Types of Schools Receiving TIF Funds

Table 1 displays the types of schools receiving TIF funds for school construction projects. Each school was classified according to five categories: Neighborhood Attendance Area schools, REN2010 schools (including charter and contract schools), Selective Enrollment schools, schools with some form of exclusive enrollment process (includes selective enrollment, charter, lottery, classical schools, and career academies) and schools with a mix of both attendance area and exclusive enrollment components.

Altogether, there are 28 schools that have received TIF funds totaling $857.81 million. Half of the schools are part of the city’s Modern Schools Across Chicago plan focusing on the construction of new school buildings. One of the most significant trends in the allocation of
TIF revenues to finance school construction projects is the prioritization of schools with some form of an exclusive admissions policy. Schools with some form of exclusive enrollment process (including mixed component schools) account for 52% of all TIF funds spent on schools. This indicates that neighborhood area attendance schools are getting shortchanged. Although 69% of all Chicago Public Schools are neighborhood attendance area schools, they received 48% of all TIF funds, or a third less than what would be expected if the allocation of TIF revenues were proportionate. Even if mixed enrollment component schools were combined with neighborhood schools, this brings of the total amount TIF funds spent on neighborhood area attendance schools to 58%.

Based on this evidence, CPS’s top priority for the allocation of TIF revenues to school construction projects is to support selective enrollment schools. The city’s nine selective enrollment schools were created by Mayor Richard Daley to help retain middle-class
families who he believed would leave CPS and the city in pursuit of what they perceive as better schools in the suburbs. Though selective enrollment schools account for 1% of all CPS schools, they received 24% of all TIF funds spent on school construction projects. Selective enrollment schools have rigorous admissions standards and all children across the Chicagoland area are eligible to apply. Since they are not required to accept neighborhood children and must draw from all four CPS socioeconomic tiers, selective enrollment schools may not directly benefit the children of those taxpayers paying into the TIF district in the form of access to better school conditions.

Locations of Schools Receiving TIF Funds

As the following map reveals, the location of schools receiving TIF funds is spread throughout the city. However, taking 30th Street on the Southside as the city’s physical halfway point, 78% of schools receiving TIF funds are concentrated in the northern half of the city (this does include some of the most economically starved neighborhoods on the Westside). Schools in the southern half of the city, which includes some of the city’s most economically depressed neighborhoods, are neglected by the current allocation of TIF funds for school construction projects. This suggests that the original goal of the TIF program to help develop blighted or economically neglected communities is not the
current goal of the TIF program.

School Demographics

The race and ethnic makeup of each school receiving TIF funds in Table 2 is one indicator of the student population benefitting from TIF development funds. There is information for 27 out of the 28 schools receiving TIF funds for the 2011-2012 school year. The Back of the Yards Area High School was excluded from the CPS Racial Ethnic Survey in 2011-2012 because it was still under construction at that time.

Using the simple indicator of race and ethnicity as a percent of the student population composing each school receiving TIF funds, a few observable patterns emerge. First, Latinos compose 44% of all CPS students. However, schools with a Latino population that are at or above this proportion received only 27% of all TIF revenues going to school construction projects. In contrast, the proportion of White students in the CPS system is 9%. And yet schools with a White student population at or above this proportion received 23% of all TIF revenues. In addition, schools with exclusive enrollment processes tend to have a higher proportion of White students relative to the general CPS student population CPS. Exclusive enrollment schools also have more race and ethnic mixing than the CPS system as a whole.

Another interesting trend shows that predominately Black schools are, for the most part, proportionately represented in the allocation of TIF funds. Black students compose 42% of all CPS students while 55% of all TIF revenues going towards CPS school construction projects had a Black student population at or above the CPS proportion. It should be emphasized that since the purpose of the TIF program is to promote development
in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, the distribution of TIF funds should not be proportionate to the racial and ethnic makeup of the school. Rather, since Black and Latino neighborhoods are more likely to be blighted and more in need of economic development, predominately Black and Latino schools should be receiving revenues that are higher than their proportional makeup of all CPS schools.

Neighborhood Demographics

CPS conducts its own socio-economic analysis of communities across the city of Chicago. CPS divides the city into 4 socioeconomic tiers, with each tier representing a quarter of the school-age population. CPS combines school test scores and five other socio-economic indicators (single parent households, median family income, education attainment score, percent of population speaking a language other than English, and home ownership rates) to construct each Tier groups. The Tiers range from 1 to 4, with Tier 1 being the lowest socio-economic grouping and
the Tier 4 being the highest socio-economic grouping.

According to CPS’s Tier groupings, 36% of schools receiving TIF funds are situated in the highest socioeconomic grouping – Tier 4. At the same time, 36% of schools receiving TIF funds are situated in Tier 1 neighborhoods. Alternatively, when combined, Tier 2 and 3 communities accounted for 28% of schools receiving TIF funds, even though they account for 50% of the school-age population. Additionally, schools with some form of exclusive enrollment component receiving TIF funds are more strongly concentrated in Tier 1 and Tier 4 neighborhoods.

In order to develop an understanding of the socioeconomic character of the neighborhood in which each school receiving TIF funds is situated, neighborhood level data (using the Census tract in which each school is located) was collected on selected socio-economic characteristics. Overall, 25% of schools receiving TIF funds are in neighborhoods where the median income is higher than the city’s median. Schools in which the neighborhood area had a higher median income relative to the median income of the city as a whole are aggregated together along with
their other socio-economic characteristics in Table 3.

In almost all cases, each of these neighborhoods had a lower percent of its residents in poverty, lower unemployment rate, higher property values for houses and a higher percent of residents owning their own home relative to the city of Chicago. This indicates that at least 1 out of every 4 neighborhoods receiving TIF funds do not suffer from a lack of economic development. Additionally, the dominant type of school receiving TIF funds in relatively affluent neighborhoods is selective enrollment schools. It is interesting to note that selective enrollment
schools tend to have more racial/ethnic and income diversity than the neighborhood in which the school falls.