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Chicago Public Schools is poised to cut in half the money and staff the district provided to some high schools after they removed police officers stationed at their campuses.
High schools were given money roughly equivalent to a school resource officer’s annual salary in order to implement alternative approaches to safety, known as Whole School Safety Plans.
A Chalkbeat analysis of the proposed 2026-27 budget found that funding for Whole School Safety Plans at 54 high schools would go from $8.7 million to $4 million and the number of positions would go from 80 to 42. Most schools would see a reduction from $160,000 or more to around $80,000 and the loss of roughly one position, under the proposed budget.
At the same time, CPS plans to roll out a new framework, designed to help all schools implement a wide-ranging policy related to safety and student well-being passed in 2024. That policy requires teaching social-emotional learning, having restorative practices, staffing a behavioral health team, maintaining at least one security guard, and annually updating an emergency management plan, among other things.
District officials and advocates who long fought to remove police and end harsh discipline practices said the framework is meant to expand those approaches beyond a subset of high schools.
In a statement, CPS officials characterized the money schools received after removing police as “temporary supplemental funding” and that it is now being “phased-out.”
“This is a planned adjustment to temporary transition funding, not a reduction in the District’s commitment to Whole School Safety,” the statement said. CPS also said they added 10 new climate team security officer positions and reclassified 28 other school climate positions.
Calls to remove police from Chicago high schools started years before 2020, when Local School Councils began voting on their removal. That year, 17 campuses cut school-based cops. In the years that followed, more schools voted to remove police, and in exchange, the district provided those campuses “trade-in” funding to support climate and culture coordinators, restorative justice coordinators, social workers, and security guards.
Researchers at the University of Chicago studied the impact of removing police and shifting to restorative practices at CPS high schools and found declines in school-based arrests and high-level discipline violations. Students said they felt a stronger sense of safety and belonging.
In 2024, the Chicago Board of Education, then made up of seven members appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, voted to cut the district’s contract with the Chicago Police Department and remove all school resource officers ahead of the 2024-25 school year.
Before that, CPS had a contract with the police department to station officers at schools. The cost was $33 million dollars in 2020, but fell to $11 million in 2022 before the board’s 2024 vote. CPS staffs security guards at all schools and budget documents show their ranks remain stable at more than 1800 in the proposed budget.
Jitu Brown, an elected school board member and longtime advocate for restorative justice practices, said the district needs to continue the work of undoing “decades of zero-tolerance policies that targeted Black and Brown youth and looked at our young people through a lens of hate.”
“I will personally check in to make sure that the resources you need will be provided, that you’re getting the support that you need from the district level to make sure that we can implement this plan,” Brown said at a news conference Thursday morning.
Maria Degillo, Youth Director of Communities United and a longtime activist on the issue, downplayed the cuts, noting these funds have only been available to about two dozen high schools that had voted to remove police. She said it’s more important to train staff inside all schools to be part of building safe school environments.
“We can’t think about it as just one position,” Degillo said. “Rather, how are you actually creating again a space where everybody feels like this is a part of what they do and this is how they move in their school?”
Ronan Shableski, the chief of safety and security for Chicago Public Schools, said his office is focused on making sure the Whole School Safety framework is implemented citywide.
“The safest schools aren’t just the ones that respond well to emergencies; they’re the ones that help prevent them,” Shableski said.
Shableski and Degillo said the district and community organizations plan to start training principals and assistant principals on the new framework starting in August.
This story has been updated to include a statement from Chicago Public Schools.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
