Thomas Day
Elections and appointments
Personal
Contact
Thomas Day ran for election to the Chicago Public Schools school board to represent District 4b in Illinois. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Day completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Thomas Day was born in State College, Pennsylvania. Day's career experience includes working as an adjunct professor. He served in the U.S. Army from 2002 to 2007. Day earned a bachelor's degree from Penn State University in 2003, a graduate degree from Northwestern University in 2008, and a graduate degree from the University of Chicago in 2012. He is the co-founder of Illinois Veterans for Change.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Chicago Public Schools, Illinois, elections (2024)
General election
Endorsements
To view Day's endorsements as published by their campaign, click here. Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Day in this election.
2016
- See also: Illinois' 7th Congressional District election, 2016
Heading into the election, Ballotpedia rated this race as safely Democratic. Incumbent Danny K. Davis (D) defeated Jeffrey Leef (R) in the general election on November 8, 2016. Davis defeated Thomas Day in the Democratic primary on March 15, 2016.[2][3]
U.S. House, Illinois District 7 General Election, 2016
| Party |
Candidate |
Vote % |
Votes |
| |
Democratic |
 Danny K. Davis Incumbent |
84.2% |
250,584 |
| |
Republican |
Jeffrey Leef |
15.8% |
46,882 |
| Total Votes |
297,466 |
| Source: Illinois State Board of Elections |
U.S. House, Illinois District 7 Democratic Primary, 2016
| Candidate |
Vote % |
Votes |
|
Danny Davis Incumbent |
81.2% |
139,378 |
| Thomas Day |
18.8% |
32,261 |
| Total Votes |
171,639 |
Source: Illinois State Board of Elections
|
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Thomas Day completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Day'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'm a father of an Chicago Public School kindergartener, a U.S. Army and Iraq war veteran, a social entrepreneur, and a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, teaching a course in regional economics and technology policy.
I was also a bureau correspondent in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, and have contributed commentaries to the Washington Post, ESPN the Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, Governing, and Crain’s Chicago Business. I hold degrees from Penn State University, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and the Harris School of Public Policy.
- I am fighting to improve CPS student achievement by investing in programs that are going to get our kids back in school and back on track.
The COVID-19 lockdowns went on way too long and incurred tremendous damage on our kids. We need to devote every dollar we can toward tutoring and, where required, summer school. We also need to make sure that we are reversing the increasing rates of absenteeism. I believe that when school administrators see that a kid is missing an inordinate number of school days, we should quickly respond by working with community stakeholders – churches, community organizations, law enforcement, sports organizations – to identify students who are missing school and understand and respond to the causes.
- We absolutely must set a long-term plan to balance the CPS budget. Spending on Chicago Public Schools has nearly doubled in the last ten years, while enrollment has decreased by 80,000 students. Property taxes to fund CPS schools are maxed out. The results? Students are a year behind pre-COVID test scores, chronic absenteeism is at 40 percent, and the average school is 84 years old. We face $3 billion in urgent capital repairs and a $505 million structural deficit. This is what happens when special interests and power-seekers control our government and schools. I am running for good governance to address tough choices, including school consolidation and pension reform.
- Mayor Johnson's agenda is to squeeze selective enrollment schools and double-down on empty schools, some as old as Wrigley Field, many with appalling levels of racial segregation. My agenda is to make sure our best performing schools are protected, while at the same time mapping out a capital development plan that consolidates disenrolled schools into new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools.
As a board member representing the 4th District, I'll ensure selective enrollment schools continue to support high-achieving CPS students and accelerate excellence, while at the same time strengthening our neighborhood schools and integrating all of our classrooms.
In 2024, we should be able to enter any Chicago Public School and see the diversity that makes our city great. I am out fighting against an agenda that accepts and even facilitates school segregation. My progressive vision for CPS is to build new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools. All available evidence suggests equity and upward mobility are better served by integrating students across racial and socioeconomic demographics at high-performing schools. That's what I'm out to do as representative of the 4th District.
"Ours was the Shining Future" by David Leonhardt, columnist for the New York Times. Leonhardt publishes a morning newsletter for subscribers. He is a left-of-center commentator, but isn't afraid to question progressive orthodoxies (and neither am I). In this book, which he published last year, Leonhardt maps out how the American Dream undermined at a series of historical turning points. He also explores ways of better facilitating upward mobility. Leonhardt's book and his views have deeply influenced me as I thought about my run for school board.
Any veteran of the US Army knows what "LDRSHIP" means: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal courage. These are the values that guide soldiers in uniform, and they should guide anyone seeking to serve the public in elected office. These values are fundamental to my candidacy. They have to be.
Public trust is at the foundation of any effective policymaking process. When a strong degree of trust exists between communities and public officials, communities can know that, while policies may not be perfect, the processes and the institutions that guide policies are directed at their best interests.
