InFocus: Yesenia López

Yesenia López never thought she would run for elected office. She was persuaded to run for Chicago's school board by the moms she met through her work with the Telpochcalli Community Education Project (TCEP), a Little Village nonprofit founded in 1998 by parents and teachers connected with Telpochcalli School. "The Telpochcalli moms had seen me around. And they’re the reason I ran. They’re my community," she said.

When names of potential candidates were being tossed around, one mom asked, "What about you?" López said she laughed it off. "That had never been my intention. I had always been the person working behind the scenes. But people kept asking. They want someone they know advocating."

People know López. At a time when U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Border Patrol, and other federal agencies are stepping up raids, she's everywhere. Within the last week, she met with schools in her district to discuss keeping students and families safe from warrantless arrests, strategized with community leaders from the Peace and Education Coalition of Back of the Yards, and spoke at a press conference calling on Yards Plaza's owner to prevent federal agents from using their parking lot as part of Operation Midway Blitz.

Last week, Inter-American parent Jennifer Torres asked the board to "affirm in writing that absences due to credible safety concerns related to immigration enforcement will be recorded as excused." She also asked that CPS create "clear guidance" for families about how students can obtain and complete missed work.

I asked López about the state of the district's attendance policy for students who feel unsafe traveling to and from school. "The stance as of right now is it will be marked as [an] excused absence as long as the parent or caregiver calls and says there's a safety concern," she said. But "there is no process that applies to all the schools" regarding missed work. It's likely there will be more advocacy to come regarding make-up work, and more discussion around allowing students to access remote learning. Currently, the district's stance is that students must attend school in person.

López is also leading the charge to ensure that Mayor Brandon Johnson fulfills a requirement in state law to create a Noncitizen Advisory Board to work with the Chicago Board of Education. But, she acknowledged, getting it off the ground is tricky. "The statute is not very specific" in terms of the number of advisory board members or how to choose them. The mayor's office is working out the details, said López, in a moment when publicly recognizing people as noncitizens could put them at risk. "How do we ensure that those who end up volunteering for this feel safe, that they're not targeted?"

Another hurdle: creating a Noncitizen Advisory Board is likely to invite more retaliation from the Trump Administration. Under Trump, the federal government already challenged the CPS Black Student Success Plan, calling it racially discriminatory, and withheld $8 million for magnet schools when CPS refused to abolish the plan.

"I support the CPS decision that we're not going to back down from the Black Student Success Plan. We're moving forward with it. That's the same for the Noncitizen Advisory Board, but we also need to be prepared," López said. "What does that potentially mean for funding? And how can we have other levels of government, the city or the state, step in and help us?"

Priorities: Given the rapidly changing environment, she's had to juggle an ever-expanding list of priorities. As a candidate, she told WBEZ her top priority was to scale dual-language programs across the school district. Once she took office, she joined her colleagues in working to support Acero charter school families facing the closure of their children's schools. "That's what led to me pushing the [charter oversight] resolution back in May," she said. Now, she's deeply involved in the work to protect immigrant students and families while also advocating for community schools and keeping an eye on developments in special education. She's also interested in supporting mental health in schools. Balancing all these needs is not easy, but "some of them overlap," she noted.

As a board member, she has been a vocal presence during public meetings. According to the quarterly report cards independent researcher Adam Parrott-Sheffer uses to track board participation in meetings, López has been a leading public questioner. She also visibly partners with board members across the elected-appointed divide. She's currently working to create an ad hoc committee to support immigrant students, and six of her colleagues (Bannon, Blaise, Brown, Gutierrez, Rivas, and Rios-Sierra) have expressed interest in joining.

Soundbite: "The part that is giving me hope is seeing how the community is stepping up. That is beautiful to see."

News Bites

This morning. Sendhil Revuluri announced his candidacy for president of the Chicago Board of Education. Revuluri served as the board's vice president during former mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration. His campaign website lists supporters from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to former school board candidate Jesus Ayala and former 25th ward aldermanic candidate Aida Flores. So far there appear to be no formal endorsements from local political heavyweights, unions, or other organizations.

Tomorrow, Mayor Brandon Johnson will announce his budget proposal, and WBEZ reports it is expected to include the massive TIF surplus necessary to give CPS not only the $379 million needed to fill the anticipated budget gap, but an additional $8 million to make up for the loss of the federal magnet grant.

Among the massive cuts recently made to the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration has laid off nearly all staff in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, and all the staff supporting 21st Century Community Learning Centers. These cuts could have especially difficult repercussions for Chicago schools. Follow The Hechinger Report's federal actions tracker to stay abreast of more changes.

Turning Research into Results for Learning

Last Friday, Chicago took center stage at the Society for Educational Effectiveness 2025 conference, where local researchers highlighted the value of partnering with communities--individual schools, school districts like CPS, or state education systems--to answer practitioners' questions and inform policy and practice. Now is the time to increase everyone's access to data and evidence, noted Elaine Allensworth, executive director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research. At a time when federal education data is under threat LINK and people are forming opinions based on widely varying information sources, it's more important than ever to provide families, school staff, district leaders, and school board members not just with trustworthy data, but with opportunities to sit together and examine that data in a community, across roles and perspectives.

Consortium researcher Shanette Porter and CPS chief Nicole Milberg offered an example of community building around data in their work with schools to interpret their Cultivate student survey results and develop ways to improve the student experience.

Other panelists spoke to the importance of providing clear, actionable insights that can guide policymakers. More than 400 researchers from around the country attended the session, which was moderated by Crown Family Philanthropies' education program officer Christina Herzog.

It's also important for researchers to work closely with school district partners to determine a research agenda that answers real questions in policy and practice, said Dominique McKoy, executive director of the To & Through Project. That requires researchers to distinguish between "what's interesting and what's important," he said.

Chicago's pioneering partnership between the Consortium and CPS has produced real results for students and district policy. Most notably, the creation of the Freshman On-Track indicator helped high schools better support ninth-graders, leading to a massive increase in graduation rates. Consortium researchers also doggedly tracked students displaced by the massive school closures of 2013, providing key evidence that they did not experience promised improvements in their educational trajectories. This research was cited in the decision to place a moratorium on school closures until 2027.