After hearing oral arguments from both sides in the LSC lawsuit, Judge Sophia Hall announced that she will render her verdict in court on October 6th at 11 am.

Attorneys for LSCs and for CPS argued over whether CPS has the right to ban LSCs from any school labeled by CPS as a small or an alternative school.

CPS has changed their policies for school governance every year and relabeled schools in what simply looks to us like an illegal effort to get rid of LSCs. Their lawyers attempted to argue that “the community” wanted alternative, advisory LSCs. In fact, every small schools application we have seen, including the ones named in our case, specified that they wanted a real, not an advisory, LSC, to govern the school.

According to Elaine Siegel, attorney for the LSC side, even under CPS's own policy up until 2007, any small or alternative school could decide to have a real, elected LSC. CPS violated its own policy (which has the effect of law) by denying these schools the right to have a real LSC.

Here's just one example. CPS lawyers claimed that Pershing West, in its original application as Mid-South Scholastic School, "asked" to have an advisory council. Yet, the Board report states clearly that the school would have a transitional board and "thereafter a Local School Council will be established in a timely manner." 

Remember that PURE found a huge gap in accountability in Renaissance 2010 schools. Most schools had no governing body at all, and the ones that did had very few parents involved – less than 5% overall. Our schools need more, not less, community support and monitoring.

Besides the charter schools, which are exempt from LSCs under state charter law, there are between 40 – 50 schools which currently operate without real LSCs. We may have to bring all of them into the case before we're done!