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Coretta Shane, the mom of a Chicago seventh-grader, applied earlier this year to serve on a new committee that would help steer the district’s Black Student Success Plan, a five-year initiative to address academic disparities Black students face.
She got an email thanking her and promising updates in the following weeks. That was back in March.
Shane knows the plan is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has withheld federal dollars from the district over its refusal to scrap it. Still, the silence hasn’t sat well with her.
“I’ve just heard nothing, which is maddening to me,” she said. “I wish there would be some communication.”
Over the past year, district officials have worked to reassure parents and advocates that they are forging ahead with the initiative — while appearing to move slowly and cautiously to ward off further federal scrutiny and fallout. On Thursday, Jitu Brown, the board member slated to lead the Black Student Achievement Committee, announced yet another delay in naming its members. And when the district this past spring challenged in court the U.S. Department of Education’s move to withhold grant dollars over the plan, one of CPS’ arguments was that it hadn’t even started implementing the program.
Those who pushed to codify the committee in state law have voiced impatience with the slow pace — a sentiment Brown echoed at the board’s monthly meeting on Thursday.
Other advocates and experts say they understand the precarious position CPS is in — and recognize the first year of the plan’s rollout was likely to largely involve low-key planning.
“I just remind myself that this is something CPS has never done before,” said Dominique McKoy, the executive director of the University of Chicago’s To & Through Project, who has followed work on the plan. “This is an effort that’s trying to disrupt decades and generations of frustration for a population that historically hasn’t been served well by the city and the school district.”
In a Thursday statement, CPS said it is making headway on the initiative, and recently got a $250,000 grant from a Chicago-based foundation for its work on cultivating Black student unions and hiring more Black male educators. The district is planning a fall conference bringing together members of more than two dozen Black student unions on CPS campuses this fall. The statement also cited an increase in Black student enrollment in Advanced Placement courses and ongoing efforts to reduce discipline for Black students.
The district has pushed back on the feds’ call to kill the plan
CPS unveiled the plan in early 2025 after a yearslong process of gathering input from community members who had decried gaps Black students face on a long list of academic metrics and in access to some advanced courses and other opportunities.
The day after its release, a conservative advocacy group filed a complaint with the federal Department of Education, arguing the plan discriminates against non-Black students, particularly Latinos. The Trump administration began investigating, and last fall announced it would withhold millions in magnet school grants unless CPS scrapped the initiative altogether.
The plan sets a number of sweeping goals, which include hiring more Black male educators and reducing punitive discipline for Black students, who make up roughly a third of the district’s student body. But it doesn’t go into detail about how the district would tackle these goals or what progress toward them would look like in each year of the rollout. CPS also did not spell out a specific budget for implementation.
Brown, a longtime advocate for Black students in the district, said last summer that the first year of the initiative would be about listening to district employees, parents, and students, and figuring out how to replicate practices that have worked well for Black students.
He had initially said the committee to oversee the rollout would be announced last September. The board office said in May that Brown would be available for an interview only after the new committee is onboarded, but it did not give a timeline for when its members would be named. The district in recent weeks has also asked for more time before providing an interview with officials, and on Thursday, it referred questions about the committee delays to the board office.
At Thursday’s board meeting, Brown blamed the delays on an internal “struggle” after the board held two separate rounds of taking applications this past school year. He did not elaborate what exactly was getting in the way but said, “I am very frustrated, very concerned.”
In the meantime, the district held several community roundtables to gather more input on the plan this past spring. District budget materials from last summer also said CPS’ various central office departments would work on their own visions for implementing the plan during 2025-26. In response to a public records request from Chalkbeat, the district declined to provide these department-level plans, citing an exemption for internal documents that are in draft form.
CPS said a first-year focus would be supporting Black student unions at its high schools and expanding their number. McKoy said there’s some momentum on this issue as well as conversations about cultivating closer partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities. Some Black students in CPS have expressed interest in better understanding what these campuses might have to offer, McKoy said.
Sona Fokum, a research project manager at the Black Researchers Collective, said CPS officials had preliminary conversations last year with the group and other local experts about tracking and evaluating the initiative’s outcomes, including by involving students in the effort. But the collective hasn’t heard about next steps more recently.
When it comes to the federal pushback, the plan remains in limbo. In its lawsuit against the feds, the district has demanded that the government reinstate its magnet funding, noting the decision to withhold it happened before the investigation into the initiative was even formally completed. The district argued the plan is on solid legal footing because it sets out to rectify historical discrimination and missteps that have led to measurable disparities between the outcomes for Black students and those of their peers.
“The Plan does not take anything away from non-Black students,” the district said in court filings.
The Department of Education hasn’t filed a response to the district’s complaint in court, and a spokeswoman did not respond to an inquiry about the status of the investigation.
District Superintendent Macquline King was subpoenaed to testify before a congressional education committee earlier this month on CPS’s handling of hot-button issues, including the Black Student Success Plan and policies on transgender students, which are also under a federal investigation. But the plan itself sparked just a brief exchange with a friendly Democratic lawmaker, in which King stressed the community input that went into designing it and its goal of helping “students that have been historically and systematically void of opportunities.”
Committee’s creation lags
Shane, the mom who applied to serve on the Black Student Achievement Committee earlier this year, lives in South Shore, but she drives her daughter to school across the city to the North Side’s Walt Disney Magnet School, where she was recently elected to the local school council.
Shane has long been a critic of the more meager academic offerings — especially when it comes to science, technology, engineering, and math — that some schools in predominantly Black neighborhoods have. She saw the committee as a chance to advocate for more robust programs at the district level.
“The fact that my daughter can’t go to a school in our neighborhood because of a lack of resources really bothers me,” she said.
Koron Nash, the father of two CPS students, attended a virtual meeting about the plan with Brown, the school board member, organized by the parent advocacy group Kids First this spring. Nash, who also applied to serve on the committee, felt Brown’s commitment to advancing the plan was genuine. Nash strongly supports the plan’s goals.
But he wants to see specifics on how CPS will tackle them, with a budget and metrics to track progress: “At this point, we should be well beyond informing people. We should be taking action. We’re behind the eight ball.”
David Stovall, a professor of Black studies at the University of Illinois Chicago, said with any new multiyear initiative, planning and troubleshooting tend to take up the first year.
Still, he said, he is eager to see the district flesh out the plan — and address head-on the issue of its severely underenrolled schools, many of which serve predominantly Black students. He said he got involved with offering input when the district was first crafting the plan. But he left because officials did not seem open to discussing that issue or addressing it explicitly in the initiative.
“It’s nonsense to talk about a success plan when you’re not doing anything to address this glaring issue,” he said. “If you are going to address marginalization, you have to start with the most marginalized.”
McKoy says the district needs the help of other city agencies, academia, and others to address the needs of Black students and families. He believes the district is still genuinely committed to the initiative in the face of the Trump administration’s attack on it.
“There’s no way that’s not having an effect,” McKoy said. “But I am not seeing folks shy away and change the messaging.”
On Thursday, Brown, the school board member, said he will push to finally name the committee overseeing the initiative in July.
“I’m not really interested in any more conversations about it,” he said. “We need to announce this committee and get to work.”
Chalkbeat Chicago reporters Reema Amin and Makiya Seminera contributed to this report.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
