On Wednesday, Chicago Public Schools Superintendent and CEO Macquline King sat before a congressional committee in Washington, where some politicians tried to frame LGBTQ+ inclusion in schools as a threat to children.
I see it differently.
As the only openly gay member of the Chicago Board of Education and as someone who has spent his career working with students and families, I know the real threat is when children are made to feel invisible, unsafe or ashamed of who they are.
President Donald Trump’s administration has already turned Illinois schools into political targets. Federal officials are investigating school districts across our state over lessons involving sexual orientation and gender identity, parent opt-outs, bathrooms, locker rooms and whether transgender students are treated with dignity at school. CPS has also faced federal scrutiny over policies that allow transgender students to use facilities that match their gender identity.
This is not happening by accident. It is part of a broader effort to pressure public schools into walking away from the basic promise that every child belongs.
And for many of the families I represent, these fights are not separate.
In our Latino communities, we know what it means to have politicians talk about us instead of to us. Immigrant families know what it means to be treated as a problem to be solved instead of people to be respected. LGBTQ+ students know what it means when adults debate their lives like they are an issue on a campaign mailer.
The targets may change, but the politics are the same. Make a child seem dangerous. Make a family seem foreign. Make a classroom feel like a battleground. Then ask the rest of us to look away.
I will not.
I grew up in Humboldt Park, raised by a single mother who emigrated from Mexico and worked in a factory. Like many families in the neighborhoods I represent, we did not have every advantage. What we had were educators who saw me, supported me and helped me believe my future could be bigger than the hardship around me.
Those educators were not pushing an agenda. They were doing their jobs. They cared about a child.
That is what good schools do.
Years later, I returned to this work as a teacher, counselor, youth advocate and now school board member. I have seen students walk into classrooms carrying fears much heavier than their backpacks. Some are worried about violence in their neighborhoods. Some are worried about rent, food or whether their family will be separated. Some are trying to find the courage to say who they are out loud.
The same child can be Latino, immigrant, gay, trans, poor, undocumented, bilingual, scared, brilliant and full of promise. Our schools do not get to protect only one part of them.
This is personal for me in another way, too. I am a foster parent for young people who come to this country unaccompanied, without a parent at their side, hoping that an adult somewhere would be decent enough to protect them. When you sit across from a child who has already experienced more fear than most adults ever will, the politics disappear.
What remains is simple: Is this child safe? Are they cared for? Do they know they matter?
That is the question every leader should be asking — and the one missing from too much of our national politics right now. Too often, the children with the least power are the first ones used to make a point. Immigrant children are used to scare voters. LGBTQ+ children are used to inflame voters. Black and brown students are used to divide voters.
But children are not props. They are not talking points. They are not threats.
They are students.
Chicago can hold more than one truth at once. Parents deserve communication and respect. Students deserve an age-appropriate curriculum. Taxpayers deserve transparency and accountability. And every child who has ever been made to feel different deserves to be treated with dignity.
The problem is not parents asking questions. The problem is politicians using “parental rights” as a weapon to erase students who are already vulnerable.
Pride has never only been about celebration. It has always been about protection, courage and the refusal to disappear. For me, Pride is also about solidarity — understanding that the fight for LGBTQ+ students is connected to the fight for immigrant families, Black students, bilingual students, students with disabilities, students in foster care and every young person who has ever needed an adult to stand between them and cruelty.
Our fights are not identical. But they are bound together by a simple belief: No child should have to earn their humanity.
As members of Congress questioned King, I hope they remembered they are not interrogating an abstract policy. They are talking about real children in Chicago classrooms — students who want to learn math, read books, make friends, go to prom, graduate and come home safely. Young people whose dignity should not depend on who is president.
Chicago Public Schools is not perfect. We have serious work to do on student outcomes, school funding, special education, safety and transparency. But we should never let Washington bully us into believing that protecting vulnerable students is somehow separate from that work. A school system cannot help students succeed if it first asks some of them to hide.
To every LGBTQ+ student in Chicago: You are not the problem. Your identity is not a distraction. Your safety is not negotiable.
To every immigrant student and every child from an immigrant family: You are not a burden. Your story belongs here. Your future belongs here.
And to every parent who wants what is best for their child: So do we. The job of public schools is not to replace families — it is to work with them and make sure every child entrusted to us is treated with care.
That is the Chicago I believe in. That is the CPS I am fighting for. And this Pride Month, that is the message Washington needs to hear.
Carlos Rivas Jr. is an elected Chicago school board member who represents District 3B.
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