The opportunity to be part of the hiring process for my school’s new principal came from my position on the local school council, or what I like to call a “mini school board.”  The autonomy Chicago Public Schools have given individual schools through LSCs has, I believe, been very effective in giving teachers and the community a stronger voice in education policy in Chicago.

LSCs, established in each school, are comprised of six parent representatives, two community members and three school employees (two teachers and one non-teaching representative). This committee has full authority to hire and evaluate the school’s principal, as well as make decisions on curriculum and school-based policies and help develop and approve a school budget.

This is distinct from the common practice of having an elected school board make these decisions. In most school districts, these decisions are made externally, and schools are not offered the same opportunities to make individual choices for themselves.

At the moment, my school, like others in CPS, is at risk of losing its autonomy through the weakening of LSCs, which have been under assault throughout Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s current tenure. Our current city-wide school board is appointed by the mayor, and many Chicagoans believe it’s time for the city to have an elected school board instead.  Earlier this month, the question of creating an elected school board was on the ballot in many precincts, and 90 percent of Chicago voters in those precincts voted yes.

Elected board important, but so are LSCs

I don’t disagree with the importance of an elected board. I believe in the democratic process and think that there are many positives that will come from electing board members - possibly most importantly, pushing the general population to pay more attention to what is going on in public education. I am only concerned that this loud push for an elected school board is undermining the efficacy of LSCs.  If Chicagoans had a better understanding that LSCs were an effective system of managing our individual schools, perhaps we would not be as anxious about a mayoral-appointed school board’s control over our local schools.  The conversation needs to focus not just on electing our district-wide school board, but on how the school board and LSCs can work together more closely.

My experience on my school's LSC has largely been a positive one. Despite the large amount of time the principal selection process demands, I have been impressed with and honored by the opportunity to impact my school and advocate for my students and colleagues. I think that many teachers, parents and community members would be interested in being elected to their LSC if they realized how effective they actually are. As a council member, I have had influence on not just our school’s leadership, but also on our curriculum options, technology offerings and fundraising opportunities.

These may seem like small issues, but when looking at an individual school and its intricacies, is it not much better to rely on the judgment of people who are actually inside the school on a daily basis? Each school has its own personality - different needs, different ways of doing things, and is thus in need of governance not just from a district-wide ruling body, but from people whose lives are entwined with what goes on there.  Being on an LSC may become a more desirable appointment if it meant opportunities to participate in decisions being made by the district school board as well.

LSC appointments might be more attractive if council members were offered the opportunity to meet with the school board to discuss important issues such as school closings, which most directly affect schools with higher populations of low-income students - the same schools in which it is most difficult to convince people to join their LSC.

While I am fully aware of the shortcomings of the current LSC system - the lack of proper training and guidance when it comes to selecting a principal is one of the most glaring problems - I believe that trading or weakening the LSC system for an elected school board would be disenfranchising to schools that are in desperate need of having their own voice in CPS policymaking.  As a city, we will benefit from having both an elected school board and a strong LSC system. 

It would be a step backwards for us to gain a city-wide voice in electing our school board, if at the same time we cut off individual schools’ autonomy and strangle the voices of parents, teachers and community members in schools that are most in need of a platform.

Kylene Young is an LSC teacher representative at Pulaski International School, where she is a middle-grades special education inclusion teacher. She is also a TeachPlus Teaching Policy Fellow.

The suit claimed that CPS did not provide adequate support to schools slated for closure and turnaround while they were on probation, resulting in a disproportionate impact on African-American students.

“This ruling is a win for students and families across the district. For too long, CPS has accepted a status quo that has failed its students year after year,” the district said in a statement. “With almost one out of two students not graduating high school, and only 7.9 percent of our 11th-graders testing college ready, it would be an injustice to wait another day to give our students access to the quality education they deserve.”

Michael Persoon, an attorney who represented parents in the case, said it’s too soon to say whether the case might be re-filed or the ruling appealed.

Judge Michael Hyman wrote in an opinion issued this afternoon that “this court understands the frustration of the students, their parents, the Local School Councils, the neighborhoods, and the teachers at the manifest failure of the 10 public schools in this lawsuit.”

