On Sunday, November 17, the school board and teachers’ union agreed to a deal that averted a strike and kept 409,000 children in school. Everyone should have been happy, and yet the pictures on the front pages of Monday’s newspapers showed only somber faces.
School superintendent Ted Kimbrough contends that such accusations are off target since the “central-office staff is cut to the bone.” But very few activists believe him. The consequence is a barrage of charges and countercharges that will undoubtedly hurt Chicago’s efforts to receive additional funding from the state.
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Central-office officials counter that some activists have ulterior motives for attacking the board. “We respect the mission and purpose of many watchdog groups, but we have to wonder where they get their information,” says Linda Matsumoto, a spokeswoman for the central office. “Their actions are not always as altruistic as they may assert. They may reflect hidden political agendas.”
Many veteran teachers consider the bureaucrats the bane of the system. “If you take a leave or want to get college credits added to your record, you have to go to them–they never come to you,” says one longtime grade-school teacher. “Half the time they have someone at an inflated salary doing some minor record keeping that should be done by a clerk.”
According to budget reports by LQE, Kimbrough made up for central-office personnel cuts in this year’s budget by raising the salaries of about 50 central-office staffers and by spending more money on overtime (up from $5.4 million in 1991 to $10 million in 1992) and outside consultants (up from $4.8 million to $6 million in the same period).
Kimbrough and his allies contend that these kinds of miscalculations are unintentional. “It is a documented fact that we have lost over 2,000 central-office administrative positions during the last three years,” says Linda Matsumoto. “There has been a significant increase in employees at the local site, which is in accordance with the school-reform act, which mandates that governance be from the bottom up.”
