Portage Park Elementary School Braces for Cuts View Full Caption

PORTAGE PARK — Portage Park Elementary School will see its budget slashed by approximately $400,000 in the coming weeks because of a steep decline in enrollment, Principal Maureen Ready said.

The budget cuts will force Ready to lay off three teachers by Sept. 29 and require the school to consolidate some grades, Ready said Tuesday during a meeting of Local School Council.

Chicago Public Schools officials had expected 1,030 students to enroll at the neighborhood school at 5330 W. Berteau Ave., but only 951 students attended class on Monday, the 10th day of school, which is used to set the school's budget, Ready said.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think [our enrollment] would be down this much," Ready said of the 79-student drop.

Heather Cherone says even though the school year just started, layoffs will take effect immediately:

CPS officials are preparing to fully implement a new budgeting system for the first time that earmarks money for schools based on the number of students, rather than the number of teaching positions.

"It's awful," Ready said of the looming layoffs.

While CPS officials say the new system will give principals more flexibility and replace an outdated formula, critics contend that it has made it almost impossible to offer students a well-rounded education.

Each school will get about $4,700 for each student in kindergarten through third grade and $4,400 for students in fourth through eighth grade, slightly more than last year.

CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said the district has not yet finalized enrollment figures for schools, and "any discussions are only projections of the individual schools."

The district's budget team trained principals last winter to implement the new student-based budgeting system, and gave principals a chance to appeal enrollment projections before they were finalized, McCaffrey said.

Last year, 1,032 students attended Portage Park Elementary School, which recorded an increase in student test scores as compared with the previous year.

Most of the students who left Portage Park Elementary School moved to the near suburbs, while others enrolled in school at Our Lady of Victory or nearby charter schools, Ready said.

David Nordwall, a parent representative on the council, said he was upset there was nothing the LSC could do to stop the cuts.

"It will disrupt our children's education to have to switch classrooms," Norwell said. "It will disrupt the whole school."

The latest round of budget cuts come a year after the district cut $900,000 from Portage Park Elementary's budget as part of a district-wide belt tightening to fill what officials said was a massive deficit caused by rising pension costs.

Had district officials implemented the student-based budgeting last year, Portage Park Elementary would have lost another $60,000 because it was short 30 students, according to CPS records.

In addition, the school has had no afterschool programs since the start of school because the grant that provided free activities for low-income students was canceled by district officials, Ready said.

The funding may be restored in a few weeks, Ready said.

Despite the budget cuts, the LSC unanimously rejected on Tuesday a request from U.S. Cellular to build a new cell phone tower on the school's roof, saying the $8,000 that would come with it wasn't worth the trouble.

In June, district officials dismantled one of two cell towers on the roof, which once meant an extra $60,000 for the Far Northwest Side neighborhood school.

The LSC also voted to fill one of the two vacancies on the council with a city planner who said she would spearhead an effort to amend the boundaries of a nearby tax increment financing district to include the school.

Elections during the spring did not attract enough candidates to fill all of the seats on the LSC.

Including the school in a TIF district could provide much needed funds for new programs and facilities at the school, Linda Mercado-Vazquez said.

"It will be a lengthy process," Mercado-Vazquez said. "We have nothing to lose and everything to gain."

For more Northwest Side news from Heather Cherone, listen here: