Legislators and Governor Quinn created the charter commission in 2010, after receiving pressure from boosters who didn’t think districts outside of Chicago were approving enough charter schools.
The leading legislative backer for the commission was state senator Heather Steans, a north-side Democrat whose banking family has championed charter schools for years. Her sister, Robin Steans, is the executive director of Advance Illinois, an influential organization of charter school boosters.
I called Senator Steans for comment, but she didn’t respond.
The commission has overturned the Chicago school board once—in 2013, when it reversed the board’s decision to reject a charter for Concept, the organization that operates the Chicago Math and Science Academy in Rogers Park.
That’s the school whose leaders fired a teacher who was eight months pregnant after she tried to organize the faculty into a union. The union sued the school, which eventually agreed to pay the teacher $40,000 while admitting no wrongdoing.
The Chicago school board denied Concept’s request to open campuses in McKinley Park and Lincoln Square, concluding that its application was incomplete. But the state commission overturned the board, ruling that new Concept schools are in the best interest of the students the board is “designed to serve.”
Presuming, of course, those students never want to organize a union.