Local school councils are the centerpiece of Chicago’s vaunted school reform movement. Yet how they function remains a mystery to many.
They are designed to give parents a voice in their school.
Yet it’s rare to see more than a handful of parents attend a school’s monthly LSC meeting.
These are just two of the concerns that proponents of school councils must address in the weeks leading up to Chicago’s LSC elections in less than three months, when seats on about 600 school councils will be up for grabs.
Still, even the staunchest council proponents acknowledge that more must be done to build public awareness of these elected bodies if they are to remain an essential component in a reform movement that has reshaped the nation’s third-largest public school system.
Over the years, councils have struggled with numerous problems–not the least of which has been finding enough parents willing to serve on these volunteer boards.
Some councils need help
And then there’s research that shows about one in five councils eventually disbands or fails to carry out its responsibilities.
Though the vast majority of councils function well, between 25 percent and 33 percent were “functioning properly but are in need of support,” according to research by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, an organization that studies Chicago’s school reform movement.
“Some councils don’t function very well, but there are a lot more that do, and we have to get the word out ” said Andy Wade, director of the Chicago School Leadership Council, a non-profit group that offers resources and professional development to school councils.
Doing so will go a long way toward ensuring that the May 1 and 2 citywide school-council elections are a success.
“If you want to change things at your school, there isn’t a better place to do it than through the LSC,” Wade said.
“Some of the issues that have surfaced can be addressed very simply by providing council members with training and getting their voices heard in corridors of power.”
The background
School councils were created by the Illinois General Assembly 13 years ago, in a push to reform Chicago’s ailing school system. Each public grade school in Chicago has an 11-member council that consists of six elected parental representatives, two community representatives, two teachers the principal. High school councils include a student, who may not vote on personnel matters.
The legislature gave them a simple mission:
Hire and fire principals.
Shape an improvement plan for underperforming schools.
Determine how the roughly $260 million in annual anti-poverty funds is spent.
Yet even though so many of Chicago’s schools are academically underperforming–about 100 face some type of sanction for performance–the Board of Education each year must appoint parental representatives to fill hundreds of vacancies on councils across Chicago.
Some council members say the experience can be gratifying and frustrating–and involve spirited debate.
“There are lots of ideas that get talked about during our meetings,” said Nicole Salas, one of the parent representatives on the council at Gladstone Elementary School, 1231 S. Damen Ave.
“In a good scenario, people come into this process with an open mind and want to talk about what’s good,” she said. “But sometimes people show up with their minds already made up, and what ultimately comes about doesn’t always help a school.”
She added that doing a good job often means between 15 and 20 hours of work on the council a week.
Salas moved her three children from a different elementary school two years ago because other pupils often picked on them. She pulled the children after raising the subject of bullying with the school’s principal. Council members seemed indifferent as well, she added.
“I understand it’s not always good for councils to be in agreement with their principals,” she said. “You need to have people on the council who are willing to challenge the principal to be better, and to keep coming up with ideas to make the schools better and address issues.”
Salas said Gladstone has difficult issues to sort out in the months ahead–one of which is how to find the money to pay for the extra hour of class time the school wants to add soon.
She is not running for re-election; she is moving out of Chicago at the end of the school year.
There has been an impact
Don Moore, director of the school-reform group Designs for Change, said that though the leadership of the Chicago Public Schools has changed several times and legislators have tinkered with the city’s reform law, councils have remained a constant since 1988.
It is the council that has made reform work at the neighborhood school level, and that hasn’t changed, he said.
“One cannot diminish the impact of school councils,” Moore said.
“This is where important decisions are made and where a school’s priorities get established.
“People want to get involved in making their schools better, and this gives them the option.”
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For more information about becoming a local school council member, call the Chicago School Leadership Cooperative at 312-499-4800.
