Narrator: [00:00:00] Change Agents.
Judith McCray: Chicago's public schools are set to gain 1. 8 billion dollars in federal relief funds. CPS sees the money as a chance to return to business as usual. But for Chicago's communities of color, Business as usual means their schools struggle to get by on too little. Organizations like Brighton Park Neighborhood Council are demanding parents and educators have a say in where the money goes.
Producer Kenni Terrell shares the story in Trust, Learning, Caring.
Lucille: So my name is Lucille, I'm a student and I go to Cary High School and I'm currently an IB sophomore. Well as of now [00:01:00] doing Like, education wise, when it comes to learning during a pandemic, it has been, um, very hard and difficult considering in the beginning, we weren't expecting at all this pandemic. And so when a student.
You know, a student slash someone who could either be a brother, a sister, a family relative, anything after all, has to change their lifestyle completely. Um, that really does take a toll on us. And personally, it has affected my education as of now. In some ways positive, but in many ways negative. You tend to begin to think about how you yourself can help yourself when you never learned how to.
Joseph Williams: My name is Joseph Williams, a parent of five children at CPS, and I think we are right back here again, right? We are right back at that space where we feel like we are [00:02:00] being left out of the decision making. And I think, I think most of all, we have to be involved in the process. Um, you know, as a parent, a community leader, um, decisions should not continue to be made if you haven't never walked a day in our shoes to see what it's like.
You don't know what it's like when we have to get up in the morning and take our babies to school and go through all of these obstacles. Sometimes you don't know. What children are going through when they're just taking care of their brothers and sisters and they're coming to school and dressing everybody.
You have to be intentional about what you're doing. And what I see here sometimes is that CPS isn't very intentional and they don't show a lot of transparency.
Kenni Terrell: My name is Kenni Terrell and CPS. Folks with community organizations, specifically Brighton Park Neighborhood Council on where and how they believe Chicago Public Schools should spend the $1.8 billion granted to them from the American Rescue Plan.
Brighton Park Neighborhood [00:03:00] Council, along with various other community organizations, came together with parents and students with a trust learning care plan. This plan has been introduced to the Board of Education and Mayor Lori Lightfoot herself as an action plan for online and in person learning. Andrea Ortiz, a lead community organizer for Brighton Park Neighborhood Council explains,
Andrea Ortiz: Yeah, a lot of the parents of students in like organizations or or leaders within their... For years ever since, like, even before the school, the 50 school closings and the Rahm Emanuel, the charter school expansion and disinvestment from our neighborhood community schools, and like the fight for sustainable community schools, like parents and young people have been calling for like, equitable funding for our schools.
Well, under COVID, it kind of just continued to all the lack of resources were kind of like under a microscope. And it's like, these are all the [00:04:00] resources we've been saying that we've been needing for years, and kind of like challenging CPS, like, what are you going to do to make it safe enough for us to go back?
Now it's like our actual lives are also like in danger. If we if and when we do go back and these resources are and like protections aren't in place It's a lot more than just like sanitizing wipes and like masks that we are demanding We're demanding lead free water. We're demanding more counseling more social workers a librarian a nurse We're demanding a lot of these resources and you could be Funding these by, for example, taking police out of schools,
Kenni Terrell: police free schools would give us a lot more money to spend on the students.
But how much money are we getting exactly? And what is the history of funding of this type?
Andrea Ortiz: You're getting a lot of money from the federal government. They got a lot of money from the CARE act and we didn't see that go to any other [00:05:00] resources that we were demanding. Parents kind of like gathered together where like, these are, this is, Our platform and we demand trust, learn, and care category.
It's like a list of demands that are more like explicit. We saw that the ARPA money that's coming down that passed under Biden administration, it's like 1. 8 billion. That's a lot of money. Like. A lot, a lot of money, so it's like within that funding the Biden administration, like there's like a caveat where it's like you have to engage community members and parents and stakeholders in a process.
So like we see other school districts creating commissions and CPS is not planning on doing that, the mayor's not planning on doing that, the board of education's not planning on doing that, they're planning on paying back. Okay. loans and like banks that they had taken out previously. Parents and young people see this as like this is recovery money, recovery money to [00:06:00] help support us.
Kenni Terrell: Other organizations came together as well to work on the trust learning care plan and see what they can do to benefit the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and the students in that neighborhood.
John Anchi: My name is John Anchi. I use he him pronouns. I'm the Executive Director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education.
