The mayor's current school board is a good one. How do we move on to an elected board?

The new board. 

Mayor Lightfoot has chosen some excellent people to fill the seats on the new Board of Education. It's a board that's dominated by progressives, including parents, ed activists and people, like Board Pres. Miguel del Valle, who see themselves as interim members until an elected board can be put in place.

What a change from the previous regime! No cronies or puppets on this board. As far as I can tell, no profiteers like Deborah Quazzo, using the board to enrich themselves. It's a board composed entirely of people of color and women. No white men. What a radical breach from the Chicago machine days.

As for Rep. Martwick's current Elected School Board bill, which was written without any input from the mayor, it is dead in the water. The start date under HB2267 is 2023, 4 yrs from now, at the end of Lightfoot’s first term, and it requires reauthorization even then. The coalition of ed activists, including RYH and the CTU, who drafted the bill, will have to go back to the drawing board and take into account the mayor's objections to the unwieldy size of the proposed board. Until then, the legislature isn't foolish enough to go against Chicago's first black, gay, woman mayor,  a mayor that has just won a landslide election and carried all 50 Chicago wards.

In remarks to the Sun-Times, del Valle raised the possibility that an elected board could be installed much more quickly than the four-year timeframe proposed in State Rep. Robert Martwick’s bill.

The current bill might have already been passed except for the fact that it's fatally flawed and even if passed, wouldn't take effect for four years or more. So we need a new bill that is reflective of the changes in the city and state political climate since the election.

Rahm Emanuel was the mayor and Republican Bruce Rauner was the governor. Some drafters of the current bill have admitted to me that the four-year ramp was the result of a compromise, a bone thrown to Rahm/Rauner. But they're both gone now. So a new compromise is in order if and when an elected board bill can be passed.

Unfortunately, some CTU leaders have turned their guns on Lightfoot over the issue. One goes so far as to claim that we don't need a good appointed board and that the mayor's new "okay" board is only a ruse, an attempt to pacify us and kill their elected school board bill.

Makes me wonder whether these union leaders are more interested in scoring some political points against a mayor they opposed in a vitriolic campaign, than they are in passing ESRB legislation? Some unity building is badly needed here. Let's see who's up to the task.

We'll be talking all about the mayor's board picks and an elected school board tomorrow, 11-noon on Hitting Left with the Klonsky Bros with in-studio guests Curtis Black and Jacqueline Serrato Flores from the Chicago Reporter. Tune in 11-noon CDT to WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago. Streaming live at www.lumpenradio.com

Rising student homelessness not an 'excuse' but a brutal fact of life at CPS

Last night I was watching CBS News Chicago. I was surprised when I saw their report on the city's homeless children, putting the number at 11,447. It sounded low to me. I assume it's from the latest report by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. But that number includes only young people aged 14-21. ABC 7 reports that there are more that 20,000 homeless students in Chicago Public Schools.

To put that in perspective, that's about one in every 20 CPS students, the great majority being African-American or Latino.

CPS's Nancy B. Jefferson school and the Juvenile Detention Center, is packed with homeless kids, many of whom have committed no crime other than being homeless.

The number of homeless families in Chicago has tripled over the last dozen years, says CCH.

Corporate school reformers love to talk about their so-called, "no excuses" schools. But homelessness is not an excuse, but a fact.

There's only a  small body of academic research and literature that focuses on the academic achievement of homeless children. But everything I've read points to the conclusion that poverty and homelessness have a much greater impact on measurable student learning outcomes than any classroom variables.

It generally indicates that homeless children score poorly on standardized reading and mathematics tests and are often required to repeat a grade.

For one thing, homeless families with children move a lot, often from shelter to shelter. That often means lots of different schools, teachers, and high absentee rates. Many CPS schools, especially charters and selective-enrollment schools tend to push homeless kids out, or not accept them at all.

Fifty-six percent of the 118 homeless Chicago families with school-aged children that were surveyed said they moved between two or three times over a three-year period, and 20 percent reported living at four to six different residences during that time period.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of parents said their child lacked an adequate study area when they were homeless, and 66 percent reported changes in their child's behavior at school since losing permanent housing. Of the families surveyed, nearly 33 percent of the children missed six days of school last year and 17 percent missed more than 10 days.

This doesn't even touch the psychological effects of homelessness on children or their susceptibility to sexual abuse and violence.

Homelessness by the numbers from CCH report:

52.3 percent: The number of renters in Chicago who are “extremely low income,” making less than $22,000 per year.

$17,160: The annual salary for someone working a full-time minimum wage job in Chicago.

44 percent: The percentage of a full-time minimum wage worker's paycheck that goes toward housing at the median fair market price in Illinois.

629,454: The number of people living in poverty in Chicago with 298,403 of those living in “extreme poverty.”

Wednesday's press conference

At Wednesday's CCH presser, Latoya Ellis, a single parent of three whose family became homeless in August due to a lack of affordable housing, spoke to the educational challenges her children, ages 8, 14 and 16, face as a result of their housing status.

"Children need structure and routine, and due to homelessness, I as a parent cannot provide that, because I have no control over certain things like what time the lights go off. My children are often left trying to do their homework by the light of the cellphone, or on the bus on the way to school the next morning or sometimes even in class the next day," she said. "There are constant distractions that keep them from sleeping and getting a good night's rest so, as a result, they sleep during class time."

With Gov. Rauner's devastating cuts in support services for homeless families and children, those numbers will certainly go up. Consider it the next time you hear the words, "no excuses" or Mayor Emanuel's call for "better parenting" or for evaluating schools and teachers primarily on the basis of student standardized test scores.