My memo to Rahm: Killing Petunia not a good look

Fired Animal Care Director, Susan Russell, left, holds Petunia alongside state Comptroller Susana Mendoza 

Memo to Mayor Rahm Emanuel...Your poll numbers are in the dumper. 23 shot, including 5 children 15 and younger this past weekend. Your administration is ridden with scandal. For the next few months leading up to election time, that video of the Laquan McDonald shooting will be playing over and over again. Black families are leaving the city in droves. Your police Supt. Eddie Johnson claims he has never seen any police misconduct in all his years on the force. Yet he's pushing for a new, $95M cop training academy. This while many schools are in ruins, filthy and disgusting. The sexual abuse scandal at CPS goes all the way to the top. You, your hand-picked school board president, Frank Clark and schools CEO  Janice Jackson all appear culpable. While you still have tons of money to spend on reelection, your main opponents are raising lots of cash from your former patrons. Even some of your closest pals are dropping hints that you may drop out of the race. I could go on.

So what do you do? You fire Animal Care Director Susan Russell, for "warehousing dangerous animals".

Not a good look, Rahm.

You sure you're really up for this campaign?

CPS response to sexual abuse scandal is just what you'd expect

CPS BUTT COVERERS:  Board Pres. Frank Clark, CEO Janice Jackson, and Board V.P. Jaime Guzman

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board have responded to the ongoing CPS sex-abuse scandal in the same ass-covering way we've come to expect. It can be summed up as follows:

• Create another new department in the bloated bureaucracy without any input from community groups or even from their own team.
• Rationalize: "Not our fault. It's always been this way." 
• Throw a couple of principals under the bus with no due process.
• Impose new bureaucratic rules (annual fingerprinting??) that put the onus on teachers and makes them suspect (i.e., meeting one-on-one with their students) and makes it more difficult for them to do their jobs. The Tribune, whose reporters broke the story in the first place, wasted no time in placing equal blame for the scandal on the CTU.
• Do an end run around your own appointed IG.
• Above all, cover the behinds of the mayor, his schools CEO and Board President.

Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security, now says all employees are required to report suspected "grooming" behavior on the part of colleagues. At first I thought she meant whether teachers smelled bad or were having a bad-hair day. But, it obviously means something else. Please give us a checklist of such behaviors, Jadine, so we can turn colleagues in and have them fired immediately.

Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, who is supposed to work with the new department, said Wednesday that he was largely in the dark about the new plan.

"Figuring out how we're going to interface with CPS and the new unit they've started today is what I would have liked to have seen some more details about before today," he said.

After an uproar in the press, Schuler was nominally put in charge of the investigation. But he will remain under the watchful eye of CEO Jackson.

Chamala Jordan, parent to a CPS student, said the announcement left her confused.

"As a parent, honestly, those things were told to us that they were in place. So to create or construct a whole new entity, that was supposed to be in place already, doesn't really make sense to me," she said. 

Jesse Sharkey, CTU Veep

"While tutoring a student alone in your room puts you under a cloud of suspicion, I think we have to be concerned about what that would mean for the work that we do as educators."

Sharkey also raised doubts about the new department's origins. The formation of the office was developed with Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor who is overseeing the comprehensive review of CPS policies as state inspector general.

"The bottom line reaction is that I'm surprised by this and I don't trust its political independence," Sharkey said.

RYH calls for Pres. Clark to "step down".

Jennie Biggs, CPS parent and Raise Your Hand (RYH) Communications Director.

President Clark and his predecessors were briefed on rampant reports of sexual abuse in our schools over time and did NOT act to ensure this situation was better managed, and did NOT demand that procedures and policies were implemented beyond very basic and clearly insufficient mandated reporter trainings.

 We do not know how much Frank Clark or David Vitale or those before shared with respective board members, but we do know that they knew and did nothing.

Sure, some individual teachers, principals and staff are also complicit.

BUT YOU hold the keys to district policy making, and YOU did not act, YOU did not do your jobs, YOU did not ensure schools were being trained, and you should step down and admit that you are part of a flawed system of school governance that has no checks and balances.

Chicago Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot on Hitting Left

If you look at what's been happening in the Chicago Public School system, especially this past six or seven years, you see epic failure after epic failure. You can't have a good, well-run public school system when you have five CEOs in the last seven years...Yes, I do support an elected school board. -- Hitting Left 

The bailout of Exelon nukes comes right out of the schools

Jobs creators -- 30 years after the nuclear meltdown, the Great Arch at Chernobyl is finally completed.

