Kimberly Brown – District 4

I am proud of my direct work supporting underserved youth because I lived through adverse childhood and young adult experiences and survivors give back.

When I founded Centrally Human in 2015, it was to break through the digital divide and teach underserved youth how to be the executives of tomorrow. We trained more than 200 Chicago youth (94% black and brown youth; 68% female and 3% nonbinary) on the Centrally Human model with positive impact in entrepreneurship opportunities, advocating for self through trauma-informed and Restorative Justice-informed techniques, and creating paths for youth interaction with the creation of our formal and informal mentor network.

I met a leader at CPS Family and Community Engagement, and I support that incredible team for Network 4 personally with direct donations of resources (book shelves, access to corporate donations, introductions to experts to offer free community classes from my professional network). They work directly with our high-need CPS families in Network 4 (not to be confused with electoral District 4 but they highly overlap) for food, clothing, language, books and so much more.

As a teacher at Roosevelt University, I personally mentor youth who come from homes and lives with limited resources, means, and encouragement of their dreams. I support their imagination and also teach curriculum that drives economic success for my students. I proudly have many students who are living their successes.

As an adult educator and executive trainer, I humanize the lived experience of trauma and challenging upbringings and bring proven strategies for them to address their conflict management and growth from home into their workplace. Many of these adults were once the underserved youth.

I’m a volunteer leader with Communities United, and I am learning from their incredible leadership team how to mobilize and activate volunteers and bring critical resources directly to our most at-need families on the north side.

I came from working class parents who sacrificed a lot for us to get the education to have a better future. I lived through sexual assault, intimate partner violence, losing multiple friends to suicide, deep financial insecurity, and creating healthy family dynamics as I worked to find my footing in the world. I train, support, and care for those that need it because that’s what others did for me. Because we’re part of a community.

My vision for CPS is to be the foundation of Chicago’s thriving economy as a fully-resourced, modern, and sought after destination for education. And we’ll start to get there with my top 3 priorities, which will directly address inequities for special education and students with disabilities as well as English as a Second Language Learners.

1. BRING BACK BUSES: If you can’t get to school, nothing else matters. Every student needs safe transportation. Whether it is a bus*, bike bus, or walking group. Let’s build a CPS-wide community culture and have it start with a basic bus to school. *Redefining “bus” from being big and yellow to being a group commute. Kimberly Brown is proudly endorsed by the parent-run CPS Parents for Buses
2. IMPROVED PROCUREMENT: CPS spends 1.2-1.5 more than retail pricing too often. Improved financial management across people, process and technology is critical to make every dollar work harder and is the fiduciary mandate to taxpayers. Best in class procurement & financial management is critical to earning and accessing additional resources from every level of government and grant providers as well.
3. ACCESS & TRANSPARENCY: We will begin the culture change with CPS HQ to match our CPS families. Mobile-friendly, multi-language, easy-to-search websites across departments and schools. School and District visualizations that are easy to read, updated bi-annually, and based on performance and feedback. Children with disabilities will not require lawyers to be treated fairly. Principals will stay at schools for 10+ years and be top performers across every metric.

When the District is fully funded and resourced, we will never have to worry about the needs of children in one part of the city being different or conflicting to the point of creating a Board Member conflict of interest. This is because a fully-funded CPS gets the right resources to the schools (Principals and LSCs) to flex to their community’s needs. This is equality AND equity.

I have a multifaceted process for communicating progress that would also adapt over time based on effectiveness and community needs/feedback.

1. Reformat Board meetings to prioritize the Board and executive leadership to report progress to the community as the first agenda item for each meeting.
2. My own weekly digital updates (website, newsletter, social media) with volunteer support for language translation.
3. I will attend District 4 LSC meetings as well as host my own monthly community “coffee chats” at rotating locations around the district as well as virtually.
4. I will have regular meetings with local, city and state elected officials and community leaders to ensure key updates are included in their communications.
5. I will communicate with Chicago journalists (including student journalists) to ensure all questions are answered and get reported to the community.
6. Build a “living” community survey visualization (the good and the bad; CPS leaders can’t cherry-pick) where users can provide additional information or clarifying feedback. Ideally we would update quarterly or bi-annually, and this data would inform strategic planning as well as performance tracking.

We will hopefully have Chicagoans electing experienced leaders to take on this challenge. We cannot get additional resources until we prove to the stakeholders we can manage money. We need a budget and transparency. Procurement processes that are best-in-class. Expert renegotiations of all corporate contracts. Chicagoans want to understand where the money is going and how it’s being spent. They love their local schools. They are not happy with CPS ‘central office’ management. We need to change the culture to be accountable, responsible and radically transparent to regain trust of the community and grow public education successfully. We need a real audit (potentially a forensic financial audit) to show the funding inefficiencies and provide radical transparency into areas to ‘de-bloat’ and areas lacking investment. First, we do a detailed audit and analysis of budget as well as cash flow. Then we need to factor in future cost increases. Then, we find efficiencies (they won’t fill all the gaps but there should be no inefficient waste or overspending if it’s avoidable – and there are plenty of areas we can improve). Then, we show the operational and capital expenditure gaps at a school level and district level. Finally, we agree on the future state and vision for CPS based on real outcomes. Once we see our current state reality and future state vision, we can work with community and elected leaders across our government systems to build a modern plan. There is no easy answer because of its untangling decades of mismanagement and corruption. The solution is real teamwork. (With recent news, I also need to say: I oppose the short-term, high-interest loan that the Mayor is advocating for; I oppose CTU getting everything they want right now when it’s not financially possible; I oppose the inappropriate and immature adult behavior; I oppose unprofessional public arguing with a school district superintendent by city leaders).

