Hilario Dominguez

Candidate Q&A

Why are you running?

This district rarely starts with what our students need, it starts with what we cannot afford. That is a choice, and I am running so we can finally make a new choice.

I taught special education in CPS for six years, and every time the budget got tight my students were the first to lose something. I know firsthand how decisions made far from the classroom land hardest on students who already have the least margin for cuts, and how often their families are the last to find out.

I am the only candidate who actually went to CPS. These schools raised me. I taught in them, I served on my old school’s Local School Council, and I have spent the last three years in Springfield fighting for the funding this district is owed.

For thirty years the mayor appointed this board and it largely rubber stamped what came from central office. Chicagoans organized for years to change that, and this November we elect the whole board ourselves for the first time. I am running so that fight does not end with a board that functions with “business as usual" - we organized for this change and now we need to bring it to life.

Are you in support of the most recent CPS budget that relies on uncommitted state funding? 

Yes. The alternative was cutting classrooms and laying off school staff, and I am not willing to treat that as the responsible choice simply because it is tidier on paper. That budget is the reason the school where my wife is as an assistant principal has their math teacher.  

That money is owed to us under Illinois' own funding formula. Budgeting it says so publicly rather than quietly absorbing another shortfall the way this district has done for years.

I would not call it a strategy - it is a stopgap. If you book revenue you have not received, you owe the public a real fight in Springfield to go get it, not just throwing your hands up and saying it probably won’t come.

How will you work with CPS officials and staff to balance the district’s budget?

The Board’s job is to set policy, approve the budget, and hold the CEO accountable. I will use all three, and I will expect central office to bring the Board real numbers early rather than a finished plan two weeks before a vote.

We need an honest look at what we already spend. Our food contract runs roughly $100 million a year for meals students throw away. We own hundreds of roofs that could be generating power instead of running up utility bills every month. We are leaving money on the table.

And we have to go get the revenue. Illinois wrote its own funding formula and has never funded it. A school board president’s job is not to assume the state will not find the money, but to make sure that it does.

What I will not do is balance a budget by asking students to do with less.

Other than the budget, what is the single biggest issue facing Chicago Public Schools? 

Staffing. Schools across this city are short special education teachers, case managers, counselors, social workers, nurses, and librarians. When those positions go unfilled the work does not disappear, it gets absorbed by whoever is left, and eventually by students.

You cannot teach reading without reading specialists. You cannot deliver a service written into an IEP if nobody is there to deliver it. Almost every other problem in this district traces back to this one.

What is a top issue for students, schools and families in your specific school board voting district?

My district is the entire city, and the issue I hear in every neighborhood is early childhood. Families cannot find or afford childcare. My wife and I pay more for childcare than our mortgage and car payment combined, and we are not unusual.

That is why universal full-day pre-K starting at age three is my top priority. It gives every child an extra year of learning, it connects families to their neighborhood school before kindergarten, and it gives working parents room to breathe.

If you accept campaign contributions from special interest groups, how will you maintain independence from those donors?

I am proud to be supported by the Chicago Teachers Union and its members, which I would not consider a “special interest group”. I also refuse contributions from charter and privatization interests, the real estate lobby, developers, and corporate PACs.

Independence is not having zero relationships, and every candidate in this race has them. It is keeping students and families as your true north, and being willing to disagree publicly with people who helped you win election.

I will state my reasoning in public before a vote and people will be able to hold me to my values.  

How can current board policies and procedures be improved?

1. Publish Board items far enough in advance that communities can actually read them before a vote.

2. Require an operational impact review on items affecting budget, staffing, safety, and school operations, so the Board sees in writing what a policy asks of a school before voting on it.

3. Publish what the district already knows: building conditions, staffing and vacancies by school, whether students with IEPs are receiving the services their plans require, and post-graduation outcomes by school. Disaggregate all of it. No more hiding behind citywide averages.

4. The board must set its own agenda rather than receiving one from central office.

How should CPS and the board work to address declining enrollment?

By asking why families are leaving instead of treating the number as a verdict. Falling enrollment is a symptom of disinvestment, and when families leave a school the answer is usually the programs, the staffing, or the building.

So we need to invest. Sustainable Community Schools with wraparound services. Pre-K at three, which brings families into their neighborhood school years earlier. Real programs inside the building, open to the students who live there without an application or a lottery. Facilities that work, in a district where buildings average 86 years old with more than $3 billion in deferred maintenance.

We also need to be honest that this district created some of its own decline. Closing 50 schools in 2013 pushed families out of neighborhoods, and those communities have not recovered.

Do you foresee a need to close some district schools?

No. I will not close schools. Not framed as consolidation, not framed as underutilization, not “bottom up.”

Chicago ran this experiment in 2013 with 50 schools. The savings we were promised never materialized. Research has since found that most displaced students moved from one under-resourced school to another, that the closures did not save money, and that violence increased in the affected neighborhoods. Black educators left the district.

Dyett High School is the counterexample. Community members and families had to fight tooth and nail to keep it open. Today Dyett is fully enrolled and their basketball team are state champions. Imagine if we had given other schools that same opportunity.

Should CPS implement AI in its classrooms? What, if any, guardrails should be put in place? 

Not until this district decides what protections apply. I support a pause, and my platform calls for keeping AI and screen-based instruction out of the early grades.

As a special education teacher I know assistive technology can be transformative for some students, and I do not want to lose that. But right now vendors are selling into this district faster than we are deciding anything, and our students should not be the experiment.

The guardrails have to cover student data and privacy, accessibility, and a real review process that includes teachers, students, and families. And any tool has to demonstrate it improves learning rather than simply saving money.

The board currently includes one Honorary Student Member. As the board has recently tripled in size, should that number be expanded?

Yes. But I believe that one student representing more than 300,000 students was never enough, and it is harder to justify on a board of 21.

We should expand it and make sure those seats reflect the district: students from neighborhood schools, selective enrollment, charters, alternative and option schools, and students with disabilities. I would also want to look at what “honorary” means in practice. If we are asking young people to do the work of a board member, we should be serious about the role we are giving them.

How will you be responsive to student-led issues? 

I was a CPS student who organized walkouts against budget cuts before I was old enough to vote, so I know what it is like to be told you are too young to understand a decision being made about you.

Being responsive means getting student input before decisions are made rather than after. When students raise something and the Board goes another way, they deserve to hear why, directly.

It also means taking their issues seriously as policy rather than as a listening exercise. Students have led on police in schools, on mental health staffing, on climate concerns, and on how they are treated in their own buildings, and they have been right at least as often as the adults running this district.

Did you attend Chicago Public Schools? When/Where?

Yes. Greene Elementary, Galileo Scholastic Academy, and Whitney Young Magnet High School.

Have you sent your children to Chicago Public Schools?

My son is not yet school age. He will attend Chicago Public Schools.

Have you ever served on a Local School Council? When/Where?

Yes. Whitney Young Magnet High School, Community Representative, 2018–2021.

Have you ever worked for Chicago Public Schools?

Yes. Six years as a special education teacher, beginning at Pablo Casals Elementary in Humboldt Park.

What neighborhood do you live in?

Pilsen / Lower West Side