Time to stand up for the elected representative school board
Add your voice to the conversation
If you’ve been around Chicago for a decade or a few, you know how hard we’ve fought to get an elected representative school board for CPS. It took many years to get to this point, and finally a law establishing an elected representative school board was passed; the first of a few phased elections will soon be upon us; and legislators are hammering out the details of the citywide districts. There is still a loud chorus against an elected board and even now moneyed interests want a reduced board from the 21 the law calls for. Today I’m letting Illinois Families for Public Schools explain the rationale, the process, and your role in it. Their update shares instructions for witness slips and giving testimony as well as very clearly explaining why a 21-member board is right for Chicago Public Schools.
Take it away ILFPS:
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More hearings on Chicago school board maps
The Illinois General Assembly’s spring session is scheduled to end May 19th, and there is a deadline of July 1, 2023 to have a map dividing the city into districts to elect members to the Chicago Board of Education starting next year.
The first elections of ten members of a 21-member in total board are to be held in November 2024; the remaining members would initially be appointed, and then those seats too would be elected in November 2026. From what we understand, the two chambers are each drawing up maps and then resolving their differences and disagreements to create a single map that will need to pass both bodies.
The Senate created a special committee and held five hearings earlier this month. The hearings in the House will be subject-matter hearings of the House Executive Committee.
If you plan to testify or submit written testimony, fill out a witness slip and email: redistrictingcommittee@hds.ilga.gov. (More instructions here.)
The dates of the House hearings are:
Monday, April 24th at 1pm, virtual (Witness slip)
Saturday, April 29th at 12pm, Kenwood Academy (Witness slip)
Monday May 1st at 6pm, Lane Tech (Witness slip)
Friday May 5th at 1pm, virtual
Saturday May 6 at 10am, Curie High School
IL-FPS live tweeted two of the Senate hearings here and here, and Cassie Creswell, IL-FPS director, spoke on behalf of the org at the virtual hearing. Read her testimony here. (You can watch a recording of the fifth hearing here.)
We wrote previously about why the law establishing the board will create a board with 20 members elected from sub-districts of the city and 1 at-large-elected president. Dividing the city into 20 districts means one elected member representing around 130,000 constituents. Here’s some relevant comparisons:
Other school boards in Illinois almost all have seven members. But 90% of those boards’ districts are very small with fewer than 4500 students. That’s less than just the largest single CPS high school.
Elgin U-46 is the second largest district in the state. There are 160,000 registered voters in the district and 35,000 students, about 1/10th the size of Chicago. It has a 7-member elected board.
About half of our property taxes in Chicago are controlled by the Chicago Board of Education. We have 50 aldermen and a mayor to levy and allocate the portion that goes to the city.
Cook County Board has 17 members and a president with an operating budget roughly similar to that of CPS.
Organizations funded by wealthy donors, like Kids First, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, Stand for Children and Advance Illinois, that did not support a democratically-elected school board, a governance structure that all other Illinois school districts have, continue to push for a smaller board that would be easier for them to control.
It’s important for ordinary Chicagoans, especially Chicago Public School families, to advocate for a map that will allow for a elected representative school board. A board with twenty-one seats makes that more likely.
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Thanks ever so much, ILFPS. Now back to me.
The fact is, democratic processes take a lot of work! And we actually don’t have a whole ton of experience with that in Chicago. From mayors and aldermen who can reign for decades, to backroom deals and foreordained conclusions, to an appointed school board, we have had to just shut up and take whatever has been imposed on us for a long time. In the case of our schools this has meant a shamefully inequitable district characterized by ingrained racism and grifting. So this thing, this elected representative school board, that we finally have attained—which is not quite here—needs to be closely attended to and carefully stewarded. Or we’ll end up back where we started.
So join the process. Attend a hearing. Fill out a witness slip. Maybe even submit testimony! And watch in amazement as this long-sought-after goal finally becomes a reality.
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Finally, a little p.s.: I have a new website for writing that is not about public education, and here’s the the first post, “Spring in Chicago and the mysterious beginning of the next round,” in case you need a little break from the public education and politics fray.