Chicago: 26% of students have special needs; enrollment declining
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
The Chicago Public Schools system is spending nearly twice as much on special education as it did in 2019. Too little state and federal funding means much of this burden falls on Chicago taxpayers. . . .
When her son had reached his second birthday without uttering a single word, Tiffany decided to have him evaluated by a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Tiffany’s little boy is now 6. And he is part of a growing group of students in Chicago Public Schools who have autism and need special education — a new reality for the school district that has major academic and financial implications.
As of this spring, almost 83,000 students qualified for either an individualized education program, known as an IEP, or a 504 plan, which legally require school districts to provide students with specialized education services or to remove barriers to their learning.
That’s 26% of CPS students, up from 20% in 2019. It’s a national trend that’s more pronounced in Chicago.
The number of students with autism has doubled since 2019, according to CPS data obtained through an open records request. Many of these students require intensive classroom support and therapy and a growing number spend the majority of their day in separate classes.
Surge in CPS students with autism and developmental delays
Even as enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has decreased in the past seven years, the number of students who need special education services and support has increased.
Chicago is not alone. More children across the country are being diagnosed with autism, a fact that experts attribute to a variety of reasons, including that pediatricians and parents are more aware of the early signs. . . .
But, as the cost of providing special education rises, federal and state funding is not keeping up. And that’s putting a tremendous strain on CPS’ and other districts’ budgets.
CPS spent $1.8 billion on special education in 2026, almost twice what it did in 2019. At the same time, the gap between what state and federal funding covers and what CPS must pay has grown by an astronomical amount. CPS’ total budget is roughly $10 billion.
Special education costs skyrocket, CPS burden rises
Most of the increased spending is to pay for teachers, aides and clinicians, such as occupational therapists. CPS also has more students with special needs who are often bused to schools where they spend most of the day in separate small classes. These are expensive and transportation costs have also doubled.
Most of that money pays for teachers, aides, social workers, psychologists and therapists. It’s the primary reason why CPS added 9,000 staffers over the past seven years, even as its enrollment dropped by 45,000 students.
When CPS officials announced 1,500 staff layoffs and other drastic measures to close the district’s $732 million deficit earlier this week, they stressed that they were actually adding more special education staff.
Joshua Long, chief of CPS’ office for students with disabilities, said CPS is in a difficult position. . . .
In recent years, schools like Nash with majority Black student populations were more likely than schools with mostly white or Latino students to have a significant increase in students with disabilities, according to a WBEZ analysis. This is partly because CPS often puts self-contained classes in schools with space due to low enrollment, which tend to be located in majority Black neighborhoods.
Byrd thinks it is also because more children in the area need the intensive support that’s offered in these classes. . . .
CPS says state special education funding is falling woefully short. And district leaders, school board members and unions are urgently calling on the state to increase funding. They want Gov. JB Pritzker or Democratic leaders to bring lawmakers in for a special session, but so far they have refused.
Pritzker’s office and state education officials say the state has stepped up its contributions to schools, primarily by putting $2.5 billion more into the education funding formula since Pritzker took office in 2019.
Still, two-thirds of school districts are well below the adequate funding level that the state promised to reach by next year. At the rate Pritzker is funneling money into the school funding formula, experts say it will take at least another decade.
The federal government also falls short. It provides about 10.5% of the average per-student cost for special education — way less than the 40% that Congress promised when the original law for students with disabilities was approved in 1975. . . .
Nationally, so many school districts are struggling to provide special education that U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently toured the country to talk with school districts about it. She put $144 million more this past year into federal grants for special education and has asked Congress to provide an additional $500 million in next year’s budget. . . .
She knows parents, pediatricians and others “are really hungry to understand” why there are more autism diagnoses.
There’s not a simple answer. Research has shown that autism is often heritable and that genetic variations and mutations play a role. But children are also at higher risk if their parents are older, their mom has poor mental health during pregnancy or they are born prematurely, Pierre says.
Likely the biggest change, though, is that pediatricians and parents are more aware of autism and are keyed in when children fail to hit developmental milestones, she says.
“We’re getting better at diagnosing subtle presentations of autism younger, especially with girls who tend to be overlooked,” Pierre says. “That can maybe explain, to some degree, why we’re seeing kids come into the Chicago Public Schools with a diagnosis, as opposed to getting diagnosed later.”
CPS data bears this out: The rise in students in special education is most pronounced in preschool, kindergarten and first and second grades. . . .
Comments