LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

School board can’t work for families unless we listen to what parents want

Plenty of people have strong opinions about what our school board should look like. With political groups squaring up for a battle, there is already evidence that they plan to weaponize parents for their own agendas, rather than listen to them.

Here’s an idea: let them tell us what they want. If you don’t have children in schools, you really shouldn’t be first in line to decide.

From focus groups we conducted with CPS parents, we found a unanimous takeaway — they want to be leading the decision about school board structure.

Importantly, parents are not monolithic. However, given time to chew on the nuances behind the oversimplified public arguments over an elected or appointed board, parents point to the same concerns about opposing political interests.

Elected boards devolve into political battlegrounds, with massive amounts of money determining election outcomes and excluding parents who can’t raise the money to run as candidates. These elections often center around issues that matter to unions and their adversaries, not issues that matter to parents. Los Angeles’ $20 million school board election fight between charter and anti-charter positions is a perfect example.

Meanwhile, Chicago’s appointed board has made decisions without deep involvement from parents, most glaringly the decision to close 50 schools. Some communities are still reeling from these closings, made disproportionately in minority neighborhoods with the justification that they were under-enrolled. There has been a double standard: under-enrolled schools in majority-white communities were never closed in the past.

What we have heard is that parents are looking for balance. They want a structure that maintains the mayor and city’s commitment to supporting CPS with resources and ensures that the everyday mom and dad can serve on the board (not just those with money). The majority of parents also believe undocumented families should be able to vote and run in any board elections. And they want board members that closely match the racial demographics of CPS, not the city.

The only way we end up with a board that will work for the majority of families is if we let them tell us what they want. This means families that reflect the faces of the kids in Chicago’s schools, not the white families of privilege who have been able to leverage their advantages in the past.

It may require a shift in mindset to recognize that parents know what they are talking about.

But parents should have the power to weigh in. They have the most at stake. It’s time they were in charge.