If Rahm intended to run for re-election on CPS progress, his campaign may be over before it's begun

Rahm Emanuel is beginning to look like a politician whose re-election campaign may be on the brink of collapse before it's even officially begun. His political achilles heel surprisingly turns out to be his autocratic control over Chicago Public Schools. Most everyone thought his greatest vulnerability would be his cover-up of the Laquan McDonald police killing.

What should have been his strong suit, running as an "education mayor," is now buried in a volcanic lava flow of school privatization, corruption, inequality, and dysfunction.

His new schools CEO, Janice Jackson, the fifth CEO in six years, has gone from looking like a source of hope for change, to being little more than Rahm's political functionary, in just a few months, even fronting for the mayor in commercials touting the progress at CPS, bankrolled by a nonprofit with close ties to MRE.

Instead of talking about alleged increases in standardized test scores and graduation rates, the mayor could spend the next eight months leading up to the election dodging questions about the mountain of scandals piling up at CPS.

These include hundreds of recently revealed cases of sexual assault and abuse of students over the past decade, cases that were ignored or covered up by CPS' law department and the mayor.

My alderman, Scott Waguespack (32nd), put it bluntly:

“This is about more than politics, it’s a core issue of our humanity. We’re calling for a City Council hearing on what the Tribune found. Every alderman should be demanding to have CPS there and the mayor’s people, too. He’s the boss. Emanuel is the mayor.”

Then there's new reports of mountains of filth and vermin in the schools since custodial services were privatized by Rahm and former CEO Forrest Claypool, who resigned in December after being charged with "ethics violations."

The Sun-Times reports that SodexoMAGIC and Aramark Corporation have received nearly $800 million in contracts to privatize school engineers and custodians and bust their union. Coincidentally, SodexoMAGIC made an extraordinary campaign contribution of $250,000 to Emanuel. And Aramark has charged CPS with over $20 million in cost overruns.

U of C Lab School fired Aramark over mouse droppings

Chicago Public Schools officials have now agreed to give $259 million in additional work to Aramark. They will be handed control of all facilities work at most of Chicago’s schools on July 1, according to its contract, which CPS officials tried to keep under wraps.

The irony of all this is that the University of Chicago Lab School, the expensive private school where elites like the mayor and former Ed Sec. Arne Duncan send their kids, just gave Aramark the boot after finding mice droppings in school food. Looks like mouse poop is only OK for other people's children.

There's more, so much more, including pay-to-play scandals involving Rahm's hand-picked board members like Deborah Quazzo, who colluded with former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now doing time in prison, to enrich herself at the expense of the schools.

If Rahm had any intentions of building his campaign on his running of CPS, it's looking more and more like his campaign is over before it's begun.

Toxic CPS culture starts at the top

Gift cards for reward and punishment

What happens when you make the public school system a wing of Chicago City Hall, arguably the greatest symbol of corruption in this country's history? Answer: You end up with a toxic culture of corruption that filters down throughout the system.

The latest example has to do with the misuse (theft?) by school administrators of thousands of dollars in school-purchased gift cards that were supposed to be used as incentives to get students to come to school and take their standardized tests more seriously.

According to the IG's report:

Between January 2013 and December 2016, CPS schools, network offices and central office departments spent about $250,000 to buy 7,462 gift cards, according to the report. The cards were often bought as incentives for good student performance or attendance.

The report describes the purchase of the cards as wasteful, noting that they come at a high cost.

“Vendors that sell gift cards to CPS are essentially selling cash but they charge significant processing and service fees on top of the value of the gift cards,” the report states. “Those fees have been, on average, 18 percent markups on the gift cards purchased since January 1, 2013.”

The report also details the widespread practice of using the gift cards to “circumvent the district’s prohibition on the use of petty cash.”

As you might expect, this latest corruption scandal targeted teachers and principals only. Several were fired or reprimanded. It all reminded me of the Atlanta test cheating scandal where only African-American teachers went to prison. Top administrators pressured teaches to produce higher test scores or risk being fired paid not penalty.

In a similar vein, the IG found several “high-level” central office employees violated district policy by living outside of the city.

“The violations by high-level central office employees are particularly concerning given that CPS regularly terminates the employment of low-level employees for such violations,” the report states.

The Sun-Times reports:

In an emailed statement, CPS spokesman Michael Passman said, officials “appreciate” the inspector general’s office for “identifying employees who have not upheld the values of our district, particularly when their actions deprive students.”

Yes you heard Passman right -- "the values of our district..." But he carefully avoids any mention of the mayor or his appointed district leaders for their roles in this latest corruption scandal or for promoting the culture of corruption at CPS.

For those who've been sleeping, CPS has gone through 8 different mayor-appointed CEOs in the past 9 years. Of the last two, one is in prison on fraud and corruption charges, the second was recently forced to resign amid more corruption charges.

Nobody in the media is even questioning this basic form of bribery that lays the foundation for cheating and corruption of both educators and students. This testing madness with it's winners and losers, rewards and punishments for students, teachers and administrators, breeds corruption and cheating at every level of the system.

Why pay students or families with restaurant gift cards to come to school take tests? Who at the top, thinks this is a good idea? Where's the research to support bribery or even so-called "merit pay" as a successful education tool? And why would they think that this wouldn't lead to more corruption within the system?

