“The reality is we might not get jobs because of (our activism),” said Acha, an undergraduate anthropology major at the U. of C. and an organizer with Students for Justice in Palestine. 

Acha has more than one reason to worry. She is one of four U. of C. students whose degrees were withheld because of their involvement with the university’s pro-Palestinian encampment calling on the institution to sever its financial ties to Israel. 

A U. of C. spokesman has said the school cannot comment on individual student disciplinary matters, but said that the process is standard practice after a formal complaint is reviewed by the university’s Disciplinary Committee. Meanwhile, over the weekend, hundreds of students and faculty walked out of U. of C.’s convocation over the university’s actions. 

“All four of us aren’t employed yet,” Acha said. “I’m in this situation now where I have to find a job to support myself but I also need to continue to fight for the things I need to fight for.”

The fear of long-term professional consequences has been a source of concern for pro-Palestinian students out protesting, though several of them, including  Acha, plan to enter professions well served by activism such as community organizing, nonprofit work, politics or academia.

“We have some universities, like U. of C., that are pledging that they are going to protect student speech and the presidents (of these universities) recently have been saying that more than their policies actually do that, but at least they’re saying it,” said Kimberly Yuracko, a Judd and Mary Morris Leighton Professor of Law at Northwestern University who specializes in antidiscrimination and employment law. “But I’ve just not heard of a single private sector employer that has said they will contractually protect speech in accordance with the First Amendment. Maybe there’s one out there, but I’ve not seen it.” 

Jinan Chehade, the lawyer who filed a complaint Wednesday in U.S. District Court, said the law firm, Foley & Lardner, discriminated against her because of her Arab Muslim background and political statements she’d made on social media and at public meetings about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the ensuing crisis in Palestine.

“It was devastating when they turned against me and vilified me in this way when I really respected their supposed commitment to diversity,” Chehade told the Tribune on Thursday. 

Yuracko said because employers like Foley & Lardner can rescind employment offers for any reason, cases such as Chehade’s would not fall under a breach of contract.

According to the complaint, Chehade, a Georgetown Law School graduate, had been interning with Foley & Lardner in July 2022 when they offered her a full-time position to begin in fall 2023. Then, 13 hours before she was set to start work, she was fired, according to the complaint.

The Sunday before her first scheduled day of work, Foley & Lardner managers asked her to come to the office where she said they interrogated her for two hours “in a very hostile manner,” according to the lawsuit.

“As soon as we all sat down, they pulled out a packet of about 15 to 20 pages with screenshots of my social media posts, about speeches that I’ve made, about my background, my identity,” Chehade told the Tribune. “When I really started to feel the anxiety and panic was when they asked me about my dad, and where he worked — and obviously as a child of immigrants, a big law firm asking you about your father … alarm bells just started going off in my head.”

Chehade’s father serves as communications director of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview.

The complaint also alleges that several Foley & Lardner partners openly and publicly supported the actions of Israel toward Palestinians in Gaza without facing consequences.  

In an emailed statement Friday, a Foley & Lardner representative said they believed Chehade’s complaint was “without merit.”

“We stand behind our decision to rescind Ms. Chehade’s employment offer as a result of the statements she made surrounding the horrendous attacks by Hamas on October 7,” a firm representative said.

Chehade’s claim is actionable, Yuracko said, because she is arguing that she’s being discriminated against based on race or national origin, not just based on her political view.

Yuracko said that if a company wants to not hire a person because of opposing viewpoints, “viewpoint discrimination by a private employer is fine.”

“But what’s legally problematic is if they’re treating people who, let’s say, engage in protests, who are race A, differently than people who engage in protests who are of race B,” she said.

Acha, who is Black and was a vocal organizer of the protest encampment for Gaza at U. of C., said she’s noticed a differential treatment of people who are pro-Palestine compared to those that are pro-Israel. 

“For example, there were certain students who were so actively harassing us during the encampment who have now received their degrees,” she said. 

Jeffrey Sun, a literature major at U. of C. who is graduating this summer, said he plans to find a job that aligns with his values and his social work, which includes continuing to raise awareness about Palestine. He said the current climate might put pressure on private sector employers who will likely be faced with job candidates and clients who are clear and confident about the issues they support. 

“So many of us are pro-Palestine — my friends and I once went on a university-sponsored trip to L.A. and there was a restaurant that had Israeli flags, and I remember we just all agreed to not eat there and got up and left,” Sun said. “I think we’re making it very uncomfortable for private businesses, and businesses are becoming more aware that we don’t consider our work separate from our lives.” 

But not everyone has the same type of privilege to pick and choose their job prospects, he said. 

Acha, who comes from a lower-income background, said she’s considering scrubbing her social media platforms while she looks for work, even though her accounts are private. 

Yuracko said more student activists should consider doing the same. She said employers generally want to hire people who can fit into their company culture, rather than be agents of change. 

Acha and the three other students whose degrees were held back still participated in graduation, and hope to get their degrees after a resolution in the disciplinary process. But if the Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct finds that certain policies were violated, their degrees could be denied despite four years of coursework and a staggering tuition. 

“I want to be hopeful for what the next chapter looks like away from the university,” Acha said. “But it’s terrifying to not know what’s next and to not have my future lined up because I’m choosing to fight for what’s right and choosing to fight for humanity.”

Chicago Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed.

Jinan Chehade alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court that Foley & Lardner discriminated against her because of her Arab Muslim background and political statements she’d made on social media and at public meetings about the crisis in Gaza.

According to the complaint, Chehade, a Georgetown Law School graduate, had been interning with Foley & Lardner in July 2022 when they offered her a full-time position to begin in fall 2023. Then, 15 hours before she was set to start work, she was fired, according to the complaint.

The Sunday before her slated first day of work, Foley & Lardner asked her to come to the office where she said they interrogated her for two hours “in a very hostile manner,” Chehade alleged in the complaint.

“As soon as we all sat down, they pulled out a packet of about 15 to 20 pages with screenshots of my social media posts, about speeches that I’ve made, about my background, my identity,” Chehade said. “When I really started to feel the anxiety and panic was when they asked me about my dad, and where he worked – and obviously as a child of immigrants, a big law firm asking you about your father… alarm bells just started going off in my head,” Chehade told the Tribune in an interview Thursday.

Chehade’s father, she said, works at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview.

The firm also questioned her about her associations with Students for Justice in Palestine and public comments she had made regarding a proposed ceasefire resolution at a Chicago City Council Meeting, said Chehade, who is Lebanese but has family who live in Gaza.

“It was devastating when they turned against me and vilified me in this way when I really respected their supposed commitment to diversity,” Chehade said.

In an emailed statement, a Foley & Lardner representative said they believed Chehade’s complaint was “without merit.”

“We stand behind our decision to rescind Ms. Chehade’s employment offer as a result of the statements she made surrounding the horrendous attacks by Hamas on October 7,” a firm representative said.

