15 years later, CPS reclaims Duncan's AUSL 'turnaround schools'.

Piccolo parents protest the takeover of their school by AUSL in 2012. (Katie Osgood pic) 

"Yet for all the public attention, AUSL's results have been mixed; many students have made considerable progress, but as a group they still lag well behind district averages ... with many ending up on par or even below comparable neighborhood schools." -- Chicago Tribune, 2/6/2012

Yesterday, CPS announced that it was reclaiming the so-called "turnaround schools" which were handed over to the private management and teacher training company, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL) in 2006. 

All I can say about this break from Arne Duncan's privatization "reforms" carried out under the banner of Renaissance 2010 and then rebranded as Race to the Top during his term as Sec. of Education, is -- it's about time. 

Lacking any research base and built on the false premise that private companies, hedge funders, and power philanthropists could best operate public institutions, AUSL's school takeover turned out to be an expensive and dismal flop.

AUSL was founded and run by Chicago venture capitalist Martin Koldyke, who used his connections and big campaign donations to become a powerhouse in the school turnaround business. Koldyke, a golf buddy of then-Mayor Daley, decided he could save the public school system by running it like a business. Koldyke's company, Frontenac, had been a big investor in for-profit colleges like DeVry and Rasmussen College.

Despite AUSL schools ranking at or near the bottom of the system, the company benefited from backing from Daley, and then from Rahm Emanuel. Rahm even selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous board chairman, David Vitale, as president of the CPS Board of Education. With virtual control of the board and the central office, Koldyke was assured of a stable funding pipeline to his then 19 turnaround schools, even in the midst of a budget crisis when neighborhood schools were being starved of operating cash.

But as I pointed out here in 2012, 

 Chicago's turnarounds failed to meet even their own criteria of success and they paled in comparison to a large group of neighborhood schools being run more democratically with popularly-elected Local School Councils. More than 60 elementary-level high-poverty schools that have made school-based democracy a reality, out-achieved the top Turnaround School.

I still remember Duncan speaking to Dodge Elementary parents who were angry over his handing their school over to AUSL, without any input from the community, and promising them that they would be thrilled with his new Renaissance alternatives. 

WBEZ's Becky Vevea wrote at the time:

In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

But fast forward another five years, turnarounds Dodge and Williams were closing their doors after being labeled as low-performing schools. And by 2013, CPS  had closed many of the schools Duncan had created.

Four years after it was opened CPS pulled the plug on “turnaround” school, Bethune Elementary. The Bethune staff had all been fired when AUSL took over. Duncan claimed that a "clean slate" would lead to better schools. He would go on to push that same baseless claim at the D.O.E., withholding federal funds from school districts unless they closed schools and fired teachers in mass.

Good move, CPS and Mayor Lightfoot in bringing these 31 schools back home to CPS and in taking steps to put the public back in public schooling. There's still a long way to go on that one.

It will be a great and historic tragedy if this Dem majority fails again on gun control

A solemn group of King Soopers workers, left, some from the Boulder store and some from the same district, brought large displays of flowers for each of the victims of the mass shooting.  (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP)

It's become a familiar pattern. Dems promise mild federal gun control legislation but get no bi-partisan support so they drop the issue. Then comes another mass shooting and there's a new whirlwind of gun-control chatter that dies down again after a week or so. 

Pres. Biden did not fulfill a campaign promise to send a bill to Congress on his first day in office repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers and closing background-check loopholes.

But after two mass shootings, which took the lives of 18 people, in less than a week, he's once again promising "common sense" gun legislation, including the banning of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. He's also promising to take executive action if Republicans block passage in the Senate. 

But we've heard those promises before, like after the Sandy Hook killings in 2012 when Obama tasked Biden with coming up with a legislative package of gun control measures. But the effort resulted in no significant legislative action, and Obama was forced to enact a handful of relatively modest reform through executive actions.

After a February 2018 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., students launched a wave of activism that propelled gun-control issues to the front of the Democratic agenda, including Biden’s. But since taking office, the president has been swamped by other crises, from the pandemic to the economy to immigration.

Dems fear losing Republican support on potential bipartisan issues. Trump's MAGAs threaten to block enforcement once a bill is passed. Same as it ever was. 

This was the case even in the wake of gun-toting militias storming government buildings and threatening the lives of governors and legislators. Not to mention the horrible rise in the number of shootings in cities like Chicago. 

Federal gun control, including the outlawing of military assault weapons, was dropped to near the bottom of the Democrats' legislative agenda ever since Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told Attorney General Eric Holder to "shut the fuck up" about the issue a decade ago.

And without strong, enforceable federal laws, state and local legislation becomes almost meaningless since illegal guns are easily transported across state and municipal borders. 

Then there are the courts, now loaded up with Trump-appointed judges. Three years ago, the city of Boulder banned assault weapons. A court blocked the measure just 10 days before Monday’s rampage.

It would be one of the great historical tragedies if no significant gun legislation is possible even with a Democrat in the White House and a Dem majority in both houses.

Police reform? Where is it?

The Anjanette Young case is one more brick-in-the-wall story about a racist political system. It's a system that reproduces racial inequality, criminalizes and incarcerates Black people, allows cops to "legally" bust down doors and invade homes in the middle of the night, abuse, and even kill women like Young and Breonna Taylor. 

The raid occurred nearly two years ago when CPD cops broke into the home of Young, a social worker who was undressing when they barged in looking for a suspect. Young, standing naked and handcuffed, cried repeatedly that the officers had the wrong address.