Getting rid of the culture of corruption is a long, hard struggle. But the best place to start is by separating CPS from City Hall, ending this autocratic mayor's control of the schools, and establishing a democratically elected school board.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CTU V.P. Jesse Sharkey on Claypool

“His own arrogance did him in...Because, in his mind, there was no such thing as unethical as long as it applied to him.” -- Sun-Times

Ald. Sue Sadlowski-Garza on hearing news of Claypool resignation

“I shouted out the F-bomb when the mayor’s office called me, like ‘F yeah!’ ” said 10th Ward Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, a CTU member and a school counselor of 22 years. -- Chicago Tribune 

Ben Joravsky 

 With the Cortland TIF, it seems as if Christmas has come early for Amazon. It's Rahm's way of saying "I love you, Jeff Bezos." Of course, the mayor's generosity would be backed by money that could otherwise go to dead-broke public schools. -- Reader

Barack Obama on rising fascist threat

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly." --  Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago

Paul Ryan

Providing free lunch to hungry school children gives them a "full stomach and an empty soul".  -- Time

Roy Moore 

Getting rid of amendments after 10th would "eliminate many problems." -- CNN

Mayor, #CPS Board Pres, Forrest Claypool refuse questions after Claypool resigns. More like retirement send-off than resignation @cbschicago pic.twitter.com/AKy36wWzTt

— Dana Kozlov (@DanaCBS2) December 8, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Harold died 30 years ago. 

To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox ("Protest" 1914 poem)

 Forrest Claypool (Doing his best Jeff Sessions)

“However differently I recalled my past conversation, the documents you shared with me this week make it clear I did do that." -- Sun-Times

Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

...noted the city’s history as the industrial centre of the south and the related rise of trade unionism. “What made Alabama different from other deep south states is that it did have this pesky progressive tradition."

For the state to have gone through so much agony and now be in this position is “deeply heartbreaking”, McWhorter added, describing Alabama as something of a bellwether for the nation. “Looking back at George Wallace, we thought he was a fading and terrible relic, but he’s now in the White House, effectively. After Trump, we’re all Alabamans now.” -- The Guardian

Rev. Dr. William Barber

This is not Christianity. Rather, it is an extreme Republican religionism that stands by party and regressive policy no matter what. It's not the gospel of Christ, but a gospel of greed. It is the religion of racism and lies, not the religion of redemption and love. -- NBC News 

Fritz Kaegi

Fritz Kaegi

Within Chicago, we have a lot of cynicism ("Oh, this is just the way the system is and that's the way it's always been") but people in the rest of the country who see what we see, they see an anomaly. They see a problem. They can't quite believe it's like this. And it's become a national story. -- Hitting Left

Joshua Tepfer, attorney for victims of Chicago police corruption

“This group of police officers led by Sgt. Watts had been doing this for 10 years; corruption on this scale is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s truly astounding. This represents great hope for the future of our county.” -- Sneed

 David Figlio, economist at Northwestern University

"I think the best evidence from the best recent research ... if anything, it looks like that maybe kids going to private school on voucher programs might do worse in reading and math than they do in public [schools]," -- Edweek

Taking the deduction away from school teachers who pay out of pocket for supplies for their students, but including this. Vile. https://t.co/DZbSGIlmh1

— Adam Scott (@mradamscott) November 17, 2017

Fact-checking the checkers on miraculous CPS test score bump

Stanford researcher Sean Reardon conflated test scores with learning. 

I don't trust meteoric rises in student test scores or graduation rates. I didn't buy George Bush'"Texas Miracle" or Arne Duncan's "Chicago Miracle". I don't want to bust anyone's bubble, but there is no "magic sauce" leading to such miraculous gains. If there was, everyone would be eating it.

Neither do I accept the idea that student learning can be accurately or usefully measured by high-stakes standardized testing. More on that later.

Chicago's Better Government Association (BGA) just fact-checked the claim that “CPS students are learning and growing faster than 96% of students in the United States.” I'm glad somebody checked. But unfortunately the BGA got it only partly right and ended up joining CPS in conflating test score gains with learning.

Thank you,BGA, for pointing out that CPS leaders were cherry-picking the results of a recent Stanford study  reporting miraculous test score gains. Unfortunately, they confined their fact-checking to the study's own limited, narrow use of test data and therefore missed the forest (no Claypool pun intended) for the trees.

BGA fact checkers missed the forest for the trees.

The Stanford study shows CPS students making the fastest academic progress of the 100 largest school districts in the country. But even the researchers aren't quite sure how or why that happened or what to make of it all. For one thing, the gains are uneven across the grades. For another, they are percentage gains, and use a metric that can be interpreted in many ways.

Let me use a baseball analogy to explain. A batter strikes out his first 8 times at bat. Then he gets two hits, thereby raising his pitiful batting average from zero to .200, a 200-point increase in just one game. It's the fastest rise of any of his teammates. But at the end of the day, he's still a weak .200 hitter and will likely soon be sent down to the minors to work on his batting stroke.

In other words, rapid percentage increases often mean that the counting began and ended in a very low place. That's the most credible interpretation of the Stanford/CPS study.

According to the BGA:

CPS’ fast-paced gains were assessed in a report prepared recently by Sean Reardon, a professor of education inequality at Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis.

By comparing Chicago Public Schools students’ scores on standardized tests to those of students nationally, Reardon found that the scores of CPS students in grades three through eight improved more from 2009-14 than did the average scores of all U.S. students during that time.

But, asks the BGA,

Improvement aside, how does CPS’ overall academic performance stack up against the rest of the country? Here, the picture was not as rosy. Third- through eighth-graders in the nation’s third-largest district still perform at roughly one half to one-and-a-half grade levels below the national average, which the report describes as a “significant concern.” 

In short, CPS test scores started low, may have improved rapidly, but remain subpar. District leaders, however, were jubilant about the report, even though earlier in the week, the state released scores from the PARCC test it has administered for the past few years, showing that barely more than one in four CPS elementary students can read, write and do math at grade level. CPS officials have refused many requests to discuss those scores.

But I will.

By looking only at standardized test scores, Reardon's study is limited in the insights it can offer as to  whether or not real progress is taking place at CPS. Dramatic increases or sudden drops in test scores could be the result of many things, completely unrelated to any change in district policies or anything new going on in the classroom. For example, they could be driven by a dangerous overemphasis on test prep or a dramatic loss of student population.

