Before the days of Reading First, and NCLB, and all the fraudulent “reforms” that came to education, you had initiatives for site-based decision making and having more democratic input from stakeholders (parents, teachers, etc.) These came because of initiatives started by our unions. Now school site councils are a rubber-stamp for decisions made at district hq, which are based mainly on the input of handful of consultants selling the “new” thing. Things were not perfect, but they were heading in the direction we’ve always wanted from our schools, being a community resource and a democratic institution, not job training centers for future workers. School can be so much more than that. They once were. They could be again.