Forty Jobs Against a $732 Million Gap
Summary
Chicago Public Schools' own FY2026 budget book forecast a $520 million FY2027 deficit. Nine months later the district put the number at $732.5 million and stripped assistant principals from 138 small schools to help close it — by July, discretionary funds and exceptions had spared all but about 40.
A forecast that missed by $212 million
CPS doesn't hide its own numbers — it publishes a multi-year deficit table in every budget book. The one behind the FY2026 budget, approved in August 2025, showed the FY2027 gap falling to $520 million once that year's fixes took hold. By the time CPS released preliminary FY2027 school budgets in May 2026, the preliminary deficit had grown to $732.5 million — a figure CPS itself flags as provisional, built on an assumed $100 million Tax Increment Financing surplus and excluding what the district may owe the City of Chicago for its municipal pension fund (MEABF). The final number goes to the Board of Education for a vote by August 29, 2026.
View data as table
| FY2026 deficit, closed | $734M | approved budget, Aug. 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| FY2027 deficit, forecast Aug. 2025 | $520M | CPS's own forward projection |
| FY2027 deficit, updated May 2026 | $732.5M | preliminary, revised nine months later |
CPS names the same drivers each cycle: the state funds the district at 73% of what Illinois' own formula considers adequate, federal pandemic aid has expired, and enrollment has fallen by 45,000 students since 2019 even as the district added more than 9,790 staff positions over the same stretch. None of that is new information — it's the same structural mismatch the district described when it closed the FY2026 gap. What changed is the size of the number.
The cut that mostly didn't happen
In 2024, CPS committed to staffing an assistant principal at every school, regardless of size, as part of a formula meant to steer more resources to high-need campuses. That commitment was the first thing on the table this spring: the preliminary FY2027 staffing formula withdrew AP funding at schools under 250 students, putting 138 campuses at risk of losing the position. The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, mid-way through negotiating its first full contract, sent the district a cease-and-desist letter over it.
View data as table
| Slated to lose AP funding | 138 schools | under the FY2027 formula |
|---|---|---|
| Kept it — discretionary funds | 72 schools | |
| Kept it — district exception | 23 schools | |
| Lost the position | ~40 schools | the actual net cut |
By the time Chalkbeat Chicago tallied the outcome in early July, 72 of the 138 schools had used their own discretionary dollars to keep the position, and CPS had granted exceptions to another 23 — leaving about 40 schools that actually lost an assistant principal. District-wide, CPS still employed 644 assistant principals as of its end-of-June staffing count, up from roughly 600 before the 2023 formula change and 540 during the last budget crunch in 2017.
Chalkbeat's reporting also puts the 2026 average AP salary at $135,650. Multiplied against the roughly 40 positions actually eliminated, that's about $5.4 million — a figure this publication calculated, not one CPS has reported — against a $732.5 million gap. Even if every dollar of it is real savings, it closes under 1% of the deficit the cut was announced to help close.
The takeaway
- The forecast moved more than the cut did. CPS's own FY2027 deficit projection grew by $212.5 million — 41% — in nine months. The assistant-principal cut, the most visible line item attached to closing that gap, ended up touching roughly 40 of the district's more than 600 schools.
- Discretion absorbed most of the policy. A formula meant to apply uniformly across 138 small schools was substantially reversed at the school level — through discretionary spending and case-by-case district exceptions — without CPS revising the formula itself.
- The 2024 staffing guarantee didn't survive contact with the budget. A commitment to fund an assistant principal at every school, made two years ago to direct resources toward high-need campuses, was the first thing withdrawn when the deficit forecast jumped — even though restoring it cost the district almost nothing to do, case by case, once schools and the union pushed back.
The $732.5 million FY2027 figure is CPS's own preliminary estimate as of May 2026, built on assumptions (a $100 million TIF surplus, no MEABF reimbursement) that can still change before the Board's August 2026 vote. The assistant-principal outcome figures reflect Chalkbeat's count as of early July 2026 and may shift as remaining school appeals are resolved.
Sources
- Chicago Public Schools, FY2026 Budget Book — Final Approved (August 2025) — the $734 million FY2026 deficit CPS closed, and the district's own multi-year projection showing a $520 million FY2027 deficit after FY2026 solutions. cps.edu
- Chicago Public Schools, "Chicago Public Schools Launches FY2027 Budget Process with Preliminary School-Level Budgets" (press release, May 13, 2026) — the updated $732.5 million preliminary FY2027 deficit, its TIF/MEABF assumptions, the 73%-of-adequacy funding figure, and the 45,000-student enrollment decline since 2019. cps.edu
- Mila Koumpilova, "Chicago cut funding for assistant principals in small schools. Most chose to keep them anyway," Chalkbeat Chicago (July 7, 2026) — the 138-school AP funding cut and its outcome (72 kept via discretionary funds, 23 via exception, about 40 lost the position), plus CPS's district-wide AP headcount and average AP salary. chalkbeat.org
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Chicago Public Schools closed its FY2026 budget in August 2025 by finding $734 million — a bond issuance, a property-tax increase, a TIF-surplus assumption, and roughly $320 million in central-office cuts. In that same budget book, the district told its own board what would come next: a $520 million structural deficit in FY2027, even after all of that. Nine months later, in May 2026, CPS put the real number at $732.5 million — 41% higher than its own forecast — and told principals at the district's smallest schools they'd be losing their assistant principals to help close it.