The primary election may be over, but voting season is still underway, as this week communities across Chicago Public Schools will vote on who will oversee academic and social initiatives within the walls of their school.
Local School Councils exist at each of the more than 600 public schools spanning all 77 neighborhoods of Chicago, and operate independently of the district administration, the school board and other schools. They were created in part to give Chicago parents more control over what happens at their children’s schools.
LSCs are made up of students, parents, teachers and community representatives. The power of LSCs varies from school to school, which can create confusion and disengagement within communities. At some schools, they deliver critical input around the school’s budget and develop school improvement goals. At other schools, they’re tasked with choosing a principal and evaluating his or her performance.
In recent months, the autonomy of LSCs came up when the Board of Education voted to remove student resource officers from all district schools — a controversial measure that effectively removed local school decision-makers from the process.
A traditional LSC consists of two teachers and one non-teacher staff member who work at the school; six parents of students enrolled at the school; two community members who reside in the school’s attendance area or voting district boundaries; at least one student representative; and the school’s principal.
To better understand how LSCs operate, the Tribune spoke to several parent, student, teacher and community candidates, in addition to one former council member, across the city to weigh in on the successes and pitfalls of their councils.
Elections for elementary schools will take place Wednesday, while polls for high school LSCs will open Thursday. Voters can view which candidates are up for a seat at their school online.
Michael Morrison and Javier Payano, North Center
Michael Morrison and Javier Payano are teachers at Lane Tech High School in the North Center neighborhood and first-time candidates for the LSC. Slates don’t necessarily exist in Local School Council elections, but Payano and Morrison are longtime collaborators and said they are essentially running jointly. Morrison, a visual art teacher, and Payano, a music teacher, are delegates for the Chicago Teachers Union.
Teachers Rebecca Daly and Mario Nunez are also running at Lane Tech.
Q: What was the driving force behind why you decided to run for a Local School Council seat?
Morrison: The LSC is one of the areas we were seeing that maybe wasn’t as engaged in our school as we were hoping it would be. We have an LSC and they are active for sure, but we were seeing that the staff’s voices weren’t being amplified at the LSC meetings as much as we were hoping for. We saw that vacancy and decided that we wanted to amplify teacher voices.
Q: There is varying awareness about Local School Councils. What are some of the strong points people should know about an LSC?
Morrison: I appreciate that there is a diversity of different stakeholders coming to the table with the goal of improving the school for staff and students. You have teacher representatives, non-teacher representatives, student representatives, which I think is incredible to have students at that level of voice and governance.
Q: From your perspective as a teacher, how does the LSC differ from the school board in terms of being a critical component of a school district?
Payano: LSCs have more of a connection to the school and are in a better position to understand the specific needs of the school. We will have an elected school board and that’s great. But often (there are) a lot of issues that come up when you have a group of people so far removed from a local school community, making decisions without being aware of the impact that it’s actually going to have on the ground on the school. I also wouldn’t like to see the student voice component removed from school governance, which is what would happen if we did not have Local School Councils.
Q: What’s your take on the board’s recent decision to remove student resource officers rather than allow the Local School Council to vote on whether to keep them on school grounds?
Payano: In my experience, it wasn’t a program that was making our students feel safer, especially our undocumented students. It was something that caused a lot of anxiety for them. I’m interested to see what happens moving forward with using funds that were previously assigned for student resource officers and instead using that to hire restorative justice coordinators at our schools that are professionals that are trained in restorative practices and in accountability measures that will lead to both mental psychological and also physical safety at the school.
Q: In addition to increasing accountability for the school’s administration, what do you hope to accomplish as an LSC member at Lane Tech?
Morrison: I don’t believe that the majority of our staff or students have an idea of what’s actually happening inside the LSC meetings, no different than I believe the majority of teachers probably aren’t aware of what’s going on at the Board of Education meetings. A definite goal of mine is to increase the visibility of what happens inside of the LSC and to increase staff and student voices to make sure that those community members have access to LSE information.
