Replace LSCs...With What?

There are a lot of people who think that LCS are an essential part of public schooling in Chicago, and lots of others who think they're often a nightmare.

However, coming up with a replacement won't be easy, as this NYT article points out.  NYC replaced its version of LSCs about four years ago, but so far at least they may not be working out.

Link: Report Finds Unhappiness With City's Parent Units - New York Times.

Comments

[Levois]

Yeah coming up with a replacement won't be easy. However I'd rather have some semblance of local control of the public schools.

I just graduated from Brooks last week and I don't know if it was worse before LSC's started or not, but I know ours is all messed up.
Our chairman Mrs. Chapman wants one person to be principal and everyone else wants someone else and they are getting into some crazy arguments. No one knows what is going to happen there. Our LSC is messed up.

LSCs, except in limited circumstances, have proven that they are an interference with the educational process. They should be advisory only.
The young person above makes very clear observations here. Thanks you for sharing your voice and best of luck to you, graduate.

Anything is better then the many disfunctional LSCs that exist . . .

How can we expect LSCs to fulfill their obligations when they have not been trained appropriately? Whose fault is that?

As one who has sat on several LSCs at relatively high-functioning schools, I can say they are a very weak form of reform. In one, the principal was high performing and the LSC ended up mostly rubberstamping his good decisions; in the other, the principal was a weak leader but she was good at neutralizing the LSC. In both cases, I can't say the LSC had much impact. Besides, if you're concerned about parent involvement, why waste so much energy and money on a model that only involves a handful of parents?

Amen!

Amen again.
Don't blame the training and some of the organizations that train, only give misinformation and make things worse for the poor students who have to reap the benefits of poorly trained and uninformed or power-hungry LSCs.
This is a waste of money and time that should be directed to direct instruction of school students.

What do you mean, "some people think this..." and "some people think that..."? Exactly who thinks LSCs are a "nightmare" and why do they think it?

i get the sense that many folks at the board, and school reform groups, aren't particularly pro-LSC.

In my view, the board and most professionals in CPS are pretty sick of LSCs and the diversion from education they often bring with their roles. Politically, however, there will always be LSCs as long as Madigan and Jones are in the IL legislature. Madigan because LSCs keep an aura of accountability and Jones because he doesn't trust that the central office won't steal the State Ch. 1 money (and he's right on that).

[Phil Hansen]

You know, I spent alot of time with difficult and bad LSCs. Even through this, we all realized that the bad ones were no more than 10% of the total. Now that I am retired and work in other systems, I see clearly that in most urban areas there is not a process to ensure that parents are given the formal opportunity to be involved in the decision making processes of schools. Without that formal opportunity, parents are just not invovled to the level they are in CPS. The most serious problem I encountered with LSCs was over conflicts with the principal, often times LSCs selected the principal and then became disenchanted with that principal. I would suggest that CPS leadership should have the ability to select their principals. That, I think, would be a positive change. Another change would be to increase the accountability of LSCs. They are now not really accountable to anyone. But aside from that, LSCs really encourage community and parent support. They formalize a process of parent and community involvement. Without that, there would be no process for parents and community to become involved in their school. People, myself included, have complained about bad LSCs. But most of them are good and they should not be disbanded. A wonderful LSC selected me to be a principal and they were a support system that I valued and appreciated.
There needs to be a serious discussion about this. People need to recognize the shortcomings of LSCs and provide serious changes to make them more effective.

A great advertisement for LSCs is found in the comments for "Hot Seat in Philly." CPS needs more checks and balances, not less.

Did Phil Hansen really write one of the comments? Pleeease. His office of Accoutability did ALL it could to unempower parents and LSCs. He brought us remediations, probations, interventions, re-engineerings, etc. How quickly he has forgotten! And for his LSC, he did not even finish a contract before he was promoted and there was talk that his wonderful LSC was not going to keep him. He also influenced, from his accountability purch, who other LSCs chosea principal--unempowering them yet again.

[Phil]

Yep, it's me. A couple of clarifications.
1. My LSC would have renewed my contract.
2. We disbanded two LSCs in five years, Prosser and Hale. Both surely deserved to be disbanded by any objective standard. That is 2 out of 600.
3. Probation, remediation, etc. did not disband LSCs.
4. As I said before, about 10% of the LSCs were problematical and we worked with them, spending countless hours at LSC meetings.
Finally, if I sign my name, I would expect critics to sign theirs, especially when the information they are giving is inaccurate.

Rose-colored glasses and not facing reality.
You still have too much influence at CPS for anyone to leave their name.