Hard to understand CTU's vitriol on these charter closings.

Arne Duncan with K12 Inc. founder William Bennett

I'm having a difficult time making sense out of CTU policy statements lately. Yesterday, the union leadership came out with a blistering, overheated attack on CPS leaders. Why? Because CPS recommended the closing of two privately-run charter schools for poor academic performance and financial mismanagement.

The two schools are Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS) and Frazier Preparatory Academy Charter School. Both schools opened as part of Renaissance 2010, a failed initiative of former Mayor Daley’s schools chief, Arne Duncan. The initiative called for the opening of 100 new schools by 2010 amid the closure of dozens of schools the district said were "underperforming."

Private charter school operators moved in like vultures, promising that their non-union schools would outperform neighborhood schools. It turned out to be a lie. The best of the charters did just about the same as the schools they were replacing. The worst either kept getting their charters renewed with little oversight, or were closed, either for poor performance, financial mismanagement or put on probation and given a few years to improve. Several more went out of business of their own volition, as with any failed business venture.

CTU leaders have responded to the recommendation with vitriol, calling it "racist and irresponsible."

I have been an outspoken opponent of public school closings, especially the mass school closings in the black community, under Rahm Emanuel's regime, closings that disrupted the lives and learning of thousands of CPS students and drove hundreds of families out of Chicago. But that doesn't mean that no charter school should ever be closed, no matter how poorly it serves its students and their families or how corrupt they are. I know very little about Frazier, except that it has been on academic probation for several years and has failed to meet the standards set by its own operators.

According to the Tribune: 

At Frazier Prep, a K-8 school in Lawndale, CPS further cited a failure to meet a contractual requirement to implement a successful remediation plan and improve the school enough to get it off the academic warning list. Students in the community have higher-quality options, according to CPS.

 Since 2015, the Chicago Board of Education has used a “quality policy” to review charter schools. In accordance with that policy, school officials conducted “comprehensive performance reviews” and said they found that Chicago Virtual and Frazier Prep were failing to provide a high-quality education to students.

I generally mistrust evidence of "low performance" based solely or mainly on test scores. But I'd leave this decision to CPS in consultation with the school community.

CPS has assured the community that if the Chicago School Board approves the closures, CPS will provide families of current students with transition support "to help them identify a new higher-performing school that best meets their educational needs and priorities."

But we heard that before from Rahm. He lied. So far, Lori Lightfoot has shown that she's not Rahm 2.0. CTU President Jesse Sharkey told me as much on Hitting Left, last Friday.

But I do know something about Chicago Virtual Charter, a subsidiary of K12 Inc., the worst of the worst when it comes to privatization and plunder of American public education. The largest of the virtual charter chains, K12 Inc. in particular, has been a sewer of corruption since it was founded by Ronald Reagan's Ed Sec. William Bennett. The company was forced to remove Bennett as chairman of its directors following a series of racist remarks and gambling scandals which threatened the company's marketability.

K12 Inc. has been under investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, which has been looking into K12's involvement in a project that received an improper multimillion-dollar grant from the Department of Education during Bennett's tenure at the firm. MEANWHILE...

A K12 Inc. company database that included information for 19,000 students was available for anyone with an internet connection to see for at least a week, according to a report from Comparitech, which describes itself as a pro-consumer organization that offers security services. -- Digital Education

Trump's Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos touts online learning and cyber charter schools as a viable alternative to public schools. But her support for these virtual schools and the private companies that run them may have more to do with her and her husband's investment portfolio than with any positive results for students. Her husband invested in virtual school powerhouse K12 Inc. before she became secretary.

According to The Nation:

K12 Inc.’s lobbyists helped author model legislation to develop sweeping voucher laws through the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that provides state lawmakers with template legislation.

K12, Inc. initially wanted to open a full-time virtual school in Chicago, but Illinois law prohibited full-time online learning. To comply with the policy, K12, Inc. compromised by adding a mandatory, on-campus attendance requirement and thus the CVCS was born.

It's a school that never should have been opened in this city. In fact, back in 2006, the CTU filed a suit intended to stop state and city payments to the Chicago Virtual Charter School. The union sued the charter school operator, the Chicago Board of Education, which approved the school as part of its Renaissance 2010 reforms, and the Illinois State Board of Education, which gave final approval for the charter to open.

So the question is, why the sharp attack by CTU leaders, who called the CPS recommendation to close CVCS racist and irresponsible? I can understand their making a case against the closing of any neighborhood school. But CVCS was not that. Whether to close Frazier is a question worthy of community debate.

I hope the charges of "racism" against CPS leadership and the mayor's appointed school board isn't just a continuation of the negativity directed at the mayor and the board, stemming from the election and the school strike. But I see no other basis for it.

What's happened to Chicago schools since Arne Duncan got Judge Kocoras to lift the deseg consent decree

Students wait for the bus in front of Bouchet Elementary Math & Science Academy in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. More than 74% of students whose neighborhood school is majority black schools are bussed to majority-black schools. (Manuel Martinez/WBEZ)

I'm reading Sarah Karp's WBEZ story about Chicago's experiment with school desegregation and recalling how Arne Duncan helped get a federal judge to quash the city's deseg consent decree.

Karp writes:

Most of the city’s 78 magnet and test-in schools — including classical, gifted and selective enrollment — were created under the decree as a way to lure in a diverse group of students. But even after the court order was lifted, school district officials said they believed integration was important, and they started integrating by the socioeconomic status of children.

In 2009, U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras lifted the consent decree ending three decades of efforts to integrate Chicago schools. The decree’s bilingual education provisions, according to Kocoras, duplicated protections in state law. The ruling came despite evidence presented by DOJ lawyers in court that the district repeatedly failed to enroll English learners in bilingual education fast enough or provide them with required services.

Since then, writes Karp, CPS has continued busing and spending extra funding on magnet and test-in schools and also added 13 new ones plus more charter schools that have been shown to contribute to segregation. This year, the school district plans to spend $50 million for bussing and extra positions at these schools, which serve 62,000 students.

But, says Karp, the WBEZ analysis finds only about 20% of magnet and test-in schools meet the racial makeup goal set out in the court order, compared to 35% a decade ago. Under that definition, the goal was for white students to make up between 15% and 35% of the student body and black, Latino and Asian students to make up between 65% and 85%.

Six schools of the 65 in existence 10 years ago went from being considered integrated to not, while only one of the new schools has that mix of students. Among the schools no longer meeting this definition of integrated are Skinner North Elementary School, which opened in the last decade, and Walter Payton College Prep High School — two schools often named as the best in the city and the state. They have both seen significant increases in white students. 

