Lifelong Humboldt Park resident, and newly elected CPS District 3 Consultant, Carlos Rivas, 35, knew he would pursue a profession in schooling from a really younger age.
“I need to have the ability to present that very same help that my lecturers supplied me to different college students and households,” Rivas mentioned. “That love facet is unquestionably what introduced me into schooling.”
His expertise rising up in a single dad or mum family with three brothers was not at all times simple, particularly having his mom work as a lunch woman in his faculty cafeteria, Rivas mentioned.
“I grew up within the neighborhood at a time when it wasn’t the most secure, and there was positively plenty of gang exercise and drug dealing,” Rivas mentioned. “I grew up in poverty.”
Rivas mentioned he values fostering as an prolonged dwelling and household to help college students and households who face the challenges he skilled.
Rivas has labored with CPS as a trainer, counselor, substitute trainer and trainer’s aide. He’s at present the director of public affairs on the Civilian Workplace of Police Accountability. He’s including the duties of elected Faculty Board District 3 Consultant, ending 30 years of mayoral management of CPS.
On this position, Rivas will symbolize 55 colleges in Humboldt Park, Hermosa, Belmont Cragin, Logan Sq., Avondale, Outdated Irving Park and Mayfair.
“We have to work on creating genuine neighborhood engagement, and that’s at all times been a core piece for me, how will we even have the voices of our households being represented on the board,” Rivas mentioned. “You will have CTU, SEIU, INCs, different charters, sure faculty teams. They’re those who come to talk at board conferences and type of monopolize the few slots which can be there for public feedback. That’s performative neighborhood engagement to me.”
The efficiency – or official engagers – he’s figuring out are the Chicago Academics Union, Service Staff, Worldwide Union and Illinois Community of Constitution Faculties, in addition to the voices of different constitution colleges and sure faculty teams. He needs the engagers to incorporate the frontline stakeholders together with the households within the district.
Founding Government Director of the Academy for Native Management (ALL) Chicago Fellowship, Bridget Lee, met Rivas when he utilized to her studying program designed to organize aspiring leaders in schooling methods.
“I don’t know if he felt tremendous assured in operating immediately, and I say that as a result of since then, he’s talked so much about how the ALL Chicago neighborhood, the opposite fellows, actually saved him going, particularly when issues acquired actually darkish,” Lee mentioned. “Campaigning in Chicago is usually a actually unfavorable expertise. I feel he got here in with a number of expertise and confidence, however I feel the neighborhood that he in-built ALL sustained him all through that course of.”
The Academy for Native Management doesn’t present marketing campaign help. Fairly, their program is a studying expertise for candidates contemplating operating for varsity board. Lee launched this challenge in January, impressed by her personal schooling expertise and the thrill she felt with the brand new change in CPS governance.
“He’s an unbelievable individual,” Lee mentioned. “He had the whole lot that he wanted to succeed. I feel what we did is simply assist him really feel extra assured, that he can actually do that job and that he is usually a main voice on the board.”
His opponent, Jason Dones, had CTU’s endorsement, nevertheless, within the hotly contested marketing campaign. Rivas acquired a complete of 36,475 votes whereas Dones adopted with 28,621 votes in accordance with Chalkbeat.
To make sure that the voices of all households in his district are heard, Rivas mentioned he hopes the brand new 21 member faculty board will discover methods to extend neighborhood engagement by visiting colleges, going to Native Faculty Council conferences and talking with mother and father. The brand new board will start to satisfy in January with 10 elected members and 11, together with the board chair, chosen by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Lucia Ramirez met Rivas working for the Noble Community they usually have saved in contact for the previous eight years. As a pal, Ramirez supported him in his marketing campaign efforts.
“He understands the Latino story, the immigrant story very nicely and he’s very keen about ensuring that every one college students have the identical alternatives to have decisions relating to colleges,” Ramirez mentioned. “Simply the way in which that he was introduced up and the those who he surrounded himself with, he is aware of these tales very nicely, in order that’s one thing that he places on the heart of his work and he has a ardour for it regardless that he’s not working in colleges anymore.”
Rivas mentioned he’s an enormous believer at school selection, as he attended Northside School Preparatory Excessive Faculty and desires different households to have entry to the same instructional expertise on the aggressive regional colleges the place pupil exams decide admittance.
“If we inform a household, ‘You need to go to your neighborhood faculty,’ that could be a failing faculty, then persons are going to vote with their toes,” Rivas mentioned. “That’s both leaving town of Chicago or leaving the state of Illinois, and that simply perpetuates the issues that we have now already with our fiscal cliffs.”
Exterior of the political sphere, Rivas enjoys spending time strolling his canine in Humboldt Park, considered one of Chicago’s hallmark parks that shares the identify of its neighborhood. That is particular to him, as there was some extent in his younger life the place it was not protected to stroll via the east aspect of the park.
It has solely been weeks since Rivas was elected for his first time period, but he mentioned his marketing campaign for the 2026 election has already begun.
“I used to be simply actually anxious on election evening as a result of I didn’t know what the outcomes had been going to be,” Rivas mentioned. “I’m actually proud that the neighborhood supported me on this approach and fairly handsomely, a ten level lead.”
Cowl Photograph: Carlos Rivas/Facebook
