Three Things CPS Parents Should Know
Every CPS school receives a set package of staff and resources.
Schools serving students with greater needs receive additional support.
Funding is no longer driven primarily by enrollment.
Why Did CPS Change the Funding Formula?
For many years, CPS funding relied heavily on student enrollment. As enrollment declined across the district, some schools struggled to maintain key staff positions and programs.
To address this challenge, CPS created a new needs-based funding model. The goal of the new model is to ensure every school receives a foundational set of staff and resources, while also supporting schools serving students with greater needs with additional support.
Every CPS School Receives:
📘 School leadership
- Principal
- Assistant Principal (for schools with over 250 students)
📘 Classroom instruction
- Core classroom teachers
- Arts, music, and PE teachers
📘 Student support
- Counselor
- Professional learning funds
📘 School operations
- Clerk
- Custodial and engineering staff
- Lunchroom and security staff
Evidence-Based Funding: What You Need to Know
Download our One-PagerMore Background on Evidence-Based Funding
On August 31, 2017, Illinois replaced one of the most inequitable K-12 public education funding formulas in the country with the “Evidence-Based Funding for Student Success Act,” or “EBF.” The primary goal of EBF is to ensure that the state's K-12 funding is distributed more equitably and fairly across school districts.
The EBF formula starts by figuring out how much money is needed for the basic things every district needs, like school staff and up-to-date materials. Then, additional funding goes to districts that serve a higher number of students with greater needs, such as special education students, English Language Learners (ELLs), and low-income students.
The amount of state funding that goes toward EBF is determined annually by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the Governor, and the Illinois General Assembly.
When Illinois created EBF, the State promised that all school districts would be fully funded by 2027. The formula has improved funding at CPS since 2017, but the annual amount of additional funding for EBF needs to be substantially increased if Springfield intends to keep its promise. According to the Center on Tax and Budget Accountability, it could take until fiscal year 2038 before the formula is fully funded if Springfield continues to contribute the minimum funding amount of $350M each year.
What’s the impact of Evidence-Based Funding on Illinois Districts?
Since EBF came into existence, CPS has received nearly $300 million in additional state funding. CPS is still $1.4 billion away from being fully and adequately funded.
This additional state funding could provide over $4,300 in NEW per-student funding. For CPS this would mean each student gets nearly double the funding they receive currently.
Districts have used this additional new funding in many different ways including increasing support and programming for students, dual language programs, smaller class sizes and more teachers in classrooms, more full-time positions, supplementing budgets and supplies and improving accessibility needs.