Magnet schools and busing programs that were created and funded for the purpose of encouraging racial desegregation have since been turned into their opposites. Now magnets have increasingly become privileged selective-enrollment schools, anchors for neighborhood gentrification with expensive busing programs taking children miles away from their neighborhood schools and into segregated ones.

Niketa Brar on Hitting Left

Niketa Brar, executive director of Chicago United for Equity, and a frequent guest on Hitting Left, says magnet and selective schools have been used as a way to allow families to avoid the problems of the public school system. This is especially true in gentrifying neighborhoods, she said, where parents put their children on buses to be driven away from their local schools.

Brar tells Karp:

“They become little havens of white people feeling like they are participating in the public school system while actually keeping their children segregated from the impacts of a local neighborhood school that have the same resources that every other child in their neighborhoods gets.”

It's worth recalling that it was Pres. Obama's Secretary of Education and former CPS school chief, Arne Duncan, along with Mayor Daley and Duncan's successor Ron Huberman, who pleaded with Judge Kocoras to scrap the decree a decade ago. They claimed that the city had done all it could do to desegregate its schools and that the deseg struggle was "futile and a drain on district funds".

This,  even though research has shown that the period in which school deseg was in full play was when the district had made the greatest gains in measurable student learning and closing the so-called achievement gap.

Duncan maintained that if the consent decree was lifted, CPS could save $300 million, mostly in eliminating bus service to magnet and selective enrollment schools. It was all a lie. Busing service and selective enrollment programs and charter schools have been expanded. Only their purposes have changed.

Under Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's selective-enrollment schools became even more exclusive.

During the period of 1981 to 2015, the total population of African-American students in CPS plummeted from close to 240,000, 60% of all CPS students, to 156,000 or 39% of CPS. The loss of so many poor and black children and an increase in wealthier white students have since been ignored as an explanation for claimed rising test scores and graduation rates.

I'd argue that they, along with school resegregation, have lots to do with it.

We'll see if and how things change over the next four years with a new mayor and city council. 

Chicago reporters broke the story wide open. Mayor Lightfoot went to New York!

Jet-setters? Really?

Chicago's ace political reporters, Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times and wing-nut Kristen McQueary of the Trib, broke the story wide open. It's all about Lori Lightfoot, the city's first black, gay, woman mayor and it's a doozie.

No, she didn't close 50 public schools or cover up a police murder, like her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel. No, she didn't sell off the Skyway or the city's parking meter business for pennies on the dollar like Mayor Daley. No, it's worse. So much worse.

You see, Lightfoot WENT TO NEW YORK, home of the hated Mets and Yankees, raised big money for city projects, Democrats and LGBTQ causes and then, wait for it... she went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

She told the donors the Democratic 2020 presidential contenders have to put more on the table than just being anti-President Donald Trump. 

She got that right.

The mayor said in her DNC speech, “I’m proposing that we pledge to work together to defend our democracy, promote equality for all, and refashion the values that our movement forged so many years ago after Stonewall.

“Let’s stand together, stick together, and work together for justice of every description. Racial justice. Gender justice. Immigrant justice. Economic justice. Environmental justice.”

The Horror...

According to Lynn Sweet who sat in Colbert's audience,

 The audience of about 420 in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Colbert is taped, gave Lightfoot a standing ovation after Colbert introduced her. They laughed at his jokes — and hers.

But McQueary, who once famously editorialized for a Mussolini-type dictator to run Chicago schools and prayed for a Hurricane Katrina to ravage the city, wasn't impressed:

Most Chicagoans didn’t expect Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and non-fashionista, to be popping up in their Instagram feeds. But there she is draped in Oprah’s embrace in the foyer of the media mogul’s estimated $90 million mansion.

 But it is surprising to see Lightfoot, four weeks on the job, already hopping on and off airplanes...We’ve got plenty of problems in Chicago. They don’t require commercial airline travel. 

Actually, hopping on and off an airplane is not easy. Try it some time, Kristen.

Spielman, a born-again Lightfoot hater, then echoes McQuery,

Four weeks after taking office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has already stumbled in a way that might make it a bit more difficult for her to govern. From going to war with a police union that didn’t trust her to begin with, to hobnobbing with Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Colbert during fundraising trips to both coasts, Lightfoot appears to be repeating some of her predecessor’s early mistakes.

Then she sings a Daley praise...

 What former Mayor Richard M. Daley knew in his soul, but Emanuel never took to heart, is that Chicagoans believe the sun rises and sets in Chicago. 

She does have a point there. The sun does rise each morning and set each evening in our fair city. Doesn't mean we have to spend each day of our lives here, however.

Then for a topper, Spielman charges LL with spanking Eddie Burke publicly and having a nasty exchange with leaders of the Fascist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). You know, the ones that supported Jon Burge and his torturing Midnight Crew.

It's about time someone took 'em on.

Nice work, Fran and Kristen. Could be story of the year. I see Pulitzers in your future.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle met downtown for a private lunch to discuss ways the city and county can cooperate as they try to move past the lingering hard feelings from their bruising mayoral campaign.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot

“I would say that we, obviously the city and the county have a lot of overlapping things in common, and I wanted to make sure the president [Toni Preckwinkle] and I started off in the right direction a week out from my inauguration." -- Chicago Tribune

 David Greising, BGA President

If [Lightfoot] continues leveraging the capacity of civic and business leaders, without abandoning the progressives who helped elect her, she could have the formula for a lasting impact on economic equity in a city that badly needs it. -- BGA 

Laura Washington

[Congressman Bobby] Rush could be a potent ally for Lightfoot. He must be. Lightfoot needs every iota of power, access and wisdom the veteran congressman can offer. Rush needs “Landslide Lori,” who was elected Chicago’s first African-American woman and first LGBTQ mayor with nearly 74% of the vote. Many of Rush’s constituents have even more dire needs. In this supposedly robust economy, African American families on Chicago’s South Side are buried in a landslide of violence, joblessness and poverty. -- Sun-Times

Clint Krislov, IIT Chicago-Kent’s Center for Open Government

“If the city had just hired LAZ Parking directly to do the pay-and-display system, the city would probably have $2 billion-to-$4 billion more over the course of the deal above the merely $1.16 billion it got up-front.” -- Sun-Times

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

 “The “opioid war” is a medical problem rather than a behavioral or law enforcement one, Warren argued....But we got a second problem in this country and it’s greed. People didn’t get addicted all on their own, they got a lot of corporate help. They got a lot of help from corporations that made big money off getting people addicted and keeping them addicted.” -- Politico

Kate Oronoff on Green New Deal

Critics have smeared the Green New Deal as a colossal waste of money, involving a level of spending sure to crater the economy and pass an unnecessarily cruel financial burden down to future generations. They seem to be confusing it with business as usual. -- Guardian

Robert Kuttner

 The problem is not that “Democrats” fail to appreciate unions. It’s that the corporate and Wall Street Democrats who have dominated the presidential wing of the party since Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton actively loathe unions. -- Diane Ravitch Blog

 Cary Huang

Worse can happen than just material loss to the countries directly involved. While a country may try to destroy another by targeting its economy rather than its military, history suggests that a full-blown trade war inevitably leads to a shoot-out between nations. -- South China Morning Post

Some unsolicited advice to both mayoral candidates

Despite protests, plans for the $95 million West Side police academy sailed through the City Council on Wednesday

As readers know, I've pretty much committed to voting for Lori Lightfoot in next month's mayoral election. I won't rehash all the reasons why right now. Suffice to say that while I have big issues with both (all) candidates, I find Lightfoot, basically a good-government candidate, (no radical or @AOC by any means) to be the most unchained to the old, corrupt machinery. In a race with no true hard-core progressives or lefties in it, that's good enough for me.

