Policy that creates real change!

I’m running to represent District 2 on the newly created Chicago School Board to help create a thriving Chicago Public School system in which every child in our city can walk to an excellent neighborhood school. In addition to securing increased funding, this can be achieved through reforming SPED funding allocations; providing high quality, culturally relevant curriculum, supporting an equitable, needs-based funding model; and partnering with community based organizations, city services, elected officials, LSCs, and school staff to ensure a consistent, proactive approach to mental health and wellness for our children.

I am the only candidate running in District 2 who has children enrolled in CPS. What sets me apart from other candidates is my intentional choice to opt-in to living in, learning from, and listening to the most diverse community in the city; parenting a child with an IEP as a parent with disabilities; and my experience navigating city bureaucracy for much of my professional career.

I’m confident I can earn your vote by being honest, empathetic, listening to and valuing all perspectives; and sharing my vision of a better future for every child, every school, and every community.

CPS must entirely shift the culture at the district and school levels, as well as the practices they employ when it comes to serving students with disabilities.

People with disabilities do not have deficits. We are forced to function within systems and spaces that have deficits. For example, neurodivergent minds are brilliant and unique and NEEDED. The vision and perspective I am able to bring to complex systems change and my ability to balance both high-level vision and detailed, operational understanding has made me an asset innumerable times in my career. 

And yet, CPS has the largest legal team of any city department or sister agency. The central function of this team is to maintain the minimum threshold for legal compliance without actually providing services or ensuring that every child can learn.

This is deeply offensive and completely unacceptable. While protecting municipalities from litigation can and should be one of their roles, we must demand that internal teams work through a comprehensive, collaborative, and long-term reimagining of their central purpose.

The problem posed by our current approach to SPED funding is twofold - it is about the amount of funding available and about the methodology by which it is allocated to each school. The board can and should become a strong lobbying body at the state and federal levels to fight for full funding, but the fundamental flaws in the CPS allocations are something that can be corrected immediately.

Every year, the district determines SPED funding by looking at the number of students with IEPs + the number of minutes and subtracts the total number of outgoing students with IEPs. For example, at Hibbard, the district will subtract the number of IEPs in the graduating class of 6th graders.

The district does not, however, use any projection to determine the estimated number of incoming students with IEPs and/or the number of students that will be identified as needing IEPs (generally in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades).

The result of this approach means our school loses at least 3 three SPED staff positions and between .5 - 1.5 FTE case managers in our new budget. Of course, eventually, we regain that funding loss at the mid-year re-allocation and scramble to hire new staff, after being understaffed for the first half of the year.

This process repeats itself, year over year, without fail. The result is that SPED teachers and staff face little to no job security or stability and our students are unable to benefit from forming long term relationships with a team that knows them. It also means that curing the first semester of each year, at the time when our school would need more staff in order to better identify, assess, and provide IEPs for students with disabilities, we are chronically understaffed.

In addition to supporting the needs-based funding approach that the current Board implemented this year, I would fight to amend the existing allocation methodology because the issue will persist whether funding at the city, state, and federal level increases or not.

I propose introducing a methodology that projects the estimated number of incoming students with and existing students in need of IEPs.

This would provide a baseline at each school and create substantive stability year over year.

Members of the Board of Education should play a strong role in advocating for policy changes at every level of government. As an elected official, they will have the ability to build a lobby for legislation. There are numerous resources and policy positions that have been developed by organizations leading the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights. As a member of the school board, I will always listen to and fight alongside the LGBTQIA+ community and will push for policies like:

• The creation of a Queer Issues advisory council made up of students, families, and community members (especially those who identify as transgender) to share experiences, make recommendations, and serve as key experts on how to ensure CPS is a safe and loving environment for all students and their caregivers.

• Passing state-level comprehensive student-nondiscrimination legislation that is inclusive of trans and nonbinary students’ full participation in athletics, access to facilities that align with students’ gender identity, respect for their names and pronouns, and privacy protections.

• Ensuring that sexual education is not taught to children based on or separated by gender.

• Establishing policies to inform students and caregivers of their rights and provide them with resources like GLSEN and SPLC.

• Establishing policies that require schools to teach students how they can form student-led clubs or organizations such as Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network (formerly Gay Straight Alliance) clubs and require that schools provide the requisite administrative support to such groups.

First and foremost, I am deeply committed to centering Black experiences and doing this work as appropriate and invited. I will not compromise on establishing the Black Student Achievement Committee AND ensuring that its members have the resources required to make meaningful change for Black students. Additionally, I will advocate for incorporating all recommendations from the Black Student Success working group into the district’s strategic plan. I attended several sessions and witnessed the labor that built this robust, achievable platform.

Finally, elected members of the Board of Education must continue the moratorium on school closures and staunchly oppose any further school privatization efforts. When Chicago closes schools, Black schools are disproportionately negatively impacted.

Not only have school closures proven deeply destabilizing for Chicago’s Black middle-class communities, there is OVERWHELMING evidence that having Black educators dramatically improves Black student outcomes.

