Between mayoral announcements and families settling in for the summer, Chicago Public Schools has been preparing the budget for approval in just a few weeks. As I have attended budget briefings in every corner of the city, people have taken notice of the timeliness of CPS passing a budget. Usually, CPS passes the budget in August, but there is a push this year to pass it in July. While the accelerated schedule is due to the hard work and breakneck speed of the budget staff, the haste with which we are passing this budget is due to the financial calamity waiting at the door if we do not.
If the budget is not passed by July, we will not be able to secure the needed tax anticipation notes, or TANs, to keep CPS open. That is not an exaggeration.
CPS is already facing serious cash-flow pressures due to ongoing delays in Cook County property tax distributions and underperforming year-end financials. 2026 is projected to end with a negative net cash position of approximately $642 million, with $914 million in TANs outstanding against a cash balance of only $272 million. The district’s expenses are outpacing incoming revenue; there is no cash reserve cushion. CPS is reaching the legal limits on available borrowing for 2026. The current $1.25 billion borrowing capacity is expected to be fully exhausted in August. Without action, operations will cease, paychecks will stop and the start of the school year will be thrown into chaos just as families are ending their summer breaks.
How did we get here? In short, Cook County has delayed a year’s worth of revenue to the district. The Tribune has chronicled how the failures of Assessor Fritz Kaegi to get assessments done on time, along with Cook County’s Tyler Technologies debacle, have led to nearly an entire year of revenues not making it to CPS — and not just our district, but many units of local government in Cook County.
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Because CPS is funded almost solely by property taxes, Cook County’s failure cost Chicago taxpayers $3 billion dollars in TANs and tens of millions in borrowing costs. Dollars that could have made it to the classroom instead went to useless interest payments.
Last year alone, the five-month delay of the 2025 second installment of taxes cost CPS about $30 million, or approximately $220,000 per day at the peak. The two-month delay of the first installment in 2026 has already cost $10 million to date, or about $165,000 per day at a borrowing peak of $1.65 billion. The delays since 2020 have cost the district a total of over $80 million. And this cost will grow further because of another anticipated two-month delay for the 2026 second-installment property tax bills, which are being shifted from Aug. 1 to October.
Now, due to another delay, CPS will reach its legal limit for TANs by August. If we do not pass a budget this month, CPS will not be able to talk to banks to secure the money to pay any of its bills.
As we go into the final weeks of the budget process, I urge everyone involved — board members, staff, union leadership, families and concerned citizens — to not engage in brinkmanship on this budget, but to get it done in the time allotted. We cannot have the budget fight we had last budget cycle. Fighting among adults will not lead to any positive outcome for our students. We need to show our children how adults are supposed to behave: Cooperate for the common good.
While there has been a lot of talk about the money Springfield owes CPS, that is not a complete view of what the goal of education spending from Springfield was supposed to be. It was an aspirational goal for CPS. To Springfield’s credit, Gov. JB Pritzker and the General Assembly increased education spending in this last budget.
In the future, what we need is legislation that holds the county accountable for the borrowing costs related to TANs when it fails to administer tax collection on time — not just for CPS, but for all Cook County units of local government. Schools, parks, libraries and public safety agencies should be held harmless for failures by a unit of government they do not control.
Following this budget, the Board of Education needs to immediately begin the internal work of optimizing operations of the district by looking ahead to the next fiscal year as soon as possible. Taxpayers, parents and most importantly our students deserve a budget that protects them for years to come.
Jennifer Custer is a member of the Chicago Board of Education who represents District 1B.
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