Parents and youth have not been engaged meaningfully throughout the entire pandemic by Chicago Public Schools. And parents have come up with really creative ways and really important solutions during the height of the pandemic last year. And simply CPS operates in a vacuum. They operate with, they ultimately believe they know what is best and they were executing a strategy.
Kenni Terrell: So how did TLC start and how did parents get involved?
John Anchi: TLC has started technically in January, but it's been going on since the beginning of the pandemic. And that's [00:07:00] kind of how the TLC campaign formed is through a lot of parents and youth who are just frustrated that CPS is not listening to them. And, um, and so I'm just gonna share a little bit about where the campaign is positioning itself now with the federal money coming down the line with 1.
8 billion just to Chicago families see this as the opportunity. To not return back to normal. CPS is kind of prerogative and their MO during this whole time has been, let's go back to where it was before. Right. And in order to survive the pandemic, we must put kids back in the school buildings, even if the majority are still in remote learning and not focused on improving that.
And so parents see this, this money coming in as a chance to be transformative. Normal was not good enough for many CPS parents for many black and brown parents who we saw. A friend of mine likes to use that the COVID was like a blacklight for all these inequities in [00:08:00] Chicago and we see that in education especially.
Kenni Terrell: Chanella Miller, a CPS parent, continues the conversation about their issues with Chicago public schools and where they're going to spend this money.
Chanella Miller: We need to have a say in how this one billion dollars is going to be spent in our public schools. We keep trying to get back to, you want us to get back to normal, but the reality of it is our normals are two different normals. We were already having issues inside of CPS before the pandemic. So because you failed us before the pandemic, we, we need you to go back and fix those things first before we can get back to what our normal is.
Because you're not in our communities, you don't know what we need. That's why we're saying as stakeholders, we need a seat at the table to explain to you what's going on in our communities and what we need. [00:09:00]
Kenni Terrell: John Anchi explains how this is not just a recent occurrence from Chicago Public Schools.
John Anchi: Decades of distrust in the district kind of leads to this idea that whenever they have to make big decisions, It's, it's, it's not just essential, but it's, it's mandatory for a district that struggled with trust issues over, over the years to include parents and they just haven't. We had started kind of those conversations earlier again, remember before it was, wasn't a lot of, it wasn't even about what we could use the funding for in the future.
It was a lot about, Oh my God, IEP need this immediately. How do we think creatively about services we can provide? The TLC campaign is a belief that parents and communities need to determine how that money is spent, but also how would the future of education look.
Kenni Terrell: Andrea explains how the application of the TLC program can be used for more than just virtually, but in person as [00:10:00] well.
Andrea Ortiz: I think it's like, whether we're in person or virtually learning or hybrid, like, these Demands are very applicable to like all of our schools no matter like the situation. It's like regardless like our schools if we're still e learning. We're one day's eventually going to go back in person and like these resources still need to be like fulfilled and like if and when we do go back full time and still keep demanding these resources as we did in the 60s as we did in 2013 as we're doing now.
Kenni Terrell: The parents came up with this plan and they have their own demands based on specific needs of their students.
Chanella Miller: I'm a parent of diverse learners. My diverse learners are falling behind. You're trying to push us back into the schools where we don't feel safe. We're asking for things that people in affluent communities and schools either don't have to [00:11:00] ask for because they already have, or they ask once and it's done.
So that's, that's what we're saying. We've been, we've been asking for the same things over and over and over. Our kids need more. We need more social workers in the school. We need more money for remote learners. Well, we need money for remote learners. They should receive a stipend so that they can things that they need so that they are no longer falling behind.
Um, A few years ago, everybody was saying, no kid left behind. And this is exactly what you're doing to our black and brown children.
Kenni Terrell: Students, parents, and families are looking for change.
Lucille: Why hasn't CPS done anything? And so when we heard about the TLC plan, it was like, it was like a relief. Like finally, something's being done because.
We've learned like my parents learned as well along with me that CPS just doesn't put their students needs or mental [00:12:00] health into consideration. And so, you know, to my parents when learning about the TLC, like I said, like it was to them, it was a good idea and they loved it because it would benefit me as a student and make my learning environment better.
As well as other classmates, staff, other parents and students. So they were really on board with it. And I have, I strongly hope that this goes through because it would be like so much weight lifted off our shoulders.
Narrator: Thank you for joining Change Agents produced by Juneteenth Productions with funding support from the Chicago Community Trust.
And the field foundation, please subscribe to our series on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. Do you have a story to share? Join us in the ongoing conversation on Facebook, Twitter, [00:13:00] Instagram, and our website changeagentsthepodcast. com.