On key policy issues of police and neighborhood violence, as well as on education issues, both Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle appear about the same. At yesterday's mayoral forum hosted by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, both stressed more community investment as a response to street violence.

According to Chalkbeat's report on the forum:

Both candidates pledged to devote more staff and resources to public safety, and honed in on underlying issues that contribute to violence, like poverty, housing and disinvestment, while emphasizing the need to provide mental health resources in communities wrestling with trauma. 

On police reform, both oppose the Rahm Emanuel's $95M Cop Academy. But they both see more police training as at least part of the solution, in step with with the DoJ report and the negotiated consent decree. Lightfoot said yesterday, that she would even consider using some of the city's shuttered schools for decentralized, community-based training, rather than the new cop academy, just approved by the city council.

While I'm OK with more and better cop training, I can think of at least 10 better re-uses for those buildings. I'd like to push the discussion beyond training. Racist police murders, like the killing of Laquan McDonald are not mainly "training" issues. They are systemic issues emanating from a system of white supremacy and class power, where cops are the enforcers. I wish we had some candidates who would talk about systemic change. But we don't. That's left to us.

On school policy, each candidate opposes charter school expansion and further school closings. Each call for an elected school board. Neither appear to be over-influenced by the school privatization, vouchers lobbyists -- so far at least.

It's true that Preckwinkle won the early endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), an endorsement I respect, if not agree with. I think it was a mistake, on par with the AFT's early endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016. Feeling confident back then, that Hillary would have the best chance of defeating Trump, union leaders thought they were putting a lock on a seat at the table under the new administration. They were wrong on all counts. All they succeeded in doing was splitting the rank-and-file.

The CTU endorsement of Preckwinkle was understandable in the first round of the campaign when it looked pretty certain that Bill Daley, the man from JP Morgan, would be in the runoff and the hope was that Preckwinkle would have the best chance of defeating him. They and many of us were wrong about Daley who turned out to be a paper tiger despite his massive campaign war chest. He folded like a cheap suit, paving the way for a late Lightfoot surge into first place and a significant lead in the runoff polls. It now appears Lightfoot leads Preckwinkle in every demographic with three weeks to go.

But as we all know, anything can happen

*****

Now we have two African-American women, one openly gay, running for mayor. How great is that! But it's a situation fraught with danger. The campaigns have split the progressives into two pretty hard camps. In my mind, the progressive movement in Chicago, at its peak after the Bernie Sanders campaign, might have unified around it's own candidate for mayor and IL governor two years ago. But it didn't. Instead of building on the Sanders insurgency within the party, which produced successful electoral revolts in N.Y., Detroit, and other cities, we are fighting pitched battles over which mainstream candidate will take us to the promised land.

Now attacks are flying back and forth on FB and on Twitter, including sharp personal attacks which won't easily be forgotten.

Soon after the election, the camps will hopefully be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and unite to roll back Mayor Emanuel's boondoggles like the Cop Academy and Lincoln Yards, and to support the teachers union in their upcoming contract negotiations, and possible teachers strike.

Here's some unsolicited advice to both candidates. Whoever wins will unfortunately, at least for a while, have autocratic control over CPS -- control that neither claims to want. But the contract negotiations won't wait for the passage of stalled elected school board legislation to be passed or for the elections to follow.

Both candidates should make it clear now that their election won't mean a continuation of Rahm-ism without Rahm. First it means having a democratic (not autocratic) style of work. Second, it means clean house, if not immediately, soon after the election. Bring in your own team and tell us now who they will be. Next, it may already be too late, but playing the stall game on Lincoln Yards and the Cop Academy and call for an immediate stop to both.

In other words, show leadership now and not wait until you are elected.

Also, please stop the anti-teacher rhetoric about "supporting teachers" but supporting students "even more". The CTU has been in the lead when it comes to negotiating smaller class size, more nurses and social workers in schools and special ed resources. Teachers, students and parents have the same interests in the upcoming negotiations.

Progressives split in Chicago race. Can they unite against Daley in a runoff?

With the first round of the mayoral election only a week away, things are starting to get hot and heavy. Progressives are split at least three ways (Toni Preckwinkle, Lori Lightfoot and Amara Enyia) and there's lots of vitriol back and forth among their camps..

Cook County party boss Toni Preckwinkle, with early support from many progressives, including the CTU and SEIU seemed like the clear front-runner a month ago.  The SEIU endorsements alone translated into roughly $2M in cash and in-kind contributions to Preckwinkle and nearly two dozen full-time campaign workers and upwards of 500 part-time volunteers.

Bill Daley, the man from JP Morgan and the candidate without a shred of progressive pretense, has replaced Rahm Emanuel as the darling of Chicago's 1%-ers. They've gone all in on Daley because, 1) they fear a takeover of the city by left-wing insurgents of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type and 2) his early lead in fundraising has them believing he's a for-real candidate, who can win.

The irony is that the modern notion of Democratic Partyinsurgency they're so afraid off, goes back to Harold Washington's victory over the Daley machine in 1983. But the latest attempt at building a progressive electoral coalition petered out after the collapse of the Bernie Sanders coalition in 2016 leading to the election of J.B. Pritzker as governor with no real progressive opponent.

The current internecine warfare over mayoral choices results from progressive groups not being able to unify around candidates for mayor and governor two years ago.

Instead, Rahm, their main electoral target with plummeting poll numbers following his Laquan McDonald cover-up and his school-closing debacle, pulled a slick move and abandoned the race altogether, before we had a chance to beat him. Even though #RahmResign was exactly what progressives had been demanding, it took many of them them by surprise, as Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative admitted on our show on February 1st.

Without Rahm as a unifying target, the door was left open for a gaggle of old-line, well-financed Democratic Party regulars to jump in and suck up all the money and organizational support.

