Chalkbeat

Chicago Public Schools cuts staffing slightly but special education positions will rise at some campuses

2026-07-28T21:08:38+00:00

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Amid Chicago Public Schools’ budget challenges, the district’s campuses will start the upcoming school year with a less than 1% cut in overall staffing compared with last year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school budgets posted last week.

But the cuts vary across the district’s 500-plus schools. More than 200 schools will have more staff positions, mostly driven by hundreds of new special education positions that CPS says are necessary to meet student needs.

At some schools, there are staff increases of as much as 22% compared to this time last year, while others are losing nearly 20% of their positions. The positions affected by the cuts are wide ranging, from counseling positions to teachers meant to reduce class size ratios.

The school-based staffing figures come as the district tries to close a $732.5 million deficit. The Chicago Board of Education is expected to vote on the district’s nearly $10 billion budget plan, which includes hundreds more special education teaching positions but many other layoffs. CPS on Tuesday nixed a plan for five-day furloughs next school year.

At individual schools, the changes in staffing ranges from a single part-time position to 16 positions.

The schools with staffing increases serve an average 70% of students who are from low-income households, on par with the districtwide average. Roughly 270 schools will have fewer staff compared with this time last year. At those schools, three-quarters of students on average are from low-income households, slightly higher than the district as a whole.

Forty-one schools won’t have a change in positions compared with last fall. At those schools, 68% of kids on average come from low-income families.

These budget figures also don’t tell the full story of decisions that principals must make, according to one principal, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. Her school — where students are overwhelmingly from low-income families — is gaining a couple of positions to open a special education cluster program. But the school also had to cut some non-teaching positions in order to keep a teacher, she said.

While she said her school is faring better than many others, she and her staff are “feeling the impact.”

“We had to make tough decisions,” she said.

Chalkbeat’s analysis excludes staffing for charter and contract schools, including a group of former charter and contract schools that will become district schools in the fall, because district data does not provide enough information about their staffing levels.

The district is slated to spend about $18 million less, or about 2% less, on charter schools, according to CPS budget information. However, it has budgeted $27.6 million for the upcoming school year to absorb and reopen five former Acero charter schools and Chicago High School for the Arts — a former contract school — as district-run schools.

The data shows how many positions schools got before the start of the school year compared with the same point in time last year. But the figures don’t capture whether schools gained or lost staff during last school year.

In a fact sheet about school budgets, the district said its goal “is to ensure staff are placed where most needed across the District in an effort to best serve all schools and decrease vacancies in high-need positions and schools.”

Officials said schools’ staffing changes are due to changes to enrollment, student needs, changes to programs, and how individual schools decided to spend their discretionary dollars.

The district also tightened its needs-based formula for funding schools and incorporated enrollment in more.

The formula is largely based on a school’s needs rather than the number of students enrolled, to decide how many positions schools get. It assigns each school an Opportunity Index number based on many factors, including how many low-income students a school serves and the life expectancy in the area.

This year — as overall CPS enrollment dipped again after a couple of years of small gains — the district tweaked its formula by slightly increasing student-to-teacher ratios and the Opportunity Index score needed to warrant some additional positions.

CPS has emphasized that class size limits won’t change and are enshrined in its contract with the Chicago Teachers Union.

The district said it limited cuts to positions. It decided that elementary schools wouldn’t lose more than four “foundational” — or core — teacher positions, and high schools wouldn’t lose more than six, regardless of their enrollment or Opportunity Index scores.

Foreman High School will gain special education positions but lose other teaching positions, and it will lose one position overall.

The school’s Opportunity Index rose, which warded off additional cuts, said Jessica Keirns, a member of Foreman’s Local School Council. Almost 90% of Foreman students come from low-income families, and many are English learners, she said.

The index is protecting “some of the most vulnerable students in our city,” Keirns said.

For Lizette Garcia, the mother of a rising first grader at Nightingale Elementary School on the Southwest Side, hearing of additional cuts is frustrating because the school already feels tight on resources, she said. The school, where 83% of kids come from low-income households, will lose five more positions, or nearly a 5% staff reduction.

The school enrolled 862 students last year. At the time, her son’s kindergarten class had 30 students. Her son was struggling with reading, and she wondered if the class size made it harder for the teacher and her assistant to support students.

The school opened a new kindergarten classroom midway through the year, and his class got smaller, she said.

“But by that time, he was already behind,” Garcia said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago cut funding for assistant principals in small schools. Most chose to keep them anyway.

2026-07-07T21:49:24+00:00

Data analysis by Sophie Hayssen

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Alex Dakessian, the assistant principal at McCutcheon Elementary on Chicago’s North Side, had a hectic year.

She scheduled classes, helped evaluate 78 teachers and support staff, oversaw the school’s five specialized classrooms for students with significant disabilities, and translated for some of its more than 130 English learners. With two campuses several blocks apart, she sometimes became a “track star running between buildings” when emergencies arose.

But with McCutcheon’s kindergarten through eighth grade enrollment a few students shy of 250, Dakessian’s position landed on the chopping block this spring when the district cut school budgets.

More than 130 small schools were poised to lose funding for their assistant principals next school year. Most, including McCutcheon, used discretionary dollars to keep them or convinced CPS to make an exception, leaving about 40 campuses without that position, Chalkbeat has learned. The move comes as district officials are trying to close a $732.5 million deficit to balance a more than $10 billion budget.

In 2024, Chicago Public Schools vowed to staff an assistant principal on each of its campuses — no matter how small — as part of a new budget formula meant to steer more resources to high-needs schools, many hit hard by enrollment losses. But this spring, the district announced it would cut funding for assistant principals, or APs for short, in schools with fewer than 250 students, among other educator and support staff positions.

The move incensed leaders at the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, which is bargaining with the district to finalize the first fully fleshed-out contract for school leaders. The union has argued that regardless of school size, APs such as Dakessian ensure campuses run smoothly and serve as sanity-saving partners and confidants for principals.

According to numbers provided by school board members, 72 of 138 campuses chose to use discretionary dollars to keep those positions. In the cases of another 23 schools, the district made an exception and funded an AP position, for example because of an upcoming program change.

Nelson Gerew of the Chicago Public Education notes the nonprofit has been a major proponent for staffing an assistant principal in each school. They help ease the intense pressure and loneliness of the principal role and represent a crucial school leader pipeline, with about a third eventually taking over the top job at their CPS school.

But this spring, Gerew says, school budget cuts were inevitable to balance the district’s budget. Because CPS guarantees a minimum level of staffing under its 2024 formula, many small schools were protected from other cuts the district made, Gerew notes. Cutting their APs meant they would share in the budget pain with larger schools, he said. There, principals have occasionally noted that both some schools serving hundreds of students and campuses serving fewer than 100 receive funding for one assistant principal.

“It’s encouraging that the vast majority of principals were able to keep their APs,” Gerew said.

As of its most recent staffing data at the end of June, CPS had a total of 644 assistant principal positions, up from about 600 before the 2023 budget formula changes and from a recent low of 540 in 2017, during another tough budget stretch. In 2026, APs made an average salary of $135,650, based on a Chalkbeat analysis of public CPS staffing data.

In a statement, CPS, which lost 45,000 students since the start of the pandemic, pointed to the intense fiscal pressures it faces. It said school budgets — including the number of eliminated assistant principal positions — remain preliminary until the school board approves an overall district budget this summer. But it said most appeals for additional staffing from schools were approved, and the district would make an effort to reassign employees whose positions were cut.

An ‘arbitrary’ enrollment cutoff with a catch

The principals union has pointed to Dakessian’s case to argue that the district’s 250-student cutoff is arbitrary and to contest a decision not to include pre-K enrollment.

Last year’s official enrollment at McCutcheon was 246 students. But that number does not include about 70 preschool students, who are part of a separate funding stream, but still demand the time and attention of school leaders.

School leaders and their advocates say assistant principals tend to have full plates, pitching in with a wide range of duties, from handing school discipline to communicating with families to filling in when other staff is absent or positions go vacant.

At last month’s school board meeting, Cy Hendrickson, the vice president of the principals union and an assistant principal at Hernández Middle School, said because they work throughout the summer, many assistant principals make less per hour than they would if they had continued teaching. Many regularly work on their own time on evenings and weekends, from completing teaching evaluations to answering parent emails, he said.

“The responsibility of leading and loving a CPS school is too immense and too profound for any one person to bear alone,” Hendrickson said.

The standoff over the AP cuts has cast a shadow over ongoing contract talks between the district and Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, which formally unionized school leaders for the first time after state lawmakers allowed it in 2023. Last fall, the two sides reached a preliminary agreement that included more protections against harassment and more due process rights for principals facing discipline, as well as 4% cost of living increases for 2025-26. But the union and district have been bargaining over a more fully fleshed-out contract.

Kia Banks, the union’s president, said it was “blindsided” by the district’s assistant principal decision — and has continued to push for a way to preserve these positions at the bargaining table. She said at the more than 40 schools losing their APs — campuses serving predominantly high-needs, Black and Latino students — only two principals told the union they feel they can make do without a second-in-command next year.

School board members express concern about AP cuts

Some school board members have voiced concern about the assistant principal cuts, even as they say they understand the district was forced to make difficult decisions to balance its budget.

Board member Karen Zaccor, a former CPS educator, said three schools in her North Side district lost their AP funding, including McCutcheon and Uplift High School, which has bucked district trends by growing its enrollment in recent years. All three chose to keep those positions with discretionary dollars. But she said she worries about what programs and other budget items might not be funded as a result.

“You can’t say, ‘We solved the problem. All of these schools are getting their APs back,’” Zaccor said. “We don’t know what else might be going away.”

School board member Jessica Biggs, a former CPS principal, said she felt the district had made the right call when it committed to staff an assistant principal in each school. She had spent most of her first year as a principal without a second-in-command, at Burke Elementary, which served fewer than 250 students at the time. She struggled.

In her second year, she hired assistant principal Tenesha Hatter, whom Biggs credits with the school’s enrollment and academic growth. Hatter led the school’s efforts to improve its climate and culture and fostered relationships with students to improve attendance, allowing Biggs to focus on boosting academics. Hatter went on to become a CPS principal herself.

“I don’t know if I would have stayed in the role if it wasn’t for her,” Biggs said. At the same time, she added, “There is nothing that’s good to cut right now.”

One small school principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously to discuss the issue without district authorization, recalls finding out the campus would lose its assistant principal funding this spring.

“I remember putting my head in my hands and just sitting there thinking, ‘Oh my god,’” that principal said. “It was devastating.”

The school got just enough discretionary dollars to keep the assistant principal. But it eliminated a teaching position to free up more discretionary dollars it still needs for learning materials, supplies, and more. For the first time, it will start charging student fees, and will lean on parent leaders to do “a hella lot of fundraising,” the principal said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

CPS CEO Macquline King testified before Congress. Here are 3 key takeaways.

2026-06-10T23:27:27+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King’s summer is already off to an unconventional start — testifying in front of Congress just a few months after officially landing the superintendent role.

The Republican-led U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing Wednesday morning where King answered a litany of questions on the district’s policies on gender identity, sex education, abortion, and religious freedom. It’s the latest in an ongoing saga that has placed CPS under federal scrutiny for its efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

CPS has had an especially strained relationship with the Trump administration over the past year and a half. Two months after Trump took office, conservative groups filed federal Title IX complaints with the U.S. Department of Education, alleging CPS’ LGBTQ protections violated the anti-discrimination clause. Then in September, federal officials pulled magnet school grant funding. The district is also under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights for its Black Student Success Plan — an initiative meant to improve conditions for Black students and teachers — for alleged race-based discrimination.

“Whether it’s building community partnerships, advocating for our schools or testifying before Congress as she’s done today, we applaud [Dr. King’s] unwavering commitment to keeping students and families at the center,” Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden told reporters after the hearing Wednesday.

Alongside King, two other superintendents spoke before the committee — Maria Su from San Francisco Unified School District and Aaron Spence from Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools. All three school districts are located in largely Democratic-leaning areas and implement progressive policies.

But King’s appearance was under different circumstances from Su and Spence. The committee ordered King to answer its questions in person by subpoenaing her last month. King acknowledged the legal order in her opening statements, attributing it to “complicated scheduling issues and some underlying privacy concerns.”

Earlier this week, America First Legal filed federal complaints to the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice calling for investigations into each of the school districts in question. The organization, co-founded by White House senior advisor Stephen Miller, largely focused its grievance on issues regarding gender and sexuality in schools.

Questioning lasted for about three hours. Here are the noteworthy takeaways from King’s testimony.

King’s testimony style? An even tone with brief responses

Heading into Wednesday’s hearing, it was no surprise that King was called to testify on the district’s policies. Chicago already found itself in the hot seat about a year ago when Mayor Brandon Johnson was called to testify in front of Congress about the city’s immigration laws.

King’s testimony approach wasn’t nearly as combative as previous exchanges between the district and the Trump administration. Instead, King kept a steady tone and took several opportunities to affirm that CPS values parental input.

She kept most of her answers concise, and at times, didn’t answer “yes” or “no” to questions she was asked to do so. King answered many questions by saying: “CPS is in compliance with Illinois state law.”

“Dr. King emphasized that CPS policies are rooted in law, the District’s mission and values. Above all else, Dr. King emphasized the District must always prioritize the best interests of students and their families,” CPS said in a written statement after the hearing.

Those blunt answers sometimes elicited frustration from Republicans, who cut King off a few times. It also led to several reprimands about CPS’ academic performance and massive budget deficit.

“CPS has shown it is far more interested in sidelining parents and advancing radical gender ideology than ensuring students can read, write, and perform math at grade level,” said Republican Rep. Mary Miller, Illinois’ sole member on the committee.

Most Republicans focused on gender identity and sexuality, while Democrats pointed to other issues

All three superintendents fielded questions on school rules related to gender identity and sexuality. For CPS, policies about transgender students’ sleeping situations for overnight field trips and their ability to use the locker room for the gender they identify with came under fire.

“If a student is transitioning and they have gone through the eligibility process and it has been approved according to Illinois policy, that would be considered on a case by case basis,” King said, when pressed by North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx on transgender girls being allowed to sleep in the same room as cisgender girls.

Republicans also raised concerns about Chicago’s sex education curriculum teaching about puberty blockers, as well as school staff calling students by a different pronoun or name than they use at home. Several referenced recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court that expanded a parent’s authority over their child’s education as evidence that the school districts in question Wednesday were not complying with federal laws.

The Democratic committee members used their time to bring up other issues in education they saw as more pressing: budget cuts, immigration enforcement, and school shootings. Several Democrats also apologized to the superintendents for some of the fiery statements made by Republican lawmakers.

“You know what you do, you’re good at what you do,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Democrat from Connecticut. “Do not be intimidated by this committee.”

May Day protests scrutinized

One topic that got fewer mentions in committee — but more in-depth answers from King — was the district’s approach to May Day.

In an agreement last month between the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS, the city’s schools stayed open that day and provided a full day of instruction, which included lessons on civic engagement and labor.

As part of May Day, CPS approved and provided transportation for 40 field trips — with about 2,200 of the district’s 315,000 students involved. Some of those trips was to a downtown pro-labor, anti-Trump rally, which was called into question during Wednesday’s hearing.

King defended CPS’ handling of May Day, saying it was part of the district’s goal to “engage students civically.” When asked if field trips would be approved for protests aligned with conservative causes, King emphasized that the day of instruction was “not a politically slanted event.”

“The curriculum was expansive and there were options,” King said. “The curriculum was still decided at the school level, and so were the field trips.”

King also tentatively agreed to a lawmaker’s demand that the district investigate a May Day field trip permission slip that said students would “engage in political advocacy.”

Reema Amin contributed to this report.

Makiya Seminera is a reporter covering how the state and federal government affect education in Chicago and across Illinois. Contact Makiya at mseminera@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools cut hundreds of custodian jobs last year. Staff say their schools are dirtier.

2026-05-11T10:00:00+00:00

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Last summer, as the district faced a massive budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools cut nearly 500 custodian positions, or close to one-fifth of full-time staffers who cleaned schools, and ended all private custodial contracts.

Then, three months into this school year, complaints rolled in through a district survey of 168 principals and 423 custodians: Three-quarters of principals indicated they didn’t have enough custodians on staff to meet their cleaning needs, and at least 40% asked the district for more staff. Nearly two-thirds of custodians said their tasks were difficult to manage given the size of their buildings and the number of people on their team.

The survey responses from late November, obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request, are a window into how the custodial staffing changes have impacted school cleanliness — and the potential challenges ahead in maintaining hygienic environments for kids and staff. Many custodians signaled that they were not equipped to clean schools well. Principals said they were picking up trash and cleaning spills or vomit. A few schools had new pest issues.

“It is so disappointing to observe the current state of custodial service and resource availability at our school, as it directly impacts our students’ well-being and basic dignity,” wrote one principal.

“I have never experienced anything like this in my 14 years in CPS,” they said.

Studies have shown links between school cleanliness or air quality, student health, and attendance. One study found that higher levels of contaminants on student desks were associated with student absences for gastrointestinal problems.

Some people are pushing for change now: SEIU Local 73, the union that represents CPS custodial workers, said the issues highlighted in the fall survey remain today, and it wants the district to hire more custodians.

But that’s a tall ask for a district that’s planning a budget with a $700 million deficit and may be looking at cuts to schools this year without any additional revenue.

The district, which as of April employed about 2,200 custodians, said that it took the survey results seriously and, in response, implemented two rounds of custodial shift changes at schools. More than half of principal respondents said they were satisfied with responsiveness with the district’s facilities management office.

“The District continues to utilize feedback from students, staff and families as a guide to ensure school buildings are safe and welcoming environments,” Evan Moore, a spokesperson for CPS, said in a statement.

District defends cuts to custodial staff

Before the custodial changes last year, CPS directly employed 1,375 full-time custodians — who are represented by SEIU Local 73 — and also contracted out to seven private custodial companies, whose roughly 1,250 workers were represented by SEIU Local 1, according to a district memo last year. CPS’ contracts with those companies came after the district severed ties in 2024 with Aramark, which had for a decade helped manage janitors and cleaning supplies but had been sharply criticized for failing to keep schools clean.

The district’s layoff plans last year meant cutting the 1,250 privately contracted custodial jobs and then filling roughly 750 of those positions.

Both unions protested against the district’s plans, which were estimated to save the district $40 million. At the time, CPS’ chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said direct district oversight, coupled with better training and a mobile app for custodians to upload information about the rooms they’ve cleaned, would help the district ensure schools were clean. Bringing custodial services in house helped meet a district goal to move away from privatized services, CPS said.

Responses to the district’s fall survey, which came two months after the custodial changes went into effect, told a different story.

Custodians, principals describe difficulties with keeping buildings clean

Custodians reported finding it difficult to clean all types of school spaces with less staff and raised concerns with a later start time in the morning — providing a shorter runway to complete certain tasks before kids and staff get in. CPS noted that shifts ranged across schools and started as early as 4 a.m. before the custodial changes. Now, no shift starts sooner than 5 a.m. or ends later than 11:30 p.m.

Many custodians expressed concerns in the survey about being the only custodian on staff during the day, making it difficult to complete tasks or respond to multiple calls for help. One custodian said they’re now the only person on their shift cleaning the two-building campus.

At Walt Disney II Magnet in Irving Park, custodian Johnny Jones, who has worked for CPS for 35 years, said his start time changed from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., about a half-hour before other staff and students get in. Unlike previous years, there’s no longer a second custodian who joins him.

The school eventually hired an additional custodian for the night shift, which helped get the building ready for the next morning, Jones said. But it can still be difficult to fly solo during the day, he said. He might be cleaning up a spill in the lunchroom and get a call for soap in the girls’ bathroom. Depending on the importance of the task he’s handling — for example, spills can be a safety hazard — a new task may need to wait until the second shift starts.

Keeping the building clean is personal for Jones, who thinks about wanting clean spaces for his own grandchildren, and he wishes the district would give schools more autonomy over shifts.

“Do I want my kid going to a dirty building? Do I want my baby using an unclean bathroom?” Jones asked. “Absolutely not.”

Principals noted various spaces in their schools that are now dirtier, such as classrooms, student bathrooms, and hallways, and many noted that the result is unclean and unhygienic spaces for students and staff.

Several principals reported having to pick up trash or clean up spills on their own. Some said cleaning tasks have fallen to other educators and, in at least one case, students. And a few noted new issues with rodents or cockroaches.

“I feel that the communication, quality of cleaning, and the lack of staffing has put a huge strain on the school resulting in unclean, unsafe conditions for students and teachers alike,” one principal wrote in the survey. “Teachers are having to clean their own rooms in addition to their already large workload.”

One principal said fewer staff custodians has resulted in a “consistently filthy” building, contradicting a CPS goal to provide “a joyous and equitable learning environment.”

“It cannot be a joyous place for scholars or staff when the school is dirty and unsanitary,” they wrote.

As CPS brought on hundreds of new hires, some initial onboarding problems may have impacted staffing, including technical issues that resulted in some custodians not being paid. The district said it has since resolved the problem and issued more than $916,000 in back pay to custodians. But the lack of pay initially led many custodians to not report to work or quit, said Trumaine Reeves, SEIU Local 73’s CPS division director.

At one Southwest Side high school, where the custodial staff was cut by one-third, a teacher has noticed that trash often is not picked up overnight and sneaker scuffs aren’t cleaned off the floor. Those details can make a difference for how comfortable both students and staff feel in the building, he said.

The teacher, who asked for anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak with the press, said veteran custodial staffers who have always been good at their jobs tell him that they now feel stretched.

There are a myriad of challenges that teachers face at his high school, such as supporting students with a lot of needs. Navigating those difficulties, then walking into a dirty classroom “just really hurts your soul,” he said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Cesar Chavez Elementary in Back of the Yards to be renamed — and neighbors can weigh in

2026-04-16T21:21:05+00:00

Efforts are underway to rename Cesar E. Chavez Multicultural Academic Center, a Back of the Yards elementary school.

School officials and the local school council are gathering feedback and suggestions for a new name for Chavez Academic Center, 4747 S. Marshfield Ave., a Chicago Public Schools spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Neighbors have until Friday to submit suggestions for a new name using this online form.

Last month, a New York Times investigation revealed multiple women have credibly accused Chavez of grooming, raping, and sexually abusing them.

At the time, parents and current and former students of the elementary school said they were shocked, confused, and felt like they’d been lied to about Chavez, previously seen as a hero for his work in the farmworkers’ rights movement.

The school should not be named after someone who abused girls as young as some of the students who walk the school’s hallways, and keeping Chavez’s name sends the wrong message to young people, parents, and neighbors previously said.

On March 25, the local school council voted to start the name change process. Four public meetings were held March 30-April 2 to gather feedback on potential new names for the school, the CPS spokesperson said.

The school can be renamed after a place, thing, or person, according to CPS policy. If suggesting the name of a person, the person must have been deceased for at least six months and cannot be a religious figure nor a relative of a school employee or the local school council.

Once the period to submit suggestions closes on Friday, students and staff will vote on their favorite options before presenting the local school council with three name suggestions, the CPS spokesperson said.

The local school council will then vote on the proposed names at one of its monthly meetings. Once the council votes on the name change, it needs to be approved by CPS officials, including the school’s network chief and the Chicago Board of Education.

Pilsen’s post office, named after Chavez, is also in the midst of getting a new name, and Chavez’s likeness was removed from a Pilsen park mural last month.

This story was originally published in Block Club Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools to stay open May 1 during nationwide protest — at least for now

2026-04-09T23:01:09+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools will stay open May 1 for now, despite a push from board members and the Chicago Teachers Union to allow teachers and students to join a nationwide protest that day, in part against the Trump administration.

But it’s still possible schools will close that day, since a majority of Board of Education members support the move.

In a statement issued Thursday afternoon, interim CPS CEO Macquline King — who will begin leading the district permanently July 1 — said she’s recommended that school should stay open. She added that if the board wants to cancel classes, it must convene a special meeting and take a formal vote “as soon as possible.”

“Our staff, students and families need a clear understanding of what to expect on May 1,” she said.

Union leaders have pushed for the day to be a teacher-directed professional development day — for which students are off from school — so that teachers and students could participate in the national day of “no school, no work, no shopping.” The protest is meant to advocate for raising taxes on the rich, reining in immigration enforcement, and more funding for schools, union officials have said.

The disagreement could be an early test of King’s leadership of the district, which is confronting a range of challenges.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer and close ally of the union’s, previously said he supports letting students miss school on May 1, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

But confusion over whether the day would be off began Wednesday, after a memo from King leaked to the press. King’s memo, dated Tuesday and delivered to board members, said she wanted to keep classes in session in order to “ensure continuity of instruction, maintain safe and supervised environments, and minimize disruption for families,” including providing access to free student meals, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Chalkbeat.

She also noted that in a recent survey, 113 schools — or roughly one-fifth of all schools — reported a range of activities happening May 1, including field trips, college-decision day events, sports events, and make-up AP testing, the memo said. Just over 100 schools said they had out-of-school activities planned, including prom and senior night.

Those activities, which required “months of planning and financial commitments” could be difficult to reschedule as the district gets closer to the end of the year, the memo said.

Board members are split on calling the day off.

But also this week, the Chicago Teachers Union filed a grievance against the district, claiming CPS had violated its contractual agreement when planning this school year by failing to work with the union to schedule one professional development day for the 2025-26 school year.

In a letter dated Monday, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates wrote that the contractual language was negotiated “with the express purpose of accommodating a day of civic action on May 1.”

King notes in her memo that the provision cited by the union is set to take effect next school year, not this year. The school board adopted its calendar for next school year, when May 1 falls on a Saturday.

The union has also pointed to a state law allowing middle and high school kids to participate in a civic event. But in her memo, King said the law allows those students to take one excused absence a year for such an action and doesn’t allow a district-wide day off.

The grievance and the matter of May Day came up during the board’s closed session on Wednesday, board members said. King asked board members to weigh in and presented them with multiple options, including to keep schools open. A majority of board members, who are aligned with the mayor, voiced support for canceling classes on May 1, and some of those who were opposed stated that King had switched her position after the board’s closed session.

Debby Pope, an appointed board member, said board members shared many perspectives, including concerns for working parents. Pope said she supports closing schools May 1 because the nation is in “unprecedented times” and that “education takes many forms,” including participating in or learning about protests.

Other board members have stated staunch opposition, including Jessica Biggs and Jennifer Custer, both elected board members who have announced their runs for board president.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Biggs said, “The academic calendar has been set. Key end of year activities are planned. Our teachers are working hard to wrap up the year on a focused note. And our families count on our schools to do what they say.”

Custer started a petition online calling for school to stay open.

On Thursday morning, King joined a call that included leaders from CTU, the city’s principals union, and the mayor’s office so that they could plan for different scenarios, but no final decision had been made, according to Kia Banks, president of the principals union. Banks said all parties are trying to be “aware of our civic responsibilities while preserving or protecting our learners.”

A source close to CTU said it has been in “productive meetings” figuring out plans with the district, the principals union and the mayor’s office.

It remains unclear how staff in other unions, such as those who represent custodians and other support workers, would be affected or if they were included on the Thursday morning call.

Board President Sean Harden issued his own memo to King and some of her top cabinet members on Thursday, expressing the board’s support for King to “operationalize a day of civic action” on May 1.

King responded the same day, telling Harden that she was sticking by her statement that the district’s position “is to remain open May 1.” She also reiterated her call for the board to publicly vote on the matter.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools are growing. But few outperform neighboring schools.

2025-12-19T23:25:00+00:00

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Principal Anna Vilchez takes pride in how much Steinmetz College Prep has to offer:

More than a dozen student-led after-school programs, from photography to DJing. A 3D printer-equipped engineering lab. Some 30 classes each month through its Parent University.

These offerings are paid for through Chicago Public Schools’ Sustainable Community Schools initiative, a joint effort by the district and its teachers union that has given high-poverty schools about $500,000 annually to team up with community nonprofits to provide wraparound support.

Vilchez is grateful for the boost. But she also wants to see more gains in the school’s attendance, graduation rate, and test scores — growth similar community school programs have powered in other cities.

Unspent money, turnover, and tension: Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools provide lessons for future

A Chalkbeat analysis of student outcomes at the 20 schools in the program since 2018 suggests the investments have not yet led to widespread improvement in how likely students are to attend school regularly, graduate from high school, or pass key reading and math tests. This is partly due to the pandemic’s disruption to the rollout, but also a lack of clear goals and guidelines, tensions between schools and their nonprofit partners, and money left unspent, Chalkbeat found.

Nevertheless, Chicago Public Schools is more than tripling the number of Sustainable Community Schools to 70 by 2027. The expansion will cost $35 million annually — a major investment at a time when the district is wrestling with budget deficits.

Supporters, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, say the initiative transforms some of the city’s most disinvested campuses into service-rich neighborhood hubs, bringing needed programs and support staff often seen as givens at higher-income schools.

“Schools are successful when every single child has everything that they need,” Johnson said last summer when he announced 16 additional campuses joining the program. “The success of a school is not just based on student outcomes.”

But critics say the district should have ensured the model is delivering measurable results before enshrining the expansion into its latest teachers contract.

District officials say they are spelling out clearer expectations and giving more guidance to schools, especially the 16 schools joining the initiative this school year.

“We’ve learned that giving schools money and partnering them [with nonprofits] does not give them the foundation of how to actually transform their school,” said Autumn Berg, the district’s community schools initiative director. “It took us a long time to get there.”

On traditional metrics, Sustainable Community Schools do not outperform

Before Steinmetz became a Sustainable Community School in 2018, the campus — which serves predominantly low-income Latino students — had few enrichment programs. And it never consistently gave students and parents a say in what it offered.

That changed with the program, which now funds a range of after-school activities, including an after-school K-pop dance club founded by junior Miguel Hernandez.

Hernandez, who came to the school as a freshman English learner, is now taking college-level arts classes at Columbia College.

He credits much of his growth to the club.

“I created a great bond with a lot of people,” he said.

Miguel Hernandez, a junior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, practices a dance routine on the school’s auditorium stage on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. Hernandez founded the school’s K-pop dance club and is now taking dual-enrollment dance classes at Columbia College Chicago.

Hernandez’ experience reflects a community school promise: Engaging programs created with input from families give students a reason to go to school and do better in their classes. But the model hasn’t yet given most Sustainable Community Schools an edge in attendance and achievement.

Chalkbeat compared student metrics over time at the 20 pilot schools to those at 29 campuses that applied to the program but didn’t get in, which have an almost identical average poverty rate to the pilot group and also serve almost exclusively Black and Latino students. The analysis also looked at about 300 campuses with poverty rates of at least 80%, the minimum required to apply to the program.

Student outcomes shifted similarly in all three groups since 2018, with the SCS schools seemingly getting little academic boost from the program’s investments. Absenteeism shot up comparably during the pandemic and has remained well above pre-COVID levels, with Sustainable Community Schools struggling slightly more than other high-needs schools.

A district analysis last school year obtained by Chalkbeat did find that among students who regularly attend after-school programs at the 20 Sustainable Community Schools, chronic absenteeism was 13 percentage points lower than for their peers in the same school.

The pilot schools have also had consistently higher graduation rates than the campuses that didn’t get into the program. But over time, those campuses improved slightly more and narrowed the gap.

When it comes to test scores, all three groups saw the same trends on the SAT and the Illinois elementary proficiency test.

The Sustainable Community Schools have seen marked reduction in suspensions and, after a COVID-era uptick, in behavioral incidents. But so did other high-poverty schools.

On a University of Chicago-designed student and staff survey called 5Essentials, measures of school connectedness and climate have declined districtwide post-COVID. But the 20 pilot schools experienced a steeper drop than other high-needs schools, with almost half getting a rating of weak or very weak in the most recent year for which data was available.

And even as program supporters have held it up as a possible antidote to declining enrollment, the 20 Sustainable Community Schools have lost more than a fifth of their enrollment since 2018, while districtwide enrollment dipped about 11%.

Students move between classes at Steinmetz College Prep High School in Chicago on Dec. 9, 2025. The school is expanding its STEAM curriculum as part of the district’s Sustainable Community Schools program.

At Steinmetz, absenteeism, academic outcomes, and enrollment largely followed these pilot groups trends, with a sharper drop in suspensions than other high-poverty campuses.

In recent years, the community schools model has gained traction nationally, though the Trump administration recently cut some community schools grants.

Research has shown well-implemented programs can yield measurable student gains. Isaac Opper, a University of California, Los Angeles and RAND School of Public Policy expert who helped evaluate New York City’s community schools program implemented before the pandemic, said that several years in, that initiative had produced attendance gains, graduation rate increases, and modest but notable test score improvements.

“If you are seeing no difference, one story is that Sustainable Community Schools isn’t working,” Opper said. “Another is that it is working, but so are other things the district is doing.”

But there are outliers. Several schools in Chicago’s initiative have seen student outcomes markedly improve and enrollment stabilize. What they appear to have in common: consistent leadership through the seven years of the program, teacher and staff buy-in, and a clear vision for how to make the most of the added dollars.

At Richards High School on the Southwest Side, enrollment is up, graduation rate increases are outpacing the district’s, and absenteeism, though still high, has dipped below pre-pandemic levels. Metcalfe Elementary on the Far South Side saw improvements in test scores and attendance. Its 5Essentials rating rose to the highest possible.

Metcalfe Principal Stephen Fabiyi says the program has helped support smaller class sizes in the early grades and a robust, well-attended after-school program that blends enrichment and academic help from the school’s teachers. Getting family input on programs and curricula boosted engagement.

“My kids would have a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful in school without Sustainable Community Schools,” Fabiyi said.

With Sustainable Community Schools expansion, a promise of more accountability

Monique Redeaux-Smith, a former CPS teacher who now works at the Illinois Federation of Teachers and co-chairs the district’s Sustainable Community Schools task force, says that at these high-needs schools with histories of disinvestment, the program is “trying to rebuild after a series of hurricanes.”

“I’m not worried about not seeing outcomes,” she said. “I know from having conversations and from seeing and talking to these schools and school stakeholders often that it is making a difference in the experience that young people are having every day.”

The model just needs more time, Redeaux-Smith said.

Mayor Johnson echoes that sentiment. When pressed about the program’s outcomes, he has brushed aside critics, arguing metrics like test scores have been historically abused to justify disinvestment in neighborhood schools and even their closures.

The STEAM Makerspace at Steinmetz College Prep High School is shown on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. The space is used by students for hands-on projects in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math as part of the school’s STEAM program.

Dwayne Truss, a former school board member who says he’s a fan of community schools generally, says the Sustainable Community Schools program shouldn’t be growing so much given the lack of measurable results and budget crisis, he said.

“It would seem that you would wait until you have the data before you that says this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and go forward with this massive expansion,” Truss said.

District leaders say they are working to harness the lessons of the program’s rollout as Chicago grows it in the coming years. CPS and the union have agreed to bring in outside experts to evaluate the program and its outcomes this school year.

Officials say there are clearer expectations for the schools and partners, and a longer, more supportive transition into the program.

And the district is pushing for a new process whereby schools that don’t meet a set of performance goals — still under discussion — could lose half and eventually all of their SCS funding.

Vilchez and other principals say they hope the new push to better track results won’t take away flexibility and the ability to let families and local communities shape the model’s priorities. At the same time, they want the program to power student gains.

“I am committed to owning our data,” Vilchez said, ”and working to improve it.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Unspent money, turnover, and tension: Chicago’s Sustainable Community Schools provide lessons for future

2025-12-19T23:25:00+00:00

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When Anna Vilchez became principal at Steinmetz College Prep four years ago, she had to quickly turn to an unexpected crisis.

Since 2018, the high school on Chicago’s Northwest Side had teamed up with the nonprofit Northwest Center as part of Sustainable Community Schools, a partnership between the school district and its teachers union. High-needs campuses and partner nonprofits receive about $500,000 a year to expand family outreach, wraparound student services, and after-school programs.

But as Vilchez took over, Steinmetz and Northwest Center were poised to part ways. Their visions for the program were at odds. Meanwhile, the nonprofit struggled to spend the money it received through the initiative. Vilchez set out to salvage the partnership.

As Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union gear up to expand the program from 20 to 70 schools in the next two years, their leaders say the initiative has been a boon to high-poverty campuses. It has allowed them to enlist key support staff, offer more programs, and give their communities more of a voice in school decisions.

Chicago is expanding its Sustainable Community Schools. They haven’t yet boosted student outcomes.

But a Chalkbeat analysis of program spending showed schools and especially their community partners have left more than $6.6 million on the table since 2018. The initiative has also faced leadership and staff turnover, and tensions between schools and their nonprofit partner, which — along with the pandemic’s disruption to its rollout — could help explain why the model hasn’t yet given the 20 pilot schools an edge in improving student outcomes, as a Chalkbeat analysis of academic and school climate metrics found.

Clear goals and firm leadership are key to realizing the promise of the community school model, said William Corrin, an expert at the think tank MDRC.

“For Chicago, this juncture seems really critical,” he said. “We’re about to create more community schools. So what could we do to set ourselves up to do it better?”

‘There was no blueprint’ for Chicago’s community schools

Steinmetz, in a grand building in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, was exactly the kind of school the district and union were looking for when they negotiated a 20-campus Sustainable Community Schools pilot that started in 2018. A neighborhood campus that serves predominantly low-income Latino students, including many English learners, the school was also already a community hub, with a health clinic and a Parent University.

Deja Kirk, a senior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, sings in the school’s recording studio on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. The space is used by students in the music program to create and record original work as part of the school’s STEAM initiatives.

Steinmetz teamed up with local nonprofit Northwest Center for its successful bid to join the program. Then COVID hit, disrupting the rollout.

Here, as on other campuses, turnover and some resistance from educators and staff have been key hurdles. Jesse Livingston, the resource coordinator with Northwest Center (formerly the Northwest Side Housing Center), said teachers have seen programs and reform efforts come and go over the years, leaving them skeptical that this latest initiative would last. Some have also balked at the idea of engaging students, parents, and the nonprofit in more school decisions.

“Our biggest challenge has been adult buy-in,” he said. “Every school community wants to function as a village, but there’s conflict and a clique mentality and old gunky energy.”

Earlier on, the school and the nonprofit also didn’t see eye to eye on what the program should accomplish and struggled to understand how the other did business.

Angel Gonzalez, at the time the school’s program coordinator who also had experience working at a nonprofit, tried to mediate. Lack of guidance and training were big issues, he said.

“There was no blueprint,” Gonzalez said. “You just had to figure it out as you went along.”

Money for community schools initiative left on the table

Northwest Center, like other community partners in the program, receives about half of the $500,000 allocated to Steinmetz. But records obtained by Chalkbeat show the nonprofit, and others in the program, are not spending all the money.

Livingston said unfilled positions and midyear turnover as well as the district’s cumbersome reimbursement process for vendors have been key challenges.

“We’ve gotten better every year,” he said. Data show the nonprofit left more than $142,000 unspent in the first year working at Steinmetz, while last year, they used all but $45,000.

Chalkbeat found money went unspent at many of the other 20 schools, though last year they came closer to using all of it. At Beidler Elementary, the school and its partner, Blocks Together, have failed to spend more than 45% of their overall SCS funding so far, which the district attributed to “operational challenges rather than a lack of need.”

The union in its last round of contract negotiations won a provision allowing schools to carry over up to $300,000 in unspent SCS dollars to the next year.

Spending and staffing data Chalkbeat obtained shows in more recent years, campuses in the program used the money to pay for relatively few staffers. Some principals said rising salary and benefit costs have meant the dollars don’t stretch nearly as much as they did in 2018. The district did not provide data on school staff hired by partner nonprofits.

Across the city from Steinmetz, Farragut High School on the Southwest Side used Sustainable Community Schools money to pay for valuable positions, including a college and career coordinator and a youth intervention specialist, principal Virag Nanavati said.

But even as the school dipped into non-SCS funds to pay for these staffers, its partner, Enlace Chicago, left more than $75,000 unspent the year before Nanavati started alone. At the time, that meant the money stayed with the district instead of flowing to the school.

Nanavati says the nonprofit struggled to staff after-school programs and ran some that were poorly attended. The nonprofit also hired a resource coordinator, an assistant to the resource coordinator, and two counselors, even as the school had to cut staff because of budget woes. Enlace did not respond to a request for comment.

The school and Enlace worked to rethink the spending, Nanavati said, pitching in for holiday celebrations that have brought in prospective families and other residents. Farragut also expanded its after-school offerings, offered attendance incentives, and launched a credit recovery program during the school day — initiatives he credits with a dramatic increase in the school’s graduation rate this year.

“Your lead partner needs to understand that it’s not their money,” he said he told a principal at one of the 16 schools joining the program this fall. “It’s money to serve students that they help manage.”

