On a frigid February morning in West Town, Room 302 was cold enough to see breath. The radiator hadn’t worked for weeks, and neither had the chemistry teacher. No substitutes came. The silence was broken by fifteen-year-old Carolina Carchi, standing quietly and moving to the front of the classroom. She opened a worn binder filled with worksheets she’d printed herself, placed sharpened pencils on desks, and began teaching chemistry—a subject she was still learning herself.
The windows were fogged at the corners. A classmate coughed. The only sounds were the hum of fluorescent lights and the rhythmic tap of her pen against the whiteboard. Carolina’s story is not unique. It is one of many.
Across Chicago, students are stepping into adult roles not because they want to, but because they have no choice. In Englewood, a senior juggles her college applications while filling in for her English teacher—who left three months ago and hasn’t been replaced. In Back of the Yards, an eighth-grader leads her classmates through math drills while their teacher is out on unpaid leave. In Austin, a group of freshmen alternate roles in their science lab, copying notes from a textbook while the sub assigned to watch them scrolls through her phone.
These aren’t acts of rebellion or ambition—they are symptoms of collapse. Across the city, hundreds of classrooms sit silent, supervised but unled. The adults are missing. And the burden to hold it all together has quietly, devastatingly, shifted onto the children.
Austerity’s Silent Echo
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) faces a $734 million deficit this fiscal year. The shortfall has triggered devastating layoffs: 1,450 educators, including over 400 classroom teachers, nearly 700 special education aides, and dozens of counselors and librarians. These figures, obtained through a March 2025 CPS workforce reduction report, reveal a loss that touches 57% of district-run schools—particularly those in Black and Brown communities already burdened by economic neglect and underinvestment.
According to data reviewed by Chalkbeat Chicago and internal CPS vacancy logs, more than 1,800 classes went without a full-time instructor for ten or more consecutive days during the 2024–2025 school year. In most cases, students were either handed online modules with no support or left with busywork. “You just show up, sit down, and wait for the bell,” one sophomore at George Washington High told Chicago News Weekly.
In a districtwide climate survey collected by the Consortium on School Research, 32% of high school students at impacted campuses reported leading class activities, helping peers complete assignments, or managing classroom materials in at least one subject area during the school year. Younger students recalled working silently through reused packets or being told to write journal entries without instruction.
And Chicago is not alone. Districts in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, and Jackson, Mississippi report similar patterns: missing teachers, frozen hiring, and a widening gap between need and access. In LA, over 1,000 classrooms began the 2024 school year without permanent teachers. In the Mississippi Delta, some schools share a single counselor across entire districts. The stories shift, but the trajectory is consistent: underfunded, overstretched, and increasingly dependent on student-led survival.
When the Safety Net Unravels
This didn’t happen overnight. The erosion of public education funding has been decades in the making—shaped by federal policy shifts, charter school lobbying, and local tax structures that disadvantage poor neighborhoods. In Illinois, a history of regressive school funding has left urban districts dependent on state infusions that fluctuate year to year. Meanwhile, political leaders tout graduation rates while ignoring the hollowing of what those diplomas represent. “It’s the appearance of progress,” said one retired CPS principal who requested anonymity. “The lights are on, but the system is running on fumes.”
Budget hearings routinely exclude student voices. Promises of equity audits rarely yield material change. What students and teachers see daily—peeling paint, outdated books, and security officers replacing librarians—are the symptoms of decisions made far above their heads.
The federal safety net offered some reprieve during the pandemic. ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds injected $190 billion into school systems nationwide. Chicago received nearly $2.8 billion between 2020 and 2023. But by late 2024, the funds dried up. No replacement came.
In neighborhoods like Roseland or Garfield Park, schools now share a single social worker. Counselors juggle 400 or more students each. Librarians are assigned to three buildings—or none at all. Nurses split their week across four campuses. Children are left navigating loss, stress, and developmental milestones with shrinking adult support.
“As a teacher, I used to plan lessons,” said one South Side educator. “Now I plan interventions.”
The Domino Effect
When schools cut staff, the collapse is rarely immediate. It creeps in. Classroom energy dulls. Bulletin boards go bare. Bathrooms close for days. Reading corners gather dust. Students begin to disengage. Teachers stretch thinner. Families leave the system altogether—not for private schools, but because they’ve lost faith anyone is steering the ship.