But, he wrote, “this court has neither the discretion to second-guess nor the authority to prevent the Board of Education from moving ahead with its previously approved plans for the 10 schools … The power to make decisions on dysfunctional schools is placed squarely on the Board, with minimum interference permitted after these immensely consequential decisions are made.”

]]> http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2012/05/25/20144/school-closing-turnaround-lawsuit-dismissed Rebecca Harris http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2012/05/25/20144/school-closing-turnaround-lawsuit-dismissed Fri, 25 May 2012 17:29:55 -0500 Local School Council elections in Chicago Public Schools start this Wednesday, with 6,500 candidates running for the school-based seats. Meanwhile, CPS has created an app called, "Who is Running for my Local School Council?" so parents can see a list of candidates running for positions.

Contract talks between Chicago Public Schools and the teachers union have moved to the first of several steps that could lead to a strike, officials said Monday. Both sides have agreed to the appointment of a fact-finding panel that has 75 days to issue a report recommending terms for settlement of the labor contract. (Tribune)

Still “far apart’’ in negotiations over a new teachers contract, Chicago Public School and Chicago Teachers Union officials have agreed to call in a “fact-finding” panel, union leaders said Monday. The establishment of the panel kicks off a series of deadlines that slowly move the parties closer to a potential strike date. (Sun-Times)

CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union, which had previously been in mediation since early February, have appointed members of a three-person fact-finding panel – one of the final steps of a lengthy, legally required pre-strike process set out in Illinois law. (Catalyst)

Public charter school advocates to rally in support of HB 5225, also called the "Equal Funding Bill." (PR Newswire)

At an appropriations committee meeting last week, state lawmakers interrogated CPS officials about how the district is using state money. The answer is not what elected officials wanted to hear. CPS is using state funds to pay off its debt: $160 million last year alone. (WBEZ)

IN THE STATE
The Elgin Area School District U-46 school board on Monday said it was “extremely disappointed” in the recent decision of the teachers union to reject a tentative contract agreement that board members said demonstrates the district’s commitment to both teachers and students. (Daily Herald)

IN THE NATION
In a show of protest against high-stakes testing that they say warps the curriculum, takes precious weeks away from substantive learning, and doesn’t measure a child’s true ability, some parents are opting to keep their children out of the tests this year. In New York and across the nation, they have been sharing information, discussing concerns about potential ramifications, and asking other parents and educators to join their cause. (NYT)

Increasingly, community college students are making the jump to more selective institutions to obtain full degrees. (NYT)

That's a new low for CPS, says Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change and one of the authors of the 1988 legislation that created LSCs. (Center Square Journal)

The Chicago Teachers Union Tuesday afternoon applauded the mayor’s shift in his longer school day stance — cutting back his demand from 7.5 to 7 hours for elementary schools — but asserted the mayor has far to go on compromising. (Sun-Times)

Listen to WBEZ education reporter Linda Lutton talk with host Melba Lara about the new proposal for a seven-hour school day.

The Oak Park and River Forest High School board is calling a special community meeting to discuss recent layoffs of non-tenured teachers following outcry from students who believe the dismissals are unfair. The campaign has drawn more than 1,400 signers of an online petition backing the teachers on the website saveoprf.org. A Facebook page drew more than 1,900 members before it was turned into a private "closed group." (Tribune)

IN THE NATION
A group of urban public school teachers from across the country has launched Assessment Advisor: Reviews Powered by Teachers, an online review site similar to Yelp or TripAdvisor, but focused on classroom assessments. The teachers, all affiliated with the national non-profit organization Teach Plus, developed the project to address the absence of teacher voice in the selection of academic assessments. The site is designed to provide policy makers with teacher perspectives on the effectiveness of various testing products on a number of measure. (New Release)

The crisis in American education is a myth, writes Randy Turner, an English teacher in the Joplin, Missouri, public schools. (Huffington Post)

Membership in the National PTA has dropped steadily over the past 10 years, from about 6 million to less than 5 million. (Education Week)

Enrollment in state-funded preschool programs has more than doubled over the last decade—ticking upward even through the recession years—but an accompanying slide in per-child spending in many states is threatening the quality of early-childhood programs designed to serve poor children, according to a new national report. (Education Week)

New York State lawmakers say they are open to the idea of changing state law to allow parents to see the evaluations of their own children’s teachers but to block the general public from having access to those reports. (NYT)

Twenty years after Maryland became the first state to require volunteer hours to earn a diploma, the scramble has become a rite of spring. (Washington Post)

If the proposal passes, Ford said the money used for the compensation would come from the Illinois State Lottery rather than a new tax. Merit pay is needed to show the LSC members support for the responsibilities they shoulder, Ford said.