“This is a big win for us, as paraprofessionals, but also for the students we work with,” said Stephanie Lieurance, union president of CLASS and a learning resource paraprofessional at South Elementary. “This was a long time coming, and I think we just showed the district and the surrounding districts that even though you may not have a ton of numbers in your favor, if something is not right, you need to stand up for it and we did that.”

Last fall, the union learned district officials had hired Sunbelt Staffing to fill 21 open positions. The agency was earning up to $65 for every hour a temporary employee works, according to a contract obtained by the Tribune. The union said the rate was more than four times as much as newly hired, permanent paraprofessionals make. Before the agreement, starting pay for newly hired paraprofessionals at District 47 was $16.14 an hour, while starting pay for temporary paraprofessionals tapped by the staffing agency was between $30 and $35 per hour.

In January, Lieurance told the Tribune that the move was a “slap in the face.”

“Instead of coming up with thoughtful, long-term solutions to address these issues, the district waited until the last minute to bring in temporary help who aren’t committed to our students and our community — apparently they don’t have money to pay us, but they do have money to pay a contracted company,” Lieurance said in January.

CLASS dropped the unfair labor practice complaint per the settlement. Under the newly reached agreement, CLASS members will be given a $2,000 settlement check at the end of the school year and an immediate raise of $1 an hour.

The union said a 5% raise will also be enacted in July.

CLASS represents more than 100 paraprofessionals who serve the nearly 7,000 students who attend the 12 schools in District 47. Lieurance said some paraprofessionals have been in the district for more than 27 years.

As part of the agreement, the union was able to add an extra day of pay into their schedule to get professional development to train alongside the teachers with whom they work.

“Between the union and the district we’re doing everything we can to attract new hires and retain the current employees. And I think now we’ll be able to do that,” Lieurance said.

In a Friday email to parents and students, Bartlett High School’s interim principal, Melanie Meidel, said administrators immediately pulled back distribution to prevent further dissemination, calling the photo “offensive.”

“One of our top priorities is the well-being and respect of our students, staff and community,” Meidel wrote in the email obtained by the Tribune. “Regrettably, we have become aware that the yearbook was printed with a photo containing text that is considered antisemitic. We will work to remove the page with the photo and will inform students and families when we resume distribution of the yearbook.”

In the email, Meidel did not confirm which photo was flagged, though members of the school’s Muslim Student Association say they believe the photo in question, obtained by the Tribune, is of a group of students holding up a Palestinian flag and two signs at the school’s multicultural festival in March. One sign reads “from the river to the sea” written across, with Arabic text underneath reiterating the latter.

For Palestinians and their allies, the slogan “from the river to the sea” is a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decadeslong, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians, according to The Associated Press. However, pro-Israeli activists often hear a clear demand for Israel’s destruction.

According to Avi Gordon, executive director of Alums for Campus Fairness, he and other pro-Israeli community members believe the term “from the river to the sea” is an anti-semitic charge.

“That chant calls for the dismantling of Israel from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the West,” Gordon said. “It not only makes Jewish and Israeli students feel unsafe but also ostracizes them.”

The other sign the students held in the photo reads “in our hundreds, in our millions, we are all Palestinian.”

On Friday, after some yearbooks had been distributed, students from the yearbook club approached a few MSA students who helped organize the multicultural festival to inquire about the posters in the photo from that day, said Bartlett senior and MSA member Aisha Ali.

“They said they were asking because someone reported the picture for inappropriate and offensive content, especially the Arabic text in the picture,” Ali said.

This interaction happened hours before the official email from Meidel went out, according to Ali.

Attempts to reach Bartlett High School’s yearbook staff were unsuccessful.

In an Instagram post Friday evening, the Bartlett High School MSA posted the photo they believe is being incorrectly deemed antisemitic.

The photo features 16 students in traditional Middle Eastern and South Asian clothing in front of a black wall decorated with small flags of the world. A group of male students are holding the Palestinian flag and a couple of female students are holding posters.

Asraar Siddiqui, a Bartlett High School senior, said the picture was from the “flag walk,” in which students representing various backgrounds walk with their flags to highlight the school’s diversity.

“None of these signs were created or displayed with malevolent intent and antisemitic prejudice, and there is nothing inherently offensive about them,” Siddiqui said.

Uday Jain, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the committee on social thought at the University of Chicago, said pro-Palestine advocates say the slogan is not antisemitic, but rather anti-Zionist. To dispel the idea that supporting Palestinians equates to anti-Jewish hate, it’s essential to differentiate Judaism from Zionist thought, he said.

Jain said students all across the country have been seeing the “vicious violence of this extremely harmful racial ideology,” hence proudly holding up signs that counter it.

“So while it might be emotionally uncomfortable and deeply challenging for some people to learn that an institution they considered sacrosanct is racist and genocidal in practice, they have no right to silence and criminalize students who are making this urgent, thoughtful, and loving critique,” Jain said.

In Friday’s email, Meidel said the administration will review and improve the yearbook approval process to prevent such occurrences in the future, taking into account the seriousness of the issue.

At Monday night’s U-46 district board meeting in Elgin, a few students expressed their disappointment at school officials’ decision to halt the distribution of Bartlett’s yearbook.

“I ask if the Bartlett administration knew the (Arabic meaning) before sending a schoolwide email calling our picture offensive — I like to ask, where exactly there’s antisemtiic notions or beliefs?” said Ryhah Rizvi, a Bartlett senior and member of the MSA. “Releasing this email without consulting us led to a complete misinterpretation of the photos’ texts and caused us to feel insignificant amongst other cultures celebrated at the multicultural festival,” she said.

U-46 Superintendent Suzanne Johnson who chaired Monday night’s board meeting did not respond to requests for comment, but in an email, district officials said they are working through the matter.

“We are aware of the concerns regarding the Bartlett High School yearbook and are working on a follow-up, as we are committed to addressing this matter thoroughly in line with our Board Policy. We will be sharing an update very soon with our Bartlett High School students and families,” district officials said.

At Monday night’s meeting, Siddiqui — a former student adviser to the board — spoke about the outpouring of support from community members, parents, and alumni on Bartlett High School MSA’s Instagram page, including the Change.org petition.

Rizvi, who waited hours to speak at Monday’s meeting, said she was devastated at the school’s response, which created a problem when there wasn’t one.

“It would be sheer hypocrisy if the institutions that taught us to raise our voices are the same ones that are actively trying to silence us,” Rizvi said. “There’s nothing discriminatory about the liberation of any people, whether they’re white, black, Arab, Christian, Jewish or Muslim.”

zsyed@chicagotribune.com

Rain fell Tuesday morning as students and faculty walked to class, passing through the South Side campus dotted with discolored grass, marking the empty spaces where tents had been set up nine days ago.

“The quietness (of the quad) is deafening,” said Jeffrey Sun, a U. of C. student.  “And it’s interesting because I think maybe four or five weeks ago, before the encampment, I would have been very happy on the quad, but it’s something where once you know what it could be, you can’t look at it again in a different light.”

Around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, about 50 UCPD officers began dismantling the encampment — knocking down tents and posters, and removing barriers set up by students who had anticipated the raid after the university said it was prepared to “intervene” to remove the protestors from the school’s main quad days earlier.

