Thomas Day (District 4)
Section 1 - Basic Information & General Questions
Campaign link: http://thomasday.org
Are you a current or recent CPS parent, grandparent, or guardian/caregiver? CPS parent
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? 10
Describe your CPS experience.
During the 2023-2024 academic year and at least once during this current academic year, I have substitute taught at Tubman Elementary School in Lakeview. I am also a CPS parent; my son is a kindergartener at Hawthorne Scholastic Academy.
Why are you running for the Board of Education?
Spending on Chicago Public Schools has nearly doubled in the last ten years, while enrollment has decreased by 80,000 students. Property taxes to fund CPS schools are maxed out. The results? Students are a year behind pre-COVID test scores, chronic absenteeism is at 40 percent, and the average school is 84 years old. We face $3 billion in urgent capital repairs and a $505 million structural deficit. This is what happens when special interests and power-seekers control our government and schools. I am running to stand for good governance and embrace the need to make some tough choices.
What is the most pressing challenge our district is facing?
The most pressing challenge facing CPS is clear: a $505 million structural deficit. Incredibly, Mayor Johnson has mobilized allies on the school board to fire CEO Pedro Martinez if he does not yield to the hysterical demands of Stacy Davis Gates, which could quintuple the deficit and invite a state bailout that Springfield lawmakers will certainly never approve. If the CPS Board cannot fight back against Mayor Johnson and his allies, this budget crisis will spiral out of our control.
We need to make some tough decisions. We cannot continue to avoid or delay closing schools that are severely disenrolled. Nor should we. As has been reported by multiple news outlets, one CPS high school currently maintains an enrollment of just a few dozen students as it is built for more than 900 students -- a 4 percent utilization rate. What I have not seen reported is that in fact 12 CPS high schools and six more elementary schools have utilization rates under 20 percent. Within these 12 high schools, chronic absenteeism is, on average, 74 percent. Many of these schools were built generations ago. According to public data, only one of these 12 high schools served a white student in the previous academic year; the other 11 are, on average, 87 percent Black.
Absent a long-term plan to balance our budget and build new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools, we will continue to drive CPS into a budget calamity while, at the same time, maintaining a modernized version of the school segregation seen in the Deep South under the likes of Orval Faubus and George Wallace.
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?
I cannot promise that my votes as representative of the 4th District will align with the views of all of my constituents all the time, but I will make certain I explain my reasoning in public forums, newsletters, social media, and in open conversations as I walk the neighborhoods. I will also work very closely with all of our Local School Councils to keep myself informed of their concerns, and to make certain they are informed of matters before the CPS Board.
I will make certain that all members of the district have, available to them, logged meeting minutes and video recordings of CPS Board meetings. I will make certain my office is responsive to complaints from residents within seven days. Finally, as we set reform goals for CPS, I will establish and monitor performance goals and explain to constituents the reasoning if goals are not met.
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?
As I have mentioned in previous question, I believe that we need to consolidate disenrolled schools. Of course we did that in 2013, and the process in which that was done is not something I believe we should be repeating. We should not be ripping the band-aid off again. Instead, I believe that as we consolidate schools and build new schools, we should involve community members in planning and set requirements, including an ironclad requirement that no school should be closed without a plan to repurpose the building into something new -- perhaps a retail shop or new affordable housing.
To build trust among our residents, I believe that the very difficult decisions surrounding school consolidation should be guided outside the political process. That's why, under my plan, the CPS Board would empanel an advisory committee -- composed of community leaders, education scholars, teachers, parents, and urban planners -- to provide a plan for consolidating schools that were under a 50 percent utilization rate the previous three years. That plan would be put before the CPS Board in an up-or-down vote, much like the U.S. Congress confronts U.S. military base realignment and closure decisions. No horse trading permitted.
Public trust is at the foundation of any effective policymaking process. When a strong degree of trust exists between communities and public officials, communities can know that, while policies may not be perfect, the processes and the institutions that guide policies are directed at their best interests.
Do Chicagoans trust their local government? Do they trust CPS? Well, since 1972, on average, one Chicago alderman each year has been convicted of a crime for offenses related to their duties in office. We cannot expect to enact the kind of bold reforms we need to make at CPS and in our local government until we understand why our voters don't trust the people serving in elected office.
What is your understanding of the Board’s relationship with Local School Councils? How will you collaborate with LSCs in your district?
I will make certain to communicate directly with all school faculty and Local School Councils at the very beginning of my term representing the 4th District, and continue that conversation regularly. I will make certain to communicate with each and every LSC within the first three months of my term, and host regular conference calls to invite their input on all matters confronting CPS.