Today is the filing deadline for parents and community members to run in the upcoming Local School Council elections.

The education reform group Stand for Children, credited with helping to win major education legislation in Springfield last year, endorsed 14 “education champions”— six Democrats and eight Republicans— in legislative races across Illinois. All of them won Tuesday. Stand for Children put more than $420,000 into the election, including $150,000 in contributions to the leadership of both major political parties. (WBEZ)

Local media are all reporting on the resignation of embattled University of Illinois President Michael Hogan.
Crain's Chicago Business writes "recently came under fire for his managerial style. He had previously refused to step down despite mounting pressure from faculty who disagreed with decisions he was making about the school."

Tribune: When University of Illinois President Michael Hogan took over 20 months ago after an embarrassing scandal, his supporters championed him as a likable reformer who could stabilize the university. On Thursday, he resigned after months of turmoil, a faculty mutiny and a scandal in the president's office that had left him so sidelined that people began to question not whether he would quit but when.

Sun-Times: The move comes after more than 100 faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus called on him to step down.

Here's more reporting, from WBEZ, on the just released Consortium research that shows Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in a rigorous college prep program, known as the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, are much more likely to get into good colleges.

IN THE STATE
The Illinois State Board of Education has chosen the Consortium for Educational Change and Teachscape, a provider of online professional learning content, innovative tools and services to provide an online system by which to train and assess all of Illinois' teacher evaluators. The teacher evaluator training is part of a statewide performance evaluation-training program intended to help state school districts meet the requirements of the state's Performance Evaluation Reform Act. (PR Newswire)

IN THE NATION
When teachers leave schools, overall morale appears to suffer enough that student achievement declines—both for those taught by the departed teachers and by students whose teachers stayed put, concludes a study recently presented at a conference held by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research. (Education Week)

The Fairfax County (Va.) Public Schools system says there are no plans to discipline a middle school teacher after he was reported to have assigned his students work that involved researching the vulnerabilities of the Republicans running for president. (ABC News)

California school districts issue more pink slips than necessary and the state should consider alternatives to seniority-based layoffs, according to a report from the state legislative analyst’s office. (Los Angeles Times

AROUND THE WORLD

Grade-school students in a northeastern Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with computer chips that alert parents if they are cutting classes, the city’s education secretary said Thursday. (The New York Times)

The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research conducted the study, "Working to My Potential: The Postsecondary Experiences of CPS Students in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme." The study also found that IBDP students in four-year colleges are significantly more likely to persist in four-year colleges for two years. Study authors say the findings have important implications for other urban districts that are interested in implementing IB programs. (Catalyst)

An International Baccalaureate program created in Switzerland for the children of diplomats has produced “dramatic’’ results in Chicago’s gritty neighborhood high schools by sizably boosting the chances its graduates will make it into selective colleges — and stay there, a new study from the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research concludes. (Sun-Times)

Golden Apple has announced the 32 finalists for the 2012 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching. The finalists, selected from a pool of 265 applicants and 560 nominations, represent K-3rd grade teachers throughout the Chicago metropolitan area. (press release)

CPS has an online map that shows the latest filings for Local School Councils. Friday is the last day for parents and community members to file to run for LSC posts.

The decision to drop school holidays is not about ethnicity, it's about time, writes the Tribune's Eric Zorn.