Mendoza, Chico, Daley and Preckwinkle, none of whom dared enter the race while Rahm was still in it, all jumped in and immediately got the support and credibility from the party bosses and powerful donors who had been sitting on the sidelines. Daley was the biggest beneficiary with $7M in big-donor money. $2M coming directly from Republican billionaire Ken Griffin.

But the good news is that despite their swollen campaign coffers and TV advertising, none of the party machine regulars or great-white-hope alternatives (Paul Vallas & Gary McCarthy) have been able to create any excitement at the base and break from the pack.

If the vote were taken today, undecided or none-of-the-above would be the clear winner. According to most recent polling, the top 5, including underdog and party outlier, Lori Lightfoot are all with a few points of each other and any two could make it to the runoff, especially if this becomes a low-turnout election.

Lightfoot, who if elected, would become the city's first black, woman, lesbian mayor, is a clear underdog. But she's gained momentum and funding in recent weeks, especially after picking up the Sun-Times endorsement, while Preckwinkle and Mendoza have failed to improve their numbers since being connected to the Burke/Solis scandal.

Progressive Preckwinkle supporters, including those in the CTU and SEIU, who backed her early when union haters Rahm, Vallas and McCarthy seemed like her main opponents, probably did so more because they thought she would win rather than  because of fundamental political agreement. But now they're stuck with her even as her campaign falters and stumbles towards the finish line.

They fear a Lightfoot victory next week will lead to Daley's election in the finals and are training all their tactical guns and money on Lightfoot. For her part, Lightfoot sees Preckwinkle as part and parcel of the Burke/Berrios party machinery and has been gunning for her from the start.

Lori Lightfoot goes head to head with Toni Preckwinkle ally, Rep. Martwick: “You were a Joe Berrios surrogate for the entire campaign. You filed this bill [to appoint rather than elect assessor] to profit yourself. Who benefits from a system that’s not changed?” Lightfoot said.

Things really came to a head this week when State Rep. Rob Martwick, closely tied to Berrios and Preckwinkle, tried to disrupt a Lightfoot presser and ended up in a well-photographed head-to-head, David vs. Goliath confrontation with the candidate. Martwick is authoring a bill that would make the County Assessor an appointed, rather than elected position. The bill is obviously meant as payback against anti-machine guy, Fritz Kaegi who defeated Boss Berrios in the assessor's race.

But the damaging confrontation instead meant more bad press for Preckwinkle and the machine. Martwick had to back off, claiming that his bill was only meant as a "conversation starter" while Preckwinkle was forced to issue a joint statement with Kaegi, opposing the Martwick bill.

If all this has your head spinning as you enter the voting booth, join the crowd. Daley seems like the main beneficiary of all this mayhem in the progressive camps, if he and Preckwinkle wind up in a runoff. A Daley/Mendoza runoff is also possible if Preckwinkle continues to stumble.

Amara Enyia, running with big campaign donations from rappers Chance the Rapper and Kanye West, hopes to pick up support from young black activists and hard-left organizers. But she doesn't seem to be gaining traction as the race draws to a close.

But if somehow, Lightfoot pulls an upset on Feb. 26, the whole thing is up for grabs. The progressives only hope is for some kind of reconciliation between Lightfoot, Preckwinkle and Enyia supporters and that's not likely.

But in a close, low-turnout election, anything can happen.

Buckle up and vote.


I'll be AWOL for Friday's Hitting Left show when brother Fred tries to make some sense of all this with Chicago campaign strategist, Joanna Klonsky and Progressive Caucus leader, Ald. Scott Waguespack. But I'll be tuning in to WLPN 105.5 FM, via live streaming on www.lumpenradio.com from 11-noon CT. I hope you will join me. 

Will Chicago elect a mayor who's back in bed with Bezos on HQ2?

 

Toni Preckwinkle and Bill Daley on board with Bezos. 

...bringing Amazon to town will probably cost untold millions in tax credits—money diverted straight from the state's coffers. That spells a tax hike for everyone else as the state jacks up taxes to compensate for the money it's giving to Amazon. -- Ben Joravsky

Like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm St., Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his HQ2 plan for Chicago just keeps coming back from the dead. It looks like, now that New York has said no, Rahm/Rauner's $2.5B tax and land giveaway to Bezos is back on the table in Chicago.

How can that be with Rauner gone, Ed Burke on his way to jail, and Rahm on his way out the door? It can only happen if Gov. Pritzker and a new Chicago mayor are ready, willing and able to meet all of Bezos demands and accept his unsubstantiated estimates of tens of thousands of "high-paying city jobs".

And which of the current mayoral candidates is ready to bend over for Bezos? According to Crain's there's only two (maybe three) -- Bill Daley, Toni Preckwinkle and possibly, Paul Vallas who hasn't said yet.

While I would expect no less from Daley and Vallas, I'm still amazed that Preckwinkle, who's only in the race because of backing from CTU and SEIU, is willing to play ball with union-buster supreme, Bezos. The jobs Bezos promises are unsustainable and without long-term security. Amazon has the highest employee turnover this side of Walmart and their working conditions are reported to be the worst of any major corporation.

Burke may be under indictment and Ald. Danny Solis may have gone underground, wire and all. But the spirit of pay-to-play and quid pro quo, obviously still lives on among these three.

ONE MORE POINT, if I might... Bezos is also a big backer of charter schools and other school privatization schemes in the state of Washington. According to a report in the Nation, the Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.

Rahm hard at work trying to clean up his legacy on education

Rahm and his predecessor, Richard M. Daley. 

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tries to do a clean-up job on his years of crisis-ridden, chaotic one-man rule over the Chicago public schools. "I used to preach the gospel of reform," writes Rahm. "Then I became the mayor."

I'm not sure what gospel of reform Rahm was preaching in the first place. With no background in education and a long string of inept and corrupt managers surrounding him, His policies were neither research-based nor educationally sound. Rather they represented a googob of top-down, politically-driven policies and strategies that had more to do with breaking the union, real estate speculation, patronage and disinvestment in black and Latino neighborhoods than in anything curricular or pedagogical.

His mantra during his first campaign was, more classroom seat time equals better learning outcomes, holding up Houston, of all places, as his model. "The data shows that the longer you stay in the classroom learning,  you'll learn more...", claimed Rahm.

But we never were shown any such data. Maybe because, none existed. Everything depended on what was happening in those classrooms, how crowded they were, and who was teaching in them and what else was going on, inside and outside of school.

That led to the first of many clashes Rahm would have with the CTU and it's president, Karen Lewis. ultimately leading up to the great teachers strike of 2012. That strike would end in victory for the union which was able to gather wide parent and community support.

Rahm's revision of history has him winning the strike and Karen Lewis conceding on the longer school day.

