Chicago Public Schools notified 162 central office and citywide employees on Friday, July 10, that their positions are being eliminated, the district confirmed publicly on Monday. The layoffs represent the latest round of cuts in a prolonged effort to close a $732 million budget deficit for the 2026-27 academic year — the second consecutive year the district has faced a shortfall exceeding $730 million. CPS spokesperson Mary Fergus stated that the reductions will save approximately $18 million and were made only after the district exhausted non-personnel cost-cutting measures across every department. The affected positions span the Talent Office, Information Technology Services, the Department of Principal Quality, and the Office of School Counseling, among others. An additional 18 employees in the district’s 2026 fiscal year layoff prevention pool have been informed that their placement has expired.
Key Takeaways
- Chicago Public Schools laid off 162 employees on July 10, with 82 from central office departments and 80 from citywide positions that support individual schools.
- Of those laid off, 38 are represented by SEIU Local 73 and 25 by the Chicago Teachers Union; neither union has publicly commented on the cuts.
- The layoffs are expected to save $18 million against a $732 million deficit for the upcoming school year — meaning the cuts address roughly 2.5% of the gap.
- CPS stated it had renegotiated vendor contracts and consolidated non-essential administrative services before resorting to staff reductions.
- The district plans to unveil the full proposed 2026-27 budget later this week, with the Chicago Board of Education required to approve a balanced spending plan by August 29.
What Positions Were Cut And Why?
The 162 eliminated positions are split evenly between two categories. Central office employees — the 82 positions in the first group — work in departments focused on districtwide policies, operations, and administrative functions. The remaining 80 are classified as “citywide” employees, a designation that describes staff whose roles support individual schools but who are funded and managed centrally rather than through school-level budgets. The distinction matters because citywide cuts can affect services that schools rely on — technology support, counseling coordination, principal training — even though the positions are not technically school-based.
The departments affected include the Talent Office, which manages human resources and recruitment; Information Technology Services, which supports the district’s digital infrastructure; the Department of Principal Quality, which oversees school leadership development; and the Office of School Counseling. CPS did not release a complete list of every eliminated position or provide a breakdown beyond the central-office-versus-citywide split and the union affiliations.
The union composition of the layoffs offers some insight into which functions took the heaviest hits. Thirty-eight of the 162 employees are members of SEIU Local 73, the union that represents CPS support staff including custodians and security personnel. Twenty-five are members of the Chicago Teachers Union, though the district has not specified which CTU-affiliated roles were eliminated. Neither union had issued a public response as of Monday afternoon.
CPS leadership directed department heads to “prioritize maintaining critical functions that directly serve students, and protect school-based staffing to the greatest extent possible” when determining where cuts would fall. That language mirrors the framing the district used during last year’s layoffs and signals that CPS is attempting to insulate classrooms from the direct impact of administrative reductions — though education advocates have argued that cuts to counseling, technology, and principal support staff inevitably affect students even when teachers themselves are retained.
How Big Is The Deficit And Where Did It Come From?
The $732 million shortfall for the 2026-27 school year is driven by three structural forces that have been compounding for years.
The first is declining enrollment. CPS has lost tens of thousands of students over the past decade as families have left the city, shifted to charter schools, or opted for private education. Fewer students means less per-pupil funding from the state, but the district’s fixed costs — facilities, pensions, debt service — do not decline proportionally.
The second is the expiration of federal pandemic relief funding. Between 2020 and 2025, CPS received nearly $3 billion in one-time federal aid through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) program. That money allowed the district to maintain staffing levels, expand programs, and avoid the kind of cuts that would have otherwise been necessary. With the federal funding now fully exhausted, CPS is confronting the operational costs those dollars had been masking.
The third is rising operational expenses, including pension obligations, health insurance costs, and maintenance for aging school buildings. CPS operates a $10 billion annual budget, but a significant share of that spending is locked into long-term obligations that are not easily reduced through administrative action.
