Local School Councils

Every Chicago public school has a Local School Council (LSC) which consists of parents, community members, teachers, and the principal of the school. All members of the council are elected and conduct monthly meetings which the public can attend. Some LSCs have less power than others and only serve as advisory and not as decision-makers; such as, Academic Urban School Leadership (AUSL) schools that displace an entire school's personnel when school is closed or becomes a turn-around.

Local school councils are the site based management team of each school. Their primary responsibility is to select the school’s principal, renew the principal’s contract, approve the School Improvement Plan for Advancing Academic Achievement and approve the school’s budget for the school year.

The Chicago School Reform Act of 1988 created local school councils for all Chicago Public Schools. The newly formed councils consisted of the principal, two teachers, six parents, two community members, and a student representative on high school councils.

The push for reform came from a couple directions, first the declaration President Reagan’s Secretary of Education that Chicago public schools were the worst in the nation, and continued teacher’s strikes which in September 1987 lasted for nineteen days.

The Reform Act was a product of grass roots work to improve Chicago public schools through decentralization. The Chicago School Reform Act was a state law directed only at changing the Chicago schools which exercised much less local control than other school systems in the state. Many complained that the bureaucratic organization of the school system did not allow for parental or community input. The Reform Act put strong faith in the ability of parents, community members, and educators to govern their children’s school.

By creating the local school councils, parents and community members could exercise real control over their schools. This reform also ended principal tenure which had allowed principals to stay in their position for life. After the reform, all principals were selected by the local school councils and were only given four year contracts, after which they had to reapply. Members of LSCs were also given significant control over their school’s use of funds by shaping and approving the budget. Curricular changes were also under the control of the councils, as they implemented the School Improvement Plans (SIP).

Since the Reform Act, the Chicago schools have gone through more changes and reforms, but the basic structure of the local school councils are still in place. The 1995 Chicago School Reform Act gave the mayor of Chicago more control over the schools and the ability to appoint a five-member board of trustees and chief executive officer. The board of trustees was given the power to intervene in low-performing schools, which some critics felt took power away from the local school councils. Also, the CEO implemented citywide curriculum standards which took some policy control away from the school. The local school council still retains the ability to hire principals, but as changes were made, the principal is increasingly responsible to the district authority and an LSCs' decision to renew or not to renew the principals' contract can be challenged before an independent arbitration officer. But, with most of the school-level authority left intact, Chicago still remains the most decentralized big-city educational system in the nation.

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