My initial doubts emerged four days into what turned out to be the first Chicago teachers’ strike in three decades. After a series of arduous negotiations with Karen Lewis, the union president, we’d arrived at the basic contours of an agreement. In return for higher salaries, Lewis accepted my demands to extend the school day by an hour and 15 minutes, tack two weeks onto the school year, establish universal full-day kindergarten, and rewrite the outdated evaluations used to keep the city’s educators accountable.

In fact, it was the teachers who won that strike, fighting for much more that high wages, but smaller class size and an end to layoffs and much more.

Now Rahm claims to be a school-reform apostate who has abandoned "the gospel of teacher-focused reform for a more top-down approach centered on empowering principals." As any educator could have told him, real reform is not just about power struggles between principals and teachers. It’s more about school/community relationships and adequate resources.

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he wasn't going to run for a third term, it seems all he's interested in is cleaning up (whitewashing) his brand. That's perfectly understandable if his goal is making a credible transition from the public, back to the private or non-profit (foundation or university) sector at the end of his term, the way his predecessor Rich Daley did after his notorious parking meter deal.

That won't be as easy as it's been for him in the past when he managed investments and other enterprises for the likes of Bill Clinton and Bruce Rauner. For one thing, he's got a poor track record when it comes to enticing giant companies like Amazon into Chicago by hook or by crook. Chicago still owns the reputation as the most corrupt city in the most corrupt state in the union. We still don't know how high up the current Burke/Solis scandal will go or if Rahm can steer clear of it. And despite finally getting a school budget passed in Springfield, Rahm still has to own the fact that he drove CPS finances in the debt hell.

Then there's his role in the cover up following the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

Finally and probably most important is the destruction he's left in the wake of his policy of mass school closings in the city's black communities, replacing them with school vouchers and privately-run charter schools. It was his misleadership on the schools, more than anything, that bottomed out his poll numbers and caused him to finally drop out of race for mayor.

He can now spend his time remaking his brand and rewriting history.

Candidate Bill Daley, the man from JPMorgan Trust

MY FAVORITE BILL DALEY QUOTE -- "I stopped wearing a tie every day when I joined the hedge fund. It's a lot easier."

He doesn't always tell the truth, but at least great-white-hope mayoral candidate, former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, the man from JPMorgan Chase,  and the Swiss hedge fund Argentiere Capital, tells the Daily Line straight-up where he's coming from and where he's heading.

"I’m proud of the fact that I am pro-business."

Unlike some of the new-found progressives running for office, Daley has been consistent in his contempt for progressivism and liberal politics. In case you had any doubt, he supports building the new Cop Academy and Sterling Bay's Lincoln Yards. He's a strong supporter of charter school expansion. He's a teacher union hater (Peter Cunningham is his campaign manager for chrissakes), and he's calling for camera-bearing drones on every block in Chicago.

You want more? In response to CTU’s demand for higher pay and hiring nurses, librarians and aides Daley offers this:

“Conceptually, everyone would like to see everybody get a pay raise as much as she could, and give everybody whatever they want. The reality is, we have to deal with reality."

“Let’s be honest, ‘progressive’ is just because Democrats didn’t want to call themselves ‘liberals’ anymore because it was such a negative term… [I'll make] sure that the economic pie grows and isn’t just the economic pie of government, it’s the economic pie of the private sector, which is much larger and much more meaningful than government’s ability to affect things. 

No, that's not a quote from Trump.

But when I say he's not always truthful, I mean...

 “I’ve been fortunate over the years of having a lot of friendships and relationships around the country. I had one senior businessperson, a Republican, give me a substantial amount of money and has no interest in Chicago other than his attitude was we need reasonable sensible leadership in urban America,” he said. While many connected Chicagoans have donated to his campaign, including the Ricketts, former Tribune owner Sam Zell’s trust, and dozens of Chicago-based investors, he said, “The people that have supported me don’t play in the game of Chicago politics, they have no business interest in that sense."

Yes, you heard it here first. None, zero, nil of Daley's biggest campaign contributors, including Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, former billionaire Trib owner Sam Zell, Byron Trott, CEO of BDT Capital Partners, or Christopher Reyes and M. Jude Reyes, executives of Reyes Holdings,  play politics in Chicago and have "no business interests" there.

If that sounds to you too much like Trump claiming he has never had business interests in Russia...well.

And if you aren't familiar with the billionaire Reyes brothers, they are among the Republican Party's biggest donors.

During his 18-year tenure at Chicago Title’s National Commercial Services unit, Chris Reyes has received increasing responsibility in various departments. Currently, he oversees the Local Commercial Operation responsible for underwriting and closing transactions involving all of Chicago’s trophy buildings, such as the Sears Tower, John Hancock building, Merchandise Mart and AON Center. Most recently, Chris and his team completed the largest commercial deal that has ever closed in Chicago, involving 32 different properties and a price tag of $3.2 billion.

Reyes makes Eddie Burke look like a novice.

I'll stop here. Don't even get me started on the ways Daley is ducking and dodging on #MeToo and women's choice issues. Let's just say that if Daley is elected (latest polls have him in the lead in fundraising and near the top for white voters), you can expect nothing more than a continuation of Rahm's 1%er policies, including massive taxpayer investment for super real estate projects, disinvestment in isolated neighborhoods, autocratic rule over the schools, and less police accountability.

No, definitely not a progressive.

After the lights came on at the Burke affair

Best quote on the Burke(s) affair comes from S-T columnist Neil Steinberg:

Corruption is like rust. It spreads, both coming and going. When the party’s on and the lights are low, lots of people wander into the dim tent to help themselves at the long tables of pie. When the lights are snapped on, those same people are caught standing there with pie on their faces.

He adds,

It’s almost comical to see the casting call of mayoral candidates lunging for napkins to smear away Ed Burke’s money, or try to. It’ll be interesting to see how long that stain lingers around their mouths.

Yes, it would be comical if the cost of corruption at the highest political levels didn't weigh so heavily on the city's poor and working people facing severe cuts at their schools and city services. Dick Simpson and Tom Gradel, authors of Corrupt Illinois, put the "corruption tax" at $500M. Many experts believe it is much higher.

Examples include the costs of the Jon Burge police-brutality scandal, which has already reached one hundred million dollars and counting. The cost of Chicago police corruption averages more than $50 million per year. Since 2004, "Chicago has paid a staggering sum -- about $662 million -- on police misconduct, including judgments, settlements, and outside legal fees," according to the Associated Press' examination of city records. In 2015, the payment for the fatal police shooting of LaQuan McDonald cost the city $5 million in a settlement, while the cost to investigate and prosecute Police Officer Van Dyke is ongoing. Also, following that shooting, Chicago's legal and consulting bill for the subsequent Department of Justice investigation of city police practices totaled $760,000 through the middle of March, 2016. 

