This story was reported and published in collaboration with WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit newsroom covering Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. Stay informed with Chalkbeat Chicago’s newsletter, WBEZ and the Sun-Times’ education newsletter, and Block Club Chicago’s newsletters.
Ellen Rosenfeld, a former Chicago Public Schools teacher and district engagement specialist, is running unopposed to keep the North Side seat she won handily in 2024 against five other would-be school board members in the city’s most crowded race.
Pro-school choice groups spent heavily to back her and oppose a teachers union-backed candidate. She’s made serving on the board her full-time role the past two years after leaving her position with CPS Family and Community Engagement. Rosenfeld is part of a bloc of seven elected members who have opposed the mayor’s appointees and elected allies on the school board, who make up a majority. She has backing from the Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council, which represents CPS support staff, and other groups that oppose the Chicago Teachers Union, the mayor’s former employer and key ally.
The former Local School Council chair and mother of four CPS graduates argues the current board has been too mired in politics and susceptible to outside pressure. But she feels the incoming fully elected board could preside over an academic resurgence, from a rise in reading proficiency to a decrease in chronic absenteeism, one of her key concerns. She said the next board must rally around a set of goals for improving the district.
“Without a shared vision, it’s almost impossible to get the good stuff done,” Rosenfeld said. “We don’t even know where the ship is trying to go.”
District 4b is home to 18 schools, including several high-performing neighborhood campuses, coveted magnet schools, and one popular selective enrollment high school, Lane Tech College Prep. Families here choose their neighborhood schools at higher rates than in many other districts, especially at the elementary level. Some campuses draw diverse student bodies from both inside the district and across the city, but overall, the student population is whiter and higher-income than CPS overall.
Rosenfeld said she has forged relationships with school and district staff, families, and students thanks to regular office hours and visits to about 60 campuses, including some outside her area. She stands by each of her votes, including two on the budget: one to approve a 2025-26 spending plan without high-cost borrowing and a vote against this year’s budget, which she opposed for relying on money that the state hasn’t yet sent to CPS to ward off staff layoffs.
Rosenfeld angered the CTU and some Acero charter school families when she was among a small minority of board members who voted against absorbing five of the network’s schools into the district. She has argued that given its own enrollment and financial challenges, the district should not come to the rescue of troubled privately run public schools. Some charter and contract operators have since pointed to that vote to argue CPS could bail out their campuses.
Rosenfeld is poised to clash with the union again over the issue of school closures, which it staunchly opposes. She says the board has to reckon with decade-long enrollment losses projected to accelerate amid a plummeting birth rate. She said school board members shouldn’t simply look away from a growing number of severely underenrolled schools, where she said students get a subpar experience. The district needs to learn from the “awful” mass school closures of 2013 and start with genuine community engagement, perhaps by assembling a task force with a cross section of Chicagoans, she said.
“What we’re doing it’s not working,” she said. “It’s insanity and it’s wasteful.”
Read Rosenfeld’s full questionnaire.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.