An Elected School Board vs. an Appointed School Board

Societies are built on trust and destroyed by distrust.  If citizens feel their leaders are not listening to them or are not acting in the best interest of the community, social discontent arises.  In the long term, this social discontent is suppressed or mollified.  If it is suppressed, the undercurrent of resentment is a continuous headache for both a community’s leaders and the community itself.  Long-term damage to the society is inevitable, and often takes years to repair.  Better for a society’s leaders to understand the social discontent and seek peaceful resolutions to it. The current debate regarding the appointed School Board’s decision to close 53 Chicago neighborhood schools for “underutilization” is a case in point.

The thousands of Chicagoans who rallied around City Hall on March 27^th  are evidence enough that many Chicagoans question the validity of the appointed Board of Education’s recent decision to close 53 neighborhood schools for “underutilization.”  This does not mean that the appointed Board of Education was wrong in its decision to close the schools based on what it earnestly believes are cost savings that trump local concerns. Perhaps the appointed Board members are right; perhaps they are not.  What is most important, however, is that a significant portion of Chicago’s citizens does not have faith in the appointed Board of Education’s ability to make fair decisions.  Significant numbers of Chicagoans believe, rightly or wrongly, that the appointed Board members represent the Mayor’s interest, and not the interest of the local neighborhoods. This is a problem for Chicago that cannot be corrected even if the appointed Board of Education suddenly came to the conclusion that the thousands of protestors were right and declared that all proposed school closings were suddenly reversed.  Even in this unlikely scenario, many would question the validity of their decision.  Those who support the school closings would argue that the appointed Board succumbed to political pressure.  The solution is to have Chicago do what every other school district in Illinois does: elect its school board.

The advantage of an elected school board is clear.  Unpopular decisions made by the Board would be presumed to represent the people who would have to live with the consequences of those decisions.   The idea that difficult decisions were “hotly debated” among elected officials makes those decisions more palatable for the populace. Those who oppose decisions made by an elected school board would need to organize and try to get different school board members elected.   The argument of an “unfair decision” guided by unelected, unaccountable decision makers would be dismissed with the familiar, “if you don’t like the decisions that are being made, vote the people out of office.”

Because the people who are currently making unpopular decisions are not elected officials, many people feel disenfranchised, rightly or wrongly.  Regardless of one’s position on the school closings, most would agree the mood of the City is not good.  Regardless of one’s political perspective, everyone should understand that a sense of “unfairness” by large numbers of Chicagoans does not serve Chicago as a whole.

Regardless of outcome, the current fight over the closing of neighborhood schools should result in Chicago’s return to an elected School Board.  It is in every Chicagoan’s long-term interest to return to a communal sense of “fairness” that is unavailable in the current political climate. Those who would argue that an appointed School Board can make fair decisions miss the point.  “Fairness” is a matter of both perception and reality.  It is clear that the current appointed School Board is perceived by many to be unfair.  That may or may not be an unfair characterization.  Either way, sooner rather than later, it is in Chicago’s best interest to return to an elected School Board.

Chicago Citizens at a Crossroad

Fundamental Paradigm Question: 

Are 54 schools 

unnecessary “businesses” or necessary "infrastructure"?

Chicago civic leaders and citizens are at a crossroad.  Serious decisions with long term consequences are currently being made and challenged in an epic struggle that will determine the future of the City of Big Shoulders. With the full support of the Mayor and local business leaders, the Chicago Board of Education decided last Wednesday to close 54 schools for ‘underutilization.”  Union Leaders and community organizations are taking to the streets this Wednesday to challenge that decision.  The consequence of that clash will have long-term consequences for Chicago and potentially the rest of the country.

At the core of the argument is a fundamental paradigm question: are schools “businesses” or are they “infrastructure.”  The distinction is critical to Chicago’s long range planning.  Current Chicago political leadership believes the business model for schools is most appropriate when making critical decisions.  This is evidenced by the fact that the Chicago Board of Education, hand picked by the Mayor, is dominated by prominent business leaders.  Those opposed to the business model for schools are led by Union and community activists who believe schools should be viewed as infrastracture and not businesses.   Those who support the business model and those vehemently against it insist that choosing the opposing side will cause Chicago to become America’s next Detroit.  That is, a bankrupted town with a dwindling population.  A thorough examination of the business model and infrastructure model for schools is necessary to point to the way forward.

If the school system is a business, then each school is a “factory.” The Chicago Board of Education is the high level management team that works in the corporate headquarters offsite from the factories.  Teachers and staff in the school are “low level management” in one of many factories, and students are “lower level workers” inside one of the factories.  The quality of product of each factory is  measured by whatever educational “score” is earned by the lower level workers on a battery of standardized tests.   The cumulative test results of each factory and cost of  running each factory must be carefully considered by the high level management team (Chicago Board of Education.)  The decisions of the high level management team are based on financial efficiency alone.  The impact of a factory closing on a community is irrelevant to the business, except as it applies to the cost of shutting down that individual factory.    The safety and convenience of the lower management team and the lower level workers is important to the business only when it relates to onsite operations. The degree of inconvenience to reach the factory by low level management and the lower level workers is irrelevant to the bottom line of the business.  This is because the time and money it takes for most workers to get to the factory is borne mostly by the workers and does not effect the financial bottom line of the business. 

