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We asked Documenters to interview friends, family and colleagues about the upcoming election.
By Natalie Frazier
2020 (Photo: Linghua Qi)
2022 was a year of political upheaval for Chicago. About a fifth of alders are either resigning or no longer planning to run for another term, citizens are vying for 66 newly created Police District council positions, and the city has a new ward map for the first time in 10 years. In all of the hullabaloo, reliable and useful information about our local government can get lost.
That’s why City Bureau decided to task our Documenters (regular folks who sign up for free trainings and paid opportunities to do civic work such as documenting public meetings) with interviewing their families, friends, neighbors, acquaintances and coworkers about the upcoming municipal elections. We learned some super interesting stuff, too. For example, only 4 out of our initial out of 24 respondents knew that we’d be electing people on the city’s Police District Councils.
Who did the interviews and who did they interview?
City Bureau’s Documenters are fairly representative of Chicago. They live in almost all of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods and vary in age, race and education. For this project we focused on communities where 90% or more residents are people of color, though all types of communities are represented in the overall interview pool. The 12 Documenters who conducted the interviews represent neighborhoods such as Beverly, Archer Heights and Logan Square, are between the ages of 24 and 52 and identify as Asian, white, Black and Latinx/Hispanic.
The 24 community members they interviewed represented neighborhoods such as Austin, Humboldt Park, Bedford Park, Little Village, Uptown, Mckinley Park and Lakeview and have lived 3 to 75 years in Chicago. Interview respondents were racially diverse, they ranged in age from 22 to 88, and their news consumption habits varied from reading local Chicago news daily to almost never.
What did we learn?
While 24 interviews with family and friends don’t constitute a scientific poll of the city, the responses and anecdotes they provided begin to paint a picture about the connection between Chicagoans and their understanding of local government. (Graphs below by Jim Daley of the Chicago Reader.)
Here are a few themes that emerged:
Accountability is key.
Interviewees want accountability from candidates, city officials and police.
“They’re [public officials] doing the usual politricks.”
“I want more accountability.”
Are there too many candidates?
An overwhelming majority of the interview respondents feel like there are too many people running for mayor and city council spots.
“They got too many people on the ballot.”
Interviewees described a need for less “fluff” and more thorough and honest reporting.
One respondent feared that news outlets were only reporting on news that adhered to their own agendas.
“I want a roundup. Where can we make a comparison of candidates that are running?”
Respondents were very passionate about public safety and policing.
“People don’t feel safe here.”
“They need to do away with AR15s. They need to go back to the military.”
“Why are we criminalizing children’s behavior as opposed to handling it in school?”
Affordable housing is a huge concern.
“Why do we have all of these schools that were shut down and homeless people with no place to go?”
People feel unequipped to vote.
“The problem is that they don’t teach people how to plan for voting.”
“I don’t really like voting. I just feel like it’s a way to make people feel like they’re a part of the government when I don’t think it really makes a difference.”
“They tell you to vote and all of these issues [unemployment, youth disinvestment, policing] is why I don’t.”
Interviewees were dissatisfied with Mayor Lightfoot.
The majority of respondents voiced dissatisfaction with the way Lightfoot has handled the pandemic and her response to legitimate concerns from citizens and other elected officials.
“People are kind of hitting a breaking point with her [Mayor Lightfoot].”
“Are you trying to help people or are you trying to get reelected?”
What’s next?
Register to vote and work your local polls.
Read local news & sign up for the Newswire.
City Bureau is using these survey results, in addition to other interviews, to inform our coverage in January & February.
Sign up to be Documenter.
Documenters are still interviewing and submitting submissions so stay tuned for updated results and new ways to get involved with the project!
We’d like to thank all of the Chicago Documenters who contributed to the initial leg of this project!
Javanna Plummer, Pachina Fletcher, Mare Ralph, Aryssa Burton, Janetta Pegues, Anna Mason, Chris Ridgeway, Gloria Valle, Ryland Pietras, Tattianna Howard, Kevin Pearson, Justin Agrelo, Wendy Wei
Documenters applied for a special assignment through our website documenters.org and attended a mandatory training on interviewing. Documenters then found 1-3 people to interview, recorded their interviews, and inputted the answers into an Airtable form. Special thanks to Jim Daley who co-hosted a Documenters workshop about data analysis, edited this blog and created the data visualizations pictured above using flourish.studio.
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October’s Public Newsroom showcased how disabled students and their families can advocate for the services they need.
By Mike Tish
In October, City Bureau’s Public Newsroom addressed how students with disabilities and their parents can advocate for an essential education service from Chicago Public Schools: Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). IEPs are legally binding documents that outline how educators will ensure students with disabilities make progress in school.
