Dive Brief:

• Chicago released new school budgets Monday that could see the city's traditional public schools lose $60 million in funding.
• Meanwhile, charter and contract schools are looking at a $30 million funding boost.
• Those shifts are due to changing enrollment patterns, with the charter sector expected to add roughly 3,000 students while traditional public schools anticipate a decrease of about 4,000 pupils.

Dive Insight:

While the cuts to Chicago's neighborhood schools may seem deep now, they could become even deeper. The current budgets are based on a plan to provide no raises to teachers as part of a compromise with the Chicago Teachers Union. The plan is intended to help the financially struggling school district meet its financial obligations and also includes roughly $200 million in cuts to the district’s overall budget.

But the budgets are also based on the idea that the state will kick in $500 million toward the city’s weighty teacher pension obligations. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken the state to task for taxing city residents twice for teacher pensions: once for city teachers and once for teachers outside Chicago.

But it’s not at all clear that the state money will come through. A plan to borrow against the city’s pension fund in order to dodge more cuts failed last week. Jesse Sharkey, the vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said that the assumptions underlying the budgets released Monday “are based on fantasy.” Advocates in the city have called the move an attack on neighborhood schools.