Candidate Q&A
Why are you running?
As a K-12 graduate of CPS, parent of a CPS student, and Chicago taxpayer, I am running to represent families like mine who want to remain in the city we love and want quality schools for our children to do so. I am running for my daughter, who came to CPS as a newly adopted, blind English language learner. Despite my experience as a former teacher and attorney, I found the IEP process overwhelming and secured legal counsel for assistance. It occurred to me that if it was that complicated for me, what was it like for other families? So, I’m running too for the families struggling to navigate the byzantine IEP process to secure appropriate services for their student’s unique needs. I run for the families that aren’t even aware that their kids are entitled to such services.
I am running for the students who cannot read, whose career prospects will be severely constrained if they don’t make significant gains in literacy and numeracy. And for the students who graduate without direction, guidance, or support.
I am running for the families who contemplate leaving Chicago to find a better school system for their children and for the taxpayers whose hard-earned dollars fund our flawed but resilient system.
I am running to ensure that we have experienced fiscal and education stewards on the Board, to decrease partisanship, and ensure that our children are not sacrificed on the altar of politics. I run because we need competent, experienced leaders who understand what is at stake if we don’t get this right.
These are my motivations. These are my “why”.
Why are you the most qualified candidate?
I am a lifelong public servant with more than 30 years of experience in education, law, advocacy, community and workforce development, and non-profit executive leadership. My entire career has been focused on public service and improving the lives of others through systems change and creating economic opportunity through education and workforce development.
My education, leadership, fiscal management, and lived experience as a CPS alum and parent of a special needs student are uniquely aligned with the leadership required for Chicago’s School Board. As an African-American woman fluent in Spanish and a former bilingual elementary school teacher and ESL instructor for adults I have rare experience in multi-lingual, multicultural educational settings that reflect the diversity of our district. I also come to this race with experience in early childhood literacy, and the creation of innovative programs in career and technical education.
As CEO of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership I honed my skills in fiscal stewardship growing a $3 million cash advance on a $30 million budget into a $100 million budget. I also secured roughly $150 million in philanthropic funds for job training and placement initiatives such as Opportunity Works, Chicago Codes and the 100,000 Opportunities initiative. I raised $3.5 million in private funds to construct and equip the Chatham Education & Workforce Center (630 E. 79th Street). During my tenure, I ultimately managed more than $500 million in public and private funds, all while deftly navigating the politics of the 5th floor.
I bring an extraordinary set of professional and personal experiences to bear on this role. Equally as important, I am a CPS alum (K-12) and the mother of a student with special needs. My family is precisely the demographic that CPS serves.
What is the biggest issue facing your specific school board district?
School quality and access to high performing schools is an issue in District 10. Students compete for the top-rated schools and the educational quality among the other schools varies wildly. This is the tale of our city in some ways, but when we have high performing Level 1 schools that receive students from across the city it disenfranchises neighborhood kids who are equally talented but may not be aware of the selective enrollment process. We need to expand access to high caliber schools.
How has your district been impacted by the shuttering of CPS schools?
Throughout the city, the majority of shuttered schools remain vacant. This is no less true for the 10th District where schools are closed with no current plans for redevelopment. Census tracts with a majority Black population that included closed schools lost 9.2% of their residents between 2013 and 2018 (NPR) This exodus resulted in the loss of a majority black Aldermanic seat during the most recent remapping process.
A study by the University of Chicago in the years following school closures found that students impacted by the closures tested lower in math than unaffected CPS students, and the deficit grew in subsequent years.
District 10 schools have not fully recovered from the impact of school closures, particularly because most of the closed schools served as neighborhood schools. Roughly 64% of today’s District 10 schools are defined as neighborhood schools. The correlation between community/structural disinvestment and lower education outcomes is both stark and real. District 10 has one of the largest Black populations in the city, coupled with one of the largest neighborhood schools profile and stands out for low outcomes. That said, there are pockets of excellence throughout this city, and the 10th District is no exception. The challenge is spreading that excellence evenly throughout the district so that all children reach their full potential and thrive
How have your district’s schools been impacted by students who are new arrivals to the U.S. and how should CPS best accommodate those students and families?
Many schools that received new arrivals were under-resourced. Principals across the district scrambled to accommodate students and needed more bilingual staff support to serve new arrivals effectively. Some schools had never dealt with a large ESL population, and getting support from the central office was slow and convoluted.
In 2021, even before the recent influx of asylum seekers, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) put CPS on a corrective action plan because the district was out of compliance with bilingual education requirements. To date, CPS still fails to staff bilingual programs and certified bilingual teachers at all schools that need them.
