By Linda Lutton
Stowe’s LSC finally selected a candidate with an impressive resume. Charles Kyle was an assistant schools superintendent in La Grange at the time; he had a doctorate in the sociology of education from Northwestern University, had served as a superintendent in the Berwyn-Cicero high school district, was a full faculty member at the graduate school of education of Loyola University, and had even worked a year as an administrator in the office of policy of the Chicago Public Schools. In 1993, before Vallas, he’d actually been a candidate for superintendent of Chicago schools. And he knew Humboldt Park–a couple of years ago he served on an oversight team that Vallas sent in to review conditions at Clemente High School.
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Likewise, an LSC that wanted to retain a principal who’d received an unsatisfactory rating could be overruled. Vallas’s proposal would erode the cornerstone of the 1988 School Reform Act–the power it gave the parent-majority councils to hire and fire their schools’ principals.
“If passed, the bill would give good principals support for keeping their jobs and would help to remove poor principals from schools where they are failing to improve students’ education,” wrote Vallas in a letter last month to LSC members. “The idea is so logical and simple that it is hard to understand why anyone concerned about improving the Chicago schools would be opposed to it.” Vallas went on to say that the proposal actually strengthens LSCs, which would benefit “by having specific criteria set by law for evaluating principals and deciding whether or not to renew their contracts.”
Azcoitia says that so far people have interpreted the legislation to be of use only when a principal’s contract is up for renewal, but he suggests that the board could step in at other times as well. “In the middle of a contract, after you retain, a lot of things happen. And many times [LSC members] ask us, ‘Oh, we made a mistake, there’s a four-year contract, we’ve retained this person.’
Designs for Change and other reform groups say that even compromise legislation would usurp the rights of LSCs. “We’re very leery of any ‘compromise’ language,” says Davenport, “because what we’ve seen so far creates some kind of appeals process for principals, and this to us is no compromise at all. This is still giving the central office exactly what they want, which is the ability to create turmoil in any council’s decision about their principal. The issue for us is to protect the right of the local school council to make the final decision about the principal.”
Stowe’s LSC even garnered kudos from a finalist who didn’t get the job. “We have a letter from one of the candidates, who even though she wasn’t selected she felt proud just to have participated in our process because we had shown such professionalism, and she congratulated us as a council,” says Franco.
