Angel Gutierrez – District 8

I bring 30 years of experience working in low-income communities in Chicago and Denver creating programs that help address needs – from food insecurity to health and wellness to employment and training. Some of those programs were in WIC Grocery Stores, Summer Lunch Mobile Program, Afterschool programs, Summer Camps, health and nutrition classes to creating safe places for kids to thrive. Working with lawmakers to create policies that not only work for families with children, but that come with the dollars necessary implementation purposes from SNAP to WIC to Summer Lunch Benefits.

My long-term vision is for all CPS schools to be fully resourced based on their unique needs, with communities serving as champions for change. I envision a district that meets the needs of families, fosters inclusivity, and prioritizes student growth, achievement, and outcomes. I hope to achieve this by prioritizing:

Establish Board Transparency – I aim to establish transparency within the Chicago Board of Education so that no stakeholder feels “left in the dark.” In order for all our community members, school staff, educators, parents, and students to advocate for the necessary change they need, they need access to clear, accurate, and timely information. I aim to empower our constituents by bringing transparency while bringing everyone together.

Ensuring Top-Quality Education for Every Student – I will work to ensure that families have more top-quality education options to choose from. As the current system leans into becoming a one-size fits all model, we will see this serve some families but not all. I will lead with a true, equity lens and try to serve all families based on their specific needs.

Responsible Management of Chicago Tax Dollars – In addition to providing more transparency around the district’s budget, I will work towards a budget formula that equitably distributes resources without compromising the quality of education at high-performing schools. The current approach does not account for the unique needs and context of every school. The board should work towards understanding all these needs and challenge themselves to meet those needs with the resources available.

One of my priorities is to be a leader in transparency. This will empower the community to advocate, collaborate, and hold me accountable. I will work with my Board Colleagues to produce an Annual Impact/Care Report that would include key academic, athletic, financial, and achievement data for the city’s students and for my district.

I would also commit to District 8 newsletter about what is happening in our schools and invite the community to provide feedback on how they would assess our progress around:

• Student Achievement
• Parent Involvement
• Local School Councils
• Administrator Perspectives
• Partner Highlights
• Awards awarded to our students, teachers and schools
• Behind the Curtain Look at the work of the Board

Given the role’s responsibilities and obligations, a board member needs to understand that this job requires a view that is a thousand feet above sea level. It is a big picture, high-stakes view that ensures we’re making the best executive and policy decisions on behalf of the City of Chicago. That being said, I understand the varying needs of my neighbors and the families in my district. It is my job to also ensure that my district’s perspective gets baked into the high level view to serve my district.

The Mayor and CPS Leaders need to court and engage the whole Illinois Congressional Delegation about the current and emerging needs of our school systems. Work with them to help us identify federal funding within all the federal agencies. I would encourage my colleagues if elected on the School Board to identify 8 to 10 business men and women champions for education and use them to begin talking with Legislative leaders in Springfield about creating a different funding formula for CPS. I would work with CPS leadership to create a plan of something tangible that we could pitch to foundations and corporations to buy into. Beyond that, the board needs to challenge itself to find savings one-third of Chicago Public School buildings that have space for at least double the students they’re currently enrolling, negotiate more favorable contracts with labor and vendors, and make more timely debt service payments

Instead of eliminating options for students, parents and communities and making decisions in a vacuum, we should be doubling down our investment and creating more opportunities for them to succeed. All this new policy decision is doing is shifting resources from schools that have healthy enrollment numbers to schools that have less than 100 students attending the school. In district 8 our schools have lost millions of dollars with this decision. Instead of rehiring a teacher or counselor the positions were left vacant to “balance the budget.” I will work with my colleagues to find a better funding formula for our schools based on size and utilization.

This is an important challenge to acknowledge and address, especially in the context of CPS’s history of undeserving our Black students. First, the Board needs to abide by state law by creating a standing Black Student Achievement Committee; and more importantly, it needs to be intentional in its formation and focus. I will rely on that committee to build on my vision for more and better opportunities for all students but especially for our black students. As I advocate for more diverse, fitting programs and better allocation of resources, I want to ensure that underserved communities are also being provided with tailored programs that best fit their needs and create opportunities for growth and success. I am committed to collaborating with this committee and the impacted communities to better address this challenge.

I will advocate to have a budget line item with an appropriate appropriation for Black Student Achievement Committee and the other two committees that are called for in HB 2908. This budget appropriation would call for the committee to be staffed appropriately to do the work that is required by the committee. Also, I commit to ensuring that the African American Community has a strong voice and autonomy in nominating committee members. The committee at minimum should have two representatives from each of the 10 School Board Districts (1 from each sub-district) for a total of 20 members made of up members most invested in Black Student achievement and impacted by the district’s failure to serve Black Students.

The Board’s role and responsibilities are to oversee the different types of public, charter, and options schools and represent the interests of their district’s residents. I believe that each district should be providing an array of education options to parents and students from selective enrollment to magnet to neighborhood to alternative to charter to Arts to Science, Classical or Trade schools. I want all CPS funded schools from the Neighborhood, Selective Enrollment to Alternative and Charter Schools to be successful because those students are our students and when they succeed, we all succeed. I support students and parents having educational options in the form of charter and alternative schools as long as they are meeting the contractual requirements and performance metrics around educational attainment, enrollment, financial, etc, that have been negotiated by CPS and contractors.

CPS needs to continue to work with our federal and state partners to ensure that they Invest in English Learner Programming with adequate and consistent financial investment. While increasing their investment in funding for Bilingual Educators. In addition, the district must continue to collaborate with agencies, city providers and post-secondary institutions to help meet the needs of students. Some of that help can come in the form of recruiting more bilingual teachers and aides.