Reardon's team never set foot in a CPS classroom.

CPS' student population has decreased by nearly a hundred thousand as more than a quarter-million mostly-black Chicagoans left the city over the past few decades. Many of these children in the out-migration were likely among CPS' poorest and most academically challenged students. This alone could account for the increase in scores, since standardized test scores have been shown to more closely align with parent incomes that with any district policies or professional development strategies.

Stanford researcher Reardon doesn't believe this is the case since

"...the consistency across race as well as similar growth on a nationally administered no-stakes NAEP test convinced him that CPS’ growth was real and not from a demographic shift in students or from holding lots of kids back a grade."

It may have convinced him, but not me. Test score growth may be real. But what does it really show?

As for consistency across race, CPS remains 93% students of color going to mostly segregated schools. Even if test scores increase across race, the gap across race and class remains intact. Inequality is merely reproduced. Not exactly a recipe for increased learning or for educational equity. As for the similar gains in the more highly-regarded NAEP exam, they could also be connected to changes in demographics.

CPS Chief Education Officer Janice Jackson attributes the gains to staffers now "using data to guide instruction", and principals being "empowered to lead schools." You'd think she would have at least tossed a bone to the district's classroom teachers, especially those in special ed, who have been working overtime, with reduced staff and severe district program cuts.

Stovall & Radinsky

Even if the test-score gains are real, this doesn't mean that authentic student learning has improved. As UIC prof and CReATE researcher David Stovall put in on our Hitting Left show Friday,

"We're conflating test taking with learning and if you remove thousands of the poorest students who are are struggling, why wouldn't you have an increase (in CPS test scores)?

 HL guest Josh Radinsky, another CReATE researcher, called all the focus on test scores a "dangerous discourse." The danger being how you generate higher test scores in Chicago Public Schools by minimizing subject areas that aren't tested. There's also danger in the way these reported test score increases are used to justify bad school reform policy.

Says Radinsky:

We have been trying to get reading and math scores pumped up by artificially stimulating student performance on these bubble tests...Walk into any school in Chicago and ask, what are you doing in social studies right now. Social studies has been eviscerated by the focus on test scores. This is one example among many and we can talk about music and art. Teachers who love their kids and teach their hearts out every day are put into this straitjacket of test prep. 

I'm going to save my last point for a future post. But here it is in short. If in fact, dramatically rising test scores show that Rahm/Claypool/Jackson reform policies are working and that increased student learning has brought CPS to number-one in the race to the top, then why did the mayor support the recently-passed voucher bill to grease the exit of students from public to private schools?


Meanwhile in the burbs...While parents and students in mainly white, wealthy, high-scoring suburban districts decry the debilitating pressure resulting from high-stakes testing, CPS continues to mandate more and more testing along with more time spent on test prep.

The Tribune reports:

Parents are sending their kids to therapeutic day schools at hospitals that treat adolescent mental health issues. Teachers are changing their curriculum to factor in students' anxiety and stress. And kids are facing what they say is a constant, grinding strain throughout their academic careers. 

"There is a double-edged sword. We want kids to challenge themselves, but not at the expense of their mental well-being," said Emily Polacek, a social studies teacher at Hinsdale South High School in west suburban Darien.

Despite moratorium on school closings, CPS still at it

Maybelline why can't you be true?
You've started back doin' the things you used to do
-- Chuck Berry

Like Maybelline in the Chuck Berry classic, Rahm Emanuel and his lieutenants, Forrest Claypool and Janice Jackson just can't seem to be true. They just keep on doing the things they used to do -- like closing neighborhood schools populated mainly by African-American children. Only now, instead of taking the heat for the closings, they're claiming that the "community" made them do it.

Why can't you be true?

CPS continues to try and wiggle around it's own five-year school closing moratorium imposed in 2013 after massive protests in response to the closing of a record 50 schools, mainly in African-American neighborhoods. Rahm's hand-picked board (this has to change) has found new ways to close a few more, and are about to shut down four high schools in Englewood after agreeing to replace them with a brand new $75 million school. They claim it's all because of dwindling enrollment as black families continue their massive out-migration from the city.

But actually, the mass closings, along with the closing of health facilities and cuts to city services, have only served to push more poor and people of color out of the city.

Just check out this letter from Claypool/Jackson in response to protests by the Austin schools community, denying there was any talk about school closings in the west side community.

@CTULocal1 didn't @bylaurenfitz write this story 2 wks in a row? #cps still lying to parents. #sad pic.twitter.com/srsE4WOcFP

— Stacy (@stacydavisgates) October 10, 2017

The pair have been implying that the CTU started the school closing rumors to stir up the community. Actually, it was Sun-Times Lauren Fitzpatrick who reported last week that, "proposed rules CPS released late Friday afternoon could allow more unpopular closures after June if they’re proffered by principals, parents or yet-to-be-defined 'community members'". 

NTA visits Rahm's house in Ravenswood

Fitzpatrick reported that meetings had taken place with pols like state Rep. La Shawn Ford and Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) about more school closings. Austin community leaders and activists then responded, making it clear as day that they opposed any more closings.

Mitts has been little more than a Rahm tool when it comes to closing schools in her ward and replacing them with privately-run charters. But Ford and about 30 community members, including the Westside Health Authority, state Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood), the NAACP, and staffers from local schools, including charters, agreed to send a letter to school officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel announcing their unity in demanding no more closures in Austin, which bore the brunt of the last round.

More Fitzpatrick: 

“We agree that no schools should close any more in Austin, can we do that together?” Ford asked at a community meeting Wednesday, prompting all hands to raise. “That’s an accomplishment right there.”

Longtime Austin activist and CPS mom Wanda Hopkins added that “We closed enough schools, we got extra dollars. Leave those schools alone.”

