Candidate Q&A
Why are you running?
I’m a former CPS student who grew up on the South Side and the parent of a CPS student with a disability. For over a decade I’ve pushed CPS from the outside, as an LSC member, on the Parent Leadership Council, and as President of the CPS Office for Students with Disabilities Family Advisory Board. I’ve also taught CPS students science and algebra. My research has documented problems in funding, special education, discipline, and gifted education, and I keep finding the same failures of early identification, transparency, and follow-through. I also keep seeing warnings ignored until a crisis forces the district’s hand. I’m running a grassroots, volunteer-driven campaign as a political outsider, so that CPS decisions are based on evidence and what helps students, not on who has the most leverage.
Are you in support of the most recent CPS budget that relies on uncommitted state funding?
No. Balancing a budget with state money that hasn’t been committed is a plan built on wishes not wisdom. I’ve warned for years that CPS budget reporting understated real costs, and this past year CPS exceeded its own estimates by nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars. When the state fails to approve the money our schools need, and they have failed each year to fully fund our schools, the cuts land mid-year on schools and students, and they’ll be deeper than if the district had made hard choices earlier.
How will you work with CPS officials and staff to balance the district’s budget?
I’d start with shared numbers: a multi-year projection that shows the real structural gap, reviewed in public. Then I’d work with CPS finance staff on an independent, line-by-line review of central-office spending and outside contracts. That includes opening bidding to more competition and cracking down on overcharging, which I’ve already documented in transportation. I’d redirect those savings toward schools with the greatest need and make investments to bring greater efficiencies and accountability. I’d also bring in principals, LSCs, and staff, including support staff, so cuts fall where they do the least harm to learning and to legally required services. I won’t promise there will be no hard choices. I will promise that the Board sees the real numbers before it votes.
Other than the budget, what is the single biggest issue facing Chicago Public Schools?
Too many students don’t get a strong foundation in reading and math early enough, and the gaps widen the longer they stay in CPS. In the classroom, I often had to rebuild basic skills students had never been given before I could teach the science or algebra I was there to teach. CPS needs universal early screening, clear literacy and math standards enforced by second grade, and real intervention for students who fall behind. That means finding students with disabilities early and meeting Child Find obligations. It means curriculum backed by independent evidence, and school-level results published so families can see whether it’s working. Finally, it means giving schools and LSCs the resources and power to deliver the higher standards our students should meet.
What is a top issue for students, schools and families in your specific school board voting district?
Our district is diverse, and there’s no single top issue, but the budget comes up constantly, and different people see it through very different lenses. Some see the challenges as the result of waste by central office, others point to CTU, others to money going to charter schools with less accountability, or to ineffective technology and curricula. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but we won’t solve these long-standing problems without transparent, school-level budget reporting and empowering schools to invest their own money where the need is greatest.
Whatever the explanation someone reaches for, the numbers point to the same question: why does CPS spend so much per student and produce so little in return?
It’s the same frustration behind the low proficiency scores and the high property taxes families in this district and all of Chicago live with every year. I don’t think the answer is any one villain. I think it’s a district that has let spending, curriculum, and results all go unchecked for too long, and that’s exactly why I’d bring transparency and accountability to as a Board member.
If you accept campaign contributions from special interest groups, how will you maintain independence from those donors?
My campaign has no special-interest funding, and it screens every donor. I personally talk with people who want to support the campaign before accepting a contribution, so I know who is backing it and why. My positions on students with disabilities, early literacy, gifted education, and budget transparency date back years before I was a candidate anyone could fund. If elected, I’ll disclose my perceived conflicts, as I do now at Northwestern, and recuse myself from any vote where a contributor has a direct financial interest.
How can current board policies and procedures be improved?
Budget: Require plain-language, school-level budgets that show what each school receives against what the funding formula says it should, with forward-looking projections and the assumptions behind them disclosed. This kind of transparency would give the public an early-warning system for schools unable to cover their operating costs — something I had to piece together myself, without access to CPS’s own records, when I warned last year that “what we are seeing with EPIC and ACERO is the canary in the coal mine” for more charter school closures. Six months later, ASPIRA announced it was closing its schools before the end of the school year. CPS had the chance to act on that warning and didn’t, and the harm to students and the added cost to CPS were both larger by the time it did.
Evidence: Before CPS adopts a policy or curriculum at scale, it should have independent evidence that it works, or, when a genuinely new approach has no prior evidence to draw on, it should launch as a limited pilot with its goals and milestones stated in writing up front, evaluated independently before any district-wide rollout. Either way, CPS should be required to publicly report the results against those same goals afterward, something it routinely skips today. CPS has launched initiatives meant to address disparities that made the problem worse instead. For example, equity initiatives that failed to improve outcomes and reforms to gifted education that made it less attainable for the vast majority of gifted students. CPS has also rolled out software and screen devices district-wide without testing whether they improved learning or students' social-emotional wellbeing. The evidence since shows they haven’t. That needs to change.
