Chicago’s Board of Education meeting is heading to the West Side in September for the first of what officials pledge will be many evening meetings in communities across the city.
The changes are meant to provide better access for students and parents with daytime work schedules than the school district’s usual workday meetings at its Loop headquarters.
September’s meeting will be held at 5 p.m. Sept. 28 at Austin High School, 231 N. Pine Ave. in the Austin neighborhood.
The board’s public briefing in February — a sort of preview of the following week’s board meeting where members question district policy proposals — will be moved to 5 p.m. Feb. 14 at Kennedy High School, 6325 W. 56th St., in Garfield Ridge on the Southwest Side.
And next April’s board meeting is set to be moved to a South Side high school that has not yet been announced.
Mayor Brandon Johnson replaced nearly the entire school board in July, picking parents, education advocates and educators to oversee the school system. One of the new board’s first moves was to build on transparency and accessibility initiatives started under its predecessor.
The board moved meetings from the fourth Wednesday of every month to the fourth Thursday to avoid a longtime overlap with City Council meetings. And meetings will return to the pre-pandemic total of 60 public speaker slots, split with 30 each at the public briefings and the board meetings.
The board under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot also promised to move some meetings to high schools but only got one done before the pandemic started and forced meetings to go online. And in Lightfoot’s last weeks in office, the board shifted the board briefings from behind closed doors to public view.
