Adam Parrott-Sheffer – District 10

For twenty years I have worked as an educator in communities that have borne the brunt of system racism. As a teacher, I launched one of the first inclusive education programs that led to students with disabilities learning at grade level. As a principal I led teams that saw 20% increases in the number of students at grade level and reduced the chronic absenteeism rate by 50%. As a district leader, I helped ensure over 200k students with disabilities had access to what they needed to successfully complete their GED by partnering with advocacy organizations, labor, the state department of education, school leaders, and families. As a neighborhood school parent, I have volunteered regularly at our schools ensuring recess was a safe and fun place, building and staffing reading rooms for students, and providing professional learning to our principals.

Our kids deserve joy-filled schools where all kids are respected. Everyday. This means that they feel significant, know they belong, and have fun while learning.

Our kids should experience powerful learning. Everyday. This means providing learning opportunities that are rooted in showing mastery, leverage individual and community creativity, and allow learners to connect to their identities.

Our schools must be safe places where each kid thrives. Everyday. This means that we make sure that each kid can access an excellent education no matter their zip code, the color of their skin, their sexual identity, or the money in their family’s bank account.

I care deeply about special education, multilingual learners, youth leadership, the arts, early childhood, and increasing the number of Black and Brown educators and leaders. We must do these things while attending to the structural inequities in our school funding. We must ensure good governance and budget management so that we do not bankrupt future generations.

I think the work to do with community engagement is not just about frequency but directionality. Currently folks do not have a good way to ensure that their perspectives are considered as the board makes decisions. The board also does not do a good job of letting people know what is happening. Communication needs to be two ways and board members need to be accountable for delivering. Communication response times and responses should be public and data should be reported/available on board websites. I also think too many ways in which we communicate are passive instead of proactive. We hold meetings at times people can’t come or in formats or locations that do not work for community members. It is on board members to be proactive and meet people where they are so that it is easy for community members to contribute. Board members are responsible for governing the whole system and to consider each child across Chicago. They should do this with a lens toward the voices of their own subdistrict but knowing the ultimate decision should be what is best for children- especially those who have been marginalized by our systems.

I believe we have to live within our means as a city while prioritizing our most important resource- our children. This means that we need to consider budget cuts that focus on shrinking central office while protecting the core of teachers, students, and curriculum. We need to address TIF funding to maximize school dollars. I also think we can be creative and generate revenue/reduce expenses through community schools that are open in partnership with the park district, public libraries, health centers, and non-profit organizations. An independent audit can help us identify how best to make these decisions and ensure we are working from the same data and evidence in a transparent way.

Borrowing is not an option for our city as it will bankrupt our future.

As a principal I have worked with student-based and position-based budgeting. There isn’t much difference in them as structures; what matters is how they are implemented. First, what matters most is that there is enough money in the pot to allocate. We are currently short $1 billion dollars we need to work with similarly situated districts to organize for these dollars from the state. Second, what matters is the weighted formula. We need to make sure that students with more needs and communities that are building back from systemic disinvestment have access to additional resources. Third, we need to make sure that there is transparency. With any formula in CPS we always move towards schools having some positions funded differently and this is a major source of in equity. We need completely transparent budgets that are easy to analyze.

As the only candidate city-wide with the education and licensure to be a school superintendent in Illinois, I think it is important to be clear about the role of the board in addressing this unacceptable reality. Our job as a board is to ensure that progress for these schools is built into any strategic plan with clear, measurable goals created in partnership with the community. We must then have the CEO and their team update us on progress towards those goals at board meetings and that update must include what they have done, the degree to which it was effective, what they learned, and how they will adjust the plan in order to do better. The board oversteps when it gets into creating programs and the day-to-day operations of the district. As a board member I would ensure we have a CEO who sees this as a top priority and I would hold them accountable to delivering academic results, staff retention and satisfaction, and a positive student experience in these schools. The ultimate success of these schools will be determined by the quality of principal and teacher leadership we identify and support with leading these communities.

I have worked with districts in the United States and internationally that developed Black Excellence committees and priorities. For it to be successful, it will need a vision, a budget, key actions, and indicators of success. It also routinely needs to be on the board agenda.

Most importantly, it needs to be community based. The membership must include the organizations in our neighborhoods who are already demonstrating Black student achievement and it must include the voices and leadership of Black young people in our schools.

I have two boys who are very different and need different things from school. I am glad I live in a city with so many different models of learning. It is really hard for one school to be all things to all kids. Having 600 schools means we can specialize. The challenge is that all options have to be excellent options. While my personal children attend their neighborhood school, I believe we need to trust families to make the best decisions for their kids. I am less concerned about governance models than monitoring to make sure every school is doing right by their kids and families. We also need to make sure every school is treating their employees well and compensating them fairly. As a board we need to be focused on equity of resource allocation, policy implementation, and excellence of learning results.

