materials aligned with research-proven methods, such as the Science of Reading, which was the basis for the Mississippi Miracle.

2. Require more specific interventions at the district’s lowest-performing campuses to ensure student academic improvement, such as the Accelerating Campus Excellence (ACE) program, which is transforming student outcomes in Houston and across Texas.

3. Support a policy to renew high-performing charter schools no later than January (at least six months before contracts expire), giving families certainty and aligning with national standards.

Financial excellence at CPS

A district that can’t manage its own budget will eventually lose the right to manage anything else. And the first step to getting out of the district’s financial hole is to stop digging.

Board members should:

1. Transition to zero-based budgeting (ZBB) by Fiscal Year 2028, where every central office department, network office, and school must justify each line item. San Francisco schools use ZBB, as required by California law. In Philadelphia schools, ZBB recently identified $100 million in savings.

2. Pass a resolution calling on Springfield to require a state fiscal note and state pre-payment for any pension sweeteners that impact local school districts, as recommended by Mayor Johnson’s Financial Future Task Force.

3. Mandate a 14-member vote for all new borrowing: CPS currently requires only 11 votes for borrowing when included in the budget, but 14 votes at any other time. Given the district’s extreme debt load, there should be one standard.

4. Pass a resolution urging Illinois to opt in to the federal education donation tax credit to generate at least $100 million per year in additional funding to support services for CPS families, as New York and Colorado have done. This is especially important for CPS students with special needs.

Board excellence at CPS

If newly elected school board members expect excellence from the CPS central office, principals, teachers, school staff, and students, they must also hold themselves to a high standard of professional excellence.

Board members should:

1. Convene a Blue Ribbon Commission for CPS Facilities Planning,³ which should:

   1. Assess the current facility footprint.

   2. Establish an ongoing framework for optimizing school facilities for student success, including core principles of school utilization, neighborhood coverage, and model school staffing.

   3. Set a consistent minimum standard for schools in terms of enrollment and performance, as well as a consistent “high bar” standard that triggers school-model replication.

   4. Compare CPS’ capital financing ability to other large districts.⁴

2. The board has an opportunity to set a new standard for fairness and transparency in negotiations on CTU’s collective bargaining agreement, which begin in less than two years. This includes:

   1. Focusing negotiations on wages, benefits and conditions of employment (the traditional subjects of bargaining) and what is best for students.

   2. Considering changes to state law to increase board independence in bargaining.

   3. Using the zero-based budgeting process to identify any changes that are hampered by the collective bargaining agreement, and changes that are not.

   4. Opening up all bargaining sessions to the public (only presentations were open in 2024).

3. Adopt a policy requiring board members to complete annual continuing education in school finance and governance, (e.g. Georgetown Edunomics Lab offers a Certificate in Education Finance) with completion publicly reported and enforceable by fines/suspensions.

What Chicago voters should know

Without a clear plan entering office, new board members will be forced to react to several immediate crises and interest groups with outsized power.

That’s an outcome Chicago students can’t afford.

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1. Notably, the same survey found almost three in four CPS parents give their own kids’ school an A or B grade.

2. It’s difficult to pin these outcomes on a lack of funding. Adjusted for inflation, CPS per-pupil spending is up 27% since 2019, the third-highest increase among peer districts. All-in, the district spends $32,000 per student per year. And from 2006-2023, CPS more than doubled property tax collections.

3. A 2025 analysis by ProPublica and Chalkbeat found 3 in 10 CPS schools are at least half empty. And 47 schools operate at one-third capacity (a number that’s doubled since 2013). “The costs are not only financial,” according to the report. “Students in the city’s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities and sports. Chicago’s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates.”

4. The district’s capital financing authority is currently capped at $308 million, compared to an estimated $14.4 billion cost to bring current buildings up to standards.