To help inform voters on who’s running for Chicago’s elected school board, the baiduhai education team posed a series of questions to the candidates in each district. These questions ranged from basic information on their background and campaign platform to their stance on several issues facing Chicago Public Schools.
See the answers from Karen Zaccor, candidate for elected school board in the 4th District, below.
Biography
Name: Karen Zaccor
Age: 68
Neighborhood: Uptown
School District: 4
Education: Bachelor of Science in biology, Brown University; Master of Arts in teaching, Columbia College
Current Job: Retired Chicago Public Schools teacher
Previous Political Experience: Parent member of Local School Councils for six years and elected school board member.
Questions and Answers
In the interest of transparency, the candidate’s responses shown here are published as written and have not been edited by the Tribune.
Did you attend Chicago Public Schools or is anyone in your immediate family a CPS student? No.
Have you worked at Chicago Public Schools or another school? What is your background in education?
I’m a former CPS teacher who just retired in June. I became a teacher in 1996 and am a co-founder of Uplift Community High School. As a teacher, I worked to make my curriculum challenging, engaging, and culturally relevant, giving my students an opportunity to have a voice in their learning and to engage in projects that lead to impactful change. I am also part of the Anti-Racist Educators Committee of Sustainable Community Schools, working on the curriculum.
Why are you running for a seat on the Chicago Board of Education?
In our fight for the elected representative school board, we envisioned a board that would be about the humanity of our students–students as whole people, not just vessels to receive instruction–and would prioritize the needs and interests of our Black and Brown communities that have been disinvested in for decades. We envisioned a board that would not favor corporate interests and privatization, but would be about developing schools throughout the city to be hubs in their communities focused on serving the whole community and developing the whole child. We envisioned a board that would be made up of parents and educators and education activists dedicated to being accessible to the community and truly listening to their needs and interests. I am running to realize that vision.
How would you describe your district?
District 4 includes many communities from Bucktown to Uptown and the Lakefront from North Avenue to Granville. While much of the area has been gentrified, which means it is also largely white, there are still large numbers of low and moderate income residents and families living in the district. The makeup of the public schools and the families that attend skews more low income and families of color than in the district itself. Many of the lower income working families, which are primarily Black and Latinx, are being displaced by gentrification and the unregulated rise in rents. This presents a huge challenge to school populations and school stability, and in some schools in the district, has led to a very large decrease in student population and therefore funding. That being said, there are large discrepancies and inequities in resources among schools in District 4. There are schools like Coonley, which are 12% low-income and 66% white, and whose parent and community fundraising base can raise $500,000/year to support extra staff and activities. There are also schools like McCutcheon, which are largely Black and Latinx and lower income, that do not have basic facilities like a gym. These are inequities that seriously impact and affect schools’ abilities to deliver the world-class education that all young people deserve. This is why I support the move towards evidence or needs-based funding. Some schools have much larger numbers of students who face serious trauma in their daily lives, have higher proportions or numbers of students with special needs and more English language learners and houseless students. These schools need to have funding that meets the needs of the students and families.
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How would you describe your campaign platform?
My campaign platform is a progressive, equity-driven, community-centered platform formed from decades of experience working in CPS. It focuses on the need to expand and implement the Sustainable Community Schools model, and holistically treating our students as complete human beings.
My primary issues are: (1) Full and equitable resourcing and support of schools, beginning with the schools with the highest need, (2) Development and expansion of Sustainable Community Schools as our best model of equity, (3) Safe, clean, green, healthy, joyful schools, in which students feel valued and supported by an environment that promotes learning.
What is the single most important issue facing CPS students?
Equitable school funding. For decades, CPS has not equitably resourced schools, as facts demonstrate. The result is that we have some of the finest schools in the country while other schools have been disinvested and staff exhorted to “do more with less.” Unfortunately, all too often disinvested schools are in disinvested communities and student basic needs are not being met, which are a prerequisite to being ready to learn. So there is a failure of both CPS and city policy to ensure all students are provided with what they need in order to be successful. We can’t be satisfied with excellence for a few. Our job is to improve student outcomes and that means all students.
This inequity must be rectified, and it will be our job as members of the school board to take the lead. Our first step should be to actually follow the state policy and practice of ensuring funding goes where the need is greatest, and direct future additions to funding neighborhood schools that have been under-resourced. We must also recognize that giving neighborhood schools the funds now that they should have always had will not repair the decades of damage that depriving them of resources has done. Extra supports will be needed.
Provide three to four key points you want voters to know about your campaign.
My campaign is powered by grassroots efforts. I have been active in education equity work and other community issues for decades, and this is a continuation of that work. My core beliefs about education come from this extensive work in my own community and with parent-led community organizations from around the city. I am the only candidate in this district who has been a teacher in CPS in the last 15 years. During that time, education has changed dramatically. Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards have changed how we think about teaching and learning. We have revised discipline policies based on a deeper understanding of the need for restorative culture. Technology advancements have brought both assistance and challenges to our classrooms, both of which require action. And of course, the pandemic brought to light the mental health needs of our students. I have experience that no other candidate has with all of these and more.
