GOP-led states increasingly taking control from local school boards
Republican lawmakers in Illinois last month pitched a bold plan for the state to seize control of the Chicago public schools, becoming one of a growing number of states that are moving to sideline local officials — even dissolve locally elected school boards — and take over struggling urban schools.
Governors in Michigan, Arkansas, Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, Ohio and elsewhere — mostly Republican leaders who otherwise champion local control in their fights with the federal government — say they are intervening in cases of chronic academic or financial failure. They say they have a moral obligation to act when it is clear that local efforts haven’t led to improvement.
“I want to protect the schoolchildren and their parents; that’s my first duty,” Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) said about his plan, which would wrest control of the nation’s third-largest school district from elected city leaders and was immediately opposed “100 percent” by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D).
After Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential hopeful, seized the struggling schools in Youngstown last July, he described it as an 11th-hour attempt to save young lives. “If you’re a school district that’s failed year after year after year, someone’s going to come riding to the rescue of kids,” Kasich said, describing the Youngstown school system, which has regularly received GOP-led states increasingly taking control from local school boards - The Washington Post:
