The wish list: even with poverty grants, Chicago Public Schools struggle to offer more to their students.

From its principals to its chief financial officer, many agree that Chicago Public Schools are underfunded. As a result, the need to keep class sizes small competes with the teachers' pension fund, sports programs, special education and other costs.

Officially, the school system has about $9,700 per student but, excluding all the mandated costs, such as special education and transportation, it has about $6,500 to spend on each regular education pupil, said Pedro Martinez, chief financial officer for the Chicago Public Schools. He points to charts showing that $6,500 is much less than the amount other big city school districts, such as New York City, Los Angeles and Boston, receive, not to mention wealthy suburban ones just miles from Chicago's border. "I see the pressures on the schools and I see the big picture," said Martinez, who oversees the budgets of 486 elementary schools and 107 high schools.

The central office provides each school with teachers and staff based on a complicated formula that takes into account the number of children in each grade and the size of the school. For example, for third-grade classes, the central office provides a teacher for every 28 children. But some schools have even larger class sizes.

Schools get additional money based on their numbers of poor students. Principals have, within some parameters, discretion on how they spend these grants, which come to the central office from the state and federal governments.

The Chicago Reporter visited one of the city's highest-performing and lowest-performing neighborhood elementary schools where at least two-thirds of the students were low-income. Principals at these schools described being forced to make choices between staff and resources that are considered essentials in other places. But another point was clear: Though on the surface the two schools have somewhat similar demographics--nearly all the students are black and at least four of every five students are low-income--the depth of poverty and transience at one school influences how it spends its money.

At Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, 3030 W. Arthington St., all of the students are low-income. And the school's mobility rate is 42 percent, meaning that, on average, two of every five students either transfer in to Bethune after the school year begins or transfer out of it before the school year ends.

In the surrounding East Garfield Park community, the unemployment rate is 23 percent, and the median household income is $24,216.

Principal Charlotte Stoxstell said she is stuck trying to choose between spending time and money on children's emotional needs and pouring her energy and resources into academics. Those conflicting spending demands were apparent on Feb. 14, 2006, when Stoxstell discovered a fifth-grader who was not wearing the school uniform. The girl's mother failed to get the uniform ready because an uncle was killed the night before in the alley behind her house.

The principal spent much of the rest of the day with the girl, a sister and her brother, making sure they had some time to talk with the school's social worker. "It is not the first time this has happened," Stoxstell said. "One mother told me she sent her kids to school so she would have time to make funeral arrangements. But how is a child supposed to learn after something so traumatic happens?"

Then, at the end of the day, a teacher mentioned to Stoxstell that the girl's cousins--the children of the man killed--were also Bethune students and also were at school that day.

On the next day, Stoxstell focused on making sure that the murdered man's children met with a social worker. Only this took some extra calling around because it wasn't the day Bethune's social worker was scheduled to be there. The social worker is assigned to three schools and spends two days a week at Bethune.

But there's no money to get more social workers for Bethune's 495 students. About 16 percent of the school's $3.3 million budget pays for the school's Head Start program and special education services. Most of the remaining $2.7 million covers teachers' salaries and other mandated costs like $54,000 for supplies and textbooks.

The school's $586,000 in "discretionary" money is used to keep security guards on the clock after school and to pay for a business manager to monitor the school's discretionary funds. The money is also used to lease 84 computers, pay for an aide to work in the computer lab and hire four teachers, including a kindergarten teacher who allows the school to offer two full-day classes. Without the discretionary money, the school could only offer two half-day classes.

The school needs a lot more. The parents want a music program. The students want a science teacher. Some teachers want a librarian, and others want teachers' assistants. Stoxstell wants a full-time social worker, two reading coaches for students who are years behind and a certified math teacher--right now, the school doesn't have one. The school could also use support staff to monitor recess and lunch. "In the end, it is a question of what money we have and what we choose to spend it on," she said. "We only have so much."

Bethune is one of the worst performing schools in the system with just 19 percent of the students performing at or above grade level in reading, math and science on state standardized tests.

On the other side of town, Amelia Earhart Elementary School, 1710 E. 93rd St. in the Calumet Heights community on the South Side, is one of the city's few neighborhood schools where more than two-thirds of the students are both low-income and testing at or above grade level in reading, math and science.

Earhart's 8 percent mobility rate is five times less than the rate at Bethune. And the Calumet Heights area surrounding Earhart has nearly twice the median household income and less than half the unemployment as Bethune's East Garfield Park.

With Earhart's $170,000 of "discretionary money," Principal Patricia Walsh hires a teacher, three aides and someone to provide security for the school's 301 students. With the additional aides, Walsh can keep the adult-student ratio in her lower grades to about 16-to-1. "The aides make instruction flow smoothly," she said.

Walsh's emphasis on teacher's aides reflects the school's focus on academics. At Earhart, there is no recess. After finishing their lunches, students are to spend the rest of the period reading a book. And students have gym class just one day a week.

Trim with short hair and always neatly dressed in suits, Walsh walks through the single-level building. Doors are open, yet there is little noise. All of the students are in the school uniform of plaid bottoms and white-buttoned tops, with ties for the boys and scarves for the girls. Single-file, kindergarteners coming from gym shuffle into their room. One teacher can be heard reviewing a poem with a class, while another stands at an overhead projector teaching a math lesson.

Walsh said that space and funding limit what she can offer to students. The school is without a science lab, art room and an art teacher. A teachers' aide--who normally works in the school's makeshift library--does art lessons, pulling a cart of supplies from class to class.

The missing element that Walsh wants most is a modern library, which she described as a "multi-media center" with televisions and computers and the capacity for "distance learning," where students use technology to exchange information with others at remote locations. Right now, the school's "library" is a room with about five computers and a couple of half-filled bookshelves. "It is a mockery," Walsh said.

Then, in late February, Walsh got another blow. Looking through her $2.2 million budget for the next school year, Walsh discovered that her discretionary fund will be $20,000 less than she expected. "I am not crying," she said in a weak voice. "But it hurts."