Mayor Brandon Johnson addressed the structural dimension of the crisis earlier this year, stating that “in order for us to repair the structural damage, the state of Illinois has to contribute more.” That position reflects a longstanding argument from CPS and Chicago officials that the state’s evidence-based funding formula, while an improvement over earlier models, still leaves the district underfunded relative to its needs.
Is This A Pattern?
The July 2026 layoffs are nearly identical in scale and structure to the cuts CPS made one year ago. In June 2025, the district laid off 161 central office and citywide employees while facing a $734 million deficit for the 2025-26 school year. That round included 67 central and network office workers, seven CTU positions, and 87 SEIU Local 73 members — nearly all of whom were crossing guards. The 2025 cuts generated similar savings and similar criticism from unions and community advocates who argued that administrative reductions were insufficient to address a deficit of that magnitude.
The consistency of the numbers — a deficit hovering around $730 million two years running, with layoffs targeting roughly 160 positions each time — suggests that CPS has settled into a pattern of annual trimming that manages the political optics of the budget crisis without fundamentally resolving the structural gap. The $18 million saved by eliminating 162 positions represents approximately 2.5% of the total deficit. The remaining 97.5% must be addressed through other means: further non-personnel cuts, potential school-level staffing reductions, increased class sizes, and continued pressure on state and federal policymakers for additional funding.
What Comes Next?
CPS is expected to present the full proposed 2026-27 budget later this week. District officials have separately proposed trimming an additional $105 million in non-school-based expenses. The Chicago Board of Education must approve a balanced budget by August 29.
Earlier this spring, when the deficit was first disclosed, the district outlined a broader set of potential cuts that alarmed parents and educators: losses capped at four teachers per elementary school and six per high school, the elimination of more than 120 assistant principal positions, and reductions to counselors, bilingual coordinators, interventionists, academic coaches, sports teams, music programs, and after-school tutoring. Whether those school-level cuts will be included in the final budget or whether the district will find alternative savings remains the central question heading into the board’s August vote.
The CPS budget crisis does not exist in isolation. The city of Chicago itself is facing a $130 million midyear revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year, with a projected $680 million gap for 2027. The overlapping fiscal pressures on the city and the school district create a compounding effect: city budget constraints limit the supplemental funding that CPS might otherwise seek from municipal sources, while the district’s own cuts reduce services in neighborhoods that are simultaneously absorbing the impact of city-level austerity.
For the 162 employees who received layoff notices on July 10, the structural analysis offers little comfort. Their positions were the margin the district chose to cut first. The budget fight now moves to the question of who — and what — gets cut next.
FAQs
How many CPS employees were laid off? Chicago Public Schools notified 162 employees on July 10 that their positions are being eliminated. Of those, 82 worked in central office departments and 80 held citywide positions that support individual schools. An additional 18 employees in a layoff prevention pool were also informed that their placement has expired.
How much will the layoffs save? The 162 eliminated positions are expected to save approximately $18 million, according to CPS spokesperson Mary Fergus. The savings represent roughly 2.5% of the district’s $732 million deficit for the 2026-27 school year.
Why does CPS have a $732 million deficit? The deficit stems from three primary factors: declining student enrollment that reduces per-pupil state funding, the expiration of nearly $3 billion in federal pandemic relief funding, and rising operational costs including pension obligations and building maintenance.
Will teachers be laid off? CPS has stated that it prioritized protecting school-based staffing in this round of cuts. However, the district has previously outlined the possibility of capping teacher losses at four per elementary school and six per high school, along with eliminating more than 120 assistant principal positions, as part of the broader budget process.
When will CPS finalize its budget? The district is expected to present a full proposed budget for 2026-27 later this week. The Chicago Board of Education must approve a balanced spending plan by August 29.
Did this happen last year too? CPS laid off 161 central office and citywide employees in June 2025 while facing a $734 million deficit for the 2025-26 year. That round included 67 central and network office workers, seven CTU positions, and 87 SEIU Local 73 members, nearly all of whom were crossing guards.
