Fifteen years ago a coalition of school reform activists decided that since control of the schools had just been turned over to local school councils, most of the bureaucrats at the central office could go. They wrote a “Sunrise Statement”–a reference to the new day they saw for public schools–in which they vowed to help eliminate as much of the central office as they could.
But within a few years Daley made it clear he wanted the system changed. He was tired of having to select board of education members from a list prepared by LSC members. He wasn’t happy that LSC members had used their position to launch independent aldermanic campaigns against incumbents he supported. And he didn’t like the chaos of grassroots democracy–several LSCs had got lost in factional disputes.
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In 1995 Daley, supported by a lot of Republicans, persuaded the state legislature to bring back centralized control. This second wave of school reform gave him the authority to name his own board of education and his own management team. He brought in Paul Vallas and Gery Chico, two former City Hall aides, to oversee the system. Vallas became CEO, Chico president of the school board.
Duncan has further undermined the power of LSCs by allowing charter and small schools to be set up without them. He contends that the new schools aren’t covered by the original school reform law; PURE members and other reformers insist that they are. Moreover, he’s allowed small schools that still want LSCs to ignore some of the rules that ordinarily govern them, such as the requirement that LSC members live in the school district.
But LSC members contend that some of the policy changes work against the kids’ needs. Perez, whose school is already on probation, points to Duncan’s new requirement that all schools on probation offer full-day kindergarten. He says the idea is noble, but the reality is more complicated. “It may not make sense for all schools to have all-day kindergarten, as good as that sounds,” he says. “If you make us have all-day kindergarten, we have to have at least two rooms fully reserved for kindergarten. If we’re allowed to have half-day kindergarten, we only need one room reserved–because we can have one class meeting in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Then we can use that second classroom for something else. We’re an overcrowded school, so we need every room we have. But the kindergarten policy ties our hands.”
