Get to know Daniel Steven Kleinman

Local School Councils are one of Chicago’s quiet revolutions. Born from a belief that democracy should live not only in city hall but in every classroom, every hallway, every lunchroom, LSCs placed real authority in the hands of parents, educators, students, and community members. They recognized a simple truth: schools do not exist apart from their neighborhoods — they rise and fall with them. For decades, LSCs have been the connective tissue between policy and people, between vision and daily life, between aspiration and accountability. They remain one of the most powerful examples of participatory democracy in American public education.

For Daniel Steven Kleinman, this work has never been abstract. For five years, he served on Local School Councils in some of Chicago’s most dynamic and diverse school communities — from the magnet halls of Disney Elementary to the neighborhood strength and complexity of Senn High School. In those rooms, around those tables, he witnessed both the fragility and resilience of public education. Especially during the hardest months of COVID, when decisions carried extraordinary weight, he saw how local leadership, rooted in trust and shared responsibility, could guide schools through fear, uncertainty, and isolation with compassion and clarity.

It was through LSC service that Daniel learned the true power of local action. When his council fought to bring a social worker into the school, it was not a line item — it was a lifeline. It meant recognizing trauma, mental health, housing instability, and family stress as educational realities, not side issues. It meant seeing children fully, not narrowly. That experience transformed his understanding of what schools must be: anchors of their neighborhoods, centers of care, stability, and hope, in every zip code, without exception.

This same philosophy drove Daniel to form block clubs — small, powerful engines of neighborhood connection and shared responsibility. His practical, accessible “how-to” guides for building block clubs have been downloaded thousands of times nationwide, empowering residents to reclaim their streets, their safety, and their sense of belonging. The work is simple, but never small: knock on doors, build trust, create systems, share leadership. It is the same blueprint that makes LSCs thrive — service for the team to serve, for neighbors to serve one another, for institutions to serve the people they exist for.

CPS students need wraparound services — academic, emotional, social, and material — because learning does not stop at the school door. Hunger, housing insecurity, mental health struggles, and community violence all walk into the classroom every morning alongside our children. Schools must be equipped not just to teach, but to support, stabilize, and uplift. Even if we understood this truth a hundred years ago, now is the moment to fully act on it, to scale it, to fund it, and to defend it.

Daniel knows this not only as an advocate, but as a student who lived it. His own high school provided wraparound services, and he knows firsthand that they work. They change trajectories. They open futures. They save lives. CPS students deserve the same — nothing less. Equity is not a slogan; it is a commitment measured in counselors hired, social workers funded, meals served, mentors trained, and safe spaces sustained.

LSCs form the backbone of this vision. They are where leadership meets lived experience, where policy meets practice, where accountability meets care. But they cannot stand alone. They require strong central support, aligned district leadership, and sustained public investment. Both are needed — empowered local councils and a responsive, collaborative CPS — working together in service of students, families, educators, and communities.

This is service for the team to serve — a shared labor of hope, discipline, and love. It is democracy in motion, community in action, and education as a collective promise.

It is now a necessary shared goal to fix the damage that was created before.

Can’t wait, looking forward.