|
|
The first question John J. Gilligan, former governor of Ohio, gets when he tells people he’s running for Cincinnati School Board is, “Why?” Why get back into elective politics at age 78? Why risk his legacy as governor, congressman and city councilman? Why the school board of all things?
Gilligan laughs when asked that question yet again in his office at the University of Cincinnati School of Law. He relates a story about when an old friend of his from Columbus heard he’d announced his school board candidacy.
“She called to ask what was going on with all these retired politicians,” he says. ” ‘President Bush skydives on his 75th birthday, John Glenn gets shot back into space, Bob Dole is pitching Viagra and you’re running for school board.’ She said she didn’t know who was the craziest one.”
Gilligan is quick to point out that he’s spent half of his adult life in politics and half in education and that he has a “passionate interest” in both fields.
He just happens to be concerned about the failure of the public school system in the United States and, as in the past, can’t stand on the sidelines.
“When you boil it down, the real problem in public education is in the urban core,” he says. “Many suburban schools across the country do well, so the problem isn’t the public school concept itself. The urban school problems center around poverty and race, discrimination and segregation.”
In 1975, Gilligan says, Cincinnati’s public schools had 89,000 students, 70 percent of whom were white. Today the system has 47,000 students, with a 70 percent minority enrollment. White flight to suburban schools has left Cincinnati with a public school system more segregated than it was in the 1950s, he says.
“The schools’ problems are reflective of larger social problems, but no one wants to talk about that,” Gilligan says. “So we blame the problems on the teachers union or on the crumbling school buildings. … But you can’t fix the schools by just fixing the schools.”
His political background, his experience and his age will stand him in good stead on the school board, Gilligan figures, because he can help address these sticky problems and not worry about stepping on the toes of the “powers that be.”
“People can’t be expected to solve complex problems they don’t understand,” he says. “The board has to educate people on these issues.”
Age: 78
Background: Cincinnati City Council, 1953-64, 1967-68; U.S. House of Representatives, 1965-66; Governor of Ohio, 1971-75; University of Notre Dame, professor of law and government, 1979-91; University of Cincinnati School of Law, visiting lecturer, 1991-present.
What is your stance on charter schools? Do you think by allowing competition among schools for student enrollment will better CPS?
Gilligan says he is against charter schools in their current form.
“Charter schools may have a role in our overall education system, as sort of a boutique school,” he says. “But they have to be under the direction and control of the local school district, not the state as it is now, so as not to compete with the local system.”
The idea of competition between schools is an analogy that business leaders find appealing, he says, but it’s not what education is all about. “We’re not selling something, selling competing products. We’re educating children. It’s an exceedingly difficult and complex issue.”
Gilligan says private schools have always been available for gifted or advanced children. But the concept of pulling the best and brightest students out of public schools to enroll them in publicly financed charter schools will only lead to the disintegration of Cincinnati’s public school system.
How will per-student budgeting work if CPS wants to maintain low student-teacher ratios?
Per-student budgeting sounds like an idea borrowed from the world of retail sales, Gilligan says. It’s too simplistic and, echoing his major campaign theme, doesn’t deal with the real world.
“It just doesn’t cost the same to educate a child with a Hyde Park background and a child with a West End background,” he says. “To pretend otherwise is to ignore the truth.”
Do you have any new ideas to help improve CPS? Explain specifically.
“A real concerted effort needs to be made to make the school board’s business the people’s business,” Gilligan says.
If elected, he says, he will strive to move the board toward representing the people of Cincinnati and away from rubber-stamping the school administration. Board meetings are open to the public but deal with little more than administrative details, he says, which keeps most parents and concerned citizens away.
“I went to a meeting a few weeks ago when the board disagreed with the administration’s recommendations about charter schools,” he says. “Afterwards, people were upset that the board didn’t back up the administration. But that’s what got us in this situation in the first place.”
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 1999.