Natasha Korecki in this morning's IL Playbook: 

It’s probably fitting that the Legislative veto session concluded Thursday with just about everyone going nuclear. Gov. Bruce Rauner dropped the first bomb by vetoing a Chicago Public Schools bill that blows a $215 million hole into the school’s budget... Then there were the actual nukes. A bitterly divisive Legislature came together to pass a massive bailout of two unprofitable nuclear plants...

Almost the exact amount...

The measure provides Exelon with $235 million a year as a reward for the carbon-free energy its nuclear reactors produce — a prize Exelon argued it was just as entitled to as the "clean" energy producing wind and solar industries. Without the money — financed by an increase in electric rates — the company threatened to close nuclear plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities.

Yes, "carbon-free." Tell it to the people of Fukushima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island.  Yes, a taxpayer bailout for nuclear giant Exelon, who raked in $29.45B in revenue last year. Yes, another assault on teacher pension funds.

CPS Board Pres. Frank Clark.

So there you have it. An even swap. Nukes for schools. A win-win for former Exelon CEO Frank Clark who now is president of Chicago's Board of Education and even has a privately-run Noble charter school named after him, as does current Exelon CEO, John Rowe, and Rauner himself.

I'm sure Democrats in the Legislature and environmental lobbyists believe they did the best they could. I might agree with them on the school budget. This was the work of our Trumpian governor and his fellow Republicans, buoyed up by Trump's victory last month. And Dems no longer have a veto-proof majority in Springfield (not that Boss Madigan was ever strong enough to use it when they did).

I'm sure IL Dems (even the progressives) will tell us that rates would have gone up or that they saved some jobs that would have been lost if they voted NO. That's questionable. Nuke plant closings are labor-intensive and take years. But giant taxpayer bailouts of unprofitable nukes (like private prisons) are not a solution to structural unemployment. The towns around the nukes all suffer from high unemployment and Exelon doesn't hire many unskilled workers. DeWitt County and Quad Cities unemployment remains higher than the national average despite the presence of the nuke plants. Maybe that's because of massive cuts to school budgets and the laying off of thousands of teachers and school staff and social workers statewide. There's also no guarantee that these plants will stay open long after the bailout or that layoffs won't happen.

I'm sure Dems and even some environmental groups like the People's Lobby, will say that I don't understand realpolitik and will explain how they managed to finagle millions in green money into the bill for wind and solar R&D and that nukes are cleaner than coal. I guess that's an example of the kind of choices we're faced with these days. A touch of green in exchange for corporate bailouts of potentially devastating nukes and lung-choking, cancerous coal companies (now supported by the Trumpians). Look at this as a follow-up to the Trump scam in IN with Carrier and United Technologies.

Democrats nationally have long been complicit is this charade. It was Pres. Obama who, in 2013, made G.E. Chairman Jeffery Immelt, a Republican, his top outside economic adviser as head of the now-defunct Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. G.E., the largest corporation in the U.S., a giant in the nuke industry, and a company that rakes in about $15 billion/yr., yet pays not a penny in U.S. taxes. They're also a big underwriter of corporate-style school reform. Funny how things work out that way.

It's lose-lose for the people of IL, especially children and parents of CPS and the rest of us living downwind from the leaky and dilapidated nukes.

WHERE IS THE HUMAN SERVICES BAILOUT? -- The National Association of Social Workers released this statement: “We commend the hard work put into the bailout for a corporation who posted a 2.27 billion profit last year, but humbly ask where is the bailout for the human service sector providers who are running up large amounts of debt to cover the state’s commitments? … We applaud the environmental groups who are getting entirely new spending on green initiatives through a ComEd rate increase, but inquire from the general assembly where is the bailout to pay for the spending for contracts that human service providers have already delivered on?”

I would add -- and for schools?

Rahm's hand-picked school board. Where democracy goes to die.

Board Pres. Frank Clark (the man from ComEd), also chaired Rahm's School Closing Commission. 

“Often there are public meetings by the school board and hundreds of people may show up and testify. And the general perception is that the school board doesn’t listen, that the decisions don’t follow the will of the people who come before them, the teachers, the parents, the community.” -- Dick Simpson

For the past three years, parents and community members have been complaining about the board's policy of making people sign-up for the limited 2-minute speaking spots at board meetings, a full week before the agenda is posted.

When complaints were filed with Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s (potential candidate for governor) office, that the policy violated the state’s open meetings act, Madigan agreed. On April 13 she sent a letter to CPS, saying the requirement “unreasonably restricts the public’s statutory right to address the Board.”