Do Chicagoans trust their local government? Do they trust CPS? Well, since 1972, on average, one Chicago alderman each year has been convicted of a crime for offenses related to their duties in office. We cannot expect to enact the kind of bold reforms we need to make at CPS and in our local government until we understand why our voters don't trust the people serving in elected office. As representative of the 4th District, I will serve on the CPS Board guided with the principles I believe are most important for any elected official. They are the same as those that guided me as an enlisted soldier. LDRSHIP: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal courage. All candidates for the Chicago Public School Board have a responsibility to support student achievement first. The question is, how do we do that? I believe that we should, above all, provide students with schools that are new, fully enrolled, and integrated -- schools that make kids feel respected. To get to that point, the CPS Board will have a responsibility to make some tough choices. We're going to need to grab some "third rails" of Chicago politics with both hands. We simply must establish a sustainable budget framework that isn’t constantly maxing out property tax levies.
After the next Chicago Public School Board is sworn into office, members will be confronted with an extraordinary confluence of challenges: the need to get students back in school and reverse the COVID-19 learning losses, balance a budget with a $505 million structural deficit, and invest in new schools to replace structures that are, on average, 84 years old. Any member of the board acting in their own self interest, serving the whims and the extreme demands of special interests -- they are not fulfilling the responsibilities of all elected members of the Chicago Public School Board.
If elected to serve on the CPS Board, I will embrace the responsibility of making a set of tough choices we cannot avoid. We need to craft sustainable budgets. We need to invest in tutoring to reverse the damage incurred by the COVID-19 lockdowns. We need to invest in programs to prepare students for the rapidly evolving labor markets. But first, all members of the board will need to reflect on the sacred responsibilities placed on them to act boldly, ethically, and in the best interests of the kids who are counting on us. I recall watching the news reports of the Berlin Wall falling, wondering what the big deal was. Why didn't people just walk around the wall? Of course at the age of 9, I had no understanding of the changes that would follow.
I was a banquet server at the Nittany Lion Inn in State College, Pa. I worked there for about a year.
The Chicago Public School Board will confront an extraordinary confluence of challenges: A $505 million structural deficit, $3 billion in urgent capital repairs, $9 billion in debt with $800 million annual debt servicing payments, and an urgent need to invest in programs to reverse COVID-19 learning losses.
There are absolutely no easy answers. We cannot just restructure some debt, cut some more administrative positions, or build another casino. We need to take on the tough choices now. In this moment, the primary job of a school board member is to show leadership, paint a vision for what the future for CPS could look like, and map out a plan to get there. That will mean some incredibly contentious debates that will no doubt enflame activists, but no one should seek a seat on the CPS Board if they do not have the political courage to get us through this challenging period.
I have knocked on several thousand doors and met several thousand more 4th District voters of the course of the last few months. It is, of course, difficult to define all residents of our different neighborhoods, but as I have walked our communities, several notable themes have emerged. The people of the 4th District are, by and large, hugely supportive of our public schools and understand the need for equal opportunities for all Chicagoans. They also need to be assured that their property tax dollars are supporting schools that work. They are progressive and require public sector efficiency and competence.
As I have introduced myself to families across the 4th District, I have also heard an eager willingness and even demand for more diversity in our highest-performing schools. Many of our residents understand that integrating schools means integrating communities, and that means comprehensive zoning reform to end the legacy of redlining. I, like many of our 4th District residents, understand the need to facilitate equity and am ready to find solutions through informed, civil dialogue.
I believe that we need to recognize the limits of centralized decision making on the Chicago Public School Board. What is best for a school in Lakeview may not be best for a school in Roseland. I believe that we need a common baseline curriculum across CPS, while also providing teachers and schools the flexibility to customize curriculums to best meet the needs of their students. I also believe that CPS should exercise caution before adding more curriculum requirements.
I do believe that Chicago is the greatest city in America, and I believe that because we are among America's most diverse cities. That diversity should be reflected in each and every school, in our students and our teachers. It is my hope that, as representative of the 4th District on the CPS Board, I can support efforts to recruit and retain Black teachers who understand -- like so many of our students -- what it's like to live in a country defined by more than four centuries of generational wealth theft and institutional racism.
The 4th District is home to many LGBTQ+ families> For many reasons, same-sex families confront a set of challenges that are not shared by other families. It is my hope that I can provide a voice for their concerns, and I will make a robust effort to engage their unique perspectives by working with community organizations like Center on Halsted to offer my services and support.
I had the privilege of substitute teaching at Tubman Elementary in Lakeview this past academic year. I learned that not everyone can be a good teacher, certainly not at the beginning. Our best teachers are remarkably patient, empathetic, and extraordinarily good communicators. Sometimes their skills do not show up in any test scores.