List the Board committees you intend to join and describe any new Board committees you will propose.
Regarding committee assignments, my very top priority on the CPS Board will be to sit on the Finance and Audit Committee. In fact, not only do I wish to sit on this committee, I want to make sure it's meeting regularly. It has not met in three years.
I believe that the CPS Board should empanel a School Integration committee. CPS was placed under a federal consent decree in 1980, when 82 percent of Black CPS students attended schools that were at least 90 percent Black. By 2006 we were released from the consent decree, but in 2012, 70 percent of Black CPS students attend schools that were 90 percent Black -- slight progress, but hardly the kind of progress in school integration that we should give anyone pride or satisfaction.
How will you prioritize your time to ensure you give your role on the Board of Education the attention it deserves?
I will ensure that I attend all CPS Board meetings and host monthly office hours for residents to share their concerns. While I will maintain separate paid employment and prioritize my obligations as a father, I am confident that I can effectively serve the 4th District on the CPS Board and dedicate ample time to fulfill my responsibilities.
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 will not circle on particular line item as the cause for our budget mess. To do so would be silly.
So as long we maintain 161 schools with utilization rates under 50 percent -- that's what we did last academic year -- there will be insufficient CPS funding for basic services like busing and support for special-needs kids. I have defended CEO Pedro Martinez from the mayor's efforts to fire him, but when Mr. Martinez puts on a ten-gallon hat and tells families on Chicago Tonight that "not on my watch" will any Chicago Public School close, what he is doing is continuing to burn money on ineffective, segregated, and largely empty schools.
The reality is that we will continue to face declining CPS enrollment for the foreseeable future. Preschool enrollment declined by 23 percent and elementary school enrollment has decreased by 22 percent since 2015, suggesting even greater enrollment declines at the high school level in coming years. Americans are having fewer kids and Chicago is suffering massive population losses. We need to manage this profound demographic challenge responsibility, not by catering to the rhetoric of Stacy Davis Gates.
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?
We must protect selective enrollment schools and transportation to selective enrollment schools from budget cuts that, even if we were flush with cash, Mayor Johnson and Stacy Davis Gates would like to make anyway. These schools accelerate excellence for CPS kids, and while I understand and agree with the need to increase diversity in our selective enrollment schools, efforts to squeeze or even eliminate funding could drive families out of the CPS system and even out of the city entirely.
What experience do you have with complicated budgets?
I have helped manage a budget for a national nonprofit organization with about $1 million in revenue. I have also built and maintained budgets for nonprofit organizations that have earned federal and private grant funding. I have also supported budget management for a major U.S. county and a large transit system as a public sector consultant.
What will you do to ensure equitable and transparent funding for neighborhood schools?
I agree with Stacy Davis Gates that all of our neighborhood schools should have a baseline of faculty and services, including a school librarian (I just disagree on the number of schools we should maintain). As we consolidate disenrolled schools, we will find savings that we can then distribute to benefit fully enrolled neighborhood schools -- and that is what I will fight for as representative of the 4th District.
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?
The average age of a Chicago Public School is 84 years old -- more than three decades older than the national average age of a public school. In fact many of the schools built in the 1960s are beset with more structural challenges than older schools. As representative of the 4th District, I will quickly respond to complaints from parents about functioning facilities, but that will only be the beginning of my support.
I will advocate for a capital improvement plan that could require as much as a $1 billion bond to consolidate 60 schools into 20 new schools. (I will also communicate to the bond-rating agencies that they should not punish CPS for a new-found willingness to address long-term challenges.) This will mark just the beginning of my efforts to pivot our discussion away from preserving schools that are too old to function safely and toward one that embraces the need to build new schools.
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?
I believe that CPS should be working with the Chicago Transit Authority to support pickup spots for kids residing more than two miles away from their school. Of course many families sending their kids to selective enrollment schools have confronted bussing challenges, and the current CPS Board has not been forthcoming about why these challenges continue even in this new academic year. I will make certain that answers are found and provided to these families.
Section 4 - Educational Programs & Academic Success
How do you define a quality education?
A quality education, one that each and every CPS student has a right to receive, includes grade-level instruction in the humanities, arts, STEM fields, physical fitness, and provides for social and emotional learning. I believe that a quality education must be facilitated in an environment that allows for growth. I believe that a quality education includes robust offerings of after-school programs. The question is, how do we provide that?
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?
