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District 8, on the south west side of the city, covering parts of the South Loop, McKinley Park, and Back of the Yards, has two candidates on the ballot: Garfield Ridge resident and public service consultant Angel Gutierrez and McKinley Park resident and music educator and music education advocate Felix Ponce.
The candidates have taken very different approaches to their campaign, with Gutierrez touting his executive level experience in policy, management, and budgeting for large organizations, while Ponce has highlighted his years as a teacher on the ground inside Chicago Public Schools.
The district they’re hoping to represent on the elected school board has 65 CPS schools serving 38,165 students. About 60% of residents in the district are Latino, while Latino students make up 72% of CPS students in the district.
Some of the issues at play in District 8 are the same as those that Latino students face citywide. In the 2023-24 school year, Latino students made up 50% of CPS students with IEPs. Latino students also received the second most in- and out- of school suspensions in CPS schools.
Three schools in District 8 are considered among the top 10% in the state and deemed “Exemplary” and three others are considered in the lowest 5% and targeted by the Illinois State Board of Education for “Intensive Support.”
Additionally, District 8 has seen many migrant families moving into the area with students in need of bilingual education and support services, resources that are not keeping up with the influx of migrant students.
Who is Angel Gutierrez?
After Gutierrez learned that property taxes for his home in Garfield Ridge would be going up by a significant amount, he decided to look into where those taxes were going.
He found that much of the increase in property taxes this past year was due to Chicago Public Schools raising its tax levy by $130.7 million, the maximum allowed under the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law, which limits increases to 5%.
That’s when he decided to run for school board.
With a master’s degree in public administration from Roosevelt University and 25 years of experience managing the budgets for large nonprofits – including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago and Chicago Hope Academy High School – Guitierrez believes he can help CPS create a more balanced budget.
“This job is a thousand feet above sea level. It’s not about making decisions at Kennedy High School or DuSable. It is big picture, high-stakes,” he said. “This is about making executive decisions on behalf of your constituents and also the taxpayer.”
Decisions about things like school resource officers, he said, should be left to Local School Councils (LSCs).
On the board, Gutierrez said he would use tactics he learned serving on the community council for the redesign of Manual High School, a low-performing high school in Denver in 2006.
“Let’s create a Blue Ribbon Committee with teachers, students, parents, community, business. Let’s figure out - Where do we need to be in three years? Five years? How do we approach those things? How do we create more options?”
If elected, Gutierrez said he would prioritize school safety and increasing school choice options in District 8, which he notes has no trade, arts, or career pathway schools.
Gutierrez’s campaign had raised more than $25,000 as of Sept. 20, of which $12,500 came from a personal loan. He received $6,900 from Jim Frank, former CEO of Wheels, Inc. and longtime political donor who also supports the political arm of the education nonprofit Stand for Children.
Read Gutierrez’s full questionnaire responses.
Who is Felix Ponce?
Ponce, a music teacher and band director at Harold L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn, wants to bring a “music perspective” to the table.
Previously, as the director of bands at Back of the Yard College College Prep High School, Ponce built the school’s founding music program, creating a band class, a drumline, a mariachi program, a jazz band, and a colorguard.
“My whole life has been creating music programs,” he said.
Over the past seven years, he has also worked to start and support programs at schools in other parts of the city and has supported students district-wide as the band director for CPS’s All-City Performing Arts Program.
These experiences have shown him how important enrichment programming can be. Sports, arts, and extracurriculars, he said, can help with everything from academic achievement and attendance to mental health and discipline.
Although music is his passion, Ponce says he’s not a one-issue candidate. Working in CPS, he’s seen the effects of staffing shortages and lack of mental health services and support staff.
“A lot of policies [from the Board of Education] were birthed out of great ideas, but they were missing some of that human element, because they were looking at the system as numbers and not necessarily [as] a community,” he said.
Ponce said aims to bring an on-the-ground, in-the-community element to what he hopes is a board with a diversity of perspectives.
If elected, he plans to prioritize funding for arts and sports programs, adequate support staff for every school, and hiring teachers of color.
Ponce is one of 11 candidates endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Ponce has also been endorsed by 12th Ward Ald. Julia Ramirez, whose ward is partially covered by District 8.
As of Sept. 22, Ponce’s campaign had brought in about $40,000 dollars, according to campaign finance reports. Of that, at least $35,000 came from the political fund of the Chicago Teachers Union to pay for field staff and other campaign support.
Read Ponce’s full questionnaire responses.
This story was published in partnership with Block Club Chicago.