Without counselors, kids shoulder grief alone. Without librarians, literacy gaps widen. Without substitute coverage, lesson plans rot on unmonitored drives. Without mentors, teens seek answers from social media and each other. And now, without public media—after the 2025 Rescissions Act gutted $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—the watchdog role of local news is vanishing, too.
Stations like WBEZ, which exposed the pattern of missing teachers last fall, have already scaled back education reporting. In shrinking the platforms that cover civic crises, lawmakers ensure fewer people notice as classrooms crumble in silence.
Carolina’s Classroom in Context
Carolina’s quiet courage helped her peers hold on—but she was never meant to be an anchor. No fifteen-year-old should be the most stable adult in the room.
Her story, reported by Block Club Chicago in fall 2024, drew national attention. She went on to graduate with honors and earned a full scholarship to Northwestern. But her trajectory, while remarkable, is not scalable. Most students don’t get profiled. Most don’t have college counselors helping them navigate the system. Most are struggling quietly, invisibly, in rooms without teachers or structure.
One sophomore at a Far South Side school said: “I don’t even tell my mom anymore. She already works two jobs. What can she do?”
Another added: “It’s like no one knows this is happening. Or worse—they do, and they don’t care.”
Educator Perspective: Dignity on the Line
For many teachers, the crisis isn’t just logistical—it’s existential. One veteran science teacher in Bronzeville shared, “I didn’t enter this job expecting luxury, but I did expect dignity. Lately, it feels like we’re expected to perform miracles without tools.” Another educator in Belmont Cragin described the guilt that comes with triaging needs: “You walk into a classroom and realize three kids need academic help, one hasn’t eaten, and another is grieving a sibling. Which fire do you put out first?”
Several described questioning their futures in the profession—not due to lack of love for their students, but because the emotional cost has become unsustainable. “It’s not burnout,” one said. “It’s betrayal. We’re being asked to hold up an entire institution while it’s being dismantled from the top down.”
Voices from the Classroom
Parents, too, are speaking out. At a town hall in Little Village, a mother of three held up a stack of take-home packets. “This is what they call education?” she asked. “This is babysitting.”
Teachers are organizing walk-ins, sick-outs, and anonymous social media campaigns to document real conditions inside schools. Burnout is high. New teachers leave within the first two years. Veteran educators say they’ve never seen morale this low.
“We’re duct-taping a system together,” said one middle school principal. “And every week, we lose another piece.”
Students are responding in kind. At several schools, juniors and seniors have coordinated silent sit-ins to demand consistent teachers. Some have created peer tutoring networks or formed Instagram accounts to document broken equipment, missing staff, and overdue repairs.
“I love my school,” said a West Side junior. “That’s why I’m mad. We deserve better.”
A Path Toward Repair
If there is hope, it lives in coordinated reinvestment and grassroots advocacy—but let’s be clear: that path is narrow, and the forces working against it are deeply entrenched.
Restoring cuts is not enough. What’s been eroded over decades will take more than slogans and budget promises to rebuild. It will take political courage, sustained public pressure, and the kind of generational commitment this country rarely offers its most vulnerable children.
Chicago can start by reallocating unspent TIF (Tax Increment Financing) surpluses to its most vulnerable schools. The city’s own audits reveal millions in reserves, earmarked for development, that could instead fund teacher retention bonuses, mental health programs, and classroom materials. These aren’t luxuries—they are survival tools.
At the state level, Springfield lawmakers must revisit funding formulas that continue to shortchange low-income districts. Advocates point to legislation like the Evidence-Based Funding model, which has helped close gaps, but argue the pace of rollout is too slow to match the rate of collapse.
Nationally, the reinstatement of Title I protections, the revival of public broadcasting support, and the expansion of child tax credits and free school meals would go further than rhetoric. These are concrete levers of policy that can help communities stabilize—and thrive.
Meanwhile, community organizing has never been more urgent. From parent-led equity councils to student unions demanding representation in budget decisions, change is already underway. What these movements need is scale, resources, and public support.
We must refuse to treat resilience as a substitute for justice. Our schools and communities do not need more heroes. They need systems that don’t require heroics to function.
The stories in this piece are not isolated. They’re multiplying. The path toward repair, if it exists at all, will only open if we stop expecting our kids to walk it alone.