Noble Schools achieved a big win this past month: The Chicago Public Schools board renewed our charter for four more years—the highest renewal issued by the board this year. This result was largely due to the hundreds of staff, families, alumni, and community members who showed up to call, email, and advocate on behalf of Noble.
While this was a major achievement, our work is not done. In a virtual Parent Leadership Series (PLS) workshop on Feb. 15, Noble’s Government & Community Affairs team gathered with parents and caretakers across the network to discuss the challenges we still face with getting Illinois schools fully funded and protecting school choice.
“Our Noble family advocated for our charter renewal as one voice, and to do that took a massive effort that demanded a sacrifice of time. Although the renewal process is over for this time period, our families continue to give their time in spaces like our Parent Leadership Series,” Ellen Moiani, the director of the GCA team, said, “Although the CPS Board renewed us for four more years, we cannot stop our advocacy—especially now, we must continue to give parents the space to share their stories and advocate.”
The first half of the session focused on preparing parents to advocate for Evidence-Based Funding (EBF)—an initiative that Noble Schools has been working on with Funding Illinois Future. You can read more about EBF and our previous advocacy work for it here.
Last week, our CEO, Constance Jones (middle), joined Noble parents in Springfield to hear Governor Pritzker's budget plan and advocate for EBF.
Every spring, the GCA team travels with parents and caretakers to Springfield to advocate for their children and schools. This spring, we will continue to push for an increase in EBF. During the workshop last week, parents broke out into groups to work on their pitches to legislators.
“Our kids need to be more competitive within the world platform and have the tools to accelerate and activate their brains… but these things are not allotted to a lot of the lower-income neighborhoods, and that’s why we continue to fall behind,” One parent shared after the breakout session, “So, the formula for developing a child should include increasing funding for these underfunded areas.”
For the last half of the workshop, the GCA team discussed CPS’s resolution to end school choice and both the CPS board’s and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s responses to our recent requests about what this resolution means for charter schools. Both the board and Mayor Johnson have made statements assuring that they would not close magnet or selective enrollment schools. However, they made no such assurances for charter schools like Noble. In fact, in a recent WBEZ article, the reporter noted that it is clear that Johnson is more uncomfortable with charter schools.
In January, Noble parents went to City Hall to advocate for Noble's charter renewal.
GCA team members broke parents and caretakers into groups again to work on strategic plans to achieve two goals:
- To get public assurance from the CPS board and Mayor Johnson that charter schools will be safe from closure in CPS’ 5-year strategic plan
- To ensure that there will be space for charter parents and caretakers to provide feedback on the plan
Parents and caretakers in the workshop had all sorts of ideas on how to advocate for their students, from continuing to show up at CPS board meetings to increasing awareness about the political situation for charter schools amongst Noble parents. Throughout the night, they were clear in how they felt strongly about protecting their children, schools, and the right to school choice for all parents.
If you are a Noble parent, staff member, student, alumni, or community member interested in getting involved in our advocacy work, please contact Pattilyn Beals at pbeals@nobleschools.org.