 Dwayne Truss, a member of the Austin Community Action Council, said that “CPS came to several of us to go float the idea of, we’re going to close four schools in order to build this one state of the art elementary school. And it was like, ‘No, if you want to build an elementary school, build an elementary. Why close existing schools? We’ve been there and done this.’”

So there is little doubt that CPS is initiating the new school closing drive. They certainly aren't just sitting back and waiting for "the community" to ask them to close more schools. 

Tomorrow on Hitting Left, along with our in-studio guest, Josh Fox from Indivisible, we will get an updated report from Niketa Brar who's part of the parent/community movement protesting the planned closing of the National Teachers Academy elementary school in the South Loop neighborhood.

On Monday, they took the protest right to Rahm's front door. 

Check out these NTA students, speaking out in defense of their school at yesterday's city council meeting. 

NTA student addresses City Council this morning, fighting for her school. #studentvoice #cpsuccess @WeAreNTA pic.twitter.com/7rUi7656J6

— Raise Your Hand (@ILRaiseYourHand) October 11, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Columnist Mary Mitchell: "But the privileged class doesn’t get to tell the oppressed class how they should react to oppression." -- Sun-Times

Deborah Meier

If it’s such a wonderful idea, democracy, why don’t at least the adults who make up the school operate democratically? Why don’t we provide the time and space so students can witness it and over time can become more and more part of it as they grow older, so by the time they graduate at 18 and are full citizens with the right to vote, they’ve had a long apprenticeship in what it means to be a citizen. -- EdWeek interview 

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis 

 “We should not be surprised by this most recent ethics breach by Claypool and his CPS general counsel, Ronald Marmer. These are not people who care about our public schools or the public trust.” -- Sun-Times 

David Orr & Steve Valles on Hitting Left

Stevie Valles, Exec. Director of Chicago Votes

"We're the most progressive generation in the history of politics". -- Hitting Left

Donald Trump

“These are Alabama values — I understand the people of Alabama. I feel like I’m from Alabama, frankly." -- Washington Post 

Sports writer Rick Morrissey

Calling any player who kneels during the national anthem a “son of a bitch,’’ as Trump did, and doing it in Alabama, as Trump did, is beyond code for “African-American.’’ If he had said “uppity,’’ he wouldn’t have been any clearer. -- Sun-Times

Former NFLer Chris Kluwe 

“Well, I think that the players and the teams are saying that they are not going to be dictated to by a racist, fascist white supremacist who currently occupies the highest place in our government...this is not what America is.” -- CNN

Dolphins safety Michael Thomas started breaking up when talking about Trump calling him "a son of a b!tch." pic.twitter.com/Z4wroPcvzW

— Omar Kelly (@OmarKelly) September 24, 2017

CPS layoffs reveal Rahm's racist duplicity

Once again, Mayor Emanuel has topped Governor Rauner’s ruthlessness towards Chicago’s public school students with his own savage, short-sighted response, by further stripping to the bone schools that he’s forced to function in a climate of civic abandonment and the violence that his neglect has caused. -- CTU Blog

Evidence of the mayor's racist duplicity is mounting as he and his hand-picked schools boss, Forrest Claypool, deliver another gut-wrenching, crippling blow to the mainly black and Latino children, families, educators and workers of Chicago's public schools.

Yesterday came the announcement that CPS was laying off nearly a thousand more staff members including 350 teachers. According to the plan,  600 support staff positions will be eliminated, mostly in high schools. Additionally, 356 teachers will be let go, with 240 at the elementary level and 116 in high schools.

According to Stacy Davis Gates of the Chicago Teachers Union, 362 classroom aides were let go, along with 221 members of SEIU Local 73, which represents special education aides and security guards. Gates thinks more cuts will follow. She predicts that CPS plans for the upcoming school year will lead to the closing of more neighborhood high schools — and the layoffs of African-American and Latino teachers, most of whom are women.

Yes, it's true that the lion's share of the blame for the devastation of public education now taking place statewide, falls on our sociopathic Republican Gov. Rauner who just last week, vetoed the emergency school-funding bill. Then there's a Democratic-Party-dominated legislature, has long been gutless when it comes to making the state's wealthiest shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.

But when it comes to racist duplicity, the buck stops at the fifth floor of City Hall. Why? Because this latest round of cuts, which hits hardest at predominantly African-American and Latino high school students, comes on the heels of Rahm Emanuel's plan to make it more difficult for city students to receive their hard-earned high school diplomas.

The mayor mandates that kids without a job offer or college acceptance can no longer graduate from high school. There's an exception to the new rule. Enlisting in the military can fulfill the graduation requirement which could make CPS the nation's number-one military recruiter of black and brown youth.

Yesterday's layoff of hundreds of staff, follows last year's round of layoffs of 1,000 teachers and staff, including counselors, and will condemn that many more students to academic failure and loss of future college and job prospects. They're losing the very support network needed to help them fulfill the new mandates.

The Washington Post reported last month...

Critics say Emanuel’s idea is an empty gesture that does nothing to address the fact that many teenagers are graduating in ­impoverished, violence-racked neighborhoods with few jobs, or that the most readily accessible community colleges are ill-prepared to meet the needs of first-generation students from low-income families. They also point out that the 381,000-student district laid off more than 1,000 teachers and staff members in 2016, and it is in such difficult financial straits that it struggled to keep its doors open for the final weeks of the school year.

The CTU correctly points out that Rahm’s slash and burn response sets the stage for the closure of dozens of neighborhood high schools and accelerates the exodus of Black and Brown people from the city,

It's time to put an end to Rahm's racist duplicity and his unfunded mandates and put control of the schools into the hands of a popularly-elected school board.

If Chicago could vote, Claypool wouldn't have been CEO in first place.

