Reimagining School Safety Through Participatory Governance: Power, History, and Policy in Chicago Public Schools

• In Event: Unforgetting Punishment: How Safety Policies Reproduce—or Resist—Inequity in Schools

Abstract

This study examines Chicago Public Schools’ Whole School Safety (WSS) initiative as a case of participatory policymaking in urban education. Prompted by community advocacy and racial justice movements, WSS explicitly sought to replace centralized safety mandates with localized, community-driven planning processes. Drawing on interviews with district officials and community-based organization leaders, the study analyzes how WSS embodied core principles of empowered participatory governance while revealing persistent institutional constraints. Findings highlight three interrelated themes: building deliberative infrastructure, restorative governance and healing-centered labor, and navigating structural fragility. The study extends governance theory by emphasizing affective and relational dimensions of policymaking in racially stratified systems and contributes to equity-centered policy research by documenting lessons for designing durable, community-engaged education reforms.

Authors

• David Wilson Johnson, Northwestern University

• Christina Scanlon, University of Chicago

• Joseph Hoereth, University of Illinois at Chicago