When our district is fully funded, the new funding formula will work better. I also think the new formula is too conservative, so “fully funded” is a financial state that is dynamic. This means we need to flex to the expertise of our Principals to help humanize the need and get additional money after core budgets to flex to their community’s needs. We overwork and underutilize the expertise of our Principals.

Decades of discrimination and poor resourcing have created the issues. And we need to solve them quickly while acknowledging there is no “right” answer and it will take time. We need to work with educators to get them the resources (staff and financial) they need to stay for 10+ years at these schools. Leadership longevity and looping are tied to student success. We need to make sure the community around the school is built up with appropriate and livable resources, which means putting pressure on those aldermen and corporations to act with intention. We need to talk to people in the community and redefine success metrics based on the community’s needs that will evolve over time. We need full day, quality preK 3 and PreK 4 programs in or near those elementary schools. And we need daycare subsidies and quality childcare support from pregnancy through 3 years old. Success starts with the family before birth and is critical in the three years after. CPS needs to create or redefine/deploy its teams to deeply partner with the new Early Childhood agency at the state level to activate and do better for our future citizens while trying to make right with our current students.

I would advocate and vote for the appointed president of the Board to put all committee formation, including and especially that committee, on the first agenda. We should also reference the community feedback and strategic plan to guide the staffing and funding needs to make sure the organizational design matches the intended outcomes.

This is not a zero-sum formula. We can and need to grow both. An effective board leader will have experience in growing resources. Creating in-fighting dynamics is a cultural artifact of CPS’s deep discriminatory history. We need to employ a proven growth mindset and model that grows resources for all. We cannot and will not pit CPS school communities against each other anymore. There are many ways to improve neighborhood schools without removing funds from other CPS schools. I oppose all school closing and divestments, especially those high-performing selective enrollment schools that serve many in District 4. Every school has a critical role. This is not a zero-sum game. Children go to these schools right now, and I will not minimize their importance and beautiful experiences. Public schools create vibrant economies. Every school should be a high-quality choice for a family.

We should not close schools, including existing Charter schools. They should be equitably funded like all other schools, and we need to remove the politics of the early 2000s and 2010s from today’s reality. When you negatively single out a Charter school in CPS, you’re only hurting the students and families by creating divisive negativity and shame. We are One CPS. I also don’t believe in Charter expansion; we have more important issues than fighting against/within ourselves.

We need to fast-track the access of educators into the classroom. We have a lot of bureaucracy and qualified teachers who want to teach that cannot get jobs because of bureaucracy and red tape. Let’s get a pipeline of teachers going into the classrooms now, including our colleagues who are certified teachers from other Latin American countries, with some core competency evaluations. Then we can simultaneously have them work on upskilling to the Illinois standards. I do not believe in undermining the intense professional standards and training required for teaching. And I know there are incredible teachers in the world (outside of Illinois and the midwest) that we got more realistic and honest with our right-now requirements.

We need an honest audit of where we are meeting expectations and failing school-specific and district-wide. We need CPS leadership to acknowledge we are failing special education students and rebuild trust through honesty and radical transparency. Then we need to create a clear short and long-term plan to meet legal requirements then grow to exceed for every learning difference across our city. We have amazing district neighbors we can be inspired from and experts across industries in addition to listening to parents, principals, teachers, and other health and learning providers. There is no silver bullet. It will be a multi-year plan based on community input, buy-in, and real time feedback on performance and adjustments.

Yes I support it. I believe in supporting and empowering our Principals with the financial and professional resources they need to manage their unique school community.

Bring Back the Buses*: If you can’t get to school, nothing else matters. Every student needs safe transportation. *Buses also include bike buses, walking groups, additional crossing guards and safe passage leaders. Let’s build a CPS-wide community culture and have it start with the right for every public student to get to school safely. We live in a district full of magnet schools, high pedestrian schools, and traffic. With parents spending hours every day to get their children to school and 51% of accidents happening near a CPS school, we know that safe, district-managed, group transportation for students is job #1. We need to get children to school. We need to normalize and generalize busing to ensure there is not a culture of “othering” those who get the access. When we don’t support all children getting to school in a safe and district-managed way, we’re not serving the public good and are actually hurting working parents (mostly women) and Chicago’s economy. Again, if children cannot get to school, then nothing else matters.

