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Two educators and mothers with children in Chicago Public Schools — Jennifer Custer and Michelle N. Pierre — are vying to represent families and residents in District 1 on Chicago’s far north west side in the city’s first school board elections.
The winner will represent the neighborhoods of Edison Park, Portage Park, Jefferson Park, and Norwood Park. In all, there are 43 schools in District 1 serving 32,410 students, most of whom are Hispanic and white. There is one charter school, CICS-Northtown, and one alternative school, Ombudsman. Six are considered “Exemplary” — meaning they’re in the top 10% in the state — and of those, five are neighborhood elementary schools. One high school is among the lowest performing 5% of schools, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.
District 1 is home to many city workers, including teachers and police officers who are required to live in Chicago as a term of their employment. The area is also unique in that the suburb of Norridge sits within the boundaries. Norridge has two school districts — one elementary district with two schools and another with one high school.
Custer and Pierre both have children in Chicago Public Schools and are educators who spent most of their careers outside of Chicago.
Custer started teaching at a district outside Madison, Wisconsin. and spent the last decade as a teacher, dean of students, and suburban districts in Addison, Itasca, and Bloomingdale. She is currently a stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old and 2-year-old. Her oldest attends pre-K at their neighborhood school in CPS.
Pierre taught at schools in New York City and Maryland, before becoming a principal in Washington, D.C. and administrator in Cleveland. She most recently worked for the LEARN Charter School Network in Chicago as chief of schools and is currently the national senior executive director of strategic partnerships and alumni impact at New Leaders. Her daughter attends The Chicago High School for the Arts, a CPS contract school.
Both cited the district’s budget and school choice as top issues for families and residents in District 1.
Who is Jennifer Custer?
Custer has always taught middle school, which, she jokes, means either “you’re a saint or you’re crazy.”
A native of West Bend, Wisconsin, just north of Milwaukee, Custer said her late grandmother inspired her to become a teacher.
“When I was a little kid, she used to bring me her old school paper planners and her old school paper grade books,” she said. “I’d line up all my stuffed animals and I’d play teacher.”
Since leaving the classroom two years ago to raise her two children, Custer said she’s running for school board to ensure her kids – and all kids in Chicago — have a good experience when they go to school.
“More than anything, I want school to be a very positive place for kids to go, a place that they at least don’t say that they hate going, that they can find some kind of joy and some kind of passion,” she said.
Custer’s campaign had raised more than $35,000 as of early September. Her husband, Jeremy, is the political director for Operating Engineers Local 150, whose political action committee is one of Custer’s top campaign contributors. She’s received more than $12,000 from the Chicago Teachers Union’s political arm to pay for field staff and data consulting
Custer also has endorsements from the Chicago Teachers Union and several other trade unions, as well as more than a dozen local elected officials, including state Sen. Robert Martwick, who championed the elected school board legislation in Springfield and whose district overlaps with District 1.
Custer said her top priorities, if elected, are balancing the CPS budget, improving achievement, and improving school facilities.
In talking with voters, she said people are most concerned about CPS’s budget deficit impacting their local neighborhood schools and many families worry that the district’s new equity formula could impact selective enrollment and magnet schools negatively.
Read Custer’s full questionnaire responses.
Who is Michelle N. Pierre?
Pierre’s first two teaching jobs shaped her philosophy as an educator.
In 1998, fresh out of college, she was hired at a private school she attended as a child. She was the school’s first Black teacher.
“Parents actually did a request to the head of school for my transcripts and for the board to oversee my teaching, to make sure that I was good enough for their kids,” she said.
Pierre decided to take a new job at P.S. 45 in the South Bronx after winter break – going from teaching a class of 12 to one with 40 students.
The class’s original teacher had walked out in the middle of the day, and Pierre followed a string of substitutes.
Once Pierre found her footing with the fifth graders, she said the principal who hired her asked: What’s your educational philosophy?
She responded that if she was still at the private school, she would have been teaching Shakespeare.
His response? “My kids deserve that too.”
“That has stuck with me for my lifetime,” Pierre said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “I think there’s a perception about certain kids, certain neighborhoods, certain backgrounds, that don’t deserve the same level.”
She moved to Washington, D.C. to become a principal through New Leaders for New Schools, then a new organization. In 2003, when she was 27, Pierre became principal of Tyler Elementary School in Southeast D.C. – then ranked 113 out of 115 schools in the district, she said.
Channeling that “my kids deserve that too” belief, Pierre launched a Spanish immersion program at Tyler, similar to one across town in a more affluent neighborhood. Within three years, Tyler was the fastest growing school in D.C., she said. It is now named Shirley Chisholm Elementary, after the first Black woman elected to Congress.
Pierre later became the chief academic officer for Cleveland Metro Schools, a district with 100 schools, 40,000 students, and a $1 billion budget. In 2018, she moved to Chicago to become chief of schools at the LEARN Charter School Network, Her daughter enrolled at the Ogden International School of Chicago - Jenner campus the year after a high-profile merger and now attends the Chicago High School for the Arts, or ChiArts, a CPS contract school. Pierre currently serves on the board of ChiArts.
If elected to the school board, Pierre said she’s well-equipped to work with people of different viewpoints and is dedicated to improving outcomes for all students. She ranked her top priorities as balancing the budget, improving achievement, and increasing school choice.
Pierre’s campaign had raised about $20,000 as of Sept. 20, with the largest amount — $6,900 — coming from Jim Frank, former CEO of Wheels, Inc. and longtime political donor who also supports the political arm of the education nonprofit Stand for Children. Pierre also received $1,500 from the Leadership for Educational Equity political action committee. That group also donated $1,500 to District 10 candidates Adam Parrott-Sheffer and Karin Norrington-Reaves.
Read Pierre’s full questionnaire responses.
Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.
This story was published in partnership with Block Club Chicago.