Her letter seems to have gotten a rise out of Board Pres. Frank Clark (ComEd/Excelon) who now will allow those wishing to speak tosign-up on line (www.cpsboe.org), at 10:30 a.m. on the Monday before each board meeting, a full half-hour after the meeting agenda has been posted.

Now for the first time in years, citizens will be able to speak -- wait for it -- directly in response to matters being voted on at the board meeting. Hallelujah!

But the question still remains. Is anyone listening.

Clark was so pleased with himself, he could pee. He lauded his own “steps to bolster public engagement” that include online tools to make appointments with board members and equal speaking time for non-English speakers — which followed a Sun-Times story about Spanish speakers denied more time to allow for simultaneous interpretation.

S-T's Lauren Fitzpatrick writes:

Board members also will begin holding informal office hours at schools instead of just downtown, starting the appointments at Earle Elementary School next week.

But unlike his predecessor, Clark has yet to hold a meeting after business hours out at a community school rather than at CPS’ downtown headquarters. And he has not yet ruled on suggestions to open up board briefings so the public can watch the mayor’s handpicked board members ask questions and challenge district staff before casting typically unanimous votes to approve CPS recommendations.

“Posting the public agenda before registration opens will allow community members to make informed decisions about their participation in meetings, which should foster more productive and focused meetings,” Clark said in a press release.

He might have added, ,,,which is why we have avoided doing it until now.

The real purpose behind this "reform" appears to be an attempt to slow down or head-off the push for a representative elected school board, which is gaining support in Springfield. Another purpose may be to make things easier for charter school proponents to mobilize support for more privately-run charters whenever that topic is on the agenda.

To Rahm's appointed head-nodding board members, it never really mattered what speakers had to say anyway. Board votes are merely all pro-forma and unanimous, with direction coming right from the 5th floor at City Hall through CEO Forrest Claypool, and certainly not from the gallery.

Claypool will run Rahm's Clark St. Operation. Otherwise known as CPS.

At a news conference with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, CTA President Forrest Claypool talks about making the Red Line trains run on time.. (Sun-Times photo)

Okay, so it looks like the hated David Vitale is out and ComEd/Excelon nukes guy Frank Clark is in as Rahm's hand-picked school board chief. And Rahm's faithful sidekick Forrest Claypool replaces Byrd-Bennett and interim Jesse Ruiz as the 6th schools CEO in 6 years.

For those who don't know Clark, he was the head of the commission that managed the secret list of supposedly "underutilized" schools and made the recommendations leading to the closing of 49 neighborhood public schools, mainly in the city's black community. He also did the suspect deal  with the Civic Consulting Alliance—a politically connected group of private business consultants linked to the pro-charter group New Schools For Chicago  -- to run the work of the same school-closing commission.

He's so into privately-run charter schools, he even had a Noble charter named after him (a la Gov. Rauner). It stands as a monument to his and Excelon's stewardship over the privatization of public space.

I thought Fran Spielman's reference to Claypool, back in April, as Rahm's "wartime consigliere" was appropriate.

He's the Clark in Rowe/Clark Charter

Having had it up to here with Broad Academy careerist education types --  J.C. Brizard and Byrd-Bennett -- and apparently steering clear of the Tribune's recommended "Mussolini" type, the Mayor has moved his fixer Claypool over from City Hall to run his Clark Street operation, otherwise known as CPS. Forget about national searches, public input, City Council review and all that small-d democratic crap. This is war.

Claypool can hit the ground running since he's already marshaling the CTU contract negotiations while doing damage control around the various federal investigations and grand jury hearings over UNO charter corruption and no-bid contract kick-backs. Claypool btw, is the master of privatization and no-bid contracting from his days as Daley's chief of staff as well as his running the park district and the CTA for Rahm. Remember the 2012 fiasco with Bombardier?  I do.

He's also got to be the guy who can cut the grand bargain agreement between Rahm, Madigan, Cullerton and Rauner to bail out district and find some short and long-term revenue (that means taxes, folks) to make pension payments and hopefully save the system from collapse.

I'm trusting that teachers, parents, the CTU, SEIU and the rest of us won't be just spectators while this grand bargain is made at our expense.

At the risk of repeating myself, Rahm's choosing another white, male Paul Vallas/Ron Huberman (Arne Duncan?) prototype manager as opposed to another traditional ed bureaucrat as schools CEO will matter little as far as teachers, parents and students are concerned.  So long as the schools CEO works solely at the pleasure of a mayor who has autocratic power over the schools, the change means little more than putting a ribbon on a donkey.

We need an elected school board and a taxing system that's fair.