Given this year’s budgetary problems and disagreements on how to solve them, what do you propose for the district’s funding in future years? Would you support the district in taking on any loans in future years to fund the annual budget?
Not enough money is being generated to support Chicago and many other school districts around the state, urban and rural. The current solutions of using the property tax in individual districts has only led to more inequity between wealthy and poorer districts.
First, we need to immediately look at holding the state accountable for following the evidence based formula model that it purports to be using and send Chicago the full amount that we are entitled to. That would give us $1.1 billion in additional funds. We should also be pressing the state to pay the legacy pension costs for Chicago like it does for all other school districts in the state.
Second, Tax Increment Financing should stop funding projects other than those that support the purposes for which TIFs were initially designed. All tax dollars should be returned to the entities that are entitled to them. This would bring a significant amount of funding back to CPS.
In the longer term, we need to implement new forms of capturing wealth that would create a much larger revenue pool for our state, city and public schools. One method would be the Fair Tax. That would raise income taxes on the wealthier portion of the population, lower taxes for the rest, and bring in hundreds of millions annually in new revenue. As Board members, we need to work with progressive legislators to get this legislation passed. We cannot, as a society, claim to value the education and development of our youth and then not ensure adequate funding for it.
The Chicago Board of Education recently adopted a new 5-year Strategic Plan. Which aspects do you support and which would you change, if any?
In general, I think the 5-year Strategic Plan reflects the feedback we have heard from parents and community members over the years within a framework of equity and holistic thinking about education. I believe that a framework is essential to making progress in ensuring that every child receives a high-quality education and is on a pathway to a fulfilling future. I will want to see more thought put into how to get diverse input from students, parents, and community members. My experience with surveys and round tables is that they elicit limited and non-representative responses. I also think a more detailed plan to incorporate student voice is necessary. Students should be part of school committees such as Culture and Climate in a meaningful way. As someone who has been a teacher for a long time, there is a big gap between the philosophy expressed here and the reality in schools and classrooms. So the real question will be, how do we actually move from these ideals to sufficient supports to make them reality? And what measures will we use to determine level of effectiveness so we can make adjustments where needed?
As thousands of migrant families settle in Chicago, how should the District handle the influx of English learners? What more should be done to ensure consistent bilingual education is provided and funded?
Last year several schools that do not normally have a significant population of students who don’t speak English all of a sudden received an influx of newcomer students for which they were not prepared and did not receive any assistance. In situations like this, some thought needs to go into how students are placed to increase the likelihood that the services they need will be available. In the absence of adequate teaching staff, CPS should reach out to parents and the community for people who would be willing to provide classroom tutoring and translation support in another language. CPS should also provide some professional development for teachers who speak only English and who are teaching classes where half of the students are Spanish speakers.
That said, the newcomers were entering a system that already didn’t meet necessary standards for bilingual education. If we hadn’t already been failing to meet standards, we would have been better prepared for the influx of newcomer students. CPS needs to provide incentives for staff to become ESL and bilingual certified. These can include providing certification pathways free of charge and encouraging area colleges and universities to make ESL certification an automatic part of their teacher certification programs, as I believe Loyola does. CPS can work with area universities on ways to make pursuing becoming a bilingual educator a more sought after pathway. It benefits all students to speak two or more languages, so our world language and dual language programs need to be expanded and provided with effective professional development. In the interim, transitional bilingual programs – where students are offered first language support for a limited number of years – need immediate space and expertise.
Do you believe the district has historically underinvested in South and West side schools? Yes.
If yes, what solutions would you propose to address inequities and opportunity gaps in the school system?
I am a strong advocate for Sustainable Community Schools. This model of school is being implemented in 20 Chicago schools right now. Sustainable Community Schools serve as hubs for their communities, opening their doors to the surrounding community for programming that continues into the evening and on Saturdays. They emphasize student achievement through a focus on challenging, engaging and culturally relevant curriculum which is supported through high quality professional development for teachers. But they also understand that education is a holistic endeavor and students need much more in order to be ready to learn. They need a nurturing school environment with mental health and social and emotional learning supports, a restorative culture, activities inside and outside of the school day that excite students’ creativity and allow them to develop their talents. SCSs are guided by a stakeholder team that is involved in all aspects of decision-making.
Since his election, Mayor Johnson has indicated a desire to move away from school choice and bolster neighborhood schools. This was recently reinforced by the District’s 5-year Strategic Plan. Do you share this position? Why or why not?
