EMPOWER CPS PARENTS TO FIX EDUCATION

Dr. Michelle Pierre brings 26 years of educational experience to the CPS board from the 1st District . She has been a teacher, principal, Chief Academic Officer and Chief of Schools. Michelle has held these positions in Chicago and in a variety of other states. So that is wonderful experience for this position. She has two master’s degrees, a bachelor' degree and a Ph. D in Education (from U Penn), In her current position, Dr. Pierre coaches School Superintendents how to do their job, yet another great qualification for the CPS Board.

Dr. Pierre has worked extensively with Charter School networks, so
she knows a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of charter schools, which is especially helpful to being on the CPS Board. CPS has worked closely and will surely continue to do so- with charter schools if and when Mayor’s Johnson’s influence on CPS is lessened.

As Dr. Pierre emphasized, a major issue confronting the CPS Board is the $10 billion CPS Budget. Are the taxpayers getting a good Return on Investment from that spending? Are the performance indicators at CPS good enough to justify the exceptionally large taxpayer expenditures on CPS?
Since over at least the last two decades and maybe the last four, no more than 10% to 20 % of the CPS Black and Brown students and no more than 50% of the CPS White students have read at grade level. So Dr. Pierre has drawn the obvious conclusion that CPS’ performance measures are unacceptable and that view would spread to a majority of the CPS board if it were composed eventually of independent thinkers.

Dr. Pierre is a believer in the desirability and efficacy of private and public
school choice. She believes all parents should have the right to pick the best school for their child from traditional neighborhood schools, charter schools, select enrollment schools, magnet schools, parochial schools, non-denominational private schools, home schooling and on and on. She seems to believe that competition is the patron saint of the consumer and that CPS traditional neighborhood schools have an extremely large amount of room for improvement.

Dr. Pierre laments the fact that discussion of Key Performance Indicators
(“KPIs”) is not a part of the governance model at CPS, so that there is virtually no public discussion by the CPS Board and administrators- including the current Supt, Pedro Martinez of the terribly low percentages of students reading and doing math at grade level, especially among Black and Brown students at CPS at traditional neighborhood schools.

These depressing KPIs are why Dr. Pierre is such a strong proponent of school choice. The performance numbers are much better at the alternatives to traditional neighborhood schools than at traditional neighborhood schools-- so how could anyone like Mayors Johnson and Lightfoot- or the current Board Members justify their refusal to allow CPS parents to exit the failing CPS schools by empowering CPS parents to take their CPS money and transfer it to the schools of their choice, that is, implement school vouchers.

Show host Berkowitz and 1 st District CPS Board Candidate Dr. Michelle Pierre discussed the fact that 34% of CPS traditional schools are half-empty or worse, as reported in a Wirepoints slide. Surprisingly, Dr. Pierre said she would not shut down, for example, one of those schools- Douglass High School, which has an actual enrollment of 35 students, even though the school capacity is for more than 900 students. Zero per cent of the students at Douglass were proficient in reading. Dr. Pierre said she would first discuss the situation with the parents, administrators and teachers.
That makes sense to have that conversation with parents.

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