During a Thursday City Club of Chicago discussion on the current state of Chicago Public Schools, panelists discussed the many challenges facing the cash-strapped school system.

The panel included: Jitu Brown, organizer of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization; Lauren FitzPatrick, education reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times; Sarah Karp, former deputy editor of  Catalyst Chicago; and Wendy Katten, director of Raise Your Hand, a parent-led coalition advocating on behalf of quality public education. 

Thursday’s discussion initially focused on CPS’s $1.1. billion budget deficit. Responding to the increasingly negative perception of CPS finances, Karp noted the system has faced financial difficulties in the past and explained the system has found creative ways to save money without negatively affecting students’ learning.

“The budget deficit seems very huge and very formidable, but we’ve faced this before,” she said. In previous years school officials found extra money for the budget through seemingly obvious solutions, such as turning off lights in schools at night and cancelling administrative magazine subscriptions, Karp recalled.

Brown and Katten both suggested city officials could help CPS address its budget gap by transferring TIF surplus funds to the school system.

While responding to a question from Troy LaRaviere, principal of CPS’s Blaine Elementary, Brown argued that a lack of money was not the only problem facing the school system, contending CPS needed to more equitably distribute its funding.

“We have a budget crisis, but we also have a priorities crisis,” Brown explained, adding that children in low-income neighborhood schools are being cheated due to a lack of resources.

Katten said an example of CPS’s “priorities crisis” was privatization, pointing to the opening of new schools run by private operators. She contended CPS has been “totally irresponsible in the proliferation of schools.” Katten argued “opening more [schools] is a bad idea.” Karp agreed the trend to privatization was a problem. She suggest the move towards privatization is unlikely to be reversed, saying she expects the next CPS chief executive to hail from a business background as opposed to an education background.

Despite the district’s budget difficulties, panelists on Thursday noted CPS has been doing some things right. “I think there are people in CPS who are running good schools,” FitzPatrick told the audience. Her fellow panelists all agreed. Brown commended CPS for recent increasing in graduation rates. He attributed the higher graduation rates to the Freshman Connection program, a month-long summer program offered to incoming high school students to get them on track for academic success. Katten said the organization she leads, Raise Your Hand, started a blog on Tumblr called “CPS Success” in which they publish positive things that are being done at public schools throughout Chicago.

The panelists all agreed CPS was investing too many resources in standardized testing. FitzPatrick, Katten and Karp all said testing should not be eliminated entirely because it does hold some value. But they argued it should be used only in moderation. Brown had a different idea for what should replace the district’s existing standardized tests.

“Balanced assessment like they use at the University of Chicago Lab School where the mayor’s children go,” he said.