Take the ”worst” school system in the nation and hand over its 540 schools to local councils composed primarily of well-meaning amateurs.
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Give them little guidance, a vague sense of their duties and no money for day-to-day expenses. But force them to make major decisions within a few weeks of taking office.
And don`t even let them meet in their own schools more than a couple evenings a year.
That`s school reform, Chicago-style, the most radical and closely watched educational experiment in the nation, and some educators think it looks like a system designed to fail.
But most of Chicago`s 6,000 school council members, who were elected six weeks ago, are acting as if they don`t hear the naysayers. They`re off and running and hellbent on improving their schools, despite all the obstacles.
Two of the councils already have begun advertising for new principals. Others are proposing to spend money on everything from teachers` aides to school security systems to computers. Councils are learning about budgets, considering school dress codes and beginning to survey students, teachers and parents about how the schools could be improved.
”I can get very excited about the creativity that`s going on,” said interim Board of Education member Joseph Reed. ”The councils are
demonstrating one hell of a lot of initiative.”
But it hasn`t been easy. Racial and ethnic animosities have broken out on some councils. Almost all of them are upset about the lack of cooperation from the school system`s huge central bureaucracy, dubbed ”the blob” by former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett, who also called the Chicago schools ”the worst in the nation.”
About half the councils will decide whether to retain their principals in 1990 and half in 1991, but those with interim or retiring principals can start looking for a new one right away. The council at Ray Elementary School, 5631 S. Kimbark Ave., began advertising in local newspapers a week ago for a new principal to replace Sara Spurlark, who postponed her retirement to help the council find a successor.
The council had no money to pay for the ads, so it hit up the local PTA, said the council chairman, Loop lawyer Richard Johnson. ”We have a very strong council,” he said, ”with a lot of people who are really knowledgeable about the process.”
But the Ray council isn`t the first to try to replace a principal. That title goes to the council at Cardenas Elementary School, 2345 S. Millard Ave., which hired a new principal so fast the Board of Education overturned the action and demanded it advertise the vacancy.
The old principal, Dolores Fitzgerald, retired abruptly on Oct. 31 and the council named a replacement Nov. 10 after interviewing eight potential candidates that morning.
”We didn`t advertise,” conceded council Chairman Carmencita Carvajal.
”We just called up people who we knew were interested.”
With her council`s first major action thrown back in her face, Carvajal has begun to suspect the motives of the interim school board. ”They want to place the responsibility on the councils and the principal and blame them for the school problems,” she said. ”I`m beginning to see the real point of reform.”
But that won`t stop her efforts to shake up the school, she said. ”The teachers are scared,” said Carvajal. ”They never had a principal that demanded anything of them. They think the council is trying to get rid of everybody at Cardenas, but that`s not true.”
The council at Amundsen High School, 5110 N. Damen Ave., agreed last week to advertise in local newspapers and in Education Week, a national trade journal, for someone to replace interim principal Siegfried Mueller.
”We hit the ground running,” said council Chairman Ray Carrell. ”Most of us were involved with the school before school reform hit, so we knew what we needed.”
They`re doing it with little help from the central office, Carrell said. The Board of Education`s training person was so bad-”he basically read from a mimeographed sheet”-that the council persuaded a business professor from Northeastern Illinois University to hold a free two-hour session on how to organize and conduct meetings.
But the biggest complaint at Amundsen, and at many other schools, is that most councils will seldom be allowed to meet in their own schools at night. Union rules require a building engineer on duty when the school is open, and the Board of Education can afford only four nights a year at most schools-two for the council and two for the PTA.
”It`s just a damn shame,” said Harriet O`Donnell, another Amundsen council member. ”We`d like to make the school a rallying point for the whole community, and we can`t if it`s closed down every night.”
”If you`re going to be making decisions about a building, you ought to be in that building,” said Spurlark, the Ray School principal. ”If you have a problem in the library, you ought to be able to walk over and look at the library.”
So the councils, as if they didn`t have enough to do, are being forced to scrounge for meeting rooms in churches, banks, hospitals-anywhere that will have them. The task is more difficult in poorer neighborhoods, where few organizations can afford to donate space.
”We`ve talked to churches, but everybody wants some money if they`re going to stay open,” said Leon Bradley, a council member at Carter Elementary School, 5740 S. Michigan Ave. ”They have to pay their janitors, too. But we`ll find somewhere to meet for two or three hours, or until we get thrown out.”
Board members concede they haven`t made things as smooth for the councils as they`d like. ”We`ve been bogged down in other things and haven`t had time to talk about ways to keep the schools open more nights,” said Reed. ”It`s either going to have to be negotiated with the unions, or we have to come up with a hell of a lot more money to pay the engineers.”
And Reed concedes that the central office has been slow and inadequate in providing guidance for the councils. ”A lot of things aren`t in place,” he said. ”And I`m not blaming the councils. I`m blaming the board and administration. We`re running to catch up with the kinds of things they need.”
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But these nuts-and-bolts matters are the least of the problems at some conflict-ridden schools. At Thorp Elementary School, 8914 S. Buffalo Ave., the council members and a majority of the parents literally do not speak the same language.
The school`s student body is 58 percent black and 41 percent Hispanic, but Hispanics won all 6 of the parent seats on the 11-member council and the 2 community representative seats. The two teachers on the council are black, and the principal is white.
According to council Chairman Jesus Alvarado, the first council meeting was conducted in English and translated into Spanish for council members who don`t speak English. After receiving complaints that the translation was poor, Alvarado conducted the last meeting in Spanish and had it translated into English.
The language problem has enraged some black parents, but Alvarado makes no apologies. ”People from various black organizations are trying to intimidate council members,” he said. ”We got elected because we worked harder than they did. And I assure you one thing: We are going to work for all the students of the school.”
Alvarado said the council will benefit blacks as well as Hispanics.
”Where once a single white person made decisions, now 11 people, all but one minority, will make the decisions,” he said. ”It has to be different.” One of the biggest challenges to the councils was meeting a Dec. 1 deadline for proposing how to spend state Title I funds, averaging $90,000 per school, that were freed up through cuts in the central bureaucracy. The spending decisions were frequently the result of heavy negotiation and horse trading.
”It was not a smooth process, by any stretch of the imagination,” said David T. Peterson, principal of Wells High School, 936 N. Ashland Ave., where the council approved a package of security guards, duplicating equipment, textbooks and Spanish-language computer software.
At South Loop Elementary School, 1212 S. Dearborn St., a council composed of well-to-do residents of the Dearborn Park townhouses and poor residents of the Hilliard Homes public housing development spent hours thrashing over four proposals. They finally agreed to hire a special reading teacher and to turn another teacher into a part-time administrator of the school`s branch at 1915 S. Federal St.
At Dumas Elementary School, 6650 S. Ellis Ave., they`ll hire part-time teachers of Spanish, mathematics and fine arts as part of the school`s Paideia program, a classical-learning experiment developed by philosopher Mortimer Adler.
Money will be spent on a program for below-grade-level readers at Ray School; computer equipment at Beasley Academic Center, 5255 S. State St.;
books and a security monitor for a branch of Goudy Elementary School, 5120 N. Winthrop Ave.; and duplicating equipment and a teacher`s aide at Prussing Elementary School, 4650 N. Menard Ave.
Chuck Millar, a council member at Prussing, says he`s pleased that his council set its spending plan and organized without much outside help.
”A lot of councils are waiting for someone to come in and give them directions,” he said. ”But the whole point of reform is to allow the councils to make decisions themselves. There aren`t going to be a lot of directions.”