CAT Tracks for May 16, 2004 COMPROMISE ON ISBE?

Apparently there is a compromise afoot in the battle over ISBE between the Governor and the General Assembly. If news reports are true, it still does not look good for ISBE...

News account from the Chicago Tribune...

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Deal would give governor control of school board

By Ray Long and Christi Parsons, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporter Diane Rado contributed to this report

May 14, 2004

SPRINGFIELD -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday backed off his controversial demand to take direct control over the state's education bureaucracy as he unveiled a broad compromise that would still give him unprecedented authority over public schools.

Unveiling a deal with Senate Democrats, Blagojevich abandoned a key element of his plan to gut what he had termed a "Soviet-style bureaucracy" at the independent State Board of Education and replace it with a cabinet-level department of education answering directly to him.

The revamped plan would leave the board structure intact but cede to Blagojevich unlimited power to overhaul its membership and then fire any of the new appointees later. Blagojevich said he would use that authority to purge all nine members currently on the panel as well as state schools Supt. Robert Schiller, who was hired by the board.

Blagojevich had attacked the current board for a lack of accountability but insisted the new structure would correct that. "Accountability is the centerpiece of reform," Blagojevich said. "Without accountability, nothing changes, nothing improves and no one ever has to answer for themselves."

Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) said Thursday that he agreed to relinquish the board's independence in order to give the governor more power to improve schools.

That concept, however, unsettled many local school district officials around the state. They feared that the arrangement would lead to high turnover on the board and in the superintendent's office and make it difficult for occupants of those posts to achieve anything meaningful.

Despite the backing from top Senate Democrats, the plan may encounter trouble with other key lawmakers. House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), the biggest potential obstacle, thinks the revised proposal is better than the original but still questions whether a governor should have so-called "at-will" power to hire and fire board members on a whim, a spokesman said.

"There may be questions about what he means by `at-will,'" said Madigan spokesman Steve Brown. "Will there be any criteria for hiring and firing people, or can he do it for any reason?"

Under the proposal, Blagojevich would be able to pick all new members of the board, though they would serve staggered terms that could be ended prematurely by the governor. The proposal also contains a number of provisions the governor contends would save as much as $450 million for schools over the next four years. For instance, the plan would let districts take part in a statewide buying pool to purchase school supplies and also would allow the state's Capital Development Board to oversee local school construction projects for districts that wanted help.

In addition, the new plan would create so-called shared service centers that let districts pool resources to save on administrative costs. To help local schools reduce health costs, districts could participate in the state's prescription drug purchasing plan.

The optional nature of those programs is a concession by Blagojevich, who had originally sought to force districts to cede control over some services when he first unveiled his school overhaul plan during his January State of the State message. Though Blagojevich predicted it would save districts $1 billion over four years, the mandatory consolidation ideas were strongly resisted by local school officials.

Many lawmakers think that added power would help the governor improve the public schools--and the faith people have in them.

"I think what the governor is saying here is that he wants to gain the full confidence of those who depend on our public education system," said Sen. Miguel del Valle (D-Chicago), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who appeared with Blagojevich at his announcement Thursday. "The changes we're proposing here are going to help us do that."

Madigan and many other lawmakers had complained that Blagojevich's original plan to gut the board would violate the state constitution.

Rep. Michael Smith (D-Canton), chairman of aHouse education committee, said the revised plan appears to allay that concern.

"It certainly avoids the constitutional questions that were among the biggest obstacles we had with the department," Smith said. "But it gives the governor a lot of say over what is happening at the state board."

That said, many lawmakers still expressed qualms. In particular, some worried that giving Blagojevich the power to replace the current board en masse would do away with the concept of continuity among its members that was important to crafters of the constitution.

"I don't like this idea that he can summarily dismiss nine board members," said Sen. Dan Cronin (R-Elmhurst), the Republican spokesman on the Senate Education Committee. "If you read the constitutional convention debate and discussions, the whole idea was for continuity. That has to transcend gubernatorial elections and partisan politics."

Many local school officials said they were bothered that all board members under the deal would serve at the whim of the governor, a provision they feared would make a mockery of the board's independence.

"Why do you even have a board then?" asked Kenneth Arndt, superintendent in Carpentersville-based Community Unit School District 300 and president of the Large Unit District Association representing more than 50 districts including Chicago. "Unless you just want a rubber stamp organization to approve every initiative of the governor's office, it certainly doesn't sound independent to me."

Arndt also said the two-year contract for a state school superintendent--which Blagojevich also proposes--is too short. "It's extremely difficult for a new superintendent to make significant changes in two years," said Arndt.

That concern was echoed by Donna Baiocchi , executive director of Ed-Red, a school advocacy group representing more than 100 districts in Cook, DuPage and Lake Counties.

Illinois went through a string of state school superintendents prior to Schiller, she said, and "and nobody ever had a chance to do anything meaningful."

Schiller, whose job would clearly be threatened under the proposal, was least impressed of all. Through an aide, he said he did not want to give credence to the governor's remarks that the superintendent would be fired before his contract is up on July 31, 2005.

"It's an amendment to a bill that still has to go through both houses," said board spokeswoman Karen Craven, "and not everyone is on board with it."

Editorial from the Chicago Tribune...

