Anusha Thotakura (District 6)
Section 1 - Basic Information & General Questions
Candidate's Name Anusha Thotakura
District 6
Campaign link anushaforcps.com
Are you a current or recent CPS parent, grandparent, or guardian/caregiver? None
Are you a CPS graduate? No
Have you ever served on a Local School Council (LSC)? No
Have you ever served on a Parent Advisory Committee (PAC)? No
Have you ever served on a Bilingual Advisory Committee (BAC)? No
Have you ever served on a Community Action Council (CAC)? No
Have you ever worked in a CPS school? Yes
How long have you lived in the district you are running to represent? 2 years
Describe your CPS experience.
I serve as the Director of Citizen Action/Illinois, where I organize at the state and local level to secure policy change in Springfield, including changes that will benefit working families and CPS students. I also coach the Spanish-language debate team at Columbia Explorers Academy in Brighton Park.
Why are you running for the Board of Education?
I am running to create a future where every child in our city receives an excellent education that allows them and their families to thrive. I believe every child in our city deserves access to a high-quality public education, and I’m running to make that a reality. As a former middle school teacher, I understand firsthand the challenges that students and teachers face daily, and if elected will focus on improving early interventions, balancing CPS’ budget, and strengthening achievement.
I have always been passionate about educational equity. It is a value instilled in me by my immigrant parents, who attribute their opportunities to their educational experiences. This commitment led me to teaching. I taught middle school mathematics at an English/Spanish bilingual school. There, I saw how gaps in student learning compounded year over year without targeted intervention and support.
I believe my passion, training, and grasp of the policy and politics of our local school system make me the best candidate for this position. I hold a Master of Public Policy degree with a concentration in Social and Urban Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Throughout my teaching career and later during graduate school, I remained actively engaged in electoral politics, managing more than a half-dozen winning campaigns for equity-focused candidates for school board and state representative in Illinois.
The combination of my knowledge and political skill will be a vital asset as District 6's representative on the school board. As we have seen too many times over the years, our city's schools can be helped or hampered based on the relationship of our elected representatives to Springfield. Having a representative with both local and state-level relationships is not just a "plus" - it is necessary to ensuring that CPS gets the funding it needs.
What is the most pressing challenge our district is facing?
CPS’ budgetary difficulties are by far the District’s biggest challenge, and there is no sugarcoating the size of the task at hand. With the Board's unfortunate history of fiscal mismanagement and corruption, the community is looking for honest representation that will hold CPS accountable - I intend to do so. We need our budget to be balanced so that students, families, and teachers do not have to worry about impending cuts and destabilization from year to year. According to the State of Illinois’s Equitable School Funding targets, Chicago Public Schools need an additional $1 billion of funding to be adequately funded. I support the current Board's hiring freeze and cuts for administrative positions, but we need additional funding to reduce classroom sizes, have social workers and nurses in every school, and to expand after school and extracurricular programs. Still, our current school funding system is over-reliant on property taxes - our city should be advocating for more state funding, but this can only happen if our leaders (including the newly-elected school board) have meaningful relationships down in Springfield. We should also prioritize using school building space efficiently to generate revenue and meet other community needs by, for example, expanding School-Based Health Centers, which can conveniently provide mental health, immunization, and primary care, and primary care services for students, families, and the broader community.
Section 2 - Board Responsibilities & Commitments
How will you interact with CPS students and families in your district to ensure that the voices of the most impacted are heard and understood?
Board members must commit—as I have—to staying in constant contact with the parents and students they serve through regular meetings, attending community events, maintaining an active social media presence, and having an “open door” policy. They must also reach out to communities across the city to ensure that they have a complete grasp of the needs of other neighborhoods. Collaboration, communication, and transparency are key. I will also commit to publishing a regular newsletter and hosting collaborative events with other members of the new board.
What specific actions will you take to address and repair the historical harms within Chicago Public Schools, and how will you ensure that students, parents, and educators are actively engaged in the healing and trust-building process?
The creation of an elected school board was an excellent first step towards healing - by electing our representatives to the Board, the People now have a greater opportunity than ever to ensure that CPS is accountable and responsive. If it isn't, Board members can and will be replaced.
Still, there is more work to be done. I support a third-party independent audit of CPS. I also support ensuring that the board-level Black Student Success Working Group—created as part of the school board legislation—is well-staffed by individuals with both community and practical experience. I also support greater efforts to promote attendance at Board meetings and engagement in all aspects of our public school system. I also support requiring CPS to be more clear about its decision-making to those who aren't well-versed in education policy, especially when it comes to the dramatic decision to fire school principal. Firing a principal for fraud or flagrantly mismanaging records is one thing, and minor procedural and bureaucratic errors are another. Our communities deserve to be fully informed about such decisions.
