The Board of Education Is Where the Money Meets the Kids
If you want to know who holds power in Chicago, don’t start at City Hall. Start at 1 North Dearborn, where the Chicago Board of Education meets. That seven-member body — appointed by the mayor, not elected — votes on a budget larger than most state governments, signs contracts worth hundreds of millions, closes schools, opens schools, and decides which neighborhoods get resources and which get excuses.
The Board of Education is the governing body of Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest school district in the country. It approves the district’s annual budget, awards procurement contracts, sets capital plans, votes on school actions including closures and consolidations, and oversees the CEO it hires. Adjacent concepts matter here: Local School Councils, the district’s capital budget, the Board’s monthly agenda, the Chicago Teachers Union contract, and the Illinois State Board of Education’s oversight role. For readers of answerchicago.org, the Board is the single richest source of ward-level accountability stories in the city — and it is the least covered.
That’s the problem. The Board of Education makes decisions that shape every ward in Chicago, and almost nobody is in the room watching.
What the Board Actually Controls
Let’s be specific, because vague complaints about “the schools” are how power hides.
Money
The Board approves CPS’s annual operating budget, which in recent years has run north of $9 billion when federal relief funds are included. It also approves the capital budget — the five-year plan that decides which schools get new roofs, new boilers, new air conditioning, and which get deferred maintenance. That capital plan is a map of whose kids breathe hot air in June and whose kids get a new annex.
Contracts
Every major CPS vendor — bus companies, food service providers, construction firms, technology vendors, charter operators — passes through Board votes. These are public documents. The agenda packets are posted. The dollar amounts are listed. The vendors are named. And yet most of these votes pass with zero public scrutiny because no reporter is sitting in the room asking who benefits.
School Actions
When CPS wants to close a school, consolidate a school, or turn around a school, the Board votes. These decisions reshape neighborhoods. They affect property values, commute times, and the social fabric of blocks. The 2013 closure of roughly 50 schools is the most famous example, but school actions happen every year, and each one is a story about power.
Policy
The Board sets policy on discipline, special education, bilingual education, and enrollment. These policies determine whether a kid gets the services they’re legally entitled to or whether a family has to hire a lawyer to get them.
Why the Coverage Gap Exists
Chicago is not a news desert. We have the Tribune, the Sun-Times, Block Club, WBEZ, the Reader, and a growing set of independent outlets. But the Board of Education beat is thin. Here’s why.
It’s a grind
Board meetings run for hours. Agenda packets are hundreds of pages. The real decisions often happen in committee or in private conversations before the public vote. Covering it well means reading procurement documents, tracking budget lines across years, and knowing the difference between a line item that looks small and one that’s a precursor to something big. That’s labor-intensive work, and newsrooms have been cutting labor for two decades.
It’s not glamorous
School board meetings don’t generate the clicks that a mayoral scandal does. But the cumulative effect of Board decisions on a neighborhood is often larger than a single City Hall fight. A school closure can do more damage to a block than a zoning variance. A capital plan can redirect millions away from a ward for a decade.
The Board is appointed, not elected
This is the structural reason the beat gets less attention. When officials are elected, there’s a campaign, a horse race, a natural news hook. When they’re appointed by the mayor, the accountability path runs through the mayor’s office, and the Board itself becomes a kind of procedural fog. Voters can’t throw the bums out because they didn’t put them in. That makes journalism the primary accountability mechanism — and we’re not doing enough of it.
What a Ward-Level Board Story Looks Like
Here’s the practical part. If you’re a reporter — or a reader who wants to push your local outlet — here’s what a Board of Education story looks like when it’s built on documents and addresses.
Follow the capital plan to your ward
CPS publishes a capital plan that lists projects by school and by address. Pull the plan. Sort it by ward. Compare what your ward got to what it asked for, and compare it to what neighboring wards got. The story is in the gap. The Board votes on that plan. The CEO proposes it. The mayor appoints the Board. That’s your chain of accountability.
Track a contract from vote to delivery
Pick a vendor that got a Board contract. Find the vote in the Board’s public agenda archive. Then find out what happened. Did the buses show up? Did the food get delivered? Did the construction finish on time? The contract is the document. The school is the address. The kids are the people who pay when it goes wrong.