IN THE STATE
Evanston voters on Tuesday voted down a referendum that called for $20.6 million in bonds for a neighborhood elementary school for students who live in the city's 5th Ward, an area dominated by African-American and Hispanic families. It also called for another $27.6 million for improvements at other Evanston schools. (Tribune)

The Illinois State Board of Education released its annual financial profile of the state’s public schools using revised Fiscal Year 2011 data that takes into account the state remains behind in payments for the third consecutive year to school districts. The 2012 financial profile scores show that the number of districts in Financial Recognition increased from last year’s 604 to this year’s 670 or 77.3 percent of 867 districts. While more districts have improved their financial standing, ISBE’s data also shows that school administrators continue to reduce their expenditures and increase borrowing to balance budgets. (Press release)

IN THE NATION
During the 2009-2010 academic year, 270,604 American students studied abroad for credit. This number is almost double the number of students studying abroad from 2000-2001, according to the website BestCollegesOnline.com. For more facts about students studying abroad, click here.

Parents of Boston Public Schools students marched from City Hall to the school department building on Wednesday to demand that the city “fully fund” its public schools. (Boston Globe)

A measure that would hide final teacher evaluation scores from parents and the public has cleared the Tennessee House State and Local Government Committee. (The Tennessean)

Whitney Young High School won the 2010 National Championship in Policy Debate at the National Forensic League National Championship tournament over the weekend in Kansas City, Mo. (District 299)

Here's the statement from CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard congratulating the Whitney Young High School Debate Team, the first Chicago Public School to win a title in the state debate competition.

IN THE STATE
Current and prospective college students who apply now hoping to get state tuition help for next school year will be turned away, officials said Tuesday. (Tribune)

The Glenbard 87 Board of Education approved the appointment of David F. Larson as the district’s superintendent, beginning July 1. (mysuburbanlife.com)

IN THE NATION
Because of its emphasis in the common-core standards, millions of teachers are faced with increasing their use of nonfiction. (Education Week)

All but 10 states and the District of Columbia saw a bigger share of their high school students graduate from 2002 to 2009, according to a March 19 report on graduation rates in the U.S. Overall, the nation's high school graduation rate rose by nearly 3 percentage points over those eight years, bringing it to 75.5 percent from 72.6 percent. (Education Week)

Community colleges across the USA, faced with tight budgets and competing priorities, are downsizing or shuttering programs. (USAToday)

An online survey of 10,000 U.S. teachers finds that only 16 percent believe linking student performance and teacher pay is "absolutely essential" or "very important" in retaining good teachers. That's down from 28 percent in 2010. The massive national teacher survey by the educational publisher Scholastic was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (USAToday)

CPS notes, however, that more candidates have already filed this year than at the same point in the last election in 2008.

“Serving on one’s Local School Council is the most important role a parent or community member can have in supporting their schools and students,” CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said in a statement. “People throughout Chicago want to see their schools and students succeed. This is their opportunity to demand the change needed to create a high quality education for every child in every community in our city.”

The board has extended the deadline in previous years and insists that the decision is unrelated to a critical letter sent by an umbrella group of 27 parent and grassroots community groups, the Coalition to Strengthen Local School Councils. The group wrote a letter to Brizard demanding a two-week extension of the candidate filing deadline. The letter asserts that “low candidate turnout reflects your personal lack of forceful visible leadership in encouraging candidacy or recognizing the existence and contribution of Local School Councils since you took office.”

The letter suggests that CPS has hindered grassroots recruitment efforts by failing to collaborate with independent groups and by requiring a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain school-by-school candidate data, when this information had been routinely distributed in the past.

Recruiting for the upcoming election has been difficult, says Wanda Hopkins, assistant director of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE). “People are not overwhelmingly willing to run for LSCs because of the current administration from the mayor to the board of trustees,” she says. “People have no hope. They don’t think that what they do will matter.” 

In the 2010 election, the district spent $25,000 for community groups to do recruitment, according to a district spokeswoman, but "because of our $700 million deficit this fiscal year, we were unable to provide grants to these organizations."

To build interest this year, the CPS Office of Local School Council Relations held four community rallies, used social media and ran ads on buses and billboards, among other actions. CPS has also displayed posters and made nomination forms available in community locations such as City Hall, aldermanic offices, libraries, and churches.

 Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, believes CPS recruitment efforts fell short. “The way you recruit people is not through rallies,” says Moore. “You have to talk to parents and talk to people who are on LSCs and encourage them to run again. It’s an organizing process. Just to hold a rally is not going to do it.”

