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District 9, which extends from Morgan Park to Englewood, including parts of Roseland, Pullman, Beverly, and Auburn-Gresham, has 95 CPS schools serving 34,128 students.
The district is predominantly Black, with 76% of residents identifying as Black, and CPS enrollment reflects that, with 81.6% of CPS students in the area identifying as Black.
All across Chicago, Black students face lower graduation rates and higher drop-out rates and suspensions than any other racial group. Data also shows that more Black students travel over 6 miles to school than any other racial group, an issue exacerbated by the lack of general busing for CPS.
Enrollment numbers for other racial groups in the district largely reflect the demographics of residents in the area. However, while 13.4% of residents in District 9 are white, just 6% of CPS students enrolled in the district are white.
Of the area’s 95 schools, three are ranked as “Exemplary” schools by the state, meaning they are among the top 10% of schools in the state. All three schools are located in the 19th ward, where some of the highest-earning families in the district live. Four schools are ranked as “Intensive,” or among the lowest 5% of schools in the state.
Candidates have noted that residents’ concerns in the district vary widely across the neighborhoods — from busing to school choice to staff retention.
Four candidates are running for the District 9 seat: Therese Boyle, a 35-year CPS veteran and Mount Greenwood resident; Miquel Lewis, a Beverly resident and acting director and chief probation officer for Cook County Juvenile Probation; Lanetta Thomas, a U.S. Army veteran and community organizer in Roseland; and La’Mont Raymond Williams, Auburn-Gresham resident and chief of staff and general counsel to a Cook County commissioner.
Who is Therese Boyle?
When talking about the schools she worked in over her 35 years as a school psychologist and teacher, Therese Boyle points to nearly every area of the large District 9 map she has hanging on her living room wall in her Mount Greenwood home.
Now retired, she sees the District 9 school board position as a chance to use her open schedule and her extensive experience in CPS to “help the kids, to help the teachers, help the school communities.”
“Thirty-five years is a long time, and I saw CPS go through a lot of different leaders, a lot of different, you know, curriculums that came and went,” she said. “I am retired. I can contribute my whole time to this.”
In her experience particularly in South Side schools, Boyle says the primary concerns vary by neighborhood. In the northeast side of the district, in places like Englewood, for example, she says she’d want to focus on attracting and keeping teachers.
In 19th ward neighborhoods such as Beverly and Mt. Greenwood, she said, constituents seem particularly concerned about busing and equitable funding for both neighborhood schools and selective enrollment schools.
With a bachelor’s in finance and a minor in economics from Illinois State University as well as professional experience serving on the board of the United Credit Union and working at banks, Boyle says she is well-prepared for the financial aspects of the job as well.
“I would be a good steward of the Board’s resources and keep them as close to the classroom as possible,” she said.
If elected, Boyle said she would investigate her constituents’ main concerns as well as prioritizing issues such as improving student achievement, improving mental health, and balancing the CPS budget.
As of Aug. 21, Boyle’s campaign has been primarily self-funded, with her own contributions amounting to more than $20,000, according to campaign finance reports.
Read Boyle’s full questionnaire responses.
Who is Miquel Lewis?
As acting director/chief probation officer for Cook County Juvenile Probation & Court Services, Miquel Lewis works with some of the most marginalized youth in the county.
“I know the transformative power of education and because education is their legal right,” he said. “I want to ensure that all children, including children who are on the margins, have an opportunity to live a quality life, and I know that begins with education.”
Lewis served on the board when former Mayor Lori Lightfoot appointed him in March 2023. When Mayor Brandon Johnson was inaugurated in May, he did not renew Lewis’ appointment.
Lewis was one of the first graduates of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences in Mount Greenwood after it opened in 1985. During a baseball team practice, he said, a mob of white residents upset about the school’s integrated student body charged the field with garden tools and bats, and a truck swerved around the field threatening to hit the players, until they were stopped by a police officer.
To get home later, he had to wait at the city bus stop where angry residents hurled racist insults, he said.
