School board fell short on real community engagement for CPS strategic plan

We write on behalf of the Coalition for Authentic Community Engagement and are cautiously optimistic about the district’s recent release of its Success 2029: Together We Rise strategic plan. However, our optimism is tempered by the process leading up to it, which has significantly contradicted the values the board professes within the document.

In its plan, the board declares that “For every major decision, we will engage stakeholders by centering CPS’ spectrum of inclusive partnerships, prioritizing the voices of those most impacted by structural inequity, to design and implement a more equitable school district and learning environment.”

In fact, the board has just done the opposite. To be fair, Chicago Public Schools boards have historically taken action without direct input from communities. However, it is disrespectful to call the development of this plan inclusive when the board pre-established the direction and is only asking communities to weigh in on the implementation of its ideas.

The engagement the board promotes was neither centered on the critical strategic questions nor inclusive of the full range of CPS stakeholders. It is disingenuous to communities to include unrelated outreach — such as back-to-school events, targeted policy engagements or board meetings — as evidence of engagement, merely to inflate the total number of stakeholders “engaged.”

Simply put, saying a thing does not make it real. This engagement effort lacked the scale and open-endedness of an inclusive, authentic and anti-racist process. Instead of genuinely involving families in shaping the district’s future, the board has imposed its beliefs without taking any time to understand what CPS parents and caregivers envision for their children’s education. The board dictated the plan’s elements without considering families’ priorities and now are looking to engage communities in a limited fashion, only to discuss how to implement those predetermined decisions.

This approach contradicts the very principles that many board members have publicly upheld and have reaffirmed in this plan. With the upcoming transition to an elected board, it is baffling why this board is rushing through a plan that will guide CPS for the next five years. This timing raises serious questions about the board’s commitment to genuine community engagement, echoing the old-guard politics of Chicago’s past.

We recognize elements of the proposed plan may resonate with our communities. Therefore, we will take this plan directly to our stakeholders — representing hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans — to determine what they support and what they reject. Our coalition of more than 30 organizations, from across Chicago and representing the vast majority of families who choose CPS, will not endorse any plan until it has been fully vetted and approved by our communities.

In short, we will do the upfront work you promised to do. We will share our findings with this board, but more importantly, with members of the incoming elected board. We believe this will empower the new board to make decisions that truly reflect the will of the people.

We invite this board to join us in this effort, as we vet this plan with the people it should have engaged from the start.

Dr. Byron T Brazier, chairman, Woodlawn Children’s Promise Community; Grace Chan McKibben, executive director, Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community; Daniel Anello, CEO, Kids First Chicago

This letter appeared originally in the Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday, September 22, 2024.