Overcoming tensions to honor the community schools model

In the weeks after she started at Steinmetz, Vilchez spent an entire day with staff at Northwest Center, talking about how to work better together and avert the looming breakup.

Vilchez says the partnership with Northwest Center is strong now. The nonprofit oversees the school’s Parent University classes, from yoga to financial literacy to suicide prevention, as well as student after-school programs. It also connects families with key resources, including foreclosure prevention, workshops for first-time home buyers, and help enrolling in public benefits.

District officials say they are trying to better prepare schools and partners to work together as 16 new campuses transition into it this school year. The district has spelled out clearer staffing and spending expectations, and provided more training to both schools and nonprofit staff, said Autumn Berg, the district’s community schools initiative director.

“There’s always going to be struggle in partnerships,” she said. “It’s a lot like being married. You have to figure out how to work together. You have to figure out how to communicate.”

Galadryel Arroyo, a senior at Steinmetz College Prep High School, is pictured on Dec. 9, 2025, in Chicago. She is a member of the school’s mural club, which is part of its STEAM programming.

Vilchez says the program is paying off at Steinmetz. The school’s restorative justice work powered by Sustainable Community Schools led to a reduction in more serious student misconduct and suspensions. The say in decisions the model gave students and parents boosted a sense of connectedness to school. This fall, a districtwide student survey captured that greater sense of belonging, she said.

But there is still a lot to do, particularly in improving student outcomes. Vilchez said she welcomes the greater focus from the district on how the program is affecting academic and other metrics.

“I just hope that they honor what the SCS model is about — giving schools autonomy and flexibility to meet the needs of that specific community,” she said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools eyes colocation of 2 Brighton Park elementaries

2025-11-20T16:30:00+00:00

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A Chicago Public Schools elementary and a charter school the district saved from closure could share a building under a plan officials are considering.

The Acero Cisneros campus in Brighton Park, which the district is in the process of absorbing this year, could move to the nearby Shields Elementary building, according to a letter to the Shields community from Conrad Timbers-Ausar, CPS’ acting chief portfolio officer. He said officials are weighing the move ahead of a Dec. 1 state deadline to announce school actions, such as closures or moves. The schools would share the campus but retain separate principals, staff, and students.

The Chicago school board made the unprecedented decision last February to transform five schools in the Acero charter network into district-run schools rather than let their operator shutter them. District officials budgeted $20 million dollars this school year to fund the transition. All but one of these campuses saw enrollment losses this fall that added to earlier declines.

Enrollment at Shields has also shrunk dramatically over the past decade as slowing immigration, falling birthrates, and gentrification have put pressure on enrollment at majority-Latino elementaries in Chicago. Shields serves about 390 students this fall, down from more than 1,000 in 2015. Cisneros has roughly 230 students, down from 560 a decade ago.

A district spokesperson said in a statement that the 70-year-old former Catholic school building Acero Cisneros currently occupies has three age-related concerns, including “severe water infiltration and drainage failure” that has caused irreparable damage to the gym floor, as well as gas and water leaks and odor emissions from an underground storage tank by the school’s boiler. Some of the facility concerns at Cisneros were discussed by the school board last spring and its initial plan was to save just four Acero campuses and let Cisneros close.

All of the Acero campuses being absorbed by CPS are in buildings owned by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Earlier this year, the Acero Santiago campus was put up for sale, but has since been pulled off the market.

In his letter to families, Conrad-Ausar said the Cisneros principal and advisory council approached CPS and requested a possible colocation for the 2026-27 school year. The district zeroed in on Shields because of its proximity, he said. The schools are a five-minute drive or 15-minute walk apart.

“As part of our District’s commitment to ensuring a high-quality education for every student, CPS will review the proposal,” Conrad-Ausar wrote, adding that the district will weigh enrollment patterns, cost, impact on the school communities, and other factors.

After losing about 70,000 students over the past decade, CPS faces a growing number of aging, underutilized school buildings. In the past, the district frequently colocated district-run and charter schools in the same building. But there are fewer of these arrangements today and they have at times drawn criticism for pitting the two schools in a competition for students. Community advocates for Bowen High School, for instance, have argued that its colocation with a charter school contributed to enrollment losses at the small school.

The district is hosting a meeting with Shields families to get their input on the colocation proposal at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday on the school’s campus. It is also inviting input via email at transitions@cps.edu.

The district spokesperson said if the proposal is advanced, both schools will be notified by Dec. 1 and more community meetings and a public hearing will be held in January.

This story was updated to include more information from Chicago Public Schools about the condition of the Cisneros facility.

Becky Vevea contributed reporting.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

After two years of increases, Chicago Public Schools enrollment drops 2.8%

2025-09-25T18:11:38+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools’ official enrollment this school year is 316,224 — a 2.8% drop compared to last school year, interim CPS CEO Macquline King announced Thursday.

“Enrollment decreased across a majority of grades and most student groups,” King said during a Chicago Board of Education meeting.

The official figure, which is solidified annually on the 20th day of school, represents the first time in the past two school years that enrollment has dipped at CPS, as preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicated earlier this month.

But the drop picks up a trend that began almost 15 years ago: Student enrollment at CPS has now dropped by nearly 22% since the 2011-12 school year, when more than 404,000 students attended the city’s public schools.

Until 2022, Chicago was the third largest school district in the country, but it is now the fourth.

Chicago is not alone. Enrollment has dropped at public school districts across the nation because of a number of factors, including declining birth rates.

King said there is a continued dip in the number of Black students, Hispanic students, those who are learning English as a new language, and those who are living in temporary housing. At the same time, the district saw increased enrollment in the number of white, Asian American, and multiracial students, and those with disabilities, King said.

As of publication, the district had not yet posted the data file that includes a school-by-school breakdown of enrollment for the 2025-26 school year.

Enrollment increased slightly at CPS over the previous two years as thousands of migrant students and their families arrived in Chicago, fleeing political and economic turmoil in Central and South American countries.

But as the Trump administration rolls out aggressive immigration enforcement, including in recent weeks in Chicago, immigration advocates say some families are scared to send their children to school. Families, they say, may have left the city or even the U.S. altogether.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

No more networks? Chicago Public Schools considers reorganizing middle management

2025-09-23T21:46:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools leadership may restructure middle management and is considering aligning it to school board electoral districts, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the plan.

District leaders say the change could be a way to make the administration more responsive to school needs and to save money, but some principals are concerned about an organizational overhaul in the middle of the school year.

During a routine call with principals on Friday, CPS leadership said it planned to reorganize the current network system of middle management into districts, but didn’t offer additional details, according to two principals who spoke to Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity in order to avoid reprisal.

The networks organize schools based on geographic location and each has a network chief who principals answer to. Among their responsibilities, network chiefs evaluate principals, provide instructional expertise if needed, and may step in when principals need help during the year, such as for additional staff or issues with their building.

According to two school board members who spoke directly to interim CPS CEO Macquline King, the potential restructure would involve reorganizing the district’s 13 existing networks for elementary and middle schools into 10 that would align with the Chicago Board of Education’s electoral districts. The four high school networks would be kept the same. The plan would also require current network chiefs and their deputies to reapply for their jobs.

On Monday, district spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said CPS has been considering changes at central office to “strengthen teaching and learning for all students,” and that no final decisions have been made about the district’s network offices. She did not outline specific plans that CPS is considering.

“All plans remain subject to change as CPS leadership continues to thoughtfully review options and considerations moving forward,” Barragan said.

The number of students under each network varies. For example, Network 14, which covers part of the North Side, oversees two dozen schools with a total 27,000 students. But Network 5 on the West Side has 28 schools with just under 8,000 students.

Switching to the 10 districts mirroring school board electoral districts could also mean uneven distribution. For example, District 5 on the West Side has more than 100 schools, many of them charters. But just over 30 schools exist in District 4 on the North Side.

A senior CPS official told Chalkbeat that the goal of the reorganization is to make the district’s administration more nimble and responsive to school needs. It would also reduce spending on administrative positions, delivering a portion of $50 million in savings the district’s 2025-26 budget assumes it will make this year and allowing it to steer more dollars directly to schools in the longer run. The official said it is too soon to say how much the district would save thanks to the overhaul or how many administrative positions might be affected.

However, the two school board members who spoke with King said the cost savings were estimated to be roughly $2 million.

The district recently passed a $10.2 billion budget that included a slew of cuts to close a $734 million deficit, but district leaders said the plan avoided midyear cuts to classrooms. Still, CPS faces potential funding threats, including a recent threat from the Trump administration to withhold federal funding.

It’s not uncommon for new leadership to restructure the district’s central office. Under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his handpicked CEO Forrest Claypool laid off hundreds of central office staffers and did an organizational restructure. Before that, former CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard also oversaw a revamp of district’s management structure that was meant to provide oversight and additional support for schools.

In addition to the 17 networks that exist for most CPS schools, there are also separate networks for options — or alternative — schools, charter schools, and schools run by principals who have been granted more autonomy than their peers.

One elementary school principal said a midyear change feels “very unfair” to school leaders. Her network chief has already evaluated her once this year, and she’s concerned about losing a supervisor with whom she’s built a positive relationship and knows her school well.

But another longtime district principal said less middle management would free up more dollars to spend directly on schools.

“Reorganizing is always an opportunity to build a better structure,” the principal said.

One of the principals who spoke to Chalkbeat said it could make sense to reorganize schools in a way that corresponds with school board electoral districts given the new structure of the board.

But two school board members who spoke to King said they’re concerned such a change could send the message that school board members have a managerial role with schools when they shouldn’t.

“I don’t want me to go visit a school, and the principal thinks this is going to affect their evaluation or they have to put a show on for me,” said board member Carlos Rivas.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools wants to tighten up employees’ use of paid time off

2025-09-10T22:10:17+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education is considering tightening up paid time off policies for CPS employees, including requiring more notice for taking off for religious holidays and adding explicit language that says CPS can fire employees who misuse sick days.

The district also proposed changes to bring its sick leave policies for non-union employees into alignment with new City of Chicago policies.

CPS is proposing the changes for approval at its board meeting on Sept. 25.

Under the proposed changes, employees would have to provide 14 days notice — a week more than currently required — before taking one of their three allotted religious days off. The proposal also includes additional language on what does not count as religious beliefs, including “social, political, or economic philosophies, or personal ideological preferences.”

The proposed policy changes for religious holidays come two years after the district stopped docking pay for teachers who took off on religious holidays. The old policy cut pay for teachers because, they argued, the school needed to be able to pay for a substitute. At the time, union leaders who had pushed for the tweaks applauded that policy change, saying it penalized teachers who observe religious holidays that aren’t accounted for in the school calendar, such as Yom Kippur.

Administrators can deny religious holiday time off for employees if there is an “operational need” for that person to stay at work. Those supervisors would have to provide their denial in writing at least seven days before the requested holiday off, the proposed changes said.

These changes would give “managers, mostly principals, more time for planning and coverage when an employee is out,” Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer, told the board during a meeting Wednesday to review the board’s agenda for the Sept. 25 meeting. Felton said clarifying definitions for religious beliefs and denial procedures “are in case religious holidays are not being used properly.”

The district is proposing that employees who abuse paid sick leave “may be subject to discipline up to and including termination,” which Felton said is possible under current board policy but isn’t explicit.

According to current board policy, unionized employees not represented by CTU who are found to be using sick leave “in an unauthorized manner” can be suspended from work without pay for up to 15 days. The current policy also says that employees who fraudulently use leaves of absence or have “excessively poor attendance” can be fired.

“It is not our intent to create more severe discipline for these infractions,” Felton said in a brief interview with Chalkbeat. “It’s just to align our policies and make sure that it’s clear that in some instances, using sick days in this way could result in termination.”

Employees who are out on sick leave for more than three days must present documentation that they were treated by a doctor or another practitioner for their illness.

CPS got little feedback on the proposed changes when it opened the policies up for public comment last month, Felton told the board. He did not specify the nature of that feedback. Neither the Chicago Teachers Union nor SEIU Local 73 responded to a request for comment.

Separately, CPS is proposing that hourly and part-time employees would begin accruing sick leave immediately upon being hired and can begin using that time 30 days after they’re hired. The district has already started implementing those changes but is updating its policies to come into compliance with a new city ordinance, Felton told board members.

Full-time, non-union employees would also be able to carry over some unused sick days into the new fiscal year; previously, these employees had to use their sick days or forfeit them by June 30, or the end of the fiscal year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools official tells families budget cuts will mean changes on their campuses

2025-07-25T22:07:49+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools students may see fewer hot school meals, delays in updating technology, fewer crossing guards, and other changes at their campuses this coming school year as the district tightens its budget.

That heads-up came in a note to families from the district’s Chief Operations Officer Charles Mayfield on Friday afternoon, a time when CPS has repeatedly sent updates about cost-cutting in recent weeks.

In the note, sent roughly three weeks before the Aug. 18 start of the school year, Mayfield wrote that students and educators will feel some day-to-day changes related to the district’s efforts to close a $734 million budget deficit.

“While these adjustments will impact how some services are delivered, our priority is to ensure that every CPS student continues to receive a high-quality education in a safe, clean, and supportive environment,” Mayfield wrote.

It was not immediately clear whether the changes Mayfield detailed reflect layoffs and other budget cuts reported earlier in July, or if some represent additional cuts. CPS spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions. The district is getting ready to unveil its overall 2025-26 budget in August amid deep uncertainty about how it will address its budget gap.

Changes to custodial and engineering staff will mean adjusted cleaning schedules and likely delays in non-emergency repairs and other school maintenance, Mayfield wrote.

Fewer kitchen workers will result in simplified menus and more cold meals, even as the district continues to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all its students. After-school programs that currently serve hot meals will start providing packaged snacks.

A Chalkbeat analysis comparing staffing levels in the proposed 2025-26 school budgets to those in last year’s budgets showed the new budgets include 238 fewer lunchroom workers and 220 fewer non-teaching discretionary staff.

The district will also curtail its crossing guard and Safe Passage programs, though Mayfield stressed that no school will lose either program entirely. The city of Chicago used to cover the cost of the district’s crossing guard program, but shifted what was then a $14 million program to CPS amid the pandemic. Some of the recent cuts impacted routes serving private schools.

The email indicated that reduced funding will impact schools’ ability to offer health services, like physical exams and vaccinations. Mayfield said the district would work with families to help them access these services elsewhere. And the Healthy CPS Hotline at 773-553-KIDS (5437) would continue to provide health information and help families apply for public benefits, albeit with a reduced staff.

Mayfield also referenced changes to bell times at 22 district schools to help with providing transportation to more students, a shift the district first announced during Thursday’s school board meeting.

“We recognize that these changes may create challenges for students and families, and we will work hand-in-hand with our school communities to make the adjustments as smooth as possible,” Mayfield wrote.

He said families will hear directly from their schools with more details on how the changes impact each campus in the coming days.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools lays off more than 1,450 staff

2025-07-11T22:30:14+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools laid off more than 1,450 school-based staffers, including teachers, on Friday as it works to narrow a $734 million budget deficit.

The layoffs include 432 teachers, 311 paraprofessionals, such as teacher assistants, 677 special education classroom assistants, or SECAs, 33 security officers, and five parent workers.

Across district-run schools that are not alternative or specialty schools, 57% saw a reduction in positions, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of school budgets that were released publicly Friday. The remaining 43% saw no change or an increase in the number of positions available compared to last school year.

However, 123 special education teachers and up to 300 SECAs will be eligible for retention pools, meaning they would be paid centrally over the next school year and can be deployed to schools with vacant jobs, according to Ben Felton, CPS chief talent officer. Staffers with unsatisfactory ratings are not eligible for the retention pools, Felton said.

The district typically adjusts staffing and announces layoffs in the summer before school starts. In the past, about 80% of those laid off got jobs at other schools, said CPS, adding in a news release that it is “working diligently to maintain or improve that rate again this year.”

School-based layoffs are happening later than usual this year amid delays in the district’s budgeting process. The new fiscal year began July 1, but CPS doesn’t expect to present a budget to its board for approval until next month.

Interim CPS CEO Macquline King also emailed teachers and principals on Friday promising that they would get retroactive raises for last school year in their checks by mid-August, according to copies of emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

Last school year, CPS laid off 1,410 staffers. CPS did not immediately say how many of these staffers were rehired.

Layoffs announced today may not be the end of staffing cuts and changes at schools.

CPS publicly pegged its budget deficit at about $229 million this spring under former CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, hoping for about $300 million additional money from the city and state and not taking into account certain potential expenses. When King took office earlier this month, she said the gap is about $500 million larger, removing the assumption that additional money will come in and factoring in additional costs, including a much-debated $175 million pension reimbursement to the city.

The larger deficit means additional cuts could still be on the horizon. Officials could also choose to borrow money — an option that has for months divided the school board and education advocates in Chicago. CPS officials are holding a series of public meetings next week across the city to collect public feedback on how the district should close its budget deficit.

Budget Director Mike Sitkowski said CPS is in a “tough situation” and the district has been open about its funding challenges. He said officials are “open-minded” about how to solve its deficit going forward “in a way that’s student-centered and that protects our schools.”

According to Chalkbeat’s analysis of the data released Friday, there will be 477 fewer positions across all district-run schools next year. CPS officials said they could not immediately verify that number. Sitkowski said position cuts at the individual school level are because of less need for those jobs at those specific schools.

At the same time, Sitkowski said, the district plans to give schools more positions after the academic year starts, based on need and “where students show up.”

“Anything that’s looking like a net reduction is going to be made up for in what we add back,” Sitkowski said.

District officials told Chalkbeat earlier this month that they’re changing how they staff schools with special education teachers and SECAs in order to address staffing imbalances at schools across the city. And they emphasized that those staffing changes have nothing to do with budget belt-tightening. Still, families and teachers expressed concern that the shifts could reduce the amount of support provided to students with disabilities.

The layoffs sparked frustration from the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents teachers and support staff. Earlier this week, CTU called for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to launch a special legislative session in order to find additional funding for education.

More than 740 people laid off are CTU members, and just over 700 belong to SEIU, CPS said.

In a letter to members on its website, CTU’s leadership team called the layoffs a “harmful and distressing annual ritual at CPS” but highlighted the retention pools they bargained for.

In a statement, SEIU said it hopes the city and the school board can work with state leaders “to mitigate these cuts so the workers do not bear the brunt.”

SEIU’s statement also said that CPS informed the union the SECA layoffs are because of a “philosophical position that too much support from SECAs will impact the independence of students post-graduation.” The union said district officials did not discuss this matter with the union or advocacy organizations before making this decision, which will “negatively impact students.”

The district’s funding formula has shifted in recent years, now providing schools with positions instead of dollars. Schools with higher needs — determined by a formula called the Opportunity Index — are generally provided more resources.

One principal on Chicago’s South Side said her budget, which is based on the smaller deficit figure, was down just one position compared to last year, and she’s trying to save it through “some savvy budgeting and maneuvering.”

She’s warned her staff that more cuts could be coming, and that the budget they’ve been working on since May is like using “monopoly money.” She’s advocating with her alderperson to provide CPS with more surplus money from a city pool of tax dollars to spur economic development, known as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF.

“I am concerned that the budget I worked with and put together is not a fully funded budget,” said the principal, who requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the press. “It’s fictitious in some ways at this point.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s teacher leader program aims to retain and diversify its educators

2025-06-06T22:54:21+00:00

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During a recent afternoon at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Paideia Academy in South Shore, Tressa D. McMillan quietly surveyed three students as they worked out math problems on a whiteboard, occasionally jumping in with a hint.

On the other side of the room, Karimah Dyson was helping two students add long lists of double-digit numbers and calculate the averages.

The two special education teachers were doing the same task: teaching students with disabilities about the concepts of mean, median, and mode. The difference was that McMillan has been teaching for 35 years, and Dyson is about to complete her first year as a teaching resident.

McMillan served as Dyson’s mentor this school year.

“She’s very detailed and organized. Anything you might need, from a bobby pin, she has it,” Dyson said of McMillan. “She has a ton of resources, and everyone at this school comes to her for everything.”

McMillan is one of 190 resident mentors and more than 1,100 educators who participate in Chicago Public Schools’ Teachers Lead Chicago program, which offers financial incentives to teachers who take on certain leadership roles at their schools, including mentoring new teachers and directing teams of educators on instructional coaching. The additional pay depends on the role and ranges from $1,700 a year to a full-time salaried position.

The program started in 2019 at seven pilot schools and now spans 400 largely high-needs schools, officials said. The idea for the program was rooted in a 2017 review of staffing that found women and people of color were underrepresented in CPS leadership roles, according to a new case study about the program. There weren’t enough leadership development opportunities, and “effective” teachers were leaving CPS, the study said.

CPS hosted a Friday event at Powell to celebrate the program and unveil the case study that found that teacher retention rates are slightly higher among teacher leaders.

The retention rate for teachers in the Teacher Leaders program was 88% compared to 85.7% for teachers generally across the district, according to the case study, which cited 2024 CPS retention data. That rate was 86% for Black teachers and 92% for Hispanic teachers in the program, while districtwide, those rates were nearly 82% for Black teachers and 87% for Hispanic teachers. The study didn’t include retention rates for mentees. However, 95% of school leaders with teacher leaders say retention has improved at schools, according to a survey of educators at schools with teacher leader positions.

The heart of the program is the “distributive leadership” model — sharing more power in a school rather than having a totally top-down approach, district leaders said. But it’s also meant to retain teachers, and, ultimately, improve student learning, said Nicole Milberg, chief of teaching and learning at CPS.

Current teacher demographics don’t match with the student population. While nearly 21% of CPS teachers are Black, 35% of students are Black. Another quarter of teachers are Hispanic, but 47% of kids are Hispanic. And 45% percent of teachers are white, while just 11% of students are white.

Ben Felton, chief of talent, acknowledged that the district’s challenging budget projections — which include a half-billion-dollar deficit — could result in minor cuts to the amount of stipends and number of roles that the district can fund. CPS spent $2 million centrally on the program to cover the stipend for 800 new teacher mentors and team directors. Other roles were covered through school budgets, official said.

Dyson seems like the exact educator whom district and union leaders say they want more of in CPS. Dyson, who is Black, said she grew up on the Southwest Side and attended district schools before becoming a special education classroom assistant.

After encouragement a couple of years ago from a teacher and a district official, Dyson joined CPS’s teacher residency program, which allows people to become teachers through a paid training program.

Dyson joined Powell this year as a teacher resident. While Dyson respected the teacher she worked with as a SECA, the classroom felt disorganized, and she didn’t feel like students were learning a lot.

But under McMillan’s wing at Powell, Dyson said she can see her students growing academically. McMillan has taught her how to manage her classroom and how to plan lessons, Dyson said.

A student works on a dry erase board with teachers Tressa McMillan and Karimah Dyson at Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Paideia Academy in Chicago, Illinois. McMillan serves as a mentor for Dyson, who is a new teacher at CPS.

McMillan said she feels like she’s learning from Dyson, too. McMillan said she’s often laser focused on running the classroom well and ensuring students are learning. But watching Dyson interact with the students reminds McMillan not to lose her compassion.

“Sometimes I do it from muscle memory,” McMillan said. “She’s doing it from heart, so she’s taught me to use my heart more.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Waiting to learn: How Chicago’s approach to staffing bilingual education programs falls short

2025-06-05T10:00:00+00:00

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This story was reported and published in collaboration with Block Club Chicago. Sign up for their newsletters here.

A few years ago, Nash Elementary was thrown into disarray when dozens of English language learners — largely migrant kids from South and Central America — began enrolling at the West Side school.

Teachers had to scramble to find ways to help the new arrivals.

They used Google Translate and turned to resources online. One struggling teacher assigned her students “busy work” and eventually decided to travel abroad to learn Spanish.

And every day, students — like one Ecuadorian fourth grader who struggled to read and write in English — were left without the support guaranteed to them in state law.

“He shouldn’t have had to suffer for almost three years before he was able to receive the type of help that he needs,” said Sylvelia Pittman, a 20-year teacher at Nash who advocated for more bilingual resources in the new Chicago Teachers Union contract.

English language learners in bilingual programs are often waiting for what they’re legally entitled to — instruction in their native language — and teachers feel their schools are ill-equipped to serve large shares of these students, according to interviews and a Block Club and Chalkbeat analysis of public records.

Since an influx of migrant students began arriving in Chicago in 2022, the number of Chicago Public Schools required by state law to open a bilingual program increased by about 20%, according to records obtained by Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago through a Freedom of Information Act request. This school year, 57 additional schools, including charters, must meet state requirements.

State law requires schools to launch a bilingual education program after 20 students who are English language learners and speak the same native language enroll.

But under the district’s funding formula, CPS provides a school with a full-time bilingual coordinator when it enrolls 50 or more English language learners. That person is meant to help schools carry out extra services for English language learners, a group that’s grown by 25% in district-run schools since 2022. The state declined to comment on the district’s formula.

CPS officials said bilingual coordinators are not meant to be the sole individuals in the school providing additional support to English learners. District and state officials say there’s no predetermined number of how many bilingual teachers are needed for a bilingual program.

Using data obtained through an open records request, Chalkbeat and Block Club conducted its own analysis to explore what staffing looks like in schools required to teach English learners in both English and their native language.

Across the district, there are on average about five bilingual teachers per every 100 English language learners. But that picture looks different on the school level. The district-run schools newly required to have bilingual programs, on average, have half as many certified teachers per English learner compared to more established programs.

Of the district schools required to have bilingual programs, 1 in 4 enroll more than 40 English learners for each bilingual-certified teacher on staff, according to Chalkbeat and Block Club’s analysis. Nearly 40 schools enroll more than 60 English learners for each certified bilingual teacher. A handful of schools have no one certified to teach bilingual education on staff, despite legal requirements to provide bilingual services.

In a statement, CPS said bilingual programs vary in size and don’t necessarily require full classrooms at every grade level overseen by bilingual teachers.

At Nash, where there are now two certified bilingual teachers and more than 70 English language learners, teachers say it’s taken multiple years to see any growth in some of their newcomer students. The school has been required to have a bilingual program for the past two school years.

And at schools newer to bilingual education, like Nash, bilingual coordinators are sometimes the only people certified to teach in a child’s native language, Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago found.

The analysis included 3,400 staffers certified to teach bilingual education. It does not include teaching assistants, a position the district has agreed with the teachers union to beef up but is not certified to teach bilingual education.

In addition to bilingual coordinators, the district said it provides guidance to schools that are supposed to launch bilingual programs. Officials also contend that CPS has significantly increased the number of bilingual teachers and that it’s up to principals to hire the right people for their schools.

Yennifer Ruiz walks her daughter Gabriela, 12, to school most days in their South Shore neighborhood. Both of them are from Venezuela.

But the issues at Nash reflect broader challenges in CPS. Last year, Block Club and Chalkbeat found that many migrant students from South and Central America were struggling to learn after landing at segregated schools on the South and West sides that had not previously served children with language needs.

In recent years, nearly all bilingual programs have failed audits conducted by the district. And the number of investigations conducted by the Illinois State Board of Education into alleged violations of bilingual education at Chicago schools has increased, Block Club and Chalkbeat found.

And as President Donald Trump declares English the official language of the U.S. and guts the office meant to serve the country’s 5 million English learners, the state could play a bigger role in holding districts like Chicago accountable for failing to provide enough support to kids learning English as a second language.

Schools that are out of compliance are “out of step with the research” on what works for English learners, said Conor Williams, a senior fellow who studies English learners at The Century Foundation, a progressive leaning policy think tank.

“If we’re not going to fund helping schools become bilingual, as the state mandates us to do, we should own that that’s something we’ve decided we don’t care enough about to fund,” Williams said.

Sylvelia Pittman, a 20-year teacher, speaks to her grandson Cahari at Nash Elementary School in Austin on June 3, 2025. Pittman said her principal is trying to encourage more staff to get certified in bilingual education.

Nash’s new bilingual coordinator only the ‘tip of the iceberg’

Pittman, who has taught in CPS schools for 24 years, is currently an interventionist at Nash, 4837 W Erie St. The district created the role in response to the pandemic to provide extra support to struggling students.

As Pittman and her colleagues worked to help students recover from the public health crisis, however, Nash began to face a new challenge.

In the months before the 2022-23 school year, busloads of migrant families began arriving in Chicago from the southern border. The school had 230 students at the time, fewer than half what the district calculates Nash’s building could enroll. Historically in CPS, fewer students have meant smaller budgets.

The surge of newcomer students boosted Nash’s enrollment. By the end of September 2023 — about a year after migrants began arriving — Nash had enrolled 48 English language learners, according to preliminary enrollment data from that time pulled by Chalkbeat and Block Club. Some time that month, CPS said it gave the school a part-time bilingual coordinator position, but Chalkbeat and Block Club were unable to verify exactly when that person was hired.

In the meantime, teachers felt they didn’t have adequate tools to teach the school’s English learners.

Staff relied heavily on Google Translate to communicate with the new students and their parents — a practice educators at other schools have told Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago they have also adopted.

Corinne Lydon, a middle school English teacher at Nash, said she felt like a “deer in headlights” when a lot of English learners first began enrolling at Nash a couple years ago.

The school didn’t have a Spanish language curriculum available for Lydon to use, so she tried to find help online and assigned her newcomer students a lot of “busy work,” she said. (CPS has developed a Spanish language arts curriculum for bilingual programs, a spokesperson said.)

Before the 2023-24 school year, the district only provided schools with a full-time bilingual coordinator if the school had at least 100 English learners. Officials said they dropped that threshold to 50 English learners starting last school year.

Teacher Corinne Lydon poses for a portrait at Nash Elementary School in Austin on May 28, 2025. Lydon said the need at her school for Spanish-speaking staff was so great, she traveled abroad to learn Spanish.

By March 2024, Nash had enrolled 61 English learners, according to preliminary enrollment data.

Now, more than a year later, Nash has two staffers certified to teach bilingual education, including the bilingual coordinator, and five others who can teach English as a second language but not bilingual education, according to district staffing records. The school today enrolls more than 70 English learners, the most for Nash in at least 15 years.

CPS said it allocated an additional part-time bilingual coordinator position to Nash this school year, but it’s unclear if that position has been filled.

Lydon recently finished her courses to teach English as a second language after encouragement from Nash’s principal. The district covered half the cost of the certification and Lydon financed the remaining $1,300. (This was before the new teachers union contract, which would have afforded Lydon full coverage.)

But Lydon also felt it was critical to learn Spanish, so she traveled on her own dime to Guatemala last August and Mexico over this spring break to learn the language through immersion, in part by living with local families.

“I felt so unprepared, so I just wanted to do all the things possible to be able to best service my kids,” Lydon said.

Lydon thinks her ESL training and Spanish lessons are helping her students. For example, one of her sixth grade students is finally completing assignments and saying full sentences in English — but that’s two years after first enrolling at the school.

Corinne Lydon, an English teacher at Nash Elementary, poses for a photo with two of her Spanish teachers during a trip to Guatemala to learn the language.

Despite the challenges Nash has faced, Karime Asaf, chief of multilingual and multicultural education at CPS, touted the school as a good example of how the district helps a school create a new bilingual program, in part by providing a bilingual coordinator who can train other teachers working with English learners.

Pittman said the bilingual coordinator has made a difference at Nash by being able to talk to students and their parents about their needs. And Pittman said she has seen some academic growth in students.

But as a part-time staffer, the coordinator hasn’t had enough time to spend with all the new English learners, particularly in middle school, Lydon said.

Pittman said bilingual coordinators are just “the tip of the iceberg.” One bilingual coordinator plus a couple of staffers who speak Spanish don’t add up to an actual bilingual program, she said.

Sylvelia Pittman, a 20-year teacher, speaks to her grandson Cahari at Nash Elementary School in Austin on June 3, 2025. Pittman says the school has not had enough certified staff to provide additional services to English learners.

A challenge to launch bilingual programs

More than three-quarters of the 57 CPS and charter schools now required to launch bilingual education programs are on the city’s South and West Sides in communities that don’t have predominantly Latino populations, according to the records obtained by Chalkbeat and Block Club through an open records request. Only seven of those schools had previous bilingual program requirements anytime in the last five school years.

But both CPS and the state said bilingual programs can’t be created immediately, and they don’t look the same at every school.

By state law, a bilingual program requires teaching students language arts, math, science and social studies in both English and their native language. Schools will still also provide English as a Second Language — or English only — instruction. The state gives schools “time to implement necessary programs” and links each district with a state expert to help them create the programs, said Lindsay Record, spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education.

“It’s a multi-year program,” Asaf, from CPS, said. “It doesn’t mean that if you receive 30 students, next month, you can have a full, established bilingual program.”

Under the district’s funding formula, CPS provides positions to schools, and principals hire people to fill those roles. Schools get more positions if they have greater needs.

CPS officials said they’ve prioritized recruiting more bilingual certified teachers. But when it comes to ensuring individual schools have the right staff, officials described a largely hands-off approach.

Asaf’s office works with bilingual coordinators to “identify gaps in services” for English learners and recommends solutions to school leaders, said Sylvia Barragan, a CPS spokesperson, in an email to Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago.

Nash Elementary School, 4837 W. Erie St., in Austin on May 28, 2025.

One principal whose school has dozens of English learners said the district is offering “less advice” than before on how to serve English learners, even though the school is still trying to figure out how to meet legal requirements and student needs.

“Normally when I advocate [for resources], I get heat” from the district, said the principal, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The principal takes issue with the district’s bilingual coordinator formula, saying the needs of individual English learners, not the total number of English learners, should be the determining factor.

“You don’t know the needs of those 75 kids or those 40 kids or those 50 kids,” the principal said.

Research has shown that English learners grow better academically in bilingual education programs than when they’re taught in English, according to three experts who have studied English language learners and immigrant communities.

But a shortage of bilingual teachers can make setting up a bilingual program difficult.

“If you’re a school and you’re fully staffed, you’ve got all your teachers, and suddenly you trigger a bilingual education mandate, you can’t just fire half of your teachers because they’re English-speakers only and hire a bunch of new Spanish-dominant or bilingual staff,” Williams, from The Century Foundation, said.

And it’s not easy for schools to convince longtime staffers to get bilingual certification.

For example, at Tarkington Elementary School in Chicago Lawn, the principal told seventh grade teacher Vivian Perez she would be laid off because the school needed more bilingual-certified staff. Perez then scrambled to get a temporary bilingual license.

But CPS says the school’s efforts to encourage other staff to get certified haven’t been successful — and Tarkington still needs bilingual teachers for seventh grade.

Perez now teaches her class in English and Spanish, which she believes makes students “feel like they’re not forgotten.”

The district views its role in solving the problem as “really dramatically increasing the supply” of bilingual teachers, who often seek jobs in predominantly immigrant school communities, said Ben Felton, chief of talent for CPS.

Felton said the district recruits and provides early offers to teaching candidates at the city’s hardest-to-staff schools, which disproportionately exist on the South and West sides and are seeing a “higher need” for bilingual teachers, he said.

CPS will now cover 100% of costs of getting a bilingual certification for up to 300 teachers in high-need areas each year as part of the new Chicago Teachers Union contract.

As of April, 3,400 of the district’s roughly 20,000 teachers were certified to teach bilingual education — a 22% increase since just before migrants began arriving in Chicago in spring 2022, according to data CPS shared with Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago.

But how those teachers are deployed across the district is uneven, especially among schools newly required to provide bilingual services in the 2024-25 school year.

On top of that, it’s not clear how many of those certified educators are actually teaching in a bilingual program or are certified to teach their students’ native language.

Teacher Sylvelia Pittman stands outside of Nash Elementary School in Austin on June 3, 2025. Pittman said that having a bilingual coordinator at the school, which now serves dozens of English learners, is far less than what Nash actually needs.

Schools caught in the middle

The district’s policies for staffing bilingual programs are also flawed in a practical sense, according to teachers and other school leaders.

A few miles east of Nash, Morton School of Excellence, 431 N. Troy St., is an example of district policy failing to keep up with the unpredictable nature of mass migration.

Like Nash, Morton teachers and administrators were completely unprepared when the Humboldt Park school received an influx of newcomer students last school year, according to Local School Council president and parent Cori Bradley.

Historically, most of the school’s students have been Black native English speakers. The school had 18 English learners at the start of the 2023-24 school year. By that March, the school had more than 80 English learners, almost doubling the student population. The staff had to respond on the fly.

“The school was operating in emergency mode for four or five months,” Bradley said.

“We didn’t have books for them. You had classrooms that had 35 kids. … The concern was: Are students learning? Can teachers adequately teach? Are there enough chairs and desks? It felt like the school had become a shelter.”

The hallways at Morton School of Excellence display flags from various different countries. After enrolling dozens of English language learners, Morton was newly required to launch a bilingual program this school year.

But by the time the district gave Morton a full-time bilingual coordinator at the start of this school year, the situation had completely changed. Morton’s English language learner population had shrunk by more than half to 35 students as of late February.

Because of that, Morton’s bilingual coordinator is slated to be part-time next year.

Barragan, the district spokesperson, said schools that don’t qualify for bilingual coordinators typically “nominate” an existing staffer to take on the role for an additional stipend.

Morton currently has five teachers certified to teach English as a second language and one who is certified to teach bilingual education — the current bilingual coordinator — according to the district’s April staffing data.

When Bradley asked if the part-time bilingual coordinator will be sufficient at a recent Local School Council meeting, Morton’s principal, Zachary Korth, told her he’s discussing the issue with staff and plans to advocate for more resources if necessary.

Korth said there are “rumblings” more newcomer families are planning to move. Two city-run shelters near the school have closed, driving families to other parts of the city and elsewhere, school leaders said.

School districts generally can’t easily respond to rapidly changing student populations, said Williams, from The Century Foundation. They fund schools based on a certain enrollment count or projection.

The district has a pool of bilingual teaching assistants that it can deploy to schools that are seeing more English learners enroll, according to district officials.

Chicago schools under state oversight for bilingual education

CPS is currently under state oversight for failing to meet bilingual education requirements.

The state requires corrective action any time an investigation finds that a CPS school is not in compliance with bilingual education requirements, officials said. When investigators find evidence of wrongdoing, the district is put on an action plan.

If a district doesn’t properly address the action plan, it can be subject to “sanctions” including loss of state or federal funding, said Record, the state spokesperson. State officials did not say when CPS must meet goals outlined in its latest corrective action plan.

Since the 2021-22 school year, ISBE has conducted no more than two investigations annually of alleged violations of bilingual education requirements at CPS schools. But this school year, the state has nine open investigations and has already completed two others — one of which found violations at Catalyst Charter School.

At Catalyst, an undisclosed disagreement among staffers led to the principal asking a teacher to stop offering English learner services to a group of fifth graders for about a month. Teachers were also not taking students’ English proficiency levels seriously, potentially impacting the type of services they received, according to the investigation notes.

The spike in complaints could be due to heightened awareness of the problem and advocacy for solutions. The Chicago Teachers Union made a big push for compliance and hosted workshops to train school staff how to file state complaints around bilingual education.

Others say the surge is a reflection of the state and school district’s longstanding inability to meet the needs of English learner students.

Audits that CPS conducted of bilingual and ESL programs from 2018 to the beginning of 2024 found that all but two programs did not comply with state law, according to public records obtained last year by Chalkbeat and Block Club Chicago.

Complaints about CPS schools failing to provide proper bilingual education also prompted federal oversight in the past.

From 1980 to 2009, Chicago Public Schools was under a federal consent decree that ordered the district to desegregate its schools and ensure English language learners were getting enough support. The decree had to be updated twice, in part because CPS was failing to provide enough staffing and materials to English learners.

The American flag waves outside Nash Elementary School in Austin on June 3, 2025. The school enrolls more than 70 English language learners, the most in at least 15 years.

Experts say that sort of oversight is highly unlikely under the Trump administration.

In March, the federal government fired nearly every employee responsible for ensuring that districts were properly using federal funds meant to support English learners.

Patricia Gándara, a UCLA research professor who co-authored a book about the impact of immigration enforcement on schools, said the president’s executive order to make English the nation’s official language suggests the administration is not interested in bilingual education.

As a result of these moves, state and local officials will likely be tasked with ensuring those students are getting the support they need.

Pittman, the Nash teacher, said her principal has encouraged teachers to earn their bilingual certification. The principal is also planning to create virtual programming for some grades of students who need to learn English and Spanish, she said. The principal declined to be interviewed.

Newcomer students at Nash “are growing academically, but it’s taking them longer because they do not have all the bilingual support they’re supposed to have,” Pittman said.

Nash Elementary School in Austin has been required to have a bilingual education program for the past two school years.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Mina Bloom is an investigative reporter for Block Club Chicago. Contact Mina at mina@blockclubchi.org.

Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter who covers data related to K-12 education, voting rights, and public health for Civic News Company. Contact them at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

A majority of Chicago teachers, support staff ratify tentative Chicago Teachers Union contract

2025-04-14T19:43:35+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union announced Monday 97% of teachers and support staff at Chicago Public Schools who voted last week approved the tentative deal it reached after a year of sometimes heated bargaining with the district.

The union said 85% of all union members voted last Thursday and Friday across 500 schools and some central locations for citywide employees. The Chicago Board of Education must still vote to approve the deal. The board must also amend its budget to pay for the first year of the four-year contract, which will include retroactive pay reaching back to last July.

During a press conference Monday announcing the results, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the approval numbers were a result of the union’s democratic process, including consulting its roughly 30,000 members on proposals for the contract.

“That should be an expectation: That people are engaged, that people have an understanding, that they get their questions answered, they see the progression of the work and then they ratify in those numbers,” Davis Gates told reporters.

To members who voted no, Davis Gates said the union will continue to “build” with them and asked those members to give the union “a few more years” to meet their demands. Davis Gates is up for re-election in May and faces at least one slate of challengers.

The approval from CTU’s membership caps a process that heightened tensions between the district, the union, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former middle school teacher and CTU organizer. It fueled deep disagreement over how to pay for the contract and other costs, leading to the resignation of Johnson’s entire first appointed school board and the firing of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who will stay through the end of the school year.

In recent weeks, tensions grew to a boiling point, raising the question of whether the union would go on strike, as it did in 2019 and 2012. That didn’t come to pass. The union and the district agreed on a tentative deal that was far more modest than the original 700-plus proposals the union had pitched at the start of bargaining.

The new contract will include 4-5% raises annually over the life of the four-year contract, as well as additional pay for more veteran teachers. It will also require hiring hundreds more staffers, including more teacher assistants, and includes some new class size limits.

One of the thorniest issues resolved in the final days of bargaining was additional preparation time for elementary school teachers. Those educators will receive an additional 10 minutes of prep time each day, as well as an additional three teacher-directed professional development days that were previously controlled by principals. District leaders said this will be achieved differently by schools, such as by increasing recess time to the state-mandated requirement of 30 minutes so that teachers can prepare.

While CPS has said it can afford the first year of the contract, it’s unclear how it will pay for the rest of the deal, which in total is projected to cost $1.5 billion. Martinez has said the district’s revenues could be enough to cover the costs, but it struggles every year with a structural deficit.

Potentially choppy financial waters are ahead for the district, which is projected to face at least a $500 million deficit next fiscal year. Additionally, there is a looming threat of federal funding cuts under the Trump administration. Union, district, and city officials have all said they plan to advocate for more funding from the state, though so far it’s unclear if those demands will be met. Mayor Johnson said the city will sue the Trump administration if it withholds federal funding because of the district’s policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Asked if she is worried about furloughs and layoffs in the upcoming school year, Davis Gates said no. She said the union has organized and fought before against painful cuts and layoffs, including during the 2013 school closures. Key players in those fights now sit in the highest places of power in Chicago’s government, she noted.

“I’m not worried about it because Jitu Brown is on the school board and he did that work already. I’m not worried about it because Brandon Johnson is on the fifth floor and he did that work already. I’m not worried about it because Jeanette Taylor is in the City Council and she’s done that work already,” she said. “See, we have set ourselves up for this moment.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

CTU and Chicago Public Schools reach tentative contract deal

2025-04-01T17:51:47+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement Monday night that would reduce class sizes in some grades, add hundreds of new positions, and give elementary school teachers more preparation time while many students get more recess.

The deal would also grant teachers a 4% raise retroactively to cover the first year of the contract, which is the current school year, and 4-5% for each of the next three years.

The deal secures significant wins that the union left on the table during a bruising, lengthy strike in 2019 and comes after it pushed hard for its most ambitious, costliest slate of demands to date. But the tentative deal is far more modest than the union’s initial proposals, which included adding thousands of new staffers and 9% annual raises.

Teachers union members and the school board still need to vote to ratify the new contract, which would be retroactive to last June.

After helping propel Brandon Johnson, a former union employee, to the mayor’s office, the CTU expressed confidence heading into negotiations. But the union and CPS leadership clashed fiercely for nearly a year over what to include in the contract and how to pay for it.

The conflict led to the October resignation of the entire school board of Johnson appointees last October. A new board handpicked by the mayor fired CPS CEO Pedro Martinez without cause in late December, though a clause in his contract allowed him to stay on for another six months.

A partly elected, 21-member school board has pressed the Martinez administration to settle the contract since it took over in January. Johnson appointees and CTU-endorsed candidates hold a solid majority on the board.

The district said the agreement is a financially responsible and fair deal in line with other public unions. The union hailed the agreement as a victory for teachers and students.

“I have never seen a document before that has win, win, win, win, win, win for every stakeholder,” CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said in an interview. “Our young people win, the people who provide their education win, the families that send them to the Chicago Public Schools win, principals win, the Board of Education wins, the CEO wins, the mayor of Chicago wins.”

In a briefing with reporters, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the agreement maintains autonomy for principals, gives teachers fair wage increases, provides a “joyful experience” for students, and balances all of that “with being responsible to our taxpayers.”

The deal would expand the union’s membership ranks with additional librarians, clinicians, and teaching assistants. It would also cement CPS teachers’ position among the best paid in the country, with an average salary poised to surpass $110,000 by the contract’s end. An entry level teacher would earn nearly $69,000, and median teacher pay would be more than $98,000 next school year, district officials said.

District officials estimated the tentative four-year deal would cost a total of $1.5 billion over the life of the contract. District leaders said they can cover the cost of the first year, but questions remain about how the district will afford future years while holding onto a structural deficit. Martinez, who leaves the district in June, said it will be important to advocate for more state funding and shifting certain pension obligations.

The agreement would avert the possibility of a teacher strike, which CTU leadership had invoked in recent weeks. It could also relieve pressure on Davis Gates and CTU Vice President Jackson Potter, who are being challenged in an election by colleagues who question their leadership’s transparency and approach to politics.

Days after Johnson convened a meeting between CTU and CPS leaders that reportedly gave negotiations a boost, Board of Education President Sean Harden postponed a high-stakes vote to amend the district’s budget to pay for the CTU contract and a pending principals contract along with a controversial $175 million pension fund reimbursement to the city that was a source of tension between City Hall and CPS.

Here’s how the two sides resolved several sticking points that snarled the talks.

Additional teacher prep time and more recess for kids

The tentative deal would increase the amount of preparation time elementary school teachers get to 70 minutes every day, up from the current hour. Students in many schools would get an additional ten minutes of recess to meet a state requirement, union and district officials said.

But the two additional weekly 15-minute preparation periods that are currently provided would be eliminated, according to the district.

Schools will implement this differently and will get guidance from CPS on how to add the instructional time, said Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer. For example, a school could add to its recess time, and additional teacher prep time could be added then. Another school that already has 30 minutes of recess time could decide to add more time to specialty classes in order to give homeroom teachers more prep time.

If the deal is approved, elementary teachers would also get additional preparation time throughout the year, which union and district officials said would be achieved by adjusting principal and teacher-directed days of professional development. Currently, there are 12 such days, nine of which are directed by principals. In the tentative agreement, six would remain directed by principals, and six would be teacher-directed.

The issue of prep time was the “single stickiest” because it involved changing the school day, Davis Gates said. Both district and union officials agreed on Monday that teachers should have more preparation time. Still, district officials pushed back vehemently on adding the 30 minutes that the union initially asked for, which would’ve restored prep time eliminated when CPS lengthened the school day in 2012 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The union reduced its ask to 20 minutes in the final weeks of bargaining.

Chkoumbova said cutting down on instructional time for students, many of whom are still recovering from the pandemic, “was not an option.” District officials noted that Chicago teachers get more prep time than counterparts in most large urban districts.

“No one’s happy with this,” Davis Gates said of the prep time compromise.

Still, it was more progress than what the union won in 2019, when prep time was also a thorny union proposal that largely didn’t materialize.

Smaller class sizes

For the past three decades, Chicago Public Schools officials were not required to bargain with the Chicago Teachers Union over class sizes due to changes in state law in 1995 that limited the scope of what they could bargain over to primarily pay and benefits.

But the Illinois legislature restored those collective bargaining rights to CTU in 2021, making this round of contract negotiations the first since Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed that bill into law. Although the union did secure wins around class sizes in 2019, there were limits to enforcing them.

The new tentative agreement reduces the class size caps in kindergarten and middle school and includes provisions to automatically add teaching assistants to classrooms that exceed the limits.

The tentative agreement would lower kindergarten class sizes to 25 students and add a teaching assistant for any class with more than 23 students, according to the union. Both are down from the previous limit of 28.

The class size cap in first through third grade would remain at 28, and in fourth through eighth grade, it would drop from 31 to 30 students, according to the union and CPS.

The new agreement dedicates $40 million to enforcing these class sizes — $5 million more than the previous contract.

More school nurses, librarians, and teaching assistants

A key union priority was significantly increasing district staffing across a wide range of positions the CTU represents. The union argued that the influx of employees would be transformative in stepping up services for students, but staff increases are the costliest for the district to implement.

CPS hired about 7,000 new teachers and staff since 2020, using the $2.8 billion wave of federal pandemic relief money. District officials have said they want to protect those positions even as federal COVID relief dollars have dried up.

The new tentative contract deal adds hundreds more employees over the course of the next three years, union officials said. The district projected between 800-900 new positions, which will be “indexed and targeted into the highest needs schools,” said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer.

According to both the union and the district, the tentative agreement adds 24 centralized fine arts positions and 68 technology coordinators. The union saids it would add roughly 90 new librarian positions, but the district said the agreement would give schools the flexibility to replace current positions with librarians.

The union said it will also boost teaching assistant positions by 50%, though district officials said staffing increases will depend on enrollment and school needs. The number of teacher assistants has dwindled in the last decade, while the number of Special Education Classrooms assistants, or SECAs, grew. The union’s fight to increase the number of teacher assistants eventually drew a wedge with its sister union, SEIU Local 73, which represents the SECAs.

The union has argued boosting those jobs will help reduce class sizes and increase support for kids. As of the latest public staffing data, the district had opened just over 1,000 teacher assistant positions and had filled all but 100 of them.

The new contract would also add 215 additional case managers by 2028 who are supposed to ensure children with students with disabilities are receiving legally required services, according to the union. However, after this story published, CPS said it estimates the number of new case managers would be 124.

The addition will help reduce case loads for case managers, Davis Gates said.

The contract would also codify the district’s new budgeting model that largely provides staff positions instead of dollars to schools.

The union’s current contract requires a social worker and nurse in every school. Under the new agreement, schools will be required to have a nurse and a social worker in every school every day, which is not currently the case, union officials said.

More salary steps, less frequent evaluations for veteran teachers

While the two sides found themselves in general agreement over the broad strokes of a pay and benefits package earlier this year, the union continued to push for changes that would benefit more veteran educators.

The first would add additional pay bumps for teachers with more than 14 years of experience. CPS officials had resisted the union’s proposal, arguing that retention of those teachers is already high. But the tentative proposal would add $30 million in pay increases for the longest-serving teachers, the district said.

CTU also pushed for changes to the district’s teacher evaluation system, which union officials said has tended to give educators working at high-needs schools consistently lower marks. This is partly due to a state requirement to connect at least 30% of a teacher’s evaluation to student performance. There’s a bill making its way through the legislature that would make that optional.

But apart from that, in recent weeks, the union continued to ask that the district agree to evaluate highly rated tenured teachers once every three years instead of every two, which is already allowed under existing state law. The district had balked, saying that would affect the quality of teaching.

Now, under the terms of the tentative deal, two types of teachers will be placed on three-year evaluation cycles: teachers with 19 or more years of experience with higher evaluation scores, who are currently rated “proficient” and earn the same designation again, and other teachers who are currently rated as “excellent” and earn the same designation in the next evaluation cycle.

This story was updated with additional data from CPS on the proposed increase to case managers.

Becky Vevea contributed.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New report finds Illinois teacher shortage is easing, but school leaders are still concerned

2025-03-11T23:13:29+00:00

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Illinois schools are seeing more teachers enter the classroom, but school leaders still believe the teacher shortage is an issue, according to a report released Monday.

The Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools and the State Board of Education, along with the Illinois Workforce of Research Collaborative and Goshen Consulting, collaborated to collect data on staffing shortages across the state for the two surveys contained in the report.

In its survey of unfilled positions, the state board found that Illinois had 1,877 more classroom teachers in the 2023-24 school year than in the previous school year — for a total of 136,092 educators. As of Oct. 1, 2024, the state board found 3,864 unfilled positions for the current school year, a 5.6% decrease from the previous year. The state’s vacancy rate for the current school year is 2.8%, down from 3% in 2023-24.

But, despite the increase in teachers, 87% of the 734 school leaders surveyed by the regional superintendents association in the fall of 2024 believe there is a problem with teacher shortages. Forty percent of the leaders who responded, 281 out of 698, said their need for educators has increased from last school year, and 64% of those who answered a question about the needs for the next school year believe their need for more educators will grow.

About 92% of school leaders — or 1,029 out of 1,120 school entities — responded to the state board’s unfilled positions survey and 71% — or 790 out of 1,120 — responded to the superintendents association’s Educator Shortage Survey.

The state’s unfilled positions data also found that special education teacher and bilingual education teacher positions were often unfilled. The unfilled positions data found that English language arts, math, and science were among the top three subjects where classroom teachers were needed.

School leaders reported using “alternative measures” to bridge the gap in services. Some of these measures included hiring retired teachers and substitutes, changing classes offered to students, or shifting teacher responsibilities. About 26% of those who responded to a question about solutions used to make up for the unfilled special education teacher slots reported increasing the caseload of existing employees.

There is a need for more substitutes, according to the association of regional superintendent’s survey. About 91% of school leaders who responded to this question reported having a severe substitute teacher shortage.

Some barriers to increasing the number of teachers include not having qualified applicants or having few people apply for open positions according to the survey. Around 43% of school leaders who answered said no or few qualified applicants applied for open positions, while 71% of respondents say they had few to no applicants for classroom teacher positions. The survey reports school leaders citing salary and pension benefits, poor working conditions, location, and difficulty with recruitment or retention as other causes for the teacher shortage.

The regional superintendents association’s survey also looked at what school districts did with federal COVID-19 relief funding. The state received more than $7 billion in emergency funding that was largely distributed to school districts to help students recover from the pandemic. Those funds dried up in the fall of 2024.

About 362 of 722 education leaders said they did not use funds to create or support staffing positions. However, some schools used the funds to create full-time positions, additional pay for current staff, and part-time positions. A small number of positions and benefits will be cut next school year, according to school leaders who responded.

Gary Tipsord, executive director of the regional superintendents association, said in an interview on Tuesday that despite the progress highlighted in the report, school leaders still have some concern when it comes to teacher shortages.

“We still have an overwhelming majority of educational leaders in the state that feel like the problem is persistent,” said Tipsord. “Even when we’re able to fill the jobs, there’s this sense that that problem is still lurking around the corner.”

The state board, local school districts, state lawmakers, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker have increased funding, changed policy, or created programs to increase the number of educators in classrooms in previous years.

The state created a $45 million grant, known as the Teacher Vacancy Grant, to support 170 school districts that struggled to fill in teacher positions. Recent reports from the state and the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative found that the grant has been successful in hiring about 5,400 new educators and retained around 11,000 additional teachers. Pritzker’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 also includes $45 million for the program.

In previous years, Chicago Public Schools funded efforts to recruit and support aspiring educators and especially teachers of color, including Teach Chicago Tomorrow, which recruits CPS students into the teacher pipeline.

Pritzker has also increased funding for the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship, which awards grants to students of color in college and universities who aspire to be teachers. Recipients have to teach at an Illinois school with at least 30% of students of color for one year after graduating from college. However, the scholarship program is currently being challenged in court.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools doubled classroom assistants in recent years. Now, labor unions are fighting over who represents them.

2025-02-20T00:05:42+00:00

The number of classroom assistants who provide extra support to students with disabilities in Chicago Public Schools has more than doubled in the past decade, according to district staffing data.

That growth has happened as the share of students with disabilities has also increased in CPS.

But the role and the ranks of these assistants is under scrutiny as the school district grapples with tighter budgets and is locked in a labor dispute that advocates worry could lead to worse services and care for children with the highest needs.

The labor dispute — between Service Employees International Union Local 73 and Chicago Teachers Union — is over a CTU proposal to allow the teacher assistants that union represents to be assigned to provide additional support to students with disabilities, a role historically represented by SEIU. The number of special education classroom assistants, or SECAs, represented by SEIU have grown in the past five years, while the number of teacher assistants, or TAs, represented by the CTU has dropped in the past decade.

On average, SECAs make slightly more than teacher assistants. For example, this school year, SECAs without a degree are making an average $48,338 — about $3,700 more than teachers assistants at a similar level, according to district data.

Mary Fahey Hughes, a former member of the Chicago Board of Education and longtime advocate of students with disabilities, said the SECAs who worked with her son Aidan were critical to his development as a student with autism in CPS. People become SECAs specifically to work with students with disabilities and gain specific experience and training along the way in working with high-needs students, she said.

“I understand that it must be awful to be a teachers assistant and to have worked many years and to have your position no longer be needed, but I can’t get behind giving SECA jobs to TAs,” Hughes said.

The CTU — traditionally a close ally of the SEIU — said its proposal is meant to boost the number of teacher assistants and provide more options of support for students with disabilities, in a district that has historically struggled to serve those kids. In 2018, the state found that the district was systemically failing to provide students with disabilities with the extra services they are legally entitled to and placed it on a corrective action plan.

Over the past few years, SEIU has fought to create guardrails on the job duties of SECAs and expand training for the position. The SEIU has characterized CTU’s proposal as “a raid” on its membership and said it would hurt the quality of services provided to students with disabilities.

SEIU has threatened to sue the district even though CPS has so far rejected the CTU proposal. SEIU’s parent union also passed a resolution earlier this month declaring that it was “under attack” by the CTU. The division between the two labor unions could come with political fallout for Mayor Brandon Johnson, who won election in 2023 with both financial and boots-on-the-ground help from both groups.

Who are SECAs and TAs?

Assistants can provide a range of needed extra help in classrooms and their exact job title may not be obvious to students and families. But their roles are distinct.

SECAs provide extra support to students with disabilities and their roles are written into legal documents governing the services those children are entitled to under federal law. Teacher assistants provide a range of additional support in the classroom and historically, the district budgets for them to support specific programs, such as pre-K or reducing class size, or principals hire them using discretionary funds.

SECAs “assist in the instruction, behavioral, and personal care needs” of students with disabilities, according to SEIU’s contract. That can mean helping them with a lesson in class, walking them to the bathroom, and helping them calm down by taking a walk in the hall, but can also include feeding and assisting them in using the bathroom, educators told Chalkbeat.

“I mean, whatever is needed for them to be safe and get their instruction,” said Kimberly Weston-Dodd, a longtime SECA at Corliss High School and SEIU delegate.

A student with a disability typically has one of two documents that outline the additional services or accommodations they’re legally entitled to: an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, or a 504 plan. A child’s IEP team, which includes a parent and other school staff, determines if the child should receive extra support from a SECA. Based on that information, CPS’s central office decides how many SECAs to allocate for each school, and then principals hire them.

Teacher assistants, in contrast, can provide a range of additional support to teachers, such as putting up bulletin boards or redirecting a student if they get off task.

Thad Goodchild, deputy general counsel for the CTU, said schools have also, at times, used teacher assistants to provide additional support to students with disabilities.

SECA jobs have ballooned over the past decade while teacher assistant jobs have dropped, but the reasons why aren’t completely clear.

A decade ago, the district had just over 3,000 SECA positions with just over 200 of them unfilled. Since Dec. 31, 2019, the number of SECA positions has grown by 65%, with roughly 7,600 positions as of Dec. 31, 2024. Of those jobs, 325 were unfilled, according to district data.

At the same time, the district has opened 225 fewer CTU-protected teacher assistant positions, or about 18% fewer of those jobs than existed right before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asked why SECA positions have increased while teacher assistant jobs have dropped, district spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said “the staffing structure has been adjusted to accommodate” the increase in students with additional needs. District officials also said that they used some of the $2.8 billion it received in federal COVID relief dollars to hire more SECAs after identifying that as one of CPS’s “pressing needs.”

Since the 2019-20 school year, the number of students with disabilities has grown by about 5%, according to district data. Still, the number of SECA positions grew by a far greater rate: 65% in that same time period.

But that massive increase happened after the state found that the district was systemically failing to provide students with disabilities with the extra services they are legally entitled to, advocates and union officials told Chalkbeat. As a result, the state placed CPS on a corrective action plan. Lindsay Record, a spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education, said hiring more SECAs was not part of that corrective plan, which has since been closed.

But before the state’s investigation, many children who needed SECAs weren’t getting them, said Terri Smith-Roback, a parent of a CPS student with a disability and longtime advocate who was part of a coalition that helped spark the state’s investigation. There was also “onerous,” time-consuming paperwork required at the time to get additional help for students with disabilities, said Smith-Roback. Those issues were highlighted in the state investigation.

“I think once the inquiry ended, people were able to assign SECAs to IEPs with more professional discretion and less red tape,” Smith-Roback said.

One elementary school principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he’s noticed the changing culture around IEPs. He said IEP teams are asking for SECAs “much more liberally” than they did 10 to 20 years ago. The number of SECAs at his school — where enrollment has grown — have more than quadrupled over the past decade.

Union dispute started last summer

The dispute between the two unions became public in December when the Chicago Tribune reported that SEIU was planning to sue CTU. But the roots of it reach back to at least last summer.

Last summer, CPS laid off 240 teacher assistants and roughly 260 SECAs, offering to continue paying both pools of workers for this entire school year as they searched for jobs in other schools, according to officials at both unions. Of the teacher assistants, as many as 140 have landed jobs at other schools — but a “significant number” of them have been rehired as SECAs at the same school, according to Goodchild, the CTU lawyer.

Around that time last summer, CTU leaders asked SEIU leadership if SEIU would give CTU hundreds of vacancies that existed for SECA positions, in order to prevent teacher assistant layoffs, said Dian Palmer, president of SEIU Local 73. When vacancies exist, laid-off workers can search for jobs at other schools.

Goodchild said the union worried about more teacher assistants, many of whom have supported students with disabilities at some point, losing work. CTU didn’t want layoffs to “have any negative impact on either union,” he said.

Palmer said she wanted to help CTU, but realized that sharing those vacancies could mean less layoff protection for her own members — the SECAs. So she declined CTU’s request.

On July 17, 2024, CTU filed a grievance with CPS that claimed that the district has been converting teacher assistant jobs into SECAs for years in violation of its contract. It suggested that SECAs should only support students who also require diapering and toileting help, and that all other teacher assistant jobs that were converted into SECA jobs be reverted back to teacher assistants.

“The vast majority of the students are not toileted and fed, so if that’s the criteria, we know our [SECA] numbers would go way down,” Palmer said.

The grievance also demanded that the district’s Office for Students with Disabilities not assign SECAs to teacher assistant jobs that don’t have diapering and feeding duties. The union’s contract says the district cannot “reclassify” a teachers assistant as a SECA who does not diaper and feed a child.

Chicago Public Schools declined to comment on the grievance. SEIU viewed the grievance as a power grab by CTU and an insult to suggest SECAs have no value beyond bathroom and feeding responsibilities.

Then, in the fall, as CTU bargained with CPS over its new contract, SEIU became aware of a proposal from CTU that would allow principals to choose between SECAs and teacher assistants to support students with disabilities. That raised more alarm bells for SEIU: Giving principals a choice means they could choose teacher assistants, who can also do other work around the classroom, and could mean fewer SECAs in schools, Palmer said.

Goodchild said that “of course part of the goal is to increase the number of teacher assistants” because the decrease in teacher assistants “has had damaging impacts for students and schools and educators.”

What does it look like on the ground?

While SECA roles are more defined on paper, their roles inside schools can be more complicated, according to two elementary school principals who spoke to Chalkbeat.

One principal said she never approaches her teacher assistants to help with personal care needs that only SECAs can do. But her SECAs, like her teacher assistants, are “very willing in a pinch to step in” and help with additional needs, which come up a lot in schools. SEIU’s contract allows SECAs to help in emergency situations.

The other principal said while a quarter of his SECAs provide one-on-one support to students with disabilities, others are working with multiple students, helping to manage behavioral issues or helping them with a lesson. As student needs and enrollment changes during the year, he vacillates between feeling like he doesn’t have enough SECAs and feeling like he may have too many.

The expansion of classroom aides is among the overall growth in staff at CPS in the past five years. District officials continue to tout more than 7,000 positions added at a time of declining enrollment. But much of that has been possible because of federal COVID relief money, which is now gone.

While CPS officials say it’s a priority to keep the new positions, budget cuts could be looming. Adding more teacher assistants could help reduce class size and provide more support in schools, principals have said.

Both teachers assistants and SECAs need the same state paraprofessional license in order to work at CPS, which requires at least an associate degree, 60 semester hours of college credit, or a high school degree along with certain passing scores on either a state-approved paraprofessional exam or the ACT WorkKeys Career Assessment.

SEIU’s contract says SECAs with 60 semester hours of college credit must have taken courses in severe disabilities. If SECA candidates decide instead to take the state-approved exam, they must have worked with children with disabilities for at least one year.

The experience SECAs have and the additional training they’ll receive is important for properly serving students with disabilities, advocates and a principal told Chalkbeat. SEIU’s current contract requires CPS to provide SECAs with additional training on a range of issues, including generally working with students with disabilities, deescalation practices, and how IEPs work, starting this July.

“I don’t see the win for students in having a cohort of teaching assistants that don’t have the training, the certification, the desire to work with students with disabilities,” Hughes, the former board member, said.

Weston-Dodd, the SECA from Corliss, said SECAs like her have gained years of experience working exclusively with students with disabilities and are best positioned to serve those children. She also said she’s received professional development training annually.

Still, one of the elementary school principals believes that if she wanted teacher assistants to get similar training that SECAs will get, the district wouldn’t say no.

If CTU’s proposal is accepted by the district, advocates for students with disabilities, as well as SEIU, believe principals would have some incentive to choose teacher assistants since they have broader job responsibilities and are paid less.

“There’s a lot of needs in schools, and things happen and there are times when it’s, like, ‘I just need you to be the body here for a little bit,’” said one of the elementary school principals. “You have a lot more wiggle room with the teacher assistant job description than you do with a SECA job description.”

Still, that principal said she doesn’t want to make the decision on who should work with her highest need students.

The other principal believes it’s good that he doesn’t have undue influence on deciding what a student with a disability needs. But he feels that right now, “it’s arbitrary” on whether the person providing additional support to a child “has a TA job code or a SECA job code,” because their job would be to do what’s in a child’s IEP.

But, he said, he also believes that the person assigned to do the job should have better training.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Amid immigration fears, Chicago school staff mistook Secret Service agents for ICE, district says

2025-01-25T02:04:34+00:00

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Citing a “misunderstanding” and pointing to community fears, Chicago Public Schools officials conceded Friday night that they were mistaken in reporting that federal immigration agents had shown up that morning at a predominantly Latino elementary school.

Two federal agents who came to Hamline Elementary in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood were in fact U.S. Secret Service agents, the agency and district confirmed.

The fear, confusion, and conflicting accounts could be a preview of what’s to come in the weeks ahead at schools with large immigrant populations now that longstanding protections are gone.

The second Trump administration has moved swiftly to follow through on campaign promises to crack down on immigration, putting communities on edge and school officials on alert.

Earlier this week, the administration cleared the way for immigration enforcement at or near schools, churches, and other “sensitive” locations that have been considered off-limits for years.

On Friday afternoon, Chicago Public Schools officials told the media that staff at the elementary school had followed district protocol and blocked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering the school at about 11:15 a.m. CPS chief education officer Bogdana Chkoumbova said school staff contacted CPS’s legal and security departments and did not allow the agents to speak to students or staff.

District policy is to not allow ICE into schools unless agents present a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge.

“We will not open our doors for ICE, and we are here to protect our children and make sure they have access to an excellent education,” said Natasha Ortega, the school principal.

That triggered a series of statements that painted a different picture of events.

Later in the afternoon, an ICE spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times the agency was not involved. Then, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that it was Chicago-based Secret Service agents investigating a threat against “a government official we protect” who went to the school after first visiting a residence.

“Agents identified themselves to the school principal and provided business cards with their contact information,” Guglielmi said. “The agents left without incident. The Secret Service investigates all threats made against those we protect, we do not investigate nor enforce immigration laws.”

On Friday night, CPS issued a statement with its revised version of events: that two individuals arrived at the school door and “presented identification that includes the name Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency that oversees ICE.”

The Secret Service is also housed under the homeland security department.

CPS said school officials responded to the agents thinking they were from ICE, “amid rumors and reports that the agency was in the community,” and acted accordingly.

“Our original communication was a result of a misunderstanding, reflective of the fear and concerns in the community amid the new administration’s focus on undocumented immigrants,” the district said.

The district said its response “demonstrates that our system, in partnership with community organizations, is prepared and ready to keep our students and staff safe.”

The morning’s events sent ripples of fear through Hamline Elementary, a K-8 school that is 92% Latino and where more than 68% of the student population are considered English learners, a number that grew by 20% over the past decade.

As the news spread through the school and the neighborhood, a handful of parents and guardians came to the school in the frigid cold; a couple of people appeared to be taking their children out of school early for the day.

One Hamline staffer, who requested anonymity, said the school went into a 30-minute lockdown during the incident. CPS officials did not immediately confirm the lockdown.

Rumors have been swirling all week that Chicago – a so-called sanctuary city – would be the target of increased immigration enforcement in the wake of President Donald Trump taking office. Trump has already signed a series of executive orders aimed at immigration, including getting rid of the “sensitive location” policy that required ICE to get approval to conduct arrests at or near schools and churches.

The Trump administration has also ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and possibly charge local officials who don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement. CPS does not ask for or track students’ immigration status, and late last year the Board of Education approved a resolution reaffirming the district’s intention to protect immigrant students.

Since last week, CPS has issued guidance to school staff and families about what to do if ICE agents come to a campus building.

Earlier this week, district CEO Pedro Martinez told Chalkbeat that families should not be afraid to send their children to school. Despite the reassurances, unfounded rumors of ICE raids at other Chicago schools have circulated.

CPS reiterated it will not share student information with ICE, “except in the rare case where there is a court order or consent from a parent or guardian.”

Outside Hamline on Friday, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates told reporters that the union has been working on initiatives and training since Trump’s first term to help staff know about their rights related to immigration.

“Schools are for children; schools are open for children,” she said. “We’re gonna work our hardest to make sure that our children and their families know that they can come in this place with our members and feel both supported and protected – not just physically, but emotionally and mentally as well.”

Gloria Marquez, a lifelong Back of the Yards resident and mother of two Hamline students, came to the school just before 1 p.m. after hearing about what was happening. Marquez declined to take her children out early and said she wasn’t fearful of immigration agents. But she expressed anger at the thought of immigration enforcement showing up, saying that if someone is “not a criminal, then they don’t deserve to go back” to their native country.

Marquez said the fear of increased immigration enforcement has been palpable in the neighborhood. A local store she frequents was far emptier than usual on Friday. People are not walking around “like they used to,” she said.

Earlier this week, Marquez said she received an email from the principal noting that the school’s attendance was about 60% on Wednesday and wondered if parents were hesitant to send their kids to school. The long weekend and cold weather could also be factors.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Teachers Union contract negotiations cause rift with other school employee unions

2024-12-06T20:49:51+00:00

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The Chicago Teachers Union’s contentious contract negotiations have already spurred a major clash between district leaders and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office and endangered CEO Pedro Martinez’ role.

Now the teachers union’s demands for a significant expansion of CTU-represented positions and of educators’ say over school matters are pitting that union against two other district labor groups: The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association and the Service Employees International Union 73, a longtime CTU ally.

The principals union, which is in the midst of negotiating its first contract with CPS, wrote a letter this week to the Board of Education saying some CTU proposals would trample on principals’ authority to run schools. Meanwhile, the Service Employees International Union 73, which represents support staff at schools, has voiced concern over a CTU demand it says will take work away from its members — and threatened to sue the district if it approves the proposal, the Chicago Tribune reported. The rift with the SEIU is especially notable as that union has jointly advocated for more special education services and staff with the teachers union, and the two groups went on strike together in 2019.

Principals union leaders said they are concerned about school board pressure on Martinez to settle the teachers contract as quickly as possible and about the cost of the union’s staffing and other proposals. They worry that the cash-strapped district might have to resort to assistant principal layoffs and other cuts to afford them. CPS estimated the union’s initial proposals to cost $10 billion but is reassessing that estimate; the union has called that estimate inaccurate and has pared back some of its proposals, but it has not shared a cost estimate.

“We don’t believe the problematic provisions are intentionally problematic,” wrote Troy LaRaviere, CPAA’s president, in the letter to the board. “They are simply the result of the limited perspective of teachers. By that I mean teachers run classrooms, not schools.”

Thad Goodchild, CTU deputy general counsel, told Chalkbeat that the goal of the union’s proposals is to beef up staffing in critical areas and ensure teachers have a voice at schools. He said there’s “an open dialogue” between leaders of both unions, and CTU is also “working to find a solution” with SEIU.

Contract negotiations with the teachers union have stretched on since April and soured the relationship between Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher, CTU employee and close union ally, who has asked Martinez to resign. The school board, installed by Johnson after the previous board resigned amid the conflict, wrote to Martinez late last month to demand a quick resolution to the talks.

The CTU recently shared what it is calling a “roadmap to settlement” with the district, including a smaller raise proposal than the 9% a year it demanded at first and a pared-down set of staffing and other demands. But that roadmap still includes proposals that would give teachers the final say over curriculums and a larger role in evaluating principals.

Principals worry their role in school decisions will shrink

The principals union says one of its major concerns is a proposal that would allow teachers to pick their own curriculums as long as they meet state learning objectives.

Goodchild, from CTU, said the proposal is meant to ensure that teacher voice exists in all schools.

“Academic freedom doesn’t mean that teachers get to teach whatever they want — it means that their professional judgment is respected and that they aren’t expected to teach from scripted, online curriculum with lots of gaps in it, which unfortunately is the direction that district has been heading in recent years,” Goodchild said.

But one elementary school principal, who spoke with Chalkbeat on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly, said she felt that allowing teachers more academic freedom would prevent staff from developing a schoolwide strategy for instruction.

“I know it’s not implemented really well in every single school, but the mechanism for that teacher input and voice exists, and I think to swing to the extreme of every teacher making their own decision in that regard is going to be harmful for kids,” the principal said.

The principals union, which formed last year, also started negotiating with the district in April. But unlike the publicly contentious teachers' contract negotiations, talks with principals have unfolded quietly behind closed doors, and the two sides have taken a few months off as the CTU talks intensified.

According to a CPS presentation for the school board obtained by Chalkbeat, district officials and principals union leaders have met five times, and the union has put forth proposals on wages and benefits, discipline and discharge procedures for school leaders, and more.

The two sides haven’t reached agreements yet, Banks said, but, “We have enjoyed a much more amenable and open-minded engagement with CPS than others have.”

Earlier this week, a group of school leaders working independently of the union also sent a letter to the school board saying the contract talks with the CTU and the pressure on Martinez to step down are creating “an atmosphere of uncertainty.” Nearly 700 CPS principals and assistant principals representing almost 80% of the district’s campuses signed the letter, arguing that replacing the CEO would be “a decision rooted in political interests, not the interest of students.”

CTU leaders have dismissed these concerns on social media, with Vice President Jackson Potter recently calling principals “middle management foremen of the system.”

SEIU says CTU demands will hurt its members

Other CTU proposals have threatened a rift with SEIU Local 73.

A recently amended contract proposal by the Chicago Teachers Union obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago would give the district more flexibility to choose between teacher assistants, represented by the CTU, or Special Education Classroom Assistants (or SECAs), represented by SEIU, based on what a student’s Individualized Education Program or a 504 plan requires. SEIU Local 73 says this proposal will take work away from SECAs, who are trained to work with students with disabilities.

Stacia Scott, executive vice president of SEIU Local 73, told Chalkbeat that adding flexibility for school leaders to choose between teacher assistants or SECAs to work with students with disabilities could cause confusion in a school building.

“We have tried to make our contract as explicit as possible so that we can focus on ensuring that SECAs are providing the services that are legally required to special education students,” Scott said.

SEIU Local 73’s recent contract with the district requires that SECAs receive professional development and training and that SECAs are included in IEP meetings. It also protects SECAs from performing other tasks in schools that would take time away from students with disabilities, unless it is to support a student’s IEP.

Goodchild said the CTU proposal is ultimately meant to beef up special education staff such as teacher assistants so that students with IEPs get the support they need.

The number of SECAs has grown by roughly 150% over the past decade, when comparing employee figures from December 1, 2014 to the same day this month, according to data from CPS. In that same time period, the total number of teacher assistants grew by just over 50%, the data show.

“We’re trying to, you know, restore balance,” Goodchild said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Study: Chicago’s former English learners outperform their high school peers

2024-11-19T11:00:00+00:00

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Chicago students who had been English language learners and became fluent in English by ninth grade graduate and enroll in college at higher rates than their peers, according to a new study released Wednesday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

Those findings go along with an earlier study that found similar trends in elementary school, where students who had been English language learners and later mastered English tended to do better in school than their native-English-speaking peers.

However, the authors of the new study stress there is more to the story — and more types of students to pay attention to.

The study found that high schoolers who are still learning English as a new language are less likely to graduate on time compared to the district average, but have GPAs and SAT scores that vary when compared to their peers. Those outcomes vary based on how long the students have been classified as English language learners or how long they’ve been in the United States.

The study comes as CPS continues to welcome migrant families and far more English learners than it has in the past, at a time when President-elect Donald Trump is threatening mass deportations. This school year, the district’s share of English language learners grew by more than 12% — higher than any other student group. (English language learners are not necessarily newcomer immigrant students.)

Chicago Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment in time for this story.

The authors crafted the study in part because publicly reported data about student outcomes, such as graduation rates, only focuses on current English language learners without digging deeper into that group or looking at students who have exited English language learner status through testing, said Marisa de la Torre, managing director and senior research associate at the consortium who helped author Wednesday’s report.

“The way we report the data — it really hides all these successes,” de la Torre said. “At the same time, I think with this report we also highlight the need to offer more nuance about the active English learners because they might need supports in different ways.”

The study looked at about 78,500 kids who graduated from high school between 2014 and 2016. Of those students, 7,950 were learning English as a new language, and another roughly 18,000 had formerly been classified as English language learners but had since exited that status by ninth grade.

They found that former English language learners tended to have better grades and graduated at a better rate than students citywide. They also were more likely to enroll in and persist through two-year colleges, and enrolled and persisted through four-year colleges at a rate similar to the rest of CPS.

In contrast, late-arriving English learners — those who had been in CPS for fewer than six years by ninth grade and continue to learn the language — graduated at lower rates than the district average but had higher GPAs. However, these students were more likely to enroll in and make it through a two-year college than the district as a whole.

High schoolers who were long-term English learners — those who have been in CPS for at least six years and were still learning English as a new language by ninth grade — had far lower graduation rates and GPAs when compared to the district as a whole and were less likely to enroll in and persist through college. And long-term English learners with disabilities also far underperformed compared to district averages, but earned GPAs and graduated at rates similar to native English speakers with disabilities.

More detailed highlights include:

Former English learners graduated at a rate of 88% — four percentage points higher than all students. Their average SAT score of 1003 and GPA of 2.9 were slightly higher than the district averages (977 for the SAT and 2.81 for GPA).
Late-arriving English learners graduated at a rate of 81%, three points lower than the district average and even lower compared to kids who were former English learners. Their average GPA was 2.87, similar to former English learners and higher than the district average, but their average SAT score of 882 fell below both groups.
Kids who were long-term English learners without disabilities graduated at a rate of 74%, or ten percentage points lower than their peers. Their average SAT score of 838 and GPA of 2.5 fell below district averages.
Long-term English learners with disabilities graduated at a rate of 69%, far below the district average but just one point lower than the average for native English speakers with disabilities. Their average GPA of 2.55 and SAT score of 771 fell far below the district average and other types of English learners but was again on par with native English speakers with disabilities.

The study spurs the question of what sort of support is missing for current English learners who might be struggling to graduate on time or earn grades as high as their peers, de la Torre said.

For example, could newcomer immigrant students who are English learners be more likely to miss school? Students in shelter, for example, may find it difficult to get to school on time or at all given barriers with accessing stable housing or transportation.

Transitional bilingual programs, which teach students in their native language and ease them into English, are required by state law in schools that enroll 20 or more English learners who speak the same native language, such as Spanish. But Chicago Public Schools and other Illinois districts have routinely violated those laws, with many schools failing internal audits that track whether a school has enough staffing and provides the correct instruction to English learners in these programs.