Marching through the rain yesterday through Chicago Loop. 

Visitors in town yesterday from the west coast were awed by this city's political life. First by the march for immigrant rights and Fight For15 march they encountered on their drive in and second, by the vote of "no confidence" in schools CEO Forrest Claypool, they read about this morning.

The conversation made me recall the reasons I left the warmth, smog, the earthquakes and my beloved Dodgers in L.A. for the frozen winter tundra and steamy summers of the Windy City back in 1968 and then again in 1975.

Yes, I explained, if you miss the protest today, stick around. There will be another tomorrow. This is a vibrant political and cultural community, a union town and a sanctuary city. It was here that candidate Trump met his first major sign of mass resistance, turned a fled the city.

I've grown to love Chicago.

If Chicago could vote, Claypool would not be here. 

THE 99% VOTE OF CTU MEMBERS sent another powerful message both to the mayor and city and state officials, that Chicago teachers are a force to be reckoned with and that his hand-picked CEO has no juice as far as they are concerned.

The vote may give the mayor the excuse he's been looking for to get rid of this, his 3rd CEO and the 7th so far under mayor control began under Daley. We recall how Rahm Emanuel's second CEO, J.C. Brizard was hired after suffering his own vote of no-confidence back in his previous district of Rochester. Rahm and the Civic Committee must have taken that vote as a feather in Brizard's cap and a sign that he wouldn't be afraid to put the hammer down on the CTU and be a buffer for the mayor against political blow-back.

The result was Brizard's botched handling of the 2012 teachers strike leading to Rahm tossing him under the bus and J.C. himself getting back-stabbed by his own former friend and colleague, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. BBB was slipped in through the back elevator to replace Brizard in the contract negotiations. She then went on to close 50 schools four years ago this month. Then she committed fraud, bilking the city's school children out of millions.

She's on her way to prison. Claypool look like he's toast. But we will have to wait til the next election to get rid of Rahm Emanuel.

How will this vote of no confidence play out is anybody's guess. But it's already a win for the CTU, another show of unity in the face of Gov. Rauner's drastic budget cuts and the mayor's own failure to respond beyond making teachers bare the burden of the funding crisis.

It's also an indication of the mass support needed to end the budget crisis and win the right to an elected school board Chicago. If citizens could elect our school board here, Claypool wouldn't have been here in the first place.

Chicago and its public schools have become profit centers for privatizers

I don't think so. 

Under our last two mayors, the city of Chicago and Chicago public schools have become centers of privatization. All public space from parking spaces, to red-light cameras, to trash collection, to the highways and skyways have become fair game for the privatizers.

The move to privatize everything public, to erode all public space and public decision-making comes as a reaction to the real and sometimes manufactured financial and other crises which have shaken cities from New Orleans, Detroit and now Chicago.

The pains of privatization have taken their greatest toll on public education, turning schools into profit centers mired in corruption and waste and impacting everything from the way we teach to the way we test. Relationships between students and their teachers have been torn apart with the massive closing of neighborhood schools and replacing them with networks of privately-managed charters.

Things will only get worse with the election of privateer Donald Trump and the appointment "choice" fanatic Betsy DeVos and Secretary of Education.

The privatization of CPS has been a disaster. It has further expanded racial segregation. It has led to union busting and the degradation of teachers and school staff. Schools under the management of Aramark and SodexoMagic have been left filthy and disgusting. They are also charging CPS $80M to oversee custodial work instead of custodians reporting to school principals through their union at no cost.

Privatization has also meant massive corruption leading to the great SUPES scandal and the conviction of former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett who is on her way to prison.

The latest moves by autocratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked schools chief Forrest Claypool, to expand the privatization of custodial and building management services, has been met with resistance from school principals, parents and labor unions.

One of those unions is local143 of the International Union of Operating Engineers. Union Pres. Bill Iacullo will be our in-studio guest this Friday on Hitting Left. He will be joined by two of the city's top progressive political campaign strategists and communications specialists, Joanna Klonsky and Brian Sleet.

Tune in to Klonsky Bros. Hitting Left Radio, 105.5 FM, streaming live at 11 a.m. on Lumpen Radio.

Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." -- Frederick Douglass

Donald Trump thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive. In one sense (certainly not the one intended) he may be right. Douglass' words, his warning, that if we don't resist oppression, we will get it's full measure, are alive and as relevant today as they were more than a century-and-a-half ago. They were ringing in my head this week as I watched our Trumpian Gov. Rauner veto a bill that would have put $215M back in the schools.

We're now in our third year without a state budget and Rahm Emanuel's schools CEO Forrest Claypool has just announced another $46M in cuts at CPS and I'm asking myself just how much more of this death by 1,000 cuts of public space are we willing or able to endure?

The cuts have created more chaos throughout the system, forcing principals to re-engineer their budgets in the middle of the school year and give up as much as half of discretionary money for textbooks, field trips, technology and hourly workers who staff recess and after school programs. CPS is also cutting $5 million in teacher professional development funds.

As expected, Claypool put all the blame for the cuts on the more-than-deserving, "Trumpian" Rauner. But Claypool, Rahm and the Democratic Party leadership in Springfield have blood on their hands as well. They've acceded to Republican demands for more and more cuts with little more than a whimper, and Sen. Pres. John Cullerton is currently colluding with Rauner in the Grand Plan to loot the pension fund and weaken the unions.

They are also unwilling to tax the state's wealthiest for badly-needed revenues and instead are considering other ways to save money, including shortening the school year. How ironic, considering that Rahm made the unfunded, compulsory longer school day the centerpiece of his first campaign for mayor.

