Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Sarah Karp | WBEZ

Brandon Johnson’s Board of Ed looks to move away from school choice, toward neighborhood schools

2023-12-12T18:47:11.391-06:00

The Board of Education under Mayor Brandon Johnson is taking a first crack at making its mark on Chicago Public Schools by focusing on neighborhood schools rather than specialty programs.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times file photo

In its first steps toward reshaping Chicago Public Schools, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Board of Education is proposing shifting back toward neighborhood schools and away from the current system of school choice where students compete for seats in selective programs.

The board has limited time to set new ideas in motion ahead of next year’s first school board elections, but any concrete changes made before then could shape the district for years to come.

A resolution up for a vote by the board on Thursday lays out a framework for a five-year “transformational” strategic plan that the CPS CEO will present to the board in the summer. It calls for a “transition away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools.”

The ideas align with the education platform Johnson campaigned on — and, like his campaign material, the framework offers few details.

This would be a radical departure for a school system built around allowing parents to choose where their children attend. Some 76% of high school students and 45% of elementary school students do not attend their assigned neighborhood schools. Chicago used to be a neighborhood-based school system, but has moved away from that model over the last 25 years. Just six years ago, CPS officials set up a new application system where they said they wanted every eighth grader to apply for high school, rather than automatically go to their neighborhood school.

Leaders said they don’t foresee dismantling specialty schools such as selective-enrollment, magnet and charter schools, and families will continue to be able to choose those options. Some of the city’s selective schools consistently rank among the top in the state and the country.

But that expectation could change if people in the community say that’s what they want. Officials plan to hold meetings over the next few months for the public to weigh in on how they want this transition to take place.

“This plan needs to be guided and informed by the community,” Board President Jianan Shi said. “The goal is that we’re able to change [the] current competition model so that students are not pitted against one another, schools are not pitted against one another.”

If there is community buy-in to the plan, Shi said it would be hard for the elected board to abandon it. School choice, the future of charter schools and the fate of neighborhood schools are expected to be among the core issues that separate candidates in the first school board elections, slated for November 2024.

Fully funding community schools, as Johnson and schools leaders have put it, will be quite expensive. CPS is already set to face a $670 million structural budget deficit next year, and new funding to fill that hole has yet to emerge.

School Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland wants the district to create a “strong, high quality pathway from pre-K to high school” in every neighborhood. Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez wants families to tell him, “‘I have this great neighborhood option in my neighborhood, and at the same time there are some of these other magnet options, and it’s so hard for me to choose.’ … It shouldn’t be a competition between schools, it should really be families, knowing that, ‘Hey, my child can walk to school and have a great option.’”

The leaders said they want to target resources to communities such as Roseland on the Far South Side that are the farthest from high-level school options. But they acknowledged it will take time for parents to consider neighborhood schools as viable options if they have long looked elsewhere.

Todd-Breland questioned where publicly funded but privately run charter schools fit in the reimagined system. Charter school expansion has stagnated in Chicago after years of growth when they were heralded as hubs of innovation without government bureaucracy that could produce better results with less money. Some 50,000 students attend charters at CPS.

She said CPS is asking if those charter schools are taking public dollars away from other schools that need investment and “are not performing at a level that we find to be a high quality educational experience for young people, then why do you continue to exist in this system?”

The Chicago Teachers Union, where the mayor was an organizer, has been a long-time critic of charter schools.

To accomplish its goals, the board’s resolution calls for the district to move away from its student-based budgeting model, which ties funding closely to enrollment. The system lets principals decide how to spend the school’s money, but it also has been found by researchers to hurt schools that lose enrollment because of outside factors.

The board envisions a new budget system “based on student need, prioritizing communities most impacted by racial and economic inequity, and structural disinvestment and abandonment.”

This could be controversial, with the district facing a $670 million deficit starting in 2025. Redistributing funding could mean drastic cuts for some schools while leaving others unscathed, or even getting more.

One way the school district is looking at investing in these neighborhood schools is by making them “sustainable community schools,” where the school brings in organizations that provide services and supports, from health care to adult education to after-school activities. CPS is spending up to $500,000 on each of the 20 current “sustainable community schools.”

This has long been pushed as a solution by the CTU, and most recently, federal education officials. Some community schools have seen their enrollment rebound.

Johnson ran on a platform of expanding the sustainable community school program. His administration sees it as a way to make neighborhood schools more attractive and also to put empty classrooms to use in schools with low enrollment.

Shi said the community meetings will determine how many schools will get these programs and where they need to be.

The resolution also calls for the school district to confront its facilities problem. A recently released facilities assessment shows the school district has $3 billion in critical repair needs and would require another $11 million to modernize schools. CPS does not have a revenue source to fill these needs.

The resolution suggests that some “underutilized” buildings may need to be used for other purposes, along with previously closed school buildings that have remained vacant. It renews a long-standing call for communities to take part in a process that “reimagines these buildings as community assets, hubs, and resources.”

The school district is currently holding meetings as it also creates a new 10-year master facilities plan. The first one is at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Englewood STEM High School, 6835 S. Normal Blvd.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

Nader Issa covers education for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Chicago schools’ troubled special education department gets new leader

2023-12-11T19:46:30.24-06:00

Josh Long, the longtime principal of Southside Occupational Academy High School, has been selected to lead the Chicago Public Schools special education department.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file photos

The longtime principal of a school for teenagers with disabilities and young adults has been chosen to lead the special education department at Chicago Public Schools, which has been through years of turmoil, accusations and investigations over its services.

Josh Long, who has spent the past 14 years as principal at Southside Occupational Academy High School, has been tapped to lead the district’s special education services for more than 52,000 students with learning, developmental and physical disabilities. Long announced his appointment in a letter to the school’s staff and families Monday.

CPS officials didn’t immediately comment. Long’s appointment is expected to go to the Board of Education for approval this week.

Long will be tasked with taking steps to better serve students in a district where special education services have been troubled for years. He’ll take the helm at a time when about 16% of CPS kids receive special education services, the highest percentage in at least a decade.

Long is a trained speech pathologist with a long history in special education. He won the prestigious Golden Apple Award in 2019. In his first job with CPS, where he started in 2000, he traveled from school to school delivering services. In an interview with WBEZ, he said he decided to become a principal after noticing disparities in special education services and support between schools.