There had been no arrests in the police action, according to the school’s President Paul Alivisatos, but, “where appropriate, disciplinary action will proceed.”

U. of C. faculty members gather to support pro-Palestinian student protesters

“There were areas where we were able to achieve common ground, but ultimately a number of the intractable and inflexible aspects of their demands were fundamentally incompatible with the university’s principled dedication to institutional neutrality,” he said in a statement.

For around a week, there was little to no police intervention at Chicago-area campuses, even as schools across the country sent in law enforcement to douse pro-Palestine demonstrations, leading to more than 2,400 arrests nationwide. That changed Saturday, however, when Chicago police arrested nearly 70 protesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Loop. In rarer instances, schools including Northwestern University, struck ​​agreements with protest leaders to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.

After receiving several inquiries about UCPD’s intention to clear its student encampment, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office said in a statement that it reached out to U. of C. leadership to reiterate serious safety and operational concerns about this plan. The Cook County sheriff’s office helped with traffic control, but not the raid itself, a spokesperson said.

“CPD raised operational concerns and expressed an unwillingness to participate in a pre-dawn clearing,” the statement from Ronnie Reese said. “Mayor Johnson and the Johnson administration continue to be committed to free speech and safety on all of Chicago’s college campuses.”

A CPD spokesperson declined to share details on the discussions between the school’s police and the city’s police.

This response comes after the Saturday arrests at the Art Institute drew condemnation from many of Johnson’s allies, including seven progressive aldermen who signed a letter Sunday saying the scene at SAIC shouldn’t be repeated.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability received a complaint of excessive force by at least one CPD officer, and a spokesperson said the agency is now working to determine if it will investigate the complaint or if it will be handled by CPD’s bureau of internal affairs. Organizers said they suffered “brutal treatment” from officers, including being thrown on the ground.

Johnson declined to say Tuesday whether he supported the weekend arrests. The mayor’s deputy mayor of safety, Garien Gatewood, had unsuccessfully tried to broker an agreement with the students and school to move to another location before police cleared the encampment.

SAIC President Elissa Tenny said in a statement that the school won’t pursue any academic sanctions against the students who participated in the protest.

“We will continue to allow peaceful demonstrations, but given the escalations we’ve seen in the protests over time, we wish to notify the school community that those who engage in future activities that jeopardize the safety of our community or the public, or disrupt academic operations, will be subject to disciplinary action,” Tenny said.

As the death toll in Gaza mounted, hundreds of students across Chicago have demanded their schools disclose their investments and divest from those with ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, where the group killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. President Joe Biden last week defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” at college campuses, as some in Chicago’s Jewish community demanded action at local universities to prevent hate speech.

U. of C. is known for its commitment to free speech, which experts have said is generally known as one of the best in the county. Dean of Students Michelle Rasmussen said in a Tuesday statement that the school’s policies, including those concerning free expression, apply to everyone. Some professors and students had also pushed the school to remove the encampment.

“Protesters have had numerous opportunities to share their views during this encampment, and they may do so now, under the same rules that apply to others,” Rasmussen said. “While we anticipate further protests, we will not allow such activity to indefinitely disrupt the functioning or safety of the university.”

School officials also noted that the overnight action, done when fewer protesters were in the encampment, was “carefully planned to minimize the need for arrests and reduce the impact on others on campus and in nearby neighborhoods.” The encampment has occupied the main quad since April 29.

Eman Abdelhadi, a Palestinian professor, said UCPD waited until the camp was at its most vulnerable before moving in.

“The point of the raid was terror,” Abdelhadi said. “They waited for those kids to fall asleep and then they pulled tents from under them while they were sleeping.”

U. of C. alum and writing instructor Avi Waldman said when she and other faculty and students came out to the site shortly after dawn to stand their ground, UCPD had already sealed off the entrances leading to the quad and wouldn’t let anyone through.

“They sealed it off in order to destroy the encampment and the students that were already inside were obviously very shaken,” Waldman said.

Organizers had spent much of the night preparing for an anticipated police incursion, the second night in a row the expectation of clearance had circulated among those camping out beneath the gothic buildings that ring the main quad.

Police had brought printed “final notices” to occupants of the encampment, which were later ripped and strewn at protesters’ feet when they locked arms against a barricade and a line of UCPD officers outside a side entrance to the quad on South Ellis Avenue later Tuesday morning.

Several dozen protesters faced university police and chanted, “We are the encampment! We are the encampment!” along with other slogans calling on the university to disclose and drop its financial ties to Israel.

Some protesters screamed insults directly into officers’ faces. “How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?” they asked. “Shame on you!”

As the chants got louder, police put up a yellow plastic barrier.

Uday Jain, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the committee on social thought at the University of Chicago, said it’s gutting to see that kind of reaction to an anti-war movement centered on peace.

“We know this to be a beautiful, principled act of protest and we wanted it to continue and for the university to consider the reasonable demands the student negotiators were asking for,” Jain said. “This was a very cowardly action by a university leadership that doesn’t want to confront its role in enabling Israel’s genocide on Palestinians in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, at DePaul University, the pro-Palestinian encampment — which went up a week ago — remained intact Tuesday evening, making it the last one left in Chicago. By 3 p.m., the rain had slowed to a drizzle and students started to peek out of the dozens of tents that line the quad.

After police intervention at other schools, Simran Bains, a senior student and one of the organizers, said protestors are “hoping for the best, but we are prepared for the worst.” She said they are willing to get arrested if that’s what it takes for their demands to be taken seriously.

“I can’t pretend like things are normal, while other people are suffering,” she said. “I think that if the university could just acknowledge that and understand why we were asking for what we’re asking for, we wouldn’t have to put our education and our futures on the line.”

DePaul President Robert Manuel said in a Monday statement that there’s a need for a “timely resolution” to the encampment. He said organizers have lived up to the values of “nonviolence and inclusion,” but that the protest has attracted those who don’t share the same principles, “putting our community at risk.” He noted the increased Chicago police presence needed Sunday as tensions flared between the encampment and pro-Israeli counterprotesters.

“​​It was evident that the protest had become a magnet for others outside our community with nefarious intent,” Manuel said.

Manuel also released the school’s response to some of the encampment’s demands. Among other responses, it said they are “aligned with the call for a mutually agreed upon cease fire.” But it refused to offer “blanket amnesty” for everyone involved in the encampment.

Henna Ayesh, a sophomore, said it still feels like administrators aren’t “really listening to what we have to say.”

“They keep saying they support us and they’re here for us, then their emails are saying otherwise,” she said.

At U. of C., students and faculty reckoning with the raid said it’s necessary to note that while the encampment was taken down, Israeli troops seized control of Gaza’s vital Rafah border crossing on Tuesday. Jain said the closure poses a potential collapse of humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

Sun, who was walking along an empty quad Tuesday afternoon, said it’s inevitable that protests at U. of C. will spark again in the near future. The activist community on campus made up of students and faculty will trek forward, he said.

