When Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new Chicago Board of Education swings into action, it should not mark the occasion with a private dinner.
The members should have breakfast together in any of several thousand elementary school classrooms. There, they will get a glimpse of the mess they have inherited. Bring antacids and a nutritionist.
A Breakfast in the Classroom program approved by their predecessors is completing its mandatory rollout. All that can be said with certitude is that it has shortened instructional time in a system with the shortest school day and year of the nation’s 50 largest districts.