The three finalists advancing to the next round of interviews are: Yolonda Brown, currently the chief academic officer in Atlanta Public Schools; Marie Feagins, chief of leadership and high schools for Detroit Public Schools Community District; and Cheryl Proctor, deputy superintendent of instruction and school communities for Portland Public Schools in Oregon.

The move puts in motion Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign promise to reinvigorate Chicago Public Schools’ neighborhood schools. On the campaign trail, Johnson likened the city’s school choice system to a “Hunger Games scenario” that forces competition for resources and ultimately harms schools, particularly those where students are zoned based on their address.

Superintendent Tony Watlington said he and other district officials are trying to signal to state and city policymakers that “we are being good stewards of the public tax dollars,” in the hopes of securing increased funding in this coming year’s appropriations process.

Attending a themed school offers no guarantee of success in the focus subject, either. At some STEM-themed schools in New York City, students score below the citywide average on the state standardized math test.

The budget gap is an expected result of the end of federal pandemic relief programs, which were meant to help school districts manage the impact on student learning. District leaders have been preparing for this day with analyses of how they spent the money, so they can try to preserve what has been most effective for students.

In Colorado, just this fall, state officials said almost a third of students are chronically absent. The number has gone up significantly since the pandemic and schools are struggling to figure out how to get kids to return to classes.

The director of the district’s English language arts department, Jazleen Othman, spelled out three problems with the district’s instruction at a recent Board committee meeting: ineffective reading instruction during the pandemic, simplifying the curriculum, and inadequate writing instruction.

If his school community had to choose between himself and its nine therapy dogs, David Snowden of the Franklin Special School District jokes that “the director of schools would have to go.”