The lack of interest by politicians, the lack of commitment of administrators and teachers, the lack of unity among parents have combined to isolate the school system to such an extent that, by default, it has become the battleground for the two groups that are clear about their goals.
On one side is a comfortably entrenched school bureaucracy, set on maintaining its status and the status quo.
On the other is an acrimonious Chicago Teachers Union, intent on wringing as much money out of the school board as possible and protecting its members.
The politicians` main goal has been to avoid a rupture in the great school machinery that employs 42,000 people, more than work for the City of Chicago. Those ruptures have never had anything to do with educating students. ”Politically and economically, the only pressure people have is just to keep that machinery going, even if it`s not doing the best job, because too many jobs are at stake if it doesn`t continue in operation,” said George Munoz, a former school board president.
Mayor Richard J. Daley played the game to avoid teachers` strikes, not always successfully, by flat-out ordering the school board to grant pay raises with money it didn`t have. Then, Daley would go to the legislature for the money. Sometimes he got it, sometimes he didn`t.
When he didn`t, he started a time bomb that exploded in 1979, three years after he died. The schools went broke.
Payless paydays for teachers sprung politicians into action. Gov. James Thompson held city and state leaders hostage for three days to get a rescue plan. It included a new School Finance Authority, given the power to stop the Board of Education from spending money it didn`t have.
”That authority was created because the employees did not receive a paycheck on a timely basis,” Munoz said. ”Do we see that reaction when we hear that 40 percent of the students are dropping out?”
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School board headquarters has traditionally been an extension of the mayor`s office.
The mayor appoints the 11 board members. The mayor tells them if they can ask the state legislature for a tax increase. Sometimes mayors have allowed the board to go hat in hand to Springfield, then quietly sent a signal to legislators to kill the bid for money.
The school board can seek a tax increase by a referendum of city voters, but it has avoided that route for 20 years out of fear that the campaign would turn into a debate on the effectiveness of the schools.
The tax rate for the Board of Education has increased by only 2 percent since 1977, according to a League of Women Voters study. In the same period, the Chicago Park District`s rate rose by 19 percent, Cook County government`s by 42 percent and the Chicago City Colleges` by 106 percent.
The Chicago schools couldn`t get a significant tax increase for 15 years until 1983, when Harold Washington became the first mayor in years to openly support higher local school taxes. The legislature approved a 50-cent increase in the education fund tax rate, restoring a cut made three years earlier when the School Finance Authority was created.
When the legislature narrowly approved that tax measure, it exposed the racial schism that is an underlying cause of the isolation of Chicago`s schools.
Every black legislator from Chicago supported the increase. Washington and his allies had to make concessions on other city issues to win the support of Downstate legislators, because nearly every white lawmaker from Chicago voted against it.
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In Springfield, Chicago`s schools are just one token in the never-ending game of political tradeoffs.
Gov. Thompson likes to say that education is his No. 1 priority and that he shares the anguish of other Chicago parents when strikes close the schools. His 9-year-old daughter, Samantha, attends a North Side magnet school.
But the political apparatus has slowly starved Chicago and other Illinois schools by reducing the state`s overall support for education.
Senate Minority Leader James ”Pate” Philip (R., Wood Dale), the Du Page County Republican Party chairman, is one of the main players. When Philip refers to the Chicago public schools, he talks of ”down there.”
”The caliber of teachers leaves a lot to be desired,” he says. ”Some of the better teachers are afraid to go down there.”
”Down there” is a term used by many suburban and Downstate legislators when talking about the city schools. They also use terms like ”sinkhole”
and, occasionally, ”black hole.”
Thompson, in the midst of a legislative battle last fall over school funding he`d vetoed, explained: ”I`m a parent and I care about public education in Chicago, but we can`t keep throwing money into a black hole.”
The latter reference, whenever used, is quickly accompanied by an explanation that it is meant to refer to the cosmic phenomenon that swallows up stars, not as a slur on the race of many of Chicago`s students. Race, however, is never far from the surface of any discussion of the Chicago public schools.
Philip is surprised to learn that city students` reading scores, though still far below national averages, rank higher than they did in the mid-1970s. ”That`s hard to believe,” he says, ”because you had more white kids in school then.”
Other Springfield nicknames for Chicago schools include ”cash cow” and
”money machine.” But budget data portray them differently.
In the 1985-86 school year, the city`s school system had total revenues from state, local and federal sources of $3,957 per enrolled student, nearly $800 less per pupil than the average suburban district.
The city schools, with 23.6 percent of the state`s public school students, receive 30.8 percent of the state education money. But they also have more than half the state`s low-income students and nearly 80 percent of those who speak little English.
