Parents and students, welcome back to school!
As a CPS parent and a former CPS teacher, I know how special the back-to-school season is for families across Chicago.
For students, there is an overwhelming sensation of new beginnings, new challenges and reuniting with old friends and classmates. And yes, for some stir-crazed parents, I’m sure there is also some long-awaited excitement on your part as well.
Trust me. I know how it goes. A few years ago, my daughter Braedyn grew a bit annoyed with my back-to-school enthusiasm.
“Dad, you’re triggering me,” she said as my wife, Stacie, and I started planning out our back-to-school shopping.
Her comment made me chuckle, but as a former middle school teacher, I also saw something promising in my daughter’s complaint.
I’m biased, of course, but I think my daughter is brilliant. Here she was, just an elementary school student, using advanced language to talk about her mental health. Just like so many of her peers, she has the awareness and ability to recognize stressors around her.
Now, she was mostly joking, but I knew that her self-awareness was fostered and grown in her school.
As your mayor, I will work as hard as possible to ensure every student in Chicago —regardless of their race, income or ZIP code — has what they need to learn, to be nurtured, fully supported and to be joyful.
From Lincoln Park to Humboldt Park, from Jefferson Park to Garfield Park, and everywhere in between, we will do everything we can this year and every year going forward to ensure every student, including your child, has a fully resourced, equitable, safe and healthy learning environment.
I want you to know that this is personal for me.
I’m not only a public school parent and a former public school teacher, I’m a product of public schools. As a young Black boy, one of 10 children in a working-class family, public education was the lifeline for me and my brothers and sisters. My public school meant opportunity. It meant the chance at a certain kind of life that was closed off to our parents.
But I also saw that this opportunity wasn’t available to all students. For far too many students, their talents were lost, their dreams were lost, and all that they could have contributed to the city and the world was lost.
I’ll never forget the words of one of my students, who once told me during class one morning, “Mr. Johnson, you’re a good teacher. You shouldn’t be teaching here. You should be teaching at a good school.”
That broke my heart then, and it breaks my heart now. Kids like her drove me to start organizing for stronger schools for all neighborhoods and all families.
That is why here on the fifth floor of City Hall and in school buildings across the city, our goal is to create learning environments that support our children in the classroom and beyond. I believe we can provide academic, health, and social support during and after the school day to create safe school communities and address the needs of our bilingual students, unhoused students and students with disabilities.
Every CPS family should feel their student is safe, valued and supported.
Together, by embracing democratic principles that bring in voices from every corner of our city, we will build the school communities that our students and families deserve. We will recognize the intellectual curiosity, personal passions and dynamic diversity of our students as an asset, not a deficit.
We will finally establish a trauma-informed standard of care that meets the academic and social-emotional needs of students by default, not by exception. And we will invest in the adults who serve our students by ensuring a living, competitive wage, and safe work conditions. All of this is possible if we come together and actively participate in the work of building welcoming, sustainable community schools.
And that brings me to the core message that I have for both parents and students ahead of this school year: Make your voices heard. It will take all of us working together to bring to life our shared vision of fully resourced, supportive and nurturing learning environments for all students. Head to CPS.edu to find back-to-school resources, opportunities to join your local school council and more.
Until then, I’ll see you back at school on Monday, Aug. 21.
