My name is Anna Fazekas and I am pleased to submit this statement of candidacy to serve a third term as Community Representative to the South Loop Elementary School Local School Council (LSC). I am committed to raising my family in our flourishing South Loop community where I have been a resident since 2006. My husband and I have three young children. I work as an education consultant doing business nationally for the Center for Secondary School Redesign, as well as locally through my own small business. I worked previously as a science teacher and administrator at a CPS high school. My most recent consulting work includes facilitating national conferences that showcase K-12 schools working to expand student-centered learning environments, as well as staffing the Illinois School Leadership Advisory Council. I am passionate about urban education, and the role a quality education plays in the health and possibility for the community at large. My professional experience, coupled with my experience on the LSC since 2014, has reinforced for me that the most successful school change is always realized with respect to transparency and engagement of all stakeholders within a school community. Change done to a school community, rather than with a school community can be very destabilizing. As community representative to the LSC, I will work diligently to engage with the community at large in a transparent way during this period of change. In my second term, I accomplished the following:
• Acted as Secretary for the LSC – providing detailed minutes from each meeting which are available on the school’s website.
• Spoke before the Board of Education in April 2016 to advocate for a long-term solution to the overcrowding at South Loop that would provide more physical space and maintain the school’s status as a thriving K-8 neighborhood and fine arts magnet school
• Engaged with members of the Appointed Local School Council at National Teacher’s Academy (NTA)
• Attended numerous community meetings to hear testimony on the district’s proposed merger of the South Loop and NTA school communities
• Facilitated a welcoming, productive, and transparent environment at meetings of the Local School Council during a sensitive time period marked by uncertainty about changes to both the school community, and the community at-large
If elected to a third term, I will commit to:
• Continue to work collaboratively with fellow LSC members to ensure South Loop Elementary School’s standing as one of the best public neighborhood schools in the city of Chicago
• Increase attendance and participation rates at LSC meetings
• Foster productive and transparent community dialogue in all matters, in particular those related to the merging of our school community with the NTA community
• Offer expertise in the