The study’s authors shared several takeaways from their study, including understanding what long-term English learners need to succeed in high school and that standardized test scores may not be a good indicator of English language learners’ potential.

They noted that late-arriving English learners struggle with tests but their grades were higher than the district average.

One of de la Torre’s biggest takeaways from the study was the relatively high average GPAs for former English language learners, which are close to 3.0. That’s a figure, she said, that “actually signals that they are ready to engage in college more.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago high schoolers get a crash course on the city’s first school board election

2024-11-04T19:37:37+00:00

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Before the start of this school year, 18-year-old Odeth Garcia, a senior at Hancock College Prep on Chicago’s Southwest Side, did not know that her first time voting would include casting a ballot for the people charged with ensuring she gets a good education.

Inside Room 105, Odeth and 20 of her peers dug into the day’s civics lesson: Chicago’s historic school board elections. They would learn that the board has immense power, including to change school policies and curriculum and adopt the district’s budget.

“I feel like the fact that they’re being elected in the first place is really cool, because I feel like we should have a say in deciding, like, how we’re going to learn,” she said. “It was interesting to learn how much they actually control.”

Teacher Froy Jimenez teaches an elections unit every year, but 2024 presented a new opportunity. In addition to learning about the race for president and other local races, Odeth learned the city would elect 10 school board members, while another 11 would be appointed by the mayor.

Jimenez ran for 11th Ward alderman in 2023, serves on Hancock’s Local School Council, and is on the district’s citywide Local School Advisory Council. But building a lesson around the new school board elections was not solely driven by his own interest in politics.

He said he used resources curated centrally by Chicago Public Schools that were meant to help teachers teach about the upcoming school board elections. Jimenez went to an optional professional development session to learn and found the lessons useful.

For his class, Jimenez wanted students to understand the responsibilities of being a school board member, but he said he wanted to take the lessons “a step further.”

“That step further was them coming up with their own version of what it means to be a board member,” Jimenez said.

Students learn to do their own research

Students pulled out a previous homework assignment: job descriptions they created for the school board in the form of colorful fliers that advertised the school board positions and included qualifications for the job. The class rotated around the room, viewing peers’ job descriptions and writing interview questions they’d pose for candidates.

“How would you distribute 10 bil?” Odeth wrote, referencing how a candidate would want to spend the district’s nearly $10 billion budget.

Students in a social studies class at Hancock College Prep write up questions they would ask candidates for Chicago's first school board election.

The lessons are about more than just this election. Jimenez said it’s also an opportunity to teach students how to find reliable information, come to their own conclusions, and understand that the outcome can impact their daily classroom experience.

“It’s important not only to vote, but it’s important to be an informed voter, and you have to do your own research — that’s something that I think we’ve emphasized,” Jimenez said.

On a cloudy October Tuesday, Jimenez asked the kids to consider the following statement: Voters should consider others’ opinions – such as celebrities or influential organizations – when casting their ballots. He asked a student to tally up her peers’ opinions on the dry erase board. The student scribbled the words “refute” and “support” across the board.

One student said people should do their own research, a tally marked under “refute.” Another said others’ opinions can provide a helpful perspective, since the outcome of any election impacts everybody. That was tallied under the “support” column.

There wasn’t a right answer. But the lesson was meant to get the students to think critically about how they’re reaching conclusions about candidates, Jimenez said.

Some students are preparing to vote for the first time

A handful of Jimenez’s students, like Odeth, are of voting age this year, he said. One of them is 18-year-old Luis Garcia, a senior at Hancock. Like Odeth, he didn’t know about Chicago’s first school board candidates until he took Jimenez’s class.

Luis said he knows where he stands politically. But in Jimenez’s class, he learned that “it’s good for me to learn about the other side.”

After reviewing the job duties of a school board member and learning how to find reliable information, the students rearranged their desks into groups to start one of their final projects for this unit: creating voter guides.

Social studies teacher Froy Jimenez, center, talks to a group of students at Hancock College Prep about an assignment to create a voter guide for Chicago's first school board election.

Jimenez tasked them with creating a few categories, such as qualifications, that they felt voters should know about each candidate. He provided multiple links to news websites that had created voter guides — including Chalkbeat’s with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ — as sources. He also encouraged students to visit candidates’ websites.

Jimenez occasionally asked the class questions that seemed targeted toward getting them to think critically or be aware of misinformation. As students prepared to work on their voter guides, he asked them about the difference between finding information on a candidate’s website and a news source.

“I think a neutral [website] would tell you about the good and the bad,” one student said.

On their own website, another student said, a candidate “would sugarcoat” their experiences.

As one group worked on their voter guides, students raised questions with each other about what counts as experience. Some of those critical thinking skills peeked through.

Junior Miche Avendano-Escobar, 17, asked: Would attending past board meetings count as experience or qualifications? Her classmate, fellow junior and 16-year-old Eduardo Hernandez Jr., decided it would fall under experience, because attending meetings makes them “familiar with the environment.”

Eduardo Hernandez Jr., a junior, asks a teacher a question during an assignment to create voter guides for Chicago's first school board election.

Senior Isabella Garcia asked if they should include candidates’ GPAs in their voter guide, an idea that popped into her mind as she combed through District 4 candidate Kimberly Brown’s resume, which said she had a 3.9 GPA in graduate school.

As the group dove into candidate backgrounds, Miche chimed in as she reviewed District 2 candidate Maggie Cullerton Hooper’s website: “My god, this girl has so many experiences.”

As class wrapped up, Jimenez asked the students to write down on a small piece of paper what they think is the most important factor in choosing a candidate and why.

Before he walked out, Eduardo quickly scribbled his answer: Look at the candidate’s “main issue” because “it shows priority and headspace.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools on track to see slight enrollment increase in the 2024-25 school year

2024-09-27T22:14:36+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is on track to see a rise in its official student enrollment this year, according to preliminary data revealed Thursday.

More than 324,000 students were enrolled as of the 15th day of school compared to the same time last year – an increase of almost 2,800 students, according to data Bogdana Chkoumbova, chief education officer for CPS, shared during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The district typically uses enrollment and demographics on the 20th day of school as the official data for the school year. If the numbers shared Thursday hold or increase, CPS will have seen two consecutive years of modest rises in its enrollment — after more than a decade of declines.

Chicago Public Schools is the nation’s fourth largest district. It had been the third largest district in the country, but lost that title in 2022, as enrollment continued to dip.

Enrollment may shift as the school year progresses, such as if families move. By May of the last school year, enrollment had grown by roughly 7,000 students, growing to a total of more than 328,000 students in CPS schools, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of preliminary enrollment data.

Most of the increase officials have seen recently is in grades K-5, which saw a 2% increase compared to the start of last school year, while other grades remained relatively flat.

The share of Black students dropped by 1.3% – the only major student group by race to see a decrease. Hispanic students saw the largest increase, by 1.6%. Among different student groups by need and income level, the largest increase has been among English language learners, who grew by more than 12% compared to this time last year, Chkoumbova said.

That could be linked, at least in part, to an increase in migrant students who have settled in Chicago. Many schools enrolled more English language learners over the course of last year as migrant families arrived in Chicago. Many of those families settled in majority Black, low-income neighborhoods where schools had not previously set up bilingual programs.

Chkoumbova said it’s hard to pinpoint one reason for the rising enrollment, given that it’s growing across most student groups. But the rise in the early grades is on trend with last year, she said.

The number of students with disabilities, those who are unhoused, and those living in low-income households also went up. Notably, the number of unhoused students – about 10,900 – increased by just under 3%, after a more than 50% increase last school year.

Districts across the nation have seen dips in public school enrollment, which have become more pronounced in recent years after the pandemic. In Chicago, the change has been attributed to dropping birth rates and people leaving the city over the last decade, including Black families. Population shifts have also impacted the demographics of the city.

Chkoumbova also said attendance is up by .7%, to almost 93%, a modest increase but one that comes after virtually no change last year and a struggle since the pandemic with chronic absenteeism.

In a letter to families Friday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said rising attendance is “important, because we know that attendance can be an indicator of how connected students feel to their school communities.”

The district’s recently approved five-year strategic plan sets a goal to reduce chronic absenteeism – when a student is absent for 10 or more school days – by 15%.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org .

Explaining Chicago Public Schools: The types of schools

2024-09-18T10:00:02+00:00

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In Chicago, all children are guaranteed a spot in their zoned neighborhood school.

But Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s fourth largest district, also offers other choices, such as magnets, charters, and selective enrollment schools — and leaving your neighborhood to attend school has increasingly become the norm.

Explaining CPS

Roughly 44% of elementary school students enrolled at a school other than the one they were zoned for in the 2022-23 school year, while about 75% of high schoolers did the same, according to district data.

Twenty years ago, shortly after Chicago rapidly expanded school choice, only about a quarter of elementary school students enrolled in schools outside of their attendance area and 46% of high schoolers did the same.

The current appointed Chicago Board of Education — which will be replaced in January by a hybrid board made up of elected and appointed members — now wants to increase the percentage of students who go to school close to home. This new stated goal comes after the board expressed a desire last December to rethink the district’s school choice system. Board members said they want to invest more resources in neighborhood schools while also improving racial disparities at some of the district’s most sought-after schools that require applications and testing to get in.

Elected school board members will represent a varying number of different types of schools in their districts. Some have more magnet and selective schools than others, while others have a large percentage of charter schools.

Decades of policies approved by past school boards have created a school system where most students can and do attend beyond their zoned school, known more generally as school choice. District leaders, the school board, and even federal courts have also overseen the rules that govern who goes to which schools.

Today, Chicago families have a lot of options when it comes to public education: magnet schools, language academies, public Montessori, gifted centers, STEM schools, International Baccalaureate programs, and more. Students apply for different schools using an online system called GoCPS.

While hundreds of schools across the city enroll students based on where they live, dozens of schools and programs – such as the district’s 11 selective enrollment high schools – require students to take tests and meet other requirements for admission.

CPS also offers magnet programs, which often have a specialized curriculum and require an application, offering seats based on a lottery system. And then there are Chicago’s roughly 120 charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed and operate on contractual agreements with CPS. Charters also require an application to get in and also admit students by lottery.

The variety of options allows families to find the best fit for their child, but can be dizzying to navigate and has been criticized for being stressful and cumbersome.

Desegregation order paves the way for school choice

Chicago began offering public education in the 1840s, shortly after it became an official city, at just a few schools. The district officially established a board of education in the 1850s, and student enrollment rapidly grew as the city’s population ballooned.

By the 1960s, Chicago’s public schools were starkly racially segregated, due in part to racist housing policies that prevented Black families from finding housing in neighborhoods where white families lived. On the city’s South and West sides, schools serving mostly Black students were overcrowded and had fewer resources than schools in more affluent, white areas.

Families and civil rights activists protested segregation, even organizing a massive school walkout in 1963. The district’s superintendent at the time, James Redmond, attempted to spur integration by opening magnet programs.

By 1980, the federal government intervened and forced Chicago to sign a consent decree that required CPS to integrate its schools. Though some magnet and selective schools already existed, the federal court oversight prompted the district to create more. These schools were open to students from across the city and the district created racial quotas for schools in order to desegregate them.

Selective enrollment schools grew in the 1990s under then-CEO Paul Vallas, who more recently ran for mayor against current Mayor Brandon Johnson.

With the city’s pleading, a federal court ended the consent decree in 2009. The district replaced its racial quota system with a tier system, which assigns students a tier based on where they live using socioeconomic data about their neighborhood, including income, education levels, how many single-parent households there are, how many homes are owner-occupied, and how many households speak a language other than English. The district then prioritizes seats at selective schools, in part, based on each student’s tier. A decade after the consent decree ended, many of these selective schools had become more racially homogenous.

Today, school board policy stipulates that the first 30% of seats at selective enrollment schools go to kids with the highest scores on the High School Admissions Test. The rest of the seats are split up among those who scored the highest across each of the four tiers. Magnets, which do not require a test, split their seats across the four tiers.

School choice accelerates under education reform plan

In 2004, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley announced an ambitious plan to open 100 new schools under an effort to provide better school options. He called it Renaissance 2010.

As part of that initiative, the district began opening more charter schools, which were authorized by state law in 1997. The board approves contractual agreements with charter schools.

But in recent years, as district leaders have more closely scrutinized charter schools, boards under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Johnson have approved shorter terms for charters. For example, in January, the board renewed contracts for a majority of charters that were up for renewal by three or four years, even though state law allows extensions for up to 10 years.

Most of the schools that opened under Renaissance 2010 did not have neighborhood attendance boundaries and many had specialized academic programs.

Daley’s massive school reform effort came hand-in-hand with school closings. Annually, district officials would target schools with poor academic performance or under enrollment for closure.

Over the course of almost two decades, the appointed school board approved roughly 200 school closings, including 50 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2013, as it expanded the district’s market-based system of choice with specialty schools that families could choose over their zoned school.

Today’s leaders are pushing back on choice

Many of the magnet and selective enrollment schools meant to help desegregate the district never became integrated. Some have also become more segregated since federal court oversight ended.

Others are racially and economically integrated, but serve more white and Asian American students than the district as a whole and have been enrolling fewer Black students than in the past.

Additionally, families have for years said the high-stakes process of testing and applying to high school is stressful for their children.

On the campaign trail, Johnson promised to bolster neighborhood schools and make them places families want to enroll their children in.

In December, his appointed board promised to rethink school choice, signaling potential changes to admissions or other policies governing those schools. However, in its recently released strategic plan, the board did not call for any such policy changes. It did set goals to invest more resources in neighborhood schools and grow the percentage of children attending schools within their neighborhoods or community areas.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org

CPS five-year plan aims to get more kids to attend neighborhood schools

2024-09-16T22:08:41+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools unveiled a new five-year strategic plan Monday that sets out to increase the number of students attending schools in their neighborhood and redefine what it means to be a successful student.

The plan did not call for specific changes to selective enrollment, magnet, or charter schools, a possibility signaled in December when the board first announced its intention to rethink school choice. But the plan does seek to bolster resources for neighborhood schools “with an intentional focus on disinvested communities.”

Twenty years ago, when Chicago started expanding magnet, selective, and charter schools, just about a quarter of elementary school students enrolled in schools outside of their attendance area and 46% of high schoolers did the same.

The plan outlines priorities and specific goals to reach by 2029 in three different areas — students, schools, and communities — but did not signal policy changes. Officials, however, left the possibility open for future changes as a result of the plan.

“I don’t think this document is intended to indicate new policies,” Chicago Board of Education Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland told reporters. “As engagement continues around the different topics and areas there, if a policy change is seen as necessary, then perhaps that will be the case.”

The board will vote on the plan on Wednesday at a special meeting.

Under the plan, the district set the following goals to reach by 2029:

Increase the percentage of students who attend a school in their neighborhood or community area. The district said it does not have a specific percentage it wants to reach, and that this is not just limited to a student’s zoned school.
Increase the number of students in grades 3-8 who pass the state’s reading and math exams by 20%.
Reduce chronic absenteeism – when a student misses 10 or more days of school – by 15%.
Reduce teacher vacancies by 25% in schools that serve majorities of Black and Hispanic students.
Increase funding for improving school facilities by $250 million.
Increase internet bandwidth by 400% at elementary schools and by 900% at high schools to prevent outages and slow internet connections.
Ensure that all schools will have a “robust” behavioral health team.
Decrease class sizes, with priority on schools with higher needs.
Ensure that all schools have the capacity to hire arts, P.E., and other “special instruction” staff.
Increase the percentage of students enrolled in at least one district after-school program by 8 percentage points, from 42% currently to 50%.
Transition 25% of personnel who come from the private sector, such as custodians and bus drivers, to district employees.

District wants to redefine student success

The plan also outlines specific priorities for certain groups of students. For example, the district said it wants to improve achievement and opportunities for Black students, who are disproportionately less likely to read and do math on grade level compared to their peers and are disciplined at higher rates; ensure students learn more than one language by the time they graduate and boost support for English learners; and improve quality of education and instruction for both students with disabilities and kids in pre-K through second grade.

District officials and school board leaders also want more emphasis on how students experience school.

Officials said the district will continue to track things like graduation rate and student growth and proficiency on subjects for their grade level. But it will also consider other factors when considering student and school success, such as how well schools are supporting students who are chronically absent, how many students are participating in early college and career credit programs, and if schools are providing “high quality curriculum,” according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez and Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova.

The district has also set an explicit goal to improve the number of schools rated strongly as “supportive environments” on the annual 5Essentials survey, which comes from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and is supposed to measure a school’s culture and climate.

“Social-emotional learning, student well-being, it’s not an add-on,” Todd-Breland said. “If it’s not deeply integrated into everything that we do, then learning cannot happen.”

The district also included priorities to increase funding for all of its schools.

Todd-Breland said board meetings will soon be restructured so they monitor the plan’s goals, “so that every month when you come to a board meeting, you’re going to find out something new about how the strategic plan is being monitored and how things are moving.”

But it’s unclear if that meeting structure will remain come January when the school board grows from 7 appointed members to 21 members, 10 of whom will be elected by Chicago voters on Nov. 5.

Strategic plan comes amid change, tensions at CPS

Martinez and his administration unveiled the plan eight months after the school board passed a resolution signaling the district’s intent to curtail a choice system that leaders said has undermined many neighborhood schools and bred inequities in the experience of students in different parts of the city.

That resolution was in keeping with campaign promises by Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, who called the district’s system “a Hunger Games scenario” in which families scramble to flee their neighborhood campuses for spots in coveted test-in and lottery programs across the city. Chicago’s selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools are also prized by many families, and district leaders have spent the intervening months reassuring state lawmakers, parents, and others that they won’t close or severely weaken these choices.

Asked why the plan revealed Monday did not include explicit policy changes for choice schools, Todd-Breland said the board heard from people who valued schools beyond their neighborhood options, including selective enrollment and charter schools.

“What felt more important, and what continues to be the more important thing … is that the lever of change in Chicago Public Schools is to invest in neighborhood schools and our communities furthest from opportunity to make sure there are pathways that families are confident in and have high quality education provided in them from pre-K through high school in their neighborhood,” Todd-Breland said.

Still, the strategic plan says academic gaps among students and challenges have worsened because of “our current competitive enrollment policies and previous accountability policy, which pitted schools against each other and sorted students based on academic performance in an under-resourced system, reinforcing cycles of inequity.”

Martinez is putting out the plan just as reports emerged that Johnson might be gearing up to replace him following disagreements with City Hall over how to tackle budget deficits and rocky contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. Those reports raise questions about the district’s ability to see the new blueprint through, after a run of frequent CEO comings-and-goings that have destabilized CPS.

In a statement, CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said the “best parts” of the plan mirror the union’s current contract proposals with the district and that, at the bargaining table, Martinez is “out of step” with his own district.

“If the district actually led with this plan, then we’d have the partner we’re looking for to deliver for our students,” Davis Gates said.

Efforts to reinvigorate Chicago’s neighborhood schools date back to the tenure of Martinez’s predecessor, Janice Jackson, who served for three and a half years. She launched “equity grants” to give campuses with shrinking enrollment a funding boost as well as a program in which schools applied for dollars to start specialized programming, such as arts or STEM, in a bid to lure families seeking distinctive learning options. Jackson’s own five-year plan also emphasized improving how the district serves its Black students, especially Black boys.

After the school board’s December resolution, Martinez’ administration disclosed few details about the development of a new strategic plan, with officials saying they wanted to first hear from community members at a series of public meetings this spring. Officials said Monday that nearly 14,000 people “engaged” with the plan by providing feedback or attending community meetings.

But for some, the wait for more details on the plan produced anxiety about the future of school choice in Chicago. Families in the district’s selective enrollment and magnet programs worried those schools would be diminished – a claim CPS officials repeatedly denied and is not a part of the strategic plan released Monday. On some campuses, those worries spiked as the district unveiled a new approach to school budgeting in the spring that district leaders said would steer more dollars to campuses with the highest needs and correct for historical inequities in how Chicago distributed resources. At some selective schools, officials and parents said newly tight budgets made it hard to staff specialized programs.

The plan released Monday calls for the district to monitor both the strengths and weaknesses of the new funding formula.

In the spring, state lawmakers introduced a bill threatening to intervene if Chicago moved to close any of its selective and magnet programs. The bill didn’t gain traction during the legislative session, but it elicited reassurance from Johnson and district leaders that there were no plans to shutter these schools.

Anxiety has also run high among charter operators and families, who felt that the December resolution was taking clear aim at their schools. Last week, charter officials and parents rallied at a school board meeting to demand more clarity on the plan and a promise that it won’t undermine the city’s charters, which serve roughly a fifth of its students.

The plan calls for revisiting the district’s renewal process for charter schools in a couple of years, but provides no additional details.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org .

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org

With no chemistry teacher, Chicago student teaches her own class: ‘They forgot about us’

2024-09-13T11:00:01+00:00

A week after their teacher left, the students were growing restless.

Despite promises that a permanent new teacher was coming, students in the sophomore-level chemistry class at Roberto Clemente Community Academy were sitting in their classroom with little to do. Though a substitute teacher was assigned to the room, the students quickly concluded that he didn’t know much about chemistry.

Carolina Carchi was struck by the reaction of one of her classmates: “They forgot about us.”

“When I heard that, this spark and passion grew in me,” Carolina said. She told herself: “No, you’re not going to be left out, they didn’t forget about you, and I’m going to be here to prove that.”

The following day, the 15-year-old got up in front of the class and began to teach her peers about the properties of liquids and solids and how to balance chemical equations.

Carolina went on to teach the class for two months during the winter of her sophomore year. A permanent teacher didn’t take over the classroom until the following fall.

When Clemente was built in the mid-1970s, the school was a symbol of hope in Humboldt Park and West Town, offering the promise of a new beginning for the Puerto Rican families who had settled in the area.

But now, 50 years later, Clemente students are missing critical instruction because so many teachers are regularly absent and positions go unfilled for long stretches.

Clemente is emblematic of a broader problem: CPS schools — and many other public schools across the country — are hamstrung by funding constraints and a nationwide teacher shortage, education experts said.

“It’s a resource issue that’s much larger than Chicago, much larger than the state,” said Erika Méndez, director of P-12 education policy for Latino Policy Forum, a state advocacy organization. “We have some big gaps to meet in terms of school funding. We are in a really tough financial time, and that’s coming with some big costs.”

Students file out of Roberto Clemente Community Academy in Humboldt Park at dismissal on Aug. 29, 2024.

But Clemente’s challenges are compounded by the management and leadership approach of administrators, teachers told Block Club Chicago.

As they deal with the stresses of working with students with significant needs, teachers say they’re not getting support from the school’s principal, which has left them burnt out and demoralized — and often absent.

At Clemente, about 46% of the teaching staff had more than 10 absences in 2023, according to CPS data. That means nearly half of Clemente teachers missed the equivalent of at least two weeks of school.

Yet CPS officials insist Clemente doesn’t have staffing issues.

The result is dozens of students sitting in what one teacher described as “dead classrooms” — unadorned spaces without permanent teachers where students receive little if any instruction and can essentially do whatever they want, according to interviews with teachers, support staff, and students.

Teacher absences

Last year was stressful for Betsy Garcia, one of Clemente’s school clerks.

Every morning, she checked her phone to find out how many teachers were absent that day. It was typically a high number — sometimes as many as 20, about a third of the school’s teaching staff.

Garcia frantically called in substitute teachers, but sometimes she and other support staff had to watch over a class or two because no one else could do it.

“We’re not teachers, but we have to do what we have to do,” Garcia said during a Local School Council meeting in May.

Across the district, teacher attendance hit a five-year low last year, according to state data reviewed by Block Club. About 43% of CPS teachers had 10 absences or more, the level the state considers “chronic” absenteeism that negatively impacts student achievement. The rate was even higher at Clemente.

On top of teacher absenteeism, 9% of Clemente’s staff positions were vacant as of last October, more than double the district average of 4%, according to district figures.

Clemente has a regular roster of substitute teachers who fill the gaps when teachers miss work. The district pays subs more to teach at high-poverty schools like Clemente. But subs are no replacement for full-time teachers, school employees said.

“I definitely have students who have [substitute teachers] for 3-4 classes easily everyday — that’s half their schedule. There’s a profound lack of instruction happening,” said one teacher who asked not to be named. “It affects school culture. … You have a lot more students cutting class or disorderly hallways because there’s less staff, less relationships.”

And sometimes the school doesn’t even have enough subs, leaving Garcia and other school employees scrambling to cover classes.

The result: Students are falling behind academically. SAT scores have dropped in recent years, according to state data, though learning disruptions at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic could be a factor.

“Our kids are coming to school to learn, but they just sit and watch movies or wander the halls,” said Dennis Acosta, Spanish teacher and member of the LSC.

A troubled history

Many in Humboldt Park were hopeful when Clemente opened in 1974 after years of issues at Clemente’s predecessor, Tuley High School.

“You had a school system that literally wasn’t listening to communities,” said José López, a longtime Humboldt Park activist. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s, CPS schools were considered some of the worst in the United States, and there was no attempt to address major issues of language support, trauma.”

López and other Humboldt Park leaders were instrumental in getting Chicago Public Schools leaders to open Clemente as a community-based school. It felt to them like Puerto Rican families would finally get the school they deserved, López said.

“What happened almost immediately was the total opposite,” López said.

José López, executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, speaks after Governor JB Pritzker announces ‘Puerto Rico Town,’ and nine other areas, as official state-designated cultural districts at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture in Humboldt Park on Feb. 26, 2024.

Poverty and disinvestment in Humboldt Park and West Town led to gang violence around the school. The school also suffered from overcrowding.

The trouble continued in the mid-1990s, when a front-page Sun-Times story alleged school leaders used state anti-poverty funding to indoctrinate students into a Puerto Rican liberation group called FALN. Though investigators weren’t able to find concrete evidence of fraud, officials put the school on financial probation and then-district chief Paul Vallas replaced the principal.

Since then, school leaders have carried out a number of reforms, including some that the district turned into citywide initiatives like launching a satellite program for at-risk students and hiring parents as tutors and office help.

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center made Clemente the centerpiece of its “Community as a Campus” initiative. Under the program, Clemente regularly hosts practices for feeder elementary schools’ sports teams and offers tech training and financial literacy classes for parents, said López, the executive director of the cultural center.

In addition, Clemente became an International Baccalaureate school in 2015, meaning it offers a range of college-level courses, and its graduation rate and student attendance have improved over the last two decades.

“There’s a history of Clemente that is not a good history. Yet over the years, we’ve done everything possible to make sure Clemente would maintain itself as a school of choice for the young people in the community,” López said.

Juanita Garcia, Clemente parent and chair of the school’s Local School Council, said battles between teachers and administrators are negatively impacting students.

But as selective-enrollment and charter schools have become more popular, and as Humboldt Park and West Town have gentrified, Clemente’s student population has steadily dropped, which has led to fewer resources under the district’s system of student-based budgeting.

The school has capacity for 2,000 students, but today enrolls about 750, according to the district. About 200 of those students are migrant kids who enrolled last year after the district made Clemente a “welcome center” for families arriving from Central and South America, according to teachers.

The school is 70% Hispanic and 25% Black. Most students — 86% — are low-income, according to district data. Last year, about 28% of Clemente students were getting special education services, nearly double the district’s rate of 15%, according to state data.

Juanita Garcia, parent and chair of the LSC, said the counselor at her son’s Wicker Park elementary school discouraged her from sending him to Clemente.

“She said the [International Baccalaureate] program at Clemente wasn’t fully developed,” Juanita Garcia said. “If she had that conversation with me, I’m sure she had it with other people.”

Teacher turnover

In addition to the day-to-day absences, Clemente has struggled with teacher turnover.

Clemente had 57 teachers in the 2019-20 school year, a total that includes special education teachers and military instructors. But by the 2023-24 school year, less than half of those teachers — 23 — were still at the school, according to a Block Club analysis of CPS data.

Teachers and other school employees who spoke to Block Club said several teachers have left, gone on leave, or considered quitting because the school’s principal rarely provides support and often ignores requests for help.

Teachers said they’re instructed by administrators to give students a passing grade even if they do very little work.

“The principal does not support teachers in any capacity,” one employee said. “Copiers rarely have paper, classroom resources are not ordered, textbook requests are denied, and we are forced to give inflated grades. Students know the game.”

Adults watch over as students file out of Roberto Clemente Community Academy in Humboldt Park at dismissal on Aug. 29, 2024.

District officials contend Clemente doesn’t have staffing issues.

Clemente’s teacher retention rate — the year-over-year percentage of teachers returning to work at the school — has been “relatively stable” in recent years, though lower than the district average, officials said in an emailed statement.

But students aren’t learning core subjects like chemistry, algebra and Spanish for months, sometimes a full year, because full-time teachers aren’t in classrooms, according to teachers, employees, and students interviewed by Block Club. Teacher morale is the lowest it’s been in years, signaling more problems to come, the teachers said.

These issues aren’t unique to Clemente.

As it pushes for a new teachers contract, the Chicago Teachers Union last week launched a school vacancy tracker to illustrate “an alarming level of understaffing” in CPS schools. Some schools have 7-10 teacher vacancies. Union leaders said it’s the result of “the district’s lack of a plan to fully fund our schools.”

All CPS schools have felt the impact of a nationwide teacher shortage, which has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer. But Felton said the district is “trying to get away from post and pray” by extending early job offers and expanding residency programs to attract more teachers.

While some schools have openings, Felton said overall the district has 2,500 more than it did five years ago.

To bring down chronic absenteeism, the district is trying to connect teachers with more wellness programs and mental health resources, while also backing up principals who need to discipline employees for excessive absences, CPS officials said in a statement.

‘No one … to teach me’

Yet many Clemente students have stories of going long stretches without permanent teachers.

Mya Maldonado-Bustamante loves being in the classroom and is eager to learn.

But last school year was frustrating for the 16-year-old. Mya didn’t have full-time teachers for math and chemistry, which meant she usually spent a couple hours of her school day sitting around, without much school work to do. Now she doesn’t feel prepared for junior year.

“It was just really challenging because I love math, but no one was really there to teach me about it,” Mya said.

Similarly, 15-year-old Annaliz Stovall went without math, English, and Spanish teachers for long stretches of last year. She spent part of her summer trying to learn Spanish on her own.

“They expect us to take Spanish II next year and pass. It really upset me,” Annaliz said. “I care a lot about my grades, but I don’t know anything. I obviously can’t excel at it.”

Mya Maldonado-Bustamante, a junior at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, said she doesn’t feel prepared for her classes because of teacher absences.

Mya and Annaliz consistently show up to school and have no plans to transfer out, but the instability has led dozens of students to leave the school or not show up, according to interviews and state data.

Last year, Clemente’s student mobility rate — the percentage of students who transferred either in or out of the school — was 27%, nearly triple the district-wide rate of 10%, according to state data.

High student mobility, along with chronic truancy and low student attendance, are common issues at schools like Clemente that serve mostly low-income students. But students are feeling the impact of teacher absences, according to interviews with teachers and other school employees.

“Today a student came up to me and confided [in me]: “All day everyday at this school I do nothing,” a school employee said during the last school year.

‘It starts at the top’

A number of teachers at Clemente say Principal Devon Morales has made the staffing issues worse.

Morales became Clemente’s principal in 2022. Since then, his leadership style has created a culture of fear and retaliation, pushing some teachers out of the school, current and former teachers told Block Club. They said Morales is cozy with his allies at the school, a group made up of longtime employees and friends, but shuts out teachers and other employees who question him.

Teachers who have decried his leadership have struggled to get new supplies and approvals for time off, they said.

Principal Devon Morales speaks at a press conference at Roberto Clemente Community Academy before the opening of a pilot CPS welcome center for newly arriving families on July 17, 2023.

Morales didn’t notify teachers that there was a shooting outside of the school at the end of last year — one example of his “lack of communication about anything that’s important,” one teacher said.

Another employee said Morales’ administration turns a blind eye to the school’s challenges and fails to discipline students for serious misconduct, like threatening a teacher.

“The kids don’t want to be there, the teachers don’t want to be there, and it starts at the top,” the employee said.

Almost all of the teachers interviewed by Block Club spoke on the condition they not be named because they’re worried about retaliation, even if they’re no longer employed at the school.

Despite Block Club’s repeated requests over two months, Morales wouldn’t make himself available for an interview for this story. District officials didn’t respond to questions about Morales’ leadership.

Though they’re troubled by the principal, many teachers, staff, and parents have poured energy into the school and want to see students succeed. School employees and community leaders are fiercely protective of Clemente; many were apprehensive about participating in this story for fear it would cast a negative light on the school.

Student becomes the teacher

Carolina grew up in nearby West Humboldt Park and felt a moral responsibility to go to Clemente instead of one of the city’s selective-enrollment high schools, she said.

When her algebra teacher left during her freshman year, Carolina started to teach the class herself.

“No students at Clemente are ever in an unsupervised classroom and substitute teachers have access to any lesson plans they may need on any given day,” district officials said in a statement.

But the substitute teacher assigned to Carolina’s class didn’t know algebra and let her take over, according to interviews with students and school employees.

“I took it as a good journey and challenge to simply just do something for my class, and not leave them behind,” she said.

The same thing happened in her chemistry class the next year. Carolina prepared lesson plans during her free periods and went to FedEx after school to print out assignments. She brought in a bag full of extra pencils and other supplies, including a plasma ball, for students to use while she taught.

“My classmates are more visual learners,” she said.

Clemente student Carolina Carchi taught her alegbra and chemistry classes in the absence of permanent teachers.

Sabrina Negròn, one of Carolina’s classmates, said she and other students struggled with the state science exam after going without a certified teacher, but Carolina “got us as far as she could knowing what she knew.”

“I think she’s an amazing person for what she did because she didn’t need to,” Sabrina said.

Carolina, now a senior, said she was simply following her passion for Clemente.

“I strongly believe in community schools, and that they should be an anchor in their communities,” Carolina said. “A school with the proper resources can be just as successful as any other school.”

This story was originally published in Block Club Chicago.

It’s the first day of school at Chicago Public Schools

2024-08-26T18:49:19+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools students returned to class Monday — amid an excessive heat warning, ongoing student transportation challenges, and growing friction between district leadership, the teachers union, and the mayor’s office.

Officials touted the district’s momentum in undoing some of the academic fallout from the pandemic and welcoming a larger, more diverse teacher workforce. But the kickoff to the school year was dampened by news that almost 2,000 students with disabilities are still waiting for a transportation route.

Meanwhile, Chicago Teachers Union leaders sharply criticized district CEO Pedro Martinez over what they see as too little progress in negotiations over a new contract for educators, ratcheting up tensions over the bargaining process as the district faces looming budget deficits.

The school year began on the heels of reports that Mayor Brandon Johnson is looking to replace Martinez at the helm amid disagreements over how the district should approach its financial predicament and the costs of a teacher contract. On Monday morning, Johnson and Martinez visited schools on the West Side to greet families together, though the mayor declined to take questions from reporters.

“Getting off to a good start is so critical and this year, we’re going to make sure that our children are seen and valued and that they can experience their purpose with new heights,” Johnson said. “With all the gains that we’ve made as a district, there’s still much work to be done.”

Johnson, a CPS parent himself, joked about the joy parents feel when sending their children back to school in the fall: “To all the parents out there who have been waiting for this moment, you’re welcome. Don’t ever say I ain’t done nothing for you.”

Then, there was the heat: As temperatures climbed above 90 degrees, the district canceled all outdoor sports games Monday and Tuesday, and moved recess and sports practices indoors. The district assured families that all classrooms have air conditioning, but many CPS buildings do not have cooling systems in the hallways and other shared spaces.

Amid tense contract talks, teachers union head criticizes CPS CEO

Last year, Johnson, a former CTU organizer and ally, appeared alongside Martinez and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates on the first day of school to usher in a new era of collaboration. But that was not the case this year.

Davis Gates visited Poe Classical Elementary School Monday morning and said staff there invited her to visit.

Davis Gates told Chalkbeat that she asked the mayor to keep Martinez on during the mayor’s transition period when he first took office – something she said she had not revealed publicly before.

Asked if she thinks Martinez should be replaced now, Davis Gates, who wrote an op-ed Monday in the Chicago Tribune criticizing Martinez, said, “I think that the Chicago Public Schools students deserve to be in an environment that we are in right now at Poe Classical. And if Pedro wants to do that, we should partner and get it done yesterday.”

She said Martinez has not tried hard enough to work with the union to meet its demands — a 700-plus proposal package that ranges from increasing teacher pay and adding more staff to schools to improving facilities, such as adding air conditioning to every school gym, and addressing larger societal issues such as student homelessness.

In negotiations, some of which have been held in public, district officials have pointed to budget constraints, noting that just 52 of those proposals would create a $3 billion budget deficit for the district by next school year. Union officials have pushed the district to find a way to pay for more demands, which Davis Gates said also focus on giving more to students, including librarians at every school, more arts education, and more sports programming.

Davis Gates pointed to Poe’s celebratory atmosphere on Monday that she wished existed at every school. The school continued its annual tradition of having a DJ play energizing music as families and kids walked through the school gates. Some younger students clung to their parents. Older students talked excitedly with their classmates. Staff greeted kids and some hugged. An emcee hyped up the crowd, as “It’s Time For the Percolator” boomed in the background.

“If you wanna know what we’re bargaining for, it is this right here, where the educators and the principals are a team; it is where parents, community, multigenerational [families] feel both welcomed and a critical part of it,” Davis Gates said. “These kids are going back to school — and they are smiling.”

Staff at Poe Classical Elementary School greet students on the first day of school.

Martinez and the CPS board have rejected a request from the Johnson administration to take out a short-term loan to pay, in part, for the cost of contract negotiations. As of mid-August, City Hall had continued to press CPS to take out a loan, a source close to CPS previously told Chalkbeat.

Both CPS and the union have also pushed the state to provide more funding to CPS, but state leaders have said that more money is not coming this year.

“If Pedro’s only resistance is his checkbook, that’s pathetic,” Davis Gates said.

Back on the West Side, the mayor’s Deputy Mayor of Education, Youth, and Human Services Jen Johnson told Chalkbeat that the mayor’s office will “make sure the district stays at the table and push them to make sure they’re making progress” with the union.

Hundreds of students with disabilities still without bus rides

As of Aug. 21, 15,586 students were eligible for district-provided transportation: 10,695 students with disabilities, 4,882 general education students, and nine students in temporary living situations, according to a district spokesperson.

Chicago had been under state corrective action for the past two years to ensure students with disabilities had bus routes and were not riding for longer than an hour each way. That state oversight ended earlier this year.

A district spokesperson said Friday that 1,913 students with disabilities still did not have an assigned bus route as of Aug. 21. That’s more than 1,300 more than the roughly 600 who were not on routes at the start of last year. CPS officials said that is mainly due to an increase in students with disabilities qualifying for transportation.

The district is offering stipends of up to $500 a month to students with disabilities who are not on bus routes and live at least five miles away from school.

On Monday, Martinez said the district is trying to get those students routed “as soon as possible.”

“The good news is we’re up about more than 25% in drivers, almost 900 drivers, up from 700 last year, so we’re gonna get everybody routed as soon as possible,” Martinez said.

The district is still not offering busing to general education students, largely those who need rides to selective enrollment or magnet schools.

At Poe Classical – a selective enrollment school where children must take a test to gain admission – mother Brittany Livingston said she and her son took a bus for about 20 minutes to and from their home in Chatham to get to the school last year. The bus wasn’t always timely, especially in the winter. But taking Ubers “means I would have to work more doubles and work more shifts at work to be able to afford [that],” said Livingston, who works as a certified nursing assistant.

Livingston cut the commute in half this year after buying a used car. The “little put-put,” as Livingston calls her car, sometimes requires costly maintenance, which means she’s sometimes taking on extra shifts at work.

“It’s hard, but I’m trying to make it work so that we can at least be able to go back and forth here,” she said.

Martinez painted a more hopeful picture about transportation on Monday, saying it’s probably the best I’ve felt about transportation in the last three years.” He said he hopes to see some busing for general education students by the end of this semester.

Last year, CPS canceled busing for around 8,000 general education students, most of whom attend selective enrollment or magnet schools. This year, officials said they couldn’t guarantee transportation, but would pilot new strategies, including a “hub stop” model that will be phased in later this school year. General education students eligible for transportation can get free Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) Ventra cards valued at $35 per month and a companion pass for one parent or guardian

Johnson and Martinez continue plea for more state funding

Even as school celebrated the return to class, questions continued to swirl over whether Johnson might oust Martinez, who, in addition to pushing back on City Hall demands to take out a loan, also pushed back on demands to take on a short-term, high-interest loan and a disputed a staff pension payment. But the mayor and the district’s top leader stood side by side at both schools.