Natasha Dunn, South Shore
Natasha Dunn is a community organizer and CPS mother running for a seat on the South Shore High School LSC. She previously served on councils at O’Keefe Elementary School in the South Shore neighborhood and King College Prep in Kenwood.
Patricia King, Rosita Chatonda and Paul Jones are also running for a community seat at South Shore.
Q: What are some takeaways from your time on the Local School Council?
A: One of the things that I noticed was that in particular Black community LSC members are not there — they don’t understand the power of the role that they’re in. And it’s almost as if they’re just there to co-sign whatever the principal wants. There’s not any real dialogue or conversations about how the principal is spending money; they just approve the budget. As I started learning more about the data and looking at the system internally, I started noticing that a lot of the stuff that the principals were saying was not what was actually happening on the books or on the records.
Q: What’s your perspective on the board’s recent centralized decision to remove student resource officers rather than allow LSCs to vote on retaining them or receiving trade-in funds?
A: That’s a bad decision because they’re taking away the power of those who are on the ground in these communities (who) understand what the community needs. I know they have used Curie High School as an example — that Curie got rid of their (school resource officers) and they have this amazing system in place. Curie is not the same as, let’s say, South Shore High School, or the whole community of Archer Heights, or Bronzeville. Every community has its own nuances. … The decision speaks to a board that’s just disconnected from the reality of the entire city of Chicago.
Bernard Clay, Austin
Bernard Clay serves as executive director of a West Side youth counseling program. He has been a community representative on the LSC at Michele Clark High School in Austin for seven years.
Q: What do you think works with how LSCs run, and how do you think they could be improved?
Most of them could stand to have more autonomy in running. Good LSCs run well when they have autonomy from the principal, and they can move forward and they don’t rely on the principal for every piece of information they can get.
Q: What training do you think LSC members need to be successful?
A: Basically, on budgeting, but it’s hard for LSCs to be trained when the metrics of CPS funding continue to change. For a while they were going with student-based funding, now they are going with a couple of other things, and that creates confusion, and I believe it’s going to be a huge problem … with the way funds are allocated to schools.
What’s your perspective on the board’s recent centralized decision to remove school resource officers?
A: I think it was bad, it was bad … if you have a point where you don’t have your community resource officers in schools, the kids don’t feel safe and certainly the teachers don’t feel safe, and something needs to be done. It’s not really looking at reality in saying ‘Hey, we need to not have community resource officers.’ … Sometimes you can’t wait 5 or 10 minutes for the police officers to arrive.
Maggie Baran, Norwood Park
Maggie Baran is a working parent of two CPS students and a former parent representative of Local School Councils at Hitch Elementary and Taft High School in the Norwood Park neighborhood. She is not running for a seat.
Q: Having been on a Local School Council, what should others know about it?
A: I think the Local School Council model is an excellent way to engage parents and community members in a way that does not involve fundraising and is the next level beyond PTA or PTO. It provides a lot of insight into how Chicago Public Schools operate, how an individual school operates. What people need to know going in, though, is that it’s not a mini-school board. You don’t always make decisions about things like the budget — it does not always get involved in personnel matters.
Q: What’s a big decision you made as an LSC member?
A: One of the most powerful things in my experience on an LSC was the ability to change the dress code.
Q: What was the driving force behind why you decided to run for a seat at your children’s elementary school?
A: I felt passionate about my community making a difference. I felt like I had some skills that I can bring to the table — I worked in educational publishing, so I understood curriculum. And there’s not a lot of competition for an LSC — it’s very rare that you see more than the allotted number of seats to candidate ratio. It was a better fit for me than PTA to be honest, because I was not a fundraiser, but I wanted to help in a different way.
Q: Why did you ultimately decide to resign from your seat?
