Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson overhauls faculty board with six new members

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced his appointees to the Chicago Board of Schooling Wednesday, naming Jianan Shi of the dad or mum advocacy group Elevate Your Hand to steer the board and changing all however one of many members appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. 

Shi, a former highschool instructor in Boston and Chicago, will change former state lawmaker Miguel del Valle. He’s resigning from Elevate Your Hand to tackle the brand new function.

The lone Lightfoot appointee who was reappointed, historical past professor Elizabeth Todd-Breland, will function the board’s vice chairman. The opposite new members are: Mary Fahey Hughes, Mariela Estrada, Rudy Lozano, Michelle Morales, and Tanya Woods.

Their phrases will run till Jan. 1, 2025, when a brand new 21-member, partially elected faculty board will take over.

Shi, who has a grasp’s diploma in training from Boston Faculty, taught highschool science in Boston and later at Solorio Excessive College on Chicago’s Southwest Facet. He stepped in as Elevate Your Hand’s government director in 2019.

In a press release, Shi vowed to be “the toughest working board member CPS has ever seen.” He famous that every one newly appointed board members convey expertise working with native faculty councils and have been district dad and mom, educators, or each.

“As stewards of the transition towards an elected faculty board, now we have a lot so as to add to and alter over the subsequent yr and a half,” he mentioned. 

Johnson was elected this previous spring after working for a decade as a Chicago Lecturers Union organizer. He defeated former Chicago Public CEO Paul Vallas and ran on a progressive platform buoyed by the CTU, which has argued for a broader method to highschool enchancment centered on tackling points exterior school rooms, comparable to inexpensive housing, meals insecurity, and gun violence. 

His faculty board appointments supply one other glimpse of his imaginative and prescient for the nation’s fourth largest district as the town nears a high-stakes transition away from longstanding mayoral management of its faculty district to an elected faculty board. The brand new board takes over because the district additionally faces a extra precarious monetary image, with federal COVID restoration {dollars} operating out subsequent yr and rising prices associated to worker pensions and different debt.

Within the run-up to the appointments, some dad or mum and incapacity rights advocacy teams argued the Johnson administration ought to have performed extra to obviously spell out its standards for board members and solicit functions extra broadly.

Fahey Hughes, who previously served as Elevate Your Hand’s dad or mum liaison for particular training, has been an outspoken advocate for college students with disabilities within the district. She leads nineteenth Ward Mother and father for Particular Schooling. 

Estrada is at present the director of neighborhood engagement on the United Means of Metro Chicago; she additionally previously labored on the metropolis’s Inspector Basic’s workplace and on the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, a nonprofit that companions with the district. Lozano is a vice chairman at J.P. Morgan Chase; he previously labored for the neighborhood group Enlace Chicago and taught in different excessive colleges. 

Morales is the president of the Woods Fund Chicago and previously led the Mikva Problem, a youth advocacy group. And Woods is a working towards lawyer who at present serves as the chief director of the Westside Justice Heart. 

Morales and Lozano each taught at different public excessive colleges, in line with their on-line profiles, whereas Woods and Estrada record neighborhood organizing roles of their previous work expertise. 

“It’s my honor to convey collectively such a various group of individuals from neighborhood, enterprise, philanthropy and elsewhere to collaborate round a imaginative and prescient for our colleges that ensures each scholar has entry to a totally resourced, supportive, and nurturing studying surroundings,” Johnson mentioned in a press release. 

Johnson’s faculty board picks follows his appointment of academics union chief Jen Johnson as his training deputy. The academics union’s basis has contributed financially to Elevate Your Hand and a few of the different community-based nonprofits, comparable to Enlace and Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, the place Johnson’s board picks have labored.

Schooling advocates sought a voice in board decisions

Final month, a couple of dozen training advocacy teams appealed to Johnson to make sure a extra open and clear course of for choosing board members. The teams representing dad and mom and different advocates — together with a few of the metropolis’s most outstanding incapacity rights nonprofits — urged the Johnson administration to obviously spell out its choice standards and to solicit nominations from the general public. 

Following longstanding considerations in regards to the district’s companies for college students with disabilities, they argued that the board should embody members who perceive the wants of these college students and have a observe document advocating for them. They requested for a gathering with the mayor.

In a press release to Chalkbeat in June, the mayor’s workplace mentioned the mayor is “a associate to many of those people and organizations looking for training justice,” and his choice would mirror their values. 

However members of a number of of the advocacy teams that signed the letter mentioned they by no means acquired a proper response from the mayor’s workplace — or any extra perception into the method for selecting board members. After one of many teams, Activate Chicago Mother and father, tweeted that the administration had not engaged with households about what they want to see in board appointees, a Johnson spokesperson responded: “We haven’t requested as a result of we already know.”

Cassie Creswell, a district dad or mum who leads Illinois Households for Public Colleges, one of many teams that signed the letter, mentioned the appointment course of might have been extra clear in a district the place many households nonetheless deeply distrust its management.

“That belief deficit isn’t as simple to quantify because the fiscal shortfalls, however it is usually essential to strengthening CPS in the long run,” Creswell mentioned in a press release.

In his assertion, Shi mentioned the brand new board has the “large accountability” to enhance companies for college students with disabilities, empower Native College Councils, develop profession and technical teaching programs, and develop efforts to supply extra companies to college students, such because the Sustainable Group Colleges initiative, a partnership between the district, academics union and community-based organizations.

“We might be advocating for extra funding at each stage and arrange the longer term 21-seat faculty board for fulfillment,” he mentioned.

The college board positions are unpaid volunteer posts, so Shi mentioned he’ll concentrate on transitioning into his new function earlier than beginning to search for a brand new job. Natasha Erskine and Pleasure Clendenning will collectively lead Elevate Your Hand on an interim foundation following Shi’s resignation.   

New board members might be elected in 2024

In November 2024, Chicago voters will get to elect 10 members of a brand new 21-member faculty board. The rest of the board at that time, together with a board president, might be appointed by the mayor.

The board might be absolutely elected by January 2027. State lawmakers this spring gave themselves extra time to create a brand new electoral map for the college board election amid disagreement over find out how to pretty divide the town to yield a board that displays the district’s demographics. The deadline to attract that map is now subsequent April.

Del Valle, whose time period expired in June, instructed Chalkbeat in a latest interview that he was not serious about persevering with to serve on the board or in operating for a seat subsequent yr. He voiced concern in regards to the giant measurement of the longer term board and about the truth that undocumented residents of Chicago wouldn’t be allowed to vote within the faculty board election beneath the present legislation. 

“You’ll have labor versus enterprise and constitution colleges by way of funding,” he mentioned. “Mother and father received’t stand a lot of an opportunity of getting elected.”

A number of of Lightfoot’s appointees have been serving on the board for under a brief time period. She shook issues up in June 2022, when she appointed three members, ousting one, Dwayne Truss, who vocally opposed the development of a $120 million highschool on the Close to South Facet. In March, after failing to safe a second time period, Lightfoot appointed a former constitution faculty official to the seat vacated by the previous vice chairman, Sendhil Revuluri, final December.

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