Meet Karen Zaccor, candidate for the Chicago school board’s 4th District

Academics

About 31% of Chicago Public Schools elementary students are meeting state standards in reading, and 19% are meeting math standards. How would you approach growing reading and math achievement?^*
I taught high school for the last 13 years. By the time students got to me, most were no longer curious about how the world works. They were all too often looking for the minimum path to reach their goal, whether that was passing or getting an A, rather than authentic learning. Their prior schooling led to that. American education is not sufficiently invested in nurturing a love of learning and a sense of exploration and discovery. If you are a parent, think about what you do when learning with your child. Do you pick books your child will hate? Do you drill them on contextless facts? No! You inspire your child’s love of learning. That’s step one in improving achievement: Engage students by making learning enjoyable. The more students read, the more they engage with math, the better at both they will be.

Do you support standardized testing more than once a year?
No. In general, no extra testing. However, having taught in high school, I know that students sometimes like having that extra opportunity for practice in a setting that is similar to the required test (soon to be ACT), so it should be an option.

Do you support requiring all schools to select from a certain curriculum authorized by the board of education?
No. Providing curriculum resources is valuable. I used the Skyline high school science curriculum in my teaching and found it helpful. Importantly, I modified it to fit the needs of my students, which is critical for effective teaching. Teachers are the experts on their students and should be able to find or create what works best for the students they have in front of them with support from the board of education.

Chicago Public Schools has consistently fallen short when it comes to serving students with disabilities. What would you do to improve special education?
Improvement for special education requires increased staffing, increased training, and some changes in how classroom supports are determined. All schools should have a full-time case manager. Case managers have many responsibilities and they often have to immediately respond to problems that arise during the day. When case managers also have to teach or co-teach classes, some part of their job is of necessity going to be short-changed. Additionally, SECAs [special education classroom assistants], cluster teachers, and general education teachers who work with cluster students need training in the specific needs of their students as well as competency in the appropriate use of various assistive devices in order to deliver the most well-informed program. To help transition students to high school, we must ensure IEPs [Individualized Education Programs] for these students are written ensuring they will get the support they need for their classes and that should include elective courses.

CPS finances

In recent years, Chicago’s Board of Education has consistently raised the property tax levy to the maximum allowed by state law every year. Should the board continue to raise the levy to the maximum?
No. We need progressive sources of revenue to meet CPS’ needs. The state of Illinois should step up and fund teacher pensions for CPS the way it does for the rest of the state. The CPS budget deficit would vanish. The Board, CPS, CTU, the mayor, Chicago elected officials and our business community need to come together to pressure Springfield into doing what’s right. Property taxes are a regressive source of revenue that we should move away from. We have options such as the Fair Tax, and the LaSalle Street Tax, that will stop pitting our student’s welfare against the city’s home owners.

Do you think CPS needs more funding, or do you think the school district’s budget is bloated? How would you balance the CPS budget?^*
CPS definitely needs more funding. We need to better serve migrant and special needs students. We need to expand Sustainable Community Schools, which promote a transformative holistic model that supports families and communities as well as students. We need more restorative justice coordinators and tutoring programs. We need to offer more CTE [career and technical education] programs for students and to make our school buildings safe and environmentally sustainable. We need to move toward equity across our entire school system. That all requires more funding and there is no alternative. We can’t settle for less than what is owed to schoolchildren in Chicago. All of Chicago needs a unified front to make that demand in Springfield.

School choice

Do you support the current board of education’s decision to prioritize neighborhood schools and shift away from the current system of school choice with selective enrollment, magnet and charter schools?
Yes. We call it “choice,” but it’s a choice for the few. It is undeniable that CPS’ practice of over-resourcing selective enrollment and magnet schools and opening charter schools has come at the expense of equitably resourcing neighborhood schools. It is undeniable that the majority of CPS students, especially lower-income Black and brown students, attend neighborhood schools. Recent articles and reporting have made this abundantly clear. The board has to be about true equity.

Given the board of education’s decision to prioritize neighborhood schools, how would you balance supporting those schools without undermining the city’s selective enrollment schools and other specialized programs?^*
We certainly want to continue powerful programming for selective enrollment schools, but we need to establish what that means. We currently have schools with “73-page course catalogs” as cited in a recent article by WBEZ, while other schools cannot fully staff the basics. That’s an excessive imbalance. Selective enrollment schools should have the means to offer a full menu of challenging, fast-moving courses that prepare students to excel in college or actually gain college credits, but that cannot come at the expense of the rest of our schools. Evidence-based funding doesn’t take away funding from selective enrollment schools. Instead, it dictates that as new funding comes to CPS, that money should go to schools based on need. That’s just a common sense approach to budgeting when we want all our students to have access to well-resourced, well-rounded education.