The extra funds that Chicago gets are designed, by law, to make educational opportunity roughly equal for all children in the state. But these funds do not come close to meeting the challenge of educating the children of poverty who overwhelm the city`s schools.
Philip has proposed legislation, dubbed by opponents as a reverse-Robin Hood bill, that would take money from school districts with low achievement-test scores, such as Chicago, and give it to districts with high marks.
”It`s both a race and a class issue,” says G. Alfred Hess, executive director of the Chicago Panel on Public School Policy and Finance, a citizens group.
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”We would have a state formula for funding schools that was more beneficial to Chicago if race and class weren`t so important in this state.” – – –
For an illustration of how provincialism and partisan politics combine to work against the schools, consider the case of State Rep. Andrew McGann.
He is an undertaker, a valued profession in Chicago politics, where wakes can be important political events. Lately, when McGann deals with the Board of Education, it`s as if he wants to bury it.
McGann was miffed last year when the school board decided to reopen John Crerar School, 8445 S. Kolin Ave., in his Southwest Side neighborhood. The board wanted to ease crowding at nearby schools, but McGann said the reopening would inconvenience the Chicago Park District, which was using the building.
In the old days, McGann, a Chicago Democrat, would have won because he was an ally of Mayor Daley. But the old days and Daley are gone. The board voted to reopen Crerar.
McGann didn`t give up.
Early this month, McGann joined Republicans to defeat two bills that would have allowed the school board to renew an existing tax and raise $19.1 million for school additions and rehabilitation.
McGann says he voted against the bills because the school board hadn`t fully explained how it would use the money.
State Rep. Alfred Ronan (D., Chicago), a sponsor of one of the bills, said he couldn`t discern McGann`s motive. But he knew what the Republicans were up to.
”The Republicans told me they wanted another bargaining chip with the City of Chicago,” Ronan said.
In other words, Republican lawmakers were willing to jeopardize the schools` building plan in the hope of winning a concession from Mayor Sawyer on other matters. That`s how the game is played.
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Here`s a civics test. Who has the clout in Springfield?
The Chicago Teachers Union and the affiliated Illinois Federation of Teachers spent a combined $147,267 on political activity in the year that ended June 30, 1987. The Illinois Education Association, which represents most suburban and many Downstate teachers, spent $716,102 on lobbying activities.
The Chicago schools have a lobbyist, but no political action committee for contributions. The Illinois Association of School Administrators and the Illinois Association of School Boards have begun to dabble in political fundraising. Last year, they spent a combined $1,930.
Although the Chicago school board has more employees than most Illinois cities have residents, it doesn`t have political power commensurate with its size. It must rely on outside forces, including the mayor`s office, for influence. That removes parents one more step from political decisions about their children`s education.
”Just about everything that happens in the school system is for the employees and not the students,” says Chicago school board member O`Hern.
”That`s what`s wrong with the school system.”
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Because of the public outrage over the record, 19-day school strike last fall, Chicago schools are getting some deep scrutiny.
Some of the more influential players in the politics of education have begun to talk seriously about taking steps to make the system work like it`s supposed to.
For example, corporate leaders have become increasingly outspoken on the need to improve the quality of high school graduates, and some are edging toward support for increasing taxes for schools.
The president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Jacqueline Vaughn, has conceded that the board won`t be able to meet its contract obligations to teachers this fall without financial help from the legislature. That`s a new posture for a group that has insisted in the past that the board could find money to raise teachers` pay whether or not any new cash was coming from Springfield.
But any movement toward reform will have to overcome decades of political inertia.
Republican lawmakers have already quietly served notice that they won`t agree to the financial demands accompanying various school reform proposals without a Democratic agreement to open up the statewide school aid formula and shift a little more money away from Chicago.
If that is all that reform accomplishes, playground politics will claim another victory.
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At Goudy Elementary School, 5120 N. Winthrop Ave., Mrs. Kaye is gentle yet firm with the 22 children in her morning kindergarten. Her classroom is warm and pleasant. The children like to be there.
”I know that this room is probably nicer than many of their apartments,” she says, ”so I try to make it as comfortable for them as I can.”
Mrs. Kaye is Georgia Kotsiopoulos. She has been teaching at Goudy for nearly a quarter of a century, and she evaluates her children with a practiced eye.
Four are Cambodian and speak little English. Six other pupils already are falling behind in their work. One child has a history of being abused. Three have speech impediments. Many come from families so poor that they lacked warm clothing to fend off the bitter cold of midwinter.
These 22 children are part of Chicago`s future, members of the high school class of the year 2000. They should be entering the work force as the new century dawns.
Mrs. Kaye is asked how they will do as they go through Chicago public schools over the next 12 years.
”The average,” she says, ”will survive.”