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Nov 12, 2024

School Board Candidates Talk Diverse Learning, Quantum Careers At Southeast Side Forum

EAST SIDE — With a little more than a week until Election Day, Southeast Side residents met with candidates vying for their district’s seat on the elected school board to discuss students’ educational

EAST SIDE — With a little more than a week until Election Day, Southeast Side residents met with candidates vying for their district’s seat on the elected school board to discuss students’ educational needs, ideas for shaping curricula and how to build a pipeline for careers in quantum computing.

Three candidates in Chicago’s District 10 school board race met with about 50 neighbors during a forum Friday morning at Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, 9805 S. Ewing Ave. in East Side.

Educational consultant Adam Parrott-Sheffer, artist Che “Rhymefest” Smith and nonprofit CEO Karin Norington-Reaves were on hand for the panel. Pastor Robert Jones and write-in candidate Rosita Chatonda did not attend.

District 10 stretches along the lakefront from 31st Street south to the city limits and as far west as Parnell Avenue, including portions of the 4th through 10th, 17th, 20th and 21st aldermanic wards.

Neighbors at Friday’s panel focused on concerns relevant to the Southeast Side’s demographics and future developments.

They asked the candidates about their plans to prepare Chicago Public Schools students for careers at the quantum development in South Chicago and the board’s role in shaping curricula for a diverse student population.

To watch the full forum, which included Spanish translation, click here.

With a quantum computing campus planned for the former South Works steel mill — anchored by startup PsiQuantum, and with major political and financial backing from the state and city — candidates were asked how they’d ensure local students can access careers on the campus.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and city officials have pledged to work with CPS and institutions of higher education to create more paths for South Siders to enter the quantum computing industry.

Parrott-Sheffer said the community needs “tougher contracts and stronger conversations” with the campus project’s backers, which would push the developers and tenants to play a major role in building a quantum career pipeline.

“We need to make sure that our partnerships with the businesses that are bringing this [project] in see our students as their first employees and their next leaders of these organizations and institutions,” he said.

Smith said the district must use children’s existing interests in video games, music and other subjects as a way to introduce them to engineering, programming and other scientific fields.

“The community has to know how to transfer that into education,” he said. “We have to know what to ask for. There are people in the city who work with the quantum computing facility and never help institute any feasible trainings that we can see right now.”

Norington-Reaves called for curricula to better prepare students for computer-based careers, and for the quantum campus’ backers to sign a community benefits agreement to ensure local hiring, investment in local economic development, skills training and other benefits related to the project.

“We want to make sure our parents and our young people have access to those jobs,” she said. “Those people who are going to be working for that company, they need to be volunteering at our schools, helping to train our kids.”

Candidates were asked how they would shape school curricula to reflect the history and diversity of Chicago and its cultures.

Parrott-Sheffer said the school board should seek input from Chicago’s educational and neighborhood leaders to help draft curricula which connect “back to the local communities.”

“What a board can do is help make sure we’re doing strong, locally grown programming, but we can also partner with local experts,” he said.

Smith also called for community members to guide curricula, citing former Mayor Harold Washington’s achievements and Ald. Peter Chico’s (10th) family history in the South Side steel mills as examples of educational topics locals can connect with.

“We have great giants all around us,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is bring the community in the school.”

Norington-Reaves said cultural representation is important in curricula, as students should see themselves reflected in the novels they read and the math problems they answer.

“We need to have diverse reading, we need to have diverse writing, we need to have opportunities to get exposure, and we don’t have that,” she said. “Part of the challenge is that the curriculum decisions are made by principals.”

One attendee asked the candidates how the board should meet the needs of neurodiverse students, meaning kids with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other differences in learning and thinking.

Parrott-Sheffer, who said he’s the parent of a child with a disability and the guardian of an adult with a disability, said the district must gather direct input from neurodiverse students to ensure equitable education.

Parrott-Sheffer also criticized the speed at which teachers are required to learn their annual curricula, saying two weeks “is not enough time to plan” how they’ll respond to their students’ unique needs.

“We have 330,000 students in our district who need all sorts of different things, which means we need flexible curriculum,” he said.

Smith, who said his son had an individualized education program in school, said athletics, arts and other extracurricular activities are necessary resources for neurodiverse students.

Smith also called for more funding toward special education classroom assistants, counselors, ensuring “a nurse in every school” and providing “quality, safe transportation” to and from school.

“As a school board member, I want to make sure that all of our wraparound services — after-school programs, sports, arts — help young people with neurological differences,” he said. “When they start doing arts, you start seeing them work out their own narratives and heal themselves through the arts.”

Norington-Reaves, who said her daughter is blind, said she previously had to fight the district’s plans to educate her daughter in “a refurbished storage closet with a teacher and two children.”

Every student must receive an education tailored to their abilities, which requires flexible curricula, increased training for teachers and support staff, “inclusive classroom settings” and more accessible extracurriculars, Norington-Reaves said.

“My daughter can’t go to after-school programs because there’s nobody to stay with her. There’s no aide after school,” she said.

Another attendee asked how the candidates would support multilingual education in District 10, which includes communities with large Spanish-speaking populations.

Parrott-Sheffer called for more “two-way,” dual-language schools where “all classes are taught in English and Spanish,” he said. Every teacher citywide should also be certified in English as a Second Language or bilingual education, he said.

Smith said teachers’ professional development must go beyond English and Spanish to include other languages common in Chicago, like Arabic and Polish. He also pitched immersion programs where schools can encourage community members to share music, food and other cultural markers with each other.

Norington-Reaves proposed “dual-language programming” in schools. For example, kindergarten through third grade could be taught in students’ primary languages, fourth grade would be a mix of their primary language and English, and their remaining instruction would be in English, she said.

Parrott-Sheffer, Smith and Norington-Reaves all pledged to meet with Southeast Side groups like Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, Alliance of the Southeast, Claretian Associates and others to respond to community concerns during their first 100 days in office, if elected.

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Twitter @afrodip More by Maxwell Evans