Chicago Ponders How to Balance Governing Power

By Catherine Gewertz

Next week, Chicago voters will exercise their distinctive brand of school democracy by choosing more than 5,000 fellow citizens to serve on panels that wield potent influence over their neighborhood schools.

Chicago has elected local school councils every other year since 1989. But the contests on May 1 and 2 are taking place at a time of renewed interest in the role that the councils play in the city's long-standing tug of war over control of its schools. Education in the Windy City is at a turning point, according to education leaders and activists, who say they are embroiled in an intensifying debate about the city's renowned 1988 and 1995 school system restructurings.

The first change shifted many powers to local school sites and created the school councils. The second handed pivotal authority to the mayor. Both phases of change have been regarded nationally as milestones in the efforts of big-city school systems to...