He became principal of Southside Occupational in 2010. The school, which has locations in West Englewood and Bronzeville, enrolls about 360 students ages 16 to 22 with developmental disabilities and helps them transition into adulthood by teaching life and job skills.

In his note to Southside Occupational families, Long said the school has been his “second home.” He thanked teachers and support staff for their work and parents for “placing your trust in Southside Occupational Academy as the crucial last step for your children before graduation.” He said working with students there “has been the greatest gift of my career.”

“Together we have created high-quality educational experiences for students in a dynamic and supportive environment,” he wrote.

“Through community partnerships, innovative programming, rigorous curriculum and instruction, increased technology, arts-infused learning, and the addition of our Career and Community Connections Hub, we have become a model for the education of students with disabilities,” Long continued, perhaps previewing his vision for the district’s services. “Collectively, we have worked to transform the lives of students while providing them with anything and everything that they may need to be as independent as possible within their communities upon graduation.”

Ben Felton, CPS human resources chief, said the search for a new special education leader was the most robust in recent memory — other than the one for a new CEO — because it included parents, district staff, advocates for students with disabilities, the state monitor, the Chicago Teachers Union and board members.

“My hope is that that positions the chief to step in and be more ... successful on Day 1 because they went through that process and because they had the chance to engage with all those different stakeholders,” Felton said.

Board of Education member Mary Fahey Hughes’ son graduated from Southside Occupational last year. She and her son accompanied Mayor Brandon Johnson and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez on a tour of the school earlier this year, and she said, “The program here is amazing.”

Fahey Hughes, who chairs the special education advisory committee for the school board, said she would comment on Long’s appointment after the vote Thursday.

Long will have a tall task in his new role.

The CPS special education department has been overseen by a state monitor for the last five years because the school system was found to have regularly delayed and denied services to students. Those troubles remain.

Long’s predecessor, Stephanie Jones, resigned in June after years of parent and activist criticism of special education services under her leadership.

The department was most recently accused of violating state law by continuing to allow staff members to physically restrain students despite an order to pause restraints until staff were provided training required by law. The episode led to a vote of no confidence in Jones by the Chicago Teachers Union. CPS has since said it has met the restraint training requirements.

When Jones stepped down, CPS officials announced a national search for her replacement and this week landed on Long.

The district also has been trying to navigate a nationwide bus driver shortage that, until this school year, had particularly affected special education students, some of whom were enduring two-hour bus rides to get to school.

In an attempt to address long-standing concerns and new student populations, CPS gave 85% of its schools more money for special education this year, adding $126 million to their special education spending.

But hundreds of special education positions are unfilled amid nationwide shortages.

Also, outcomes for students receiving special education services lag far behind other students. Fewer than 6% of students in special education were proficient in reading or math on the latest state exam, and the graduation rate stands at 77% — 10 percentage points lower than students without disabilities.

Nader Issa covers education for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

New Chicago dashboard tracks how youth are faring in every corner of the city

2023-11-30T11:43:37.721-06:00

The dashboard unveiled this week includes data about kindergarten readiness and the number of quality early childhood sites per community area.

Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times

A new online tool paints perhaps the most comprehensive picture to date of how children in each Chicago community are faring, tracking how they’re doing before they enter school to whether young adults graduate from high school and find jobs.

By clicking around the “Youth Opportunity Dashboard,” one can see that in Albany Park on the North Side, about 45% of children age 5 and under live in poverty; some 46% of elementary school children are on track with grades and attendance; 87% of students in area high schools graduate; and about 81% of 16- to 24-year olds have jobs.

Meanwhile, in Gage Park on the Southwest Side, about 72% of young children are in poor families; 35% are on track in elementary school; 82% in area high schools graduate; and 73% of youth have jobs.

The organization that created the dashboard said it didn’t want people to use it to compare neighborhoods, but rather it hoped to help philanthropists and policymakers direct resources and make changes.

A Better Chicago is a nonprofit venture philanthropy, which pools money to invest in programs, CEO Beth Swanson said. The organization’s mission is to fight poverty by supporting programs that create opportunities for youth.

The youth dashboard intends to create a “crisp, clear story about youth outcomes citywide and by community,” Swanson said. In addition, it can help programs put their work into context.

Much of the information on the dashboard is publicly available in other places, but the dashboard is unique because it brings the data together in one place and displays it by community area, said Onel Abreu, the group’s director of data and impact. The dashboard is a combination of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, city of Chicago, Illinois State Board of Education and Chicago Public Schools. It includes 26 indicators.

The information about children before they enter school is especially revealing because it is not easily accessible otherwise. But it also shows how much more data is needed to understand what is happening with this age group. The primary indicator is kindergarten readiness, which is based on teacher observation and is only starting to be collected by the state. The dashboard also shows many communities have no quality early childhood sites as rated by a state agency. Also, 44% of young children up to age 5 live in poverty.

Abreu said looking at the poverty rates in some communities could underscore the importance of having quality child care available at times parents need it.

“I do think there’s just a lot that is ripe for disruption in that space in terms of understanding what are the policy changes we can make to improve and change the poverty situation,” he said.

The dashboard also clearly shows how devastating the pandemic was to learning in Chicago, said Becky Betts, chief marketing and external affairs officer of A Better Chicago.

Among other indicators, it features an elementary on-track rate, which is calculated by the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project, which gets student-level data from CPS. The on-track rate looks at how many students have a 3.0 grade-point average and above 90% attendance.

Across the city, only about 43% of elementary students are on track, and there are some communities, such as North Lawndale, Pullman and West Englewood, that saw already low elementary on-track rates drop even further in the last few years.

Abreu adds that post-pandemic, there also was an increase in out-of-school suspensions, especially in schools in communities on the South and West sides of the city. He said this is not something he has seen highlighted, but it is important to take note of it.

The organization plans to update the data at least once a year.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.

Chicago students flex civic engagement skills work to improve their schools, and find their voice along the way

2023-11-28T05:30:00-06:00

Corliss High School junior Mentrell Blackman says being on his school’s student voice committee showed him he had “power and strength.”

Manuel Martinez/WBEZ

Inside a classroom at Juarez High School in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood this fall, students craft a letter about the attitude and tone of some security guards, which they say creates a bad climate in the hallways.

They are proposing a meeting with the head of security and the dean. The adviser has told them to approach it diplomatically.

“First, we just want to hear their side of the story,” says Kayla Romero, one of the students. “Maybe a kid’s doing something wrong in the hallways, and that’s causing them to be aggressive. So that’s why we will also want to see their perspective.”

