This article argues that Chicago needs an elected school board.
Rahm’s school board sounds like the Politburo, all voting in unison to do what is unconscionable.
One protester said, “Every school is my school.”
This is the saddest comment of all:
“In between the dramatic scenes of angry audience members refusing to leave the podium, there were so many speakers who raised such thoughtful issues about why it made no sense for their school to be closed that it would have given anyone pause. But there was to be no pause.
“The time is always right to do what is right,” Byrd-Bennett would later say of the 50 schools being closed, using a quotation from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to defend a policy decision that I can’t imagine King would have favored.
King would have been more likely to lead a campaign for an elected school board.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would counter what Byrd-Bennett said with what Tom Petty said, “you don’t, have, to live like a refugee”. Emanuel and Byrd-Bennett in no way represent the values of great people like King and Studs Terkel.
School boards must be elected, as all govt authorities should be, b/c there will be no chance for accountability and alternatives unless a popular electoral process is a foundation of power. NYC has an appointed advisory Board and it follows Mayor Bloomberg’s wishes to a ‘t,’ ignoring all appeals, arguments, and research provided by concerned parents, teachers, and scholars. My own town also has an elected school board which has been undermining our public schools for 3 yrs now, cutting budgets, impoverishing curricula, raising class size, releasing essential teachers’ aides in the classroom. Public mtgs of our BOE hear many suggestions and objections but listen to none b/c they are all Mayoral appointees and follow an austerity plan as does Emanuel and his BOE in Chicago and all around the nation. Election is no panacea, just changes the terms of the battle and opens up possibilities we can work with.
“as all govt authorities should be”
courts?
Judges take up probably half of the ballot in Chicago elections. There are those who are now trying to eliminate that.
PS–error–meant to write, “My own town has an UNELECTED, APPOINTED school board…” Apologies.
Fortunately my city, LA, has an elected School Board, and this week’s election showed the world that the oligarchs vast wealth still does not function to fool all the people all the time. Monica Ratliff will be a leveler on the Board and she and Zimmer, hopefully, will keep us from even more school closings urged by our outgoing Mayor and his Supt. Deasy. We in LA must stay focused however on our new Mayor Garcetti and keep him from following in Villaraigosa’s footsteps. We can’t stop now.
These people are despicable, and should be struck down when they try to appropriate the words of Martin Luther King for their greed and will to power-driven acts of social vandalism.
Never was a fan of mayoral control. While elected school board members are subject to the same temptations, at least the people can yank their chain from time to time.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees a “republican” form of government in which government officials are elected by, and are accountable to, the electorate. What is happening here is a good example of how our government is not suppose to operate.
I don’t believe changes in governance will change anything… and will use NYC as a case in point.
Diane, I’m sure you recall the decentralization wars in NYC in the late 1960s that led to multiple community boards replacing one central board and herds of superintendents reporting to a chancellor. These boards evolved into the “unwieldy” boards Bloomberg dispatched when he took over the school system promising to use his expertise in business to fix schools. In effect NYC has witnessed three forms of governance models none of which addressed the fundamental challenge of public education: improving the performance of children born into poor households headed by parents who are not engaged in their child’s education. Governance changes, pay-linked-to-performance, data-driven instruction, CCSS, removal of tenure, and all the corporate strategies have three things in common: they don’t require more money; they all focus on adults; and they all treat students like “products” or “consumers”.
My belief is that interagency collaboration is the best way out of the woods on this matter… having social services, health services, and schools intervening as early as possible in the lives of children born into poverty and providing coordinated and sustained support for their parents throughout school. But that idea assumes that government programs can work and that idea will only work if it is supported with a substantial investment of public funds.
There was a time during my lifetime when people in this country banded together to dramatically reduce poverty among senior citizens, establishing covenants that are sacrosanct to politicians in both parties. As educators we should be united in our efforts to do the same for children. I wrote yesterday to my Democratic Senator who was among the 70+ senators who voted in opposition to an agriculture bill amendment that would restore cuts to food stamps, school breakfast, and school lunch, cuts that would affect 210,000 children. Governance changes won’t put food on the table of those children, nor will governance changes occur fast enough to help those children in the near future.
Our Federal government, elected by the People, allowed sequestration, which has now cut much of the safety net programs for fragile elders such as Meal on Wheels. Also among the vast deep cuts are Child Care and Headstart, and a plethora of food and health cuts. I no longer live under a fantasy that there can be interagency collaboration, but prefer a clear understanding of the election process and how tainted it is in our society. When most legislators are bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists, and when they are allowed to be insider stock market traders, We the People have virtually no voice except with a few honorable and concerned legislators like Bernie Sanders.
I do agree that writing and phoning our representatives is imperative however…let them know that there is a gathering storm of protest that will gladly replace legislative toadies who do not honestly do the People’s business. There is little in our public world that is sacrosanct to greed merchants, including ‘banksters’ and legislators.
“How America Became a Third World Country” http://billmoyers.com/2013/05/21/how-america-became-a-third-world-country/
This is the same model here in NYC. If any of the mayor’s appointees decide to vote against him, they are automatically fired!! Yet my darling union head supported mayoral control not once, but twice. And now the mayor is using the chancellor for political purposes. This world has gone topsy turvy. There are many factors that lead to where we are today IMO. First politicians putting education last resulting in increased class sizes and schools that are crumbling. Parents who don’t take an interest. And a union who refused to address the concerns of teachers. But this should not define the whole union.