Advocates of a plan to return all of the city's local school councils to a system of elected membership have taken their case to the chair of the Senate Education Committee.

"We're trying to save the system," says Steve Ross, president of Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) and vice chairman of the local school council at South Shore School of Technology.

At a public hearing on the West Side at Austin Town Hall Saturday, Ross took his message to State Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Westchester), who chairs the Senate Education Committee.

The hearing was the third of five being held around the city as part of a resolution by the state legislature to ensure the "continued  success" of the city's LSCs by holding hearings to discuss their needs.

Ross told Lightford he believes it is time to make the members of all the city's local schools councils subject to election.

"We've got to take the A out of LSC, and make it LSC again," he said.

Elected local school councils hire and fire the school principal and set the school's budget. They include six parents, two community representatives, two teachers and the school principal. High school councils also include an appointed student representative.

The LSC at the South Shore School of Technology is one of many in the city whose members are appointed by the Chicago Board of Education. Since 1998, the state code has allowed CPS to create appointed LSCs at small and alternative schools.

The appointed boards do not have the authority to hire or fire their principals.

"The board says we don't have the authorization. Who better to have the authorization?" asked the Rev. Charles Walker, a member of the appointed LSC at Orr High School. "We need to change the school code back, when all schools have an (elected) LSC in the city of Chicago," he said.

Lightford also heard reports of principals withholding information from parents and LSC members and of   inconsistency in the way LSC meetings are publicized.

"A lot of information is not getting to the parents, a lot of information is not getting to the local school councils," complained  Carol Johnson, an LSC community representative at Spencer Math and Science Academy at 214 N. Lavergne Ave.

Cecile Carroll, education organizer for Blocks Together, an advocacy group on the West Side, says it sometimes takes three weeks to get the date of a planned LSC meeting from the school district.

A fourth hearing will be held on the North Side at a date still to be determined. A fifth hearing will be conducted in Spanish, says Wanda Hopkins, PURE assistant director and the moderator of Saturday's hearing. 

PURE, along with Blocks Together, Designs for Change and other advocacy groups, have led an effort to push for elected LSCs at virtually all schools. That effort includes a lawsuit against the CPS pending in Cook County Circuit Court.

An LSC task force is being formed to address the issues, Hopkins says. PURE has also led a petition drive to get an advisory referendum on the November ballot calling for an elected, rather than appointed, city board of education.

Since 1995, the year in which school reform legislation gave power to the mayor's office, the board members have been appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley.

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