Equitable means providing students with equal opportunities to succeed. Schools with a few dozen students and sky-high dropout rates cannot provide equal opportunities, so I have argued that instead of pushing resources into old and empty schools, we should build new schools with union labor that consolidate disenrolled schools, integrate communities, and offer everything families should expect from CPS.
At the moment, Chicago Public School kids are going to schools that are on average 84 years old (the average age of a school nationally is about 40 years). Schools are so racially segregated in Chicago that it's a wonder that the Brown v. Board of Education decision was in fact rendered 70 years ago. One school maintains an enrollment of about three dozen students even as it is built for more than 900 students. To provide educational programs that all CPS students should receive, we must rethink the demands of activists that we continue to preserve old, largely empty, and segregated schools at all costs.
Instead let's prioritize integration. We are now beginning to understand more deeply that better facilitating interaction between residents across income demographics better supports upward mobility. So instead of isolating our Black and Brown students -- paradoxically, a strategy employed by politicians and organizations carrying the banner of progressivism -- we should be facilitating greater school integration where kids of all backgrounds learn together.
As representative of the 4th District, I will fight for new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools. I will fight for schools that merge the diverse communities of our city. I will fight for schools that make students feel respected and offer abundant programs and required faculty. And I'm not afraid of making some inconvenient choices to get there.
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.
No school that produced Michelle Obama should be closed or have its funding squeezed. Whitney Young, of which our former first lady is an alumna, is just one of our selective enrollment schools that has had to fight for every dollar under the new CPS funding formula. As representative of the 4th District, I will defend funding for selective enrollment schools while at the same time fighting to strengthen neighborhood schools. Selective enrollment schools do not pit students against one another. They accelerate excellence.
Regarding magnet schools, my son attends one and we are very pleased that he does. I certainly wouldn't want to take away the opportunity for families to choose to send their child to a magnet school. And, like selective enrollment schools, I will fight to defend funding for the best performing and fully enrolled magnet schools.
I believe charter schools have a place in the Chicago Public School system, but that they should be required to play by the rules. There are some good charter schools and some bad ones. They need to be transparent about student performance, discipline, and outcomes so we can assess which ones are best supporting students so that we can weed out the ones that aren’t.
How should the Board approach charter oversight and accountability?
As representative of the 4th District, I will be rigorous in enforcing transparency, and act decisively if a charter has been found to have expelled a disproportionate number of students. I will ensure strong oversight of charter schools on matters relating to contract compliance, monitoring of performance, and compliance with state and federal laws. I will regularly solicit community feedback on charter performance, and will not hesitate to support revoking a charter if a charter school has been found to violate a contract or failed to meet expectations.
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?
I cannot commend this working group enough for their work and I am excited about implementing many of their recommendations. One recommendation that especially excites me: establishing community partnerships and providing career/technical education (CTE) courses to prepare Black CPS students for career fields in our city. One idea I've spoken about in my campaign is to work with organizations like P33 and World Business Chicago to understand employment needs in our emerging quantum cluster and providing worker training that allows for students to enter into career fields that could support value creation in quantum technology.
I will also embrace the need to teach the true and even uncomfortable elements of American history, including the legacy of slavery and compounding generational wealth inequality that continues to make our country unequal.
How will you work to ensure special education assessments and placements are more timely and equitable?
I acknowledge that more needs to be done to provide our special needs kids the support they have a legal right to receive. Three years after state-ordered reforms, CPS continues to struggle to meet the demands of special education students and families. About 52,000 CPS students, or 15 percent of CPS students, have individualized education plans (IEPs). To meet this demand, CPS has hired a record number of special ed teachers. Like many concerns confronting CPS, this challenge is likely one rooted in our budget crisis, with no easy solution. What I can promise is that I will make certain that no school expels a special ed student purely out of convenience. I will also make certain to be responsive to families who have been denied services.
What should the Board board do to guarantee students are receiving all of their required IEP minutes?
We must make certain that all IEP students are receiving their required minutes, and that IEP minutes are carefully documented. I believe that CPS should set an expectation that missed IEP minutes be made up within a short set period of time.
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?
As a substitute teacher, I have seen the challenges of teaching migrant students firsthand. Teachers are being asked to give instructions twice – once in English and another time in Spanish, with the latter often requiring Google Translate. More frequently, teachers need to just separate migrant kids from the other students and keep them busy; what else can they do? This is an unsustainable situation for CPS teachers and it needs to be dealt with. These migrant kids need to be supported.
