School Board Politics

Now that Mayor Lightfoot has named her school board appointees, the time has come for me to evaluate the previous mayor’s appointees.

I’ve known del Valle for decades. I happened to be there the night in 1986 when del Valle, then a community organizer, upset state senator Edward Nedza, a key cog in former alderman Tom Keane’s legendary 31st Ward Democratic machine.

So that’s all good, except . . .

I’m going with (3). Apparently, I’m not the only person in town who has a hard time getting over grudges.

In Chicago—as anywhere—the single greatest predictor of academic performance is, more often than not, income. That is, the more money a student’s family has, the better those students tend to do in school. I mean, duh, people—we all know this.

This is particularly frustrating, given that the appointees included university presidents, corporate lawyers, bankers, retired CEOs, and even an economics professor.