Tanika Island Childress

Chief Executive Officer, University of Chicago Charter School 

Bio

Tanika Island Childress is the Chief Executive Officer of the University of Chicago Charter School (UCCS), a public charter school in the Chicago Public Schools district composed of three campuses serving approximately 1,500 students on Chicago’s South Side. UChicago Charter’s North Kenwood/Oakland (NKO) and Donoghue elementary campuses serve grades preK–5, and its combined middle and high school Woodlawn campus serves grades 6–12. Together, the three campuses of the UChicago Charter School provide a pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade “superhighway” to college, cultivating students to become critical thinkers and leaders who succeed in four-year colleges and beyond.

Island oversees the execution of UCCS’s strategic plan, including program design, curriculum, and operations as well as the recruitment of students and staff. Previously, she served as the Director of the UChicago Urban Teacher Education Program. She also formerly served as UCCS’s Chief Academic Officer and its NKO Campus Director. During her tenure as Campus Director, Island was recognized with a Community School Leadership Award in 2012 from the Federation of Community Schools and a Principal Achievement Award from the district in 2013. Island spent her early career serving as NKO’s intermediate/upper-grades literacy coordinator and as a fifth-grade literacy instructor, providing professional development and creating literacy tools with researchers from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.