“This might be hyperbole, but there’s nothing more we need to do than care,” Sun said. “When we see something wrong, whether it’s the bombing of homes, hospitals and schools and the deprivation of food and water in Palestine, or the mass incarceration of people in the United States, we will do everything we can to stop it, even if it’s just speaking about it.  All of us who have left the encampment have seen how powerful we were.”

Chicago Tribune’s Jake Sheridan and Sam Charles contributed.

“We are determined to close the FAFSA completion gap,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten in a statement. “The funding we’re announcing today will support states, districts, and community-based groups build capacity and leverage their power to ensure that every student who needs help paying for college turns in their FAFSA form.”

In a news release, the department said the $50 million program is part of the “FAFSA Student Support Strategy” and addresses known issues with the 2024-25 form to help boost its completion. Since the application became available in December, only around 9 million forms have been successfully submitted, according to the Department of Education.

Jack Wallace, the head of government affairs and industry relations at Yrefy, a Phoenix-based student loan provider, said there’s a long way to go, as around 18 million people fill out the FAFSA each year.

The Department of Education said it has sent approximately 70 million emails to students encouraging them to complete the FAFSA form, which is being referred to as the “Better FAFSA” to reflect the many changes made to it since last year.

The new application is shorter, with only 36 questions, and most of the information will be pulled directly from income tax returns. A new IRS tool also simplifies the process, with the caveat that the family’s 2022 taxes have been completed and can be easily imported into FAFSA.

Though the changes are intended to help, Wallace said the rollout hasn’t been easy.

“Not only do you have students having a difficult time still getting on the website and getting things processed on the front end, but there’s also a delay in getting the data to the schools,” Wallace said.

The department has been in touch with hundreds of superintendents and principals to help drive submission efforts, garnering over 200 commitments from companies, non-profits, and community organizations to help boost FAFSA submissions.

Minnesota-based Educational Credit Management Corporation will implement the multi-million-dollar support program to assist organizations with demonstrated experience in expanding college access and enrollment.

“The funding will be prioritized for organizations currently working with schools and districts, and those that have deep ties with students and families which have the reach and capacity to help decrease barriers and increase FAFSA submissions,” the department said.

The application deadline for financial aid for the upcoming school year is June 30.

The fourth-year student has been inside the encampment at the U. of C.’s Main Quadrangle for more than two days.

That doesn’t mean Basta isn’t worried about police intervention or repression of the sort he said he’s recently seen at other college campuses. In fact, he expects it.

“This university has, for its entire history, been last to change, and has refused to support students and workers,” Basta said. “There’s definitely a high chance they repress students and bring in a violent police force.”

But as of Wednesday evening, a peaceful detente remained between U. of C. officials, the protesters spread out in tents on the campus lawn and the handful of police watching nearby. That sense of calm can also be found on other local college campuses where protests are in progress.

As pro-Palestinan protest encampments popped up at dozens of college campuses across the U.S. in recent weeks amid the mounting death toll in the war in Gaza, universities have had divergent responses. Many schools, including Columbia University in New York City, have called in law enforcement to douse demonstrations, leading to more than 1,000 arrests nationwide and, at times, violent confrontations with police.

Meanwhile, in rarer instances, other schools — including Northwestern University — have struck ​​agreements with protest leaders to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies. As hundreds at Chicago-area campuses call for their schools to divest from Israel and weapons manufacturers, demonstrations have remained relatively subdued, with little to no police intervention. However, some students and experts say they worry about the possibility of escalation.

Officials from the University of Chicago did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment on potential police involvement, although they’ve previously said they will intervene only if the protests disrupt the functioning or safety of the university.

Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said that as long as protests are peaceful and “there’s no violence,” the Police Department will “make sure that people who want to protest can do it and exercise their First Amendment.”

“If you notice with our universities here, people are protesting peacefully. … We’re not engaging them in a way that’s going to inflame what it is they’re trying to do,” Snelling said Tuesday at a Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability meeting. “If people are just trying to have their voices heard, hey, this is America. It’s their choice and it’s our responsibility to protect them while they do it.”

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said representatives from several local universities didn’t raise complaints in a Tuesday meeting about prosecutors’ long-standing policy not to prosecute peaceful protesters.

Sheila Bedi, a law professor at Northwestern, said she hopes Chicago-area universities continue to refrain from calling in law enforcement on students and that students are allowed to express their views safely on campus. She said it’s important to “reject the idea that what’s happening in Los Angeles or New York City is acceptable or is some sort of norm.”

“My hope is that Chicago university officials will continue to recognize students’ right to protest and also continue to recognize that calling in the Chicago Police Department, unleashing the department on students who are organizing, is a recipe for brutality against our students and also would incur significant liability legal liability on the part of the universities,” Bedi said.

Officers stormed a Columbia building occupied by pro-Palestinian protestors late Tuesday, arresting dozens. Meanwhile, the University of California, Los Angeles canceled classes Wednesday after dueling groups of protesters clashed overnight, shoving, kicking and beating each other with sticks after pro-Israel demonstrators tried to pull down barricades surrounding a pro-Palestinian encampment. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, police arrested 34 people Wednesday, detaining Palestinian American professor Samer Alatout.

DePaul University and the U. of C. are generally considered “excellent schools for free speech,” according to Zachary Greenberg, a senior program officer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Greenberg suspects that their policies and culture supportive of free speech have led to less violence and less disruption, compared with Columbia and UCLA.

“Police officers tend to escalate conflicts and potentially use violence or use force to enforce the rules, and that could really chill students from expressing themselves and from speaking out,” Greenberg said.

Schools must adhere to the First Amendment, Greenberg added. If they censor too much speech or allow too much violence in the form of threats or harassment, he said, it “can really create a chilling environment for speech on campus and really impact campus safety.”

At an unrelated event in Springfield on Wednesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that while “protesting is fine, impeding academic operations is not.” He noted that he wants to protect free speech rights but not “hate speech rights.”

“Let me be clear, there are anti-war protesters out there. There are people who are anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, which is different than just being anti-war,” Pritzker said. “And there are some bad actors too. There are people yelling antisemitic epithets and have forever been bigoted, and we want to make sure that we’re keeping everybody safe.”

Protests continue at U. of C., Chicago high schools

At U. of C. Wednesday afternoon, a handful of campus police officers could be seen dipping in and out of the encampment site. Basta said school law enforcement officers have largely kept to themselves, but protesters have their guards up.

“There’s also been various times where they (police officers) refuse to act — there have been people trying to catch (on camera) the faces of Muslims engaged in prayer and they have done nothing about it,” Basta said. “Students definitely don’t feel safe.”

Hassan D., who requested not to share his last name due to safety concerns, was one of the students who met privately with U. of C.’s dean of students, Michele Rasmussen, on Wednesday afternoon. They didn’t negotiate on students’ demands, he said, which include divesting from funds tied to Israel. Students at DePaul, Loyola and Northwestern have made similar demands.

