Margaret Cullerton Hooper
Margaret Cullerton Hooper (also known as Maggie) ran for election to the Chicago Public Schools school board to represent District 2a in Illinois. She lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Cullerton Hooper completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Elections
2024
See also: Chicago Public Schools, Illinois, elections (2024)
General election
General election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 2a
Ebony DeBerry defeated Bruce Leon, Kate Doyle, and Margaret Cullerton Hooper in the general election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 2a on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Ebony DeBerry (Nonpartisan) | 43.4 | 41,258 |
| Bruce Leon (Nonpartisan) | 20.2 | 19,218 | ||
 | Kate Doyle (Nonpartisan)  | 19.6 | 18,639 | |
 | Margaret Cullerton Hooper (Nonpartisan) | 16.7 | 15,878 | |
| Total votes: 94,993 | |||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Daniel Steven Kleinman (Nonpartisan)
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Cullerton Hooper in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released September 4, 2024 |
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Margaret Cullerton Hooper completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Cullerton Hooper'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 woman with disabilities and the parent of a child with disabilities. I have spent years in our schools, fighting for our children and I support students with disabilities as a volunteer parent advocate. Disability justice organizers have been advocating for a disability seat on the school board for decades - to no avail. If elected, I will make history as the first ever disabled member of the Chicago Board of Education.
I have served on our school’s LSC for 8 years, assessing and approving 8 school budgets and I am a parent organizer trained by Raise Your Hand for IL.
I’m confident I can earn your vote by being honest, empathetic, listening to and valuing all perspectives; and sharing my vision of a better future for every child, every school, and every community.- SPECIAL EDUCATION
Lived experience as a person with disabilities is a specific and powerful lens. I understand the needs of students and I do not view disability from an ableist and deficit framework.
Every year, the district determines SPED funding by looking at the number of students with IEPs + the number of minutes and subtracts funding for outgoing students without accounting for incoming or yet unidentified student need. The result is an inevitable loss of SPED staff positions and a scramble to re-hire at the mid-year funding re-allocation.
We must reform policies to project for incoming students with and existing students in need of IEPs/minutes to ensure full funding and establish substantive stability in our schools year over - TRANSPARENCY The board MUST commit to complete transparency, require the same transparency from our schools, and be accountable to all Chicagoans. They must create meaningful opportunities for hyper-local dialogue and be willing to discuss difficult decisions well before they are made so that they can be directly informed by parents, students, schools, and communities. Full and meaningful transparency at both the district and the school level is an issue I will not compromise on.
- LGBTQIA+ Members of the Board of Education must be staunch advocates for policy changes at every level of government and as elected officials, they will have the ability to build a lobby for legislation. There are numerous resources and policy positions that have been developed by organizations leading the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights. As a member of the school board, I will always listen to and fight alongside the LGBTQIA+ community and will push for policies that protect and celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community. *You can find specific policy recommendations in that section of my profile.
The Board is responsible for drafting and implementing the policies that directly impact school-level environments and for overseeing district leadership. We must take on the work of building robust policies that not only protect, but celebrate every child - be that through queer and trans inclusionary policies, comprehensive sexual education, calendars and meals that are inclusive of religious and cultural practices - these are the outputs of the board’s actions that will substantively contribute to a positive and inclusive culture at the school level.
Additionally, by standing up as vocal public advocates for our community, we model what we expect from other adults at the district and in our schools.
8 schools have Oi scores between 17 - 21
11 schools have Oi scores between 24 - 30
17 schools have Oi scores between 31 - 39
19 schools have an ESL population of 41% or more
21 schools have student bodies with 15%+ diverse learners
31 of 37 schools have a 45%+ FRM population
6 schools have a white plurality students body
3 schools have a Black plurality students body
17 schools have a Latine plurality students body
1 school has a Asian plurality student body
The robust religious, cultural, and language diversity in our schools and the community at large are unique to District 2 and afford our eventual elected school board member the ability to uplift a wide range of voices and experiences. It would be a privilege to continue the work of actively listening to and witnessing the experiences of my neighbors and fighting with them for the communities we deserve..
To me, gentrification and housing access is the most prevalent issue impacting the schools of District 2 (and beyond). At Hibbard Elementary, we have seen consistent declines in enrollment due to housing shifts - oftentimes, the purchase of a building by developers can be directly tied to the loss of 15 - 50 of our students at any given point in the year; and it is often children from the least economically privileged households. In the past two years, our enrollment has risen as we have been privileged to welcome families from Afghanistan, Venezuela, and other countries, but the underlying concern around enrollment drops remains. Ensuring that the new board members support and continue to do the work of implementing the needs-based funding model will be critical to ensuring every child has access to excellent schools.
