New CPS website lets you get inside school budget
BY ART GOLAB AND ROSALIND ROSSI Staff Reporters July 6, 2012 9:46PM
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Updated: August 8, 2012 6:14AM
Did your Chicago public school gain or lose staff in the battle to close this year’s $665 million schools deficit?
A new interactive Chicago Public School website may give you the answer as part of a mountain of online budget data being released at the district’s website.
Chicago Public School officials say the interactive features — including fancy pie charts and color-coded databanks — have made this year’s budget release “more open and transparent than ever before.’’
Parents and residents may be most interested in the “Find Your School Budget” section of the interactive report. It lets them see how much in funding — and how many staff members — every public school in the city is projected to gain or lose.
For further details, click on the name of a school and you can see whether its enrollment is up or down (something that impacts staffing levels), whether it gained or lost teachers vs. support personnel and whether different buckets of funds will grow or shrink.
The CPS interactive site indicates Pritzker Elementary School, for example, is projected to lose only 13 students next year, but it will gain two teachers and nearly $161,000 in funding. Pritzker’s equipment line will jump $90,000 while its funding for transportation will drop by nearly $21,000, to $300.
Why?
There’s the rub. The database doesn’t say.
To enter the database with school-by-school information, go to http://www.cps.edu/FY13Budget/Pages/FY13ProposedBudget.aspx; on the left click “Interactive Reports,’’ and across the top click “Find Your School Budget.’’