And at Chalmers Elementary in North Lawndale, Johnson asked parents and staff gathered by the playground at the school day’s start to give Martinez a round of applause. Johnson served as a Chicago Teachers Union organizer assigned to the school and said he pushed back on plans to close it in that role.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez (third from left) and Mayor Brandon Johnson (far right) ring bells with students at Chalmers Elementary School on the first day of the 2024-2025 school year on Monday, Aug. 26, 2024 in Chicago, Ill. (Taylor Glascock/for ChalkBeat Chicago)

Johnson also used the occasion to make a plug for an issue he and Martinez agree on: a request for more dollars for schools from the state of Illinois. The state has markedly increased funding for CPS in recent years, but by its own calculation, it’s more than $1 billion shy of what would make adequate funding for the district.

“We need our partners in Springfield,” Johnson said on Chalmers’ playground. “Do we deserve our $1.1 billion?” Parents and staff cheered.

Johnson got the loudest applause when he brought up the prospect of the country electing its first female Black president. He got a less enthusiastic response when he argued that the first day of school is the best day of the year, “only second to Christmas Eve.”

“Listen, if it gets hard, always ask for help,” Johnson told first grader De’Andria Lofton, dressed in the school’s uniform of a green polo shirt and khaki skirt, personalized with a sparkly purple backpack.

She nodded and smiled shyly before she paused for a photo with the mayor and her parents.

“She loves school,” said Cathy Lofton, De’Andria’s mom, who also has a fourth grader at the school. “She always wants to come on the weekends.”

She hopes De’Andria will learn her multiplication table, and that both of her children will feel engaged — and, first and foremost, safe at school and in the neighborhood.

CPS touts filling more vacant teaching jobs

District officials said they have continued to make headway on reining in start-of-school-year vacancies. Roughly 4.3% of the district’s teaching positions are vacant, slightly down from the start of last school year, said Ben Felton, the district’s chief talent officer. That marks a return to pre-pandemic vacancy levels, he said, but at a time when the district employs about 2,500 more teachers compared to when COVID first hit.

“We have more licensed educators in front of kids than at any point during recent history,” Felton said.

He said the district has 125 additional bilingual teachers and 70 more art teachers than last fall. Overall, CPS has staffed 600 more teachers and 700 more paraprofessionals.

Felton also touted a more diverse corps of newly hired educators: About 31% of roughly 2,000 new teachers are Latino, 18% are Black, and 9% are Asian American.

The district was not able Monday to provide its vacancy rate for all employees or the demographics of teachers overall this fall.

Teaira Myles, whose 6-year-old son Brandon started first grade at Poe on Monday, said she felt a mix of excitement and pride for her son. She said she hopes Brandon learns more Spanish at Poe this year, as well as more about music.

Teaira Myles and her son, Brandon, pose for a portrait on the first day of school at Poe Classical Elementary School on Mon., Aug. 26, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

Brandon showed up dressed in yellow Nike sneakers and a T-shirt with a character from his favorite anime show, “One Piece.” His circular backpack was emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, with black and red straps — also merchandise related to “One Piece.”

Brandon, who spent the summer playing football, said he was “a lot happy and a little nervous” for the start of the school year and was excited about his teachers, friends, and the classroom. He remembered the DJ party at Poe when he started kindergarten last year and thought the tradition was “kinda cool.”

Asked if he wanted to say anything else, he added, “My favorite color is red.”

Samantha Smylie contributed.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org .

‘Stressful and chaotic’: How one Chicago teacher sets up her classroom for the school year

2024-08-20T19:15:15+00:00

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As a humming air conditioner tried to block out the last of summer’s humidity, a half-dozen tiny desks and tables were scattered all over Alli Bizon’s classroom at Suder Montessori Magnet Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side.

Plastic wrap covered supplies on wooden bookshelves, and the mint-green walls were mostly bare. A rug with printed leaves was rolled up.

Bizon thought: What should I move back into place first?

The task before her was the one she’s had for the past 15 years: Transform this mess into the organized classroom her students are used to seeing – one with neatly arranged desks, colorful props for learning math, and filled with books, framed art, and comfortable rugs.

When Chicago Public Schools students go back to class Aug. 26, they will likely walk into rooms with lined-up, clean desks and brightly colored signs on the walls. But few people see the days of work and personal expense that teachers like Bizon spend to get classrooms ready for that moment.

Preparation for the first day of school can involve moving furniture, cleaning, decorating, and taking stock of supplies in the last couple of weeks of summer break – much of which teachers do on their own, sometimes with the help of other staff, parents, or relatives.

At Suder, this year’s Democratic National Convention at the United Center, which is a half-mile from the school, almost threw a wrench into the process. Suder’s administrators initially told staff they may not have access to the school during the week of the convention from Aug. 19-22, potentially wiping out several days that Bizon and her colleagues could use on their rooms, she said.

So out of precaution, Bizon came into Suder earlier than usual with her 5-year-old daughter in tow because she couldn’t find child care.

“It’s very overwhelming and stressful and chaotic and dirty and messy,” said Bizon.

She quickly added: “And fun, also.”

Teachers ultimately do have access to Suder during the DNC, Bizon said. But she and some colleagues went in last week to set up to avoid traffic.

On this particular Wednesday, 12 days before the start of school, Bizon’s goal was to shift her furniture into the right places. The shelves and tables were moved during the summer so maintenance staff could wax the floors. Bizon’s bigger goal was to get the classroom ready by Friday, Aug. 23, three days before the first day of school.

Around Room 114, there were still signs of the last school year. On one wall, a small whiteboard read, “Happy last day!” Orange signs taped to the top of the broken Prometheus board said, “We care about ourselves” and “We care about each other.”

A stack of binders with student names on them sat in one corner of the room. As part of the Montessori model, Bizon teaches first through third graders, meaning the same students return two years in a row unless they move or transfer out.

As Bizon walked around her room, another teacher who was setting up down the hall walked in. Several parents were helping that teacher clean her room, where Bizon’s daughter, Autumn, would start kindergarten next week.

“You good?” the teacher asked Autumn, who nodded yes.

Alli Bizon, a teacher at Suder Montessori Magnet Elementary School, moves a bookshelf in her classroom on Wed., Aug. 14, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois ahead of the first day of school.

Bizon started moving shelves and tables – which she’s largely done by herself or with her husband’s help over the 15 years she’s been a teacher. The task is a bit like having “seven tabs open at a time,” because she always discovers a few more things to do.

As she moved a bookshelf out of its corner, she discovered translucent drip stains on the side. Milk from the last school year, she guessed, since this shelf sat near the trash can where kids would dump cartons. She’d need to clean that before stocking the shelves.

As she moved another bookshelf, she noticed the shelves were moving from side to side. She paused her pushing and pulled out a small hammer to bang the sides and tighten things up. Her daughter covered her ears.

When she flipped over a student desk, she discovered pen and marker drawings on the bottom. The rogue student art made her laugh.

Bizon saw classrooms get set up for much of her childhood. Her mother was a teacher in Trenton, N.J. As kids, Bizon and her siblings would help their mom get her classroom ready.

A stack of books sits on a desk in Alli Bizon's classroom at Suder Montessori Magnet Elementary School on Wed., Aug. 14, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois, as Bizon moves furniture around in preparation for first day of school.

But years later, when it was Bizon’s turn to set up her own classroom for the first time, she felt lost. She recalls sitting paralyzed, “not knowing what to do next.”

Fourteen years later, she’s learned many lessons, including that the room should be clean and organized but doesn’t have to be perfect.

“I don’t need to worry about making sure there are pretty pictures on the wall and bulletin boards in a certain way because it’s about creating it with the children, so that can wait until later on,” Bizon said.

Bizon credited her principal for paying staff and giving them lots of options for which days they can come in to set up their rooms. Still, the task can feel daunting. Last year Bizon brought her other 1-year-old daughter in as she worked, which many of her colleagues do. On this Wednesday, Bizon fielded periodic questions from Autumn – and a request to play the “Nightmare Before Christmas” soundtrack – as she moved around furniture.

Bizon planned to ask some parent volunteers for help to clean or paint. She had scribbled down a five-column to-do list with more than a dozen tasks such as removing the projector and buying 25 clipboards.

“We are very lucky in that you send out a blast or email and say, ‘Hey, you wanna come scrub some shelves?’ And they’re responsive,” Bizon said of parents.

Preparing the classroom also raises questions about what supplies Bizon needs to find, get from the school, or just purchase on her own. Bizon, like teachers across the nation, pays out of pocket throughout the year to buy supplies or replace broken items the school might not be able to cover immediately in the middle of the school year.

She believes she spends at least $1,000 out of pocket annually on classroom supplies – double the national average before the pandemic, according to the National Education Association. She gets $300 of that back as part of a provision in the Chicago Teachers Union contract, she said.

Bizon, like many teachers, also has a Donors Choose page to fund supplies.

Bizon said she’s excited about implementing a nature-based curriculum and teaching her students in the school’s garden. An outdoor seating area for children, surrounded by trees, is visible from her classroom.

She’s stressed, however, about finding enough time to plan engaging lessons and making sure she’s providing enough support for students with disabilities.

Around noon, Bizon took a break from the moving and hammering and cleaning to eat her packed lunch, a premade salad with a packet of tuna.

As she ate, she acknowledged that it’s a big year for Chicago Public Schools outside Room 114’s walls. The city is holding its first school board election and contract talks are becoming increasingly tense between the Chicago Teachers Union and CPS. But after teaching through a pandemic and experiencing multiple teachers strikes, she’s not nervous about what this year will bring.

Every school year in recent memory feels “wild,” she said. “I’ve come to accept that it’s going to be a little chaotic.”

Shortly after Bizon finished her lunch, as if to prove her point, news broke that Mayor Brandon Johnson was considering replacing CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. But she hadn’t yet seen the reports. She had gone back to moving bookshelves.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org .

Chicago’s school board is changing. Here’s how it can be effective.

2024-07-29T20:45:00+00:00

Chicago voters will — for the first time — elect school board members this Nov. 5.

After decades of advocacy and several twists and turns, candidates have filed to run, even as open questions remain around ballot access, voter eligibility, and member compensation.

Some claim this transition as a win for democracy, but neither appointed nor elected selection guarantees an effective board. Awareness of this election remains low, as does understanding of what a school board does. The board’s decisions, and ultimately, whether our public schools are effective and equitable, depends on their focus, behaviors, and work.

It matters now more than ever that voters understand why school boards exist, what the Chicago Board of Education’s responsibilities are, and what effective governance looks like, so we can make informed choices this fall.

The 21 school board members — 10 of them elected — will be sworn in on Jan. 15, 2025. These members will have significant influence over how future Chicago school boards will work, the board’s relationship to district leadership, and ultimately, how effective our schools are.

The change in structure is an opportunity to shift from a governance model based on precedent and adult comfort — “this is how we’ve always done things” — to a governance model that is intentionally designed to focus on, and most effectively improve, outcomes for the students of our city.

What is a school board anyway?

To make informed decisions that lead to an effective board, voters must understand what a school board is, what it does, and how it works effectively.

School districts do not exist on their own. They are creatures of state law. In Illinois, Article X of the state Constitution establishes a “fundamental goal” of “educational development of all persons to the limits of their capacities”, that the state “shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services”, and that it shall have “primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.”

That is, we have public schools to educate all students in our community — to increase what our students know and can do.

The Illinois School Code sets overall expectations of districts and of boards and carves out specific rules for Chicago in Article 34, which was amended in 2021 to make the board elected.

In Chicago, the school board sits below the community; it exists to represent the vision and values of the community, who are the “moral owners” of the district.

The board exists to govern — not manage — for the whole community. This includes students and their families, and also residents who have no “customer” relationship with public schools. These stakeholders have many ideas about which student outcomes should be focused on, and what means should be used to do so.

Elected school board members should engage the whole community to understand the vision they have for students, and the values they have for how this work is done. They must bring coherence to the expectations shared by this diverse community to provide a clear definition of success. This enables the district’s leadership and staff to effectively pursue a common community vision while adhering to a shared set of values.

The board is also responsible for setting and monitoring goals, and developing and passing policies, on behalf of the community. The board is responsible for hiring, supervising, and evaluating a CEO, as well as evaluating its own work. And per statute and its own rules, it has a number of administrative functions, such as approving a budget.

How is Chicago’s school board unique?

Chicago’s school board will shift from seven appointed members to 21 members. For a two-year period beginning in January 2025, 10 members will be elected and 11 will continue to be appointed by the mayor. In 2027, all 21 members will be elected.

As Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) put it earlier this year, Chicago is creating “a new democratic form of government from whole cloth.”

This is not the first time that Chicagoans will vote for people to make decisions about their local public schools. Since 1988, Local School Councils (LSCs) have played a key role in governing individual schools. An effective LSC works just like an effective school board: The LSC sits below the school community, engaging with them to understand and represent their vision and values as moral owners, sets and monitors goals, hires and supervises and evaluates the principal, evaluates its own function, and fulfills other duties like budget approval.

While LSC training has serious issues and too many LSCs are ineffectual in supporting school improvement, this experience may be a helpful resource for future boards. But unlike LSCs, the school board is responsible for results across the entire district.

CPS has delivered progress for students through recent decades, often through times of economic and political challenge, but many of these improvements resulted from professional educators’ work with little Board support.

However, some challenges aren’t easily solvable at the school level. This new governing body will confront decades of segregation and disinvestment that have led to very different experiences for students situated differently in our city.

A recent Public Agenda survey finds that “more city residents trust teachers and principals to look out for students than trust the teachers union, board of education, CPS central office, or mayor to do so” — indeed, half or fewer of city residents trust the Board or district to look out for students. Only four in ten think an elected board will serve students better than an appointed board.

With more changes coming, the Board must govern effectively to face these challenges as a district.

What makes a school board effective?

While school boards make big decisions that impact many aspects of students’ educational experience and outcomes, research on what these boards actually do is limited and often relies on small samples of school board member surveys. These efforts can also provoke political resistance, especially when they focus on student outcomes.

However, ongoing work is shedding more light on what makes school boards effective, and the findings reinforce some of what is known about the characteristics of effective school boards.

Based on the evidence of other districts, whether board members are appointed or elected doesn’t seem to be tightly correlated with effectiveness — but how they work is strongly correlated.

So what should school boards do?

Specific behaviors are associated with improving student achievement. According to a review of existing research compiled by the National Association of School Boards, effective school boards:

engage with and listen to the community, and collaborate with staff and as a board around strong shared beliefs and values about what is possible for students and their ability to learn.
lead with strong collaboration and mutual trust as a united team with the superintendent, assess themselves, and work to train and develop their own knowledge and skills with a commitment to continuous improvement.
commit to a vision of high expectations for student achievement, define clear goals toward it, align and sustain resources towards these goals, embrace and monitor data, communicate progress to the community, and stay focused on improving student achievement (rather than operational issues).

What do these evidence-based best practices about what effective school boards do imply for the Chicago Board of Education?

The district, under the governance of the current appointed board, is going through the process of creating a strategic plan. Staff have incorporated many opportunities for the community to learn about the plan and to voice some reactions.

However, rather than asking the community what is important to them — their vision for our students — the district has developed a plan and then asked for feedback on these methods. This is the reverse of effective practice.

The new board and its successors will have the chance to listen to the community about their vision to identify what outcomes the community feels are most important for our students. This can only happen if the board engages communities by meeting them where they are, getting a broad and representative voice, and asking questions about the community’s vision, rather than feedback about specific methods.

The next step of effective governance is to create focus by setting clear goals reflecting both the community’s vision and the realities of the current state.

Goals are the foundation to make all the subsequent decisions well. Goals allow the board to hold district staff accountable for student outcomes — the purpose of the district — rather than focusing on adult interests or inputs. In particular, clear goals enable the board to monitor progress.

The more the board does this work while staying out of specific methods that district staff select, the more effectively staff can focus and the more likely it is that we make progress so the most important student outcomes are improved.

Finally, how the board operates is crucial to rebuild trust, engagement, and voice. Based on the last several decades, many stakeholders have well-founded concerns about how decisions are made, whether their well-being and perspectives are considered, and whether the outcomes of those decisions have been accurately conveyed.

This distrust can drive the community’s attention to securing inputs for specific schools or neighborhoods, rather than focusing on outcomes. This can move the board to respond primarily to those who have voice and privilege. This can lead to inequity, and through loss of focus, less effective system-wide governance.

What can you do to help Chicago’s elected school board be effective?

There are four things voters can do to help align what candidates do to campaign with what board members do to govern effectively.

First, ask candidates the right questions. This starts with understanding the role of the board.

Candidates are already making statements about who they are, how the district should work, or what they will do on their websites, in campaign materials, and in forums and interviews. Some of these statements are aligned with what boards can do, and even what effective boards do.

But many are not. They make promises that are outside the authority of an individual board member or the board as a whole, focus on methods over outcomes, or prioritize specific subsets of the city rather than the community as a whole.

Ask potential board members what the role of the board is and how they will act to make the board effective — how they will engage with the community, collaborate with each other and with staff, train and develop their own knowledge and skills to improve, and about how they will set and monitor goals for student outcomes.

Second, select candidates who commit to being effective, and help others do the same.

When candidates express their understanding and commitment to effective board behaviors, share this with others in your community — and when they don’t, share that too.

Awareness remains low — 63% of residents are not aware of the transition to an elected board. Turnout in recent elections has been generally low, and research finds that there is often a pronounced demographic divergence between the student population and those who cast ballots in school board elections.

Even on the ballot, school board elections will show up after every other elected office, followed only by the numerous votes on retaining judges.

Make a plan to vote, and to activate your communities, so board members who are committed to effective governance have a chance to serve, and all board members realize that their voters care about effectiveness.

Third, give candidates (and board members) input.

Chicagoans have varied opinions about what is important for our students to learn, about the priorities among them, and about the values by which our schools should abide. It is important to have conversations about these questions, and it is the board’s job to represent the community’s views.

Unfortunately, the attention of advocates, candidates, and voters has disproportionately been on factors of identity, affiliation, and ideology rather than goals for our students. Even with competent and dedicated district leadership, staff, and educators, we’re less likely to achieve the outcomes our students deserve if the board doesn’t do its job well. We must all give the board input on what is most important for the district to achieve, so these outcomes are as likely as possible.

Finally, hold board members accountable.

Accountability isn’t just about consequences; even more powerful than what happens after the decisions are made is setting clear expectations up front of what needs to be accomplished. Just as the board is responsible for holding the CEO and their staff accountable to deliver the outcomes that our students need and deserve, we as voters are responsible to hold the members of the board accountable to do their job of governance.

We must expect them to focus on what’s best for students, listen to the community’s vision, communicate the current state and progress, and provide clarity on plans for the future. If we as voters prioritize a district that works for all our kids rather than prescribing specific methods or focusing on local needs or in response to adult interests, we will have the best chance of a district that will navigate upcoming challenges to continue improving outcomes for all of our students.

This historic governance transition poses risks, but also opportunities. If voters engage with candidates now, through the election, and beyond, we will give the board the best chance to operate effectively, so our district has the best chance of delivering our students the outcomes they need and deserve.

Sendhil Revuluri is a parent of two CPS students, a former teacher, and former vice president of the Chicago Board of Education from June 2019 to December 2022.

Chicago’s Noble Schools CEO Constance Jones stepping down after six years

2024-07-19T19:35:00+00:00

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The head of Chicago’s largest high school charter network is stepping down after six years on the job.

Noble Schools CEO Constance Jones announced in an email to staff and families that she will “pass the torch to a new leader” and work with the network’s board and an outside consultant to find a new CEO.

In a statement, Jones said she is focused on the start of the school year and plans on staying and overlapping with the new CEO “for several months to support a smooth transition during the year ahead.”

“Noble is in strong and stable shape, both organizationally and financially, and recently secured the longest charter renewal term granted by Chicago Public Schools,” Jones wrote in a statement.

Noble opened its first campus in 1999 and now serves more than 12,000 students across 18 campuses.

Jones took the role in 2018 after the sudden resignation of Noble’s CEO and founder Michael Milkie amid concerns over an alleged “pattern of inappropriate behavior with alumni.” At the time Jones took over, Noble staff was also considering unionization, which ultimately didn’t happen.

As the first woman and first Black person to hold the position, Jones led the organization through a series of policy changes impacting Noble’s mostly Black and Latino students, including the relaxing of the network’s once-stringent dress code and a shift away from a “no-excuses” approach to discipline in 2020 amid a broader racial reckoning following the police killing of George Floyd.

Noble CEO Constance Jones stands in front of a window at the network’s downtown office.

The Noble Schools network has had a reputation for strong academics and a college-going culture. In her email, Jones said the network’s recent graduating class received 17,000 college offers, including from Yale, Brown, Howard, and Stanford Universities. The network enrolled more than 2,800 seniors last school year, according to district enrollment data.

Charter schools are publicly-funded, but privately-operated and go through an authorization process with the Chicago Board of Education. Chicago opened and expanded charters throughout the 2000s, but a moratorium on new charters was put in place in 2016 amid declining student enrollment and overall drops in Chicago’s child population.

Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s appointed school board increased scrutiny of existing charter schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, opposed charter school expansion and has said he would like to move away from a competitive school choice system.

Despite shifting political winds, Jones has been a vocal advocate for school choice and charters. She was recently selected for an Eisenhower Fellowship, for which she plans to travel to Ghana and Brazil to study community engagement and violence prevention.

Before joining Noble in 2014, Jones was the national development director at KIPP, a network of public charter schools.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Here are Chicago’s new school board districts

2024-06-17T15:45:02+00:00

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This November, Chicago voters will elect school board members for the first time to govern Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s fourth largest school district.

The change will end 30 years of mayoral control.

Activists and parents started pushing for the ability to elect Chicago school board members roughly a decade ago, after years of education reform that changed how schools were funded, how teachers were evaluated, how many schools were opened and closed, and who operated them.

In 2021, state lawmakers passed legislation to create a half-elected, half-appointed 21-member elected school board in Chicago by 2025 and a fully-elected board by 2027.

Explore more in this interactive map.

Could ‘newcomer liaisons’ help migrant students struggling in Chicago schools?

2024-06-11T11:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with Block Club Chicago.

A couple months after enrolling, a few dozen migrant students were struggling to adjust to life at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

The teens had landed in a school where few people speak Spanish, their native language, and the classrooms they were put in were “a mess,” teacher Maggie Ritthaler said.

“Kids were throwing things, punching each other, playing around — and the teacher was barely speaking Spanish,” Ritthaler said.

Ritthaler and another teacher, Zachary Hill, made it their mission to help: The two Spanish-speakers moved their schedules around to teach classes of migrant kids and got their principal to hire part-time student teachers.

Still, about 85% of Kenwood’s students are Black, and the school hasn’t historically served many students whose first language isn’t English. So the newcomers still aren’t getting the language help and emotional support they need, the teachers said.

“We provide a safe home base for them in school, but at the same time, the needs they come in with are more than we are prepared for or licensed for, or that we have resources for,” Ritthaler said.

In May, a Block Club and Chalkbeat investigation found many migrant students are landing in segregated schools like Kenwood with few if any bilingual resources. The so-called “language deserts,” concentrated on the city’s South and West sides, have left many migrant kids feeling lost in school while teachers scramble to meet their needs.

Gabriela Ruiz, 12, — from Venezuela — sets off for school from her South Shore apartment in April. She and her family were featured in a Block Club and Chalkbeat investigation into challenges faced by migrant students and their families.

But experts and teachers union leaders say the district could help the migrant students with a different approach: hiring “newcomer liaisons.” As envisioned by the Chicago Teachers Union, the liaisons would help ease the burden on teachers and other school employees who, in addition to their regular duties, are managing newcomer students’ behavioral and emotional needs while also helping them find health care and clothes.

The liaisons would also provide language support to migrant students who are enrolled in schools where few people speak Spanish, such as Laura S. Ward Elementary School in West Humboldt Park, where a kindergarten teacher and two custodians are translating for the whole building, Block Club and Chalkbeat found.

School districts across the country have been able to help migrant students with liaisons, said Alejandra Vázquez Baur, who leads the National Newcomer Network, a coalition of educators, researchers, and advocates that works to address newcomer student inequity.

While it will take a lot more to overcome the Chicago Public Schools’ long history of failing English learner and immigrant students, the liaisons would be a step in the right direction, she said.

“You get these newcomer liaisons in sooner rather than later and they can help,” Vázquez Baur said. “Students can at least get in the best programs for them, [they can be] aware of their options, their rights are upheld, things are translated and interpreted for them so they can make the best decisions for their futures.”

A go-between for migrant families and schools

Under the Chicago Teachers Union proposal, “newcomer liaisons” would be in charge of migrant student enrollment, programming, communication between families and teachers, and other duties that require bilingual services, like translating Local School Council meetings, union leaders said.

Those duties currently fall to teachers like Ritthaler and Hill who have a myriad of other responsibilities. Ritthaler is a Spanish teacher who chairs Kenwood’s world language department, while Hill is the school’s English language program teacher.

“What usually happens is [those teachers] are trying to do that either in their off time or they’re not providing the required services to kids because they’re doing those things,” said Julie Sugarman, associate director for K-12 Education Research at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.

A class at Erie Elementary Charter School in Humboldt Park, a dual-language school with nearly 50 newcomer students.

In other school districts that use the approach, liaisons are “local folks, maybe parents, maybe community advocates” who can communicate with new families and explain their rights, but don’t necessarily need teacher certifications, Vázquez Baur said.

Other districts have used a patchwork of funding — local, state, and federal dollars — to cover the program, experts said.

Union leaders didn’t answer specific questions about their proposal.

CPS officials also didn’t respond to questions, saying only that the district has received the union’s proposals and is reviewing them.

A list of the district’s initial proposals does not include “newcomer liaisons.”

The district needs ‘more bilingual support on every level’

“Liaisons” alone won’t be able to fix all the problems faced by under-resourced schools serving newcomers.

As of April, nearly 9,000 migrant students — many of them fleeing turmoil in South and Central American countries — had enrolled with the Chicago Public Schools. The vast majority of the new students don’t speak English and are living in temporary housing. Many have spent limited time in school and are grade levels behind for their ages.

Thousands of migrant families are getting apartments in historically Black neighborhoods like South Shore and Austin through a state rental assistance program. From there, children are enrolling at schools that haven’t historically served students whose first language isn’t English.

In addition to a lack of language support, many families are struggling with long commutes and are unaware of their rights and options, Block Club and Chalkbeat found.

All of this comes after the district has struggled for years to fully comply with state and federal laws around bilingual education.

Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said newcomer families are experiencing “what it feels like to be a Black family in Chicago public schools.”

Segregated Black schools on the South and West Sides, where many migrant students have landed, have for years faced declining enrollment and a dearth of resources, the union said in a written statement. Meanwhile, some Latino schools have seen their budgets slashed in recent years as a lack of affordable housing has led to declines in enrollment.

“This is the context for the influx of newcomer students — a reflection of how CPS has lacked funding and support for Black and Brown students, and why this is so key to our contract negotiations,” union leaders said in their statement.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates introduces Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson after he won the mayoral runoff on April 4, 2023.

Those negotiations are the CTU’s first since the election of Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former organizer for the union. Adding resources for migrant students is one of the union’s key demands.

The union is asking for “more bilingual support on every level,” the union statement said.

On top of “newcomer liaisons,” the union is pushing for more bilingual and multilingual teachers; more dual-language programs, which offer English learners and native English speakers instruction in Spanish and English; and an expansion of the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model.

Launched in 2018, that initiative enlists community organizations to bring programs and services to high-poverty schools struggling with low enrollment.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez speaks at a press conference at Roberto Clemente Community Academy before the opening of a pilot CPS welcome center for newly arriving families on July 17, 2023.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has said the district wants to expand dual-language programs, and Mayor Brandon Johnson named growing sustainable community schools as a top priority for his administration.

The union also wants “staffing and support for language access needs around early education, IEPs, guest teachers, clinicians, access to Pre-K and other high-needs areas,” along with “training and support from the Board of Education for migrant students on a yearly basis, including funding for immigration support,” according to a list provided by the union.

Union leaders didn’t respond to questions asking for more information about these proposals. The union’s current contract expires at the end of June.

‘The most traumatic journey they’ll ever go through’

Calls for more support for migrant students come as the district faces a large budget shortfall for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

With pandemic relief dollars drying up, the district is facing a nearly $400 million budget deficit while the state has its own financial challenges.

Lawmakers recently approved a state budget with an increase of $350 million for K-12 funding, the minimum under the law and $200 million less than education advocates had asked for. And the General Assembly didn’t approve a proposal that would’ve sent more money to school districts that have received an influx of migrant students.

CPS officials have said they’re trying to cut expenses at the district’s central office, but Martinez recently told reporters they’re still figuring out how to close the deficit.

Kenwood Academy on April 24, 2024.

At Kenwood, Ritthaler and Hill are wrapping up the school year exhausted and demoralized.

They spent the year “in survival mode,” scrambling to find Spanish-language activities and assignments, distributing donated clothes and food and providing counseling.

“We’re receiving these kids who’ve just gone through the most traumatic journey they’ll ever go through, and we’re kinda just plopping them into biology class,” Ritthaler said.

“This isn’t just getting 30 new students. This is 30 new students who are coming from a completely new world … and we’re not equipped to serve them the best way they need to be served.”

Mina Bloom is an investigative reporter for Block Club Chicago. Contact Mina at mina@blockclubchi.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

CPS principal, staff stymied police investigation of mass shooting at Pilsen high school, emails, interviews show

2024-05-31T19:18:00+00:00

This story was originally published by the Illinois Answers Project.

For three critical hours after four students were shot, two fatally, at Benito Juarez High School, the school principal and some staffers threw up roadblocks to the police investigation and weeks later had to be threatened with grand jury subpoenas to spur their cooperation, the Illinois Answers Project has learned.

Detectives on the scene of the mass shooting that happened just before Christmas 2022 quickly learned the four victims and the suspected shooter were all current or former CPS students and asked to view school surveillance video, to interview a student witness who’d given information to school officials, and sought access to other records relating to the students involved.

But at most every turn, according to public documents and police sources, school principal Juan Carlos Ocon and other administrators told detectives that cooperating would violate CPS policy, and they insisted on checking with their legal department.

The delays — which have never been previously reported — cost investigators invaluable time to interview witnesses and gather physical evidence, law enforcement sources said. Police arrested a 16-year-old about eight weeks later in connection with the mass shooting after they saw him leaving a stolen car with a rifle. But between the slayings at Juarez and his arrest, he is suspected of taking part in another shooting, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty in the Juarez shooting, and his defense attorney pointed to the delay in his arrest to question the strength of the case. Illinois Answers is not naming the teen since he was a juvenile at the time of the shooting.

Interviews with Chicago police and CPS sources and a review of thousands of pages of police and school records and emails, many of them heavily redacted, paint a scene of chaos at the site of the Juarez shooting and show how sharp disagreements quickly developed between officers and the school’s award-winning principal, Ocon.

Police told Ocon and CPS’ chief of safety and security, Jadine Chou, that the emergency of the shooting warranted their cooperation, and the disagreement set off a back-and-forth between high-ranking officials in both agencies that would stretch over months.

While police discussed having Ocon charged with obstruction of justice, they eventually decided not to, and CPS never disciplined Ocon, records show.

Benito Juarez High School Principal Juan Carlos Ocon

In an interview with Illinois Answers, Chou disputed the duration of the delays in cooperation, as outlined in emails at the time from the CPD’s chief of detectives and investigators on the scene. She argued police eventually got access to the surveillance video and information given to the principal that day by a school employee.

“It is incomprehensible that anyone would think that we, anyone else, me, anyone around me, would want to do anything to block … would block or delay or forestall progress on an investigation,” Chou said.

A CPS spokeswoman said there’d been no findings of wrongdoing, but records show the agency never conducted a comprehensive after-action review of what happened.

“It’s because when we sat down to talk about it, it was this: (CPD had) the information, you had the camera, you had access to the camera,” Chou said. “What’s … the after action? You know what, we could both do better on the clarification of the guidelines.”

Tension between the police and CPS has existed for years over the reporting of violence on school grounds and how and when police can arrest students involved in violent crime. One investigator described CPS as viewing itself as a “non-extraditable Vatican within the city of Chicago.”

But even among police officials accustomed to dealing with CPS during investigations, the degree of resistance they encountered at Juarez stood out, law enforcement sources said.

The dispute spurred CPS to consider changes in how it deals with police when violent crimes happen on school grounds, involving students. And it appears as if cooperation between the two agencies has improved in recent months, through an informal agreement, with police quickly getting access to critical information in two Chicago school shootings. But 17 months after the Juarez slayings, CPS officials have not created any formal policy or update but say they expect to have one finalized before the 2024 school year — about 21 months after the shooting.

At least some of the disagreement stems from an apparent misreading of federal and state law governing the release of student records.

Chou said in the interview that she spoke to CPS counsel from the scene of the shooting. A high-ranking CPS lawyer, Ruchi Verma, recounted in a CPS email that she told Chou: “if there is an active shooter situation … information could be disclosed. No one informed us that there was an active shooter situation.”

But district policy, state law, federal law, and training documents circulated within CPS all allow school officials to cooperate with police during “health and safety” emergencies, and none set the threshold for cooperation as high as active shooter situations. Verma, who is now the district’s general counsel, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A national expert on the applicable federal law said in an interview with Illinois Answers that school officials should have cooperated with police.

“What you just described would clearly be a health safety emergency exception. If there’s a shooter, they don’t have him apprehended, give them whatever they want. I don’t know if they didn’t understand that at the school,” said LeRoy Rooker, who served for 21 years as director of the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office. “It doesn’t matter what it was — they can give any of that stuff to law enforcement if it’s a health or safety emergency.”

A CPS spokesman said CPS officials on the scene provided information to police on “an ongoing basis.”

After about three hours, the school’s principal shared information about the former student suspected in the shooting, and police were eventually able to get video from the city’s 911 center. By the time Chicago police started getting at least some information, top brass scheduled a news conference at the district police station nearby. Police sources described this news conference as an attempt to present a unified front between CPS and the police despite the conflicts.

Much remains unknown about the afternoon of the shooting because CPS, CPD, and other city agencies have either denied access to records detailing the investigation or have released only heavily redacted versions. Sources in each agency spoke on the condition they not be identified, citing agency rules forbidding media interviews and fearing retribution.The Chicago Police Department declined to make any of its officials available for interviews and declined to answer questions about the mass shooting investigation.

Even that night, after some of the disputes were resolved, police had doubts about CPS continuing to provide what they needed. A timeline of the investigation shared among homicide division supervisors shows police still were uncertain whether video existed from a CPS camera near the shooting.

Those doubts proved well-founded. Ocon didn’t respond to detectives for weeks after the shooting, and other CPS staff ignored requests for interviews, records show. Frustrated with the pace of cooperation, detectives resorted to running parts of their investigation through the police department’s chief attorney, who sent requests for evidence to her counterpart at CPS.

In early January, a sergeant in the detective division told the department’s top attorney, Dana O’Malley, that some CPS staff continued to ignore detectives and that the principal still hadn’t turned over a school document detectives had been seeking for weeks. At one point, a homicide detective, John Korolis, sent Ocon an email telling him he could get a grand jury subpoena if Ocon didn’t start returning his voicemail messages.

An email from the lead detective on the Juarez shooting, John Korolis, to the Juarez High School Principal Juan Carlos Ocon.

Almost three weeks had passed since the shooting.

Afternoon of the shooting

At 2:35 p.m. on Dec. 16, 2022, the dismissal bell rang at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen. Dozens of students and staff lingered in a courtyard outside the school near a pedestrian overpass, according to prosecutors at the initial court appearance of the teen charged in the shooting. Informally, it’s near an area known as “the rock.”

A few minutes after dismissal, a girl was standing with some students lingering outside. She walked over to another group of teens nearby where she ran into a 16-year-old boy who’d been expelled from Juarez for attendance and behavior problems, according to prosecutors. Someone mentioned that there were La Raza gang members in the group she had been standing with.

The girl returned to those teens and warned them that the former student was there “to cause trouble” and that they should leave.

At 2:38 p.m., the former student asked one of the victims if he was a La Raza gang member and then fired at least eight rounds from a .357 handgun, hitting three boys and a girl described as an “unintended target,” authorities said.

Students scattered. A security guard witnessed the shooting and briefly ran after the gunman while a passing motorist tried to point the guard in the right direction. At least one witness took a photo of the armed teen standing over a victim and then chased the gunman before losing sight of him.

At 2:40 p.m, police arrived to find the four victims. The two students who died, Nathan Billegas, 14, and Brandon Perez, 15, were both shot in the head, records show. Billegas was a student at Bulls College Prep, and Perez a student at Juarez.

A 15-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl were also shot, and both survived. The girl had a graze wound to her thigh. The boy had a gunshot wound to his shoulder and thigh. The witness — who’d walked between the groups — wasn’t wounded.

Perez died at 3:06 p.m.

At 3:10 p.m., a teacher emailed the principal and other administrators to let them know 25 students and two other staff members were taking shelter in his classroom.

“I know you are all busy right now but just wanted to let you know. The staff and I are doing our best to take care of them,” he wrote.

Billegas died at 3:17 p.m. At 3:27 p.m., police lifted the school’s lockdown.

Nathan Billegas, 14, left, and Brandon Perez, 15, were shot and killed just after dismissal on Dec. 16, 2022, outside Juarez High School in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The moments after shootings are often when they are solved — or not. It’s when memories are fresh and when witnesses are most likely to talk. The longer it takes for detectives to track down witnesses, the more difficult it can be to get them to cooperate.

Time is critical, too, in gathering evidence for an arrest and prosecution before it can be altered or destroyed: the gun involved in the crime, clothing to compare to security footage, gunshot residue tests, a cell phone.

Detectives expected cooperation because they were investigating a school shooting that resulted in two dead students and two wounded students. It didn’t appear to be an “active shooter,” but police operated under the belief that someone who shoots four people in a school courtyard remains an ongoing threat because they haven’t been arrested.

The police department’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, outlined difficulties detectives encountered in an email to police department attorneys the next morning.

While detectives were at the school, they believed a student witness “provided a name of the shooter” to a school staffer. Detectives saw the staffer give a CPS photo of the named shooter to Ocon, according to the email.

Police investigate the crime scene outside Juarez High School on Dec. 16, 2022, where four students were shot, two fatally.

Chou said that after the shooting, the witness and a guardian were in the room where police would have been able to view surveillance footage, and the guardian had told CPS they didn’t want to talk to police. Chou said no detective ever told her they wanted to speak with the guardian. But law enforcement sources said officers did ask CPS staff to speak to the guardian and were denied access.

Police weren’t allowed inside the room because the guardian and witness were in there, and school officials didn’t want to let the family leave the room because the police were outside, Chou said.

Eighteen hours after the shooting, detectives were still trying to identify the student witness and the CPS staffer who gave the principal the piece of paper with the named shooter’s photo, according to the email sent by Deenihan. ”Efforts are on-going to identify and interview both the student who may [have] witnessed the incident and provided the offender’s name and the faculty member who provided this information to the (principal),” Deenihan wrote. In the following days, detectives spoke to the witness, who was cooperative.

As for the paper handed to Ocon, he “continually refused and resisted in providing this information to the (detectives) citing it was against CPS policy. After several hours the (principal) subsequently forwarded this information to the assigned personnel,” Deenihan wrote. Chou said a CPS attorney told her not to release the record, because it was from the school’s record keeping system, but said it would be OK to write down the information and share it with detectives, which she did. Chou said detectives left but later returned and said they needed the actual record for evidence.

And it was only after weeks of back-and-forth and a threatened subpoena before detectives got the document, according to emails.

Detectives also were unable to get video from the school, Deenihan wrote.

“Initially the school faculty (principle and CPS Security personnel) refused to provide the assigned personnel any video surveillance of the incident,” Deenihan wrote.

Deenihan wrote detectives were able to view the video after “three hours” and pulled video from the city’s 911 center that night. Chou said detectives should have just gone to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in the first place, which is how detectives often pull video from incidents at or near CPS property because they can pull from nearby cameras that aren’t part of the CPS system.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, whose 25th Ward encompasses the high school, was at the scene of the shooting early on and said he recalled CPS officials telling him and detectives that CPS couldn’t show them the video because legal counsel advised against it. His account mirrors that of police sources familiar with the investigation, who said CPS denied officers access to the video.

Sigcho-Lopez said he didn’t see a sense of urgency from CPS in giving police access to video and information for their investigation. And though he’s one of the most vocal critics of the police on the City Council, he said that “has to be put aside on this.”

“Look, it’s an emergency, we need to see that video footage, you know. And look I got my own perceptions here,” Sigcho-Lopez said in an interview with Illinois Answers. “Politics aside, at that point to me, that was a priority right? To say, look, we need to solve this immediately.”