When Chicago closes schools, Black teachers are purged from the workforce. The systematic elimination of Black educators in Chicago Public Schools was the predictable and inevitable outcome of every sweeping policy reform effort over the last 3 decades - from the devastation wreaked by Renaissance 2010 to the closure of 50 schools (leveraging manipulated “utilization” data) in 2013.

Black students who have one Black teacher by third grade are 7% more likely to graduate high school and 13% more likely to enroll in college. After having two Black teachers, Black students' likelihood of enrolling in college increases by 32%. And this is but one such statistic.

The Chicago Teachers Union has long provided insights and suggested policy reforms that could increase the number of incoming Black teachers in our schools, such as reestablishing a hiring pipeline through Chicago State University. As a member of the Board of Education, I will have the opportunity to listen to the experts on the education workforce and will make translating those recommendations into policy changes a top priority.

In the past two years, enrollment at Hibbard has risen (for the first time in more than a decade) as we have been privileged to welcome families from Afghanistan, Venezuela, and other countries.

Our newcomers need stability and community.

These students and their families need culturally competent housing placements, health services, trauma-informed care, legal immigration partners, and language supports.

Because the parents of these new CPS students will not be afforded a say in who represents their interests on the new School Board, it is a priority of mine to listen to these vital voices in our communities throughout my campaign. After winning a seat on the Board, continued engagement with the Non-Citizen Advisory Council will be a top priority of mine.

I have been actively engaging parents in the schools of District 2 for many years now. Through Raise Your Hand, special education advocacy, LSC partnerships, and other ed organizing efforts, I have been co-building the scaffolding within and across our schools that can serve as a strong foundation when I join the School Board.

Communication and engagement are key to building community, and public schools are spaces that bring communities together and lay the groundwork for a neighborhood’s future. The foundation to build the spaces and connectivity we deserve exist. As an Elected School Board member, a priority of mine will be to strengthen these connections across our neighborhoods in ways that can be transformational.

CPS MUST entirely reimagine their definition, conception, and implementation of community engagement.

I will prioritize constant and direct communications with District 2 constituents, making myself available to all CPS stakeholders, students, and families across the city. I have a robust constituent engagement plan that I will put into action immediately upon winning this election and in advance of taking my seat on the board. This plan includes:

• Monthly email communications

• Hosting quarterly+ convenings of District 2 LSCs 

• Regular, in-school town-hall sessions for students, families, and school staff

• Pre- and post- board meeting prep/follow up sessions to shift away from the one-way Board communications created by general “public comment” testimony

• Regular, weekly “office hours” where stakeholders can sign up to discuss issues

Additionally, I will work with elected officials to ensure there are physical spaces to voice concerns and seek solutions. Because the office is new and not funded, I will partner with elected officials, ward organizations, individual schools, park districts, and local CBOs to ensure individuals and groups can come together to build, advocate, and create the infrastructure to collaborate and hold our elected board members accountable to the community.

I am committed to building within District 2 and to reimagining a truly participatory system for the future.

Age appropriate, medically-accurate sexual education continues to be politicized across this country despite overwhelming evidence that it makes our children safer and our communities healthier. As parents, we have an obligation to protect our kids. Ensuring our children receive sexual education from kindergarten is the single best tool we have to meet that obligation.

An enormous body of research proves that providing sexual education from kindergarten:

• Reduces the risks of child sexual victimization by creating significant increases in self-protective skills; emotional gains in self-esteem, self-efficacy, and feelings of safety; significant increases knowledge of appropriate and inappropriate touch, what to do in an inappropriate situation and increases knowledge and skill to identify unsafe situations; and results in demonstrated improvements in young children's skills and behaviors specifically related to disclosure.

• Reduces the incidence of domestic violence; increases knowledge and disclosure of domestic violence.

• Increases bystander intervention & reporting, leads to more gender-equitable attitudes, and leads to improved overall school climate and external reputation of the schools as a result.

• Increases understanding of healthy relationships and improves parent-adolescent relationships

• Improves communication skills and intentions, including increased intentions to discuss relationships and/or sex within relationships with parents and medical providers

And this does not begin to address the benefits of teaching sexed in our schools to teens, families, and society writ-large.

The Chicago Public School District has struggled tremendously to implement the comprehensive, medically-accurate and age appropriate curriculum that is mandated by state law. Chicago’s 2019 Healthy Schools Survey revealed that only 42% of schools are teaching all of the required sex ed minutes, and only 62% of schools complied with the requirement to send caregivers an annual letter about the curriculum with an opt-out option. In 2018, those numbers were far worse with only 28% of schools teaching the required minutes and only 50% of schools sending home the notification and opt-out letter.

So while the current numbers show an improvement, it remains deeply disturbing that the district continues to fall short on implementing a policy that was passed into law over ten years ago.

As a member of the Board of Education, I will demand that Chicago Public Schools report, with full transparency, on the implementation of this policy, that a meaningful action plan is created, and that meaningful inclusivity is incorporated.

I am against the proposition of taking out a high-interest, short-term loan. CPS has had long-term budget issues that require long-term solutions.

