What makes Vallas run?Grant PickViola Boyd, a parent advocate and former local school council member at Crown Community Academy, prays her fortitude will not desert her. She is the second among 41 speakers scheduled to address the School Reform Board of Trustees at its Oct. 28 meeting on Pershing Road. Boyd has never spoken in front of the board before, and nerves eat at her.
But as she begins the 2 minutes she's allotted—complaining that the Crown boiler is broken and the playground needs resurfacing—her anxiety falls away, and Boyd speaks with mounting authority. At the end of her remarks, Schools Chief... > Read More |
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Corporate-style board backs the CEOGrant PickPaul Vallas has company in holding the Chicago Public Schools to a tougher standard. He is backed by a five-member board that differs markedly from prior incarnations in its corporate style, unanimity of opinion and the respect the members accord the chairman, Gery Chico, 40, a government-affairs partner at the Loop law firm of Altheimer & Gray.
The new board was formulated in the late spring of 1995 after the Illinois legislature handed Mayor Daley the right to name a chief executive officer (CEO) for the public schools and a fresh board, called the School Reform Board of... > Read More |
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Central office gets more money, powerGrant PickOn May 30, 1995, Gov. Jim Edgar signed the second sweeping reform act to hit the Chicago Public Schools in eight years. This one put the mayor in charge.
The first one, approved in December 1988, had put the people in charge; its key feature was creation of elected, parent-dominated local school councils (LSCs), with power to approve school improvement plans and the use of new discretionary funds and, most important, to select principals. The LSCs named district-level councils, which both hired district superintendents and named the bulk of a School Board Nominating Commission,... > Read More |
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For whom does LSC Advisory Board speak?Grant PickDuring the first blush of school reform, a web of legally constituted assemblies—district councils and the School Board Nominating Commission—functioned above the level of local school councils.
They were noisy, politically charged groups with defined powers, such as the authority to appoint district superintendents, approve an errant school's remediation or probation and suggest School Board candidates to the mayor—but they all died with revisions to the Reform Act passed in 1995.
In their place there is only the Local School Council Advisory Board (LSCAB), mandated by... > Read More |
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Corporate-style board backs the CEOGrant PickPaul Vallas has company in holding the Chicago Public Schools to a tougher standard. He is backed by a five-member board that differs markedly from prior incarnations in its corporate style, unanimity of opinion and the respect the members accord the chairman, Gery Chico, 40, a government-affairs partner at the Loop law firm of Altheimer & Gray.
The new board was formulated in the late spring of 1995 after the Illinois legislature handed Mayor Daley the right to name a chief executive officer (CEO) for the public schools and a fresh board, called the School Reform Board of... > Read More |
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