Sort of off topic, but I am a proud Kentuckian today. By now you have heard the governor of my home state of Illinois has been arrested. This is just the latest in a long line of corruption stretching back decades. It is embarrassing.
I have sort of alluded to it before, but I don't miss Illinois politics at all. I never had a ton of experience in it, but going to law school in Illinois and working with the department of education for a couple years was enough for me. When I moved to Indiana it was a totally different story and it is similar here in Kentucky. Here is a post I wrote earlier this year which is worth reading again.
You are never going to get all the politics out of education, but Illinois has taken politics to a whole different level. There is so much politics in Illinois that at some point it becomes only about the politics and power, not about democracy.