A Chicago parents group wants to make the city's Board of Education accountable to voters.

Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE), a parents advocacy group critical of a board plan that will lead to a dramatic series of school closings, has organized a petition drive to put an advisory referendum on the November ballot calling for an elected school board.

Julie Woestehoff, PURE's executive director, says frustration over the board's recent actions is driving the effort

"I don't think people have been this angry with the board in many years," Woestehoff says. "I think because people are just so fed up ...the idea ...is just permeating through the city."

The city's seven-member board of education is appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, who can appoint members to an unlimited number of four-year terms.

According to a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Education, it is the only education board in the state whose members do not have to run for election.

The appointment process grew out of an effort to reform Chicago schools in 1995. Since then, the mayor has controlled all board appointments, including the naming of Arne Duncan as chief executive.

But critics say it is a system that leaves Chicago's board largely unaccountable to the public they serve.

"There's a feeling in community circles, let's go back to an elected board. We can hold them accountable," says Cecile Carroll, education organizer for Blocks Together, a community non-profit group on the West Side.

Woestehoff says the group has until Aug. 14 to get 40,000 signed petitions, equal to 8 percent of the votes cast in the most recent gubenatorial election.

State law prevents the group from seeking a binding referendum, she says, but the hope is that by putting the issue to a vote, the idea will gain momentum.

"It's a way of sending a strong message. It's a way of putting an issue on the table publicly," she says.

The current Board of Education includes long-time members Norman R. Bobins, chairman emeritus of LaSalle Bank Corp., who was appointed to his fourth four-year term by Daley in 2006, and Tariq Butt, regional medical director of the Access Community Health Network, who was first appointed in 1995. Daley's most recent appointment was Peggy A. Davis in 2006. She is vice president of diversity and compliance at Exelon Business Services Corp.

Other members of the board are Roxanne M. Ward, president of Black Corporate Directors Conference, and Alberto A. Carrero, Jr., senior vice president of the public banking division for Banco Popular North America.

Board president Rufus Williams, an Orr High School graduate, and president of CEO of Olympus, LLC, a business-management firm, was appointed by Daley in 2005.

Recent board actions include the opening of 55 schools and $4 billion in capital improvements.

But the board drew strong public criticism in February with its approval of a plan to reorganize eight city schools into six "turnaround" schools next fall and a close a number of other schools for consolidation.

The plan will eliminate the jobs of teachers and administrators at the eight targeted schools in June, including
Harper High School on the South Side and the three high schools on the Orr campus on the West Side.

Some critics say the board has operated largely as a rubber stamp for the mayor, leaving parents out of the decision-making process.

"The board operates under the protection of the mayor, so the board does what the mayor tells them to," says the Rev. Charlie Walker, a PURE member and a member of the Moses Vines Prep Academy local school council that will cease to exist when the school merges with two others to become the new Orr High School in September.