It's especially not funny when the lights come on and you see pie on the faces of the top three or four (at least) candidates for mayor, including the one being supported by many progressives, unions and community orgs.

I put an (s) in parenthesis above after Burke's name because Eddie's wife Anne Burke, the liberal IL state supreme court justice, who Steinberg once referred to as the “the platinum bar of probity” (look it up), was the one (not Eddie) who threw the fundraising party for Toni Preckwinkle, that netted $116K for her campaign war chest. She had already run and won her campaign for Cook County Board President, jumping into the mayor's race only after Rahm dropped out.

Burke (r) endorsed Gery Chico

I suppose Burke's fundraiser was legal and hopefully legally reported. Although you would think a supreme court justice would keep a money arm's length from Chicago politicians, especially when she's already married to the platinum bar of profiteering in the city council. It's not a good look. But Chicago reporters haven't even broached the subject. It seems, she's untouchable.

It was only after that backyard party at the Burke's house was revealed than Preckwinkle announced she would return ALL the money. Previously she copped to receiving only $5.8K.

Preckwinkle also removed Burke from the Cook County Democratic Party's judicial slating panel, a post he held for decades. Good for her. Although without demands for accountability coming from below, who knows if she and others like Bill Daley, Gery Chico and Susana Mendoza would have even bothered bailing on the Burkes for appearance sake alone.

Preckwinkle's progressive backers seem unfazed by the latest scandal. Some are just cynical, claiming "they all do it, so why pick on Toni?" Others blame it all on the "culture of corruption". 
S-T columnist Phil Kadner writes:

Let us remember Burke has not been convicted of anything, although he has been a symbol of Chicago political corruption for decades. He has had the best people into his home. He has done favors for scores of politicians who were happy to accept his support and his money. Maybe they are all victims of the culture of corruption. As someone once said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

SEIU Illinois State Council, unfazed by Burke affair, just dropped another $500,000 into Preckwinkle’s mayoral campaign, more that making up for the Burke money she was forced to return. The new money brings the union’s contribution to Preckwinkle to $1.5 million with more money on the way.

Progressives like Rep. Will Guzzardi and socialist Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35th) were among the first to endorse Preckwinkle and at least Rosa is now lashing out against his fellow left-wing critics of TP in the press and on social media.

 “There’s nothing here,” Rosa said of the campaign contribution investigators say Burke illegally solicited on Preckwinkle’s behalf. “Do people think she called Ed Burke and said, ‘You’ve got to shake down these guys for $10,000?’ Come on. Let’s talk about what’s important to the people of Chicago, which is who can bring change to City Hall. That’s Toni Preckwinkle.”

Burke scandal aside, it's hard for me to fathom this city's progressives and socialists pinning their hopes for change on the head of the Cook County Democratic Party. It just seems to run counter to national trend of victories by young, insurgent candidates, many of them women of color or immigrants,  over party regulars across the country.

My brother Fred traces the history of the problem in the inability of the Chicago left to unify early on around insurgent candidates in opposition to the old-guard machine.

 In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, there was no single candidate that truly represented the politics of the Bernie movement and you could find Bernie supporters dispersed among all of the candidates, painfully diluted and with little apparent influence. The same can be said about the current race for Chicago’s mayor.

Who knows what more fallout will come from the Burke trial itself or who will be implicated or left with pie on their faces if he decides to roll over for the feds. But by that time we will have elected a new mayor and most likely, one still tied to the old machine by a thousand threads.

You can bet we'll be talking about the Burke(s) affair tomorrow on Hitting Left with a group of insurgent Chicago teachers who are now running for political office. And then again next Friday, January 18th with in-studio guest, author, political consultant and expert on Chicago corruption, Tom Gradel.

Tune in to Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, Friday on WLPN 105.5 FM Chicago, streaming live at www.lumpenradio.com 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mayoral candidate Bill Daley wants drones everywhere 

 “I’d have as many cameras as we could buy so the people could feel safer wherever they’re at … I’d have a camera on every block in the city if I could.” -- Sun-Times

Chris Wallace to Trump

You’re seen around the world as a 'beacon for repression'. -- The Hill

Stacey Abrams

“Let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper,” Ms. Abrams said amid a blistering attack on Mr. Kemp’s record as the state’s chief elections regulator and on the balloting process in Georgia. “As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.” -- New York Times 

 Maurice Mitchell, National Director of Working Families Party

...said in an interview that airs today on "Rising" that it is a "misassessment" to say that the Democratic Party moving too far to the left will ultimately hurt its candidates in elections. "I think it's a total misassessment of what's happening. It's less about the politics of the left and the right, and it's more about the politics of the grassroots, versus elite politics.

Cong. Bobby Rush calls for protests over Target closings.

Chatham resident, Malcolm Bonner

...said he no longer wants to fight big businesses to stay in his community. “Forget Target. I don’t understand why we have to fight them to come here, we have to fight them to stay and in 10 years am I going to have to fight them again? I’m tired of having to fight for food, I shouldn’t have to fight for food.” -- Protest planned over Target store closings 

April Simpson, the president of Queensbridge Tenants Association.

“What are they [Amazon HQ2] going to do for the community? Are they going to guarantee us employment opportunities? I’m worried about, when they come, they’re not going to have opportunities for people. Not just people from Queensbridge — but other lower- and middle-income people in this area. That’s why we’re leery about them coming in.” -- New York Times

Retired Adm. William McRaven

McRaven, the former Navy Seal who led the team that killed Osama bin Laden, called Trump's attack on the media "the greatest threat to our democracy in my lifetime." -- The Hill

People keep giving me directions to the spouse and intern events instead of the ones for members of Congress 🤦🏽‍♀️

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 14, 2018

Disinvestment & Gentrification: Two sides of the same racist coin

On yesterday's Hitting Left show, community activists Christian Diaz and Cory Stevenson both agreed. Southside disinvestment and northside gentrification were simply two sides of the same racist coin.

Nowhere is this more evident than in city policies of closing dozens of schools in struggle south and west side communities while opening up new charter and selective enrollment schools on the north side. This tweet from the parent group, Raise Your Hand, brings the contradiction into clear focus.

#ERSBnow this is absurd. District lost 40k students in 7 years, resources spread way too thin. CPS keeps putting out charter RFPs yearly. @ILSenDems @HouseDemsIL what's the plan? https://t.co/uS4uIRXbR8

— RYHAction (@RYHAction) November 14, 2018

Cory Stevenson pointed to the impact the closing of two southside Target stores could have on his community and relatives in terms of loss of hundreds of jobs and access to basic needs for families that don't have cars.

The Target store closings are symptomatic of the structural disinvestment and erosion of public space and public decision-making now taking place in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. This includes the closing of schools, clinics, stores and other city services, making many areas of the city uninhabitable.

