Chicago isn't the only city seeing school population shrink. But that trend makes it all the more urgent for Chicago to retain the population it has and attract non-residents. The latest A.D. Q&A podcast explores the trends.
The report, produced by Kids First Chicago, says the slowing growth of Latino families and a steady out-migration of Black families from Chicago are big reasons for the downward trend at Chicago Public Schools.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Janice Jackson took the helm of the Chicago Public Schools at a time when it was, again, a mess.
Her three predecessors had been pushed out, the latest in scandal, the one before him imprisoned. As an educator who’d worked her way up through her hometown school district, Jackson was tasked with stabilizing and restoring the public’s confidence in the country’s third-largest schools system.
Armed uniquely with a history they sorely lacked experience and valuable relationships as a former CPS student, teacher, principal and administrator plus parent of students Jackson shored up budgets, developed a five-year plan and promoted talent from within to assemble an uber-diverse leadership team loaded with CPS teachers. Principals halted their exodus.
Provided
When youth activist Zair Menjivar first got the mysterious email inviting him to join a Zoom meeting with Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office, he thought it was junk mail.
Then he received a text message from someone at the mayor’s office informing him it was serious.
Menjivar, an 18-year-old high school senior, learned last week he is the youngest person to receive Chicago’s Mayoral Medal of Honor.
The new award is the first of its kind and will honor 18 organizations and individuals that have contributed time, money and effort to help communities throughout the city struggling during the pandemic. A ceremony will be live streamed April 20.
Sometimes we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s how we should think about dealing with the acute inequities created by the pandemic while we simultaneously manage the long-term inequities in our education system. To press pause on funding the Evidence-Based Funding (EBF) formula for students in Illinois for a second year in a row may appear to make sense on the surface, but it flies in the face of the “equity” the State of Illinois points to as a core value.
This was a safe political move, but one that will not only halt the state’s pathway to achieving adequacy and equity, but that will hurt, already struggling, poor Black and Latinx children for years to come. We should be embarrassed knowing that when the state finally committed to fixing what was one of the most regressive funding formulas in the country, that we will not achieve an adequate funding level for these children for another thirty years. Yet now, under the veil of COVID, we are diverting funds