Compliance is critical, which means that all schools must abide by federal law requiring that our students receive education regardless of immigration status. First, we must have better screening for new arrivals so that we can connect families to schools. Second, schools should have access to ELL funding to meet these students' needs.
For parents with work permits, we should replicate the programs designed by the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. These programs empowered parents to become paraprofessionals and thereby earn wages while also keeping a presence in the schools. Programs that create a job pipeline for parents of new arrivals provide much-needed support within the school community. Philanthropic funding is available for dual-generation programming, which may align with this.
Collaboration with community groups serving immigrant populations is also critical. These groups can help navigate language and cultural barriers.
How do you believe the school board should handle the looming fiscal crisis at Chicago Public Schools?
While the need for adequate funding can’t be overstated, CPS currently spends nearly $29,000 per student, with the majority of students not on grade level. That is an atrocious return on investment. How is it possible that the per student cost has risen while the number of enrolled students has decreased along with student outcomes?
The state’s adequacy level is 90% but that still represents a shortfall, and we have an ever-growing unfunded pension debt. Real estate taxes alone will not meet CPS’s budgetary needs. Additionally, recent reports state that CPS wrongly included COVID relief funds in its year over year base contributing to next year’s deficit.
My priority will be targeting wasteful spending and redirecting it to other areas that best support student needs. Funding decisions must be rooted in educational priorities and support services, without making cuts in our classrooms. (I agree with the current Board’s refusal to further saddle the district with untenable loans). We must have a keen eye toward bloat, inefficiency and unnecessary spending. I have no doubt that that exists within the current budget, and I would endeavor to root it out and eliminate it.
We should build the budget from the center--from the schools first then out to the network office, then to central office. If there are cuts to be made they should come from the lowest priorities, not from the schools. Schools should be fully-funded first and foremost.
After first funding schools we should target redundancies and inefficiencies--in other words cut the fat.
The current budget represents an effort at equitable funding, yet it misses the mark in many regards. Schools like Bronzeville Classical lost roughly $500,000 and several teachers, while one school gained 9 staff even though it only has 25 students. There isn’t much equity in that.
Equitable funding decisions should be made not in a vacuum but with context. Had the Board analyzed the impact of adding more teachers than staff at an under enrolled school they might have made a different decision. (Absent intentionality, simply adding staff does little to increase enrollment in a city where there are fewer students).
The budget needs to reflect our priorities. If students and their well-being truly come first then we need to fully fund schools first.
A moratorium on closing CPS schools is set to expire in January. Should CPS consolidate more schools?
School closings must be a last resort (and even then, must be handled with great care, as the previous debacle demonstrates). It is true that roughly 300,000 people have left the city over the past two decades and that CPS enrollment has declined in recent years as birth rates continue to fall. However, our school buildings can potentially offer multi-generational programming, career and technical education, early childhood resources, and numerous other revenue-generating uses in collaboration with community partners both private and public. Moreover, I believe CPS has a duty to explore ways to increase enrollment before shuttering or consolidating schools.
Consolidation cannot be a knee-jerk response executed at the expense of the district’s poorest students. The previous effort was neither well thought out nor executed. It was not inclusive of the community, nor did it take into consideration social and cultural clashes that were inevitable. There was zero cultural competency imbued in the process. School closures/consolidations alone won’t fix the district’s budgetary problems--decreasing expenditures and increasing revenue combined with sound fiscal management practices will.
What is your position on closing selective enrollment schools?
I am the product of CPS neighborhood, magnet, and selective enrollment schools. I recognize the benefits of all of them and support the right of access to each. We should not sacrifice selective enrollment schools for much-needed neighborhood schools.
The most recent five-year plan approved on September 18th seems to de-emphasize the original stance. I agree that neighborhood schools replete with resources are the ideal. Yet I believe that we don't have to sacrifice one over the other to accomplish that objective. We must offer our students and families a portfolio of diverse schools that meet their diverse needs and interests. The “either or” narrative being pushed by some is a dangerous and corrosive one. We can equitably fund multiple types of schools without pitting one type against another, they can all co-exist. The reality is that 70% of CPS students attend a school outside of their community. Rather than removing options, we should ask ourselves how we got here and solve for that.
Parents want more, not fewer options for their children’s futures. The existence of a selective enrollment school does not automatically preclude that of a high-functioning neighborhood school.
