Small Businesses have spent the last two years downsizing and looking at ways to be more effiecent. Maybe our schools need to also.

In response to the story: Pat Quinn Wants to Get His Hands on Your School
A commercial jingle from day's past comes to mind here. " You asked for it, you got it,,, Toyota! " Only in this case it's Quinn! To those people who voted this Buffoon in, and are now whining..
" Ye reap what ye sow " .

Maybe it's all of the fat-cat superintendents with their 6-figure salaries that are worried. We need to cut expenses now. I would rather see hundreds of administrators go than hundreds of teachers.

Many of the school districts, including the one I live in, are top-heavy and at the same time cutting back. The "No Child Left Behind" crock is to blame for much of the lack of funding but Illinois is the main culprit, and rather than consolidating (read: closing) districts and schools they should be looking to cutting back on adminstration, lower the pay of superintendents and their assistants when their contracts expire and PUTTING MONEY INTO programs and educational material.

Imagine a school district as a Fortune 500 company.......who gets paid the most? The CEO's and CFO's, the ones who run the company and are responsible when things go wrong. Administrators at the schools deserve a decent salary, as do teachers. The whole system is a mess but consolidating districts into county schools are not the way to fix it. It makes me wonder where in cook county my child may end up going to school?!

Consolidation needs to be examined by outside parties who have the objective skills to see where the cuts need to be made and how the children can be best served. Local districts are spending way too much money on administration and superintendents, and local school boards have proven themselves to be ineffective cliques unable to properly manage the business of education. Cutting the need for superintendents in half will help bring their pay into line with their contribution. Their salaries and benefits packages have run amuck; I look forward to the state developing salary guidelines or an infrastructure that can establish appropriate pay levels so that more funds are spent in educating our children.

Chicken, if you want to talk politics on this particular comment log, focus on Illinois, which owes school districts millions and millions of dollars. And how the income tax hike is not going to cut into that for one red cent, since it's spent for the next 15 years already.

Marie, that would be an ideal situation, but as political as school districts are intrinsically, and as hot as the political fires roar in this state, it most likely won't happen. Salary guidelines, which amount to caps, would have to pass muster with the unions as well as the law of supply and demand and I doubt that's going to happen either.

Marie, very true! As poorly as the Chicago Public Schools have performed, at least they've had some leadership that was willing to implement changes. I guess I can complain about Illinois not paying its bills till I'm blue in the face, but facts are facts and in order to survive and thrive the Illinois educational honchos (in Springfield and at school board/adminstration levels) need to be creative and willing to sacrifice rather than taking the easy way out and lopping schools.

The problem is that while everyone bickers, the children are left behind. We need to push the voucher program. This way parents can take that voucher to any school. This way all of the schools have to compete for the voucher (money). This will spurn competition for the vouchers. The schools will have to get better or be forced out of business. The winners will be the children. We are very fortunate to live in the best country in the world. I cannot believe that other countries are producing smarter children and our country is so behind. Our children is our future. Our lawmakers better wake up soon.

I have to doubt that anything concerning vouchers can be passed into law without including the private schools. This idea was pretty hot about 15 years ago as I recall. And the big objection at grass roots level was that tax payers could conceivably be supporting private schools, schools not always of their own religious affiliation.