The students say they’ll use the information to draft a plan with administrators to address the issue.

Gruff security is a common complaint in schools, one many teens feel they have to live with. But these students believe they can make a change.

They are part of Juarez’s “student voice committee,” which meets regularly to tackle the question: What needs to be improved? Nearly every Chicago public high school has a committee as part of a broader effort in the school district to change its approach toward civics education.

Untitled

The Democracy Solutions Project

The problem: The number of Americans who vote is low and apathy is high.

One possible solution: Many states require students to take civics education, with the goal of equipping them to be civically-engaged adults. But what kind of civics ed works? Chicago is betting on “student voice committees,” which give students a say in issues at their schools — and can show them at an early age what a difference their voice can make.

Over the last several years, CPS has shifted beyond a narrow focus on learning the ins and outs of government and toward helping students experience what it is like to get involved and create change.

A central goal of CPS’ department on student voice and engagement, which includes the student voice committees, is to “elevate active participation in our democracy,” according to the district’s description.

“Participating in civic life isn’t necessarily something you can just study about. You have to experience and to develop those skills and competencies,” says Heather Van Benthuysen, who ran CPS’ student voice and engagement efforts until she moved out of state this summer. She says CPS is seen as a leader in participatory civics education.

Still, there are questions about whether civics education does any good, says Anthony Fowler, a University of Chicago professor. Despite a requirement in many states, including Illinois, for schools to offer civics ed, few Americans vote, apathy is high and researchers have yet to figure out how to change that, Fowler says.

Fowler notes that better civics education is often found in schools with more affluent students, who have more agency and are often more involved civically, though it’s unclear whether civics ed is responsible for that.

CPS, with its new approach to civics education, set out to interrupt this “civic empowerment gap” between wealthy and lower-income school districts and spread quality civics education across a district where most students come from low-income families.

Vaughn High School: ‘We are the ones in control’

At 7 a.m., about 20 students sit in a circle. Jacob, a young man with wavy dark brown hair, has everyone’s full attention as he explains why the student voice committee at Vaughn wants a school vending machine.

“We figured we had never had a vending machine here … and that at other schools had them” says Jacob. To protect his privacy, Jacob’s last name isn’t being used.

Vaughn Occupational High School on the Northwest Side serves 14- to 22-year-olds with cognitive and developmental disabilities. The students brought their demand to the local school council and also presented to the mayor and CPS’s CEO when they toured the school earlier this year. And, on the spot, the leaders promised to deliver a vending machine.

Jacob (left) and other members of Vaughn Occupational High School’s student voice committee show up at 7 a.m. once a week before school so they can have a say in what happens in their school.

Sarah Karp/WBEZ

Teacher Kelly Fischer, who advises the committee, says it’s amazing to see these students win.

“Often, they are not asked what they think. They’re not asked, ‘What would make this better?’” she says. “They’re given options for things that other people feel will make their lives better.”

She says the message that they lack agency can discourage them from voting or being civically engaged in adulthood.

The committee also gives these young adults a place to talk about their challenges and find support. Jacob says being in this space is a dream.

“I love being a part of this group because we are the ones in control,” he says. “And we decide what we get to do around the school and how we can improve it to make it a better place.”

His peers snap their fingers in support. He then looks around and tells them, “I love you.”

READ: More from The Democracy Solutions Project

Corliss High School: ‘You need to put yourself out there’

Brenda Vences, a junior at Corliss Early College STEM High School in Roseland, says she had to be convinced to join the student voice committee. But now, she’ll never go back to being silent.

“You really got to speak on what you need, what you want,” she says. “You need to get out of that comfort zone. You need to put yourself out there.”

When the Corliss committee gathered last year, the teens talked about issues that come up a lot, like dirty bathrooms. But something else was also weighing on them.

For years, Corliss seemed left behind as it lost enrollment and programming.

Junior Mentrell Blackman says his friends gave him a hard time when he said he was enrolling in Corliss. “They were like, ‘Oh you go to that crappy school … ha ha ha.’”

He says that felt terrible.

As part of the Corliss High School student voice committee, junior Brenda Vences and others initiated a campaign to show the community all their school had to offer.

Manuel Martinez/WBEZ

Brenda says Corliss gets lumped in with a stereotype about South Side high schools being full of gangs and drugs.

Mentrell and Brenda say their voice committee wanted to show that wasn’t true to other young people and the community. They created a public campaign that included a video, social media and billboards.

Sheila Sterling, the dean who advises the committee, set up meetings with the principal and CPS’s CEO. The group won a $40,000 marketing grant from CPS.

They created a video with the theme, “Corliss is elite.” It features a young man, whose dreads are dyed Corliss gold, giving a tour of the school. Among highlights are a maker’s lab with a state-of-the-art 3D printer and a drone simulator. A few years ago, Corliss was named an early college STEM school.

The video went viral, and Mentrell and other students wound up on billboards advertising the school.

The students and Sterling believe the opinion about Corliss is changing. They haven’t seen an impact on enrollment yet, but Sterling says she expects an uptick as it catches on.

Regardless, the campaign made the students feel better about Corliss. It gave them faith in their ability to make a change.

“I felt hopeless when I felt nobody could hear me or hear my ideas,” Mentrell says. “So just knowing that I have the power and strength to do that makes me happy.”

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

This story is part of the The Democracy Solutions Project, a partnership among WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government. Together, we’re examining critical issues facing our democracy in the run-up to the 2024 elections.

With one year until Chicagoans elect the school board for the first time, here’s what’s still being worked out

2023-11-15T15:04:08.031-06:00

Chicago Public Schools Board President Jianan Shi presides over a meeting in August.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times (file)

Chicago education advocates landed long-sought legislation in 2021 to create the city’s first-ever elected school board.

With the elections now a year away, many details of this new board are still unresolved — including even a few settled points that now appear open to negotiation once again.

Springfield lawmakers opened up the structure and timeline of the school board elections during a legislative session this month that featured dueling proposals and boiling frustration.

Lawmakers will be back in session in January in hopes of hammering out details in time for a smooth election next November.

Here’s what you need to know on the issues and where things stand today.

Election schedule (still in flux)

The 2021 legislation created a 21-member school board. The first 10 board members would be elected in November 2024, with the remaining 11 seats appointed by the mayor.

Another 10 seats would then be up for election in November 2026, plus an at-large board president.