The event stuck with him. It’s part of why he believes diversity and inclusion is essential and that education can change minds. It’s also why issues like busing and school safety top his priority list.
“I don’t see how students can focus on their academic performance if they feel threatened in the academic environment,” he said.
Lewis is the only candidate who has already served on Chicago’s Board of Education. He was appointed in March 2023 and remained on the board for a short time before Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed new members in July 2023. In his time on the board last year, Lewis said, he gained valuable insights into the CPS board budget.
The district “is underfunded relative to other districts across the state,” he said. “That’s an issue that the board, with the CEO, with the City Council, have to champion. There has to be a moment of reckoning between the state’s allocation of resources to school districts and what they allocate to Chicago Public Schools district.”
As of Sept. 22, Lewis’s campaign had raised $24,300, according to state campaign finance records. He received $6,900 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. Lewis also received a $1,000 donation from the CEO of Perspectives Charter School network, Deborah Stevens.
Read Lewis’ full questionnaire responses.
Who is Lanetta M. Thomas?
When Lanetta Thomas wants to know what changes are needed in CPS, she goes to the students first. That’s what she did when she was a student at Percy Julian High School in Washington Heights advocating against school closures. It’s what she does now as the mother of several CPS students and as a student herself at Chicago State University and Governors State University where she is earning bachelor’s degrees in global studies and Spanish.
In fact, that is how she first became a community organizer for SOUL (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation). She was speaking at a town hall about changes needed at her university when she met Tanya Watkins, the executive director of SOUL.
When the elected school board was announced, she said, several people immediately looked to her because of her advocacy for students.
“Your sponsors and your stakeholders are you children,” she said. “We see stuff that we don’t like in our school that no one listens to us about. We are in the classroom. We know the teachers.”
She started by interviewing her own 10-year-old daughter Michaela, who has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) and is part of the reason that advocating for funding and greater support for students with IEPs is at the top of Thomas’s priority list if she’s elected.
Her other priorities, she said, will be pushing for music and arts education and vocational training as part of school curriculum, something she believes will also improve school safety, and ensuring every school has social services and support staff.
Some of these issues, Thomas said, can be addressed by partnering with community groups that provide the services that CPS is looking for, such as literacy and STEM tutoring programs to improve academic performance, or arts and music education programs for enrichment, and even social services.
As of Sept. 22, Thomas’ campaign has received more than $10,000 in individual and organizational contributions. The political arm of the Chicago Teachers Union provided $4,300 to pay for campaign staff. Thomas also loaned her campaign $2,500.
Read Thomas’ full questionnaire responses.
Who is La’Mont Raymond Williams?
Growing up in Auburn-Gresham and Ashburn in the 1990s and 2000s, Williams attended some of the best schools in CPS — Clissold Elementary, Ogden Elementary, and Lincoln Park High School — thanks to the lottery system. His younger brother, on the other hand, was not as lucky.
The differences in the quality of the two brothers’ education is at the heart of why Williams is running for the District 9 school board position.
“His quality of education was drastically different than mine,” said Williams. “Those high school years are formative. My little brother did not get the same opportunity as I did and that disparity still remains, which is one of the top issues we hear parents talk about.”
The school board, he said, is an opportunity for the community to have a voice in how funds and resources are allocated to help eliminate those disparities.
Williams is no stranger to politics, the campaign trail, or handling big budgets. In 2022, Williams ran against Willie Preston in the Democratic primary for the Illinois State Senate District 16 seat nomination and lost with 45% of the vote.
As the chief of staff and general counsel to Cook County Commissioner Bill Lowry, Williams not only has experience drafting and helping to pass legislation but also consults on the county budget, skills he says are needed as the school board tackles CPS’ deficit projection of $505 million.
Williams says the decisions he makes on issues such as school resource officers and school choice will be based on input from constituents and facts and data, not personal opinion.
“I want people to know that if I cast a vote for anything I thought through it, I spoke to my constituents, and I made the decision that I thought was the best decision to make based on that input,” he said.
Read Williams’ full questionnaire responses.
This story was published in partnership with Block Club Chicago.