What is your understanding of the Board’s relationship with Local School Councils? How will you collaborate with LSCs in your district?
I will maintain regular contact with LSCs across the District to ensure that issues at each school can be addressed through their elected representative on the Board. I will commit to working with Local School Councils to continually update my understanding of the ongoing needs of each school within district 6.
List the Board committees you intend to join and describe any new Board committees you will propose.
I intend to join the Special Education Advisory Committee.
I would support bringing back the Early Childhood Committee.
How will you prioritize your time to ensure you give your role on the Board of Education the attention it deserves?
The Board of Education’s purpose is to serve CPS families and ensure students have access to equal, safe, and reliable educational opportunities. Now that it is transitioning to a representative body, it is also meant to be a conduit for the will of the communities served by members of each district. I intend to make my service on the Board my top priority after my day-to-day job duties as Director of Citizen Action/Illinois.
Section 3 - Budget & Facilities
What are your thoughts on the current proposed district budget for SY24-25? As a board member, where would you look to increase funding and where would you make budget cuts?
I support the current Board's hiring freeze and cuts for administrative and central office positions, and support using the full power of the newly-constituted school board to, in 2025, advocate for Springfield to provide adequate funding that CPS deserves. I also support the budget’s proposed debt restructuring, which is estimated to save the District approximately $112 million. Finally, I support the District’s committing nearly $70 million in additional funding to special education and bilingual services, though more could be done. Nevertheless, the failure to account for anticipated increased costs following the enactment of a new collective bargaining agreement with the teachers’ union was irresponsible and short-sighting. Even if the new contract is still being negotiated, it was dishonest to not even attempt to account for these anticipated increased (though vital) expenditures.
Funding for CPS is in a particularly precarious situation due to state shortages to Evidence-Based Funding (EBF), the end of pandemic funding, and more. What would you prioritize when facing these overwhelming budget realities?
The primary purpose of our public schools is to create well-educated, curious learners with healthy social skills and an opportunity to thrive, wherever they may go in life. These goals are the key drivers of my agenda: to increase CPS’ focus on early intervention, improve student achievement across subject areas, balance the budget with assistance from Springfield, and ensure our schools are safe. If elected to serve District 6, I am committed to putting students and families first in every decision I make. Any budget decision must start and end with an assessment of whether students are being helped, or at worse, whether the worst harms can be avoided. I am committed to making that assessment with every decision I make, budgetary or otherwise.
What experience do you have with complicated budgets?
I currently oversee the budget of my own non-profit organization and have managed 1M+ budgets as a part of prior political campaigns. Through my graduate coursework for my Master of Public Policy degree through the Harvard Kennedy School, I also took various courses on effective budgeting and management at the municipal level.
What will you do to ensure equitable and transparent funding for neighborhood schools?
We should continue investing in neighborhood schools to close the gap between the quality of your neighborhood school and selective enrollment schools. I will commit to advocating for increased funding from the General Assembly so that we can fully fund our vital neighborhood schools.
Many parents have expressed an urgent need for capital improvements in their schools. What steps will you take to ensure that schools have functioning facilities, particularly bathrooms and water fountains?
I will fight to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to make necessary repairs and improvements.
Bussing challenges have a long and fraught history in CPS. The last few years have been particularly difficult for special education students, as well as those who attend magnet and selective enrollment schools. Given CPS’s recently announced plans for the coming school year, How do you plan to address the ongoing school bussing challenges and ensure that all students have reliable, safe, and equitable transportation to and from school?
Between a nationwide bus driver shortage and budget gaps, CPS is currently facing immense difficulties in ensuring every student can get to school on time, every day—especially those students with special needs. I am committed to increasing driver recruitment that ensures, at minimum, that every student with an IEP and 504 has a ride to school.
Section 4 - Educational Programs & Academic Success
How do you define a quality education?
A quality education creates thoughtful, curious learners with healthy social skills and an opportunity to thrive, wherever they may go in life.
What is the role of the Board of Education in ensuring quality educational programs for all students regardless of their background, zip code, or school type?
This is precisely the Board’s primary duty, in my view: to ensure quality educational programs for all students regardless of background, zip code, or school type.
What are your views on the roles of neighborhood, selective enrollment, magnet, and charter schools within CPS? Please address each type of school in your answer.
I strongly support keeping selective enrollment schools open. Every child deserves access to a high-quality public school in their neighborhood, but we’re far from that reality. We should continue investing in neighborhood schools to close the gap between the quality of your neighborhood school and selective enrollment schools, but that does not mean decreasing funding for selective enrollment and magnet schools.
How should the Board approach charter oversight and accountability?