IMMEDIATE SOLUTION

Currently, the state of Illinois only funds the legacy pension contributions for schools outside Chicago. As a result, Chicago must cover these legacy costs through a property tax, creating an unfair burden on CPS.

This inequity is a little-known aspect of how the state underfunds public schools, and it must be addressed immediately. The Board should demand action by either pushing the legislature to resume funding legacy pension costs (as they did in the past) or by advocating for the merging of the state and Chicago teacher pension funds. This merger would strengthen teachers statewide and prevent future pension underfunding.

This change would free up $550M - $640M, all of which could be redirected to our schools.

1. EARNED REVENUE

Many schools have individual programs to generate earned revenue (renting rooftops to telecom companies or renting parking to local businesses). There are innumerable publicly owned and unused buildings and other infrastructure assets that sit idly, costing the district money to maintain.

We need to expand our thinking and diversify our revenue channels through community-centered partnerships that add to neighborhood economies and generate earned revenue for the district.

2. SUNSETTING OF LARGE, OUTSOURCED CONTRACTS TO FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES

The practice of out-sourcing school needs through vendor contracts with for-profit companies, in the name of financial efficiency, has been an unmitigated disaster. The process of submitting “change orders” through Aramark’s opaque system lacks any transparency or accountability and has left many of our schools in utter disrepair. The employees are subject to the anti-worker, profit-driven practices of a massive corporation.

Contracts like the ones we have with Aramark have decimated the number of high quality, good-paying union jobs available to Chicagoans. They have stripped our communities of the local economic investment that comes from having a local workforce. They have established a deeply questionable and completely opaque process that leave our principals without key information and our schools in total disrepair. And they have cost the district hundred of millions of dollars.

We must rebuild an internal infrastructure for facilities maintenance and management. The staff in our school buildings should be unionized employees supervised by our school principals.

3. BALANCED BUDGETS & LONG TERM FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

The state of Chicago Public Schools financial future is incredibly complex and solutions to address the current $520M deficit (and increasing future deficits) will require the Board of Education to develop solutions across several areas. In addition to innovative revenue generation and a shift away from privatization efforts that have proven costly and harmful, the Board will need to work with partners in the State Legislature, Executive State and City leadership, and with partner organizations who have produced sound research and analysis focused on government services and increased tax revenues. 

This will certainly mean collaboratively identifying pension reform that does not require further benefit reductions (as analyses from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability have demonstrated are in no way excessive and are not a contributing factor to pension underfunding). Setting a strategic and multi-year plan to address the estimated debt service costs and compounding interest and exploring options around reamortization and considerations models are just some of the options that Board members will have to look at going forward.

It will mean taking a look at the arbitrary and discretionary allocation of capital budget investments at the district level. From there, I would recommend the creation of a full database of capital investments that will be publicly available on the CPS website and that all future decisions be accompanied by a methodology for those decisions. Lastly, program-related new investments should not be directed from the facilities budgets. 

We must begin to deal with the challenging financial implications that prior leaders have exacerbated through reactionary and temporary fixes with disastrous long-term implications in order to claim immediate performative victories.

I strongly support the shift towards a needs-based funding model. I believe everyone can agree that the long-term goal is for every child in Chicago to be able to walk to an excellent neighborhood school.

Our current system is often painted as one where families and students have a “choice”, but any CPS family knows that could not be farther from the truth. A district with chronically underfunded neighborhood schools, small regional schools that can only serve a fraction of our gifted students, and a few exceptional options that are the only alternative for a tiny fraction of students is not a district where any of us has a “choice”.

For the first time in the history of Chicago Public Schools, the district is allocating funds using a methodology that is evidence-based, student centered, and that finally attempts to address the legacy of extraction, segregation, and oppression of marginalized students. This funding model takes those steps while establishing district-wide baseline standards, class sizes, and per-pupil funding rates.

That said, it will be absolutely essential that the Board and the district prioritize transparency and create systems for individual schools to maintain key programs (like dual language education programs at schools with high EL enrollment). The Board must lead on sharing information, communicating internal processes, and educating Chicagoans about the budget process, methodologies, and allocations that determine school level budgets. 

We need a fully transparent process in place to appeal, assess, and address gaps in initial budget determinations and the budget process should begin much earlier to allow for meaningful community input.

As a Board member, I would champion the continuation of this model so we can continue to work towards a truly equitable budget.

To me, the most effective way to improve overall transparency and build back community trust in CPS, is to introduce full budget transparency.

As a member of the Board of Education, I would demand the district publish the budgets AND that each individual school do the same.

The truth is, there are any number of revenue streams that schools access beyond central funding: student fees, earned revenue from communications devices or parking rentals, contributed revenue from donors and friends-of organizations, boosters, etc.

If we cannot look at the true cost of producing the highest educational outcomes, how can we effectively make the case for increased funding?

Full and meaningful transparency at both the district and the school level is something I will not compromise on.

Police have no place in our schools. Children, families, and communities who experience the trauma of violence need support, resources, and restorative practices inside and outside of our schools. Investments in counselors, restorative justice coordinators, parent mentors, out of school programming, and the arts are the pathways to building the school environments our children need and deserve.