The dubious tradition of political grandstand plays to resolve Chicago teachers` contracts might finally be in jeopardy.
It is an 18-year tradition that has been upheld with equal vigor by politicians, the unions and the school board. Each has played the game-leading nine times to teachers` strikes-to the growing dismay of parents and taxpayers.
The state gives money to the Chicago Board of Education to add to its local revenue. Chicago school officials say it isn`t enough and (sob) there is no money for a pay raise for employees. The employees demand a raise
(surprise) and, as often as not, walk out.
Both sides turn to the mayor of Chicago or to the governor and legislators in Springfield for a bailout, and eager politicians trying to be heroes saddle up their white horses.
But this year, instead of tidying up the mess and burnishing their image through some financial sleight of hand, politicians can only turn their pockets inside out while making the plaintive shrug panhandlers are used to seeing, ”Sorry, pal, no change.”
And this time around, the school board`s poor-mouthing combined with the union`s temper tantrum could backfire against both.
Rather than cajoling state lawmakers into giving Chicago schools yet more money, the tactics are likely to anger state lawmakers so much that they may finally act on a proposal that has been percolating in Springfield for 10 years: decentralizing the giant Chicago public school system.
Decentralization is not to be confused with simply replacing the appointed Chicago school board with an elected one-another change state lawmakers often threaten but probably will never do.
Decentralization, as it is now being discussed, has the magic appeal of destroying the clout of both the school board bureacracy and the Chicago Teachers Union, thus making it palatable to a wide spectrum of state senators and representatives.
The timing is perfect. No one seems to have any money to throw at the problem, so some other solution must be found. Lawmakers are just beginning to wonder if the multimillion-dollar education reform package they passed in 1983 has had an effect.
Restructuring the Chicago schools would follow the lead of New York City- where schools opened this year without any labor strife, and where teachers will receive a 25 percent raise over the next three years. Creating more accountable school boards would follow the Los Angeles system, where the school board is elected from sections of the city rather than at-large-and where schools are also open this fall.
Decentralization of the sprawling system of 430,000 students and 42,375 employees would give more power to parents and taxpayers, something that all lawmakers outside Chicago see working quite well in their smaller suburban and Downstate school districts.
All those districts are teaching students. Despite the Illinois General Assembly`s refusal earlier this summer to increase the state income tax and, thereby, increase state school aid, the boards and unions in those other 996 Illinois school districts settled their differences and opened their doors.
That fact has not been lost on state lawmakers. The maxim that ”If it ain`t broke, don`t fix it” clearly no longer applies. For many, this year`s city strike is the final evidence that the Chicago school system is broken and badly needs radical fixing.
”This strike only adds fuel to the frustrations that lawmakers feel with the Chicago schools,” said Judith Erwin, press secretary for Illinois Senate Majority Leader Philip Rock (D., Oak Park). ”Sen. Rock is sympathetic to legislative proposals that provide greater accountability to parents and taxpayers. He has voted for them.
”We look around the state and see that Chicago-where parents and taxpayers have the least amount of control-is the only school system on strike,” Erwin said. ”We send Chicago a lot of money. The whole reform movement was to make schools more accountable. People are saying: `Wait a minute. Why does this keep happening?` ”
Erwin said the strike also could backfire in other ways-such as lawmakers adding a ”no-strike” clause to the 3 1/2-year-old collective bargaining law or requiring binding arbitration.
Teachers` strikes have been occurring in Chicago at the rate of one every two years for almost the last two decades-as frequently as legislative elections. Pessimists have joked darkly that the first time schools may open this year will be to serve as polling places for the March 15 Illinois primary election.
The 1987 edition of a CTU walkout is certain to be a factor in the 1988 political season, when legislators facing re-election will have to grapple with new tax proposals.
Without legislative action before then, campaign rhetoric again will call for changes in the Chicago public school system. Chicagoans will ask why their lawmakers have not done something to improve their schools, while those in the rest of the state will ask why their state tax money keeps going to a system that does not work.
Those would be welcome words to people like State Rep. Douglas Huff, a Chicago Democrat who has been trying for 10 years to break up the Chicago system, and Michael Bakalis, a former state school superintendent who has pulled together a coalition of black, Hispanic and white parents aimed at doing the same thing.
”This system needs radical surgery,” Bakalis said Friday. ”It is a system that has died. It will never reform itself because the bureaucracy is too big, too cumbersome, too bungling and too out of control.
”But the push for change has to come from Chicago Democrats,” he said.
”It can`t come from suburban or Downstate Republicans because it will be viewed as an attack from the outside.”
Part of the political entanglement of all Chicago school strikes is the relationship between the governor and the mayor, the distrust and disdain of Chicago by Downstate and suburban politicians and, recently, the antagonism between Mayor Harold Washington and regular Democrats.
In deciding whether decentralization will become a reality, or if more money for Chicago schools will be found in the state treasury or the city budget, those political spider webs will be as important-or more important-than the merits of the case.
Thompson, who rode in to bring money to settle the 1985 strike while Mayor Washington was out of the country, says there will not be an encore this time because his proposed income tax increase was not passed.