That schedule has long been set in stone — until earlier this month.

Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, threw a wrench in those plans by proposing to move elections for all board members to next fall.

His reasoning?

It’s too difficult to create a racially representative voting map that adheres to voting rights laws with only half the districts. He believes every model for transitioning from a partially elected to fully elected board has “glaring shortcomings.”

“If you are going to take 20 districts and consolidate them into 10, you really lose the ability to ensure people are represented in all corners of the city,” Harmon said, referring to a House plan for voting next fall. “The way to avoid litigation over disenfranchisement is to elect all members in 2024.”

Latest Chicago elected school board voting map emerges

Lawmakers traded several proposals this month in an effort to find a solution.

The Chicago Teachers Union, the leading proponent of a fully elected school board, hasn’t immediately jumped on board with Harmon’s plan and even criticized it, surprising some.

But after the initial shock, the CTU and key lawmakers have expressed some willingness to listen, though they worry about a dramatic change so close to the election. Other players, including the advocacy group Kids First Chicago and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, have yet to take a position.

Chicago Public Schools officials project $391 million deficit next year when COVID-19 relief funds run out

Jen Johnson, deputy mayor of education under Brandon Johnson, said the mayor wants to stick with starting with a hybrid board as laid out in the law. She said, as an organizer for the CTU, the mayor worked to pass the law, which took a lot of advocacy, pressure and compromise.

“Interjecting change at this stage is not super helpful,” she said.

In an interview, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the union isn’t opposed to all members being elected next year, but Harmon needs to answer how he thinks that’s now possible when he previously argued it would be too complicated.

“The Senate president dropped this on everyone’s head without the benefit of stakeholder input or even understanding,” Davis Gates said. “So, no, the implications of this haven’t been weighed yet. We’re still trying to understand what just happened.”

Though the House passed a bill on the last day of its session that called for a hybrid bill, Democratic state Rep. Ann Williams (11th) isn’t opposed to moving all the elections to next year, but she said time is needed to consider it. She noted Harmon made the proposal late on Nov. 7, just two days before the end of the session and less than a year before the elections.

Community activist Dwayne Truss and the group Illinois African Americans For Equitable Redistricting, favors moving all 20 elections to next year. Truss, a former Board of Education member under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, said he’s suspicious of the CTU’s reasons for not supporting immediate elections.

“It’s no big secret that they went all in on Brandon Johnson’s [mayoral] campaign,” Truss said. “So they’re not politically, financially in a position to run 20 candidates [next year]. So, you know, that could be an issue.”

Davis Gates said she has no doubt the CTU will be prepared if all the elections are next year.

“That’s never the question,” she said. “You’re asking an organizing union is it prepared to organize? Well, that’s kind of what we do.”

CPS schools need $14.4B for repairs and modernization, report finds

Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said his organization is fine with either election schedule, but he urged lawmakers to “get the process finalized.”

“Either way, we’re preparing to run candidates and support candidates who have a reform orientation and who see our member schools as part of the tapestry of Chicago and an important part of dealing with the achievement gap,” he said.

State Sen. Robert Martwick, a Democrat who has been pushing for an elected board for years, said every version had pros and cons.

“Give me a model, and I will tell you the good and bad,” Martwick said. “It is frustrating because we can’t seem to reach an agreement. Let’s just pick one.”

New Education Board president Jianan Shi, 33, is praised for ‘thoughtful, insightful’ leadership

Election map (approved)

After punting on a deadline to get a voting map finished last spring, lawmakers finally seem to have found a deal this fall. Williams said it was a “big hurdle to overcome” after disagreements about racial representation.

The new map features seven districts where the majority of voting-age adults are Black residents, six majority Latino districts and five white districts.

Two remaining North Side districts have a white plurality, with one having a Latino population of nearly equal size.

But there are still concerns Latino students, who make up nearly half of CPS’ enrollment, will be underrepresented.

Kids First Chicago said focus groups with parents and a poll show most people want the board to reflect the make up of the student body — almost 90% kids of color — more than the city, which is about one-third white.

In a letter last week to the General Assembly, MALDEF, the nation’s leading Latino civil rights organization, said the citizen voting-age population, rather than the population overall or the voting age, should determine the majority in a district. With that methodology, the group said only two of 20 districts in the proposed map are majority Latino, and only one of the 10 districts in the House proposal. The group warned that disparity could lead to future litigation.

Non-citizen voting eligibility (no progress)

Advocates across the board support allowing non-citizens to vote in Chicago’s school board elections to give those communities representation. But to some chagrin, lawmakers didn’t find a solution in the original 2021 legislation.

State Sen. Celina Villanueva, a Chicago Democrat, introduced a bill last year to allow non-citizens to vote, but it has never come up for a vote.

“It is important for a school district with a growing Latinx population and with community members that have been here for 20 or 30 years to have a say over their children’s education,” Villanueva said.

Harmon said he is sensitive to this issue, but there are constitutional concerns. Several other state legislatures have tried to allow non-citizens to vote but have faced lawsuits. And even before litigation, few non-citizens have registered to vote for fear their information would end up in the hands of federal authorities.

Villanueva said she knew this would be difficult but she’s not giving up.

Ethics rules (approved)

Dueling ethics proposals during the veto session caused a small but ultimately temporary disagreement.

In the end, the Senate and House seemed to find agreement on new ethics language that would prohibit people from serving on the board if they had an ownership interest in a company or organization with a CPS contract. But workers at those places would be allowed to run and serve.

These would match the conflict-of-interest provisions for other school districts in the state.

There had been concerns some proposals opened the door for potential corruption, while other versions would have shut out working parents who are employed by an organization that does business with CPS but wouldn’t personally see any financial gain.

Board member compensation (no progress/non-starter)

Serving as a Chicago Board of Education member is an unpaid job that can be time-consuming and historically has been filled by retirees or those with full-time jobs whose companies see a civic benefit in having them serve.

Martwick and many advocates strongly believe members should be paid and proposed a bill allowing for it. They worry leaving them as volunteers will mean only rich people or those with flexible jobs will be able to run or serve. It would be difficult for working parents to find the time required.

“It defies logic that people do not want to lift economic barriers to running,” Martwick said.

But there has been no traction on this topic. Martwick said there’s concern from lawmakers that suburban or downstate districts will want to be paid.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Nader Issa is the Sun-Times education reporter.

