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Adam Parrott-Sheffer
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Adam Parrott-Sheffer ran for election to the Chicago Public Schools school board to represent District 10a in Illinois. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Parrott-Sheffer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Adam Parrott-Sheffer was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Parrott-Sheffer's career experience includes working as an educator. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Parrott-Sheffer has been affiliated with Chicago Principals & Administrators Association, Playworks IL, Harvard University, and the Data Wise Project.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Chicago Public Schools, Illinois, elections (2024)
General election
General election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 10a
Che Smith defeated Karin Norington-Reaves, Robert Jones, Adam Parrott-Sheffer, and Rosita Chatonda in the general election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 10a on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Che Smith (Nonpartisan) | 32.2 | 25,922 | |
 | Karin Norington-Reaves (Nonpartisan) | 29.3 | 23,543 | |
| Robert Jones (Nonpartisan) | 22.5 | 18,132 | ||
 | Adam Parrott-Sheffer (Nonpartisan)  | 15.9 | 12,803 | |
| Rosita Chatonda (Nonpartisan) (Write-in) | 0.1 | 87 | ||
| Total votes: 80,487 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- James Walton Jr. (Nonpartisan)
- Nathaniel Ward (Nonpartisan)
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Parrott-Sheffer in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released August 7, 2024 |
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Adam Parrott-Sheffer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Parrott-Sheffer's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I am a Chicago Public School parent, an educator, and former principal. With over 20 years experience cultivating schools where each student thrives and can unlock their potential, I am committed to a school system that works for all youth. My family and I have lived in Hyde Park for almost two decades and are deeply committed to our community. I received a degree in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I am an author with bestselling books on scaling instructional improvement and leadership entry.
- Our kids deserve joy-filled schools where all kids are respected. Everyday. This means that they feel significant, know they belong, and have fun while learning.
- Our kids should experience powerful learning. Everyday. This means providing learning opportunities that are rooted in showing mastery, leverage individual and community creativity, and allow learners to connect to their identities.
- Our schools must be safe places where each kid thrives. Everyday. This means that we make sure that each kid can access an excellent education no matter their zip code, the color of their skin, their sexual identity, or the money in their family's bank account.
I care deeply about special education, multilingual learners, youth leadership, the arts, early childhood, and increasing the number of Black and Brown educators and leaders. We must do these things while attending to the structural inequities in our school funding. We must ensure good governance and budget management so that we do not bankrupt future generations.
My grandfather has always been my hero. He is thoughtful and kind. He is slow to anger. He avoids the spotlight but does his part as guided by his relationship with God.
I would recommend the works of Paulo Freire, Herbert Kohl, John Dewey, and Carla Shalaby.
Collaboration, Creativity, Compassion, Empathy, Strategic Thinking.
I am a data-informed strategic leader who is relentless in pursuing equity and justice. I am someone who is creative and able to find ways to solve intractable conflicts. I am a team builder who prioritizes community and relationship. Ultimately, I am a parent with skin in this game, an experienced and successful educator, and someone who has done the work to improve the lives of youth at scale.
A Chicago School board member should be someone who has a deep understanding of the core work of schools– namely creating the conditions for learning. They need to work with community to establish a strong vision for the school system, hire and evaluate a professional superintendent to deliver on that vision, and help keep the system accountable through progress monitoring on results. They must do all of this while ensuring a budget that aligns with revenue streams.
I would like to leave a board that proves all of our skeptics wrong. I want to leave a board that shows 21 people can work together and put the interests of kids over the interests of adults. That we can do right and tackle our disagreements by focusing on what we have in common. I want to leave a school system that is best-in-class and has addressed the budget challenged dumped on us by previous generations.
I was in elementary school when the Berlin Wall was taken down.
I was a lifeguard and swim coach for 6 summers.
1) Whatever I am currently reading because it is limitless in its potential until done.
2) Fiction- Family Pictures by Sue Miller because of her ability to capture the stories of people and the dynamics of families.
Indiana Jones. Books? Adventure? A sense of humor? Count me in.
Johnny Cash's Man in Black
My wife likes to remind me that I am an imperfect being hard-wired for struggle. There are few things that aren't a struggle because if you are lucky to live long enough, life is a struggle. Being the father each of my boys needs and not the father I default to being or that I had is tough. I am a work-in-progress as a parent.
To ensure that our school system delivers on its promise to our youth that they can realize their hopes and dreams as community leaders, college/career ready graduates, and global citizens.
