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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Time for an elected school board

A very old item I found on the District 299 blog from Parents United for Responsible Education. I had to go back aways in their February Archives. I missed it. Anyway here's an excerpt...
CPS thinks it's a good idea to close schools for the purposes of gentrification, but not when the city is under "whiteout conditions." It's OK- little kids and moms can struggle through knee-deep snow to mostly-empty schools. Who will complain?

The upcoming hearings on school closings will be no more than idle exercises. Bored hearing officers will pretend to listen. A stenographer will duly record the hundreds of impassioned speeches from parents, students, and staff. And the Mayor's school board will rubber stamp the plan as proposed.

People are angry. People are frustrated. We've about reached the boiling point.

Talk is building out in the communities that it's time for an elected school board and time to take total power of the schools away from the Mayor. We already have at least one legislator who has expressed support for changing the law. And people are angry enough to make it happen.
Before Mayor Daley took absolute control of the school board wasn't they elected prior to 1995. That school board seemed to have a great inability to get things done. They were always crying about deficits and things like that, yet they didn't seem able to do anything about it.

I'm not exactly indicating that I favor the system that exists now but I wouldn't mind it if members of the school board were elected. And the mayor is only allowed to appoint most of the top officers of the school district with of course the approval of the school board. And I've heard that Daley wants to curb the powers of the Local School Councils I guess I'd rather they had an elected school board before they have to mess with the powers of the LSCs to run the schools as they see fit.

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