Meeks New Education Agenda?

Long aligned with school reform advocates focused on revamping Illinois' education funding formula, State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) stunned some of his allies last week.

First, he introduced SB 3063, which would curtail the power of Chicago's local school councils to hire principals and make certain discretionary spending decisions, which left many reformers scoffing. "Why would he want to get rid of the last segment of democracy that exists in our schools?" the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization's Jitu Brown said to the Sun-Times. While it doesn't seem that there's much support for the measure down in Springfield, grassroots groups are still organizing to kill the bill.

Meeks is also touting SB 2494, his proposal to extend up to 42,000 private school vouchers to students from Chicago's 65 lowest-performing schools. Such a plan would almost certainly divert already-scarce resources from struggling public schools.  (Tribune columnists Eric Zorn and Dennis Byrne had a good back-and-forth over the issue earlier this week.)

On Monday night, the South Side minister appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight to offer a broader explanation for why he's put down the banner for school funding reform -- at least for now. "[W]e're about $13 billion in debt. We're not going to be able to have $2 billion go to schools," he told host Carol Marin. "So, why use this year to continue to fight the same fight? There are other things that we need to look at as well."

Meeks went on to point out how Democratic lawmakers squandered a historic opportunity to adopt school funding reform last spring. Not only did the Senate pass HB 174, which he sponsored, but Gov. Pat Quinn "was willing to go all the way to make sure we had school funding." The obstacle? House Speaker Michael Madigan. Watch as Meeks offers his version of events:

MEEKS: Gov. Quinn called Mike Madigan 20 seconds after we passed that bill in the Senate and said, 'Do you want to go for the whole loaf?' and the Speaker said 'No.' And Gov. Quinn went to the [House] committee. He testified on behalf of that bill. He went to support that bill, it was House Bill 174. He was willing to support that bill and Gov. Quinn was willing to go all the way to make sure we had school funding.

Meeks' next target is Mayor Daley. This week, he revived SB 2500 in an attempt to wrestle control of Chicago's school system away from the mayor's office.  In addition to democratizing how the school board is selected, the measure would require the head of the district to be a certified educator. State Rep. Annazette Collins (D-Chicago) introduced her own bill (HB 5415) this month that would also put Chicago's school board up for election. We'll be watching closely to see who signs on as co-sponsors.

Council Puts Up Some Resistance

In Chicago, education officials are zeroing in on the latest round of schools to be closed or "turned around" under Daley's controversial Renaissance 2010 reform initiative. Last week, public hearings on the plan wrapped up, yet some Chicago City Council members remain unsatisfied with the opaque process and are putting up some resistance.  Alds. Pat Dowell (3rd Ward) and Freddrenna Lyle (6th Ward) are calling for a one-year moratorium on any closures, during which they want to see officials formalize the process by which schools are shuttered.

Their resolution is certainly in the spirit of a moratorium proposal introduced by Chicago Democratic State Rep. Cynthia Soto (HB 363) last year. As regular readers may recall, that measure was gutted and replaced with a plan to create a Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force, which will unveil recommendations for formalizing the closure process next month.

Dowell and Lyle explain their reasoning in the resolution itself, which they introduced on February 10. Here's an excerpt:

WHEREAS, Chicago Public Schools needs to examine its own policies regarding the distribution of resources for academic and capital needs before making drastic decisions such as replacing the school’s staff or closing the school altogether, and

WHEREAS, Chicago Public Schools has demonstrated they do not have a comprehensive long-term plan by not fully considering development and the consequential need for accessible neighborhood schools; and [...]

WHEREAS, Many of the new schools that have been created or schools that have been reconstituted are not performing better or are performing worse than the schools that were closed

The City Council's Education Committee is scheduled to take up the measure on Monday and local school reform activists are lobbying (PDF) aldermen to take a stand. CPS officials, meanwhile, appeared to respond to the public pressure by pulling five schools from the list of those slated to close this year.  Going forward, they've also pledged to identify struggling schools early on so parents and community leaders can come up with a plan to improve performance. The fact that they've yet to do so thus far certainly makes you wonder if they're operating in good faith.

Higher Education Also A High Priority

Meanwhile, education experts and university officials from across Illinois are preparing to come up with solutions for making higher education more affordable. The problem, of course, is that tuition and basic fees have more than doubled at Illinois' public universities over the past decade while aid initiatives have remained basically flat. Rep. Soto and her colleague Sen. Ed Maloney (D-Chicago) passed a measure (HJR 54) last fall requiring the state to tackle the affordability issue. As the State Journal-Register reports, they're faced with a "particularly tough assignment" considering the state's fiscal crisis:

State government owes universities hundreds of millions of dollars in overdue payments. The University of Illinois system is owed more than $400 million, while Northern Illinois University is due $60 million.

Universities and colleges have been forced to raise tuition and other costs to keep up for dwindling state help. State Sen. Ed Maloney says it’s time to do more.

On February 26, the Illinois Board of Higher Education will hold a College Affordability Summit at the University of Illinois-Chicago to get the ball rolling. But the reality is, until lawmakers address the fundamentals of state's financial problems, there's only so much universities can do to hold costs on their own.