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Characterizing investment in our neighborhood schools as a move away from school choice reinforces a false notion of choice. The fact is that under the current system, most parents don’t have real choices. The vast majority of students in our school system aren’t able to participate in the testing for selective enrollment schools, either because they don’t know about the process, or because they are not well prepared coming from an under-resourced school and can’t afford the preparation required to perform well. Meanwhile, mayoral and CPS decisions to promote charter schools instead of adequately resourcing neighborhood schools in lower income neighborhoods on top of a much longer history of inequitable treatment, has created a landscape where many parents feel, understandably, that they can’t send their children to their neighborhood school. It would be more accurate to say the desire is to move away from school choice for a few and bolster neighborhood schools so that every child has a good school option.
CPS has some of the best-performing public schools in the country. That doesn’t have to come at the expense of other schools in the system. I am in complete and enthusiastic agreement with the plan to bolster our neighborhood schools. When every CPS school is somewhere our children can get a quality education, access extracurricular programs, and be treated as a whole and complete being, then we can say that our students have real choices.
What solutions do you propose to provide busing for students at selective enrollment and magnet schools?
Students at selective enrollment and magnet schools aren’t the only ones struggling with the busing situation, and we need to do better for all of the students affected by the busing shortages. The fact that so many students with disabilities are still not receiving the busing services they are legally entitled to is cause for concern, especially because this has become an annual problem, so CPS should be getting in front of it. We should be using some common sense approaches to improving busing for students attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. CPS Parents for Buses offered a number of different ideas, working from a premise that solving the problem for some students was better than not solving it for any and that problem-solving should start with the lowest-income students. Their solutions included allowing a mix of students with and without IEPs to ride the same bus where space allowed and increasing the number of drivers by offering a competitive wage and removing irrelevant qualifications from the licensing requirements. This year, CPS changed a number of start times and is picking up students at hubs, but they do not expect this to completely solve the problem. When groups, especially parent groups, have worked on solutions to a problem and want to collaborate, that deserves a response. If we are to restore trust in CPS, we have to have a board that is willing to listen to and work with the public.
Please share your thoughts on how the District and the Chicago Teachers Union can settle on a new 4-year contract.
Simply put, bargaining in good faith on all sides is the key here. The 5-year Strategic Plan sets goals that should guide the conversations, and the first step is to find common ground and negotiate measures that may be cost-neutral or cost-cutting.
In 2024, Chicago Public Schools’ average literacy proficiency rate is 31%, an increase from pre-pandemic years. These rates, however, were lower for students from low-income families, English learners and students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs). How should the district seek to improve literacy rates going forward?
A recent article in the Atlantic talks about students coming into even elite universities never having read a complete book in middle school or high school–and struggling with attention and ability to comprehend complex texts. Like so many things, students will get better at reading if they do a lot of it–and they are more likely to do a lot of it if they are given many opportunities to read a variety of texts, are able to work with others at making meaning from text, and are given reading materials that they enjoy and therefore want to persevere at. When I taught middle school literacy, my colleagues and I were successful at building a culture of reading in our classrooms and our students increased in both proficiency and interest in reading as a result of our methods. It’s harder today with so much technology at their fingertips to attract their attention. Work has to go into rethinking how we teach reading in this age of technology and then how we nurture students to be lifelong readers. One step among many we will need to take is to encourage librarians in every school and rebuild our school libraries.
What is your position on expanded funding and renewal terms for charter schools?
I do not support closing any schools. Charter schools, just like others, are a home to the families currently attending and we do not want to create the trauma we have seen school closings cause. I would advocate that charter schools be unionized and have fully empowered LSCs so there is a process to improve working conditions and some accountability to the public. That said, the expansion of charter schools is a deliberate attempt to privatize our school system. Charters became adept at figuring out ways to encourage students who were more challenging to educate or who might interfere with their statistics to leave. Public schools are a public resource and their funds should not be used to support schools whose purpose is to enrich a corporate entity. I would not close any existing charters, but I would fiercely oppose their expansion in any way.
Please provide your thoughts on how to keep Chicago Public Schools as safe havens for students to learn and flourish without fear of violence. How do you propose the district approach this?
I hope to see us build upon the goals and policies in the Whole School Safety Plan. Restorative justice practices need to become a way of life in our schools, implemented at every level, and that requires a change in mindset since few of us were trained or live our lives that way. Making this happen requires investment because our schools will need restorative justice coordinators, training and ongoing coaching for teachers, peace rooms, training for students and implementation of peer conferencing programs, and training for parents. A peaceful classroom environment that students are involved in helping to maintain is tied to truly transformative and liberatory education.
The district can create these environments by ensuring the resources needed for the staff, faculty, and space required to implement this approach are available. Additionally, the students, families, and community should be involved in the transition to this process so their specific needs and concerns will be addressed, and they can develop a personal, intimate understanding of how and why the process works.