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| Will these people in Springfield really try to dictate ... |
How
else to explain the portion of the Chicago delegation in Springfield who want
the General Assembly to change state law requiring that the board of education
for the Chicago Public Schools be elected by the voters?
CURRENTLY,
WE HAVE school board members who get appointed by the mayor. Richard M. Daley
went through two decades as mayor being able to dictate who ran the school
system, and Rahm Emanuel has had the same power during his time in office.
Yet
the people who were desperate to dump Rahm as mayor in this year’s election cycle have also been vocal in their desire to
reduce what authority he has.
Leading
to the bill that could come up for some sort of vote during the November veto
session, or may linger around through next spring. Or maybe it will become one
of those perennial issues that causes much debate, but little activity, in the
General Assembly.
I
don’t doubt the sincerity of the legislators – Reps. Robert Martwick, Elgie
Sims, Art Turner, Mary Flowers, LaShawn Ford and Jaime Andrade – in introducing
this bill. Which calls for 13 people from across four sections of Chicago to be
elected. They may think they're doing the right thing.
THEY
MAY EVEN believe their rhetoric that they can advance this bill in the
legislative process during upcoming weeks – the time when the Legislature
returns to Springfield on the off-chance they will do something budget-related,
but wind up doing this instead.
Yet
I remain skeptical of the idea that an elected school board makes any real
difference. To me, it sounds like a power shift.
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| ... who gets to serve here in Chicago Board of Education? |
Instead
of having Emanuel in control of who runs the local school system, it will wind
up being the party chairmen – the ones who often dictate which candidates for
political office wind up being taken seriously by voters and which ones are the
fringe kooks who get disregarded.
It
would create a whole new round of political posts for the party chairmen to
fill, which would mean more government officials who would be indebted to them.
I’M
NOT NECESSARILY out to blast state party Chairman Michael Madigan or Cook
County party Chair Joe Berrios. But does it really make much of a difference
who has the influence to pick the school board members?
I
think the people eager to make the change to an elected school board
overestimate the difference that it would make. It has been my own experience
in dealing with some of the suburban school boards that are elected that the
quality of people who wind up serving doesn’t really get bolstered.
They
wind up being the local politicos who, for whatever reason, fall short of
getting elected to the aldermanic or trustee post they’d prefer.
Is
that what we really want for the Chicago Public Schools – the people who got
squeezed out of a seat on the Chicago City Council?
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