Chicago

The schools: Who shall lead them?

By MILTON RAKOVE

THE CITY of Chicago has a new Board of Education (appointed by Mayor Jane Byrne last year after the Illinois General Assembly mandated the abolition of the old board), a new supervisory financial board and a new financial superintendent for the school system, and, most recently, a new school superintendent, Ruth Love. But the problems confronting that new top-level policymaking and administrative apparatus are not new, but old, and the prospects for resolving those problems are not good, at best, and probably deteriorating, at worst.

When the lid blew off the cauldron of the school system's financial condition last year, the legislature, under pressure from Mayor Byrne and Gov. James R. Thompson, created this new governing structure to alleviate the system's financial problems. A high-level summit meeting between Byrne and Thompson emissaries resulted in a pact in which the City of Chicago agreed to underwrite and guarantee a massive long-term bond issue by the new Board of Education at high rates of interest by the only-too-willing-to-loan bankers, which palliated the temporary financial crisis, but left the system with a long-term massive debt. Gov. Thompson refused to accept any further state responsibility for the problems of Chicago's school children. As Alderman Roman Pucinski told the Chicago City Council, during the debate on the bond issue, "What did the governor contribute to this agreement? A meeting room and coffee and sandwiches!"

Despite draconian efforts by the new board and the former acting superintendent, Angeline Caruso, to cut the budget, the schools are still short of money for next year (about $45 million), and are faced with a deeper deficit if they have to give the teachers a cost-of-living raise and if they try to desegregate the system under pressure from the federal government. With President Ronald Reagan's budget cuts looming "on the horizon and Gov. Thompson's reduced school allocations facing the system, the board has only two places to raise the money -more bonds at higher rates of interest, or raising property taxes in the city. The board has opted for the second alternative, a tax increase, but cannot get it without the support of Mayor Byrne who has, to date, been unwilling to commit herself to take that step. The governor and downstate and suburban legislators have continued to evince little or no interest in Chicago's school problems.

This looming new crisis is financial on the surface, but the roots are political, and are deeply imbedded in the racial situation in Chicago and the realities of the chasm between the interests of the inhabitants of the city and the people who live in Chicago's suburbs and downstate.

Chicago's public schools are about 60 percent black, 20 percent Latino and "other" (Asians, etc.), and 20 percent white. Property taxes are levied on home and condominium owners and commercial property investors. Most of these people are white and don't have children in the public schools. A substantial percentage of the blacks and Latinos don't own property and don't pay property taxes directly, although they do, indirectly, as renters. An increasing percentage of middle-class blacks and Latino homeowners send their children and pay tuition to the Catholic parochial schools (which are supported by white Catholic homeowners), or to other private schools.

As James Madison put it, in the Federalist No. 10, "The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society." Or to put it another way, "Those who pay the taxes and those who benefit from them are on opposite sides of the fence." That is the underlying political situation in Chicago which affects the financing of the schools.

The prospects for increased outside aid for the beleaguered Chicago school system also reflect the cultural, social and political differences between Chicago and the suburbs and downstate. The people in those areas, whose children don't attend Chicago's schools, are resisting bond issues and increased property taxes for their own schools and are disinterested in Chicago's school problems. The politicians who represent those areas, as is their normal wont, are following the lead of their constituents. President Reagan and a Republican and conservative dominated Congress will not come to the rescue. Gov. Thompson and an Illinois General Assembly dominated by downstaters and suburbanites will not move to further fulfill the state's responsibilities for the education of its school children in Chicago. Those children, whose lives and futures are hostage to the quality of education they get in their critical formative years, are powerless to influence the contemporary situation or their political and governmental leaders. Someone has to take the lead and assume the responsibility for giving Chicago's children access to a decent education. Mayor Byrne went partway a year ago with her financial bail-out bond package for the schools. She and Chicago's other political and governmental leaders have to take the next step. The ball is clearly in their court now.

36/July 1981/Illinois Issues