A group of parents have begun what they are calling a “Parents Union” to push for improvement in Chicago’s public schools. You can read about it at Parents hope to form a more perfect union in dealing with CPS.

It’s particularly impressive to me because its focus is to improve public schools, and is not allied with private groups that want to create charters, which is the focus of a similarly named parents group in Los Angeles.

All I know about the group is what the newspaper article says. It sounds like it’s a completely independent group, which may make it difficult to sustain over the long-term. I spent nineteen years as an organizer working to build “organizations of organizations” for a number of reasons, including because of the long-term problems involved in creating new groups. Bringing like-minded organizations together that have been around for awhile provides financial stability and relationship “glue” that can help with sustainability.

But, whatever their situation is, I hope the Parents Union has success!