If a school aged youth is not in school, there should be designated adults and community advocates (there are, and we need to further resource and expand their influence) to get the children physically back into school. I do not mean criminalizing truancy at all. We as adults need to take responsibility for our young people to get them to school. This is community building and caretaking.

I would spearhead partnerships with Chicago Community Colleges as well as other local universities that were similar to the models used at my high school in District 88. We need to look outside CPS to get proven solutions to our challenges. Our sister districts have great ideas and programs that we can activate in Chicago. We need a little creativity + humility to look outside ourselves.

I support the development of multiple options of mandated curriculum which are more transparent to parents and community members. This will allow for better pricing overall, take the burden off the school-specific educators to research/create/train on an effective school-wide curriculum, ensure District-wide equality and core expectations for every school, and still allow equitable decision-making at the school level because there will be more than one curriculum to choose from.

I have a multifaceted process for communicating progress that would also adapt over time based on effectiveness and community needs/feedback.

1. Reformat Board meetings to prioritize the Board and executive leadership to report progress to the community as the first agenda item for each meeting.
2. My own weekly digital updates (website, newsletter, social media) with volunteer support for language translation.
3. I will attend District 4 LSC meetings as well as host my own monthly community “coffee chats” at rotating locations around the district as well as virtually.
4. I will have regular meetings with local, city and state elected officials and community leaders to ensure key updates are included in their communications.
5. I will communicate with Chicago journalists (including student journalists) to ensure all questions are answered and get reported to the community.
6. Build a “living” community survey visualization (the good and the bad; CPS leaders can’t cherry-pick) where users can provide additional information or clarifying feedback. Ideally we would update quarterly or bi-annually, and this data would inform strategic planning as well as performance tracking.

I support Principal autonomy while providing them the financial and professional resources to be successful. I respect and value the role of LSCs in Chicago, and I also support the goals of the CPAA to ensure Principals are receiving due process and equity for their critical work. Principal leadership is what creates a success school, and all those Principals create a success CPS. My favorite thing to do at organizations as a leader is to delete pointless tasks or working with on-the-ground employees to fix bad processes.

We need to work with communities and local leaders and empower them to lead the planning within the parameters given by the district (laws, etc). Many of the empty buildings are in dangerous states of disrepair. The district needs to admit the past failure and fault and work to reinvigorate the communities with real utilization of the infrastructure. There are programs through multiple agencies and nonprofits that can work with these projects on a community-by-community basis. There are unique funding/financing channels that exist today that didn’t exist 10 years ago (new market tax credits, etc). I would love to explore doing what Tribune did for their landmark building design and have a contest where Chicagoans get to compete to decide. We live in the most innovative and creative city full of architects and designers. Why don’t we ask our amazing citizens (who also live here) to solve this problem. They can do it faster, less expensive, and better than any CPS Board or staff member.

The labor unions are going to be looking out for their political power and members, and an experienced leader knows that. Within the union and depending on their members, leaders and goals, the core constituent (the student) is going to be at different levels of importance. For an independent Board member, that student is the majority stakeholder. To make sure the process is productive and in the best interests of CPS’ children, I would follow negotiation best practices which include: working with top negotiating professionals to take the lead, knowing exactly what we will and won’t be able to do, setting a key intention and grounding focus, knowing the goals of the other parties, timing the negotiations to ensure the order of the negotiations makes sense for students’ interests, and having a plan built on 5-year increments so we have long-term continuity in our District goals that same as CTU does for themselves. CTU is one stakeholder, but they are not the only one. The Principals’ union needs to gain their seat at the table. And the Board needs to act on the best interest of the students.

Voters are concerned about integrity and effective leadership. I am not backed by elected officials, CTU or other powerful Chicago unions, or the Mayor. I’m an experienced professional with the proven track record to be successful, and we need proven leaders now more than ever.

I have three priorities (below) based on the research and surveys and direct feedback from the majority of voters in District 4.

Together these three initiatives will also directly tackle the significant issues of equity for special education children as well as English as a Second Language learners.

1. BRING BACK BUSES: If you can’t get to school, nothing else matters. Every student needs safe transportation. Whether it is a bus*, bike bus, or walking group. Let’s build a CPS-wide community culture and have it start with a basic bus to school. *Redefining “bus” from being big and yellow to being a group commute. Kimberly Brown is proudly endorsed by the parent-run CPS Parents for Buses
2. IMPROVED PROCUREMENT: CPS spends 1.2-1.5 more than retail pricing too often. Improved financial management across people, process and technology is critical to make every dollar work harder and is the fiduciary mandate to taxpayers. Best in class procurement & financial management is critical to earning and accessing additional resources from every level of government and grant providers as well.
3. ACCESS & TRANSPARENCY: We will begin the culture change with CPS HQ to match our CPS families. Mobile-friendly, multi-language, easy-to-search websites across departments and schools. School and District visualizations that are easy to read, updated bi-annually, and based on performance and feedback. Children with disabilities will not require lawyers to be treated fairly. Principals will stay at schools for 10+ years and be top performers across every metric.