“What’s implied in our demands is that we want university policy to change and university administration to change,” Hassan said. “So the University of Chicago is facing this particular pressure by the fact that it hasn’t divested from genocide.”

Universities use endowments invested in companies, private equity and hedge funds to pay for things such as research and scholarships. Private institutions aren’t required to provide detailed financial statements.

College students weren’t the only ones organizing protests Wednesday. A planned sit-in at Chicago Public Schools’ Jones College Prep — one of around eight separate actions planned across CPS — prompted the delay of a “Decision Day” celebration.

Instead of marking the day when most colleges and universities request that prospective students commit to enrolling, Jones Students for Justice posted on social media that student activists planned to “use their privilege to stand up and speak out” against certain colleges’ response to encampments, that included “brutalizing students with police … expelling them and evicting them.”

At top-ranked Walter Payton College Prep, students also planned a brief sit-in and a march after school, joining with students from Jones and a handful of other high schools, before proceeding to the U. of C. encampment.

Jones Principal Keri Dolan said in a letter to student families that the Decision Day celebration was postponed to ensure ample security during the sit-in and to be able to properly celebrate students’ college choices.

“We know that this is a very emotional and difficult time for many of our students, families, and staff, especially those of Jewish and Muslim faiths, those who trace their national origin to Israel or Palestine,” Dolan wrote. “We know that many families feel frustrated and hurt not just by the events happening overseas, but about how others are perceiving and reacting to these events,” she said.

The Associated Press contribued.

After setting up more than a dozen tents in the Main Quadrangle on the Hyde Park campus, U. of C. protesters led an hourlong rally dissenting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as the death toll in the besieged area climbs to more than 34,000 people since Oct. 7.

The rally, which also called on U. of C. to end partnerships with Israeli universities and commit to transparency, drew nearly 500 people erupting in chants.

U. of C. senior Youssef Hasweh, who is Palestinian, led the crowd in a run of “Paul, Paul what do you know? Where does all our money go?”

Students said the chant references university President Paul Alivisatos’ refusal to meet with students on the school’s investments, which they’ve been demanding since last fall.

In a statement late Monday afternoon, Alivisatos said the university will only intervene when and if the protests block the learning or expression of others or if the demonstrations “substantially disrupts the functioning or safety of the University.”

“I believe the protesters should also consider that an encampment, with all the etymological connections of the word to military origins, is a way of using force of a kind rather than reason to persuade others,” Alivisatos said. “For a short period of time, however, the impact of a modest encampment does not differ so much from a conventional rally or march. Given the importance of the expressive rights of our students, we may allow an encampment to remain for a short time despite the obvious violations of policy—but those violating university policy should expect to face disciplinary consequences.”

In a follow-up statement, Michele Rasmussen, dean of students at U. of C., said setting up tents on the Quad or erecting other structures and obstructions without prior approval is a violation of university policy and will result in disciplinary action.

“We are monitoring the situation closely. The individuals involved are on notice that the university is prepared to take further action in the event of continued violations of our time, place, and manner policies governing protests, threats to public safety, disruption of operations or academic activities, or destruction of property,” Rasmussen said.

Hasweh said the encampment was designed to be “a university within a university” complete with a welcome tent, a library consisting of a shelf filled with books and tables with food and water. Inside the camp, several students worked in groups on laptops.

Student organizers chose to begin the demonstration two days early, Hasweh said, after a right-leaning media outlet on campus leaked their plans to occupy buildings for a peaceful sit-in.

Protest encampments have popped up in the past week at nearly two dozen college campuses across the country, including Harvard, Brown, the University of Michigan and University of Texas at Austin. New York’s Columbia University became the epicenter of the large, and at times violent, movement in recent days, as demonstrators clashed with police and administrators announced classes on the main campus would be held remotely for the rest of the semester.

Last week, the Palestinian-led movement sparked protests at several Chicago-area universities and colleges, including at Northwestern University where an agreement between students and administration was reached Monday afternoon.

Activists hug after Northwestern officials announced Monday that they have reached an agreement with students and faculty protesting against Israel-Hamas war, April 29, 2024, in Evanston. The deal comes five days after demonstrators established an encampment in Deering Meadow, a popular common area on the Evanston campus. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)Northwestern University officials said in an email that the move allows demonstrations to continue on campus through June 1 but requires the immediate removal of tents and sound systems, as well as a commitment that all protesters will adhere to university policies.

Students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago and Roosevelt University also marched Friday in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

At an unrelated event Monday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said his team has been in touch with universities across Illinois as campus protests evolve.

“It is obviously very important to me that we keep order — it is also important to me that we protect people’s right to protest and their First Amendment rights,” Pritzker said. “So we’re monitoring it very closely. Again, it shouldn’t interfere with people’s ability to go to class, to take their exams, which they’re in now in many places … but if people are going to protest, they should protest in a peaceable and peaceful fashion, allowing the university to operate as it should as an academic institution for those who are paying tuition and attending.”

School administrators nationwide are also cracking down on pro-Palestinian demonstrators with arrests and canceled classes. In an email, members of UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP), said the scale of the repression of students’ freedom of speech across the country is incomparable to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian territories.

The relationship between student activists at U. of C. and the university has been tense since November, when 26 students were arrested by campus police for refusing to leave the admissions building on campus during a sit-in. Charges for criminal trespassing were later dropped but the students still face disciplinary hearings, less than two months from graduation.

Further sparking the pro-Palestinian movement on campus was a meeting between Alivisatos and Yinam Cohen, consul general of Israel to the Midwest, in February. In a post on X, Cohen said the purpose of the meeting was “to further enhance the partnership between (the University of Chicago) and Israeli research institutions and to make sure that every Jewish or Israeli student feels safe on campus.”

Hasweh, who was among the students arrested in the fall, said he simply “wants to be noticed” by university administrators through the encampment.

“It’s insane to feel you’re invisible but know that you’re not,” he said, adding that U. of C. is choosing not to engage with pro-Palestinian students. “What power can you do with that? And that’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

In attendance at the encampment Monday was longtime Chicago revolutionary organizer Frank Chapman, who serves as the educational director and field secretary at the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

Chapman, who began organizing in 1961, sat in a red chair at the center of the rally. He leaned in, focusing on the speeches made by student organizers, before one of them handed him the microphone.

“I’m tired but I ain’t tired of fighting,” Chapman said. “When it comes to the course of liberation in Palestine, I am representing the entire oppressed Black community.”

Mike Miccioli, a second-year physics doctoral candidate and member of UChicago STEM for Palestine, said amid student protests on college campuses, he wants to recenter the conversation on Gaza.

“The reason we are here is to end the genocide,” he said. “And I think it’s energized a lot of people.”

As the encampment grew into the afternoon, a few counterprotesters walked through the crowd to “agitate” people, organizers said. The overarching policy is to not engage, said third-year student Anuj who declined to give his last name out of privacy concerns.

“If they want to make a scene we can’t stop them,” he said. “We know why we’re here.”

Chicago Tribune’s Olivia Olander contributed. 