Islamic school copes with fear, sadness after threat against kids

2023-11-08T15:37:19.612-06:00

Students go back to class at an Islamic school in Chicago’s southwest suburbs after a threat sent them home last month. They’re combatting hate at home while they worry for loved ones as Israel’s siege on Gaza continues.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Seventeen girls sit in a second-floor classroom at their Islamic school in Chicago’s southwest suburbs.

The whiteboard in their AP U.S Government class features notes about the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment and the Declaration of Independence. They’re questioning whether these rights afforded to Americans apply to them.

Their teacher, Nadia Ismail, asks what in particular feels restricted right now.

“Freedom of speech,” a girl shouts. “Representation,” another says. “Religion” is next.

Students in Nadia Ismail’s AP U.S. Government class at a Chicago-area Islamic school discuss American rights.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

It’s been two weeks since they were sent home for a few days because a hate letter was mailed to the school that threatened, in violent detail and using slurs, to kill Palestinian American and Muslim kids. The letter celebrated the murder of suburban 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoume. And it called his alleged killer — who prosecutors said had been listening to conservative radio about Israel and Gaza — a “national hero.”

Police in the suburb say they’re investigating the letter as one of several targeting religious and racial minorities in the area.

“It feels nerve-racking, and I’m scared most of the time,” said Mays, a student whose last name, like others’ in this article, isn’t being printed to protect her privacy and safety. “We can’t leave our school. We have to be watched by bodyguards just to walk to our parents’ car. The bathroom doors are locked. It’s difficult.”

The kids are navigating hate at home while they remain worried and devastated for loved ones in the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel’s siege has killed at least 10,300 Palestinians and counting — among them more than 4,200 children. A preceding attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis last month.

Palestinian refugees founded this school 37 years ago as Illinois’ first Islamic school with the mission to empower Muslim girls — from grades six and up, students are all girls — to be outspoken leaders and advocates. Students have advocated around social issues like climate change and school shootings. But they’re feeling alone as they face their own challenge and don’t sense much support outside their community.

“Everything I’ve taught them about speaking up, they’re now questioning,” says Principal Tammie Ismail, Nadia Ismail’s sister.

“We’re working to help them find ways to feel empowered,” the principal says. “We don’t want them to feel as Americans that their feelings, their voice is not valid, or because they are Muslim, or because they’re a Palestinian American, that their views don’t count.”

Principal Tammie Ismail says she went into “Mama Bear” mode to protect students when her school received a hate letter. She blames dangerous rhetoric spread by politicians and the media for endangering Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

‘School should be where you feel safe’

Tammie Ismail sits in her small, cozy principal’s office. She just got back from providing fingerprints at a police station — she was the one who had opened the letter — in an attempt to isolate a potential suspect’s prints.

“[I’m] hoping that providing that might get us a step closer to identifying who decided to send hateful letters and hateful rhetoric and threatening messages to my students in my school, my community,” she said.

Ismail has been the principal for more than a decade. But her responsibility to keep kids safe feels as urgent as ever.

She, like many, feels that dehumanizing rhetoric spread by U.S. politicians and media about Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs has inspired hate, threats and acts of violence like Wadea’s murder, the letter to the school and several other incidents in the area.

The school has hired private security. They’ve installed cameras. They’re keeping most window shades down. The Cook County sheriff’s office is helping patrol the area. Recess moved indoors for a couple of weeks. Teachers were keeping track of kids who headed to the bathroom in case of an intruder.

Ismail is joining national webinars to learn tips about school security. And she’s applying for grants because money for all safety measures so far has come from the school’s budget and from some parents’ fundraising.

“School should be where you feel safe. They can’t learn if they don’t feel safe,” Ismail said. “I think it’s going to take some time.”

The administration brought in grief counselors the day of Wadea’s funeral services, which were held in the mosque that shares a parking lot with the school. Just about every student went to the azza, which is what a Muslim wake is called in Arabic. Ismail said the boy’s killing traumatized her students.

Mourners pray during the funeral for 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume last month.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

But there’s only so much the school can do when kids feel scared outside the building, too.

“Going out as a hijabi is also scary,” said a student named Jana, using the word for a woman wearing a hijab head scarf. “I get more stares sometimes … It feels like I’m being watched by people whenever I go out for a walk.”

Another student, May, said her parents don’t want her to wear anything in public that indicates she’s Palestinian.

“Right now, I don’t really feel like we’re in the land of the free,” she said. “I’m only 16 and people are scared of me because I’m Muslim and I wear the hijab and I’m Palestinian.”

Mays, the first student mentioned in this story, wasn’t surprised by the letter. Her older sister was a student at the school when it was threatened two decades ago after the 9/11 attacks. So she expected to “get a letter that’s treating us like we’re not even human, like we deserve to die because we’re Palestinian.”

“When you look at the media, all this propaganda is put on the Muslim and Palestinian community,” she said. “And when you’re seen as these people who promote terrorism, or we stand with Palestine so we’re ‘animals’ … what were you expecting?”

‘They’re not in pain anymore’

The safety concerns at home are coming while kids are sad and angry over Israeli airstrikes in Gaza as well as settler and police attacks in the West Bank that have killed and injured thousands of Palestinian civilians.

“Many of our students’ families have strong ties to Palestine,” Tammie Ismail said. “They have relatives there, grandmas and grandpas, uncles and aunts, that have been killed or that they don’t know whether they’re safe … That’s a very real sadness, a very real deep experience that they’re having.”

Seven students from the school had moved to the West Bank in the past year with their families, but nobody has heard from them the past few weeks.

Emily, a fourth-grade teacher, said she was scared for her own family but trying to console students at the same time, like a kindergartner who came to school crying in worry for his grandparents.

“Even if I might be a little bit scared, I know I can turn to a colleague and talk to them and we can make each other feel better,” Emily said.

Students finish their midday prayers at the southwest suburban Islamic school near Chicago.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

May said students are leaning on their faith to remember that the Palestinians who have been killed — including Wadea — are martyrs, referring to the Muslim belief that those who have been oppressed and killed will go to heaven.

“It helps us to know they’re not in pain anymore,” she said.

That sense of shared grief and communal mourning has helped.

“It’s nice because we’re all people who understand what we’re going through,” Mays said. “I’m afraid that something bad might happen to me. But so is Jeanine, and so is Jana.”

A mother, Sarah, has two daughters at the school. She was thankful they were with classmates and teachers who could relate to their feelings.

