Local School Council Missing in West Town

William H. Wells Community Academy High School in West Town remains without a local school council, the elected governing body required in most of the more than 600 Chicago Public Schools.

The 1,076-student, low-ranking school, located at 936 N. Ashland Ave., does not have an LSC because there were not enough members present at meetings, said Anitra Schulte, a Chicago Public School spokeswoman. A majority of LSC members need to be present at all meetings to constitute a quorum, which is necessary for the LSC to conduct its business.

The local school councils were established in 1989 by the Illinois General Assembly as part of an effort to reform the state’s largest school district. The law requires that every Chicago public elementary school should have an elected body at the school comprised of parents, community residents, teachers and the principal.

Every high school also must have a student member, said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education, a public school advocacy group in Chicago. Each high school council has 12 members while elementary schools have 11. The body’s three major duties are selecting and hiring the principal, who is evaluated every four years, approving the bi-annual school improvement plan for advancing academic achievement and overseeing the school’s budget, Woestehoff said.

Without the LSC in place, the school doesn’t have a body that fulfills the duty of an LSC, CPS spokeswoman Schulte said.

A school without an LSC doesn’t have people who are strong advocates for the school, Woestehoff said. There is less accountability for the school and probably less communication with parents and the community.

“Overall, there’s probably less ability to support needed changes at the school,” Woestehoff said.

Guadalupe Pacheco, a community member in West Town and a former elected parent on the Wells LSC, said she had no idea the LSC had disbanded at the school, which has a 53 percent graduation rate, according to the 2008 CPS high school directory. She had been on the LSC when her sons attended the Near-West Side school.

Pacheco, currently a community representative on the James Otis Elementary School LSC, which is about one mile away from Wells High, said the LSCs play a crucial role in understanding what’s happening in the schools.

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to the kids,” Pacheco said.

Before she knew the Wells LSC had disbanded, she said she would have run for community representative for the school in the upcoming election on April 16.

The lack of involvement may be due to the lack of support from CPS, said Pauline Lipman, professor of policy studies in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. CPS has not been supporting LSCs and has been trying to get rid of them, Lipman said.

“There’s been falling off of people running for the council and being involved in them as they’ve become less active over the years,” Lipman said.

CPS has tried to take the LSC’s power by putting the school on probation or closing the school and reopening it as a different kind of school, such as a charter school, Woestehoff said.

Although the LSCs are part of a legislative act, it is not illegal for a school to lack one, Schulte said.

“They are not in any violation of state laws,” Schulte said. “Actually, what happens when there is not an active LSC is that the AIO, or active instructional officer, for that particular region … steps in until there can be an election and the LSC can be revitalized.”

LSC elections are coming up on April16 for high schools, and there will be an election for the full council at Wells.

“With their new members, hopefully they will attain that quorum and become an active LSC again,” Schulte said.