It was 3:15 p.m. and she’d been awake since 4:30 a.m. to get them both ready for school. The next day, she’ll do it all over again.

Sneed, 18, is one of 10 moms enrolled at Thornton Township District 205’s Blanche Foxworthy Infant Care Center in suburban Harvey, 23 miles south of Chicago.

For more than 25 years, the teen parents in District 205 have had the option to drop off their babies at the center during the day to continue attending high school instead of dropping out due to a lack of child care.

The free program, licensed by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services, appears to be one of only two in the state where a child care center is an extension of services for students funded by a school district. A similar program was created in Joliet Township High School District 204 and is dubbed “our sister center” by teachers in District 205’s program.

Sneed got pregnant with Joziah when she was 16. He’s about to turn 2 and already knows big words like “basketball.”

“He’s a boy — he’s rough, he’s energetic, he’s smart — definitely smart,” Sneed said. “When he wants certain things, he talks very well, like he’ll say ‘juice cup,’ which means he wants juice in his cup.”

The center in Harvey — a small modular school building — has three child care rooms: Tiny Travelers for babies 6 weeks to 1 year old, Blooming Butterflies for 1 to 2 year olds, and Little Explorers for the sweet spot between ages 2 and 4.

While the moms are busy taking biology and English, their babies are flipping through picture books, learning shapes and colors and playing musical games in circle time.

Sneed said she enjoys watching Joziah “in his element,” interacting with other babies and developing a personality that’s his own.

“I’m still a kid deep down inside … so, I actually love it — I’ll be right behind him,” Sneed said. “You want to play with the ball, let’s play. You want to box, OK, let’s box. I’m still a kid; it’s fun actually.”

But parenting as a teenager can also feel lonely, she said, especially as she’s grown out of friendships.

“I had a best friend, and we used to do everything together; but I’m a mom now, and this comes before going out,” Sneed said. “Even money-wise, baby needs diapers, so diapers come first before friends. … We don’t have anything in common besides being the same age or going to the same school.”

Sneed said when she discovered she was pregnant, she was shocked and scared. Her stepmom, she recalled, noticed how quickly she ran out of breath while taking out the trash.

After the initial gut-wrench upon seeing the two lines appear on a home pregnancy test, Sneed said she immediately went into autopilot. “I was like, OK, I just gotta do what I gotta do for myself and my baby and get on top of everything. I had to,” she said.

Sneed was a student at Bloom Trail High School in Chicago Heights when she was pregnant and shortly after Joziah’s birth. Her experience there wasn’t so great, she said.

She could pump milk only during her late lunch period and couldn’t maintain an adequate supply for Joziah. She ended up having to quit breastfeeding in fewer than five months, which drove up the cost of caring for her baby.

But since moving to District 205 in 2022, several aspects of her life — as a mom and as a high school student — have significantly improved. She found a second family in Candice Coleman, director of the Infant Care Center, who helps care for Joziah while she’s in class.

“I’ll go, Ms. Candice, here’s your baby!” Sneed said, adding, “Everything is OK. I don’t have to worry, and even after school when I come to pick him up, we laugh and play around — ‘Oh, Joziah did this today.’ It’s very, very, very supportive.”

Coleman said there’s a “foundational understanding” among the staff members of, “We’ve seen it all and we don’t judge you.”

“Our success is making them feel human — not less than,” Coleman said. “We’re their moms, nurses, counselors and teachers. We’re everything to them because some have no one else to turn to.”

The Infant Care Center is available to student parents who attend one of the three high schools in District 205: Thornridge, Thornton and Thornwood.

“The only caveat to that is that I monitor your grades and your attendance,” Coleman said. “I’m being very frank: You can’t drop your baby off here and think you’re about to go out in the street and kick it. Absolutely not. If you’re missing class and your baby is here, then I have a problem.”

The center’s lead teachers are paraprofessionals, aides staffed by District 205. The teachers try their best to provide the teen parents with tools to help them cope with the responsibility of having a child.

The reality is that the parents of the children attending the day care are still growing up themselves, Coleman said. The youngest parent at the Infant Care Center is 15 and was pregnant at age 14.

“If you think about a 14-year-old — that’s a kid who’s responsible for this baby that they have to feed and provide for,” Coleman said.

Sometimes, that reality really settles in. “We’ve seen it all over the years,” said Debra Ward-Mitchell, assistant director of the Infant Care Center.

Several years ago, one teen mom had set up an air mattress for her newborn baby to sleep in an area of her mom’s screened front porch, Ward-Mitchell said. “Because this baby had a baby, the mother made her live out there … on an air mattress, in the winter,” she said.

“I’ve seen a mom pass out here and then die of an aneurysm. … We’ve had four of our moms get shot and killed,” she added. “One of them, we still have their baby now.”

The baby whose mom died of an aneurysm also lost his father and was handed over to a woman who had helped raise his now-deceased mother. The mother didn’t have any family members who could step in because she was brought up in the state’s foster care system.

The center’s leaders asked social workers if they could keep the baby at the care center for an extra year so he could have continuity, Ward-Mitchell said. “All that baby knew was us,” she said.

Some critics in the community have accused the center of promoting teen pregnancy.

“When we try to set up a table at parent-teacher conferences or open houses, we get pushback from parents as if we’re promoting pregnancy or we’re promoting sex. That’s not what we’re doing,” Ward-Mitchell said.

“This district holds 5,000 kids, but if we’ve saved 22 of them just by providing this service, that’s OK for me,” Ward-Mitchell said. “There are countless ones who come back and say, I wouldn’t have been able to go to school if it wasn’t for the center or I wouldn’t have been able to do this or that.”

Coleman said she’s busy planning an end-of-year “mommy and me” picture day, on top of the daily grind of stocking up on snacks, diapers and laundry items.

“We have a system. If you need me to wash your clothes, drop some off and we will wash and fold them — and we do it very discreetly,” she said. “We’ve had girls who haven’t taken a shower, so I have a whole closet full of things, underwear, pads, Bath & Body Works (products). We don’t know what they’re going through at home, but when they come here, we want them to feel safe.”

Arguably one of the most helpful supports the program provides is the no-cost, door-to-door transportation for the student parents and their children.

A bus picks up each parent and child from their front door. The children are dropped off at the Infant Care Center before the teen parents are taken to their respective schools. After school, the buses take the parents to retrieve their children at the center and take them all home.

The program is designed to provide a support system for teenage parents and prevent them from falling behind regardless of the circumstances that led them to early parenthood, whether it’s sexual activity that resulted in unplanned pregnancies or, in some cases, sexual abuse.

“First, we can’t always assume that all of these pregnancies are consensual,” said Ashley Mulvihill, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago. “Most of those pregnancies are unplanned. Teenagers are already a really vulnerable population, now going through this very stressful experience of being pregnant. There’s just so many layers and systems that you’re expecting a teen to have to navigate that are incredibly complex.”

Several studies indicate that young mothers face increased rates of depression during and after pregnancy, compared with older mothers. Problems are more pervasive in higher risk groups such as teenagers who lack support or struggle with existing psychological distress, as well as those from a lower socioeconomic status or from a historically marginalized population, Mulvihill noted.