Within about 30 minutes of police beginning to get information, police and district officials announced a news conference at the Near West district police station. Before it started, someone from the police department’s News Affairs office told Supt. David Brown that he might be asked about issues with CPS cooperation. “Yeah, I’ll handle it,” Brown said. Brown didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Sure enough, a reporter soon asked about the quality of cooperation from CPS. Brown dismissed the question and did so again after the reporter asked him to clarify.

Jadine Chou, center, CPS’ chief of safety and security, speaks at a news conference after the Juarez shooting in 2022. She is joined by then-Chicago Police Supt. David Brown, left, and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez.

Reporter 1: Speaking of video we’re hearing from sources that the school has not turned over video. Is there any comment on that or the reasoning why there might be?

Brown: So again speculation and just, just not appropriate.

Reporter 1: But there is not — you all said POD and private video — there is not the video from the school, correct ?

Brown: So again you talk about your sources, I don’t know who those people are. We’re just starting our investigation so I think it would be irresponsible to, to …

Reporter 1: But to confirm there is ...

Brown: No, we’re not confirming your source information. We, what we’re saying is we’re just starting this video gathering, and we’re just starting the investigation any speculation would just be inappropriate.

Reporter 2: These are kids leaving school on a Friday who just got shot, two of them killed. I mean – this should never happen.

Brown: We haven’t confirmed any information about the victims, so it would just be conjecture on your part, or your sources’ part, that the victims are students. As soon as we know that we will share that information.

Contrary to Brown’s statements, police knew the victims were students and that there was a dispute over access to CPS video.

A Chicago Tribune reporter later asked a CPS spokesperson about “rumors” he had heard of the district’s failure to cooperate. An agency spokeswoman insisted that CPS was “cooperating with CPD, as always. ”By about 10 p.m. the day of the shooting, CPS provided a photo of the former student. Detectives warned other officers that the suspect “should be considered armed and dangerous.”

Video surveillance footage released by Chicago police shows the alleged gunman fleeing Juarez High School after the shooting.

As it turned out, the boy was well-known to the police; one officer had encountered him at least four times.

Detectives also asked the crime lab to rush its comparison of shell casings recovered from the Juarez shooting with casings from another murder scene earlier in the year since they suspected the same weapon was used in both crimes.

Amid chaos, CPS braces for new school week

The week following the shooting was chaotic. School officials had to find counselors for students because at least a few dozen of them witnessed or were within earshot of their classmates being murdered, and dozens more knew the victims.

School officials needed to assure students and their parents that returning to school was safe. Some students didn’t return until after winter break. Others never returned.

One student emailed a student advocate and said they wouldn’t be coming to school because they feared for their safety. Another student emailed a teacher, who removed the student’s name from the email and shared it with Ocon:

“I got told that one of the kids who got shot was part of a gang and apparently they’re going to show up tomorrow for ‘revenge.’ I’m just saying so that there can be extra security. I don’t know if this is true but either way I wanted to let you know since you’re someone that I can trust. But please, don’t tell anyone that it was me who told you.”

One of the concerns shared by students: Social media posts threatened retaliation for the shooting and warned kids not to wear colors of the La Raza street gang that at least one of the four victims was affiliated with. School and police officials soon learned of the threat, and CPS asked for extra officers near the school during the week and adjusted dismissal time.

On the morning after the shooting, a Saturday, Deenihan emailed two CPD attorneys about issues he was having with CPS.

About the same time, he asked detectives to forward what they found about CPS policy and said he’d raise the issue with CPD’s attorneys.

“I thought you mentioned you reviewed CPS policy (online) which stated there is an exception to sharing information for a Public Safety incident. If any of you have the policy, can you please share? I am going to set up a meeting with the Lawyers next week, and move on this topic ASAP,” Deenihan wrote. “We will eventually have a school shooting inside a school,” Deenihan wrote. “CPS can’t out a 3 hour delay with sharing information.”

A Dec. 17, 2022 email from then-Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan to officers involved in the Juarez shooting investigation.

A detective supervisor responded to Deenihan with a summary of state and federal law, and of CPS’ own policies. Deenihan thanked them and said he’d raise the issue with the police department’s lawyers.

“This does help. I will share with Legal Affairs and have them review case law,” Deenihan wrote. “Thanks to all for being professional even when our counterparts may not have done so.”

Email from then-Chief of Detectives Brendan Deeniham to officers involved in the Juarez shooting investigation.

On the following Monday, Chicago Police Department General Counsel Dana O’Malley followed up on Deenihan’s concerns, emailing CPS General Counsel Joe Moriarty, to discuss “an issue with CPS and CPD.”

O’Malley later asked her counterpart at CPS what they tell principals about sharing information with police.

“As we discussed, CPD’s immediate concern is what happens if we have an active shooter and need information on the spot to save lives,” she wrote.

Moriarty shared the powerpoint presentation that CPS’ law office provides to principals. It shows the principal and other CPS administrators could have shared information at the scene.

One slide said: “Federal and state law allow the disclosure of student information in connection with an emergency, to appropriate persons if the knowledge of such information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other persons.”

An informal resolution

The problems came to a head, and then a resolution, in January. On Jan. 1, a supervisor in the detective division compiled a list of student and faculty witnesses for the chief CPD attorney and a detective division commander.

“Some staff have also not provided responses to our questions citing a need to contact CPS Legal or have ignored our requests for interview,” the sergeant wrote. “Some of these staff members are witnesses and others have never been interviewed. Additionally, as of this date the principal, Juan Ocon, has not turned over the evidence containing the directory information given to him the day of the incident.”

One day later, Korolis, the lead detective in the case, emailed Ocon threatening him with a subpoena if he didn’t begin to cooperate:

“I have left numerous voice messages for you and have received no response to date,” he wrote. " With the tragic homicides of these two young Chicago Public Schools students, it’s imperative that we have cooperation from your Juarez High School team. My partner and I need to interview you and your staff at your school post-haste. I have contacted the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and they are involved with this investigation. If you are more comfortable with a subpoena to appear, let me know.”

On Jan. 5, about three weeks after the shooting, Chou, CPS’ chief of safety and security, emailed Korolis and provided records of student attendance for the date of the shooting and mentioned that she spoke to the principal, who was “able to locate the folded paper you were asking about and he indicated that he made you aware.”

Chou said in an interview with Illinois Answers that the dispute over interviewing Ocon and other staff didn’t take into account that he and staff were on Christmas break, and that Ocon may have turned off his phone when going out of town.

“He left the city, he was on time off, and he’s entitled to that. I don’t know when they were calling him. I asked him myself … did you avoid returning phone calls? Did you ignore phone calls? He said he did not ignore phone calls,” Chou said.

“There was a big block of vacation time in between there where, a principal who witnessed this and … and needed time and again … a lot of people took off their work phones and I don’t think that should be held against him.”

Ocon declined to comment.

More than two weeks after Korolis emailed the principal, subpoenas were issued for three CPS staffers. Detectives met with Ocon and other school officials just after school resumed in January, more than three weeks after the shooting.

As detectives were arranging grand jury testimony for the three CPS staffers, Chou, the school district’s chief of safety and security, pushed an effort to address what happened at Juarez.

Chou circulated a document described as “draft guidance” that pertained to school-level sharing of information.

“We would like to provide clear guidance to school leaders on info sharing and other interactions with CPD,” Chou wrote. “Based on feedback from Principals and recent experiences in the field, there is a need to codify and clarify this guidance … due to the urgency, if possible, would ask for your feedback (by tomorrow).”

The document, Chou said, will include examples of what constitutes an emergency and other clarifying information. As police and school officials were trading input on the policy in February, the 16-year-old suspect in the shooting was arrested at home. Police working in unmarked cars saw the boy run into his home with a rifle and called the department’s SWAT team and told them he was “the possible offender from a homicide.” He surrendered after the SWAT team’s Bearcat truck arrived, about 3:40 p.m. His family declined to let officers search the home, and a judge signed a warrant about 9:40 p.m., and officers cleared the home and turned it over to a search team about an hour later.

After weeks of working on a fix with input from the Chicago Police Department, progress stopped, except for Chou checking back with Chicago Police into the fall of 2023. It appears police officials never responded to her requests to finish drafting the policy.

Police sources said the two agencies have come to an informal arrangement. Detectives encountered no resistance after shootings at two high schools in late January where students were victims at Senn and Innovations high schools.

Still, 17 months after the shooting, Sigcho-Lopez said it wasn’t appropriate that CPS never conducted any broad internal review of the way its employees responded to the shooting.

“There has to be an evaluation,” he said.

“What went wrong, internally here? Why [did it take] so long? Why? Because, you know, time is of the essence, right? So, I don’t think that CPS can say, in my opinion, that they did everything they could,” Sigcho-Lopez said.

Peter Nickeas joined the Illinois Answers Project as an investigative reporter in 2023. You can reach him at pnickeas@bettergov.org.

Candles light up a memorial site outside Juarez High School on Dec. 16, 2023, one year after the shooting.

Chicago Public Schools pitches safety plan calling for restorative justice, no police in schools

2024-05-15T22:38:13+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools pitched a new school safety plan Wednesday that would get rid of campus police, call for more training for educators on alternative discipline practices, and require locking classroom doors.

The proposed plan, which is on the agenda for next week’s board meeting, comes three months after the Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution to remove school resource officers, or SROs, by the start of next school year. At the time, the board directed CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to create a new safety plan by June 27 that focuses on restorative practices.

Thirty-nine high schools still have on-campus police officers staffed by the Chicago Police Department. At 57 other schools, Local School Councils, or LSCs, voted to remove SROs.

The board’s plan to remove police could be reversed. State lawmakers have filed a bill that would allow LSCs to contract with the Chicago Police Department to staff SROs. That bill is still being negotiated, according to a spokesperson for Rep. Mary Gill, the bill’s sponsor who represents Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood.

The district’s new proposed safety plan, however, extends beyond campus police. The plan builds on existing district efforts to teach kids about social-emotional skills and restorative justice practices, which are alternatives to discipline meant to resolve conflict and understand the root of student behavior, according to the proposal. All schools would be required to have a safety plan based on these new guidelines by 2028.

The plan covers “physical safety, emotional safety, and relational trust, which drives the development of a holistically safe environment,” said Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security, during a board meeting Wednesday to review the board’s agenda for next week.

Chou said the plan was developed with community organizations and considered feedback from a survey about school safety that drew 9,000 responses. The board will vote next week to open a 30-day public comment period on the proposed plan and would vote on the plan after that.

Among the proposed plan’s highlights:

All schools would be required to have at least one security guard. Schools would get more guards based on a formula that considers multiple factors, such as the size of the school building, the number of students, and neighborhood crime.
All schools would be required to have an emergency management plan that’s updated annually.
All schools would have to teach social-emotional learning and must implement restorative practices.
Schools would include training on “climate, trauma-responsive, and social and emotional learning” in professional development plans
All schools would be required to have behavioral health teams, which are charged with supporting students who are in crisis, those who have experienced trauma, or are in need of mental health assistance. Most CPS schools – 460 – already have such teams, according to a district spokesperson.
All interior and exterior doors must be locked at all times, except for bathroom doors. Staff would have keys to doors.

This fall, all schools would receive data from the district to “conduct a baseline assessment of their safety, culture and climate” and would be required to develop safety plans based on that assessment.

After brief remarks from Chou on Wednesday, board members applauded the proposal. Board member Rudy Lozano said it signals a shift from discipline to a “healing-centered equity frame for students.”

Board’s approach to school safety draws mixed response

The board’s recent actions on school safety drew praise from advocates who had long pushed CPS to invest money in more social workers and other resources, and highlighted how Black students were more likely to be arrested. The decision drew opposition from some Local School Councils and elected officials who felt that LSCs should decide whether to keep police on campus.

Most research shows that schools with police tend to have higher arrest and suspension rates but doesn’t clarify whether police are the cause or if officers are more likely staffed at schools with more challenges, according to a Chalkbeat review of research in 2020. Nationally, students have generally positive views of SROs but those views tend to worsen among Black students, who are more likely to get arrested. Another study last fall found that Chicago schools implementing restorative justice practices saw fewer student arrests. Students also reported feeling safer at school.

David Stovall, a UIC professor of Black studies and criminology, law, and justice, said the district’s proposed safety plan reflects what many community members have asked for.

However, Stovall said, the plan will work only if officials can ensure all schools are meeting requirements, such as creating behavioral health teams with mental health professionals.

“It can’t be just one office operating out of central [office], right? You have to have teams of folks in order to do that work we’re talking about,” Stovall said.

The plan seems to require more resources at a time that CPS is projecting a $391 million budget deficit next fiscal year, which begins July 1, he said.

Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, which works with the Chicago Police Department to train Chicago’s SROs, said he was “deeply disappointed” in the board’s decision. Canady said officers are trained to “build positive relationships” with students, parents, and staff.

“We recognize that in some communities, there’s strained relationships with law enforcement,” Canady said. “If we’re ever going to get that right, we’ve got to get it right with the next generation [and] the next generation just happens to be adolescents that are going to become our next adults in society.”

The movement to remove SROs came into focus in 2019, when the U.S. Department of Justice placed the Chicago Police Department under a federal consent decree and raised questions about the role of campus police. Then in 2020, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep their SROs after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of Geroge Floyd.

On the campaign trail, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he supported getting rid of campus police, but later said he supports letting LSCs make that decision for their schools. Johnson flipped again earlier this year when he supported the board’s decision to remove officers.

Correction: May 15, 2024: This story previously said the incorrect number of days this proposal will go out for public comment.

Samantha Smylie contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how to vote in Chicago’s Local School Council elections

2024-04-24T15:57:00+00:00

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There’s a uniquely Chicago election happening this week: Local School Councils.

Every resident of the city is able to vote — either as a community member or at the school where they work, attend, or have a child enrolled. (More on that below.)

The elections take place at all Chicago Public Schools from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. Voting at elementary schools takes place Wednesday, April 10 and at high schools on Thursday, April 11.

Elementary schools also have parent-teacher conferences on Wednesday and kindergarten through eighth grade students are off. High school parent-teacher conferences are Thursday, and there’s no school for high school students.

Originally established in 1988, each district-run school in Chicago Public Schools has a Local School Council, or LSC, traditionally made up of six parents, two teachers, two community members, a student, and the school’s principal.

LSCs can be an important vehicle for parent and community voice and power. Their primary duties are approving school budgets, crafting school improvement plans, and selecting and evaluating the principal. In recent years, they’ve also had the power to decide whether or not to staff police officers at schools — a decision that the school board is now planning to make unilaterally.

More than 17,000 candidates ran in the first LSC elections in 1989, but those numbers have declined to just over 6,000 applicants in 2022. Turnout in 2022 rebounded, reaching its highest level since 2010 and after a slump in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic.

But in many cases, LSCs suffer from persistent vacancies. For several years, LSCs at low-performing schools lost much of their decision-making power.

The looming shift to an elected Chicago Board of Education with 21 members has the potential to overshadow LSCs or reinvigorate them.

Here’s more on how to participate in these hyperlocal elections:

Who can vote?

Anyone in Chicago can vote for up to five candidates at their local schools. In order to vote, you just need to live within a school’s attendance boundary or voting district. Schools without a neighborhood boundary – such as magnet and selective enrollment schools — do have a boundary drawn for the purposes of LSC voting.

There may be multiple schools where you can cast a vote, and you can search your address using this tool to find out where you are eligible to vote. A CPS spokesperson said to double check with the school if you’re unsure.

All students, parents, and guardians of students enrolled at a school may vote at that school, even if it’s outside their neighborhood.

All staff who work more than part time at a school can also vote at the campus where they work. Teachers and staff can vote for up to two candidates for teacher or staff representative.

Students are eligible to vote for their school’s student representative.

How do I vote?

Voting takes place at school buildings all day on Wednesday at elementary schools and Thursday at high schools. If you’re a parent or school staff member, you can cast a ballot while you’re at the school for parent-teacher conferences, which are also taking place on those respective days. Many schools do offer virtual conferences, but LSC elections could serve as an incentive to go in person.

If you’re a community member interested in voting, you can look up where you’re eligible to vote and cast a ballot at any of the schools that show up.

Erykah Nava is running for parent representative at Lloyd Elementary in Belmont-Cragin where her daughter is in third grade. She’s been reminding people to make sure they mark an X on the ballot by the names of the candidates they want to elect. District officials say any other mark will not be counted as a vote and will result in your entire ballot being thrown out.

Two forms of identification are needed. For parents, one must establish you are the parent or legal guardian of a student enrolled.

Why vote for the Local School Council?

Local School Councils were created to empower communities and parents to improve their schools. They “represent bottom up democracy, participatory grassroots democracy,” said Michael Brunson, a community representative at Harlan High School, member of the district’s LSC Advisory Board, and former recording secretary for the teachers union.

“I can’t think of a better introduction to politics than the Local School Council,” Brunson said, adding that a handful of the city’s current aldermen once served on an LSC.

Chicago will soon begin electing people to the Chicago Board of Education, which will expand to 21 members in 2025. But Brunson said “an elected school board is not the answer to all problems.”

Nava said she sees LSCs as complementary to the soon-to-be elected school board.

“I think having the super hyper local accountability and then having more wider citywide accountability, I think those can work very well hand in hand,” Nava said.

Even though some LSCs struggle to fill all their seats, there are competitive races at many schools.

Josh Levin is running for re-election as a community representative at Brentano Elementary, which has more candidates than seats this year. Levin attended Brentano as a child and his dad served on the LSC at Whitney Young Magnet High School in the 1990s.

“It’s always been a funny little governing body,” Levin said. “The ones that work, I think, help contribute to their schools and make a difference.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated when Levin’s father served on the LSC at Whitney Young Magnet High School. It was during the early 1990s, not the inaugural LSC in 1989.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools ending student-based budgeting in favor of set staffing levels at all campuses

2024-03-21T22:08:53+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to do away with a decade-old system in which school funding was largely based on student enrollment. Instead, starting next year, each school will get a set number of staff and additional funding based on need.

The change, announced Thursday at a Chicago Board of Education meeting, is part of a revamp of the district’s funding formula and delivers on a promise Mayor Brandon Johnson made during his mayoral campaign to end student-based budgeting.

The district had already started to move away from a student-based approach in the previous two budget cycles, as it funded more positions – such as social workers – centrally. The current formula also accounts for student needs, such as how many students with disabilities need additional support.

Under the new formula, every school will have certain guaranteed staff, including an assistant principal, a counselor, and core classroom teachers. It would guarantee “a baseline level of resources for every school, regardless of enrollment,” then add more based on need, according to a district presentation.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, welcomed the move away from student-based budgeting, calling it an inequitable approach “because not every student has the same needs and doesn’t generate the same resources.”

It will, however, likely be challenging for the district to roll out a new funding model when schools already have “a certain funding expectation” they rely on to pay for contracts or programming. The district should try to hold schools harmless, meaning schools shouldn’t lose money under the new formula, Martire said.

In 2013, Chicago Public Schools switched from using a budgeting system that funded a set number of staff at each school to one that allocated money per student. As schools lost enrollment, their budgets often tightened. But budgets have also grown over the past few years with the influx of $2.4 billion, so far, in federal COVID relief funding.

The district’s enrollment declined significantly over the past decade, losing more than 75,000 students since 2013. Enrollment stabilized this year with about 323,000 students enrolled. At the same time, the number of employees has grown. District staffing data shows CPS employed roughly 43,500 people as of the end December, up from around 37,000 as of December 2018.

District officials and school board members did not immediately share more details about the formula. It remains unclear exactly how funding will be allocated to campuses or how much autonomy a principal and Local School Council would have over their school’s budgets.

Schools will also receive discretionary funding, but it is not clear how that will be calculated.

A school’s need will be determined by something called the “opportunity index,” which considers several factors, such as the percentage of students with disabilities, those who are homeless, those learning English as a new language, those who come from low-income families, the number of teachers a school was able to retain, and whether a school is segregated by race or ethnicity. The index also considers data about the surrounding community and how a school has been funded historically.

“Maybe it’s just more striking because I’ve been here for a while now, but this is a major shift and it’s important,” said Elizabeth Todd-Breland, vice president of the Chicago Board of Education.

The funding formula shift comes as the district is also facing a projected $391 million deficit, as federal COVID relief funding runs out. That gap must be filled by revenue that has not yet been identified, Mike Sitkowski, the district’s budget director, told the board Thursday.

District officials are projecting an additional roughly $25 million in K-12 funding next year under the state’s Evidence-Based Funding formula, or EBF, which makes up the largest portion of state funding for CPS. That would bring total EBF funding for Chicago to nearly $1.8 billion. State officials have gradually provided more funding to Illinois school districts under the formula, but CPS officials are advocating for a larger increase, arguing that the district is still owed more than $1 billion.

When accounting for all state funding, Illinois gave Chicago Public Schools nearly $2.5 billion for this current fiscal year, up from $1.5 billion in 2017, the year before the state reformed how it was funding school districts.

Even with the budget challenges, the district is working to keep several of the new investments it made using federal COVID dollars, including high-dosage tutoring, additional counselors, and extended learning time, such as the expansion of summer school, as well as before- and after-school programming.

Officials defended those investments by highlighting a recent study that showed Chicago’s reading scores have bounced back from the pandemic at a greater rate than most big school districts.

“It should not take a crisis for us to fully fund our schools,” Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, said during her presentation Thursday.

In an interview earlier this week, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district may also have to make “hard decisions” this year. That could include pausing “critical” repairs for buildings, he said.

Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools ‘hitting the gas pedal’ on expanding dual language programs

2024-03-19T21:12:40+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools plans to hit “the gas pedal” on an expansion of dual language programs, which teach students in both English and another language, CEO Pedro Martinez said Tuesday at an event focused on Latino students.

At the event hosted by advocacy organization Latino Policy Forum, Martinez said CPS has a “significant opportunity” to expand its existing slate of dual language programs, which are designed to help students become fluent in English and another language.

The district currently has dual language programs in 37 elementary schools, three high schools, and three charter schools, according to a presentation Martinez delivered Tuesday.

Officials did not immediately share details on how soon the district wants to expand its dual language offerings, what it would cost, or where new programs would open because the district is still planning, according to a spokesperson. Martinez said Tuesday his team also wants to create more world language options.

Dual language programs are one of three types of English learner programs available in CPS; however, dual language can also serve students who are not learning English as a new language.

By state law, schools with 20 or more English language learners who speak the same native language must offer a Transitional Bilingual Program, which provides instruction in English and a child’s native language but focuses on building up the student’s English skills. Schools with 19 or fewer students who speak the same native language have a Transitional Program of Instruction, which provides instruction in English, according to CPS.

Transitional programs work to ensure that non-English speakers can speak English, but “imagine if they could keep their Spanish and go deeper,” he told the crowd at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy.

“We want biliteracy, not just transitioning out of the native language into English,” said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

The district’s goal comes as CPS has welcomed more than 6,000 new migrant students into schools so far this year, Martinez told reporters after the event. Educators and union officials have expressed concern about a lack of staffing and resources at schools to properly support migrant students who have come to Chicago from the southern border since 2022.

CPS has struggled to provide bilingual programming to English language learners. In February, district officials said just under 6% of schools — or roughly 30 — did not have teachers with required bilingual or English-as-a-second-language credentials.

Asaf said this challenge has emerged as migrant families move out of shelters and find permanent homes through housing assistance programs in neighborhoods where the schools do not have bilingual programming or large numbers of English learners, Asaf said. The district is prioritizing helping teachers at those schools get certified to teach English language learners, if they are interested, she said. The district is also sending central staffers to help schools with students who are learning English, she said.

But even before the most recent wave of migrants, CPS bilingual programming lagged. In 2017, the Chicago Reporter found that 71% of 342 schools audited by CPS did not have adequate bilingual programming, in violation of state law.

CPS has gradually opened dual language programs over the past decade, with efforts stretching back to at least 2016 and an expansion in 2018.

Advocates for English learners have previously pushed the district to open more dual language programs. One study focused on fifth graders in Oregon found strong signs that dual language instruction can improve literacy achievement, according to a 2022 review of the research by the federal Institute of Education Sciences’s What Works Clearinghouse. However, that study and another out of Utah found no evidence that dual language instruction boosted math or science achievement, and reviewers called for more rigorous research.

Such programs can also be costly, which could make it challenging for the district to implement as it faces a $391 million deficit next fiscal year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Who’s the boss? Chicago principals report to many different people.

2024-02-27T20:48:12+00:00

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During Femi Skanes’ 10 years as a Chicago principal, her boss was primarily a district official known as a network chief, she said. Alan Mather, who was also a principal for a decade, says he answered to then-Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan.

Many principals in Chicago also feel their Local School Council, or LSC, is a boss, while others view the council as more of a partner.

Principals are the leaders of their schools and staff. But in Chicago, multiple entities have power over principals. Later this year, Chicagoans will begin electing school board members, marking another shift in control over the city’s school system, which has been run by the mayor and a hand-picked CEO since 1995 and by a decentralized system of elected LSCs since 1988.

The city’s principals have unionized in hopes of creating more job protections for a role that has seen high turnover in recent years.

“Right now it’s kind of the wild wild west,” said Cynthia Barron, program coordinator and assistant professor with UIC’s Urban Education Leadership Program. “We’re kinda all waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Barron, who spent more than three decades at CPS, said she doesn’t foresee immediate changes as a result of unionization or an elected school board. But, given that details around the future principals union contract and the elected school board are still being ironed out, she said there are “so many unknowns.”

How Chicago principals ended up with many bosses

Those unknowns — as the principals union takes root and the city moves to an elected school board — may disrupt an already complicated hierarchy.

As it stands now, a Chicago principal’s direct supervisor is the head of their network — the geographic area their school is organized under — and they are also accountable to their Local School Council, or LSC, a unique-to-Chicago elected body at most schools made up of parents, teachers, students, and community members, that can hire principals. Both have different hiring and firing powers.

Local School Councils were created in 1988 under the state’s Chicago School Reform Act, which gave LSCs the power to hire principals, approve school budgets, and approve annual school improvement plans.

The state amended that law in 1995 in an effort to centralize and improve the city’s school system. Lawmakers voted to keep LSCs but mandated training for them. The changes also gave the mayor sole authority over appointing the school board and replaced the superintendent title with “chief executive officer” — which stands today.

Today, LSCs can hire a principal and offer them a four-year contract. They can decide to keep the principal or fire them when their contract is up for renewal.

Network chiefs, on the other hand, work for the district and are tasked with ensuring that schools are complying with district policies and meeting academic and instructional goals, according to interviews with school leaders. Network chiefs answer to district leaders who report to the CEO, the Board of Education president, and the mayor. School leaders can also turn to their chiefs when they need extra support.

Both chiefs and LSCs use a similar rubric to evaluate principals annually. Only network chiefs can fire principals at any time for just cause.

Though LSCs hold power over principals, they do not have the same connection to district officials and the school board that a network chief does. It’s also not clear how they’ll interact with the school board once it expands and includes elected members.

Froy Jimenez is a member of the city’s Local School Council Advisory Board, which the state created to advise the Board of Education. Jimenez, a teacher and LSC member at Hancock College Preparatory High School, said he believes that LSCs and principals are “co-leaders” with the shared goal of supporting students.

“When we look at [the] budget, when we look at curriculum, when we look at any specific need of our school,” Jimenez said, “we’re doing it like we’re collaborating.”

Principals balance multiple interests

Principals’ responsibilities have grown over the past two decades and especially since the pandemic. Today, in addition to being instructional leaders, they’re expected to maintain relationships with students, families, staff, and sometimes elected officials, said Jasmine Thurmond, director of Local School Council principal support at CPS.

Some school leaders appreciate the variety of voices, but others often feel torn between conflicting demands.

One principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, was asked by parents who attended LSC meetings to “publicize or encourage things like picketing or public demonstrations” over a district decision this year to suspend bus service for 5,500 general education students, largely those at selective enrollment and gifted schools.

The principal agreed that the lack of busing has been challenging for many of her students. But she explained to parents and the LSC that publicly protesting the busing decision could put her in hot water with her other boss: the district.

“I have to figure out how I can advocate for the needs of my students and the needs of my families,” she told Chalkbeat, “but in a way that is very respectful of the people that are making these decisions — and that is a really difficult balance to strike.”

She has a good relationship with her LSC, which she said is “fair and reasonable” but also demanding. The council requests a lot of data and presentations. Meeting those needs and building personal relationships can be difficult along with all of her other responsibilities as a school leader, she said.

Ryan Belville, principal of McAuliffe Elementary School, said he has a close bond with his LSC that grew during the pandemic, when they worked hand-in-hand to make sure students and families had what they needed. Belville said the LSC has also held him accountable “to serve the school community effectively.”

“I really see why LSCs were developed and why they were put into action,” Belville said. “It’s something we’re very fortunate to have in Chicago.”

Sometimes the LSC wields its power, as Hancock College Preparatory High School did last year when it decided not to renew its principal’s contract in the face of student and teacher opposition.

But there are limits to an LSC’s authority.

At Jones College Prep, the LSC voted in 2022 to recommend the district fire then-principal Joseph Powers based on various allegations, including that he was ignoring problematic teachers and was not addressing issues around gender and racial discrimination. His contract was not up for renewal at the time, so the LSC could not fire him outright.

CEO Pedro Martinez declined to fire Powers, saying there wasn’t sufficient evidence. Later that year, CPS put Powers on leave after a student dressed in a Nazi uniform was seen goose-stepping in the school’s Halloween parade. Powers then retired.

One Chicago elementary school principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said that contract renewal time can sometimes feel political. She must ensure that she’s keeping “these X number of people happy or satisfied” so that she can keep her job. At the same time, she wishes she had “more robust” feedback from her LSC, which she thinks is lacking at her school because people often don’t have time to participate — an issue many LSCs face.

On Chicago’s West Side, the LSC at Oscar DePriest Elementary School is working on ensuring enough participation on its council. It is also figuring out how it will work with the school’s new principal, whom it hired in November after interviews and a candidate forum, said Wallace Wilbourn, a teacher and LSC member.

He wants the LSC to have a greater voice on the school’s curriculum, its culture, and how it approaches assessments.

But he’s already seen that many people are trying to hold the principal accountable. Ever since being hired, Wilbourn said, his principal has had to spend a lot of time in meetings with the network.

Network chiefs, top CPS officials hold power

Barron, with UIC, said the relationship between a network chief and principal more closely resembles a typical employee-manager relationship: The two work together on a leadership plan that has goals to hit throughout the year.

Skanes, who was the principal of Morgan Park High School until 2022, always viewed her network chief as her main supervisor. Feedback from the network chief was sometimes “attached to next steps, even in terms of promotion and opportunities,” she said.

The Chicago elementary school principal said the network chief is looking for things at the school that parents or community members may not have expertise in, such as best teaching practices, she said. Her LSC is more interested in school uniform policies or community events for families, she said.

“I think both of those perspectives are super important,” she said. “It shouldn’t be all one or another.”

A former Chicago principal, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly, said most of his network chiefs were good listeners and open to his ideas of how to improve his school. But he also felt pressure from the network to boost certain metrics, such as raising attendance by 10 percentage points, including by visiting student homes.

Those efforts resulted in a lot of pressure on staff and kids at his school who were already experiencing “so much trauma,” he said. After hitting the network’s goal, the principal eased up those efforts, saying it didn’t feel “worth the squeeze and my time and emotional energy.” Attendance rates dropped.

In that case, he decided to “take the heat from the network” because it meant more “sanity” for his school, he said.

A small share of schools have Appointed Local School Councils, or ALSCs, which don’t have the power to hire or fire principals but can provide nonbinding input on who they want to lead their schools. In those cases, the CEO gets final say on hiring a principal.

That was the case for Alan Mather, now the president of the Golden Apple Foundation. He became the principal of Lindblom Math and Science Academy in 2005 when the school was reopened as a selective enrollment high school. Mather was appointed by then-CEO Arne Duncan and the new school, which drew high-performing students from across the city, did not have an LSC. It wasn’t until his last year at Lindblom that an ALSC was formed, Mather said.

Mather considered Duncan to be his boss and was given a lot of autonomy to craft Lindblom’s culture and academics, such as adopting a year-round schedule during his time.

“It was the CEO who could have removed me at any time,” Mather said. “I was not working under a contract.”

As principals unionize, a question about management

When the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, or CPAA, decided to unionize last year, its president Troy LaRaviere promised to fight for better pay, less focus on bureaucratic tasks, more job security – including the ability to voice opinions publicly without punishment – and more due process when principals face accusations of misconduct.

LaRaviere did not respond to multiple requests for an interview for this story. Another CPAA representative declined to comment, including to confirm whether the union has started bargaining, and deferred to LaRaviere.

The unionization effort could impact how network chiefs discipline and evaluate principals. But huge questions remain.

“We don’t know what is to come,” said Thurmond, from the district. She added that they’re “looking forward to deepening the collaboration” with CPAA to make sure principals are supported, versus the district “being perceived as an enemy.”

Some observers have wondered how a union contract might impact the authority of a network chief or LSC. For instance, will it be tougher for the LSC not to renew a principal’s contract?

Changes to an LSC’s powers, however, would likely require a change to the state law that created them, said Barron, the expert from UIC.

For the district’s part, Thurmond said CPS will continue “empowering LSCs and ALSCs” so that “communities continue to have control of their schools.”

One former principal thinks an elected school board could make LSCs feel redundant or powerless, since board members will represent different parts of the city.

LSCs were created when there wasn’t an elected board and are seen by some as mini-school boards at individual schools. But come January 2025, the Chicago Board of Education will be made up of 10 members elected by their communities and 11 members appointed by the mayor.

“If we have an elected school board of 21 and you have them passing resolutions saying we’re doing this, this and this,” he wondered, “then what does the LSC have the autonomy to say and do if it’s all coming from downtown?”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Board of Education votes to remove police officers from schools

2024-02-23T03:12:51+00:00

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During a meeting in which tempers flared and community members argued over the merits of school police, Chicago’s Board of Education voted Thursday to eliminate all school police officers by the next academic year and create a new “holistic” school safety policy.

The board approved a resolution that directs Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to draft a school safety policy by June 27 that explicitly bans school resource officers, or SROs, from campuses. These officers are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but the district covers their salaries.

The district’s new school safety policy must instead emphasize more “holistic” approaches to student discipline, such as restorative justice practices, the resolution said. Such practices, which focus on conflict resolution instead of punishment, have replaced sworn officers in some schools over the past few years. The resolution approved Thursday will directly impact the 39 high schools that currently have a total of 57 SROs.

The board’s decision — which drew dozens of public speakers, including 20 elected officials — addresses a yearslong grassroots movement that has pushed the district to remove SROs from school campuses. Advocates instead want the district to spend more money on social workers, mental health resources, and practices focusing on conflict resolution. A recent study found that schools implementing restorative justice practices saw drops in student arrests. Students also reported feeling more safe.

But the decision drew significant pushback as well, including from several city aldermen, who argued that schools in their communities feel safer when officers are on campus.

At one point during Thursday’s meeting, former school board member and community activist Dwayne Truss sparred with audience members over his criticism of the board’s decision — causing advocates to chant “SROs, we want you out.” Truss was on the board when it decided to let Local School Councils vote on whether to keep their officers. He argued that was the most “democratic” solution at the time and still is today.

Truss, who is Black, accused the Board of Education of “telling Black folks, ‘We know what’s best for you.’”

In defending the board’s decision, Board Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland said it was fulfilling a 2020 promise from the previous board, which committed to phasing SROs out of schools. The board’s goal is to reduce disparities among those who are disciplined at school, she said. Calls to police disproportionately involve students with disabilities and Black students, who are also disproportionately suspended, compared to their peers, according to the resolution.

The board has discussed the policy change for several months with the district and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office, Todd-Breland said, noting that it’s “about more than just SROs.”

“This is a shift, and this shift to a model of holistic safety is really necessary for all of our schools, not just schools that currently have SROs,” Todd-Breland said. “Continuing the district’s progress in moving from a more punitive approach to a holistic, healing centered approach is evidence-based work.”

Board member Rudy Lozano Jr. said the district will still rely on the Chicago Police Department to help with arrival and dismissal and to respond to emergencies. In response to criticism about pulling power away from LSCs, board member Tanya D. Woods said state law requires the district to “deal with discipline disparities.”

Makayla Acevedo, a junior at Hyde Park Academy and a member of Southside Together Organizing for Power, or STOP, said officers at her school don’t stop the many fights that break out. She wants to see the funding for SRO salaries go toward more career programming at her school, such as for nursing training, as well as restorative justice programming.

“I just feel like we just really need those funds, to invest all of that money to get the programs in order for all students … to be successful in life and reach their dreams,” Acevedo said.

The district has spent nearly $4 million on “alternative safety interventions,” such as restorative justice, at 14 schools where SROs have already been removed, according to the resolution.

After the meeting, Martinez said, “We actually have not paid for any of these services for CPD for the last three years. We weren’t even going to pay for this year.” A district spokesperson later confirmed that although money was allocated, no payments have been made to the police department since 2020, when schools went remote during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longstanding tensions come to a head

The movement to remove SROs grew in 2019, when the Chicago Police Department was placed under a federal consent decree. The next year, after protests over Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, the district asked LSCs to vote on whether they wanted to keep SROs.

But the resolution has exposed long-simmering tensions.

At Thursday’s meeting, arguments erupted between Truss and audience members from organizations that have long pushed for the district to remove SROs. Those organizations include Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Good Kids Mad City, and STOP.

As they yelled at each other, the board called a brief recess and cleared the room for several minutes.

Truss cited recent shootings outside three Chicago schools that left four students dead, and argued that some communities may feel the need to keep police at schools in order to feel safe. That sentiment was echoed by several other speakers.

“The fact is that Black folks are tired of getting disrespected by folks who don’t live in our community,” said Truss.

Ald. Monique Scott, whose 24th Ward represents North Lawndale on the West Side, said the decision needs to be made by local communities. Scott’s brother and predecessor, Michael Scott Jr., replaced Truss on the school board in 2022 and served until the end of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s term last summer.

“Every school doesn’t have to have them, but some schools need them and I think that it should be based on the LSC to determine that,” Scott said.

The district’s Local School Council Advisory Board, charged with advising the Board of Education, “overwhelmingly” approved a resolution Feb. 12 that called for leaving decisions about campus police to LSCs, according to Froy Jimenez, a member of the advisory board and a teacher at John Hancock College Preparatory High School.

The advisory board members were concerned that stripping LSCs of that power chips away their right to make decisions about their schools, Jimenez said. Jimenez noted that his own LSC voted to get rid of the school’s campus police. However, Jimenez said he represents a part of the city “where some schools would want to have [them].”

The board’s decision was celebrated by several advocacy organizations that have rallied for years to stop staffing police in schools, as well as the City Council’s progressive caucus. Several speakers asked the district to spend more money on social workers and boost restorative justice.

Kennedy Bartley, executive director of United Working Families, a progressive political organization, credited Thursday’s vote to the years of advocacy from students and educators, which “built enough political power to elect a mayor with a mandate for transformative change.”

The Chicago Teachers Union, which also supports the change, has submitted a request with the district to bargain over the new school safety policy, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter told the board Thursday. Potter said the union wants several things to be considered in the new policy, including more “trauma supports” and training on restorative practices.

Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s school board wants to remove police from all schools starting next school year

2024-02-20T19:32:03+00:00

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The Chicago Board of Education wants to remove police officers from schools starting next school year, according to a resolution included in the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting.

The resolution directs CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to come up with a new policy by June 27 that would introduce a “holistic approach to school safety” at district schools, such as implementing restorative justice practices, which focus on resolving a conflict instead of punishment.

That policy “must make explicit that the use of [school resource officers] within District schools will end by the start of the 2024-2025 school year,” the resolution said. (Find the resolution on page 15 of your PDF reader.)

The resolution nods to the district’s shift in student discipline to more restorative practices, which has led to “significant progress” in reducing suspensions. However, the resolution notes that disparities in suspension rates are disproportionately higher for students with disabilities and Black students, compared to their Hispanic and white peers.

Most CPS schools don’t have school resource officers who, unlike security guards, are trained and employed by the Chicago Police Department, but are stationed in schools full-time. If passed, the resolution would directly impact 39 schools – all high schools – that have a total of 57 officers on campus, according to the resolution and district officials. Fourteen schools voted to remove a total of 28 officers and instead received a total of $3.9 million for “alternative safety interventions,” including for restorative justice and social service coordinators, the resolution said. CPS also employs more than 1,400 security guards at schools, according to staffing data from the end of December 2023.

Schools that have voted to keep their officers have cited a variety of reasons for doing so, including that in some cases, school resource officers have strong relationships with students. Opponents of police on campus argue that the presence of officers can lead to more punitive student discipline and can leave children feeling unsafe.

