The biggest issue facing Chicago Public Schools can be boiled down to two key factors: bad policy, and lack of good faith and fair dealing as it relates to Chicago’s communities.
An organization is a reflection of its leadership. This goes for companies, school districts, and entire cities. The chaos that has characterized the CPS system is a reflection, not solely of CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett (or her predecessor Jean Claude Brizard), but a reflection of the true leader of CPS – Mayor Rahm Emanuel. One benefit of mayoral control of the school district is that everyone knows where the buck stops. The events that have transpired over the last few years – the 2012 teachers strike (the first in 25 years), the 2013 closing of 50 schools in mainly Black and Latino communities, the current uproar over Charter school expansion – all of these things are traced to disconnected leadership and reflect a clear rift between policymakers and those that are impacted by policy.
Mayor Daley’s rationale for bringing control of CPS within the mayor’s office in 1995 made sense from a policy implementation and efficiency standpoint (though it caused concern about democratic governance). His desire for clear accountability for the district’s failings and need for more nimble and quick decision-making prompted the move. For certain, he wanted to more closely align the educational agenda with his overall agenda for the city. Educational systems do not operate in a vacuum from municipalities. This is why the principles that undergird a city’s leadership are so crucial to the types of policies that are developed.
Municipal policy that effects such areas as employment, public safety, housing, transportation, and economic development deeply impact that municipality’s educational system and vice versa. Policies that spur economic growth, create jobs, create safer communities, and create access to transportation and housing, indubitably impact the city’s educational institutions because of the positive net effect on families. These circumstances create security for children who are more likely to come from more stable families and communities, thus allowing them to participate in the educational process as learners, not as recipients of much-needed social services (which stretch the limited budget of the school system to provide those additional services and resources).
However, when municipal policy is destructive, it wreaks havoc on the communities for which the educational system serves. Chicago is experiencing the results of a clear disconnect between municipal leadership and the communities impacted by policy decision-making. This bad municipal policy is characterized by the privatization of public assets and services, and disinvestment in large swaths of the city – mainly on the South and West Sides. The lack of intentional investment has created circumstances of high unemployment, little to no economic development via large or small-scale development projects, and unwieldy crime rates. Privatization of public assets means cost increases for residents who can least afford them.
Photo courtesy of http://www.blackagendareport.com
For example, with regard to crime, instead of doing what makes sense from a policy standpoint (hiring more police officers) the mayor would rather overwork already fatigued police officers and propose a mandatory minimum bill that would have disastrous effects on the life prospects of those in challenged communities already facing a keen disadvantage. From an economic standpoint, rigorous efforts to utilize tax increment financing and corporate subsidies to attract businesses to the city’s business district and certain favored communities have caused some neighborhoods to thrive while others experience a continued decline hastened by their obscurity in the city’s development plans.
The net result of the city’s policy is what we observe today – whole communities decimated by foreclosure, high crime rates, and high unemployment. The devastation is compounded by the increasing cost of living in the city. Taxes in Chicago are ranked at the top nationwide. Increases in fines and fees for everything from starting a business, to getting permits, licenses and stickers, all create a regressive tax on those who can least afford it. Add to that the privatization of parking meters, red light cameras and speed cameras, and the city’s most vulnerable populations are nearly crippled with the cost burden.
Naturally, the population of the city began to decline – nearly a quarter million residents have left the city – mainly from the South and West sides. This means that schools in those communities have seen a similar decrease in enrollment. Instead of adopting a strategy of investment for Chicago’s public schools, CPS under the leadership of the mayor, committed two cardinal sins: they continued to advance a policy of disinvestment (mirroring the city’s policy), by starving struggling schools of resources and subsequently closing those schools while concomitantly opening Charter schools; and conducted its affairs with a complete lack of good faith and fair dealing. In other words, CPS disrespected the very communities which it serves by its lack of transparency, misleading of community groups and organizations through reporting misinformation, underestimating and overestimating statistics related to school closings, and numerous other missteps that served to obliterate any trust between the school district and the community.
Good faith is almost always underestimated when it comes to politics and policy. Good faith would have generated meaningful, transparent, honest interaction between CPS and the community, acknowledging the very real challenges and soliciting feedback. In other words, engagement that does not rely on half-truths and empty exercises via questionably developed and managed “community councils” to falsely obtain support for deleterious policies. The inevitable uncovering of those half-truths and deceptions by persistent advocacy groups, parents and community leaders created an almost insurmountable rift that puts CPS on one side, and parents and community members on the other. This is detrimental to both sides and inhibits any possibility for mutual understanding and collaboration to chart a path that makes sense for communities and for the school district.
In other words, the lack of trust has politicized everything, to the point of distraction. The reality is that whether a child is walking into a public school, private school or charter school, the most important factor is the quality of education that child receives. But a city policy that disinvests in its communities means that some children are walking into their schools with a clear disadvantage. Inequity – driving the same disinvestment policies in its public school system as it does in the communities merely exponentiates the disadvantage these children face and diminishes their life prospects.
Strong communities support strong public schools. Weak schools and empty schools are a reflection of the communities for which they inhabit. Advancing inequitable policies that starve public schools while simultaneously expanding charter schools, only rubs salt in the wound by deepening the disconnect and mistrust of both the city and school district and allows for the oversimplification of the debate to whether or not Charter schools are evil – completely missing the much larger, and much more significant question of how to create municipal policy that reflects values of investment, the value of public goods and assets for the public, transparency, good faith, and equity.
Until we change the leadership of the city to leaders who reflect those aforementioned values, Chicago’s communities will continue to experience chaos in the public school system, and Chicago’s future – the children who attend its schools – will continue to suffer.
The Municipal Maven 