Still, teen pregnancy rates have been dropping in the United States, studies show, amid a continued focus on adolescent pregnancy as a social and public health concern.

Mulvihill said the stigmas faced by teenage mothers coupled with existing mental health concerns can be staggering if not dealt with appropriately. One of her patients at UIC’s outpatient psychiatry unit is an 18-year-old who is pregnant.

“She has history of trauma and a history of sexual assault. She’s struggling in traditional schooling and going to a therapeutic school. … A lot of the cards are just stacked against these teens when they become pregnant,” Mulvihill said. “(My patient) was actually asking about a program similar to the infant care center — she’s really concerned about her situation.”

Mulvihill said pregnant teenagers have a host of things to consider: If they want to keep the baby, how do they make it work? What does this mean for their schooling and their financial situation?

Psychologically, teen parents need support, Mulvihill said — from their peers, their parents, adult role models and mentors.

Ward-Mitchell and Coleman mentor the young women whose children they care for. They empower them when no one else does, and allow them the space to grow, Ward-Mitchell said.

“Every day, every morning we greet them: ‘Good morning!’ But sometimes they come in and just say, ‘I’m really hungry,’” Ward-Mitchell said. “I say, ‘OK, I can get you something to eat, I can do this.’ Or they’ll say, ‘I just need $5.’ Yup, I can do that too. Don’t abuse it, but we’re here for you.”

For Sneed, the Infant Care Center not only allows her to go to school, it also enables her to create a routine for herself and Joziah, which might be a bigger triumph than graduating in May with mostly A’s and B’s, she said.

Before it was time to go home, Joziah was coloring the number eight with a jumbo green crayon in Ms. Jasmine’s Blooming Butterflies class, next to 1-year-old Aaliyah, who was determined to color on everyone else’s paper too.

After they hop off the bus, Sneed will start preparing for the next day, checking if anything needs to be swapped out of each backpack and laying out clothes for the morning. By 9:30 p.m., both she and Joziah are usually asleep.

From the looks of it, Sneed is mature beyond her years — likely out of necessity rather than a personality trait. She said the sleepless nights when Joziah was a newborn were frustrating, but even as a then-17-year-old, she managed to get up every two hours to feed, pump and pat the baby back to sleep.

It’s important to note that teens are just as capable of loving an infant as older moms are, Mulvihill said.

“In my experience, over time most of them really do want to be their best selves and the best moms, and they do care a lot about their babies,” she said. “They just need a lot of help.”

Local School Councils exist at each of the more than 600 public schools spanning all 77 neighborhoods of Chicago, and operate independently of the district administration, the school board and other schools. They were created in part to give Chicago parents more control over what happens at their children’s schools.

LSCs are made up of students, parents, teachers and community representatives. The power of LSCs varies from school to school, which can create confusion and disengagement within communities. At some schools, they deliver critical input around the school’s budget and develop school improvement goals. At other schools, they’re tasked with choosing a principal and evaluating his or her performance.

In recent months, the autonomy of LSCs came up when the Board of Education voted to remove student resource officers from all district schools — a controversial measure that effectively removed local school decision-makers from the process.

A traditional LSC consists of two teachers and one non-teacher staff member who work at the school; six parents of students enrolled at the school; two community members who reside in the school’s attendance area or voting district boundaries; at least one student representative; and the school’s principal.

To better understand how LSCs operate, the Tribune spoke to several parent, student, teacher and community candidates, in addition to one former council member, across the city to weigh in on the successes and pitfalls of their councils.

Elections for elementary schools will take place Wednesday, while polls for high school LSCs will open Thursday. Voters can view which candidates are up for a seat at their school online.

Michael Morrison and Javier Payano, North Center

Michael Morrison and Javier Payano are teachers at Lane Tech High School in the North Center neighborhood and first-time candidates for the LSC. Slates don’t necessarily exist in Local School Council elections, but Payano and Morrison are longtime collaborators and said they are essentially running jointly. Morrison, a visual art teacher, and Payano, a music teacher, are delegates for the Chicago Teachers Union.

Teachers Rebecca Daly and Mario Nunez are also running at Lane Tech.

Q: What was the driving force behind why you decided to run for a Local School Council seat?

Morrison: The LSC is one of the areas we were seeing that maybe wasn’t as engaged in our school as we were hoping it would be. We have an LSC and they are active for sure, but we were seeing that the staff’s voices weren’t being amplified at the LSC meetings as much as we were hoping for. We saw that vacancy and decided that we wanted to amplify teacher voices.

Q: There is varying awareness about Local School Councils. What are some of the strong points people should know about an LSC?

Morrison: I appreciate that there is a diversity of different stakeholders coming to the table with the goal of improving the school for staff and students. You have teacher representatives, non-teacher representatives, student representatives, which I think is incredible to have students at that level of voice and governance.

Q: From your perspective as a teacher, how does the LSC differ from the school board in terms of being a critical component of a school district?

Payano: LSCs have more of a connection to the school and are in a better position to understand the specific needs of the school. We will have an elected school board and that’s great. But often (there are) a lot of issues that come up when you have a group of people so far removed from a local school community, making decisions without being aware of the impact that it’s actually going to have on the ground on the school. I also wouldn’t like to see the student voice component removed from school governance, which is what would happen if we did not have Local School Councils.

Q: What’s your take on the board’s recent decision to remove student resource officers rather than allow the Local School Council to vote on whether to keep them on school grounds? 

Payano: In my experience, it wasn’t a program that was making our students feel safer, especially our undocumented students. It was something that caused a lot of anxiety for them. I’m interested to see what happens moving forward with using funds that were previously assigned for student resource officers and instead using that to hire restorative justice coordinators at our schools that are professionals that are trained in restorative practices and in accountability measures that will lead to both mental psychological and also physical safety at the school.

Q: In addition to increasing accountability for the school’s administration, what do you hope to accomplish as an LSC member at Lane Tech? 

Morrison: I don’t believe that the majority of our staff or students have an idea of what’s actually happening inside the LSC meetings, no different than I believe the majority of teachers probably aren’t aware of what’s going on at the Board of Education meetings. A definite goal of mine is to increase the visibility of what happens inside of the LSC and to increase staff and student voices to make sure that those community members have access to LSE information.

Natasha Dunn, South Shore

Natasha Dunn is a community organizer and CPS mother running for a seat on the South Shore High School LSC. She previously served on councils at O’Keefe Elementary School in the South Shore neighborhood and King College Prep in Kenwood.

Patricia King, Rosita Chatonda and Paul Jones are also running for a community seat at South Shore.

Q: What are some takeaways from your time on the Local School Council?

A: One of the things that I noticed was that in particular Black community LSC members are not there — they don’t understand the power of the role that they’re in. And it’s almost as if they’re just there to co-sign whatever the principal wants. There’s not any real dialogue or conversations about how the principal is spending money; they just approve the budget. As I started learning more about the data and looking at the system internally, I started noticing that a lot of the stuff that the principals were saying was not what was actually happening on the books or on the records.