Last month, Nadig Newspapers and WBEZ reported that the board was planning to remove Chicago Police Department officers from schools. Mayor Brandon Johnson later confirmed to WBEZ that he’s in support of such a plan.

The resolution, which the board is slated to vote on Thursday, represents Johnson’s hand-picked school board’s clearest statements on removing police officers from Chicago schools. As a mayoral candidate, Johnson had said police officers “have no place in schools,” WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times reported. However, last year, he told the outlet he would leave the decision up to LSCs.

The resolution said the district would continue to partner with the Chicago Police Department, but district officials did not immediately explain what that relationship would look like.

Having police stationed inside Chicago schools came under scrutiny in 2019 as part of the police department’s federal consent decree. In 2020, amid protests and the racial reckoning that swept the country after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, Chicago schools began voting one-by-one on whether or not to keep their school resource officers.

Driven by similar issues, Denver Public Schools removed police from schools in 2020 and 2021, but its work to implement a new school safety policy, as Chicago’s board is seeking, was derailed by the pandemic. The Denver school board reversed its decision last June after a shooting inside a high school.

In 2022, the Chicago school board reduced its contract with the police department from more than $30 million to roughly $10 million and allocated money for schools to implement alternatives to police, such as restorative justice counselors. The contract was renewed last summer for $10.3 million and about $4 million to improve school climate was separately allocated to schools that had removed their officers.

Research from the University of Chicago released last fall found an improvement in student engagement and a decline in suspensions at schools that had implemented restorative practices in recent years.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools plans to end Aramark cleaning contract

2024-02-13T01:41:10+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools said Monday it is not planning to renew a multi-million dollar deal with Aramark for the management of school janitors and cleaning services after a decade.

The move comes after years of concerns and complaints over school cleanliness from staff, parents, and students.

The school board’s latest agreement with the Philadelphia-based company is set to end June 30, 2024. According to a school board committee agenda posted Monday, the district is asking board members to increase the current contract, which started Aug. 2021, from $369 million to $391 million “due to unforeseen expenditures associated with overtime, custodial supplies and custodial equipment.”

A district spokesperson confirmed Monday the district is not renewing the contract with Aramark and the school board will vote on seven new contracts at its Feb. 22 meeting.

Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer at CPS, said the district is looking forward to more direct oversight of janitorial services and supplies and allowing principals to have more say on school cleaniness. Mayfield said the district will contract with seven vendors for custodial services. He said he doesn’t anticipate any job losses with this change.

CPS employs more than 1,000 custodians, according to staffing records updated at the end of December.

“We had an opportunity to renew at Aramark and we opted not to,” said Mayfield. “There were some challenges there, but they’ve also been great partners over a number of years. Sometimes change happens.”

A spokesperson for Aramark wrote in a statement that the company was disappointed to not be selected to continue providing facility services for CPS.

“We are proud of the efforts of our dedicated employees and are committed to ensuring a smooth transition to the school district’s new provider,” said Chris Collom, Aramark’s vice president of corporate communications.

Chicago Public Schools first contracted with Aramark in 2014. Budget officials at the time promised that outsourcing the management of school cleaning would save money and ease the burden on school principals.

But the deal backfired in the first school year when staff returned from summer break to dirty classrooms and, in some buildings, fewer custodians. Then-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett admitted the shift to privatized management of custodians was not going smoothly and the board reversed nearly 500 planned layoffs. By the spring of 2015, the contract with Aramark had gone millions of dollars over budget, WBEZ reported.

The union representing school janitors called the move a victory for its members. SEIU Local 73 — the union that also represents school employees such as special education classroom assistants, bus aides, and crossing guards — has been meeting with the district’s facilities department for almost three years to raise concerns about Aramark’s management of equipment and supplies for custodial staff.

Stacia Scott Kennedy, executive vice president of SEIU, said she is thrilled the contract is over.

“I feel hopeful that this change in management will improve the outcomes of cleanliness,” said Scott Kennedy. “I also feel hopeful that it’ll improve the working conditions of our members who have suffered under private contract with management for the last 10 years.”

SEIU Local 73 has been in contract negotiations with Chicago Public Schools since its contract ended June 30, 2023. One of the union’s economic proposals was to ask the district to get rid of the contract with Aramark. Scott Kennedy said they will keep the proposal as negotiations continue.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment climbs as more migrant families arrive

2024-02-08T23:43:51+00:00

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More than 5,700 newly arrived immigrant students have enrolled in Chicago Public Schools since the beginning of the school year, district officials said Thursday.

Preliminary school enrollment data updated daily on the city data portal and analyzed by Chalkbeat shows overall enrollment increased by 4,500 students since the official count on the 20th day of school in September. After more than a decade of decline, CPS saw its enrollment stabilize this school year.

“The number is fluid and evolving,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said Thursday. “Our principals and teachers and school communities have been incredibly welcoming to the students and their families.”

His comments came during a virtual press conference about a new volunteer coordination effort launched by the City of Chicago aimed at supporting migrant families. It also comes after city officials once again delayed its plan to enforce a 60-day shelter stay limit on migrant families.

Publicly available data does not reveal how many CPS students are migrants or how many are living in city shelters. District officials said they do not collect information about the immigration status of students or their families “to support the City of Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance.”

Preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat indicates nearly 7,000 more students have been identified as English language learners since the end of September, when the district officially counted enrollment. English language learners can include both newly arrived immigrants, as well as students already living in Chicago.

Last school year, English language learners made up about one-fifth of all students; a decade ago, these students made up roughly 16% of CPS.

Last month, educators, union officials, and some local lawmakers raised concerns about schools without enough bilingual staff and other resources struggling to meet those students’ language and mental health needs.

District officials said Thursday that just under 6% of schools are lacking teachers with necessary ESL or bilingual credentials. Karime Asaf, the district’s chief of language and cultural education, said officials are prioritizing those roughly 30 schools — which officials did not identify — “for any kind of services or resources.”

Asaf said schools are working to get more teachers certified to teach English learners. District officials said they’ve allocated a total of $8 million to schools that saw increases in English learners since the 20th day of school.

Martinez said around 600 teachers are currently working toward getting bilingual or English as a Second Language endorsements.

Martinez said currently 7,200 teachers have these qualifications, up from about 5,100 teachers in 2018. However, bilingual staffing can vary by school, and often support staff, such as social workers, are not bilingual. CPS does provide a 24/7 language interpretation hotline that schools can call to get assistance communicating with families, but some parents have said they’ve struggled to communicate with schools or understand their school options when it’s time to move.

Students who are homeless — those in shelters, living doubled up somewhere, or living in a public place — have a right to remain at their school even if they move out of the school’s boundary and are entitled to transportation provided by the district, such as free CTA passes. By state law, if a school enrolls 20 or more students who speak a language other than English, the school must set up a bilingual education program with qualified staff. Asaf said this is “a multi-year process.”

“Generally, the challenge we have is when families just walk up to our buildings and we always tell our schools: Enroll the families. And then we have a process to work with those families to make sure we find the nearest program,” Martinez said.

The district also has bi-weekly meetings with staff at the city’s largest temporary shelters that are housing migrants, to “make sure that our families understand that there’s always a way to connect with the Chicago Public Schools … to make sure all their questions are answered,” Asaf said. She added that most school leaders attend these meetings.

Martinez said CPS is planning to hire newcomer adults who have received work authorization for “critical needs” at schools, including as custodians, as well as positions in transportation, nutrition, and classroom support.

Many of Chicago’s migrant families have been searching for work but need authorization to obtain jobs legally. Axios reported that about 1,000 newcomers have received work permits as of late January, four months after the federal government expanded eligibility to nearly half a million immigrants from Venezuela, where political and economic turmoil has pushed many residents to leave.

“We were proactive working with the city to say, since we know we have these families who are looking for jobs, we have many openings,” Martinez told reporters on Thursday. “We are now just trying to make it easier for our families to be able to apply for these different jobs.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org. Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

As Chicago gets its first elected school board, Local School Councils may become a proving ground for candidates

2024-02-08T16:32:48+00:00

Updated: This story has been updated to reflect an extension to the deadline for candidates to file paperwork to run for LSC. It is now Wednesday, Feb. 14.

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In the halls of Uplift Community High School, Karonda Locust is known as “Mama T.”

“If you need help, go tell my mom,” her daughter Tiara, now 23, would tell her friends when she was a student there.

“That’s how I got stuck here,” Locust said with a laugh on a recent Monday.

For four years while her daughter attended Uplift, Locust served as a parent representative on the school’s Local School Council, the governing body of community members, parents, and school staff that make decisions about the school’s budget and academic plan and evaluate the school’s leaders. Locust has also served on the LSC at Willa Cather Elementary school, where her youngest daughter still attends, for nine years.

For Locust, the LSC was a gateway to more involvement in the school.

“That’s how it should be,” said Locust’s sister Taschaunda Hall, who is also an active member of the Cather’s LSC and briefly served on the LSC at Uplift as well.

Chicago’s LSCs are unique and powerful. There’s nothing quite like them in other school districts across the U.S. The Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 established that every CPS-run school would have a Local School Council. Today LSCs are made up of six parents, two teachers, one non-teacher representative, two community members, one to three students, and the school’s principal.

But while the first LSC elections in 1989 had over 17,000 candidates, those numbers have plummeted over the years. The last LSC elections in 2022 saw just over 6,000 applicants, but voter turnout was at its strongest in a decade, with students making up the majority of the 110,700 voters.

Still, LSC members have successfully advocated for change and improvements and many believe the councils are the key to better schools across the city.

Now, with Chicago’s Board of Education adding elected seats for the first time this year and transitioning to a fully elected board in 2026, LSCs may become a sort of proving ground for positions with a broader reach.

“I do predict many of our LSC members may put their hat in the ring,” said Kishasha Ford, director of the CPS LSC Relations office. “Our LSC members [are] very well-equipped to do this work because they have some experience being on a kind of a board, because if you think about it, LCSs are like mini school boards for their local school.”

Elections for these “mini school boards’' are happening again this spring. The deadline to run for LSC is 3 p.m. next Wednesday, Feb. 14 and election day for elementary schools is April 10 and April 11 for high schools, with new two-year terms of office beginning July 1, 2024.

As of Feb. 1, 1,902 people had filed to run for LSC, according to district officials. At the same time last election cycle in 2022, 852 people had applied.

Over the decades, LSCs have changed the names of schools named after enslavers, removed controversial leadership, won capital improvements, even helped open new schools. Others have sat mostly empty, served as little more than a rubber stamp, or been rendered ineffective by infighting and conflicting interests.

It depends on who’s running the ship, says Kendra Snow, the lead parent organizer for grassroots organization Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.

Studies showing that parent involvement in schools can have a major impact on student outcomes are abundant, but for LSCs to be effective, Snow argues, parents have to do more than just show up, they have to be informed.

But the “showing up” part is still a major part of the battle.

After elections in 2022, over a thousand LSC positions were unfilled and according to CPS data, 311 schools still have vacancies on their councils. Still, according to CPS, 97% of LSCs had enough members to meet “quorum,” which requires that seven members be present for the LSC to vote and conduct business.

Chalkbeat caught up with four parents who have served on LSCs, where they called for improvements and guided their schools through challenges. Their experiences demonstrate what LSCs are capable of, some of the reasons parents may be opting out, and how the role of LSCs may shift as Chicago gets an elected school board.

The mom who wants to open LSCs to more people

Karonda Locust (right), a current LSC parent representative at Willa Cather Elementary School and former LSC parent representative at Uplift Community High School, stands with her sister, Taschaunda Hall (left), on the playground outside Cather.

Karonda Locust is decked out in the red and black of Willa Cather Elementary school on a recent Monday morning. Today, she’s helping out at the security check-in at the front doors before heading to work, but “I’m always there, everywhere,” she says.

She chats easily with staff and students and no one questions her presence as she walks the halls. They all know who she is.

Locust has served on the LSC at Cather alongside her sister Taschaunda Hall for nine years. When her eldest daughter moved on to Uplift Community High School in 2019, she joined the LSC there as well. For four years, she served on both LSCs at the same time.

Her time on the LSC at Uplift helped her forge relationships with the staff and kids and she continues to volunteer there even though her daughter has graduated. That’s the point of LSCs, she said, to invest in not just your own kids, but the school community as a whole.

That’s why in 2022 when her daughter was a senior at Uplift, she and her daughter (who sat on the LSC as a student representative) advocated for a bus service to bring in more students from the West Side. Her own daughter would never benefit from it, but other kids would.

Now, a bus picks up kids from Cather Elementary to bring them to Uplift, giving West Side kids a chance to attend the school without leaving parents to figure out the hour-and-a-half commute.

“That’s one of the things that I’m most proud of – that we were able to bring kids from other neighborhoods to Uplift and they can have that experience as well,” said Locust.

With the first Chicago Board of Education elections happening later this year, Locust said several friends and community members have asked her to run for a seat, but she doesn’t have the time.

Instead, now that her daughter has graduated – she earned a scholarship to study education at Truman College and plans to become a teacher – Locust is shifting some of her focus to advocating for changes to the structures and rules of LSCs.

Some of the requirements for serving on LSCs, she says, are keeping people out.

When Locust herself was a teen mother, she had a hard time making it to her daughters’ school events. In her stead, she often sent grandparents or aunts or uncles, any way to make sure her kids felt supported. But none of those family members could run for the LSC as a parent representative – and none lived within the school’s neighborhood boundaries, making them ineligible to serve as a community representative.

Family structures have changed in the past three decades, said Locus, and she wants to open up LSCs to more family members outside of the traditional parent-child paradigm.

“We’re actually losing out on opportunities for family members that could support the school because of the structure that was created over 30 years ago,” said Locust. “This is a non-paid position, so if somebody wants to serve and help my kids’ school, God bless ‘em.”

She also hopes to end the fingerprinting and background check requirements for LSC parents, saying it alienates parents with criminal records and scares off parents who are undocumented, though, barring convictions for certain offenses, both are legally allowed to serve on LSCs.

The veteran LSC leader who built a new school

José Quiles, a community representative on LSCs at Mary Lyon Public School, Steinmetz College Prep, Belmont-Cragin Elementary School in Belmont-Cragin, speaks inside of a classroom on Fri., Jan. 25, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

José Quiles has served on LSCs since they were first created in 1989. In his 35 years as a parent representative and then as a community representative, he’s seen it all.

The stories roll out of him with ease on a recent Thursday as he leads a Local School Council information session at the Belmont-Cragin not-for-profit organization he founded in 2015, the Education Community Committee (ECC).

He currently sits on LSCs at three schools – Mary Lyon Public School, Steinmetz College Prep, and Belmont-Cragin Elementary School – and when he’s not conducting LSC business, he’s teaching other people in the neighborhood how to join their LSCs and get things done on them.

In the workshops at ECC, they talk about things like how to read a budget and the rules and expectations for LSC members.

But what he hones in on and repeats over and over in the workshops is that the LSC is about the kids. All of the kids, not just their own.

That’s what sustained the eight-year movement he helped lead to get a new school built in Belmont-Cragin, he said – knowing that it was what the kids in the area needed.

“Belmont-Cragin started because Mary Lyon had 1800 kids,” said Quiles.

Initially, to address the overcrowding, some of the Mary Lyon kids were sent to a nearby site on Mango St. that was formerly the Catholic school St. James. When it became clear that the principal at Mary Lyon was struggling to oversee both school facilities, the LSC requested a separate principal and LSC to separate the school from Mary Lyon altogether, thereby creating a new school.

“Basically, we gave birth to it,” he said with a laugh.

Amid the swath of school closures in 2013, the St. James facility was closed and the students were relocated to a site on Palmer St., but the LSC found that there were not enough bathroom facilities for the students.

The LSC and other community organizations began pushing for a new school to be built at Riis Park.

In January 2023, the new Belmont-Cragin Elementary School officially opened in the park, offering 32 classrooms with park views, a black box theater, library, music room, and access to the connected park fieldhouse.

Quiles’ own children and foster children have long since graduated from the schools where he currently serves as community representative on the LSCs.

At 68, he says he wants to retire, but he’s worried that the LSCs aren’t ready for him to do so.

“A strong council moves mountains,” he told participants in Spanish during a recent LSC workshop. “But a weak council goes in no direction. And when you don’t move in any direction, there is no progress.”

That’s what his work with ECC is all about – educating parents so they know what questions to ask and how to push for change, whether on LSCs or as members of the new elected school board or as the voters who put people on those governing bodies.

Despite his insistence that he needs to retire, Quiles still has his ear to the floor at his local schools.

Right now, he says the biggest issues his LSCs are working on are the social emotional impacts of the pandemic on the students and supporting immigrant students and parents.

Advocating for the South Side

Kendra Snow is running for LSC at Christian Fenger Academy High School in Roseland. She is a former LSC member at Harvard Elementary School in Auburn-Gresham.

Back in 2002 when Kendra Snow sat on her first Local School Council at a school in Auburn-Gresham, “it was like a puppet show,” she said.

The principal “hand-picked” the parents she wanted on the council and ran the meetings, quickly going over budget lines. No one asked any questions or knew what anything meant.

“We were just bodies here to put a signature to something,” she said.

Then, Snow began to learn on her own.

“I had to learn this for myself, it’s the parents with the power, and if you want to know something then you read into it the same way she did,” said Snow. “So now I’m the troublemaker, because I challenged things.”

CPS supports LSCs with trainings and office hours, as well as 13 specialists supporting 511 LSCs, according to the department’s director Kishasha Ford.

There is a 300-page manual for LSC members and online modules as well as in-person trainings, said Ford.

“That’s the biggest part of our job is the education piece.” she said. “Because it is a lot to know and we can’t expect every single LSC member to know every single nuanced thing. That’s why we’re here to help support and to guide them.”

Snow read the manual and did the online modules, but she says, it’s not quite enough.

“You got to just do more than just watch these videos,” she said, suggesting that CPS incorporate questions into the modules to make sure viewers understood the material before moving on to the next video.

She supplemented her CPS training with resources and workshops from community organizations. Now, Snow works to empower other parents so they can have a voice on their LSCs. She is the lead parent organizer with Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.

The mother of seven, Snow has been entrenched in public education since her eldest son, now 31, first attended school. In fact, it was when her son was accepted into a school on the North Side that Snow was able to compare his experience there to the schools her other children attended on the South Side.

The biggest difference?

“Resources,” she said. “We’re not fighting the same battles. The resources that are in those schools, we don’t have in our schools.”

In her experience, Snow said parents are angry about the lack of resources and come into the schools shouting about it. She sees it as her job to give them a more effective way to get things done.

“You’re not getting results that way. So now let’s fight a different way for what we need in the school,” she said. “You hit them with policies. You hit them with facts.”

Snow has concentrated her efforts specifically on the South Side where she grew up and where most of her children have attended public schools.

In her work as a CPS-certified LSC trainer, she hopes she can not only encourage more South Side parents to run for LSC seats, but help make sure they are informed and therefore empowered to help improve their schools – one parent at a time, one school at a time.

“Know your power. Know that this is for your kids,” Snow said. “You have to fight for your kids. Just be there. Just show up. It’s a couple hours out of the month. Just show up. That time is worth it for public education.”

Educating fellow parents, ousting a principal

Vanessa Espinoza is former LSC member at Orozco Community Academy in Pilsen.

Vanessa Espinoza has been volunteering in Chicago Public Schools since before she had kids.

When she became a mother and began making friends with other parents, it opened her eyes to some of the inequities and challenges in CPS. Espinoza, who is bilingual, became particularly interested in supporting English language learners as well as students with IEPs, or Individualized Education Programs, to help students with special needs.

She soon joined the LSC at Orozco where her kids were enrolled and was surprised that few of the parent representatives understood the documents and policies they were supposed to be making decisions about.

“Why are you expecting the parents to approve something that they don’t understand totally?” she said. “You gave them the power just to say yes and no, but not do anything else.”

The trainings offered by CPS to parent representatives, she said, were superficial. For example, they teach the names of the budget lines, but not that each budget line can only be used for certain purchases.

“None of that was taught to the parents who were going to make this decision on the budget” she said.

However, Espinoza’s background as a support worker at another school gave her a leg up in this area. And her knowledge of finances turned out to be particularly important on Orozco’s LSC in 2014.

Because she knew how to read the budget, Espinoza soon discovered that the principal at the time was transferring large sums of money between budget lines, something that required approval from the LSC.

So she asked to see all of the reports on the budget and the school’s internal accounts. The principal refused and Espinoza requested an audit. The LSC tried to work with her, Espinoza said, but the principal was not amenable.

“This money’s for the kids. You don’t want to tell us where the money is and how you’re going to use it, then that’s it,” she said. " So we requested her removal.”

The council voted unanimously to remove Principal Nancy Paulette-Aguirre in November 2014.

But it wasn’t an entirely popular decision.

Most of the teachers at the school supported the decision, raising issues about turnover among other things and other LSC members said Paulette-Aguirre refused to work with the council, but non-LSC parents were split. On the day of the vote, 12 parents protested outside the school. Paulette-Aguirre was later removed from a second school in 2019.

“Even though the parents have the power to make significant changes, you have to be able to educate the parents with the information needed to make educated decisions, and [CPS] is not. In my opinion, they’re not.” said Espinoza.

She worries that these same issues might bleed over into the newly elected school board but is still hopeful that parents will gain some of the 10 elected seats this year.

“To have an elected school board that is going to be successful you have to have parents involved,” she said. “They know what their kids need.”

Espinoza’s children have graduated out of CPS, but Espinoza remains an advocate for education and serves as the bilingual communication specialist with Kids First Chicago and as the president and co-founder of Amigos de Gunsaulus, a parent-led non-profit that supports Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy in Brighton Park, where one of her children graduated.

Despite her challenging experience on Orozco’s LSC, she’s hopeful things can change as long as LSCs are filled with people who put the kids first.

“To be honest with you, it’s a lot of responsibilities, and it’s not well rewarded in a sense, not a monetary reward. Sometimes you get enemies,” but, she said, “If in your mind and your heart is the best for the kids’ education, I think you should run.”

Chicago proposes later start date for 2024-25 school year due to Democratic National Convention

2024-02-01T19:58:07+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools has proposed calendars for the next two academic years, pushing next year’s start date back by a week to avoid overlapping with the Democratic National Convention.

The Board of Education is slated to vote on the proposed calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years at its Feb. 22 meeting.

The first day of school for the 2024-25 academic year would be on Aug. 26, about a week later than recent years. The move avoids starting school the same day Chicago is set to begin hosting the Democratic National Convention from Aug. 19-22. The convention is expected to bring in about 75,000 visitors, according to a news release from CPS.

“This shift not only accommodates the city’s logistical needs as they relate to the influx of Conventiongoers, but it also allows time for students to attend, volunteer, and participate in the civic process of hosting the Convention,” district officials said in a press release.

Because of the later start, the first semester next year would also end after a two-week winter break on Jan. 17, 2025. School would end on June 12, 2025, about a week later than this year.

For the 2025-26 school year, the first day would return to the third week of August – on Aug. 18, 2025 – and classes would end June 4, 2026.

Both proposed calendars would continue the recent practice of taking a full week off at Thanksgiving.

The district is asking parents, staff, and students for their feedback. A survey for parents, staff, and other community members will close at 5 p.m. Feb. 7. while a survey that CPS distributed Tuesday to students in grades 6-12 ends at 5 p.m. Feb. 2.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Inspector general’s report prompts Chicago Public Schools to propose changes to device tracking policy

2024-01-17T23:39:41+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is working to improve how schools keep track of electronic devices and other items, in response to an inspector general’s report that found the district had lost more than 77,000 devices.

The proposed changes — some of which were outlined at a school board committee meeting Wednesday — include disciplining staff for failing to abide by the district’s policy for managing school assets, such as devices, and updating policy language to say that training is “mandatory” for staffers who are responsible for keeping track of devices. The district’s asset management team would also create an annual report about theft and loss of devices, according to the proposed changes.

Last week, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher released his annual report which, in part, found that the district had marked more than 77,000 devices lost or stolen in the 2021-22 school year. The district has found 12,000 of the missing devices, nearly all inside schools, district officials said.

Fletcher’s report cited a lack of training and an unreliable tracking system as some reasons for why so many devices were missing or unaccounted for. He also said staff and students were not held accountable for devices. Last year, a Chalkbeat and WBEZ investigation also found that the district didn’t have a structured system for tracking down devices and lacked a clear plan or vision for how to best use the technology in the classroom.

“The [policy] has been amended to reflect a more accurate description of the current process, eliminate sections of the policy which are obsolete, and overall improve CPS asset and inventory management practices,” said Rolando Hernandez, assistant deputy controller for CPS’ finance office, during Wednesday’s meeting.

The district’s asset management policy doesn’t just cover technology. It applies to any item that is not real estate, that is purchased by or donated to CPS, is valued at more than $500 but less than $25,000, and has a lifespan of more than a year. The current policy applies to schools, central offices, and network offices, which are responsible for managing their devices.

Each school and district office should have an “accountable official” who is responsible for keeping track of devices, the existing policy says.

Other proposed changes include:

All devices must be entered into CPS’ electronic inventory system once they are delivered – not just purchased – within 30 days.
Each person designated to track devices within their school or office will be responsible for complying with their annually required inventory and ensuring its accuracy.
Schools and offices will report potential loss, damage, or theft to the district’s asset management team. That team will share an annual report on such loss or damage to the district’s Risk Management team, the Department of Facilities, and Safety & Security team.
If a student or staffer transfers to a new school or department, any devices they’ve received from the district will follow them, which their old school or department must log into the district’s asset management system. Once students or staff leave the district, they must return devices and other “assets.”
Broken computers must be disposed of through a special process created by the Information and Technology department, though that process was not spelled out in the proposed changes. Items that are not computers will be disposed of by the Department of Facilities, including through contracted salvaging companies.

The board is expected to vote on the proposed changes in March after a month-long public comment period, which is slated to begin Jan. 26.

Separately, the district is also working on several other changes “to more accurately represent” what devices are in schools, district officials said Wednesday. That includes automating the process of recovering computers, which would involve freezing and sending notifications to devices that would ask students or staff to return them. The district is also considering replacing its current asset management system because of “functionality and data issues” that must be improved.

On Wednesday, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez disputed Fletcher’s estimate that the missing devices were worth $23 million. Martinez said many of those devices were old, bringing the total cost to about “a tenth” of Fletcher’s figure. However, he added that’s “not an excuse” to explain the lack of tracking at a time when the district added hundreds of thousands of devices to its inventory.

“It’s been great that now all of our children have access to devices [but] it is easy for us to not prioritize how we get rid of old devices, and it’s not always clear even to staff, and so I just want to call that out,” Martinez said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Inspector General urges overhaul of Chicago Public Schools’ ‘flawed’ tracking system for tech devices

2024-01-09T06:01:00+00:00

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The Chicago Public Schools inspector general is raising red flags about potential waste and fraud — particularly in areas where the district has spent more than $2 billion in federal COVID recovery money.

In his annual report out Tuesday, CPS Inspector General Will Fletcher also outlined eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students, and recommended more consistent training on sexual misconduct for vendors who provide services to schools.

The report — which details the inspector general’s work from the previous fiscal year, or July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 — highlighted the office’s investigation into lost or stolen laptops and other technology valued at at least $23 million and, for the second year in a row, detailed cases of fraud and potential mismanagement of extra pay for staff.

The OIG found that CPS marked at least 77,000 devices as lost or stolen during the 2021-22 school year, often with little or no effort to find those devices, according to the report.

The OIG’s review comes after Chalkbeat and WBEZ found the district spent tens of millions of federal COVID relief dollars on technology without a reliable system for tracking those devices.

“CPS spends a couple of million dollars on software and other assets that try to monitor and keep track of their assets, and we found out that that system is just very flawed,” said Fletcher, in an interview Monday with Chalkbeat.

District officials are “concerned about the loss of any public asset,” and are working to improve their tracking systems and hold staff accountable to district policies in how to manage devices, a CPS spokesperson said.

At three dozen schools, all of the devices assigned to students were listed as lost or stolen, according to the OIG’s review of audits schools submitted of their technology inventory during the 2021-22 school year.

“When we followed up with the schools, we would talk to people who had an asset or a laptop or a Chromebook that was issued to them that was marked as lost or stolen — that in fact wasn’t,” Fletcher said. “There were a few interviews with people who reached into their desk and said, ‘Hey, I got this laptop, no one ever asked me for it.’”

Incorrectly labeling devices can lead the district to purchase replacement devices “at taxpayer’s expense,” the OIG noted.

During the time period the OIG investigated, the district spent $2.6 million on services meant to keep track of and recover the technology, the report said. Fletcher described the district’s tracking system as “very flawed,” mainly because there isn’t enough of an effort to find devices. In July, the district sent messages to 50,000 reportedly lost or stolen devices in order to recover them. As of Monday, the district has recovered more than 12,000 devices, a district spokesperson said.

Almost all of them were “in schools and were simply missed in the previous inventory cycle,” the spokesperson said.

There isn’t enough training for how schools should track their devices, leaving the district with flawed or incomplete data that’s not credible or enough to use to determine if criminal activity, such as theft, might have taken place, Fletcher said.

Between March 2020 and August 2023, Chalkbeat and WBEZ previously reported, the district spent more than $308 million on computers and other technology from its three main vendors — Apple, CDW, and Virtucom. The amount was roughly as much as these companies got paid during the previous two decades combined.

District officials said they bought nearly 311,000 laptops and tablets during that time, but more than 41,000 of the devices were sitting in a warehouse or yet to be shipped by a manufacturer. They also cited a lack of dedicated staff at schools to do inventory as an issue. According to district data, roughly 35% of schools had a technology coordinator.

The OIG’s office has recommended 16 changes to the district’s technology tracking system, including making principals accountable for their inventory audit results, making students and staff accountable for their devices, and requiring students and staff to be notified that they’re supposed to be in possession of an item that’s gone missing.

The district is now working to automate the process in which devices are recovered, a spokesperson said. Schools will be able to send messages to devices that are marked as lost or stolen, “urging people to return them.”

Devices that are not returned “promptly” will be disabled, the spokesperson said.

The district ultimately wants to create sensors in schools that would track mobile devices “and other high-value assets,” the spokesperson said.

‘Systemic problems’ tracking extra pay for staff

In addition to new technology, Chicago has spent millions in federal COVID recovery money on support for students beyond the normal school day — such as after-school programs, summer school, and tutoring — that existing school staff often help run.

As he did last year, Fletcher’s office raised concerns about how the district is tracking the recent spike in extra pay, which employees receive for working outside normal hours, such as to run an after-school activity.

According to the report, 67 employees each made more than $15,000 in extra pay in the 2021-22 school year, an amount that district officials consider excessive. The report says district officials plan to ask principals in late January to verify amounts for all employees whose extra pay was 50 percent or more of their normal work hours.

The OIG’s office noted a 74% increase in extra pay from 2017 to 2021. The district has since received $2.8 billion in federal COVID relief funding. The report notes that last school year, about $100 million of that funding was allocated to summer school, after-school programs, and professional development.

The OIG has pressed the district to monitor those payments more closely after detecting seemingly unchecked approvals of extra pay, such as pay granted without timesheets or without “supporting swipes” in the timekeeping system.

The district plans to create “new processes to ensure that payment reports are accurate and validated,” a spokesperson said, but did not provide more details.

Fletcher’s office highlighted two cases of fraud connected to programs operating outside the school day. Though both schemes allegedly began prior to the pandemic, Fletcher notes that they illustrate the “systemic problems” with how extra pay is tracked.

In one case, an elementary school assistant principal allegedly stole $195,000 over two years by diverting fees paid by parents for after-school programs into her personal bank account. Fletcher’s office first reported the alleged fraud, which dated back to 2011, in 2021 and referred the case to local authorities. In July 2023, a 17-count indictment came down against the former assistant principal, alleging she stole a total of $273,364.

“I mean, $200,000 is a lot more than a rounding error for an after-school program,” Fletcher said. “For that to go missing without any curtailment of the programming or anything like that raises concerns about what the parents are getting charged.”

In another case highlighted in the report, Fletcher’s office found a school clerk approved close to $70,000 in extra pay for hours she didn’t work. The alleged fraud took place at two separate schools dating back to 2017. She was able to log the payments for herself and an additional $15,000 for another clerk because “supervisors did not check to see whether they earned the extra pay they were claiming,” the report said.

CPS timesheets now have new language that says employees must swipe in and out of the timesheet system to receive extra pay for extended day and summer school programs. Because of pressure from the OIG’s office, timesheets detailing extra pay now also require employees to sign an attestation saying that they can be disciplined or fired for submitting false timesheets, the report said.

Sexual Assault Unit tackles 20% of all complaints

The OIG’s Sexual Assault Unit was created in the wake of a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found schools failed to protect students from sexual abuse. It has opened more than 2,188 cases since its creation and fielded more than 400 complaints in the past year.

The annual report includes details of eight cases of substantiated sexual abuse of staff on students and dozens of other sexual misconduct cases that led to discipline, all of which the unit closed in fiscal year 2023.

One case led to criminal charges for a now-former security guard who the OIG found had sexually abused a 16-year-old student for five months, often inside the school building during school hours. The guard was charged with multiple counts of criminal sexual assault and aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County Criminal Court, the OIG’s office said.

While sexual misconduct-related complaints made up one-fifth of more than 2,000 complaints filed with the OIG last fiscal year, most of those complaints — about two-thirds — are about allegations that don’t rise to sexual abuse or harassment. These “other concerning” allegations could represent grooming of students and involve allegations of staffers texting students or “liking” their students’ photos on social media, for example.

Separately, the OIG’s report raised concerns about inconsistent training on sexual misconduct and professional boundaries for outside employees who work with schools, such as vendors contracted to work with the district. The office found that some vendors and volunteers said they were trained on CPS policies while others weren’t. Of the 157 complaints reported to the Sexual Assault Unit about vendors or volunteers, about one-third were substantiated, according to the OIG.

The district has started training at least one subset of volunteers, the OIG reported.

Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

2023-08-03T21:55:39+00:00

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.”

Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

The analysis looked at 44 elementary schools that joined ISP between 2016 and 2018. Those schools saw pass rates for state reading and math tests grow, on average, by about 4 percentage points more than similar schools that weren’t part of ISP, according to the study. (Comparison schools were chosen based on things like demographics and test scores.)

The findings suggest that schools can benefit from more empowered principals, who are “closer to the ground” and may have a better sense than district leaders of what their students need, said C. Kirabo Jackson, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern who conducted the study.

But there are some caveats, Jackson said. The ISP schools with the best test score results were also run by principals who are considered “highly effective,” as determined by teacher ratings and other evaluations. Less effective principals saw test scores grow at a slower rate. Other studies have found mixed results when giving schools more autonomy, Jackson noted in his study.

The benefits of such a policy depend on “the capacity of the leaders to manage on their own,” said Jackson.

Test scores don’t show the full picture of how well students are doing, Jackson said, and his study found mixed results in other areas. For example, ISP schools on average had better ratings for school climate. But he found no evidence that these schools saw better student or teacher attendance.

The ISP initiative was launched under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of an effort to pair principals with “more leadership and professional development opportunities,” according to the district.

Currently, district leaders identify veteran principals to apply for the program and then evaluate them based on several criteria, including their school’s test scores, their “five essentials” survey data and a series of interviews, according to the district.

A spokesperson did not respond in time for publication on whether there were minimum test scores that schools had to meet in order to be eligible.

Jackson noted that nearly all of the elementary schools he evaluated were highly rated by the state. In all, 86% of the city’s current 63 ISP schools — which also include middle and high schools and one early childhood education center — were rated either commendable or exemplary by the state, according to the most recently available Illinois Report Card information.

In addition to less oversight and more budget flexibility, ISP school leaders also have more power over professional learning for their staff and more flexibility over principal evaluations. In exchange, principals must meet several requirements, including maintaining or improving school performance, remaining compliant with district wide policies, and remaining as the school’s principal for at least two years.

Having more power over professional learning was among the biggest boons for Patricia Brekke, principal of Back of the Yards High School, who joined the ISP program in 2016. Her school, like others, used to spend time addressing student needs in ways that district leaders recommended.

While she considered those good strategies, her staff didn’t have extra time to focus on other issues they believed to be important, such as drilling down on students’ analytical and essay writing skills.

For the past seven years, she and other teachers have created their own professional development sessions to, in part, improve kids’ analytical skills. Her team draws on good examples from their own classrooms, including taking videos during the school day, so that teachers can see how their own colleagues are approaching instruction, Brekke said.

“I’ve got a lot of brilliant teachers, and their ideas really pushed me, I think, to be a better principal, you know?” Brekke said. “And it was really important for me to have them around the table and identify our problems of practice.”

Jackson only studied elementary schools, so he doesn’t know the program’s impact on high schools.

SAT scores at Brekke’s school were within five percentage points of the district’s. But Brekke said she’s noticed her students demonstrating “elevated” writing skills that go beyond a classic five-paragraph essay response.

“They’re really starting to think more deeply about text,” Brekke said.

Jackson found another bonus of the program: Principals “tend to remain in their schools” even after the two-year requirement. That is by design, said Jerry Travlos, a former ISP principal who now works as a district leader.

Travlos conducted a study, which Jackson cites, and found that ISP principals largely preferred the autonomy they got under the program. Extending more power to veteran principals is also a “retention strategy,” he said, at a time when school leaders are heading for the door.

Brekke, who has been an educator for 32 years, said she sometimes misses the camaraderie that comes along with a traditional network like most of Chicago’s public schools. But she loves being able to “geek out” and customize instruction for her students.

“Having those kinds of conversations are really just so refreshing and encouraging and motivating,” Brekke said. She paused and added, “Maybe it’s contributed to why I’m still here.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools with mostly Black student bodies share less information about LSCs: report

2023-07-27T21:17:13+00:00

Chicago families on the South and West sides were less likely to have access to information about their Local School Councils, compared with their North Side neighbors, according to a new analysis about the 2021-22 school year.

The report, released this week by advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, also found that most schools — 61% — had at least one parent vacancy on their Local School Councils, or LSCs. These school-based elected bodies, made up of parents, other community representatives, and students, can make school-level decisions, such as evaluating and selecting principals and voting on the annual campus budget.

The findings suggest that white and more affluent parents are more likely to have access to accurate LSC information and LSCs without parent vacancies. On top of the neighborhood disparities, schools with mostly Black student bodies were less likely to have updated information online about their LSCs, compared with schools citywide. They were also more likely to have at least three parent vacancies on their LSCs.

Last year, following LSC elections with significant voter turnout, more than 1,400 vacancies remained, mostly on the South and West sides, Chalkbeat found at the time.

“Vacancies make it impossible for the schools that need LSCs the most to have effective LSCs,” the just-released Raise Your Hand report said. “This means student needs are ignored, budgets are cut, and more.”

On the city’s North Side, schools were more likely to list basic information on their websites about their LSC, the report found. That information includes a mention of the LSC’s existence, meeting times, agendas, minutes, a list of current members, and contact information for those members.

For example, an average of 67% of schools across the Far North, North, and Northwest sides had LSC meeting times listed on their websites. In comparison, meeting times were listed for less than a quarter of schools, on average, in neighborhoods across the South and West sides, according to the report.

“This lack of transparency and accessibility is unacceptable and leaves parents feeling frustrated and powerless,” the report said.

Other findings include:

About one third of all schools have an LSC meeting time posted online, while the same is true for 14% of schools with student bodies that are at least 90% Black.
32% of all schools have three or more parent vacancies. The same is true for 36% of schools on the South and West sides, and 23% of schools on the North sides as well as the Loop.
42% of schools with more than 90% of Black students have three or more parent vacancies.

Raise Your Hand said that school websites have not changed even after they raised some of their findings with Chicago Public Schools “months ago.” The group has urged CPS to ensure websites have updated information, including meeting times and locations, a list of current LSC members, and contact information for the LSC.

After Raise Your Hand members revealed some of the study’s findings at a Wednesday Chicago Board of Education meeting, Board President Jianan Shi said the district “has to do better.” Shi is the former executive director of Raise Your Hand.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Evan Moore noted that the district saw a record-breaking 6,145 people apply for LSC positions last school year. He touted district efforts to raise awareness about LSCs, including roughly 100 “engagement sessions.”

Still, Moore acknowledged the need to improve and said officials are reviewing Raise Your Hand’s study.

“As a District, we are committed to continuing to work to improve awareness and access to this important democratic process,” Moore said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Urban Prep Academies could be turned over to Chicago Public Schools after state denies appeal

2023-04-19T21:44:09+00:00

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Urban Prep Academies may soon no longer operate public charter high schools in Chicago after state education officials denied the nonprofit’s appeal of a decision by the Chicago Board of Education.

The Illinois State Board of Education’s ruling could mean the end of Urban Prep’s 17-year run as a nationally-recognized charter school network known for serving Black boys.

