Can't let go: just a few years back, school-based management was the rage in Cleveland. Except that the central office wasn't all that interested in relinquishing control - Forum

Education Next, Winter, 2001 by Patrick J. Ryan

The Local Councils

During the 1998-99 school year, some school governance council members quickly recognized that their councils lacked the power to make policy. They came to see that the central administration simply could not or would not allow the councils to fulfill the roles specified in the union contract. The best of these council members instead focused on small, discrete programs that might help their schools. But they were a minority. Asked what their most important accomplishment of the year was, only 17 percent of council members were able to cite a specific task beyond holding meetings and writing by-laws. Council members most often referred to the ideals of creating community or building better lines of communication. As a whole the responses simply repeated the "team building" language that was offered in training manuals. Nearly half of the council members said either that they accomplished nothing or that writing bylaws was their biggest accomplishment.

School visits and discussions with the principals confirmed the survey results. The decentralization plan was not a pilot program, but it was initially implemented in only eight schools, later to be implemented in over 100 more. Of the eight original schools, two, Anton Grdina Elementary and Miles Park Elementary, failed to create functioning councils. Anton Grdina's council failed to form after the school's principal left for health reasons in the fall. The replacement principal explained, "It is my job to give the central office what they want. They send me papers, I fill them out and send them back. This is my job." The council at Miles Park met three times and, seeing that their role was "unclear," made no policy decisions and initiated no new programs. Miles Park had already developed strong teams for grant writing and community collaboration, so the leaders of their school community saw no purpose in entertaining a new paper program that lacked real administrative power. The school governance councils a t Glenville High School and Gracemount Elementary were only a little more active than the two failed councils. They met regularly, but served only as discussion groups. They spent most of the year trying to determine their "purpose" and writing bylaws.

The councils at Charles Mooney Middle School and John Marshall High School became involved in furthering special projects at the schools. At Mooney, the governance council wrote and approved a policy that the school must hold at least four community events on school grounds each year in order to bring parents and families into the school. The members also helped to develop a "Backpack Sign-out" program encouraging parents to work with their children on academic tasks and proficiency tests. John Marshall's council pulled together community resources for a teen center in collaboration with the West Side Ministry. Marshall's council also helped to start an attendance-reward program with the Rotary Club, and it asked National City Bank to donate used computers to update the school's lab.