“I think I would have been more worried if there was a potential of being in a setting where they may be exposed to bullying because of their backgrounds or the views that they hold,” Sarah said. “It’s a safe place.”

Principal Tammie Ismail shows off a mural created by a former student that shows a girl carrying a torch and embracing the world with Chicago and Palestinian landmarks on one side and the school on the other.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

‘We can’t even express our identity’

The kids want to advocate for their people like they’ve been taught, and like they have for other causes. But speaking up for Palestinians is drawing backlash.

“Just for even saying something like ‘free Palestine,’ it’s twisted,” Jana said. “So we can’t even express our identity.

“Palestine protests downtown are labeled ‘pro-Hamas protests,’” she said. “We can’t even breathe without being scared.”

May spent the past couple weeks rewriting all but one of her 11 college application essays to remove mentions of her ethnicity and religion in her answers to identity and diversity questions.

“We’re not even sure if we should state that we’re Palestinian or we’re Muslim,” she said. “I think we’re all kind of trying not to … We’re worried that the school might turn us away.”

That’s tough to hear for Tammie and Nadia Ismail, who want to empower girls at the school. They had to navigate those fears themselves when some in the community wanted to stay quiet about the hate letter.

“I think our community is, in some cases, so afraid of backlash, so afraid of the exposure, that they’d prefer to just keep it quiet,” Tammie Ismail said. “Just keep it between you and the police. Nobody else needs to know.”

Sarah, the mom, said her oldest daughter, a fifth grader, asks questions about Gaza and has been to protests.

“I want her to grow up knowing that it’s important to stand up for what’s right,” she said.

Latest Chicago elected school board voting map emerges

2023-11-01T18:18:15.218-05:00

The appointed Chicago Board of Election, currently headed by President Jianan Shi, is transitioning to an elected board beginning in 2025.

Manuel Martinez / WBEZ

State lawmakers are out with yet another proposed map of voting districts for Chicago’s first elected school board slated for November 2024 — and they’re hoping it will be passed by legislators who will gather in Springfield next week for the end of a fall veto session.

The new map, released late Tuesday, aims to satisfy advocates who want a map that reflects a voting population that reflects the minority-majority school district. The new map has fewer majority-white districts than previous maps and more districts where Latino Chicagoans are either the majority or a plurality.

Illinois Sen. Robert Martwick, the vice chairman of the Senate Special Committee on the Chicago Elected Representative School Board, said he anticipates a hearing on the new map next week and votes in the Senate and the House before the veto session ends on Nov 9. The final map also requires the governor’s signature.

The deadline to approve a map is April 1, but lawmakers have said they would like to get it in place sooner so potential school board candidates can begin planning. Next November, 10 members of the 21-member board will be elected from geographic districts to start serving in January 2025. The rest of the board will be elected in 2026, with the president elected at large.

Draft map of 20 voting districts for Chicago’s elected school board released on Oct 31.

Provided by Illinois Senate Democrats

Martwick, a Democrat whose district covers parts of Chicago and the northwest suburbs, said this map was produced by map-making consultants who took feedback from the public and lawmakers, and also made sure each district would have about the same population so it would comply with the Voting Rights Act. Each proposed district would have about 137,000 residents.

The House Democratic CPS Districting Working Group appears to be on board with this map.

“This latest map is the product of hundreds of hours of discussions and significant input from stakeholders across our Chicago communities,” state Rep. Ann Williams, a Chicago Democrat, said in a statement. Williams leads the House committee.

The Legislature originally was supposed to settle on a map by June 1. But their first versions garnered pushback from community members and parents, mostly because of concerns the school board chosen based on that map would not reflect the racial makeup of students in the school district.

The city’s population is 33% white, 29% Black and 29% Latino, according to the U.S. Census. The school district’s student population is 47% Latino, 35% Black, 11.1% white and 4.5% Asian.

The new 20-district map includes five districts where the majority of voting-age adults are white, seven that are majority Black and six that are majority Latino. The two other districts have no majority, but they have a plurality of white voters.

Still, some groups already are saying this new map does not do enough to ensure the board will represent the school district’s students.

Dan Anello, president of Kids First Chicago, an organization that has held focus groups with parents and worked with them to advocate for a representative map, said he is disappointed.

“I think it is kind of unfortunate that we haven’t gotten there yet,” Anello said. “So I am worried that they’re not hearing what people are asking for and we’re going to be handed something that is going to do more harm than good.”

Anello points out the two districts that have no majority could be dominated by white voters because some Latino adults are undocumented and can’t vote. This would essentially make white voters the largest voting group in seven districts, he said.

Anello said the majority of voters — not just parents — in a poll commissioned by his group want the elected school board map to be drawn in a way that creates a likelihood the board will reflect the racial makeup of students.

The map is not the only outstanding question for the Legislature related to the elected school board. It also must decide how it is going to deal with having two elections — one that only covers 10 voting districts and a second one covering all 20. The Legislature could either combine districts for 2024 so everyone is eligible to vote, or it could have voting in half the districts in 2024 and then the rest in 2026.

In addition, Martwick has a bill pending to allow board members to be paid. He said there are also some issues around conflict of interest that need to be clarified.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

Illinois reading scores have bounced back, but math scores remain below pre-pandemic levels

2023-10-30T09:38:29.306-05:00

Nearly 35% of Illinois third through 11th graders scored at a proficient level in reading and writing on tests given last spring. This doesn’t match the nearly 38% rate from pre-pandemic 2019, but is higher than the 30% proficiency rate of the last two years. Illinois’ proficiency standard is higher than in most other states, according to the Illinois Superintendent of Education, Tony Sanders.

Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times file photo

Illinois public school students are continuing their slow recovery from the pandemic with improvements in English proficiency, a slight increase in graduation rates and more participation in advanced courses, according to state test data released Monday.

“This is a great sign for the state of Illinois that we are really back on track,” Illinois Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said. “We certainly always want to see greater growth than what we saw this year, but this was significant growth, specifically in English language arts. Math, we still have more work to do.”

But only 27% of students reached proficiency in math. The 2019 pre-pandemic rate was nearly 32%. Sanders said the state will likely start examining how it defines high-quality math instruction to spur improvement.

Many students have struggled to recover from the disruptions caused by the pandemic in math in particular. Schools shifted to remote learning starting in March 2020, and some, including Chicago Public Schools, remained remote for most of the 2020-2021 school year.

