FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Thursday, March 3, 2016

For more information, contact:

CPS Office of Communications
Phone: 773-553-1620
Website: http://www.cps.edu
Facebook: ChicagoPublicSchools
Twitter: @ChiPubSchools

CPS Announces 3 Furlough Days for Employees in FY16

CHICAGO Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool announced today that District employees will be
furloughed for three days this fiscal year.
Employees will not work on furlough days and will not be paid for the furlough days. The first furlough day
will come on March 25, which is Good Friday. The next two furlough days differ for Central Office and
Network Office staff and school-based employees. School-based employees will have two non-instructional
professional development days converted to furloughs in June, while Central and Network Office staff will be
furloughed for two days in April, while schools are on Spring Break. This schedule allows Central and Network
staff to continue to support schools while they're in session. A full list of furlough dates is below.
Based on teacher and staff time off requests, CPS estimates that as many as 8,000 staff members are planning to
take Good Friday off work, or about quadruple the daily average. The expected absences would have been so
widespread that several principals had planned to manage their schools by holding all-day assemblies in the
school auditorium or showing movies. Instead, there will be no school that day and employees will be
furloughed.
CPS is expected to save $30 million from the furloughs, which will be added to the more than $120 million in
savings that has already been realized this fiscal year.
After hearing from many principals that they were concerned about staff capacity on Good Friday, which
normally falls during Spring Break, we determined the best course of action was a furlough day, combined with
non-instructional year-end days. Claypool said. Its never easy to furlough employees, but our priority was to
preserve instructional time for our students while preserving year-end cash and continuing to chip away at our
budget gap.
In a letter to employees sent this afternoon, Claypool wrote: Unfortunately, as hes made clear in recent weeks,
Governor Rauner is more interested in forcing bankruptcy and taking over our schools than in addressing the
unequal funding issues that hurt districts like ours across the state. We know we cannot cut our way to a
solution. However, the Governors inaction means we must continue to cut costs and ease our cash flow, so we
can do whats necessary to ensure our classrooms are protected and our students progress is uninterrupted.
Furlough Schedule
The furlough days are as follows [reminder, each employee is only be affected by three days]:

Chicago Public Schools - Press Release

Friday, March 25, 2016:
All employees will be impacted.

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Thursday, April 21, 2016:

Teachers, PSRPs and school-based ESPs are not affected.
All other staff will be furloughed.
Friday, April 22, 2016:
Teachers, PSRPs and school-based ESPs are not affected.
All other staff will be furloughed.
Wednesday, June 22, 2016:
Teachers, PSRPs, and school-based ESPs will be furloughed.
All other staff will report to work, as regularly scheduled.
*Thursday, June 23, 2016:
Teachers, PSRPs, and school-based ESPs will be furloughed.
All other staff will report to work, as regularly scheduled.
(* Note that teachers who have already worked the June 23rd day because they are in schools that redistributed
the June 23rd Flex PD day will be paid for that day.)
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