Losing power?

Michael Brunson, recording secretary of the Chicago Teachers Union, says the efforts haven’t been apparent. 

 “In the past couple months, have you noticed many advertisements? I haven’t,” says Brunson. “What I have heard on the radio are advertisements for charter schools and turnarounds and how great they are. There’s been no exposure of LSCs in the media.”

The CTU has sought this year to work more closely with parent and community groups opposed to closings and turnarounds, which affect LSCs. Brunson says they are being "systematically disempowered."

“You have an administration that seems to feel that in order to implement school reform they have to hold the principal more accountable, so they should have the power to hire the principal,” Brunson says. “That’s directly in opposition to LSCs’ power.”

Principal hiring is one of three major responsibilities of LSCs, which also approve spending of discretionary money and develop school improvement plans.

But over the years, principal hiring and budgetary power has been whittled away as successive administrations take tougher action against low-achieving schools that are on probation; currently, 250 schools, according to the district.

Schools on probation no longer have final authority over their school improvement plan or discretionary budget, which must be approved by the district. If the district removes a principal at a school on probation, the LSC can no longer select a new principal until the school comes off probation.

The district’s move to do more turnarounds affects LSCs’ power as well. At turnaround schools, the LSC does not control principal selection.

But at Morgan Park High School, LSC representative Peggy Goddard questions whether the model of having LSCs choose a principal is viable. Goddard has gone before the Board of Education at its regular meetings to complain about the lack of principal candidates. Morgan Park went through two principal searches in 2011. At one point, both of the top two candidates ultimately failed the district’s eligibility process for principals.

The council kicked off the new year by starting a third search.

“I do not think having local school councils choose the principal is the best way to do it,” says Goddard, who has served on the council for 12 years. “A local school council is not always made up of people who have ever hired or interviewed people. Sometimes they come to the table with their own agenda, and what they think will make a good principal, that may or may not be based on any kind of education background.”

Catalyst Chicago’s latest issue of Catalyst In Depth covers bilingual education.

Local School Council members, helped by the Chicago Teachers Union, are asking a Cook County court to intervene before the Chicago Board of Education votes on 17 proposed school closures and "turnarounds" later this month. (Tribune)

A coalition of local school council members filed a lawsuit Thursday to stop CPS from moving forward with its proposed school closings, phase-outs and turnarounds. (Catalyst)

Tempers flared and insults flew Thursday as opposing sides on the school closing issue held dueling news conferences in the lobby of Chicago Board of Education headquarters. Local School Council members who had planned an 11 a,m. news conference about a new suit seeking to block proposed school shakeups loudly chanted over the tail-end of a 10:45 am ministers’ news conference when the clergys’ message ran into the LSC members’ time slot. (Sun-Times)

High school principals or guidance counselors who are interested in nominating a student for the Chicago Tribune's 27th annual All-State Academic Team can find details and a nomination form here.

IN THE STATE
A record number of Illinois high school students took Advanced Placement, or AP, exams last year. And the increase was especially notable among Latino students, as the number of Latinos taking AP classes has quadrupled in the past decade, the Illinois State Board of Education says. (Sun-Times/AP)

IN THE NATION
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts announced a big shake-up in the district Wednesday, closing nine schools next year and converting four into charters, to save $7.5 million in annual operating costs. (Huffington Post)

The waivers being granted to 10 of 11 states that applied for flexibility under the No Child Left Behind Act would allow them to make potentially broad changes in how school performance and the performance of student subgroups are judged under the decade-old law, the Obama administration announced Thursday. (Education Week)

Sixty-five percent of Philadelphia's young adults without a high school diploma are unemployed. (Education Week)

In analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period. (The New York Times)

The LSC members claim that CPS violated state law when it put their schools on probation and then failed to provide them “specific steps” in order to “correct identified deficiencies.”

The coalition wants a Cook County Circuit Court judge to hold an emergency hearing and put an injunction in place before Feb. 22, the day the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on the proposals. If an injunction is not put in place before the vote, the plaintiffs hope a judge will stop the actions from being implemented.

CPS leaders have proposed closing six schools, including Crane and Dyett high schools, and turning around 10 others.