The governor cut the state budget by 4 percent after the legislature refused to approve his proposed tax increases. Chicago was the biggest loser: $113 million in elementary and secondary education spending cuts. Although smaller school districts also lost money, most do not rely as heavily as Chicago does on state aid to fund their schools.
Thompson can use the strike as evidence that the legislature was irresponsible and that he was right all along.
”No money here,” says Washington, who did not galvanize much support for the governor`s tax plan and who does not want to raise property taxes for the Board of Education to pay higher teacher salaries.
The mayor, loath to jump into the snake pit of school contract negotiations, already has had to raise city property taxes to pay for operating city government.
He has not abated as much of that tax increase as had been hoped, and he has never had legislative support for a city income tax. Such a tax might have afforded more flexibility in working with the city and school budgets.
Legislative leaders say there is no hope for more school money in their upcoming fall veto session. Overriding Thompson`s vetoes would be hard enough, since an override requires a three-fifths vote. The appearance of doing something special for Chicago schools will be anathema to suburban and Downstate lawmakers, who must file in December for re-election next year.
On Thursday, Rock said Chicago public school teachers should go back to the classrooms and hope that a retroactive pay boost comes from the Illinois General Assembly.
Rock, who supported calls for a statewide tax increase this year, said more money for schools will not come this fall but might be possible next year.
He also suggested that the Chicago school board restore three school days that it cut from the school calendar to save funds.
”Let`s get back to school, let`s accommodate the kids and the parents, and we`ll worry about the money later,” Rock said.
It`s also unlikely that a special session will be called to resuscitate Thompson`s tax proposal. The governor`s calendar is nearly filled: He hosts the Midwestern Governors Conference annual meeting in Galena this week, travels to New York after that and leaves at the end of next week for a two-week, three-nation European trade mission.
Rock and House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago), the only other officials who could call a special session, are reluctant to put their legislators in harm`s way so close to candidate filing.
But anything`s possible. A complicated city sports stadium and suburban horse racetrack package were put together in a week last fall, and the mayor`s chief lobbyist expresses hope that a solution to the strike can be found this year.
”There`s a process,” said Jacky Grimshaw, the mayor`s director of intergovernmental affairs. ”They want something, we want something. You work things out.”
Huff and State Sen. Howard Carroll (D., Chicago) plan to introduce decentralization legislation during the veto session and hope that the teachers` strike will add impetus to its passage.
Both Huff`s and Carroll`s bills passed their respective houses during the spring legislative session but were not passed by the other chamber.
”The school board and the union put pressure on lawmakers so that neither bill passed both chambers,” Carroll said. ”They oppose
decentralization because they would lose power. We hope, with the unfortunate lesson of this strike, fewer legislators will listen to them.”
Clark Burrus, a member of the Chicago school board, said before the strike began last Tuesday that such a confrontation could backfire, and that he feared the result could be a legislative restructuring of the system.
”If we have a prolonged strike, I am fearful of what the legislature would do in a crisis situation,” Burrus said. ”There is talk of
decentralization, elected school boards, turning power over to the parents.
”We don`t want anything like that,” he said, shuddering. ”That`s one place where we and the unions are in agreement-we don`t want any
restructuring.”
One of the proposals would create four pilot, semiautonomous districts in what are now Districts 1 and 2 on the North Side and District 7 and 9 on the West Side. Locally elected school boards would have the power to hire and fire teachers, establish curriculums and control service contracts. The highest vote-getter in each of the four districts would each replace one appointed board member on the 11-member central Chicago school board.
”It could be a shakedown cruise,” Carroll said. ”We could see what works and what doesn`t and then expand it to the entire system.”
But Bakalis` Chicagoans United to Reform Education (CURE) is opposed to a pilot program because, he said, ”the system would eat it up and spit it out and do whatever is necessary to make sure it failed. There are too many vested interests opposing it.”
Instead, Bakalis` group-a coalition of white, black and Hispanic neighborhood groups-wants the entire city to be decentralized over three to five years with power given to elected councils in each school.
”You would still have a central coordinating board, but it would have limited powers,” said Bakalis, dean of the Loyola University School of Education. ”It would collect all the money and distribute it equitably to the schools and run special, citywide programs, such as desegregation, bilingual education and special education.
”But the bureaucracy would be gone,” he said. ”We figure you would only need 200 people in a central office to run the system, rather than the 2,000 or 3,000 that they have now.”
Bakalis feels that his plan would give more power to teachers by having them more intensely involved with the day-to-day operations of their schools, including hiring a ”lead teacher” or principal.
His views are compatible with some school reform research that has shown that the most effective schools are those with involved parents, a strong principal and teachers who have a direct say in how the schools are run.
Huff`s proposals are different, but his goals are similar.
”I think getting parents involved will mean that we will reverse the dropout rate and have more money for books, computer programs, vocational education equipment and qualified teachers,” Huff said. ”Not all of the money will be going to the unions.”
Even Chicago School Supt. Manford Byrd Jr. concedes that would appeal to lawmakers.
”I was under an incredible amount of pressure during the school reform debates to assure people that new money would actually help children,” Byrd said recently. ”Legislators kept saying: `How can we be sure this won`t just go into raises and nothing will change?”`