Taking the biggest hits...As I scroll down the list of CPS schools to see which ones are affected the most, something jumps out at me. It's how Claypool wielded his sword in favor of the mayor's pet selective-enrollment high schools, which were hardly touched. Compare for example, Walter Payton (.049% of its budget was cut) or Northside Prep (0.13%)  with Clemente (4.20%) or Juarez (4.14%). Newly opened Dyett, the product of a community hunger strike, took a 5% hit.

I haven't seen the list yet of charter schools. I've read that charters could see their funding cut by a total of $18 million in April to match the spending freeze and furlough days imposed on district-run schools. But charters are also benefiting from outside funding streams that remain inaccessible to most public schools. The also pay their non-union teachers less and push out veteran teachers in favor of less-experienced, lower-paid TFAers.

I know in some cases, I'm comparing apples and oranges here, due to size of the schools and their overall budgets. For example, Lane Tech, the city's largest high school, stands to lose about $890,000, by far the largest of any school. But Lane also had the largest pool of discretionary funds to begin with. Forty other elementary and high schools are targeted for an average of $300,000 for cuts.

But percentages and sizes of cuts are still indicators of the two-tier system of schooling Rahm is building, by attrition and subtraction, here in Chicago, where privately-run charters and selective-enrollment continue to supplant community-based schools according to policy.

Back to Frederick Douglass -- The heart of the resistance is still the public employee unions, AFSCME, CTU and SEIU, along with parent and community groups.

The CTU used one of Claypool's 4 forced, unpaid furlough days to protest the cuts and call for his resignation. AFSCME #31 is taking a strike vote as I write this.

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis summed it all up nicely,

"Rahm and Rauner are both to blame, There's no separation between their intention to destroy publicly funded, public education in Chicago."

### 

Claypool not worried about a strike. It's all good.

Claypool with top lawyer Mormer, the man from Jenner & Block

Given that Chicago schools CEO Forrest Claypool is under investigation once again, this time for funneling CPS contracts a connected law firm, you would think he would tone down his arrogance a notch or that the mayor would put someone else in front of the media for a while.

Claypool suddenly exudes a false sense of optimism after forecasting a deficit hovering near $1 billion less than a year ago. This even while Gov. Rauner, in a political death spiral himself, is still holding the state's school budget hostage.

After a year of CPS teachers working without of contract, Claypool still had the audacity to assure everyone that contract negotiations with the CTU were going swell with no need to worry about a teachers strike.

"We are at the negotiating table. I don't see any reason why we should not be able to come to an agreement. Teachers do important work. We want to give them as generous a contract as we can possibly provide given the dollars that are available."

Well here's one reason for no agreement. Claypool continues to push for an end to the 7% pension pick up which was negotiated in lieu of a pay increase. With no corresponding pay raise, this would mean a huge cut in pay for thousands of city teachers.

Here's another reason. Claypool just pink-slipped 1,000 teachers and school staffers, a blow not just to them and their families, but to the city's economy as well. That's a thousand paychecks that won't be spent on goods and services in city businesses each week. That's also a thousand school faculty and staffers like that won't be out there in the schools and neighborhoods, working to improve the lives of our children.

CPS has a debt load of nearly $7 billion and its debt service spending is estimated to consume more than 10% of operating budget funds in the 2016 fiscal year, more than any year since at least 2007. That translates into downward pressure on wages, more school closures and larger class sizes.

"It's not good government, it's not sound fiscal policy, " says Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. "It's not as if we are seeing a budget that is moving towards fiscal health. What we're seeing is a budget that's under significant pressure."

The CTU's Stephanie Gadlin responds:

"He seems to ignore the fact that we live in the city and pay taxes, and CTU members have seen their pay frozen and then cut with furloughs, have seen over $1 billion diverted from their pension fund, have seen contractually guaranteed raises canceled and have witnessed conditions in schools worsen throughout layoffs and privatization deals."

 "No educator wants to strike for the sake of striking, If they do so, it is because they must protect their students and their profession from technocrats who don't realize these are real lives they are messing with."

There are many options available to the CTU, including a strike. They can continue working without a contract as a holding action against the cuts. They can mobilize support from the base through street protests. I think it's Claypool and his boss, Rahm Emanuel, who are the ones on the ropes here.

Following layoff of 1,000, Rahm demands 'more sacrifice' from teachers.

Rahm to big Chicago banksters -- Don't worry, you'll be first in line to get paid. 

Rahm to teachers and staff after laying off 1,000 -- Don't Strike, "Be Part of the Solution."

And by part of the solution, Rahm means teachers should accept a 7% pay cut to cover pension costs and bear the burden of years of the city and state missing required contributions to the pension fund.

According to the Tribune:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday joined his Chicago Public Schools chief in calling on teachers to start contributing a chunk of their salaries toward their pensions." 

Who at City Hall thought telling teachers to give up a chunk of salary, was a good idea? Are they trying to provoke a strike? Or is this the kind of bullying needed to appease Gov. Rauner in exchange for a budget deal?

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis dismissed schools chief Forrest Claypool's pledge of a budget with "no gimmicks," saying, "Was his mouth moving when he said it?"

Patricia Scott

Dark day for homeless students. I remember Patricia Scott from my days coaching at Prosser.

This from Mark Brown's column in today's S-T.

At the end of this past school year, Prosser counted 68 homeless students among its 1,400 enrollees, 26 of whom were seniors. “They all graduated,” Scott told me Wednesday. “I’m very proud of that.”

That group of 26 seniors will be the last class of homeless students Scott shepherds to their high school degree at Prosser.

On Friday, she was among 1,000 Chicago Public Schools employees to learn they were getting laid off.

Just multiply Ms. Scott's story by 1,000 and you begin to feel the impact the layoffs had on students and their families.

School 'reform' Chicago-style. 1,000 teachers/staff laid-off.

CEO Forrest Claypool, left, with CPS general counsel and former Jenner & Block pal Ronald Marmer 

Last week, we learned that CPS chief Forrest Claypool was funneling big contracts to his Jenner & Block law firm pals.

