The issue of Black families' trust is not only missing from school reopening plans, but also from many school reopening arguments.

But Black families make up more than 1/3 of our school district and many others, so it matters.

It absolutely matters.

Chicago Public Schools is the third-largest school district in the U.S. In the past 20 years, our classrooms have lost more than 5,000 Black educators, which has had a negative impact on many school communities.

Some of the direct causes of this loss are Rahm's 50 school closings, terminations in Black and Brown schools as a result of turnarounds, and annual layoffs targeting high-need schools with predominantly Black student populations.

CPS then failed to replace the Black teachers forced out of the system, and our district remains deeply segregated. So even as the Black workforce declined as Black schools were closed or turned around, educators were then seldom hired by schools outside of Black neighborhoods.

The decline of Black teachers has also been accelerated by CPS' chief policies of the last decade: student based-budgeting (SBB) and School Quality Ratings Policy (SQRP).