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A chance at education evolution

May 14, 2004

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's announcement Thursday that he has reached a compromise with state Senate leaders on how to revamp Illinois' education bureaucracy has a lot of potential, even if it's not quite the revolution the governor promised in January.

Blagojevich has given up on his bid to dismantle the Illinois State Board of Education. Instead, the governor, under this compromise, would get to appoint all new members of the board, with Senate approval, and to remove members whenever he sees fit.

That would create accountability to the governor, and that is good, given that Blagojevich's ideas for improving student achievement generally are on target.

Another potentially significant change would encourage local schools to buy through a Web-based "catalog" of items--from glue to student desks to employee benefits--to help the schools lower operating costs. A "central procurement center" created by the state theoretically would offer lower negotiated prices from vendors in exchange for bulk purchases of common supplies.

District officials could make contract purchases of under $10,000 from local vendors if those vendors offer lower prices or come close to the state's.

Blagojevich's estimates of the savings--as much as $550 million over four years--may be exaggerated. Whatever the ultimate savings, though, they're still savings. And that means superintendents would have more money on hand to spend on things like teacher development, rather than on janitor brooms and conference room tables. The key will be whether local districts take full advantage of the savings or opt to pay more because they don't want to lose control over their purchasing.

The state board is not all that ails education in Illinois. Giving the governor more control over a traditionally lumbering, paranoid and reform-phobic bureaucracy will help. But it's just a start.

This is a state that values strong local control over schools, which is why the state board has been little more than a financial pass-through agency rather than a promoter of bold new ideas and best practices.

Blagojevich will now get the chance to change that. And once that's accomplished, perhaps the focus can move to closer scrutiny of the spending, hiring, teaching and business practices of the hundreds of school districts dotting the state.

News account from the St. Louis Post Dispatch...

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New education reforms worry some downstate

By Brian Wallheimer
Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau
05/13/2004

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday unveiled legislation that would give him more power than any governor in modern times to change Illinois' troubled education system. But downstate officials fear the plan could slight their region, because it gives the Chicago-based governor near-absolute power to pick the people who will lead the school system.

"Knowing what he's done to this point, this administration's been top-heavy in Chicago. We'd like some guarantee that this board won't be that way," said Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, R-Greenville. "He's primarily focused on Chicago interests."

Blagojevich on Thursday announced a plan that would allow him to take over the State Board of Education, which he has said is wasteful and ineffective. The plan would give Blagojevich almost complete power over board membership. The plan was presented as a compromise of Blagojevich's earlier proposal to eliminate the board, transferring its powers to a new Department of Education.

"I'm not satisfied with the state of education in the state of Illinois," Blagojevich said in Springfield, alongside Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago. "After weeks of discussion, we've come up with a plan that paves the way for real education reform."

But board President Janet Steiner, of Carlinville, and others voiced concern that Blagojevich could stack the board with northern Illinois members. "A downstater always has that concern because there's always been a lot of control from the urban areas of the north," Steiner said. "Let's hope that everything is evenly distributed."

State law says two members of the state board must be from Cook County, two from the counties that surround Cook, two from other counties and three at-large members. Blagojevich's plan would keep those restrictions in place, but would allow him to immediately replace all current board members, which is a power he doesn't have. The concern is that Blagojevich's new appointments could all come from the northern half of the state.

"I think we have been shown by this governor that Southern Illinois has been forgotten," said state Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro. "Just driving through on a bus from time to time doesn't show he remembers."

Blagojevich spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch said downstate school districts can be sure that their concern will be addressed by a new board.

"The governor is committed to making sure the state board of education is representative of the interests of all parts of the state," Rausch said. "This is about the betterment of Illinois schoolchildren."

In 2007, the governor would be allowed to replace five members of the board and the other four members two years later. By picking board members, the governor also would control whom the board hires as state superintendent.

Under Blagojevich's new plan:

The board would still choose the state superintendent, but the superintendent would serve a two-year term instead of a three-year term.

The board would begin line-item budgeting, so that the governor and the Legislature could eliminate spending they deem unnecessary.

All school districts would be allowed to opt into the state's prescription drug-buying plan, and allow schools to buy supplies under a state contract if local vendors cannot provide the supplies cheaper.

Schools districts could ask the state Capital Development Board to manage building projects if it would be cheaper than hiring a local contractor.

"I'm saying that today the Berlin Wall has come down," Blagojevich said. "It paves the way for major reform in the state's regulation of its schools. It has the potential to make life easier for all the nearly 900 school districts in our state and help our children learn better."

Blagojevich faced opposition for his original education plan from House Speaker Michael Madigan. Madigan wanted the governor to be able to appoint five of the board's nine members during his term and to keep the hiring of the state superintendent under the control of the board.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said the speaker still has some concern about Blagojevich's new plan, including having a lack on continuity on the board if Blagojevich were to replace the members in July and giving the governor power to remove members for any reason.

"I think there needs to be some kind of criteria on how to remove board members," Brown said.

Board member Ronald Gidwitz, of Chicago, called on members of the Legislature to consider Madigan's plan, saying Blagojevich's proposal gives him too much power.

"By giving every governor unilateral control of every board member, turns the board and our entire K-12 education system into another political machine," Gidwitz said in a written statement.