On Wednesday, CPS announced it was maintaining and expanding it's network of high-paid, mid-level regional managers called network chiefs. They're the enforcers who give school principals marching orders and ride herd over clusters of neighborhood schools.

On Thursday, we learned that more privately run charter schools will be opening, including a new $27 million charter that's part of the development around the newly-planned Obama Library in Kenwood. The goal is to give a boost to the real estate market and promote gentrification on the city's south side.

Today, Rahm/Claypool pulled the trigger on nearly 1,000 CPS teachers and staff. That includes 494 teachers — including 256 tenured teachers. The layoffs broke down this way: 302 high school teachers and 192 elementary school teachers for a total of 494; and 352 high school support personnel and 140 elementary school support personnel, for a total of 492.

All this, while Gov. Rauner continues to hold hostage the state education budget, city residents are being hit with record massive property tax increases and a myriad of regressive fees and hidden taxes, and at the start of a new round contract negotiations between the board and the CTU. Teachers have been working without a contract for more than a year,

 All affected teachers are from district schools, none from charter schools. I haven't seen all the numbers yet but previous CPS mass layoffs and school closings have resulted in dramatic reductions in the numbers of African-American teachers to a record low. 

Budget cuts and staff reductions have also led to a mass exodus of CPS principals. 

Even though laid-off teachers can re-apply to get jobs back in the fall, this is obviously a way to gut the system of veteran, higher-paid teachers. Look for an influx of unskilled newbies and TFAers to fill some of those slots. Also, watch class size explode in the fall.

Reform, Chicago-style. Get the picture?

Broke on purpose: The price of 'reform' at CPS.

Tim Cawley was Byrd-Bennett's and then Claypool's  attack dog. He cut the Children and Family Benefits Unit which provided support for CPS's neediest students. 

Late last summer, in its haste to implement savage austerity measures, CPS leaders eliminated the 10-person Children and Family Benefits Unit, saying it was not vital to the core mission of educating children. The move turns out to have cost the district millions in poverty money that would have directly supported its neediest students.

Diane Fager, who launched the unit in 2005 and retired from CPS in 2014, tells Catalyst that she and others repeatedly told leaders that the unit brought in more money than it cost.

“People should know that this was not an accident. The reality is that without assistance from these kinds of programs, kids are going to school hungry so they cannot perform as well at school, and without health insurance they’re sick a lot more,” she said. “This was pointed out over and over in numerous meetings, memos and reports, and ignored, even at the cost of giving up millions of dollars in federal and state revenue.”

According to Catalyst:

 The decision to eliminate the unit was made in what, even by Chicago standards, was a chaotic moment. Forrest Claypool had just been named CEO of schools, and had pushed through an operating budget that depended on a wish: an extra $500 million from Springfield. Contract negotiations were heating up with the Chicago Teachers Union. A small group of Bronzeville activists were drawing national attention for their month-long hunger strike over the fate of Dyett High School.

And jobs were getting cut left and right, says Taalib-Din Ziyad, vice president of SEIU Local 73, which represented the unit’s school-based liaisons. The unit's manager remained at central office — despite not having any staff left.

Diane Feger

According to Fager, the real culprit here, besides Forrest Claypool, was [then-chief administrative officer] Tim Cawley, who pushed to cut any unit which had a funding sources that left it outside of his bureaucratic control.

I have written about Cawley often in these pages. Appointed by Rahm Emanuel in 2011, he was Barbara Byrd-Bennett's and then Claypool's attack dog before retiring last fall. Cawley represented the city in contract talks that eventually resulted in the first Chicago teachers' strike in a quarter century. He was the architect of the privatization of school janitorial services, a scheme that has left hundreds of CPS staff without jobs and many buildings ankle-deep in trash and principals screaming for mercy.

It was Cawley who became the main cheerleader for disinvestment in neighborhood schools and replacing them with privately-run charters. These were the very policies that led to the closing of Dyett High School and the ensuing hunger strike by parents and Bronzeville community activists that forced the school's reopening.

The dismantling of the Children and Family Benefits Unit was just one more brick in the wall that has left CPS broke on purpose. 

Don't wade in the water, children.

"We'll spend whatever it takes to remove any devices or any piping that might pose lead hazard risk. Whatever that is, however much it costs, we will do it to make sure that our water pipes are safe and that our children, your children, are safe." --  Forrest Claypool

Claypool sounds like a guy trying to get out of a bad marriage after he's been caught cheating.

Lots of questions here. What does he mean, "whatever it takes"? What if it takes billions, like in Flint for example? I mean, we're only beginning to get a handle on the problem. Right? And why is that?

Every day, the number of schools found with leaded water grows. CPS is still awaiting test results from dozens of buildings but has disclosed that at least 27 28 schools have dangerous levels of lead in their water fountains.

Does Claypool have some unlimited mountain of money stashed somewhere that he's not telling us about? I thought the system was "broke". At least that's what he's been telling the CTU as an excuse for not settling contract negotiations with the union.

Does "whatever it takes" include making things right for the potentially tens of thousands of students, former students, and teachers who have drunk from those toxic fountains for years?

And finally, how can parents trust that current and past lead testing is on the up and up? The Guardian names Chicago as one of 33 U.S. cities that have used water testing “cheats” that potentially conceal dangerous levels of lead. It seems that the mayor's  water department testers have been using the same water testing methods that prompted criminal charges against three government employees in Flint. In one case, Chicago officials asked employees to test water safety in their own homes.

It's enough to make you wonder why Claypool brought over Jason Kierna, one of his cronies from the CTA, with no school building experience, to run the facilities department.

It also makes me wonder why State Senator Heather Steans suddenly rode in on her white horse last week to sponsor a new water-testing bill. Where has she and her bill been all these years?