But Urban Prep officials said late Wednesday that they filed a lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County “asserting that the Chicago Public Schools has violated state law that there be a moratorium on school closings until 2025.”

However, the district is not planning to close the schools. In October, when the Chicago Board of Education voted to revoke Urban Prep’s charter agreement to operate campuses in Englewood and Bronzeville, district officials – in a nod to the network’s unique mission and model – promised to continue operating the schools under district management.

At the time, the Chicago school board cited the charter network’s mismanaged finances and its response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving Urban Prep’s founder, which were uncovered by a report by Chicago Public Schools’ Inspector General.

That report alleged that the charter network’s founder, Tim King, groomed an underage student who later worked at the nonprofit and continued to receive paychecks and benefits after he stopped working there. King denies the allegations.

Board chair Steven Isoye said after Wednesday’s vote that “critical steps are already in motion” to communicate with current students and families about the transition. He said Chicago Public Schools will operate a new school with two campuses and an advisory group is already working on transition plans. A district spokesperson confirmed that plan and said the campuses would remain at their current locations.

Two state board members — Donna Leak and James Anderson — abstained from voting on Urban Prep’s appeal.

“As an African American woman and the mother of an African American son myself, I know there’s a need for a safe space that provides them with the chance to know your value and not how you are portrayed in the media on so many occasions,” Leak said. “We have to do better for African American young men.”

Over the last several months, parents and school leadership have fought to keep all three campuses open and under the operation of Urban Prep Academies. The school’s website also appears to still be accepting applications for new students.

“We trust that the courts will rule in favor of justice and Urban Prep students and families,” the statement from Urban Prep read.

The state board had also voted in November to revoke a charter it held with Urban Prep for a third campus — which the state took over in 2019 after the charter network appealed a decision by Chicago’s school board to close that campus. That campus is slated to close at the end of this school year.

Dennis Lacewell, Urban Prep’s chief academic officer, told state board members their decision will impact 400 current students and “hundreds of elementary and middle school black boys” who will “lose the Urban Prep option.” He called the Chicago school board’s October decision “erroneous” and accused the district of “moving the goalposts” as the network tried to address concerns about financial mismanagement.

“A decision to close our schools would eliminate this black institution which almost 20 years ago took on a challenge to successfully educate the most neglected demographic of students: Black boys,” Lacewell said prior to the vote. He also said the decision could result in roughly 100 people losing their jobs, 85% of whom are Black.

Isoye said Chicago Public Schools is committed to retaining as many current Urban Prep staff as possible.

As part of the appeals process with the state, a hearing officer issued a full report for each school in February and recommended the appeals be denied. The reports outlined concerns about Urban Prep’s financial management, noting “extensive borrowing practices via credit cards and predatory lenders.”

It also highlighted a finding by Chicago Public Schools Inspector General that the charter network obtained a Paycheck Protection Program loan from the federal government that “made significant misrepresentations regarding the cost of its operations leading to the receipt of a loan larger than what it would have otherwise been qualified to receive.”

Last fall, Chicago school board members acknowledged that Urban Prep’s academic model has been successful for the Black teenage boys it serves. In the past, Urban Prep has received national recognition for graduating Black students at high rates and steering them into college.

The school’s leadership decided to appeal to the Illinois State Board of Education in November to prevent Chicago from taking over the schools.

After the vote, Isoye said the decision to deny Urban Prep’s appeal — effectively ending the once-lauded charter network — was “not an easy one to make.”

“Supporting the success of Urban Prep students through the transition and beyond is a top priority of all of us here,” Isoye said.

Mauricio Peña contributed to this report.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago mayoral election 2023: How Johnson, Vallas answered 10 important education questions

2023-03-01T18:23:38+00:00

Chicago voters will head to the polls once again on April 4 to vote for a new mayor, choosing between two candidates who are vastly different when it comes to public education.

Brandon Johnson is an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union and Paul Vallas is the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Both are Democrats, but their views vary widely on everything from school choice to measuring academic performance to how campuses are funded.

Whoever wins will take office in late May and will get to appoint a school district CEO and seven school board members to oversee the nation’s fourth largest school district, its $9.5 billion budget, 635 schools, and the education of 322,000 children. They will also be the last mayor to have control of Chicago Public Schools before the district transitions to being governed by an elected school board.

Chalkbeat Chicago asked candidates 10 important questions about the city’s public schools in January — some of which came directly from our readers. Explore Johnson and Vallas’ answers below.

Chicago Public Schools is no longer the nation’s third largest school district after a decade of enrollment decline. The loss of students has had significant impacts on neighborhood high schools in particular. How will you address declining enrollment?
What are your plans to address learning loss and social emotional gaps that have emerged during the past three years of the COVID pandemic?
The Chicago Board of Education will expand from 7 appointed members to 21 elected officials over the next four years. How will you ensure parents, students, and teachers are fairly represented on the new school board? And how will you work with the elected board?
The Chicago Teachers Union’s contract ends next year. There was an 11-day strike in 2019, a rocky return to in-person learning in 2021, and five days of canceled classes in January 2022. How do you plan to avoid a strike in the next contract negotiation with CTU?
Chicago Public Schools stopped rating schools and holding students back during the pandemic. Both accountability policies are under review. How do you think schools should be measured, judged, or rated?
What are your thoughts about Chicago Public Schools’ student-based budgeting model, which ties a school’s funding to how many students are enrolled?
The Illinois legislature created a tax-credit scholarship program in 2017 to expand school choice. After a one-year extension, the program is scheduled to sunset in 2025. Do you support continuing the state’s tax-credit scholarship program? Why or why not?
During the early days of the pandemic, students with disabilities had limited or no access to academic accommodations written in their Individualized Education Program. Many students were unable to receive or renew IEPs to meet their needs. What will you do to ensure that students with disabilities are being identified without delay and getting the resources they need to catch up in school?
Are you for or against trade/vocational education? How would you reactivate trade school curriculum and would it be available in all schools?
Describe a high quality school. (How many staff work there? What are students taught? What programs or extracurriculars are offered? What support services are available? What does the facility look like? What is the schedule?) How many CPS schools meet your definition of a high quality school?

Chicago voters will now pick between former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas (left) and Cook County Commissioner and teachers union organizer Brandon Johnson (right) in the mayoral runoff election on April 4.

Chicago Public Schools is no longer the nation’s third largest school district after a decade of enrollment decline. The loss of students has had significant impacts on neighborhood high schools in particular. How will you address declining enrollment?

JOHNSON: If you recall, that decade began in 2013 with the greatest closure of Black and Latinx schools in Chicago’s history. If we can build sustainable community schools alongside quality affordable housing, we will reverse the trend. We must also tackle the violence epidemic with more holistic measures that provide resources and trauma intervention for students and families.

Mayors Rahm Emanuel and Lori Lightfoot have both presided over precipitous declines in pre-kindergarten enrollment. This is not simply a result of demographic change, but the district moving to an online, centralized application process for preschool that is elitist and prejudiced against families with little access to technology. Enrollment also decreases due to poor program design. This is also evident in a number of special education crises – from State monitor to transportation – over the last 10 years.

Schools communities need direct investment, guarantees of staffing and program offerings. Every school should have a library and librarian, adequate clinicians and counselors, thriving arts offerings and sports programs and teams. And the mayor of Chicago has an obligation to be actively fighting in partnership for the revenue required to fulfill those basic needs for every school in the city, not just some.

VALLAS: Making the schools more attractive to parents by allowing for schools to take on specialties as well as bring back the work study program for high school students. We must also make our schools safe, so students feel comfortable in their learning environment. We must also have the dollars make it down to the school level, right now only 60% of the budget makes it to the schools. In my career I have worked to make education meaningful to students allowing a greater trust in the system by not only the students but also their parents. I would also expand the alternative schools network to provide for the educational needs for high school students too old for the traditional high school program.

Reader question. What are your plans to address learning loss and social emotional gaps that have emerged during the past three years of the COVID pandemic?

JOHNSON: Let’s remember that students and families are still struggling with the pandemic, and there is much trauma and recovery that must occur – especially among Black and Brown students and families who make up the majority of CPS students (like my own).

First, we must address the trauma that existed pre-pandemic, and acknowledge that COVID-19 exposed and exacerbated conditions around cleanliness, bilingual education, access to technology, special education services and more, that city leaders left unaddressed for decades. Asking a student to catch up on math when they are still recovering from the death of a loved one, or a classmate, is inhumane.

Students and families must have trauma support, such as weekly cognitive behavioral therapy, and students need summer jobs and engaging programming. Support student and staff mental health by infusing schools with mental health professionals like counselors and clinicians so that unaddressed trauma is acknowledged, and treated, and learning is more of the focus from day to day. Teachers and staff need adequate time and professional development to help address student needs. And educators need to be empowered with planning time to reinvigorate curriculum and work with students to ensure instructional practices and pedagogy meet students’ needs and interests.

VALLAS: The loss of learning due to the COVID pandemic has been unprecedented. We must work to ensure that our children catch up and can be competitive in their future. In order to meet the gap our children are facing I will open all school buildings through the dinner hour, weekends and summers. We need to invite community organizations to provide enrichment to students in the CPS during these off hours as well as invite retired CPS Teachers to provide tutoring and academic support to the students.

The Chicago Board of Education will expand from seven appointed members to 21 elected officials over the next four years. How will you ensure parents, students, and teachers are fairly represented on the new school board? And how will you work with the elected board?

JOHNSON: I support a map that ensures all communities in this tremendously diverse city have the opportunity to have their voices heard. This is why I worked so closely with Illinois Senate President Don Harmon and community organizations on the legislation to create this vibrant model of democracy for the first time ever in the history of Chicago Public Schools.

We need campaign finance rules to prevent those with no stake in our public schools, or our communities, from controlling our democracy. We cannot have uber rich, arch-conservatives usurping the power that working people in Chicago fought so hard to win. We need candidates who are deeply invested and knowledgeable from the communities served to have a fair chance to win races to influence the education of their children.

Democratic governance requires partnership. The city doesn’t absolve itself of any responsibility to schools just because there are democratically elected school community leaders sitting at the Board of Education. As mayor, I will continue to fight for resources in our schools, and maintain and build upon the coordinated support and services that the city has to offer children and families.

VALLAS: Like I have done all my career I will work with the elected board of education with the respect that is due to them as an equally elected official that is representing the needs of the community that elected them. In all CPS work I will put the needs of the students first and advocated with the board for any necessary resources. Before this board takes office it is important that they do not inherit a broken system, I will push the dollars to the school level and ensure that schools have the resources they need.

Reader question. The Chicago Teachers Union’s contract ends next year. There was an 11-day strike in 2019, a rocky return to in-person learning in 2021, and five days of canceled classes in January 2022. How do you plan to avoid a strike in the next contract negotiation with CTU?

JOHNSON: We need a mayor who can reasonably work with labor. We cannot have the type of leader who will promise something like, say, an elected representative school board and then fight tooth and nail to stop it from being enacted. We cannot have a mayor who, on the campaign trail, calls for a nurse and social worker in every school, then puts teachers on strike for two weeks when they ask for exactly that in writing. We cannot have a mayor who grants expanded parental leave to city workers, but blocks educators from receiving the same.

Just a shift in consistency and keeping one’s word will more than allow for a much more rational and collaborative process.

As mayor, I will be a partner in working with Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union to remove obstacles in the way of achieving excellent schools, rather than contributing to constant friction. The stakes are too high for our students and families for labor and leadership not to have a positive working relationship. And I will openly advocate and build coalitions to identify revenue sources and structures that, over time, will deliver the fully funded schools that families and communities deserve.

VALLAS: The previous CTU strike could have been avoided and we see the cost of that strike in the already exacerbated loss of learning from the pandemic. Over the course of my career I have negotiated 6 teacher contracts with teachers unions in the largest district in 4 different states that led to no strikes and members getting a pay raise. If all parties work in good faith there should be no need for a teacher strike this year which only leads to a greater negative impact of the education on Chicago’s children who are already struggling to regain confidence in the classroom.

Chicago Public Schools stopped rating schools and holding students back during the pandemic. Both accountability policies are under review. How do you think schools should be measured, judged, or rated?

JOHNSON: We cannot continue to punish schools that have suffered from decades of divestment, violence and destabilization. When a school struggles, we often give them more accountability, yet fewer resources. So any school rating formula must bring greater equity, and greater support, to ensure greater success.

Chicago Public Schools does not need its own rating structure, as the state still has and requires one. CPS’ time is better spent identifying sources of revenue to fill the gaps identified in programs, staffing, and services that we know hold schools back from meeting student needs and increasing enrollment. I live in Austin. My wife and I drive two children to Portage Park and another to Hyde Park every day because there are few schools in our community to meet their extracurricular needs. Families should not have to leave their community to find a school with a music program, a sports program, a nurse in every school, or a library with a librarian. We have to use what we already know about the strengths, weaknesses, and assets in our schools to ensure that we are directing resources to where they are needed to make every school excellent.

VALLAS: We should aspire for high standards, we cannot embrace the bigotry of soft expectations. We must set high standards, we have to measure school’s base on their improvement as a school. We must take every school uniquely and see their growth from where they were to where they are.

Reader question. What are your thoughts about Chicago Public Schools’ student-based budgeting model, which ties a school’s funding to how many students are enrolled?

JOHNSON: Student-based budgeting (SBB) and the former SQRP rating policy have had a devastating impact on our 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. Schools struggling with enrollment need to have a process by which root causes are identified and resources are deployed to ensure students still have the richest possible education, and the school has an opportunity to grow its enrollment.

The state, in its evidence-based funding model, has recognized that student and community needs must drive school funding, and that all districts must be brought up to a certain level of resources to meet those needs. Yet CPS has not adopted that approach among its schools. We cannot keep supporting a system that favors choice, but does not provide schools with the same baseline resources and offerings – then punishes students who attend the less frequently chosen school.

VALLAS: The first priority is to push the funding down to the schools. We have to have the majority of the funding flow down to the local schools as of right now only 60% of the funds makes it to the local schools. My second priority is to make sure that the money that is allocated to the students encompasses the needs of the student, we need to make sure the school district is allocating Title I money directly to the school it is assigned too. This money needs to flow directly to the school with only minimal diversions because unfortunately funding due to poverty has been used as discretionary funds by the administration.

Reader question. The Illinois legislature created a tax-credit scholarship program in 2017 to expand school choice. After a one-year extension, the program is scheduled to sunset in 2025. Do you support continuing the state’s tax-credit scholarship program? Why or why not?

JOHNSON: I do not, because this is the kind of thinking that continues to reinforce unequal educational opportunities. Until every Chicago public school and big-city public school has the baseline of resources provided in suburban districts with high property tax bases, the idea of “choice” is a fallacy.

Parents with resources are able to navigate the system for their students, which I don’t begrudge. What is concerning is that families without the means, time, resources, and access to navigating these same systems have no choice at all.

I am not interested in continuing to shift unequal resources around. I am interested in leveling the playing field for all families.

VALLAS: The tax credit scholarship program is beneficial in empowering parents to pick the school that best suits their child’s needs. Whether the students attend private, parochial, public or public charter schools they are students of the City and we need to ensure quality education regardless of their zip code.

During the early days of the pandemic, students with disabilities had limited or no access to academic accommodations written in their Individualized Education Program. Many students were unable to receive or renew IEPs to meet their needs. What will you do to ensure that students with disabilities are being identified without delay and getting the resources they need to catch up in school?

JOHNSON: Teachers in Seattle last fall ratified a contract with a three adult (two teachers, one instructional assistant) to 10 student ratio to help address the needs of their special education population. Chicago must work toward something similar to address compensatory services and the particular needs of this incredibly vulnerable student population. We also need greater clinical support to properly diagnose and service the individualized education programs of these students. This includes the need to ramp up pipelines with state and local funding to hire many more teachers, special education classroom assistants, and teacher assistants to address the accumulated needs of students living with disabilities.

VALLAS: Students with disabilities are a priority even much more so after the loss of learning experienced due to the pandemic. The key to supporting these students is the availability of resources at the local school level. My administration will reallocate dollars in a way that the schools see the most benefit and allow principals to support all the students in their neighborhood schools.

Reader question. Are you for or against trade/vocational education? How would you reactivate trade school curriculum and would it be available in all schools?

JOHNSON: We need to do much better to train Chicagoans to fill the jobs that exist today. Businesses are hiring and manufacturers are hiring. There may be somewhere around 30,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs across the state, and a good number of them are here in Chicago. But we’ve abandoned vocational training in our schools. Modern manufacturing jobs require tech skills, and it is our job to give our students the skills necessary to succeed. So I am all for trade and vocational education, commonly known as Career and Technical Education (CTE), in Chicago Public Schools. CTE is essential to closing the gap between our district, and skilled trade industries and employers.

There is potential in some of the plans the district and CPS CEO Pedro Martinez have around this. With an aviator simulator in Dunbar, and making Tilden, Phillips, Chicago Vocational, and Fenger sustainable community schools with specialized and relevant trades training, we will have education and apprenticeship pipelines to create the skills and engagement necessary for a CTE corridor that will empower our Black and Latinx students to become the next generation of unionized trade workers.

VALLAS: Yes I support trade and vocational education. However I believe on a broader scale that we need to integrate a work study program into all of our high schools and make elective programs more meaningful. We need to reestablish our VocEd and occupational training programs that were in our high schools during my time at the CPS. My administration will do this by partnering with local trade unions and businesses in our city. We have to leverage these connections in ways that attract our students to take interest in these programs that offer amazing opportunities for success after high school.

Describe a high-quality school. (How many staff work there? What are students taught? What programs or extracurriculars are offered? What support services are available? What does the facility look like? What is the schedule?) How many CPS schools meet your definition of a high-quality school?

JOHNSON: We have a model that works – the Sustainable Community School (SCS) model, which calls for collaborative and effective strategy for increasing educational equity. SCS builds on the traditional community school model to prioritize specific pillars and principles to make schools the anchors of their communities, and to share leadership around meeting student, family, educator, staff, and community needs.

We also have schools that have parent mentors, community programming, and partnerships to provide additional support for mental and physical health across the district. Neighborhood schools like Kelly High, National Teachers Academy, Hanson Park Elementary (despite a horrendous facility situation), Chavez Elementary, Beidler Elementary are all vibrant school communities using culturally relevant curriculum and community partnerships to advance the academic and social/emotional needs of countless children. However, we need to do more and better. That will require greater investments in addressing the needs of homeless children, students with disabilities and all the newcomers who do not speak English as their primary language. It also cannot continue to be the case that selective enrollment schools, which provide students with the most extensive course offerings, extracurriculars and sports opportunities, serve only the wealthiest students in the system.

VALLAS: A high quality is a medium sized neighborhood school that embraces high standards and offers the students a high quality curriculum that ensures students achieve a high level of proficiency in all core areas. The ideal quality school offers key enrichment opportunities in the academic year as well as continuing into the non-traditional school hours (weekends, evenings, summers and holidays) to support students in their growth. My ideal quality school offers key wrap-around services for students to ensure they are holistically growing. This school also needs a well trained and supported local school council that broadly represents the community and can provide a vehicle for community input in school governance and supplemental activities.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board moves to take over once-lauded charter serving Black boys

2022-10-26T22:35:09+00:00

Chicago’s school board moved Wednesday to take over two South Side charter campuses that specialize in serving Black boys — an unprecedented step to pull the school’s charter but preserve an academic model officials acknowledged has delivered for many students.

School board members voted unanimously to revoke the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men’s charter. They forcefully rejected the school’s arguments for more time to prove they are on the right track, and voicing dismay at the school’s response to a sexual misconduct investigation involving the school’s founder.

Urban Prep leaders pushed back forcefully, calling on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to halt the district’s plan to take over its two campuses.

Urban Prep, which once received national recognition for steering its students to graduation and college admissions, has come under intense district scrutiny in recent years. Its founder, Tim King, resigned his positions as CEO and board chair this summer after a district watchdog report substantiated allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a former student — allegations King has strongly denied.

The district has also rung alarms about the school’s financial management, which is the focus of an ongoing district inspector general investigation, as well as its services for students with disabilities and the number of licensed teachers it employs.

In a Tuesday news conference on the Englewood campus and during Wednesday’s board meeting, the school’s leaders and supporters decried the district’s own track record of serving Black male students and said the school, run largely by Black men, has delivered better outcomes. They said Urban Prep has gotten its finances in order more recently, and accused the district of using the allegations against King to launch a takeover of the school.

But school board officials were unmoved.

“It’s an egregious report, and it should make everybody upset,” said board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland, referring to the investigation’s findings about King. “It’s shameful to me that the Urban Prep board had this information and did not act swiftly.”

However, district officials said Urban Prep has forged a strong academic model and a supportive environment for Black boys, who in Chicago and nationally have long faced the widest academic disparities. In an unusual move, district CEO Pedro Martinez said Wednesday the two campuses, which have a combined enrollment of about 370 students, will remain open under district management — either as free-standing schools or as programs of existing high schools. It plans to keep teachers and staff at the school.

“We want to make sure high-quality programs continue for children in Bronzeville and Englewood — it’s essential,” Martinez said. But, he added, “We cannot compromise. We need ethical behavior, and we need to make sure we are protecting our children.”

The school can appeal the district’s decision to the Illinois State Board of Education. The state took over a third Urban Prep campus in 2018 after the school board revoked its charter.

Tensions between school, CPS boil over

The inspector general’s report alleged King groomed and sexually touched a student who was 16 at the time. According to the report, the relationship continued after the student graduated, and he eventually came to work at Urban Prep; the report also says he continued to receive pay and benefits long after he stopped working there.

The district said the school’s handling of the investigation was troubling because it allowed King — who was featured on a 2010 People Magazine cover as “hero of the year” — to continue interacting with students after the inquiry substantiated the allegations.

Urban Prep also refused to email families about the investigation’s findings, and appointed King to two boards after he resigned, according to board documents.

Meanwhile, an ongoing district watchdog investigation is taking a closer look at the school’s finances. The district says that for years the school relied on district cash advances and high-interest loans to make payroll, racking up more than half a million dollars in finance charges in the process.

Yet Urban Prep still defaulted on paying salaries, leases, and vendors providing services for students with disabilities. The school was able to use a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan during the pandemic to balance its books, but a separate inspector general investigation found it inflated the number of employees on the loan application.

During public comment at the school board meeting and during a Tuesday press conference, Urban Prep officials and supporters decried the plan to revoke the school’s charter. They argued that district leaders can’t come in and replicate the charter’s climate and culture, which is steeped in the sense of identity and backgrounds of its leaders.

They touted the school’s outcomes, from its attendance rate to the 100% college acceptance rate that the charter has long made a cornerstone of its model.

(The rate of College Prep students who actually enroll in college within a year of graduation has plunged in recent years to 48% on the Bronzeville campus and 63% on the Englewood campus, according to state data.)

Troy Boyd, the chief operating officer, asked the board to at least delay the vote on revoking the school’s charter, insisting the school has done everything the district asked of it, and that its financial problems are a thing of the past. He called Wednesday’s vote “tragic.”

“The non-renewal of Urban Prep would mean the end of something that has been transformational for the city,” he said. “We won’t stop fighting.”

At the meeting, a string of students, dressed in the school’s uniform of navy blazers, red ties, and khakis, spoke about the impact the school has had on them, which many credited to the Urban Prep’s leadership and educator team of largely Black men.

Avery Barnes, a sophomore at the Bronzeville campus, said at the school he came to see his value as a Black male, built close relationships with educators, and went on several college visits as an underclassman.

“I feel like Urban Prep has already started the process of preparing me for adulthood,” he said, adding that, “Urban Prep Academies needs to be renewed simply because they make young Black males feel accepted and seen in a society where we are often predicted to go to jail or end up in an early grave.”

Kevin Scott, a senior at the Bronzeville campus, said the school gives students positive role models who look like them in the classroom and principal’s office. Unlike district-run schools, it remained open for in-person instruction throughout the 2020-21 school year, Scott, a National Honors Society member, pointed out.

“Urban Prep is more than just a school,” he said. “It’s been like a family, a safe place, a hangout and so much more.”

Urban Prep Charter Academy leaders and parents hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon in Englewood.

Inside Urban College Prep Englewood Tuesday afternoon, Dennis Lacewell, chief academic officer at the charter school, said the charter has made progress in rectifying past financial problems, and said Urban Prep officials had completed more financial reporting than at any CPS schools.

Leaders dismissed the district’s claim that the school has compromised its students’ safety. He also argued that the district has been unfairly attacking Urban Prep for some time by revoking the license for its downtown campus in 2018, and disparaging the charter to potential financial lenders.

“Despite CPS’ lack of success and commitment to Black male students, they have the audacity to think they can be successful taking over Urban Prep and turning it into a program of another CPS high school,” Lacewell added. “It is both ludicrous and infuriating.”

But school board members and district officials said they could not allow the charter’s current leadership to continue on. The board has granted the school a series of short-term extensions of its charter amid mounting concerns, in part because of its reluctance to cause any disruption to students at the height of the pandemic, members said.

“At this point, unfortunately, all doubt has been removed that the leaders of the organization do not have students’ best interests at heart,” board Vice President Sendhil Revuluri said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

At West Side military high school, alleged misconduct often went unreported: watchdog

2021-12-23T22:26:56+00:00

A Marine Leadership Academy principal contributed to a “dysfunctional and divisive environment” at the West Side school and failed to conduct a background check on a volunteer before he was allowed around students, according to Chicago Public Schools’ watchdog.

The office of William Fletcher, the Chicago Public Schools inspector general, on Thursday released its second summary report publicly detailing more instances of sexual misconduct, inappropriate behavior between a volunteer and students, and failures by the principal to safeguard students at the public military academy and college-prep high school.

The report issued during winter break — and just days before Christmas — concludes the inspector general’s investigation that started in 2019. The second report paints a picture of a school culture where sexual harassment and charges of abuse and inappropriate behavior were overlooked or brushed under the rug by those in charge.

The latest from the inspector general’s office summarizes the final two reports issued to the Chicago Board of Education on its investigations at Marine Leadership Academy, or MLA. In total, the office has issued five reports to the Board of Education detailing allegations of sexual misconduct at the school dating back to 2016.

According to the watchdog, the principal violated the CPS Volunteer Policy by failing to have a volunteer complete fingerprinting and a background check before unsupervised interactions with students, according to the latest report.

The volunteer’s interactions included unsupervised interactions with students, as well as calls and text message exchanges with students. He also took students out for meals and went for walks with them, according to the report.

The principal eventually reported the volunteer for texting with a student but failed to report multiple instances where he violated CPS policies. The volunteer was eventually removed in Jan. 2020 after the principal raised concerns about his conduct, but investigators found no evidence of sexual misconduct with students.

Still, investigators found multiple instances of staff failing to comply with Chicago Public Schools policies prohibiting interactions between staff and students, including texting, connecting on social media, or giving students rides.

The report separately said the principal contributed to a “dysfunctional and divisive environment, which played a role in whether MLA staff members reported violations of CPS policies at all and how the reporting was handled, or mishandled.”

Even while under investigation, former Marine Leadership Academy principal Erin Galfer was promoted by the district before being fired on Nov. 6, according to WBEZ and the Sun-Times.

Neither Galfer nor her attorney could be reached for comment Thursday.

The Chicago public school at 1920 N. Hamlin Ave. is affiliated with the Marine Corps JROTC program and is one of a handful of schools connected to branches of the U.S. military. In 2013, a plan by district officials to convert the neighborhood school into a military academy faced significant community pushback.

The report said military staffers were responsible for most improper communications with students, citing more than a dozen phone records. But the watchdog said they found no evidence that the communications between instructors and students were sexual.

The full investigation substantiated allegations of violations of other CPS policies against 13 individuals, including the Marine Leadership Academy principal, four current and former staff members, four teachers, three military instructors, and a member of the MLA board of governors, the military school’s equivalent to a local school council member.

Chicago Public Schools office of the inspector general, or the OIG, investigated allegations against 29 individuals associated with the school. The allegations spanned sexual abuse of students, grooming nonsexual conduct, failure to report inappropriate behavior, and violations of CPS guidelines and policies.

Since the investigation’s started, the school district’s investigative arm communicated with Chicago Public Schools and the city’s police department regarding student safety. The watchdog agency contacted the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services at least 22 times since 2019 about allegations at Marine Leadership Academy, according to the November summary report from the inspector general’s office.

That report describes a school employee having a sexual relationship with a student after that student turned 18. Another staffer groomed a student and began a sexual relationship after that student graduated. A third employee sexually harassed and retaliated against a student after the student filed a report, and a fourth groomed one student and crossed boundaries with others, according to the report.

Seven other staffers, including the principal, assistant principal, head of security, a counselor, and a teacher’s assistant, did not report and actively hid suspected violations, the OIG said.

District officials said all staffers involved have been removed from the district.

No individuals currently face criminal charges, according to the OIG.

Mary Fergus, a Chicago schools spokesperson, said in an email that the OIG investigation “revealed a school culture in which adults did not keep the safety and well being of students a priority.”

“CPS has zero tolerance for perpetrators of inappropriate relationships and abuse and complicit non-reporters who do nothing to stop such behavior,” Fergus said.

With the investigation now completed, the district has begun to move forward with “disciplinary action or dismissal proceedings against involved employees and will keep the impacted students updated on any action taken,” Fergus said.

During the Chicago Board of Educators December meeting, district CEO Pedro Martinez addressed the “culture of inappropriate adult behavior” at Marine Leadership Academy

“Our top priority at CPS is protecting the safety and wellbeing of our students, ensuring that all students feel safe, supported, and valued and that their learning environment reflects a culture of respect and trust,” Martinez said. “When that standard is not upheld, we are committed to being transparent and taking actions to fix it.”

The CEO said the “perpetrators and enablers” had all been removed from the school and were being disciplined to the greatest extent possible.”

He expressed frustration that federal and state laws have until recently limited the district’s ability to prosecute those who are grooming students. Weeks after the allegations emerged, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law aiming to make all forms of grooming illegal.

Martinez said that the district would “not tolerate anyone using their position of authority to manipulate children, and those who turn a blind eye to this behavior will have no place in our schools.”

The reports come more than three years after a 2018 investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed a systemic failure in the school system’s handling of cases of sexual misconduct. The district responded to that investigation by transferring some investigative authority to the inspector general, creating a 20-person Office of Student Protections tasked with protecting students from sexual violence and discrimination, establishing a reporting hotline for alleged abuse, and strengthening its background check policy for staff, vendors, and volunteers. At the time, Chicago also removed two principals.

Following the revelations in last month’s OIG report, the union said the lack of action was concerning and called on Mayor Lori Lightfoot to make her “district responsible for all facets of student safety.”

“We cannot continue to have such an alarming lack of attention, and lack of action, in protecting children,” the union said Friday. “We must also continue to push back against cultures of fear and intimidation from administrators in our schools.”

Wanted: Ways to boost the profile of Chicago’s Local School Councils. A new bill could be a start.

2020-01-28T01:29:51+00:00

Established as a way to ensure parent and staff input into the running of schools, Chicago’s Local School Councils were heralded as a potent mechanism to empower communities.

Twenty years later, many councils suffer from vacancies, parent indifference, and a sense of powerlessness. But with council elections looming in April, the school district is hoping to beef up participation, parents are speaking out, and a key state bill could boost the councils’ profile. Chicago community groups are seeking to engage parents and community members and press lawmakers to give the bodies more teeth.

In a city lacking an elected school board, “It is the only democracy we have within the education system in Chicago,” said Rod Wilson, an organizer from the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, at a workshop aimed at strengthening the councils.

“If you’re getting public dollars then we’re saying that parents should have some say in the governance of the school.” But some parents feel as if they’re fighting an uphill battle to create change.

“Most members don’t welcome me there,” said Myriam Perez, who has served three terms as a community representative on the council of her former school, Nathan S. Davis Elementary in Brighton Park. She joined the council because she wanted to give back to the school that made her feel safe when she didn’t in her own home. But she’s had a mixed experience.

“I tend to ask a lot of questions, I tend to call people out if they’re not doing something … I don’t like going sometimes but I go anyways because I know that I want to speak up for students that might want a safe space at Davis.”

At the Saturday workshop, the host group Raise Your Hand encouraged attendees to get involved with their councils and briefed on coming changes, including the proposed LSC Empowerment Bill that would bolster councils’ powers.

More than 150 council members, parents, teachers and community members, plus several school board members, attended the Saturday workshop at offices of the teachers union.

Chicago is the only city in the state that uses the local school council model in public schools. Each school council has space for six parents, two teachers, one non-teacher staff member and two community members, as well as a student representative in high schools.

The councils have the authority to hire and evaluate the principal, allocate discretionary funds, and approve and monitor the school improvement plan.

Charter schools, contract schools and military schools — which together make up about one-fifth of public schools in the city — do not have councils.

But those schools would be required to form local councils under a state bill proposed by Rep. Sonya Harper, of the 6th district, and Sen. Ram Villivalam, of the 8th district. The bill also would allow councils to keep decision-making authority when schools are on probation.

It also would prohibit the district from closing any school without a supermajority of the council approving.

Additionally, the bill would scale back district influence on the councils and create advisory positions for seventh and eighth graders. In response to criticism about the preparation and ongoing support for council members, the bill calls for an independent commission in charge of training.

Some parents cite a lack of consistency among schools in running councils. Many attendees raised questions about voting technicalities and election rules, as well as the specifics of LSC authority.

The John H. Hamline Elementary council has a community vacancy and a non-teacher staff vacancy, said Geszill Lightfoot, a teacher at the school who has served on the council.

“Community should be involved because they have a stake in the education of the kids as well. It’s their school, their neighborhood,” said Jessica Suarez Nieto, who also teaches at Hamline Elementary, located in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. “How do we welcome parents to come in?”

David Vance, who is the community representative at James H. Bowen High School and James N. Thorp Elementary School, in South Chicago, said he’s noticed a lack of parent and community involvement in both councils.

“We need more parent involvement,” Vance said. “This is our taxpayer money. Our schools are public institutions, so we need to have our voices loud and clear to fight for the money that we need to fight for better schools because CPS hasn’t been doing it.”

Others said they hoped to bring a fresh perspective to their current councils. Bridget Doherty Trebing, a visual art teacher at Taft High School, in Norwood Park, said that her school’s council does not reflect the diverse student body and has consistent low attendance at meetings.

“We benefit from some privilege, being a well-resourced school, but our LSC is not terribly progressive … so I don’t feel like our LSC best serves our students,” Doherty Trebing said. “I don’t think we’re doing a good job of engaging the community.”

The coalition LSCs.4.All will launch a hotline Feb. 15 will launch a hotline on Feb. 15 to assist with elections and answer general inquiries, said Jennie Biggs, communications and outreach director of Raise Your Hand. The number will be 707-LSC-4ALL.

Elections will be held April 22 at elementary schools and April 23 at high schools.

In a move that has families on edge, Chicago is exploring enrollment caps at some popular schools

2019-11-20T23:37:26+00:00

In a city where some schools sit half-empty while others are bursting at the seams, Chicago education officials are trying to build support for a potential solution: capping enrollment at some neighborhood schools.

Instituting caps would mark a significant change in a district that has long guaranteed students admission to one elementary and one high school based on their address — a policy that has meant that families with means can effectively choose their schools based on where they buy or rent homes.

Even before any formal proposals are on the table, parents and school community members are pushing back.

At Audubon Elementary School in Roscoe Village, community members are awaiting a second visit from a top district official who recently gave a presentation about “controlled enrollment,” an approach where some applicants would be sent to nearby schools instead of the one to which they are zoned.

At Burley Elementary School, where classrooms are packed with students from the crowded zone, parents traded anxious emails this week before their principal told them that admissions changes are off the table for this year.

And multiple parents from Sauganash Elementary School exhorted the city school board Wednesday to build an addition to their school rather than send some local students elsewhere.

District officials say no formal proposals are on the table. But it is clear that they are casting about for strategies to quell an ongoing enrollment crisis posed by declining enrollment in some neighborhoods and population booms in others — and that they want local communities to support changes.

“As part of the district’s commitment to engaging school communities and addressing concerns of overcrowding, district representatives have been informally soliciting feedback on potential solutions at a small number of schools,” a spokeswoman, Emily Bolton, said in a statement.

“No policy decisions have been made or proposed and when it comes to issues impacting parents and students, the district’s highest priority is community engagement,” Bolton added.

Controlled enrollment would target longstanding dynamics. But the city faces new pressure to manage crowding because of financial penalties for oversized classes that are baked into its new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union.

The city previously used the approach in some places before discontinuing it because of transportation costs, but it would be new to the neighborhoods where it is currently being discussed.

Under the approach, the city would no longer guarantee admission to a particular school to every student who lives in its zone. Instead, once the school is full, students who seek to enroll would be offered choices of other nearby schools.

Audubon and Burley would appear to be ideal candidates for controlled enrollment. They sit just blocks away from another school, Jahn Elementary, where more than 40% of space went unused last year, according to the city.

The differences among the schools get at the heart of the city’s challenges, which include segregation and inequity on top of a changing and uneven student population.

Audubon and Burley both have student populations that reflect the neighborhood’s increasing affluence. Two-thirds of students are white, while just 2% or less are black — and only about 10% are eligible for subsidized lunch because of their families’ low income. Both schools have enrolled more students each year and now fill their seats exclusively with students who live in their zone. Burley has gotten so crowded that it eliminated its pre-kindergarten program.

The situation is very different at Jahn, where most students last year traveled from other zones to attend. Nearly two-thirds of them were from low-income families, and white students made up just 20% of enrollment.

If some students zoned for Audubon and Burley instead enrolled at Jahn, all three schools’ enrollment challenges could be addressed.

But Jahn is also considered lower-performing, causing many families living in its zone to enroll elsewhere. It has a lower rating from the city, lower state test scores, and higher teacher turnover than Audubon or Burley.

Do those data points reflect subpar teaching at the school? Or do they reflect the fact that Chicago’s population dynamics and enrollment rules sometimes cause needy students to be concentrated in certain schools?

The district’s top demographer, James Dispensa, might have offered a response to that question in his presentation to Burley’s Local School Council about controlled enrollment. He had been scheduled to appear first at a meeting that was canceled because of the teachers strike last month and again Wednesday night.

But in the days leading up to the meeting, anxiety-ridden emails circulated among parents in the community about what the presentation would contain. And on Tuesday, Principal Catherine Plocher told community members that the meeting agenda would no longer include enrollment policy and that the district had assured her that no enrollment changes would happen for the upcoming school year.

“After gaining insight and community feedback at Audubon School’s Local School Council meeting, the district has determined that they are still in the early stages of development needing more time and thought towards policies that would impact neighborhood school enrollment and overcrowding issues,” Plocher wrote.

“I understand that waiting for information without a clear timeline can feel unnerving and create worry, assumptions, and rumors that are not fully accurate,” she added. “The only real solutions and decisions will come from the district itself.”

Some in the Burley community have been pressing for their preferred solution, for the city to build an addition or annex to their school. That has happened at other overcrowded schools, and minutes from the March 2019 Local School Council meeting suggest that Plocher was optimistic about the idea. “Ms. Plocher is continuing to work with CPS headquarters and officials for a possible addition, but is in a holding pattern until the mayoral runoff in April,” the notes read.

But Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who prevailed in that runoff, has emphasized that the city needs to watch its education spending. Already, the school district is the second-most-indebted in the country because of its spending on new buildings. Controlled enrollment, if it worked, could even out enrollment disparities without construction costs.

But changes could also backfire and propel families with means to leave Chicago, adding to the exodus that is already putting extreme pressure on the city’s schools.

Lisabeth Weiner, a former Burley parent, hinted at that possibility during her comments at the school board meeting Wednesday. She said Burley parents and community members want to work with the district to “develop long-term, sustainable solutions while continuing to be part of a stable, unified community.”

Weiner added, “Congruent with that goal is keeping families in the city and enrolled in CPS.”

There are also pockets of the city where controlled enrollment may be less practical. At Wednesday’s board meeting, several speakers from Sauganash Elementary on the Northwest side petitioned for an addition to their school, which has grown more crowded as new home construction in the neighborhood has drawn families. The library has been closed, musical instruments are going unused, and art and science rooms could be converted to classrooms next year, Marikay Hegarty, a member of the Local School Council, told the board.

Planning for new space was a main agenda item at the school’s September Local School Council meeting, where meeting minutes show that Principal Christine Munns reported that the district’s CEO, Janice Jackson, had visited the school early this year and encouraged her to documenting the crowding there.

They may have a point. Sauganash was so crowded last year that its kindergarten classes had 36 and 37 students — but a nearby school, Edgebrook, is also at capacity and had 30 children in its kindergarten classes.

“A change of school boundaries or a cap on enrollment,” Hegarty said, “is not an acceptable solution to our problem.”