Primary elections are coming up in Illinois. One office on the ballot you might not know much about is the Regional Superintendent of Schools. It’s the state’s only partisan, elected education role. WNIJ education reporter Peter Medlin spoke with Mark Klaisner to explain. He’s the president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools.
Peter Medlin (PM): What are the main responsibilities of a regional superintendent?
Mark Klaisner (MK): Primarily, in statute, we have three responsibilities in our office. One is around professional learning, and, for most people, you think about ‘Teacher Institute Day.’ The second one is around safety. We actually inspect all 4,000 schools in the state of Illinois to make sure that they are physically safe, but then we also do compliance around procedures and policies. The third strand is supporting students. For many years, that was pretty much the truancy officer role; we've expanded that. My role, as an individual, is to enact those three things with the districts in my charge.
(PM): I know that regional offices also do a lot around teacher licensing and McKinney Vento Act work with homeless students as well, right?
(MK): We do. I think for many people, that's what they know us for. ‘That's where I go and get my license renewed.’ But we have full-time staff at all of our offices. They're there to support teachers in those endeavors. McKinney-Vento is another piece of the work that we're charged with.
(PM): Is this a role that exists in every state? Is it something that some states have and some don't?
(MK): Each of the 50 states has some version of our offices. Since our state has so many school districts, 864, we have so many more offices than many others.
(PM): How many regional offices are there now?
(MK): 38.
(PM): in some states, the state superintendent is an elected position. It's not in Illinois; it's an appointed role. Local superintendents are not elected, but voters do get to pick regional superintendents. Do you know why that is?
(MK): There are only three states in the country where regional superintendents are elected: Arizona, California, and Illinois. The history is that our offices are county offices of education, which were constituted in 1865 at the same time county structures were designed. As you know, sheriffs, coroners, clerks — all of those are elected positions. Interestingly, we are actually partisan elected officials. Our school boards across the state of Illinois are nonpartisan. They don't run on a particular party ticket, but the regional superintendents [do]. That goes back to the way Illinois set up its structure years ago.
(PM): Are these elections often competitive? I was just looking in most counties around our area in northern Illinois, and I saw pretty much only one person on the ballot, either a Republican or a Democrat, depending on the county. Are there some cases where these do get to be competitive elections?
(MK): They are not frequently contested. One thing that's strange about our offices is all 38 offices are up for election every four years.
(PM): Oh, so they all go up [for election] at the same time?
(MK): Exactly, all 38. We're in the thick of that time now. I've been doing this work for about 14 years now, and, in a given cycle, there would be four or five contested races across the state out of 38.
(PM): How can voters evaluate whether their current regional superintendent is doing a good job? For people who want to do some research before they vote, what are the main issues they should look at? Where can they find more information?
(MK): In general, if you want to look across the state, our website is IARSS.org, Illinois Association of Regional superintendents of schools. My advice would be that they Google their own county and regional superintendent. The local office will have a list of all the kinds of things they're doing. Because we are compliance based, there are things we can help with in terms of complaints, hearings, things we can help community members with as well as supporting school districts. If you quickly Google your own county and regional superintendent, it'll give you a link to their page, and you can learn specifically what's happening right in your backyard.