Read the Board’s agenda like a beat reporter
The agenda is posted before every meeting. It lists every vote. Most of it is routine. Some of it is not. A reporter who reads every agenda and flags the anomalies — a no-bid contract, a sudden change in enrollment policy, a school action that wasn’t on anyone’s radar — is doing the work that no press release will ever do.
Attend the meetings
Public comment at Board meetings is where parents and students say out loud what the data shows. That’s not just color. It’s testimony. It’s a record. And it’s often the first place a story surfaces.
The Accountability Chain
When something goes wrong in CPS, here’s who has the power to fix it:
- The Board of Education — votes on budgets, contracts, and school actions. Appointed by the mayor. Meets monthly.
- The CEO of CPS — runs the district day to day. Hired by the Board. Proposes the budget and the capital plan.
- The Mayor of Chicago — appoints the Board. Owns the outcomes, whether or not they admit it.
- The Illinois State Board of Education — oversees compliance with state law, including special education and bilingual requirements.
- The City Council — controls some adjacent funding and zoning that affects school sites, but does not run the schools.
Every story about a school problem should name which of these offices can fix it. That’s not a rhetorical flourish. It’s the difference between a complaint and a demand.
What More Reporters Would Actually Change
More reporters on the Board beat would not magically fix CPS. But it would change the incentive structure.
Sunlight on procurement
When vendors know someone is reading the contracts, they bid differently. When Board members know someone is watching the votes, they ask harder questions. This is not speculation — it’s the basic logic of oversight. The reason it doesn’t happen now is that the cost of being caught is low because the chance of being caught is low.
Earlier warning on school actions
School closures and consolidations are often announced with a timeline that makes real community input impossible. A reporter who tracks the signals — enrollment projections, facility condition reports, budget line shifts — can surface the story before the decision is locked. That gives parents and Local School Councils a chance to organize.
A public record of promises
Board members and CEOs make promises. Reporters keep the receipts. When a CEO says a program will be funded and it isn’t, that’s a story. When a Board member says they’ll hold the line on a contract and then votes for it, that’s a story. Over time, that record is how voters and parents decide who to trust.
How Readers Can Push for This Coverage
You don’t have to be a reporter to create demand for this beat.
- Ask your alderman what they know about CPS capital spending in your ward. The alderman doesn’t run the schools, but they should know what’s being built and what’s being deferred.
- Subscribe to a local outlet that does this work. Money follows attention.
- Send tips with documents. If you have a Board agenda item, a contract, or a school action notice that doesn’t add up, send it to a reporter. The document is the story.
- Show up to Board meetings. Public comment is public record. It’s also a signal to editors that people care.
- Ask candidates for mayor how they’ll use their appointment power. The Board is the mayor’s. Make them own it.
FAQ
Who appoints the Chicago Board of Education?
The mayor of Chicago appoints all seven members of the Board of Education. They are not elected. This means the accountability path for Board decisions runs through the mayor’s office, which is why ward-level reporting on the Board is so important — it’s often the only public scrutiny these decisions get.
What does the Board of Education vote on?
The Board votes on the CPS annual budget, the capital plan, major procurement contracts, school actions including closures and consolidations, and district policy on discipline, special education, and enrollment. The agenda for each meeting is posted publicly before the vote.
How can I find out what the Board is voting on?
CPS posts Board agendas and meeting materials on its website before each monthly meeting. The agenda packets include contract amounts, vendor names, and school addresses. Reading them is the most direct way to see what’s being decided before it’s decided.
Why does local reporting on the Board matter more than national education coverage?
National coverage tells you about trends. Local coverage tells you which school in your ward is getting a new boiler and which one isn’t. The Board’s decisions are hyper-local — they’re about specific addresses, specific contracts, and specific kids. That’s the level where accountability actually happens.
The Thread to Pull
If you want to understand power in Chicago, pull the thread that starts at the Board of Education. Start with the next agenda. Find the contract that’s largest. Find the school action that’s quietest. Find the capital project in your ward that got deferred while another ward got funded. Then ask who voted for it, who proposed it, and who appointed them.
The answers are public. The documents exist. The only thing missing is someone in the room to read them out loud. That’s the job. Chicago needs more people doing it.