I believe we should be providing additional tuition support for teachers to gain bilingual certifications. I also think we should be looking at strategies to relax rigid qualifications for teachers who have clearly demonstrated competence in working with kids -- especially ESL kids -- but may not have the degree requirements necessary to be a CPS teacher.
How would you advocate for the reinstatement of comprehensive art, music, and library programs to our schools?
As with many concerns that CPS families have rightly and justifiably raised, challenges in providing comprehensive art, music, and library programs are rooted in our budget crisis. I cannot promise to fund these necessary programs so as long as CPS continues to waste resources supporting largely empty schools. I can only support budgets that provide these and other necessary programs once we have resolved to balance our budget, make a series of tough choices, and deploy resources where they are needed.
Section 5 - School Culture
What do you believe is the role of the Board in fostering a culture of belonging for every CPS student?
It is essential that CPS provide curricula that includes instruction on the cultures and history of our many diverse communities, and that's what I will fight to support and defend as representative of the 4th District. Students should be able to learn about American history, even the most uncomfortable parts. CPS should also provide programs that allow for CPS students to safely, comfortably express themselves, and seek and find guidance.
As we continue to fight to catch up from the COVID-19 lockdowns, we must not lose sight of the need for social and emotional learning, and the impact at the extended lockdowns had on students on their growth. That will require that we prioritize more social, face-to-face interaction and playtime, but within safe and supportive environments.
What are specific steps you will propose to increase in-school mental health support for our children?
Mental health challenges among adolescents (particularly girls) have increased sharply since 2007. What is it that happened in 2007? There is only one logical answer: the introduction of the smart phone and popularity of social media. I believe the State of Illinois should act decisively to set a minimum age for creating a social media profile (they have done the same in Florida, banning all social media for anyone under the age of 16). Such a measure would be outside the bounds of the CPS Board, but what is certainly in the purview of the Chicago Public School system is to ban cell phone use during school hours at all schools. I support phone-free schools.
What policies do you propose to help stop bullying in CPS schools?
I believe concerns around bullying and mental health intersect on social media. As previously mentioned, I support phone-free schools and would ask state lawmakers to consider more tightly regulating social media.
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 fundamentally believe that CPS should be providing curricula that reflects diverse communities and the many different perspectives that come together in our schools. I support and embrace the need to teach American history that does not exclude the uncomfortable elements of our past. I also recognize that curricula that is provided to neighborhood schools in Lincoln Park may not be effective in a school in Roseland, and that schools should have the highest degree of autonomy possible to tailor instruction to their students.
As the representative of the 4th District, I will provide strong oversight and closely monitor disciplinary practices, carefully observing and responding to any trends of students being subjected to overly harsh measures or expelled at abnormally high rates.
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?
It is critical on all matters relating to sexual trauma to follow protocol and to inform the necessary and trained professionals. Failure to report an accusation of sexual violence is and should remain grounds for immediate dismissal. I will, as representative of the 4th District on the CPS Board, understand and fulfill my responsibilities to ensure oversight of CPS personnel and enforce responsibilities to respond to reported acts of sexual violence.
How do you plan to ensure that LGBT+ students are protected and supported in CPS, both in anti-discrimination policy and inclusive curricula?
As representative of the 4th District, I will understand and accept the enormous responsibility to represent Chicago's historically LGBT+ concentrated neighborhood of Lakeview. I will make certain that all Chicago Public Schools understand our long-standing anti-discrimination policies, provide LGBT+ affirming counseling and support programs, and ensure cultural competency and understanding for kids with same-sex parents. I will also fight to make sure our many LGBT+ heroes and transformative events -- like the Stonewall revolt and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision -- are included in our history lessons.
Is there anything you would change about the recently adopted Whole School Safety plan? What can the Board do to ensure its implementation?
The CPS Whole School Safety plan rightly defines safety as inclusive of not just physical safety, but of emotional and relational components. It is strange then that the draft document does not appear to address the tremendous harm that social media has done to the emotional and relational wellbeing of our kids, and I believe that conversation must be a central part of any plan to ensure the safety of our kids.
Of course the plan notes the end of the CPS contract with the Chicago Police Department to provide School Resource Officers. While I am supportive with that decision, I do not believe that the Chicago Public School Board should be setting policies prohibiting Local School Councils from welcoming School Resource Officers into schools.
Implementation of the safety plan is critical, particularly concerning matters of emergency management. As the representative of the 4th District, I will ensure that all schools in our district are prepared for emergencies, equipped with "Go Kits," and that faculty receive training to quickly respond to student threats.