While across town, gentrification has created a housing crisis for poor and middle-class, mainly Latino families in neighborhoods like Logan Square. This, according to Diaz, who is the housing organizer at Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA).  LSNA has been organizing community meetings and marches to protest high rents and support affordable housing projects.

While supporting the push for new rent-control laws, Diaz doesn't think current emphasis on lifting the ban on rent-control is the best tactic. "My fear is that we're talking about a campaign that may take 10 years and in the meantime, families are losing their homes and rents are climbing, making affordable housing out of reach."

Instead, LSNA is pushing for a "community land trust" where a nonprofit, community-based organization develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community.

Harold died 30 years ago. 

At our holiday family gathering this week, we will take a moment to remember Chicago's greatest mayor, Harold Washington, who suffered a fatal heart attack the day before Thanksgiving 30 years ago. Today the city is more in need of a mayor like Harold, than ever.

Instead, big-money corporatists and old-line machine Democrats have jumped into the race following Rahm Emanuel's departure and they appear to be sucking up all the air and money from the campaign as they try and push out upstart progressives. The shakeout will begin in earnest after Nov. 26, the day that nominating petitions are due. Without a big campaign war chest and paid staff or ward organization to round up the needed 12,500 valid signatures, several of the early runners are likely to drop out. Actually, campaigns really need to collect at least double that amount so they can withstand a challenge.

More on that to come. But for now there two developments in the past week that caught my attention. The craziest came from candidate Bill Daley, who more than all the others, combines the worst of big-money corporatism with old-line machine politics. Daley, trying to outflank former top-cop, Garry McCarthy as the law-and-order candidate, says he wants to have thousands of camera-equipped drones flying over the city.

He tells the Sun-Times:

“I’d have as many cameras as we could buy so the people could feel safer wherever they’re at … I’d have a camera on every block in the city if I could.”

Chicago’s network of 29,000 public and private surveillance cameras is already billed as the largest “federated” system in the nation. But I'll bet there's a Daley family member or close business associate who'd be thrilled to get that drone contract. Kind of like Rahm's red-light camera plan.

The other recent development is the entrance of Susana Mendoza into the race. Mendoza, who has always been viewed suspiciously by progressives as a Rahm/Madigan machine puppet, is now staking out progressive territory and trying to outflank frontrunner Toni Preckwinkle on the left. She promises to stop school closures, including the closing of embattled National Teachers Academy, the re-opening of the clinics closed by Rahm, and support for an elected school board.

You can believe her or not. But for now at least, other candidates will have to respond on these issues.

Dizzying!

'It's Christmas in October' for Rahm's pet alders

 It's Christmas in October for Rahm's toadie, Ald. Moore (L) 

Here's a quiz question for my urban policy students. How much money does it cost to buy a Chicago alderman?

Hint: If old Mayor Richard J. Daley were alive, he's probably answer, around $500 and a pat on the head. His son Richie, Jr. would likely say, $1,000 and a meal at the Park Grill, if they were especially well behaved.

Give up? Today's price, adjusted for inflation? $20K plus bacon and eggs at the 312.   

The Tribune reports: 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel continued his “no friend gets left on the field” tour Wednesday, handing out $20,000 checks to more than two dozen City Council allies to help them get re-elected.

Emanuel hosted a breakfast at the 312 Chicago restaurant across the street from City Hall. Far North Side Ald. Joseph Moore, 49th, said he expected to enjoy a meal and a thank-you speech from the mayor to aldermen who backed Emanuel’s series of property tax hikes and other politically difficult votes.“Christmas in October,” Moore said. “In addition to eggs, potatoes and bacon, we got checks.”

Among those getting bought and gift-wrapped was Ald. Ariel Reboyras, 30th, who’s trying to get re-elected against Jessica Gutierrez, daughter of outgoing U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Asked about his backing of Reboyras, Emanuel cited his mantra from his days as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: “No friend gets left on the field.”

Ald. Roboyras 

In all, Emanuel paid out around half a million dollars to friendly aldermen. How nice for them. Not to say that each and every one of them got bought. A few can still claim some independence. For example, several black aldermen voted no in protest of not enough minority contracts being awarded at the airport and still got a breakfast check. Black Caucus leader, Ald. Rod Sawyer, says he is giving his $20K to community groups. Make of that what you will.

But if old man Daley were alive, he'd likely tell Rahm, "you paid too much". To which Rahm would reply: "What the hell. It's not my money."

Next question: Speaking of the Daleys, how much does it cost a billionaire charter school investor to buy a prospective mayor?

A retro trend in Chicago politics

Bill Daley, the man from JPMorgan.

They used to call it "plantation politics." The Tribune's Clarence Page has traced the origins of the metaphor to refer to the old Daley political machine in Chicago, a regime built on racism, patronage and corruption that ruled the city for decades.

A Dec. 13, 1987, Chicago Tribune article traced the phrase to a speech that political consultant Don Rose wrote in 1966 for [then aldermanic candidate] Timuel Black's crusade against the Democratic machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley. It later became a rallying cry in Harold Washington's successful 1983 campaign to become the city's first black elected mayor.

It's hard for me to believe that more than 50 years later, this city's voters, especially African-American voters, will opt to return to Daley-style politics, especially at a time when progressive candidates of color are chalking up victories over old-guard Democrats here, and in cities and towns across the country. And yet, here we are, with Bill Daley--a personification of old plantation politics, only now with a boatload of corporate cash at his disposal, and a stint in the Obama administration on his resume--opportunistically jumping into the mayor's race now that Rahm Emanuel has pulled out.

“I would not do that to a friend,” he explained, as to why he didn’t enter the race earlier.

It must be noted that the inability of the city progressives -- the 2015 Bernie Sanders coalition -- to unite around a black or Latino candidate early in the race, has opened the door wide for a return of the machine. As has the inability of anybody in the current field to move beyond single digits in the polls.

TALE OF TWO CITIES...To those who would argue that we've moved beyond racial politics in Chicago, I would have them look at this recent survey showing how different the city looks, depending on which racial or class lens you're looking through.

One example: A stunning 97 percent of white college graduates—83 percent of them “strongly"—said they "would recommend living in my neighborhood in Chicago to a friend or family member." That’s near-universal approval, and an indication that parts of the city now have huge appeal, at least to certain demographic groups.

But among African-American college graduates, the “strongly agree” figure drops to 48 percent, and among all Hispanics (not just college grads) to 41 percent.

Similarly, 58 percent of white college grads indicated they strongly believe Chicago is a good place to get a job, but only 47 percent of non-college whites concurred, and 29 percent of blacks.