The first charter school opened in Chicago in 1997 and these privately run, publicly funded schools grew in number throughout the 2000s. Today, 54,000 Chicago Public Schools students, or about 17%, attend charters and contract schools. Do you support having charter schools in CPS as an option for students?
No. Charter schools take money away from public schools while finding different ways to pick and choose whom they serve. In effect, their existence removes choices. It didn’t make sense in the 2000s to continue adding schools when the CPS population was dropping and it makes even less sense now. No more charters should be opened. Existing charters should have LSCs and their workers should be unionized.

Independence

If elected, how will you maintain your independence from the mayor’s office, the Chicago Teachers Union or other powerful forces shaping the school system?^*
My job as a representative is to represent the best interests of the students and families in my district and throughout CPS. If the best ideas for how to serve my community and our schools come from students, those are the ideas I will champion. The same is true if those ideas come from the congregants of a church in my district, LSC parents, or members of a community organization. And, yes, if the best ideas and approaches for serving our schools come from CTU or the mayor, those will be what I champion.

Police in schools

Do you support having sworn Chicago Police Department officers stationed in schools?
No. Police do not belong inside schools. Positive school culture is built through trusting relationships, classroom and school level social and emotional supports, a restorative culture and a true voice for students. Research, including in CPS, documents that police in schools leads to more suspensions and arrests, disproportionately targeting students of color. Forty hours of training does not make a police officer an expert in adolescent psychology, mental health, or social work. Leave police outside and bring in the appropriate professionals to serve student needs.

Busing and facilities

Last year, in an effort to prioritize transportation for students with disabilities as required by state and federal law, CPS canceled busing for general education students who attend selective enrollment and magnet schools and hasn’t found a solution to reinstate that service. Do you support busing for general education students?
Yes. We should, ideally, provide busing. We can use common sense approaches to maximize each route for all possible riders while not sacrificing the right of students with disabilities to a ride shorter than one hour. Use union bus drivers who are paid a living wage and fill shortages by recruiting parents for the union jobs. If it still isn’t possible to provide enough buses to cover all students, we can at least provide realistic options for those who can’t be covered with busing.

About one-third of Chicago public school buildings have space for at least double the students they’re currently enrolling. Chicago officials have previously viewed under-enrolled schools as an inefficient use of limited resources — and a decade ago the city closed a record 50 schools. Do you support closing schools for low enrollment?
No. The school closure program was a failure by any measure. It didn’t actually save significant funds. Students whose schools were closed were not sent to “better” schools as was promised. The cost to our communities in the harms experienced by our students and families has not and cannot be measured. Closing schools for low enrollment is a failure of imagination and community investment. Use the extra space to transform schools into hubs for their community, with space for services and social programs. Strong schools mean strong communities, and strong communities will encourage families to come and stay in our city.

Bilingual education

CPS has long struggled to comply with state and federal laws requiring bilingual programs at schools that enroll 20 or more students who speak a different language. The recent influx of migrant families has exacerbated the problem. What policies do you support to ensure the district is supporting bilingual students and in compliance with state and federal laws?
Realistically, compliance is out of reach right now. Last year, my school got a large influx of migrant students and no help from CPS. We qualified for the TBE bilingual program (core instruction in native language), but had no money to hire staff nor were there people available to hire. That situation is not going to change immediately. Offering ESL [English as a Second Language] certification programs free to all current teachers and building it into teacher certification programs is step one, but will not be enough. Creating an incentivized teacher prep pathway/using Grow Your Own [teacher training programs] to target Spanish speakers is a step. Skyline curriculum materials must be translated into Spanish. Provide professional development on methods for teachers who have mixed classes and only speak English. Expand dual-language opportunities so more biliterate students graduate and are encouraged into teaching (a down-the-road strategy).

Top local issue

Please share one issue that’s a top concern for your community or your larger elected school board voting district.
Previous questions address what I hear, but what it means to have a well-resourced, well-rounded neighborhood school can benefit from some definition. This is what Sustainable Community Schools, an initiative born in Black and brown communities, are about. Sustainable Community Schools embody a holistic view of education, recognizing the need to nurture the whole child within the context of family and community. They provide challenging and culturally-relevant curriculum and support teachers in delivering quality instruction. They build restorative culture and provide for all stakeholders, including students, to have a voice in decision-making. They provide wrap around services for students and the larger community, including health, legal, education services, etc. And they consciously involve parents and community in being full partners in building for student success. This vision is what my community wants for their schools.