We must provide intense instruction, extracurriculars, and supportive services at every school, but not at the expense of specialty schools. With effective budgeting, 9.9 billion dollars is more than enough to invest entirely in all school types. When done effectively, public-private partnerships, universal curriculum, and innovative revenue sourcing can be the key to properly investing in neighborhood schools without penalizing students simply because CPS failed to make equitable investment a priority.
What is your position on charter schools?
Ideally, every student should be able to attend a local school and have their needs met there—this is not our reality. Thousands of families have left CPS because they felt they were done a disservice by our traditional public school system. More, not fewer options is what parents want.
I firmly believe parents should have the autonomy to choose the school that best serves their students. I fully support charter, magnet, STEAM, and selective enrollment schools as a viable option for families. CPS has systematically harmed many families across the city while deftly meeting the needs of others.
I understand the frustration regarding charter school regulation, but I believe ALL schools should be held to the same standard in terms of education quality. I firmly believe that we should implement universal curriculum standards to ensure that all students are provided with quality, culturally competent curriculum. High caliber standardized curriculum ensures educational equity and consistency across all schools. Currently, individual schools choose curricula at the principal’s discretion.
This leads, in part, to uneven outcomes district wide. A common curriculum promotes coherence in learning, ensuring that students who transfer schools don’t experience learning delays. However, balancing standardization with flexibility is crucial to accommodate diverse student needs while maintaining educational rigor and innovation. Our board has a responsibility to students first, and our role in oversight should be similar to our role within CPS, rate the schools according to set academic outcomes and balance the results with the overall need of the school community.
Is your campaign being supported by the Chicago Teachers Union?
No
The Chicago Teachers Union wants the district to focus on retrofitting schools with equipment that will battle the effects of climate change. Is spending money that way right now a good idea with the massive deficit the district faces?
While I recognize the need to ensure that our buildings are environmentally sound, in light of the current budget deficit and the fact that deficit does not yet include, the CTU contract, the principals contract, as well as the non teacher pension costs,it strikes me as imprudent and fiscally irresponsible to direct funds as described in this question.
I do however recommend exploring the Clean Energy Jobs Act grant opportunities and create apprenticeships to help offset the costs through partnerships with companies like ComEd & Peoples Gas. These partnerships can help retrofit buildings with the necessary upgrades while also training students and preparing them for fulfilling careers.
What is your biggest priority and what do you hope to accomplish on the Chicago Board of Education?
My first priority is to address the pressing financial challenge faced by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) — a projected $500- $700 million deficit for the upcoming school year. My strategy centers on meticulously balancing the budget while safeguarding a commitment to equitably fund all schools, especially those serving our most vulnerable students. To do this, I will target waste and redundancies while streamlining resources.
Drawing from my extensive experience in establishing successful public-private partnerships, I would aim to secure additional funding sources for CPS. These partnerships would not only provide financial support but also foster collaborations that enhance educational outcomes across the district.
Beyond funding, Career and Technical Education (CTE) is woefully lacking. 40% of CPS graduates are neither enrolled in postsecondary education (college, skilled trade training) nor employed one year after graduation. Our schools have a duty to equip our students with the skills and opportunities needed to succeed in the workforce. Currently, CTE is only offered in a very small percentage of the district’s schools, effectively creating an inequitable system which leaves an overwhelming number of students without direction.
CPS recently hired a new director of the Office of Diverse Learners Supports and Services. This was long overdue. As the pandemic bore out, special needs students were left behind due to lack of access and resources.
However, these issues were only exacerbated by the pandemic—they existed long before. As a school Board member and mother of a special needs child, I will give voice to the community of families whose children have IEPS and 504s, the community of students who are dissuaded from inclusive classrooms, and the community of children who are enrolled in cluster programs.
My priority is to ensure that every school in Chicago has a robust and inclusive special education program. It is unacceptable that parents are forced to transport their children across the city simply because their local school cannot accommodate or in some cases chooses not to provide inclusive education.
I have personally experienced the challenges of navigating the special education system in CPS with my daughter, Rachelle, who was born without eyes. She is in an inclusive classroom and academically exceeds her sighted peers, but this is only as a result of my advocacy from preschool and beyond.
Like many other students she endures long bus rides that begin at 6:30 a.m. and has returned home as late as 5 p.m. Sadly, others have no transportation at all, and the solution is insufficient.
I will advocate for increased resources and funding to enhance special education services across all Chicago schools. This includes recruiting and retaining qualified special education teachers, providing professional development opportunities, and ensuring access to assistive technologies and accommodations for students and educators.
I am committed to promoting inclusivity and accessibility in our schools. This involves creating environments where students with disabilities feel welcomed and supported, and where their educational experiences are fully integrated into the school community.