While the plaintiffs are LSC members, the Chicago Teachers Union is paying the legal expenses and supporting the lawsuit. The CTU has consistently fought against school actions, saying they displace teachers and there is not enough evidence that they work to improve student achievement.

Pat Bell, a grandmother on the local school council of Herzl Elementary on the West Side, said her school has been on probation and in physical disrepair for years. She noted that Herzl never turns off the boiler, even in summer, because the school staff are afraid it will break down and not turn back on. But now that the turnaround is announced, she said, CPS facilities staff have been there looking at the condition of the building.

“We cried out for help,” Bell said. “We asked for someone to tell us what to do.”

 CEO Jean Claude responded to the lawsuit by saying it would be an injustice not to take some action to improve the schools. 

“The fact is that most adults in our system have allowed the status quo to continue year after year, failing our children,” Brizard said in a press release. “Our students cannot afford to wait another day.” 

But Jitu Brown, a Dyett LSC member and a community organizer for KOCO, said the school actions being pushed by CPS are a continuation of what has been happening for years. He called CPS policies “punitive.”

“CPS is locking out LSCs,” Brown said. “We don’t pay taxes to be disenfranchised.”

Besides the primary charges, the lawsuit asserts that:

·         The board did not involve LSCs in the probation process.

·         The board has no “specific objective criteria” to determine which schools on probation are selected for closure, phase-out or turnarounds.

·         The board never provided the plaintiffs with a budget that included “specific expenditures directly calculated to correct educational and operational deficiencies identified by the [Board’s] probation team.”

In addition, the lawsuit suggests that the board’s actions disproportionately affect LSCs at black schools. 

Local school council advocate are celebrating.  They saved LSCs from a state senator’s attempt to strip their power, and they recruited enough candidates to make half the upcoming LSC elections competitive.

The office of Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) confirmed that the Far South Side lawmaker is no longer pursuing a bill that would have made LSCs advisory, taking away their power to choose principals and decide how discretionary money is spent. Meeks, who surprised activists when he introduced the legislation this winter, said he introduced the bill to consolidate responsibility and accountability in schools.

Given the threat to LSCs, it was important that people showed up to run for the councils, says Don Moore, executive director of the advocacy organization Designs for Change. But Moore says the central office staff didn’t provide activists a list of specific schools needing more candidates, thereby thwarting targeted recruitment efforts.

As the March 11 candidate filing deadline neared, fewer than 2,000 candidates had registered for about 5,400 seats, and less 5 percent of schools had contested parent and community member elections.

But Moore and other activists were able to get CPS to extend the deadline by two weeks. They developed a strategy for recruitment and by March 24 had 6,742 candidates for the April election. Elementary school elections are on April 21 and the high schools hold their elections on April 22.

Half of the schools now will have contested elections for the six parent seats and two community seats. The councils also include two teachers.

“Our goal is to have competitive elections, but we want to make sure we at least have enough candidates to fill the positions,” Moore says.

He is optimistic that with more advanced planning next year, schools will have more than 10,000 candidates. 

Moore thinks that Meeks’s effort to take away power from LSCs made some decide not to run. “When we talked to some of the potential LSC members, they said the legislature is going to get rid of the LSC, so why should I run,” Moore says.

Others say that a school’s environment encourages candidates or turns them off.

“I think we had parents feeling more comfortable and welcome in the school,” says Stevenson Elementary School Principal Karen Kowalski. Stevenson has 22 candidates for six parent positions.

She says LSCs can be a positive or negative force in a school. Kowalski has had a good experience with Stevenson’s council, but she knows other schools have struggled with their LSCs.

“If you have people who are always going to be disagreeable, and that’s their intent -- to disagree with the administration or bring in problems that don’t even exist -- that could be a problem,” Kowalski says.

She thinks there should be guidelines to ensure that LSC members are contributing in a productive way.

Grassroots education advocacy groups are reeling from the news that state Sen. James Meeks filed a bill Monday that would strip local school councils of their most important powers, including selecting principals and controlling their school’s discretionary funds.

The bill would make LSCs merely advisory boards and would transfer their authority to the Board of Education.