1. Making sure CPS is investing the proper resources into the department
2. Making sure that CPS is drawing down all allowable federal/state dollars that are allocated to serve students with disabilities.
3. Making sure that CPS is partnering with local nonprofits, government entities and healthcare systems that serve students with disabilities that might have resources to provide the school, students and family. This will allow for a better coordination of care and service to the student.

As for busing, instead of taking away options and choices, CPS should be looking for ways to increase services for students and families that need them. I support the recommendations that CPS Parents for Buses has made which include – 1) Stipend, 2) Pay, Benefits, and Legislation for Bus Drivers, 3) Prioritize Low Income Students and 4) Allow paratransit companies (vans) to begin transporting Priority Group A and B students.

I can support implementing and funding CPS’s new whole school safety plan if it empowers the school communities to make the decisions on how to spend their resources. For example there are some schools in the 8th district that are plagued with gang/turf issues and would love to have a police officer present in their schools as a deterrent and can’t based on the new model. This is a local school decision that should be made by the principal, local school councils, parents, students and teachers. As I heard way too frequently on the campaign trails from students, teachers and parents – if teachers and students do not feel safe in schools – not a lot of teaching and learning will happen.

The district must continue to collaborate with agencies, city providers and post-secondary institutions to help meet the needs of this student population. It needs to look at meeting students where they are at and begin offering different academic programs that offer core classes along with different workforce pathways for students to choose from like tech, health sciences, transportation and logistics, etc.

CPS needs to offer more robust Pre-K opportunities and continue to offer families different education options that best serve their needs. This will build a strong pipeline of college-ready students that can advocate and take advantage of dual credit opportunities. We need to identify college readiness gaps and start solving for them in real time. When students earn college credits while still in high school, they are better prepared for that postsecondary transition and save money. All of that is dependent on our students being fully prepared to take advantage of this opportunity, and that starts much earlier.

I also support schools offering more Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses as it provides students with the academic and technical skills, knowledge, and training necessary to succeed in future careers and to become lifelong learners. CTE programs are designed to prepare students for a wide range of high-wage, high-skill, and high-demand careers. In CPS, expanding access to quality CTE programs is crucial for equipping students with practical skills that meet the demands of the evolving job market.

We need to understand the diversity of students we serve, and we have to offer diverse opportunities that enable all our students to be successful in their postsecondary journey.

I believe that there should be one overarching curriculum that should be used by CPS. The curriculum decision should be determined based on the needs of the diverse set of learners that attend the various types of CPS schools. That means before any decision is made to purchase a curriculum there should be the buy-in of the end user, the Teachers and Educators, who are tasked with using and implementing the curriculum on a daily basis. That means creating user groups to test the product before it goes live in the classroom.

The Board plays a major role in ensuring that the public has enough information to best support the district’s work from their seat. This means transparency, communication, and collaboration are important, especially with Local School Councils (LSCs). I would work to ensure that our district office is doing everything they can to elevate the role LSCs play, offer comprehensive training for them to fully understand and own their responsibilities, and empower them with the decision making powers to drive impact. We should trust LSCs to make decisions that best support their goals and needs. Decisions like hiring School Resource Officers should be made by LSCs with input from administrators, teachers, parents, students, and other interested community parties like elected officials. I also support democratically elected LSCs’s ability to hire, evaluate, and fire their school’s principals. A local, democratically elected group should be in the best position to do this, with the proper training, support, transparency, and outside of any legal and safety concerns. Let’s empower, train, and provide the tools necessary to our school leaders to best serve our students.

I think that Local School Councils and Principals should be partners. The LSC’s job is to make the life of the Principal easier and help them focus on BIG PICTURE school things from hiring to raising money to raising the schools profile in the community. With that said the school systems job is to provide the LSC and hire committee with the overarching criteria that is necessary for hiring. Same goes for dismal of a Principal – YES the LSC can recommend termination/removal for performance related issues, but CPS can intercede and dismiss a Principal if they have done something egregious, unlawful, or brings-discredit, that will pose a risk, bring exposure or liability to the school or school system.

Currently, state law prevents Chicago from closing schools until January 15, 2025. And, the current CPS Board of Education just passed a resolution put forward by Martinez that said it will not close schools until 2027. I believe that after the moratorium ends Chicago – parents, students, teachers, administrators, communities, elected officials, higher education, city colleges, business community, nonprofits, foundations and industries will need to reassess and have a soul-searching conversation around education, space utilization, types of services and opportunities that can help us create new education and or community models for meeting the needs of the students, parents, community and industry with the hopeful repurposing of schools closed.

Unfortunately the current model of one-third of schools being under-enrolled and under-utilized is not a sustainable long-term model. The cost of maintenance, deferred maintenance obligations, general operating expenses keep growing and not a good use of taxpayer dollars. Better to take a hard look now and use those cost savings as a big down payment for our students’ future!

Negotiating labor contracts should always begin with CPS providing their union partners with detailed budget assumptions and projections for each of the fiscal years covered in the contract. These projections should include both expected revenues, expenses, and extra payments the district would like to make towards pension obligations or debt. Also, we need to factor in market conditions and inflation to ensure all sides have an understanding of what short-term and long-term impacts a contract can have. Once that has been established, contract negotiations need to be grounded in student service, reality, and trust. All parties have to be constrained by the information presented in the forecasts and bargain in good faith for our students around the matters they are legally obligated to.

In District 8, we need a dedicated arts-focused school that will inspire and nurture creativity amongst our youth that don’t have significant, creative outlets. We also need more trade programs, or even a dedicated trade school, to better prepare our students for the jobs of tomorrow, especially for those not ready or interested in a four year college degree. Lastly, we need more full-day, Pre-K slots to meet the growing demand of our working families.