I was principal of a school where students spoke more than 35 languages and represented more than 75 nationalities. “Bilingual” frames the challenge as an English/Spanish divide when it is actually a multilingual asset of our city. At my school, we addressed this need by incentivizing all teachers to be endorsed to teach students with English as a Second Language and prioritizing hiring bilingual teachers. These are practices that can be adopted at scale.

In my experience, we can be more creative and flexible in how we support multilingual learners. We need to design programs based upon what each kid needs instead of how we have labeled their “problem.” This should include partnering with families, community organizations, and our own students to help address learning needs in ways that are both innovative and compliant with relevant laws.

As a teacher, I launched one of the first inclusive learning models for students with disabilities. As a principal, I increased the number of special education teachers supporting my students and improved services. As a district leader, I streamlined how long it took to address parent concerns when their child was not receiving support. This is personal for me; as a parent and family member of people who learn differently, I’ve worked harder than should be necessary to make sure legally required services were provided to my loved ones. Too often I wasn’t successful despite my efforts.

Our biggest challenge in special education is we wait for kids to fail before we help them. Kids have to struggle and not pass classes before they receive the appropriate help. Shifting to provide services first to demonstrate they are needed allows us to focus on grade level learning instead of always playing catch up.

Yes. As a principal my experience is that schools become safe places when everyone who walks through the doors knows they belongs, feels significant, and experiences joy. The whole school safety plan prioritizes this approach to building school community.

We need to create schools where kids want to be. Students need to be connected to the adults in the building and know adults care for them. School must tap into their interests, their identities, their desires to be creative, and challenge them.

This will go a long way and we will still need support for families. As a principal I worked with families to figure out the root causes why kids were absent. We coordinated family carpools, we bought alarm clocks, we had parents call other parents to remind them. I even went to homes and walked kids to school to make sure they got there. Knowing the data, then building relationships, and rolling up ones sleeves and getting to work is how we solve hard problems.

We can learn from schools like Kenwood Academy that are very effective at offering college level courses. Every year we have students who are qualified for the academic center track and do not attend due to space issues. The dual credit work begins in 7th and 8th grade by ensuring that every student who wants an academic center spot and is ready has one. One way to do this and strengthen neighborhood schools is to have satellite academic center programming in neighborhood schools. This will get kids on track to dual credit while enhancing our elementary school programming city-wide.

The district is obligated to provide a high quality curriculum that is aligned to state standards and it must ensure there is adequate training and support for understanding that curriculum. This is critical to the success of early career teachers. However, mandating a curriculum is short-sighted provided schools are using high quality materials and achieving ambitious learning goals. There are different types of schools and sometimes they need different curriculum. For example, an arts-based school or a expeditionary learning project-based school would be enhanced by using curriculum that reflect their approach to learning. Our diversity is an asset and we should not give up on it just because it is easier to have everyone do the same thing even if it doesn’t work for a lot of people.

LSCs are an asset to our system and part of the reason we have seen improvement over the past thirty years. However, there are many schools that do not have a functioning LSC. We need to make sure LSCs have appropriate training and support. We need to invest in recruiting candidates city-wide and incentivizing participation for this unpaid role. Ultimately we need to ensure LSC decisions, made in partnership with principals, are respected and followed to the extent legally possible.

The research in Chicago demonstrates that principal leadership and agency coupled with collaboration amongst teachers and LSCs improves student learning. Local School Councils should be responsible for hiring and evaluating their school leaders. The district should build the pool of eligible principal candidates but selection belongs to the local community. Principals should have significant autonomy bounded by clear accountability for performance and how people experience the school.

Closing schools is a failed proposition and one rooted in a scarcity mindset. We should look at building new integrated school communities in places where the current buildings are deteriorating and where student enrollment has decreased or families are selecting non-public options. We should identify neighborhoods that have experienced systemic disinvestment and rebuild new school options in partnership with other community resources. Ultimately, we must consider the participation of community members in the process and the demand from the local community for a new integrated or composite school. The local community should drive new school community creation and not have it done to them like it was previously. We can do this in a cost-effective way by sharing space and resources with other city agencies, non-profits, and community-based organizations.

I have represented district leadership in negotiations with labor on workload reduction. I have also resolved cross agency and stakeholder conflict regarding policy and services. When conversations are centered on finding multiple ways to meet each groups needs and address their fears we can find resolution. When we stay focused on interest-based bargaining (our values and what we care about) and refrain from position-based bargaining (our preferred or only solution) we can get things done. At the end of it, the priority has to be that we can all communicate how the contract will ultimately serve students better.

Our district has the fewest number of high performing schools and the largest deferred maintenance required on school buildings (~$32 million per a school). We also have the least access to regional gifted, classical, academic centers and selective enrollment schools. We also have limited early childhood options that are affordable and accessible to families. District 10 needs to go from the bottom of the list to the top in terms of investment in order to address the legacy of inequity on the south side.