Dear Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, Treasurer Maria Pappas, Assessor Fritz Kaegi, and Cook County Commissioners, 

Because of the Governor and General Assembly’s lack of compliance with the evidence-based formula, CPS students and families are facing down the prospect of disastrous school cuts, including the prospect of two weeks cut from the school year, after already seeing hundreds of position cuts, and special education services eliminated for some students and reduced for others. This will mean students will learn in much larger classes, and southside schools who were finally rebuilding their school libraries will have to start all over again as CPS lays off librarians. 

Continued delays in property taxes across Cook County pose such great danger to our school communities across the county. 

A decade after the historic Evidence Based Funding formula was passed into law in order to provide all students with an adequate set of educational resources and programs, Governor Pritzker still has not fully met the commitment to our students by fully funding our school communities. Public school communities are underfunded by $5 billion statewide. CPS is underfunded by $2 billion. Until that state promise is met, schools in Cook County and across the state still rely overwhelmingly on local property taxes to meet the needs of their students. 

The delays put school board members charged with budgeting for our students in an even worse scenario than the impossible situation they were facing. Last year CPS spent well over $40 million in interest costs due to extensive short–term borrowing, waiting over 6 months for property taxes last fall and again this spring. According to a December 2025 WBEZ report, CPS was paying approximately $220,000 per day in interest on short-term borrowing. That means our students are losing two teachers every day as a result of these delays. This is already wreaking havoc as districts across the state lost funding for after-school programming and full service community schools and are bracing for additional attacks from the Trump administration. 

Other school districts, community colleges, and public libraries across the County have reported the extensive cost of these delays, amounting to at least $120 million in additional borrowing costs and expenses - funds that otherwise would go towards programming and services that our constituents and families rely on.

These delays have continued - last month CPS was still waiting on over $400 million in property tax payments from the County from this spring - funds that the County has collected and are held by the Treasurer - but inexplicably have not been distributed to CPS. These delays have also affected the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, which by law receives their property tax levy directly. Yet the delayed billing and distribution process has meant the potential for more underfunding by lawmakers. The damage from these delays is severe: reduced funding, less special education services, larger class sizes, counselors carrying larger caseloads of students who need critical support, and less clinicians and teacher assistants to provide our students what they deserve. 

None of these delays are the fault of our school communities, yet our students and families pay the price.

Recognizing this, the County has offered a critical lending lifeline for eligible suburban school districts to access their tax dollars to which they are entitled, with no interest penalty. Yet CPS, which serves the highest number of  Black students, English language learners, unhoused students and students living in low income communities in the County and in the state, has been selectively excluded from this program. Exclusion from this program means tens of millions in additional interest costs paid to banks. Meanwhile, students and families will have to absorb cuts to their classrooms and even face the prospect of a delayed start to the year. 

The County is holding money that belongs to our students and should be released now.  It has the tools to mitigate the impact for our students of any delay in payments, Chicago’s school communities should not be excluded. 

We the undersigned therefore:

1. Demand Treasurer Pappas release the funds owed to schools, parks and libraries immediately.

2. Call upon the Cook County Board to expand eligibility to its lending program to include the Chicago Public Schools like other school districts in the county that have been harmed by late property tax payments.

3. Demand Governor Pritzker call a special session to fully fund education and meet the legislative commitment to Illinois’ schools.

4. Call upon Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund to join us in a suit against Cook County seeking the full release and timely distribution of all owed property tax payments and compensatory damages for the losses our schools have endured as a result of the delayed and withheld tax payments.