To the extent possible under the law, the Board should exert maximum oversight over charter schools and hold them accountable whenever they falter in providing Chicago’s kids with the high-quality education in the safe learning environments that they deserve.
The initial recommendations of the Black Student Success Working Group were shared earlier this summer. Which of those recommendations will be most important to incorporate into the district’s strategic plan and why?
All of the Black Student Success Working Group’s recommendations are vital. If forced to choose one, I would highlight Recommendation 4, Facilities Improvement and Equitable Resource Allocation, because an equitable education system cannot possibly be built on an inequitable distribution of school funding resources. In addition, I support efforts to repurpose un- and under-used space in school buildings to meet the needs of Black students (an effort that could also dovetail with efforts to implement Recommendation 2, which focuses on providing wrap-around services and establishing new community partnerships).
How will you work to ensure special education assessments and placements are more timely and equitable?
Once elected, I will work with special education advocates in and outside of CPS to create a plan to improvement special education assessments and placements, and to ensure that all students are receiving all of their required IEP minutes.
What should the Board board do to guarantee students are receiving all of their required IEP minutes?
The Board should increase funding for special education services to ensure that every school has a full time special education case manager and sufficient special education classroom assistants.
In 2021, even before the recent influx of asylum seekers, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) put CPS on a corrective action plan because the district was out of compliance with bilingual education requirements. To date, CPS still fails to staff bilingual programs and certified bilingual teachers at all schools that need them. What steps would you advocate for the district to take to solve this problem?
I support the proposed 2024-25 budget allocating more funds to bilingual staffing, but more must be done. I support increasing efforts to recruit diverse, bilingual educators to CPS.
How would you advocate for the reinstatement of comprehensive art, music, and library programs to our schools?
I support the reinstatement of comprehensive art, music, and library programs in our schools to the maximum extent possible. As a Board member, I would bring attention to the connection between these essential programs and increased school attendance and graduation rates.
Section 5 - School Culture
What do you believe is the role of the Board in fostering a culture of belonging for every CPS student?
Leadership means setting a positive example through words and deeds. The Board must never falter in fighting to ensure that CPS is a welcoming, inclusive environment for every student regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, immigration status, or otherwise.
What are specific steps you will propose to increase in-school mental health support for our children?
Moving towards a system that offers wraparound services for students in need would also be beneficial. I will work to ensure that CPS provides counselors and social workers at every school for those students, faculty, and staff who need it. Moving towards a system that offers wraparound services for students in need would also be beneficial, as would expanding existing restorative justice practices – the restorative approach currently promoted by the Office of Social and Emotional Learning is a positive framework but needs more and better-trained staff to implement it. However, these advancements can only occur within budget constraints, and one of my top priorities, if elected, is to focus on securing additional funding from the General Assembly for the programs our students and communities are calling for. My connections in the General Assembly and experience advocating for meaningful change in Springfield will be fundamentally to achieving this, and note, few if any other candidates running for school board have this vital expertise.
What policies do you propose to help stop bullying in CPS schools?
I support current policies as well as the recent increased focus on accountability through restorative justice.
What specific steps will you take to address and reduce racial bias in our schools, both in terms of pedagogy, curriculum, and disciplinary practices?
I support implementing the recommendations of the Black Student Success Plan to the maximum extent possible, and also, increasing educational efforts to reduce racial tensions among students in our pluralistic school system.
Students who report sexual assault and violence in CPS schools often feel that their voices are not heard. What is your approach to ensuring meaningful accountability and what will you do to ensure that this type of violence stops?
I support survivors’ efforts to obtain justice and believe that school administrators must take these allegations seriously in every case, which means conducting a full investigation while respecting the privacy and due process rights of all those involved.
How do you plan to ensure that LGBT+ students are protected and supported in CPS, both in anti-discrimination policy and inclusive curricula?
I support strict enforcement of CPS’ anti-discrimination policy and maintaining inclusive lesson plans. Teachers should be free to create curricula that highlight LGBT+ history and achievement where possible and pedagogically relevant.
Is there anything you would change about the recently adopted Whole School Safety plan? What can the Board do to ensure its implementation?
The draft Whole School Safety (WSS) Policy released in May 2024 and finalized in July 2024 was a positive step forward for revamping CPS’ approach to ensuring student safety in a more comprehensive sense than ever before. I will continue working to build deeper relationships with the leadership of each school in District 6, and keep a close eye on each school’s progress as WSS Committees are selected and WSS Plans are created and implemented. I will promote the WSS Committees’ establishment to parents in District 6 to encourage deep, authentic engagement with this vital new process. And finally, if any school or schools are not moving forward with the process, fail to create truly representative and diverse WSS Committees, or approve frameworks that fail to adhere to mandatory WSS Framework Components, the communities I serve will hear about it from me directly.