‘I WASN’T RAISED TO BE A POLITICIAN’
Curiosity about her kids’ education led Chaleski to become Danbury’s newest rep
DANBURY — While Republican Rachel Chaleski is excited about the opportunity to represent the city’s residents in Hartford next year, the newly elected state legislator is quick to admit her budding political career is not some product of a lifelong aspiration to serve.
Weeks removed from the stress of election night and casually sipping tea at Elmer’s Diner Friday morning, Chaleski remarked on the absence of political influence in her family and described being far from displaying any characteristics of a future politician. She was never a comfortable public speaker and maintained a “middle of the road” status as a student throughout her academic career.
“I wasn’t raised to be a politician — my family is not political at all.” Chaleski said. “At all. I can remember going to vote with my parents maybe a few times and it was old school, pull an actual lever with a curtain but they never spoke about politics.”
After serving on the Danbury Board of Education since 2017, the school board chair edged out incumbent Ken Gucker, D-Danbury, last month by a narrow margin of 27 votes to take the 138th House District seat and claim the only victory among the Danbury Republican Party’s card of candidates.
But the lack of political savvy in her
“I was just a pest. I just kept showing up, I kept speaking. I would meet with parents regularly who would come and say, what can I do?” Rachel Chaleski
make-up does not mean Chaleski is not qualified for her new job — in many ways her background is it exactly what has prepared her for what lays ahead.
The native of Warwick, R.I. grew up in a threebedroom, one bathroom home as the oldest of four children — two sisters and a brother — all of whom attended the city’s public schools. Her mother worked full-time as an administrative assistant and then in finance for an insurance company; her father a welder for Electric Boat Company who worked numerous part-time jobs.
“I did not have a lot growing up,” she added. “But my folks instilled in me a strong work ethic and compassion for others.”
Passion for education
At Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y., Chaleski met her husband, Carl, before the couple moved to Danbury in 2000. They have called the city home ever since but it would not be until their first born-son enrolled in kindergarten in 2012 that Chaleski began a steady engagement with local politics
“I just wanted to learn about my kid’s day at school,” she said. “He was 6, going to kindergarten for eight hours and would come home and I would ask, ‘how was your day? What did you do? What did you learn? And it was like, ‘I don’t know, nothing.’”
Chaleski, said her curiosity around her kids’ education led her to start attending Parent Teacher Organization meetings where she found interest in how local governance affected the school district.
“It kind of felt like high school all over again where it was kind of cliquey, you know? I was never the popular kid in high school so it was like, ‘here we go all over again,’” she remembered with a laugh. “But I just kept going.”
With her two children attending the city’s Western CT Academy for International Studies elementary magnet school years later, she said the first issue that she engaged with came from a decision by the city’s Board of Education school to eliminate “sibling privilege” for Danbury families seeking to enroll their children at the school, but not for those families’ sending children from surrounding districts.
The privilege meant parents would get preference to enroll children if one of their siblings had already secured a spot via the standard lottery system.
While it didn’t affect her kids directly, Chaleski said the idea that they would eliminate the privileges only for Danbury students and not others felt “discriminatory.”
“I didn’t even know there was a Board of Education before that, and it was like, who is making this decision?”
The feeling of inequity led Chaleski to enroll in a free, 20 week Parent Leadership Training Institute — a program designed to teach parents the intricacies of civic engagement as an avenue to advocate for their children.
While she may have been a “middle of the road student” in her younger years, Chaleski excelled in the course where she would practice public speaking and learned how to lobby Board of Education members at their meetings and by circulating petitions.
She only missed one of the parent leadership classes over the 20 week semester in order to attend a budget presentation provided by the non-partisan policy organization, the School and State Finance project. Eventually, the Board of Education reversed the student privilege position, keeping the rule in places for all students and their families.
“I was just a pest,” Chaleski said. “I just kept showing up, I kept speaking. I would meet with parents regularly who would come and say, what can I do?”
The sense of having an impact on the Board of
Education’s decision made an impression on her as she learned more about the how the school district operated, particularly around the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula, which the state’s Department of Education established first in 1989 as a way to distribute roughly $2 billion in state education funding to school districts around the state.
Above all, the newly elected state representative discovered value in a yearslong push to establish a charter school in Danbury, which she sees as a way to raise student achievement in the school district. The issue was one of the main differences between her and her opponent over the course of her campaign.
Members of the Danbury legislative delegation have heavily opposed the idea, arguing it would take funding away from the school district’s budget.
Chaleski noted in 2017, “when the state legislature was pretty much split between” Democrats and Republicans, “there was more room for compromise, but now it is like a one party-rule and (the Democrats) can do whatever they want.”
Non-partisan
Chaleski does not claim unchecked loyalty to the party line. During her campaign, many Republican candidates running for state office downplayed any threat from the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade because abortion access remained codified in Connecticut State law; whereas Chaleski did not shy in her willingness to always support for a woman’s right to choose.
As chair of the Board of Education, Chaleski keeps a calm, reserved demeanor, a reflection of the fact that she is more interested in listening and making grounded decisions based on research and context when it comes to the school district’s budget challenges and other matters.
She shook her head recalling the anger displayed by parents upset with mask mandates during the pandemic and said she is uncomfortable with the concern from parents alleging Danbury schools are teaching "critical race theory" when she knows that is not the case.
She also disagreed with statements made by fellow Board of Education members at a recent meeting who criticized a small section of an expansive set of educational goals outlined by school administrators’ seeking ensure curriculum is “culturally competent” in a school district where more than 60 percent of students identify with a race other than white and nearly 30 percent qualify as English learners.
“I’ve found my passion to serve during my time as a ‘professional volunteer’ at the local level and my goal is to bring that passion and experience to the state level,” Chaleski said of her future role in Hartford.
“All I can do is go up there and make some noise and connections and build relationships and hopefully get something done,” she added.