No matter the perception, Chicago's become a near-impossible place for many, if not most, to live, work, or raise a family. Not only is the plantation gone (too many revolts), but so is the industrial era as well. Thus, the shocking mass exodus of displaced African-American families from the city and its school system and the attempt to replace them with wealthier, corporate, white techies and professionals.

Crain's editorial graphic

A Crain's Chicago Business editorial posted their corporate agenda (Next mayor must keep business at top of City Hall priority list).

Here's hoping one of the mayoral wannabes takes a plank from Emanuel's platform and fights for the interests of business. And if none of the current contenders is smart enough to do so, here's hoping a better candidate emerges.

A day later Bill Daley announced his candidacy. Coincidence? I think not.

Rahm, no heart for the struggle. Who will wear the crown?

Hey little emperor come down from you throne

And let another emperor climb on -- Steve Earle

After a brief celebration and a listen, or two, or three, to Little Emperor, I came back down to Earth and began considering the changes ahead in a post-Rahm Chicago and the reshaping of the upcoming mayor's race.

Most, but not all of my friends are exuberant over the news that Rahm is bailing after two terms. He claims he's trying to save us Chicagoans from a bloody election battle (no heart) and that he wants to spend more time with Amy and the kids. But we all know that's bullshit. I'm kind of sorry we didn't get a chance to give him a beating in the election. But I'll take it.

Like his predecessor, Mayor Daley, Rahm could read the numbers on the wall. His closest advisors and wealthy patrons have been telling him since May that his pathway to victory was closing and with the Laquan McDonald cover-up re-emerging around the Van Dyke trial, more protesters about to fill the streets and block up the highways, and more school-closing battles on the horizon... Discretion became the better part of valor. Tough-talking Rahm wimped out.

But we need to keep in mind, he's still there 'til February and a lame duck can do a lot of harm, especially in the schools. It's called, loot-and-pillage. Rahm can also use his campaign cash and his organization to back a candidate of his choosing. Somebody with like-minded politics but without all his baggage.

At first I was thinking, someone like Arne Duncan. He's been feathering his nest over at the Emerson Collective since his return from his Race To The Top days as Obama's ed chief. But talk about baggage? My god! And Duncan would be running, not only against the CTU and every conscious teacher in the city, but against charter and testing-loving Paul Vallas, the very man who first brought him into the ed game in Chicago. A three-way split in the white vote would leave Rahm's minions in the same shape they are already in.

So since a lot of you have been asking. My bet that the next wave of big election cash will flow towards Toni Preckwinkle and that a LatinX will enter the race, just like Ald. Rick Munoz told us they would, when he was our guest on Hitting Left. Possibly someone like IL Comptroller, Susana Mendoza.

Then again, as Susan never lets me forget, I thought Clinton would beat Trump.

The youngest mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter activist, Ja'mal Green will be our guest on Hitting Left this Friday, 11-Noon. Lots to talk about. You bet. 

What Paul Vallas learned early about the school reform biz

Rauner gives Vallas fat contract to fix Chicago State.

“High-performing individuals with decades of specialized experience and knowledge do not limit their ability to contribute to the greater good." -- Paul Vallas

Paul Vallas was never an educator, but he was a quick study. He learned from the start of his stint as Mayor Daley's schools CEO in 1995, the power of government contracting and that there was good money to be made in the school reform business. He also came to believe that the future of school reform belonged not to the system's bureaucrats, but to the outsider corporate reformers, wealthy, powerful, self-interested billionaires and outside consultants who they patronized.

After Daley gave him the boot from Chicago and through a series of unremarkable stints as district school chiefs in Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Vallas assembled a team of loyalists (mostly former Chicago school bureaucrats) and developed a strategy for injecting himself and his brand into struggling urban school districts, in order to do "the greater good". The game plan involved using political clout to place his lieutenants into power in selected districts and in return, having them bring in the big-ticket Vallas Group to "reform" district schools from the top-down. It also included a heavy dose of replacing public schools with privately-run charters and weakening or completely eliminating union collective-bargaining agreements.

It was a plan that included perks and kick-backs to district leaders as in the case of former Vallas partner Gary Solomon, who along with former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is now doing heavy prison time on fraud and corruption charges in the Chicago SUPES scandal.

Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy and worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates, the consulting company founded by Vallas and Solomon. Vallas not only hired Solomon and his companies when he worked in Philadelphia, but brought Solomon with him to New Orleans.

From an earlier Sun-Times story:

Urging that the then-newly formed Synesi be hired in 2007, Vallas told officials the New Orleans school system didn’t have anyone who could do the work, according to documents from the New Orleans district. And in his “justification for an external contractor” letter, he urged that Solomon’s company be hired without seeking competitive bids.

Sun-Times reporter Dan Mihalopoulos broke a story Friday, exposing the unlikely relationship between Vallas, the erstwhile Chicago Democrat Party machine operative, and billionaire Republican and future governor of IL, Bruce Rauner. Actually, a bit of old news. But he evaded the whole Vallas/Solomon connection.

Nearly seven years ago — when Rauner wasn’t yet a politician, just a wealthy private investor with an interest in public education and a friend in the mayor’s office — Vallas corresponded with and met with him, offering to help create what he described as an “ambitious new school district” in Chicago.

In three letters to Rauner in 2010 and 2011, Vallas offered to work for with Rauner and city officials. Vallas said that school “buildings would be provided to the charters at no cost.”

“Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago,” Vallas wrote to Rauner in February 2011, when Vallas was the top schools official in New Orleans.

 “You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest,” Vallas told Rauner. “Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.”

Vallas now claims that nothing came of the plans he and Rauner discussed for the Chicago schools and that his offers to assist CPS, "were rebuffed, as leadership chose to follow Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s vision for the district."

A lot has changed since Vallas first solicited Rauner. Vallas lost his bid to become Lt. Gov of IL and in the process, became a factor in Pat Quinn's election loss to Rauner in the governor's race.

Under the15-month contract Rauner has given Vallas to lead an economic recovery at Chicago State, he is still allowed to continue his private work with the Vallas Group.

Here's what Mihalopoulos' story left out...

Actually BBB's "vision" was Gary Solomon's vision and Solomon's vision was Vallas'. Same dreams but different beds. Solomon’s consulting company advertised that it had “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model of education reform.” In Philadelphia, he marketed the consulting company as using the “Paul Vallas method of school reform.”

In Chicago, Solomon used his former partner's strategy of installing BBB as schools CEO and then kicking-back to her after she gave SUPES and $20M contract to do principal training.

Solomon later said he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

But Vallas had used a similar approach in Rockford, St. Louis, Philly, Rochester, Peoria and other districts and greased the wheels for the Synesi group. Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011.

Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up.”

He's right and this says a lot about our justice system and media's reluctance to make the connection.