Steans, who is exploring a run for governor, is right when she says:

“We know that exposure to lead can cause developmental delays, learning disabilities and many other significant health problems, and young children in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods are most at risk. That’s unacceptable. By mandating rigorous testing of water systems and communicating openly with the public, we can prevent our cities and towns from becoming another Flint – a community where children were poisoned unawares.”

But hasn't this horse already left the barn? Could lead poisoning be one of the causes of the so-called "achievement gap" in our test-crazy school system? The Steans testing bill, even if passed and signed by the governor, won't "prevent" anything for those like my former basketball players who guzzled water at practice from those fountains for years or for all those summer school students, going back decades, who tried to stay hydrated in 100-degree buildings with no A/C.

Steans claims that until her bill is passed, CPS is under no legal obligation to do lead testing. Who does she think she's protecting here? Does she really expect angry parents to buy the excuse that lead testing didn't go on, or that Chicago cheated on testing, because there was no legislation mandating it?

Do you think Claypool is at all worried about leaded water at Francis Parker, where where he sends his children?

No, this isn't just about  removing or fixing some water pipes. It's about trying to restore faith in the leadership of a school system that seems more concerned with political ass-covering than in the safety and well-being of other people's children.

Have we learned nothing from Flint?

'Reforming' the cities

Expensive condos go up where public housing used to stand in Chicago. 

In just two weeks, Illinois will start its second year without a state budget, threatening the opening of schools in the fall and pushing school systems to the brink. But it's impossible to understand the near collapse of urban public school systems like ours in Chicago, outside the context of the great transformation (whitenizing) of the cities.

The nation's biggest cities, once centers of industry and manufacturing, have increasingly become concentration points of great wealth and deep poverty. They are becoming places where most people can no longer afford to live resulting in the out-migrations of the poor, particularly of African-American families. This, even as the U.S. economy recovers from it's latest deep recession.

The dramatic shift in the the mode of production has resulted in increasing loss of well-paying jobs and union representation for millions of workers as well as an erosion of the tax base. Because politicians are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them, they are unwilling to increase taxes on the wealthiest. This unwillingness lies at the heart of cities' revenue problems. As a result, public schools have become beggars, looking, in the words of Gov. Rauner, for a "bailout".

A report released yesterday from John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, shows that almost half of adults living in Chicago are spending more than they can afford on their homes or apartments, and have to deal with the burden by taking on second jobs, moving to less safe areas, or cutting back on food or the quality of their children's education.

The Tribune reports:

While the problem of finding affordable housing is most acute among people ages 18 to 34, African-Americans and households with incomes under $40,000, 49% of those in households with incomes over $75,000 said "it's challenging to find affordable housing in my area... Nationally, 76% of people noted more difficulty holding onto a middle-class lifestyle.

On top of this, Chicago's small property and business owners are being hit with massive tax increases to make up for the revenue shortfall. The average Chicago homeowner’s property tax bill will go up 13% this year, and it will keep going up for years.

That means even more foreclosures, more families leaving the city and more homeless students in Chicago schools.

No 'Grit' at Lab or Francis Parker

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children." -- John Dewey, founder of the Lab School

The latest curriculum for poor kids. 

I checked. No, there's no "Grit" curriculum being taught at the University of Chicago's Lab school or at chichi Francis Parker, the schools where Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schoools CEO Forrest Claypool send their children at upwards of $34,000 a kid.

Professor Duckworth didn't intend it for their kids. Fixing the poor is the burden of the rich, white and powerful.

According to a story in this morning's Tribune, both Rahm and Claypool were "prickly" (ah, that's the word I was looking for) when asked by a reporter about why they, who run CPS, send their children to expensive private schools.

"I've got to be honest, I don't think it's a fair question, and I'll say why," Emanuel said. "My kids go to the same school that President Obama sends his kids to school, and nobody said anything when President Obama was leading the fight for Race to the Top. I don't live in public housing, but I do fight for fairness in housing. I'm not homeless, but I do fight for resources for homelessness. So if it's only about whether I as a parent make a decision, that's not actually, it's not about my kids, it's about the kids of Chicago."

Claypool said the fact his kids attend the exclusive Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park is "a parental choice. It's appropriate, OK?"

I remember N.J. Gov. Christie practically chewing a parent's head off for asking the same question.

Point of fact, I and many others, blogged plenty about Obama/Duncan's so-called Race to the Top and its reproduction and reinforcement of our two-tier school system.

And what a strange analogy Rahm's making between public schools -- created for everyone-- and public housing and homeless shelters, specifically reserved for the poorest and neediest of us. It's clear that the mayor views public education as some sort of poverty agency rather than as the cornerstone of a democratic society. And therein lies his problem and ours.

Nobody I know is challenging the right of the rich and powerful to send their children to private schools. That's not the point. The point is that the corporate reformers now running public ed, including our autocratic mayor and his hand-picked CEO, don't want our kids in public schools to experience the best educational practices, now reserved for their own.

Not banned at Lab or Parker. 

Remember back in 2013 when Rahm's felonious schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett banned the book Persepolis from CPS libraries? I made a quick call to the Lab School librarian only to find out that Persepolis was part of the middle school curriculum and readily available to all middle school students in the Rowley Library. In fact, the middle school library has 7 different editions of Marjane Satrapi's book, both in English and in French.

In 2011, the mayor forced a longer school day and school year on resistant Chicago schools even though he had no plan for what to do with the added seat time or how to pay for it. Again, I checked with Lab only to find out that their day and year was shorter than Chicago's.

Common Core? Nothing common about Lab or Parker.

Over and improper use of standardized tests? You won't find it in Lab or Parker.

In conclusion -- the best way to learn grit is by standing up to the bullies and pretenders who think they know what's best for other people's children.