We need to recognize that there is a limit to what we can measure when it comes to teacher performance. While I am all for reasonable measures of testing to make sure that students are progressing, I trust principals and local school councils to make certain our teachers are supported and held accountable.
As representative of the 4th District, CPS teachers can look toward me as an ally who will support their own professional development, not subject them to onerous testing that time away from classroom instruction. We had several hundred thousand Chicago residents employed in manufacturing forty years ago. Then the ground shifted, and our regional economy quickly pivoted toward professional services. The ground is shifting once again. The jobs of today, in services and manufacturing, are rapidly being automated. Our public schools need to proactively respond.
To prepare our kids for the job market they will enter, we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to understanding the skills needed and best approaches for teaching those skills. I believe the CPS Board should convene discussions between major employers, business communities like P33 and World Business Chicago, organized labor, and scholars at our top universities to chart out a comprehensive approach to updating curricula to meet rapidly evolving demands. We do need more career and technical education (CTE) teachers. Chicago is famously a labor town, so let's ask our friends in organized labor to work with Chicago Public Schools to on-ramp high school students into apprenticeship programs in high growth sectors.
We should also be thinking of how education is changing in the coming age of AI. As representative of the 4th District, I will also ask Chicago Public Schools board to do as the states of California and Oregon have done and issue detailed guidance on how AI can enhance and not undermine the learning experience. AI can provide students entering an unfamiliar workforce a force-multiplying tool, but it should be no substitute for the kind of creativity and intellectual exploration that we should always expect from our students, and academic integrity should always be enforced. Equitable means providing students with equal opportunities to succeed. Schools with a few dozen students and sky-high dropout rates cannot provide equal opportunities, so I have argued that instead of pushing resources into old and empty schools, we should build new schools with union labor that consolidate disenrolled schools, integrate communities, and offer everything families should expect from CPS.
To be clear, “ripping the band-aid off” is not the way to consolidate schools, as was done a decade ago when 50 schools shuttered at an instant. Instead, let’s involve communities in deciding how schools are consolidated and ensure buildings are repurposed after closure. I argue in favor of this approach not because I embrace the idea of closing schools, but because I recognize that we cannot ask more of property tax payers, that public dollars going into CPS are being spent inefficiently, and that new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools yield better results for kids.
All students should feel safe in schools. The shameful failure of Washington lawmakers to enact sensible gun reforms, coupled with lax gun laws in nearby states, have exposed our city to unimaginable levels of violence.
I do not believe that the Chicago Public School Board should be setting policies prohibiting Local School Councils from welcoming School Resource Officers in schools; I believe that is a decision best left for the Local School Councils. As the representative of the 4th District, I will ensure that all schools in our district are prepared for emergencies and that faculty receive training to quickly respond to student threats.
We absolutely need to do what they have done at schools across the United States and in many suburban Chicago communities: enforce phone-free schools. We can no longer turn away from the very clear mental health trends -- dramatic increases in mental health concerns among teens especially -- that trace back to 2007, when the iPhone was introduced to the commercial market. Our kids are having their brains rewired. Fewer kids are interacting with peers in person and are instead moving prematurely to the virtual world, missing out on the normal process of building social and emotional skills. In retrospect, we should have known that allowing our kids to grow up in a phone-based, virtual area would lead to alarming mental health challenges -- it has.
As for teachers and staff, I know well the mental health challenges they face from my time as a substitute teacher. I believe that we need to provide school environments where teachers feel safe, supported, and recognized for their achievements. I also think we should invite teachers to take mental health days, when necessary, without stigma or apology.
In isolation, I have no problem providing additional points for funding schools that are 90 percent or more one race and ethnicity, as the CPS Opportunity Index requires. I understand that these schools are located in historically underserved communities.
But let me be clear: We should not simply provide additional funds for schools that are this racially segregated. We should act to integrate these schools. We are now seven decades removed from the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Chicago is one of the most diverse cities in America. It is 2024. No Chicago Public School should be 90 percent or more one race.
It is perhaps outside the bounds of a candidate for school board, but I do need to offer comment on housing policy, because zoning laws have served to segregate our schools. We need to finally end the legacy of redlining by eliminating zoning laws that block multi-unit residential developments. The evidence is clear: More housing provides for more affordable housing and more diverse communities and schools. I strongly believe that we need to close the radius of our city, bringing our many diverse communities together in physical spaces where we live together and learn together. Ald. Scott Waguespack, Ald. Bill Conway, VoteVets, and Illinois Veterans for Change.
At the moment, Chicago Public School kids are going to schools that are on average 84 years old (the average age of a school nationally is about 40 years). Schools are so racially segregated in Chicago that it's a wonder that the Brown v. Board of Education decision was in fact rendered 70 years ago. One school maintains an enrollment of about three dozen students even as it is built for about 20 times that number of students. This is the opposite of what an ideal learning environment looks like, yet this is what CPS students are attending every day.
