Th e Challenges of School District Governance

SCHOOL DISTRICT POLITICS, CHICAGOSTYLE Not one to mince words, U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett came to Chicago in 1988 and pronounced the city’s schools the worst in the nation. Bennett, of course, was not saying anything that many Chicagoans did not know already. Th e previous year a 19-day teachers’ strike delayed the opening of school. More than a thousand citizens marched on city hall to demand that Mayor Harold Washington intervene to settle the strike.