WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Principal Troy LaRaviere

So when people ask me, “Aren’t you afraid of losing your job if you speak out?” this is my answer: I did not travel across an ocean and risk my life to defend American freedoms only to return and relinquish those freedoms to an elected official and his appointed board of education. -- Sun-Times

Valerie Leonard, N. Lawndale community activist

 "It's depressing. What we're seeing is a consolidation of our schools under private interests. For us as a community, we're the ones that are bearing the brunt of all this." -- Tribune

Parent Nivia Simmons

"There's so many kids in the area and there's not enough schools. When they closed down schools, class sizes went up. And for parents who have to work or they don't have a car, their options have been taken away." -- Private operators dominate public schools in North Lawndale

UC Berkeley Prof. Bruce Fuller

“It’s like putting a Burger King kitty-corner to a McDonald’s and expecting — in the same location and competing for the same families — warm and fuzzy cooperation." -- NYT: Charters, Public Schools and a Chasm Between

Paul Krugman

First, modern inequality isn’t about graduates. It’s about oligarchs. Apologists for soaring inequality almost always try to disguise the gigantic incomes of the truly rich by hiding them in a crowd of the merely affluent. -- New York Times