These results are featured on the Illinois State Report Card, released Monday. The report card includes numerous metrics about each school and district in the state and identifies which schools are performing well and which ones need improvement. Illinois third through eighth graders take the Illinois Assessment of Readiness exam, and high school juniors take the SAT college entrance exam.

About 1.86 million students are enrolled in public schools, a slight decline from last year and about 10% less than a decade ago. Nearly half of all students in Illinois are considered low income.

The state saw the biggest jump in students learning English, known as English Language Learners, in five years. Sanders said this might be attributed to migrants and refugees coming to Illinois from Ukraine, Russia and Central America. Chicago has received thousands of migrants mostly from Venezuela, and the increase in English Language Learners has helped stabilize the enrollment after more than a decade of steep decline.

While Sanders finds reasons to be optimistic, many student metrics remained lower than the year before the COVID-19 pandemic. A continued concern is chronic absenteeism — students who missed 10 days of school or more last year. State officials say this is an important figure because studies show a high correlation between performance and time in school.

Chronic absenteeism has shot up dramatically since before the pandemic in 2019. It affects 28.3% of students, up from 17.5% in 2019. State officials say this is “alarmingly high” and “more work must be done to ensure full academic and social-emotional recovery from the pandemic.”

Gaps remain amid stronger academic growth this year

Sanders noted progress among Black students, as well the need for more work. About 16% of Black students and 22% of Latino students in reading were deemed proficient, compared to 45% white and 63% Asian students. In math, 8% Black students were proficient and 14% Latino students.

But Black students demonstrated more growth on state tests in reading than any other racial or ethnic group, Sanders said. Student academic growth across the board accelerated more last year than it did in the year before the pandemic.

The state superintendent stressed that gaps in proficiency are because Black students historically attend schools with fewer resources.

“We educate Black students disproportionately in underfunded school districts with more teacher vacancies, higher teacher and principal turnover, higher chronic absenteeism,” he said.

But for the last five years the state has been increasing education funding and targeting new money to districts that are historically under-resourced under a new funding formula. Some $2.38 billion in new funding has been funneled to schools during this time, Sanders said.

“We lived for years under a funding system that was one of the most inequitable in the country, and now we have one that for the last several years has directed resources to the districts and the students who need it the most,” Sanders said.

He said school districts have used that money, along with federal COVID relief dollars, to target supports for students of color, including lowering class sizes and introducing high-impact tutoring.

But many school districts that have seen significant growth in test scores among Black students have small numbers and few low-income students, state data shows. Frankfort Consolidated School District 157-C saw the highest growth in reading test scores among Black students of any other school district in the state.

Frankfort serves about 2,600 students and is located at the tip of southwestern Will County. Superintendent Doug Wernet said it has become increasingly diverse in recent years. Since 2010, the percentage of white students has decreased by 10%, while the number of Black and Latino students increased. Its percentage of low-income students has stayed at about 5%.

“So as a district philosophically, we ensure that rigor doesn’t decrease based on any preconceived notion about performance or ability by any one subgroup,” he said. “And so by holding the best instructional lessons and ensuring that the kids that are in front of the teachers are getting what they should for their grade level, we help them rise to that challenge. So we don’t lower the expectations.”

Wernet said it also helped the district returned to in-person learning during the pandemic before many others in the state.

The quick return to in-person learning is one reason Wernet thinks the reading test score gap is so relatively small. The difference in performance among Black and Latino students and white students is less than 10 percentage points. As is the case in the rest of the state, Asian students outperform all other groups.

In math, however, there remain some significant differences. Wernet said math is skill specific, and students often only practice those skills in school. “Either you get it or you don’t,” he said. However, children are exposed to literacy in many places outside the classroom.

Promising signs for high school students

Illinois’ high school graduation rate reached its highest level in 13 years, at 87.6%, though that’s only slightly higher than last year. Graduation rates did not suffer during the pandemic.

Sanders said the ninth grade on-track rate also went up this year. Studies have shown that students who are on track with passing grades and no more than one F as freshmen are significantly more likely to get their diploma.

Composite SAT scores are about the same as last year but still below 2019 levels, according to updated data from the Illinois State Board of Education. This year, the average composite score for the state is 961. The average was 995 in 2019. All juniors in the state take the SAT, but it may be less important to students because most colleges and universities are now test optional.

Sanders said there are other highlights that speak to the experience students are getting in high school. The number of students taking advanced classes, such as AP or dual enrollment classes (college classes taken in high school) is going up.

Also, an increasing number of young people are participating in career and technical education programs, where they are trained in such professions as health care and manufacturing.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

Nader Issa covers education for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Maligned CPS budgeting model has boosted funding equity in Chicago, research finds

2023-10-11T16:37:35.091-05:00

New research finds that the way Chicago Public Schools has been distributing money to classrooms for the past 10 years has been benefiting the lowest income students.

Manuel Martinez / WBEZ

New research challenges two factors many see as driving inequities in funding between Chicago’s more than 400 public elementary schools.

Researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago looked at Chicago Public Schools’ per-pupil budgeting system, which was introduced 10 years ago. They also looked at private fundraising, such as “friends of” groups which many see as tipping the balance in favor of wealthy schools.

They found, contrary to a view held by many, that CPS’ per-pupil budgeting model, called student-based budgeting, has actually led to greater equity across the school system, with more dollars flowing to elementary schools with mostly low-income students and fewer dollars going to the most affluent schools. Many people have been critical of this budgeting model because they say it undermines schools as their enrollment drops.

The researchers also found that private fundraising by schools that serve the wealthiest students has undermined the equity gains somewhat by boosting revenue going to the most affluent schools.

CPS officials said they are not surprised student-based budgeting is creating more equity because leaders have made it a priority. They note the study looks at funding until 2019 and since then, they say, they have taken even more “aggressive and intentional” measures to advantage schools serving students with the highest needs. They say they are continuing seeking ways to make school-level funding more fair.

The pros and cons of CPS’ budgeting approach

The research is part of a broader look at school-level spending in CPS in a paper titled “Are Friends of Schools the Enemy of Equity? The Interplay of Public School Funding and Private External Fundraising.”

With the introduction of student-based budgeting in 2013, CPS officials started adjusting how much schools got based on enrollment as well as on the number of students at different grade levels and how many were receiving special education services. Principals also got more flexibility in how they could spend the money. This new approach was aligned with a market-driven approach to education in which schools compete for students and money follows students.