We are now beginning to understand more deeply that better facilitating interaction between residents across income demographics better supports upward mobility. So instead of isolating our Black and Brown students -- paradoxically, a strategy employed by politicians and organizations carrying the banner of progressivism -- we should be facilitating greater school integration where kids of all backgrounds learn together.
As representative of the 4th District, I will fight for new, fully enrolled, and integrated schools. I will fight for schools that merge the diverse communities of our city. I will fight for schools that make students feel respected and offer abundant programs and required faculty. And I'm not afraid of making some inconvenient choices to get there. The Covid-19 school closures went on way too long and incurred tremendous damage on our kids. We did not balance the understandable concern of spreading the virus with abundant evidence, clear in the fall of 2020, that schools could open safely. We did not even think to ask what the second-order educational and mental health impacts would be as we closed schools into 2021. Of course virtual learning was no substitute for in-person instruction. Policymakers and commentators need to take responsibility for this tragic and historical error. I too am responsible. For whatever it's worth: I wish I had stood up in 2020, against the most shrill commentators on social media, to demand that schools reopen. While I may have tweeted my concerns, I did no more than that, and I'm accountable for my own inaction.
Schools should have reopened at the very latest at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year.
As a candidate, I have walked every block of the 4th District (honest) and knocked on several thousand doors. I will do the same if I am elected to represent the district. I will also produce a monthly newsletter informing residents of matters in front of the board, and host regular in-person and virtual forums. Finally, I will make certain to communicate directly with all school faculty and Local School Councils. Communication with residents and families will be at the center of my leadership for the 4th District.
Put simply, for a school district that is 89 percent non-white, we need more non-white teachers. We especially need more Spanish-speaking teachers. As a substitute teacher, I have seen the challenges of teaching migrant students firsthand. Teachers are being asked to give instructions twice – once in English and another time in Spanish, with the latter often requiring Google Translate. More frequently, teachers need to just separate migrant kids from the other students and keep them busy; what else can they do? This is an unsustainable situation for CPS teachers and it needs to be dealt with. These migrant kids need to be supported.
I believe we should be providing additional tuition support for teachers to gain bilingual certifications. I think we should be looking at strategies to relax rigid qualifications for teachers who have clearly demonstrated competence in working with kids -- especially ESL kids -- but may not have the degree requirements necessary to be a CPS teacher.
I am committed to upholding the highest degree of transparency for Chicago Public Schools, the CPS Board, and myself. I say this as a proud Democrat: How did Mike Madigan attain and retain the kind of extreme power for as long as he did? We knew long before the investigation into his dealings with ComEd that he had no business leading the State of Illinois. What happened was that Springfield lawmakers put political convenience above basic measures accountability that apply to everyone in public office.
We see the same push to deny transparency and accountability today with Mayor Brandon Johnson. In spite of repeated assurances that he stood for transparency and accountability as a candidate, Brandon Johnson's administration has denied reasonable FOIA requests, including those requesting communications between him and Stacey Davis Gates, a longtime political ally.
CPS requires some big reforms right now. We need to balance a budget that has a $505 million structural deficit, we need to consolidate disenrolled schools, and we need to invest in programs to close the massive COVID-19 learning gaps. Those reforms will not be possible without a high degree of trust, and trust is not possible without transparency and accountability. 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.
2016
The following issues were listed on Day's campaign website. For a full list of campaign themes, click here.
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- Jobs And The Economy: Chicago’s 7th Congressional District – wholly inside of Cook County – is primed to become a national hub for advanced manufacturing, helping create thousands of good paying jobs with good benefits. With the right vision and leadership, our community could lead a new industrial revolution. I will fight hard every single day to make that a reality so Chicago can once again be the center of a national manufacturing supply chain.
- Raising The Minimum Wage: Chicago has led the national conversation on increasing the minimum wage and I wholeheartedly support that long overdue raise for our working families. As our next member of Congress I will make sure our families are provided a living wage. It’s the right to do and now is the time to do it.
- Serving Our Veterans And Military Readiness: The words homeless and veteran should never be used in the same sentence. As our next member of Congress I will make sure our country keeps our promise to our veterans, and that they receive the programs and services they have already worked for and earned, such as health care, home loans, educational benefits, and compensation and pension.
- Ensuring A Bright Future For Our Children: I will work as an active ally to our parents, teachers, school administrators, state legislators and local school boards to make sure Chicago kids are getting the tools and resources they need to insure their brightest possible future.
[4]
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| —Thomas Day's campaign website, http://thomasday.org/issues/
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Campaign finance summary
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See also
External links