Q: What’s your perspective on the board’s recent centralized decision to remove student resource officers rather than allow LSCs to vote on retaining them or receiving trade-in funds?

A: That’s a bad decision because they’re taking away the power of those who are on the ground in these communities (who) understand what the community needs. I know they have used Curie High School as an example — that Curie got rid of their (school resource officers) and they have this amazing system in place. Curie is not the same as, let’s say, South Shore High School, or the whole community of Archer Heights, or Bronzeville. Every community has its own nuances. … The decision speaks to a board that’s just disconnected from the reality of the entire city of Chicago.

Bernard Clay, Austin

Bernard Clay serves as executive director of a West Side youth counseling program. He has been a community representative on the LSC at Michele Clark High School in Austin for seven years.

Q: What do you think works with how LSCs run, and how do you think they could be improved?

Most of them could stand to have more autonomy in running. Good LSCs run well when they have autonomy from the principal, and they can move forward and they don’t rely on the principal for every piece of information they can get.

Q: What training do you think LSC members need to be successful?

A: Basically, on budgeting, but it’s hard for LSCs to be trained when the metrics of CPS funding continue to change. For a while they were going with student-based funding, now they are going with a couple of other things, and that creates confusion, and I believe it’s going to be a huge problem … with the way funds are allocated to schools.

What’s your perspective on the board’s recent centralized decision to remove school resource officers?

A: I think it was bad, it was bad … if you have a point where you don’t have your community resource officers in schools, the kids don’t feel safe and certainly the teachers don’t feel safe, and something needs to be done. It’s not really looking at reality in saying ‘Hey, we need to not have community resource officers.’ … Sometimes you can’t wait 5 or 10 minutes for the police officers to arrive.

Maggie Baran, Norwood Park

Maggie Baran is a working parent of two CPS students and a former parent representative of Local School Councils at Hitch Elementary and Taft High School in the Norwood Park neighborhood. She is not running for a seat.

Q: Having been on a Local School Council, what should others know about it?

A: I think the Local School Council model is an excellent way to engage parents and community members in a way that does not involve fundraising and is the next level beyond PTA or PTO. It provides a lot of insight into how Chicago Public Schools operate, how an individual school operates. What people need to know going in, though, is that it’s not a mini-school board. You don’t always make decisions about things like the budget — it does not always get involved in personnel matters.

Q: What’s a big decision you made as an LSC member? 

A: One of the most powerful things in my experience on an LSC was the ability to change the dress code.

Q: What was the driving force behind why you decided to run for a seat at your children’s elementary school?

A: I felt passionate about my community making a difference. I felt like I had some skills that I can bring to the table — I worked in educational publishing, so I understood curriculum. And there’s not a lot of competition for an LSC — it’s very rare that you see more than the allotted number of seats to candidate ratio. It was a better fit for me than PTA to be honest, because I was not a fundraiser, but I wanted to help in a different way.

Q: Why did you ultimately decide to resign from your seat?

A: I left the LSC because I learned it doesn’t make as big of an impact as I thought it would. It was kind of like ‘once you find out how the sausage is made.’ There’s always a little bit of disappointment. I thought if this wasn’t giving me the kind of experience that I had hoped, then, it might be better to open that spot up to someone else. It’s also very difficult for working parents or parents that work a 9-to-5 job. The thing that led me to resign probably more than anything was the stress of being able to make it to the meetings that were usually never later than 6 or 6:30 pm.

Q: As a parent of two CPS students and as a former council member, do you think LSCs are necessary? Some might argue there are already too many hands in the pot, soon with a half-elected, half-appointed school board.

A: We’re a city of 77 neighborhoods. And the elected school board is making a good effort at trying to represent the 20 or 21 different districts. But I also feel that Local School Councils can exist to be that pipeline of information up to the new board. I think that they do serve a purpose, and they always continue to be a really great way for parents and community members to learn more about how their schools work.

Marcie Pedraza, East Side

Marcie Pedraza is chair of the George Washington Elementary Local School Council in the East Side neighborhood and a member of the districtwide LSC Advisory Board. Her daughter is a seventh grader at George Washington.

Q: Do you think LSC members make a difference in schools? Are there any specific examples that come to mind from your experience sitting on a council?

A: It just depends on how much of a difference you want to make. (At George Washington,) we changed some of the wording in the uniform policy because a lot of parents thought it was mainly biased against girls, and it just wasn’t fair.

Q: What do you think are some key positives about a local school council?

A: It’s a fair process where you are elected, and it’s not just an appointed position. … It’s good to have people — the community of the school, parents, neighbors and students — involved in what’s going on. I just wish that we would have more attendance at our meetings. I wish we would have more involvement and more people who wanted to run where it was actually a competitive race. Sometimes we’re elected because we’re the only ones running.

Tony and Sabrina Negron, West Town

Sabrina Negron is a junior and two-year student member of the Local School Council at Clemente Community Academy in West Town. Her father, Tony, is a district employee running for a parent seat on the council for the first time this year.

Carolina Carchi, Jaylani Sanchez, Kayla Porrata and Jamel Williams are also running for the Clemente student seats.

Q: What prompted you to run for the LSC at Clemente?

Sabrina: Honestly, the first time, it was more of a resume thing for me. I thought it would look good on paper. However, knowing the actual issues afterward that were happening in the school, I mean being on an LSC, you can really do something. And I feel like knowing what’s going on and having that power to vote and do something about it helps.

Tony: I have a unique perspective in that that’s also my alma mater. I graduated from the same school, and now my kids go there and I know firsthand when I was there, the issues in school and every time my kids come home talking about the issues in school, that strikes a nerve. So when a parent position was available, I decided I’d like to be a voice in this, and it’s been very welcoming actually.

Q: What do you think is good about how LSCs operate now, and are there any ways that you think the role of LSCs in school governance can improve?

Sabrina: Coming from a student, I think it depends on the teachers and adults also on the LSC with you. You can have those teachers that will take your side, and you can have those teachers that really won’t. So I’m lucky to have a teacher who really advocates for us, alongside us and listens and gives a voice.

Tony: I think the democratic process I’ll be able to see is definitely something positive. It’s back to the fact that you have a governing body that actually takes different perspectives. In other words, you got community folks, you got teachers, students, you got parents, all these folks are part of this committee and they’re trying to do the best that they can for their school. What I think needs improvement would be educating the members that are not immediately part of the school.

Q: Recently the board voted to take away the power for LSCs to vote on school resource officers. Do you think that could have implications for future decision-making by LSCs?

Sabrina: I think yes, that definitely impacts us a lot. Because that actually happened at one of our meetings, and nobody was aware of it. And so they told us that you can no longer vote on that sort of thing and we were just shocked … because it’s like, ‘What are we here for then?’ You go on the LSC because you think you’re going to make a change and then you strip it away, all of our power, that’s significant, and I think it does mean a change in future decisions.

Chicago Tribune’s Sarah Macaraeg contributed.