The mayor's office still has no word on any candidates or the progress of the search to replace Michael Scott as school board president more than two months after his death.
When reached late Wednesday, Mayor Richard M. Daley's press secretary Lance Lewis had no comment on any possible candidates or the progress of the search.
But education advocates across the city are chiming in on what type of person should lead the Chicago Board of Education.
The Chicago Teachers Union already asked that an educator replace Scott, who committed suicide in early November. And other education groups are asking that not only for an education-focused board president, but a new direction for the overall board.
The groups--the Caucus of Rank and File Teachers, Black Star Project and Parents United for Responsible Education--say that the school board needs to shift its focus from business to education. They are also pushing for a board that's more independent from the mayor.
"I'd love to wipe them clean and it be an elected school board that reflects the wants of the community," says Jackson Potter, the co-chair of the Caucus of Rank and File Teachers.
In order for the new board president to be able to have a real agenda to improve education for students, he or she needs to be independent of the mayor, says Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education.
"But that's unlikely to happen," Woestehoff says in an e-mail.
Daley won the authority to appoint Board of Education members in the 1980s, during a period when CPS was widely regarded as one of the country's worst school districts.
Since then, many experts say, the district's academic performance has improved, though low test scores and high dropout rates remain as major issues.
Potter says that with so many business minds on board, the real educational issues get lost.
"Their specialty is what the bond rating of CPS is. Unfortunately, that is 1 percent of the 99 things we need to worry about," Potter says. "They only deal with an infinite and small percentage of the issues we face in schools."
The new board president should have at least worked in schools or spent time developing methods for teaching for at-risk students, Potter says.
"It definitely has to be someone who is attuned to the life of schools and not some type of abstract business perspective," Potter says. "We really don't have any voice on the decision-making body."
One issue the new school board president needs to tackle is keeping parents and the community in the loop for major decisions, says Phillip Jackson, executive director of the Black Star Project.
For example, Jackson was part of a coalition of community members and education advocates upset with the process of developing a new admissions policy for the city's magnet and selective enrollment schools. The policy came together in a few months with little parental involvement, Jackson says.
School officials have said that they plan to work better with the community and parents over the next year as the new policy is put into place.
"They think they can do things without involving, consulting and the support of the community. It can't. Nothing they do is going to be successful when they do it to spite the community or in spite of the community," Jackson says.
Jackson isn't as concerned with the background of the new board leader but with the entire makeup of the board. He says he'd like to see a diverse group hailing from business, academic and religious organizations.
And the ethnicity of the new board president shouldn't matter either as long as he or she understands the needs of the student community, says Jackson.
"If there is a guy out there who has been advocating and promoting the interest of students, that's the person they want," Jackson says. "The board cannot be successful--it's not that they don't want to be--but they cannot be successful without the support and participation of parents as co-managers in education for their children."
The real issue comes down to the mayor's control of the board, Potter says.
"Ultimately, we've got to get rid of mayoral control, because basically, the mayor picks who he wants and they do whatever he tells them to do," Potter says.
Windy Citizen 