Meeks, a Democrat and the pastor of the House of Hope, a megachurch on the Far South Side, did not return calls on Wednesday.

Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Monique Bond issued a statement that “Meeks has been a champion of school reform and education and his efforts to ensure that students are receiving the best educational opportunities is consistent with our mission, and we look forward to reviewing the legislation.”

But Bond did not respond to follow-up questions about whether CPS officials knew Meeks planned to submit the bill and whether the district supports it. 

Leaders of advocacy groups say they had no idea that the bill was coming. 

“We are completely shocked and stunned about this bill, considering we have had no communication from Meeks’ office on an issue that directly affects us,” says Clarice Berry, the president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

Don Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, says he does not understand Meeks’ motives. 

“It seems ironic that an elected official from the South Side would propose a bill that would basically gut the powers of LSC’s, which have a majority of African American members,” Moore says.

In recent years, the district has curbed the power of LSCs by choosing principals for schools on probation and by creating charters and other new schools that are not required to have LSCs. 

Still, education advocates were caught off-guard by the attempt to completely remove any power from the councils. 

Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart cited the bill as more evidence of bureaucratic leadership ignoring the needs of students in favor of their own agendas. She made her comments at a previously scheduled CTU press conference on Wednesday regarding school closings.

Wanda Hopkins, assistant director of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) says that the organization will not rest until the bill is stopped.

“We’re going to fight it like we’ve never fought before,” she says. “We are not going to let them kill our community.”

LSCs have faced a barrage of criticism in recent years, including calls
by Mayor Daley and CEO Arne Duncan to curb one of their most
significant powers, selecting a principal. And earlier this year,
community groups received far fewer dollars for recruiting candidates
for the most recent LSC election. (See related story.)

Next month, a coalition of community groups and activists plan to
unveil recommendations for amending the Illinois School Code to beef up
LSCs’ authority and power. Among the proposals: a requirement that
charter and other new schools have elected LSCs. Supporters of local school councils are planning to target state lawmakers in a nascent effort to strengthen LSCs.

LSCs have faced a barrage of criticism in recent years, including calls by Mayor Daley and CEO Arne Duncan to curb one of their most significant powers, selecting a principal. And earlier this year, community groups received far fewer dollars for recruiting candidates for the most recent LSC election. (See related story.)

Next month, a coalition of community groups and activists plan to unveil recommendations for amending the Illinois School Code to beef up LSCs’ authority and power. Among the proposals: a requirement that charter and other new schools have elected LSCs.

“The public institution of local school councils has been weakened and this gives some folks reason to say, ‘This is not working, let’s dismantle it,’ ” says Pauline Lipman, a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of education policy and a member of Teachers for Social Justice. “But there are others who say [LSCs] need to be revitalized, not gotten rid of.”

Since April, hundreds of local school councils, community leaders, organizations and parents have attended meetings and a citywide summit that included discussions about the state of LSCs. Training, the conduct of elections, support and oversight emerged as top concerns.

A task force made up of Lipman, Brown and representatives from Parents Responsible for Responsible Education (PURE), Designs for Change, Blocks Together and the Pilsen Alliance boiled down suggestions into a set of specific recommendations.

“Research proves that when LSCs receive the support they need, they are effective bodies that create successful schools,” says Jitu Brown, a community organizer from Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization.  “There is no research that says LSCs don’t work”. 

The proposal includes recommendations to:

•    Reinstate LSC powers at probation schools. Since 1995, councils at schools that have been placed on probation do not had the authority to select a principal, control their budget or write school improvement plans.

•    Provide funds for leadership development, fundraising and community partnerships to address the needs of their schools.  

•    Require every publicly funded school to have a publicly elected council, including charter, alternative and small schools. Many charters have governing boards, but they often do not have parents as members and do not the same legal powers as LSCs. Small and alternative schools are not required to have LSCs.

•    Provide more funds for training and support, up to $2,500 a year. Currently, councils receive just $400.

•    Create an independent commission to conduct oversight, offer support to councils and develop a training protocol. The commission should be made up of community organizations, school reform groups, CPS administrators and post-secondary partners.

The task force plans to complete a draft of its recommendations by the end of December, then unveil them and begin lobbying in Springfield in January.