A: I left the LSC because I learned it doesn’t make as big of an impact as I thought it would. It was kind of like ‘once you find out how the sausage is made.’ There’s always a little bit of disappointment. I thought if this wasn’t giving me the kind of experience that I had hoped, then, it might be better to open that spot up to someone else. It’s also very difficult for working parents or parents that work a 9-to-5 job. The thing that led me to resign probably more than anything was the stress of being able to make it to the meetings that were usually never later than 6 or 6:30 pm.
Q: As a parent of two CPS students and as a former council member, do you think LSCs are necessary? Some might argue there are already too many hands in the pot, soon with a half-elected, half-appointed school board.
A: We’re a city of 77 neighborhoods. And the elected school board is making a good effort at trying to represent the 20 or 21 different districts. But I also feel that Local School Councils can exist to be that pipeline of information up to the new board. I think that they do serve a purpose, and they always continue to be a really great way for parents and community members to learn more about how their schools work.
Marcie Pedraza, East Side
Marcie Pedraza is chair of the George Washington Elementary Local School Council in the East Side neighborhood and a member of the districtwide LSC Advisory Board. Her daughter is a seventh grader at George Washington.
Q: Do you think LSC members make a difference in schools? Are there any specific examples that come to mind from your experience sitting on a council?
A: It just depends on how much of a difference you want to make. (At George Washington,) we changed some of the wording in the uniform policy because a lot of parents thought it was mainly biased against girls, and it just wasn’t fair.
Q: What do you think are some key positives about a local school council?
A: It’s a fair process where you are elected, and it’s not just an appointed position. … It’s good to have people — the community of the school, parents, neighbors and students — involved in what’s going on. I just wish that we would have more attendance at our meetings. I wish we would have more involvement and more people who wanted to run where it was actually a competitive race. Sometimes we’re elected because we’re the only ones running.
Tony and Sabrina Negron, West Town
Sabrina Negron is a junior and two-year student member of the Local School Council at Clemente Community Academy in West Town. Her father, Tony, is a district employee running for a parent seat on the council for the first time this year.
Carolina Carchi, Jaylani Sanchez, Kayla Porrata and Jamel Williams are also running for the Clemente student seats.
Q: What prompted you to run for the LSC at Clemente?
Sabrina: Honestly, the first time, it was more of a resume thing for me. I thought it would look good on paper. However, knowing the actual issues afterward that were happening in the school, I mean being on an LSC, you can really do something. And I feel like knowing what’s going on and having that power to vote and do something about it helps.
Tony: I have a unique perspective in that that’s also my alma mater. I graduated from the same school, and now my kids go there and I know firsthand when I was there, the issues in school and every time my kids come home talking about the issues in school, that strikes a nerve. So when a parent position was available, I decided I’d like to be a voice in this, and it’s been very welcoming actually.
Q: What do you think is good about how LSCs operate now, and are there any ways that you think the role of LSCs in school governance can improve?
Sabrina: Coming from a student, I think it depends on the teachers and adults also on the LSC with you. You can have those teachers that will take your side, and you can have those teachers that really won’t. So I’m lucky to have a teacher who really advocates for us, alongside us and listens and gives a voice.
Tony: I think the democratic process I’ll be able to see is definitely something positive. It’s back to the fact that you have a governing body that actually takes different perspectives. In other words, you got community folks, you got teachers, students, you got parents, all these folks are part of this committee and they’re trying to do the best that they can for their school. What I think needs improvement would be educating the members that are not immediately part of the school.
Q: Recently the board voted to take away the power for LSCs to vote on school resource officers. Do you think that could have implications for future decision-making by LSCs?
Sabrina: I think yes, that definitely impacts us a lot. Because that actually happened at one of our meetings, and nobody was aware of it. And so they told us that you can no longer vote on that sort of thing and we were just shocked … because it’s like, ‘What are we here for then?’ You go on the LSC because you think you’re going to make a change and then you strip it away, all of our power, that’s significant, and I think it does mean a change in future decisions.
Chicago Tribune’s Sarah Macaraeg contributed.