Previously, central office administrators sent each school a set number of staff positions based on their expected enrollment and offered little flexibility.

But student-based budgeting has come under fire in recent years and the district is moving away from it. The main criticism is that as enrollment plummets, schools lose funding, forcing them to cut programs, which then makes it harder to attract students.

When Brandon Johnson was running for mayor, he said student-based budgeting had a “devastating impact” on schools.

“SBB, in particular, has contributed to principals, whose budgets are strapped, to choose between keeping a veteran teacher or having a librarian and a functioning library,” he wrote in his campaign platform.

Yet the researchers found student-based budgeting has been reallocating money to the neediest schools. Ten years ago, per-pupil spending at schools with more than 80% low-income students was only $213 more per student than at schools with fewer than 20% students considered low income. By 2019, that gap had grown to $1,629 as low-income schools got more per pupil and wealthier schools got less.

“What we find suggests it is creating more equity in Chicago, and I think I would want the district to think twice before undoing that,” said Lisa Barrow, a senior economist and economic adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. But she also points out that her team only looked at elementary schools and that some schools, particularly extremely small ones, might not benefit under student-based budgeting.

It is well established that schools serving poor students need substantially more money than schools with affluent students to adequately educate their students, who have more needs.

The researchers say the shift of resources to schools with low-income students under student-based budgeting is likely due to many factors. Among them: Schools serving more affluent students tend to have more experienced teachers who are more expensive. These schools are likely at a disadvantage under SBB; If they keep their more experienced teachers, their dollars don’t go as far.

These schools benefited under the old method of distributing money, which awarded teacher positions regardless of cost to schools based on student enrollment.

The fundraising advantage

At the same time CPS shifted its budgeting approach, fundraising at some schools, especially in affluent neighborhoods, took off. The researchers found that most schools fundraise, but only a small number serving few low-income students generate substantial sums. Fundraising among those schools during the time period studied, 2014 through 2019, increased.

These schools tend to use fundraising revenue on personnel and instruction, the researchers found. As a result, fundraising narrowed the per-pupil spending gap between schools with the greatest and fewest low-income students by 26% to 39%.

Other school districts have opted to redistribute money raised by individual schools across a range of schools, but the Federal Reserve researchers do not recommend that approach for Chicago because so few schools raise a significant amount.

“If you were trying to spread this across all the schools, it would be pretty negligible,” Barrow said. “And that assumes that it doesn’t change the amount of money that organizations would raise if you were spreading it around. Parents may, if they’re motivated to help their own school, they may not be motivated to help the district as a whole.”

Rather than addressing fundraising, Barrow said policies like student-based budgeting and equity grants that target certain schools do more to combat inequity.

Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ.

Black community leaders call on CPS to fix achievement gap

2023-09-28T20:48:05.067-05:00

School Board President Jianin Shi welcomes attendees during a school board meeting at Austin College and Career Academy in Austin, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. Later in the meeting, he and the board were criticized for their plan to support Black students.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Black community activists are criticizing Chicago Public Schools leaders for not doing more to examine and address an educational achievement gap between Black students and other racial groups.

A couple dozen Black community leaders attended Thursday’s Board of Education meeting to call on the board to create a committee that would develop a strategy to help Black students academically.

The meeting was held at Austin College and Career Academy High School on the West Side in the first of a series of board meetings set to be held on evenings in neighborhoods across the city. The change is meant to give more access to working parents and kids than the usual afternoon downtown board meetings during work and school hours. About 100 people watched on Thursday in the school’s bright and broad auditorium.

Toward the start of the meeting, CPS officials announced they would begin creating a five-year strategic plan for the district and in that larger process would select an advisory team for Black student success that would report to CEO Pedro Martinez. That team would eventually offer recommendations based on its findings, CPS said.

But the plan was a surprise to Black activists who said they weren’t told of the development and felt folding it into the strategic plan would cause the issue to be overlooked. They instead wanted a committee at the board level.

Former school board member Dwayne Truss said it was a “disingenuous” plan given there’s a board advisory committee on special education students and a task force on migrant students.

“All we are simply asking is that we can have a seat at the table so that we can go ahead and be part of that success,” Truss said.

“Dude,” Truss said directly to board president Jianan Shi, “it’s not a good look, especially when you are an Asian American person talking to Black folks in a Black neighborhood, saying, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’

“Folks, all we see is the same old, same old,” Truss said.

The president of the West Side NAACP tried to speak but was not registered for the meeting’s public comment section, so the mic was turned off.

Community leader Valerie Leonard said it’s important to have a standing committee at the board level so there is some accountability for this longstanding disparity.

“I am 60 years old; we had an achievement gap when I was born, we have an achievement gap now,” Leonard said. “At what point will we have priority for Black children? It is not enough to have a strategic plan. It is not enough to say, ‘We hear you.’ I want you to see me.”

Natasha Dunn said reading and math scores have plummeted to the lowest in 30 years. At a news conference before the meeting, Dunn accused the board and school district officials of ignoring the group.

“The fact that you do not see it necessary and important while witnessing children in CPS struggle and flounder in the system,” she said.

Board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said she understands the distrust of the Board of Education and CPS given the lack of progress spanning decades.

Todd-Breland, a University of Illinois Chicago professor of African American, urban and education history, cited the 55th anniversary of Black student walkouts. Primarily led by high schoolers on the West Side, the protests demanded more Black teachers and administrators and a better quality education.

“Many of the same issues that they were talking about in 1968 are still present today,” she said, acknowledging the “pain that we heard today, the righteous anger that we heard today and the earned distrust of this body that we are now a part of.”

But she said this new board, filled with parents, activists and organizers, is serious about working with Black families to make real changes. She lamented efforts at reform like school closings, No Child Left Behind and other government programs “that particularly harmed Black students.” The process announced Thursday “is intended ... in very explicit ways to turn the page on some of these previous” initiatives, she said.

“These persistent opportunity gaps for Black students in particular are a sign of our collective failure as adults, not some type of inferiority amongst Black children,” Todd-Breland said.

“I understand why people distrust us to do that work. But part of what we’re asking and saying is that the only way to address the needs of Black students and communities is for us to do this work together moving forward,” she said. “We need community members like those that came out tonight to help us as board members, to help the district, to create a Black student success plan. Not in some future state, but this year, that will be voted on by this body.”