In addition to expanding these high school level programs, children all across the city should be introduced to the wide array of stable, fulfilling career options available in a rapidly changing economic and workforce landscape at a much younger age. Every year, elementary students are asked what they want to be. I would love to see more young children from all backgrounds encouraged to explore and excited to consider trade careers. This will require innovative and community-led partnerships with unions to co-create the best pathways and entry points for young people, rather than a top down decision from the Board. Implementing reform to increase equity in CTE programming should be a collaborative conversation between unions, students, parents and local business that works to dismantle any myths about the quality and stability of union employment in trade careers and other non-college post graduate paths.
Currently, the state of Illinois only funds the legacy pension contributions for schools outside Chicago. As a result, Chicago must cover these legacy costs through a property tax, creating an unfair burden on CPS.
This inequity is a little-known aspect of how the state underfunds public schools, and it must be addressed immediately. The Board should demand action by either pushing the legislature to resume funding legacy pension costs (as they did in the past) or by advocating for the merging of the state and Chicago teacher pension funds. This merger would strengthen teachers statewide and prevent future pension underfunding.
This change would free up $550M - $640M, all of which could be redirected to our schools.
THREE STRATEGIC LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS:
Earned Revenue
Many schools generate earned revenue (renting rooftops to telecom companies or parking to local businesses). Meanwhile, unused district-owned buildings cost the district to maintain. We need to diversify revenue through community partnerships that support neighborhood economies and generate income for CPS.
Sunsetting Costly Underperforming Contracts
The practice of outsourcing school needs to for-profit companies, like Aramark, for financial efficiency has been a disaster. Their opaque system lacks transparency, leaves schools in disrepair, and undermines high-quality union jobs while costing the district millions. We must rebuild internal infrastructure for facilities maintenance and unionized city employees supervised by school principals.
Balanced Budgets & Financial Sustainability
To address one sub-section of in-school mental health supports, I will expound on how CPS currently responds to the trauma of experiencing community violence.
Because if they were green and scaly, they’d be a dragon.
The creation of a Queer Issues advisory council made up of students, families, and community members (especially those who identify as transgender) to share experiences, make recommendations, and serve as key experts on how to ensure CPS is a safe and loving environment for all students and their caregivers.
Passing state-level comprehensive student-nondiscrimination legislation that is inclusive of trans and nonbinary students’ full participation in athletics, access to facilities that align with students’ gender identity, respect for their names and pronouns, and privacy protections.
Ensuring that sexual education is not taught to children based on or separated by gender.
Establishing policies to inform students and caregivers of their rights and provide them with resources like GLSEN and SPLC.
I will continue to prioritize direct communications with District 2 constituents, being available to parents, students, educators and neighbors, establishing monthly email communications and monthly LSC convenings, planning regular town-hall sessions for students, and holding pre- and post- board meeting prep/follow up sessions for community members.
Additionally, I believe that CPS MUST entirely reconsider their definition, conception, and implementation of community engagement. In our current system, programs and policies move through a closed, administrative system and are presented to the Board BEFORE there is any discussion of community input, let alone meaningful co-creation efforts.
After clearing those myriad bureaucratic hurdles, it is presented to the community for their “input”. This is absurd, performative, and has only deepened the distrust and disdain that most CPS parents have towards both the district and the board. Once elected, I will fight for a collaborative process to redesign and reframe the way that CPS approaches “community engagement”. It cannot continue to be transactional and placating by design.
A perfect example of how CPS and the Board must do better is regarding the recent shift to the needs-based funding model. While the new model takes necessary steps to ensure that every CPS student has the opportunity to succeed, the refusal to act with transparency and the ongoing disregard for community input and engagement has fueled distrust. We saw late budget approval timing for schools and their LSCs, refusal to allow principal appeals, and uniformity of application with no consideration of specialization, language programs, or other educational commitments to students.
The same can be said for the outsourcing of services to private, for-profit companies. Contracts like the ones CPS has with Aramark have established a deeply questionable and completely opaque process that leaves our principals without key information and our schools in total disrepair.
Capital budget allocations and decisions, the selective application of so-called “utilization” data to close schools (without making a significant dent in the district’s long-term financial stability), the removal - without explanation - of Black principals, even parents’ and students’ ability to access multiple test score results for high school application processes, the list is endless.
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 2a |
Personal |
Footnotes