Since the pandemic, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has been unable to fulfill thousands of IEP evaluations. As a result, thousands of Black and Latine students have been without access to services they’re owed.
To help us gain some actionable insight into this issue, we were joined by:
Chris Yun, former education policy analyst at Access Living, where she led policy advocacy efforts to ensure inclusive education for students with disabilities.
Barb Cohen, a policy analyst and legal advocate focusing on special education at the Legal Council for Health Justice, which works statewide to help folks overcome and dismantle barriers to the care and services they need to stay healthy, fed and housed.
Rachel Shapiro, a supervising attorney at Equip for Equality, which provides advice and legal representation to students with disabilities who aren’t receiving appropriate special education services.
Our moderator was Sammie Smylie, a state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago and former City Bureau fellow, who also covered education on the city’s Southeast Side for the Hyde Park Herald.
Here’s what we learned:
During the 2019–2020 school year, CPS failed to complete thousands of IEP evaluations
“Once a year, students and their parents are supposed to have an IEP meeting,” Smylie said. These meetings should identify a student’s disability, as well as what kind of instruction or related services (think: speech pathology or physical therapy) they’ll need. State law requires that schools conduct student evaluations before they’re provided with an IEP (students with an existing IEP must be re-evaluated every three years). After filing a FOIA request, Smylie found that during the 2019–2020 school year, CPS failed to complete more than 10,000 evaluations and annual reviews. (Chicago has a little over 330,000 students; about 14 percent have IEPs.) No evaluation? No updated IEP for students.
Students across Chicago’s South, West and far east sides were most likely to have IEP delays
Smylie said the data they obtained as part of their FOIA request showed CPS students in Networks 11 and 13 were unlikely to receive re-evaluations during the school year. These networks include Englewood, parts of the Southwest Side, as well as neighborhoods on the city’s far south and far east sides. Shapiro said she heard from CPS parents all over the city who felt that CPS lacked a sense of urgency when it came to addressing its IEP backlog.
Shapiro said one of the students she represented went without services for five to six months because CPS didn’t conduct their re-evaluation on time. “The reality is no matter how many services we give [them] now, that can’t make up for the fact that, for those five or six months delay, they didn’t get the support they needed,” she said. This lack of support threatened and likely slowed the student’s progress in school.
Parents should prioritize frequent communication with their kid’s teachers
CPS’s struggles to provide IEPs for students with disabilities predates the pandemic. As Yun put it: “Denial of special education services is a product of CPS culture.” As far back as 2015, CPS was found to be in violation of federal standards that require schools to provide IEPs to their students. Cohen, a parent of a former CPS student with disabilities, said it’s hugely important for parents to communicate with their children’s teachers as much as possible.
“Teachers have always appreciated the communication and the troubleshooting we can do together,” Cohen said. “I think [that relationship] leads to better IEPs.”
Get everything in writing, and request documents you can use to show which services you’re owed
“Whatever you do, get it in writing,” Cohen said. “If you just [verbally] say to a teacher or case manager that I think I’d like to have my child evaluated...officially, it never took place.” Emails are best because they have the date on them.
Hazel Adams-Shango, an attendee at the Public Newsroom who advocates for students with disabilities in New York City, said that right now is the time to request a copy of attendance and service logs, which you’ll need whenever you request makeup services from CPS.
Word choice matters; consult free legal services before you file any complaints
You don’t need a lawyer to file a state complaint, but it helps to have someone who knows special education law look over your complaint before you send it in. That’s because slight wording changes can make a big impact. “The law doesn’t require a school to do what’s best for your child,” Shapiro said. If you tell officials that a one-on-one aide for your child is what’s best for them, they have no legal obligation to make it happen. Instead, Shapiro says, tell educators and officials that your child “needs” a one-on-one aide or other service.
Equip for Equality provides free services for folks at (866) 543-7046.
If you’re interested in advocating for yourself, your student, or want to help make a difference in your local CPS network, here are a few places to start:
Stay in touch with our guests:
Rachel Shapiro: (312) 895-7308, rachel@equipforequality.org
Barb Cohen: (312) 605-1948, bcohen@legalcouncil.org
Access Living education advocacy team: (312) 640-2100, advocacy@accessliving.org
More coverage on the issue:
“What more than 50 special education parents in Chicago told us about schooling this fall,” from Chalkbeat
Read about outstanding CPS transportation requests, of which students with disabilities account for more than 50%, from Chalkbeat
Read this report on how CPS fell behind on IEP plans, from Chalkbeat
Screenshot of the Zoom meeting where our Public Newsroom took place. A grid of smiling faces, including our panelists, moderator, organizer and interpreter, Barb Williams.
This event is part of the Public Newsroom, City Bureau’s free monthly workshop series. Learn more or support City Bureau’s workshops and events by becoming a recurring donor today.
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