What types of transportation do you and your family use during an average week, and how has this shaped your view of transportation policy for schools?

When I was growing on the Far South Side, CTA was my primarily mode of getting around. As young as ten years old, I would take the bus from where I lived on 103rd to downtown movie theaters like the Woods or the Oriental. This is what we (myself and other children in the neighborhood) did on the weekends. Along our route and in our neighborhood, there were community members who know us and our parents and would look out for us.

Now, my family, based in Austin, drives as our primary mode of transportation. Because my teenage son plays football and this means many early mornings and late nights, I don’t allow him to ride CTA on his own for safety reasons. Instead, my wife and I coordinate and dedicate time to drive and pick my son up from school, practice, and games.

Over the past several decades, Black communities have been splintered and destabilized due to school closings, the loss of affordable housing and the lack of affordable housing infrastructure. We have greater inequity, more people without the resources they need, and more desperation. This is the context in which traveling around the city alone or taking CTA at night is unfortunately not a safe option for my son in the way it was for me.

What I hope to see over time is young people being able to travel safely and reliably on public transportation in Chicago like I did as a child. That will require renewed and holistic investment in our city’s public infrastructure like schools and transportation, which have been degraded over time via privatization efforts like school characterization and the infamous parking meter deal.

What are some of the transportation challenges that families and students face in your district?

I firmly believe that every taxpayer deserves a world class pre-K thru 12th grade system of education within safe walking distance of their homes. There is a large segment of schools in District 5 in neighborhoods like Austin, Garfield Park, North Lawndale, and West Humboldt Park that have been decimated by school closures and charters, which means that many families have to travel far to send their child to a quality school.

Parents should not only have access to a good school in walking distance but, if they have to travel, they should be able to put their baby on school bus or on safe public transit option. Because of disinvestment in our school busing system and in our public transit system, many parents drive children to school.

Busing should be made available where needed and school age children should ride CTA and Metra for free and the City of chicago should invest in making sure people are safe in those environments.

School pick up/drop off can be chaotic and at times unsafe. What are ways you think this could be improved?

If we had more investment in neighborhood schools and better transportation options, there would be less individual cars dropping off students in cars. A lot of parents drive their kids to school bc the school close to their home is closed so this is at the root of the problem. Children being able to have a school in safe waking distance is important and in that scenario parents may be able to instead walk their children to schools.

Some more immediate solutions could involve:

1. Incentivizing car pooling and support parents connecting with each other to coordinate this through LSCs and community meetings

2. Investing in more access to busing

3. In the event of schools that are located on major thoroughfares (some of which should not have been zoned for schools in the first place). Take Everett Charter School on Laramie, for example. Their pick up and dropoff is right on a major, one lane school street. Dropoff locations could be distributed and Safe Passage workers assigned to walk groups of students from a dropoff corners to the front door of the school within eye-line of parents dropping off.

4. Coordinating schools in the network of nearby feeder schools to have staggered start times

Studies show that childhood independence is critical for individual development. How can Chicago Public Schools better empower families to allow their children to be able to navigate independently – and most importantly, safely – to and from school?

By investing in neighborhood schools so that parents don’t have to travel two miles to go to elementary school, we can invest in children’s independence because they can walk to and from school through a neighborhood they know and are familiar with. Every taxpayer, whether you’re buying a loaf of bread or you're paying property taxes, should have the right of safe passage to and from a world class education for your children in your neighborhood.

Most CPS students are offered driver's education when the time comes, but few are given the opportunity to learn about alternatives. What kind of educational opportunities around transportation do you think students should have?

As young person, my mother made me memorize two phone numbers RTA and CTA, which was (and still is) 773 836 7000. I got my first job working at a car wash up north and I took the 95th Street bus to Cicero and the Cicero bus up north from 103rd. I would call that number all the time to find out when the bus or train was coming. When I was growing up, my father also taught me to understand the grid of the city so I could get around

One of the classes I taught at Dyett High School was called Life after Dyett, a very popular senior elective that supported students in thinking about what they would do after high school and practical life skills to help them enter adulthood. In classes like this one throughout a young person’s educational career, we could teach skills like navigating public transportation and navigation the geographical layout of the city. This could also be the basis for educating young people about historic and present inequities and forming opinions about how those things can best be addressed when looking at gaps, challenges and needs around transportation and what exists in various communities.

Increasingly,  a lack of busing has become a serious burden for many families’ day-to-day lives as services continue to be cut. What are some short-term and long-term solutions that you think would address this?

Short term, one thing we could do is make transportation for all school age children on CTA and Metra free. We can also find ways to incentivize car-pooling among parents.

Long term, CPS has to effectively resource transportation for its students. Right now, in a “portfolio district,” serving the needs of young people particularly from Black and Brown communities is not made a priority. Instead investing in the infrastructure it requires to excessively administer standardized testing and toward privatizing more schools, we could be putting those resources toward transportation and toward investing in walkable neighborhood schools.

For many years now, Chicago Public Schools has failed to meet federally mandated requirements for accessible transportation for students with disabilities. How do you envision ensuring that students with disabilities’ transportation needs are met?

For the last 15 years, the federal government underfunded the Individuals with Disabilities for Education Act. That’s a values system issue. While I don’t have a fully fleshed out plan for solving the problem of a gap in transportation access for students with disabilities (or the gap in other needed resources), I know that the parents of students with disabilities, students with disabilities themselves, and disability justice organizations like Access Living are among the stakeholders I would meet with to inform school policy, solutions, and decisions I would make. I hope to start this process of listening to various constituent groups across the 5th District before elected.