Procurement: Open bidding to more competition and create a searchable public database of vendors and costs. This brings more accountability, lowers costs, and prevents fraud.
LSCs: Raise expectations for student proficiency, and shift more control over resource allocation from central office to LSCs, along with the training and support to use that authority well. I served on two LSCs myself, and central office consistently had more say over how our funds could be spent than the people who actually knew our students. Giving that authority back to LSCs is one of the clearest ways to improve outcomes school by school, especially by allowing more targeted investment in early childhood education.
How should CPS and the board work to address declining enrollment?
Enrollment decline isn’t a temporary dip, and CPS can’t plan as if it were. My analysis of CPS enrollment trends, cross-checked against Census and Illinois Department of Public Health birth data, shows a birth-rate decline of more than 25 years, most pronounced in the Black community. Fewer children born today means fewer kindergartners arriving five years from now: a demographic reality CPS has to plan for, not one it can wait out. Because Chicago remains deeply segregated, that decline is concentrated geographically: schools in Black and Latino neighborhoods, many built decades ago for a much larger school-age population, are seeing the steepest enrollment losses. The research is clear that this isn’t just a numbers problem: a school needs a critical mass of students and resources to offer a full, vibrant educational experience, and severely underenrolled schools struggle to provide the range of courses, activities, and peer interaction students deserve. CPS’s facilities planning hasn’t caught up with that reality, and every year it doesn’t is another year those schools are asked to do more with buildings sized for a city that no longer exists, while we pay more and the students inside get less.
Do you foresee a need to close some district schools?
Yes, not because it’s a budget fix, but because it would be in the best interest of those students. I don’t support continuing the moratorium on school closures, but CPS shouldn’t rush. As much as it pains me, being from the South Side and knowing the causes of these inequities, many severely underenrolled schools aren’t serving our students the way they could. If CPS is confident in its investments, let the LSCs of those schools have real control over their budgets, and give them the choice: keep things running as they are, or close the school and reinvest that money in the students and communities the city and CPS say they care about. Any closure should follow published criteria (enrollment trends, building condition, need-adjusted performance, and whether alternatives like investment or co-location were actually tried) with real LSC and community input. Savings should go back to the students and communities affected.
Should CPS implement AI in its classrooms? What, if any, guardrails should be put in place?
AI in the classroom needs guardrails before adoption, not after. I don’t support using AI with elementary school students, and I’d extend that same caution to cell phones in elementary classrooms: both are distractions that get in the way of learning at an age when students need person-to-person instruction most. At any grade level, CPS should be barred from entering students' private information into an AI system until real safeguards are established and independently validated. More broadly, CPS has leaned on technology as a substitute for proven instruction rather than a tool teachers actually direct, and I’d hold any AI tool to the same standard I apply to curriculum generally: independent evidence it works, and public reporting on the results, before most money is spent to deploy district wide.
The board currently includes one Honorary Student Member. As the board has recently tripled in size, should that number be expanded?
Yes, I’d expand it and go further than adding a couple seats. I want a CPS Student Board of Education that advises on both policy and on how policies actually play out in schools. Too often, CPS approves a proposal and never follows through to confirm the intended results actually showed up in the classroom. A diverse group of student advisors or honorary members is one more layer of accountability for that follow-through. The Skyline curriculum is a clear example: CPS invested $135 million in 2021, plus an unknown amount since, and its effectiveness for students and their satisfaction with it has never been properly investigated.
How will you be responsive to student-led issues?
The same way I’ve been responsive to families for over a decade: show up, listen, and follow through publicly. I’d hold regular office hours students can actually attend, and I’d want the CPS Student Board of Education I’ve proposed to have a direct channel to me, not just to central office, so student-raised issues reach the Board table instead of stalling in a system that too often approves proposals and never checks whether they worked. When students raise an issue, I’ll say publicly what I heard and what I did about it, the same standard I hold myself to with every other constituency.
Did you attend Chicago Public Schools? When/Where?
Yes, I attended John Marsh, Whitney Young, and George Washington.
Have you sent your children to Chicago Public Schools?
Yes, I believe in public education.
Have you ever served on a Local School Council? When/Where?
Yes, I served on Poe (2020-2021) and Edison (2023-2024) LSCs.
Have you ever worked for Chicago Public Schools?
No, but I have taught CPS students through multiple enrichment and pre-college academic pipeline programs.
What neighborhood do you live in?
Uptown/Edgewater but I grew up on the South Side.