If Chicago schools are really mini businesses, then consolidation of schools makes sense. Clearly, the fewer schools there are, the greater the business efficiency.  The fact that the “workers” will have to travel farther to get to the business (school) is irrelevant.  The fact that an abandoned “factory” mars the neighborhood landscape is irrelevant.  The fact that the abandoned factory lowers property values in the surrounding neighborhood is irrelevant because such devaluations to neighboring properties do not impact the business’s bottom line. The fact that “workers” may be at greater risk in their travel to the larger, more efficient distant school is also irrelevant because that risk is not borne by the business.   The only thing that matters is immediate financial efficiency to the business   So, if schools are businesses, then in the short term it make senses to close as many  “inefficient schools” as possible, in order to save money by economy of scale.  In fact, if schools are best run under a business model, then the goal should be to continuously close schools (factories) and continue to consolidate into larger and larger factories, regardless of how inconvenient those factory locations might be to the workers. 

On the other hand, if schools are  infrastructure integrated into the larger community, with the goal of providing value to the surrounding community, then convenience to the citizens becomes an additional factor to consider beyond financial efficiency.  If schools  are meant to provide vital infrastructure benefits to the community, then location does matter. The closing of any school does have an impact on the surrounding community and puts additional stress on other elements of the City’s infrastructure.  Property values of surrounding homeowners must also be taken into consideration. Convenience to the workers (staff and students) must also be considered and factored into the equation.  The safety of students and staff in their travels to and from the school also needs to be considered,  even if that travel does not directly impact the financial bottom line of the school.  In fact, if schools are part of Chicago' infrastructure, then the closing of any school that subsequently invites neighborhood degradation does matter, even though such degradation will not show up on the Chicago Board of Education’s ledger.  That said, it is clear that if only immediate financial considerations are included in the Board of Education’s calculus, it is obvious schools as infrastructure cannot financially compete with schools as “businesses”  This is because the infrastructure  model considers the larger impact on the citizens of Chicago, rather than the impact on the business alone.

Another way to understand the distinction is to consider the financial efficiency of the current parking meters in Chicago.  Because the current parking meter owners are interested solely in financial gain, those wise business people created a system in which customers must each walk to a pay box hundreds of feet away from where their cars are parked, pay into a pay box, wait forty-five seconds for a ticket to be printed, walk back to their cars, place the ticket in the car window, and then go shopping.

If, on the other hand, the current owners of the parking meters had maintained the old infrastructure mentality, citizens would have been allowed to get out of their cars and pay  their money into a meter immediately next to their cars, and walk away.  These “old fashioned” citizen oriented parking meters were not as financially efficient as the new way of paying for parking meters, but because the new owners are not interested in factoring in citizen convenience, but instead, interested exclusively in  financial gain, the customer is inconvenienced, but the profit margins shoot up.

The fact that under the new parking system, many citizens spend more time paying for their parking and less time shopping in stores is irrelevant to the current owners of the parking meters.  This is because the parking meter owners have no vested interest in how well local merchants due financially.  After all, the parking meter owners are not partners with the business owners and the they do not collect  tax revenue from local businesses.  So why should the current parking meter owners care how much time or money its customers spend in local businesses?   On the other hand, if the parking meters were viewed as part of the City's vital infrastructure, the time and convenience to the citizens of Chicago would have been a factor in the decision making process because the value to the citizen and the surrounding community would have been added to the value of the parking meter equation.

The difference between a “business model” and an “infrastructure model” is clear.  A business model is based on the business’s self-interest in its own financial bottom line, while the “infrastructure model” considers and values the impact on its decisions to the surrounding community.   If schools are simply businesses with no connection to the local community in which they are located, then the Board of Education’s decision to close schools regardless of local impact is logical, albeit myopic.  On the other hand, if schools are meant to provide vital infrastructure to a community, then the bottom line of schools are more accurately measured by the social impact of those schools on the families they serve.  If schools are necessary infrastructure connected to the community, then far larger considerations with far larger implications must be taken into account before deciding to abandon any particular school.  Clearly, under the infrastructure model, long term social costs and implications of boarding up any school would trump any immediate short term financial gain.

While ordinarily it would be up to the citizens of Chicago to determine whether or not schools are “businesses” or essential elements of the City’s “infrastructure”, because Chicago has an unelected School Board (unlike every other school district in the State of Illinois) the fundamental answer to the fundamental question is not left to the citizens of Chicago, but rather to an appointed school board that currently arguably believes schools are best described as “mini-businesses.”   Those who disagree and believe schools are not really businesses but rather essential elements of the City’s infrastructure are left to chant in the streets hoping to gain the attention and support of the Mayor and the School Board.     Chicago's taxpayers may not have the final voice in the decision, but all will clearly have to live with the both the financial and structural implications that result from that decision.