All residents of Chicago. Citizen or undocumented. Youth or adult. Voter or nonvoter. Family with public school students or without.
We must look at all policy decisions through the lens of equity. This will require meeting in different locations and different times of day and ensuring access across languages. Ultimately it means listening to all people across difference and finding the root cause needs that we have in common as a place to start.
We must prioritize engaging folks most marginalized by our system. The families and students who experience home and food insecurity. Our newest residents. Those who drop out of our schools or are engaged in our justice system. We build relationships by going to the places where people go and being in relationship with them. We listen and deliver on the needs shared with us.
Good teaching is teaching that causes learning aligned to young people’s goals and empowers youth to unleash their potential. You measure it through a portfolio of evidence that includes- real world tasks, student work, student interviews, surveys, and assessment. It is important to measure what students know and can do, their reflections on their learning, and how they feel about it. We support advanced teaching by supporting teacher collaboration and providing the evidence and information they need to continue their growth as teams of professionals.
School should be integrated into the life of our city. Students should experience true apprenticeships and learning. Our community organizations and businesses should partner with and visit schools with real challenges our youth can help solve. We need to develop a global mindset and partner with schools across the world to visit and learn from each other.
We need to ensure we receive appropriate funding from the state that meets Illinois’ definition of adequate. We must then stewards our property tax and TIF dollars to prioritize classroom-level expenses. We may also benefit from adopting 0-based budgeting practices for a few years in order to ensure we spend dollars on things that work.
I am a principal who has dealt with weapons on school grounds. I led in the aftermath of Sandy Hook when we had to face the reality that no child of any age in America is safe from gun violence. Safe schools are places where everyone who walks through the doors is known and belong. When kids are cared for and trusted, schools are safe places. When schools engage with and are led by their communities, schools are safe places.
Our social and mental health curriculum is just as important as our academic curriculum. We need to infuse social-emotional learning into all subjects, commit to advisory experiences, and have the appropriate counseling and social work staff to meet the needs of everyone.
What is the difference between unlawful and illegal? Unlawful is something against the law. Illegal is a sick bird.
My favorite classic is "Why is six afraid of seven?"
My favorite classic is "Why is six afraid of seven?"
I don’t think the work of the next board is to focus on policy. I think there are two things it needs to accomplish first. One, we need to reset the board culture to be transparent, collaborative, and responsive to community. Many residents of Chicago do not trust the board of education. We need to earn that trust by acting differently. Two, we need to build the basic governance functions of the board. This means having a community-developed strategic plan, criteria for success, and routines around progress monitoring and adjusting our actions. Until we get this governance right, we won’t have the information we need to adopt smart policy.
Our community of supporters includes public school parents, teachers, principals, community organizers, superintendents, faith leaders, and business leaders. We are building a coalition of folks who know that our diversity of experiences are an asset. We are folks who reject the tired narrative of false distractions and who realize we have more in common than not regardless of where we stand on the political and racial divides within our city. We are relentlessly focused on working together so that Chicago serves all of its youth well.
Ideal learning environments are places where kids can demonstrate mastery, apply their natural creativity, and explore their identities in a community-focused and joy-filled setting. They are places where each students feels significant, knows they belong, and experiences joy.
We failed as a city in our response to the pandemic. Our school doors were closed when bars were open. We lacked imagination and creativity in the moment and our children are still suffering as a result. In future crises, student learning should be prioritized. When offices and public spaces were closed, we could have found ways to have school with appropriate social distancing across the city. Imagine if our museums had served as campuses. Imagine if we used the loop and offices in Willis Tower to transform our city into the largest and safest campus in the world.
We can build stronger relationships with parents by strengthening our Local School Councils and Community Action Councils. We need to increase communication and ensure that there is two-way communication that prioritizes the board and district listening to families.
We have so much talent in Chicago. I believe our priority strategy should be to identify students in our classrooms and support them with Education-focused Career & Technical Education courses. We can invest in grow-your-own programs that support families, paraprofessionals, and volunteers to be our next generation of teachers. We can couple this with partnerships with HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) and HSIs(Hispanic Serving Institutions). We need to make the case that you don’t have to leave your neighborhood to be successful. One can stay and prevail.
Transparency to the degree allowed by law is critical to a healthy democracy. Elected officials must know that they are not the smartest individual in the room and there is great opportunity in sharing all information so that others can help solve our trickiest challenges. Transparency is an open invitation to all to participate in our democracy.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate Chicago Public Schools school board District 10a |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on August 7, 2024