So now the city's council has "resigned". The former police chief has been fired and Mayor Lightfoot is rightfully taking heat for her mishandling of the aftermath. 

But Mayor Emanuel, on whose watch this racist assault took place, is up for a Biden cabinet position, and the CPD perpetrators are still on the job, and with easy warrants obtained via informants' misinfo, are still breaking down doors. 

Where is Reform? 

Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge 7 President John Catanzara

Meanwhile... The head of Chicago's FOP, who calls Muslims "savages" and says "they all deserve a bullet..."  He's still on the city payroll. 

Rahm: Fighting Trump is 'sinking to his level.'

"Some may accuse me of being Pollyanna-ish — there’s a first time for everything." -- Rahm Emanuel

Rahm Emanuel is trying once again, to rebrand himself. He no longer wants to be seen as the divisive advisor who was canned by President Obama or the ex-mayor driven out of Chicago before voters could get a clean shot at him at the polls.

When he still had hopes of winning re-election, Mayor 1% tried to rebrand himself as a "progressive". But now, with real progressives threatening the centrists' hold on the Democratic Party leadership, he's dropped the progressive facade and is working with the DNC leadership to isolate and discredit the party's left-wing. Rahm now wants to morph into the "no-conflict" conciliator with Trump and the Republicans to "bring the country together."

He's warning Democrats to veer away from any anti-Trump resistance movements, especially the kind being forged by the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during the primary elections.

To Rahm, fighting Trumpism is "sinking to Trump's level."

In yesterday's Washington Post op-ed, Rahm appears downright giddy over the new NAFTA deal Nancy Pelosi cut with Trump. 

If everything in Washington centered on conflict, President Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would never have been able to align themselves on a major trade agreement. And yet there they were, serving up evidence that division and consensus can sit, however uncomfortably, side by side. What did that moment tell us? Riven though we are, we are also, on many matters, united.

From Rahm's POV, there's no longer a need for sharp conflict with Trump over issues like climate change, gun control, or immigration. Why? Because we're all already agreed. There's a national consensus, says Rahm.

We don’t need to tell Americans that the president’s decision to bully Greta Thunberg was wrong — they know that. We don’t need to tell them that his Dec. 18 attack on Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and her late husband, John, was beyond the pale and beneath this nation — they know that as well. 

This from the former White House chief-of-staff who called immigration reform, "the third rail of politics" and who warned Obama's attorney general to "STFU" about gun control. 

Rahm's call for consensus-building with Republicans is nothing more than a poke at the left-wing of the party who he and Dem party leaders see as a greater threat to their power than they do Donald Trump. Without mentioning Sanders, Warren or AOC by name, Rahm tries to paint them as the purveyors of conflict and Joe Biden as the Pelosi-style unifier.

He writes:

If Trump is going to do his best to deepen the conflict, should we do the same? Or, after three years of enduring the White House’s efforts to pit community against community, should we lean into the exhausted electorate’s desire to embrace a leader who will bind up the nation’s wounds?

His rebranding efforts won't work. He's still the same divisive, corporate shill he's always been. If the Democratic leadership follows Rahm's lead and opts for conciliation with Trump as their strategic goal, they will fail again as they did in 2016.

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.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Linda Ronstadt at the Kennedy Center Honors

Linda Ronstadt

“I’d like to say to Mr. Pompeo, who wonders when he’ll be loved, it’s when he stops enabling Donald Trump.” -- Rolling Stone

Sam Greisman, son of the actor Sally Field, another honoree

“Linda Ronstadt got up to get laurels, looked the fucker right in the eye and said ‘maybe when you stop enabling Donald Trump’” -- Guardian

Greg Hinz on ComEd's annual Mike Madigan fundraiser

Source... “It was put together by a combination of ComEd and Exelon. . . .I went because I understood it was part of the process." -- Crain's 

Sharkey on Hitting Left

CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey

We characterized Rahm as “Mayor 1%”, you know, as a “corporate shill”. We picketed his house…The thing about Rahm was that he was such a clear corporate figure who had taken a year-and-a-half off from government work to make $16 million as a stock trader or private equity guy. And that’s clearly not Mayor Lightfoot. She’s not in that same category. -- Hitting Left

Pete Buttigieg cuts ties with a campaign donor

"I learned about it this morning and within about an hour of that, he's no longer involved in the event or the campaign. Transparency and justice for Laquan McDonald is a lot more important than a campaign contribution." -- CBS News

Trump tells Jewish group...

A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me you have no choice...“You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away,” Trump said, slamming Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren during his speech at the Israeli American Council-- Market Watch

Atty. Gen. William Barr...

...threatens communities of color with loss of police protection. 

If communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need. Barr didn’t specify which “communities” he meant, but his comments were interpreted by many to refer to groups that have protested police violence against people of color. -- Washington Post

Sun-Times blows it again on teacher planning time

Sun-Times editorial asks: "But since when do salaried professionals watch the clock like hourly workers on an assembly line?" Answer: In Chicago, schools are still organized like factories (remember them?) Teachers still punch in and out.

Today's Sun-Times editorial: When teachers strike so they can teach kids less, something is wrong, blows it again.

It's the second time in a row for S-T, although the last one wasn't an editorial. They just turned over a full page to an anti-public-school harangue by a right-wing think-tanker. But now they're running neck-in-neck with the Tribune's McQueary and Kass for most ill-informed anti-teacher, anti-union pundit awards.

Kass and McQueary I understand. They are committed right-wing, racist, anti-union ideologues who never bother with seeking truth from facts. Remember when McQueary wished a natural disaster would strike Chicago to pave the way for a "rebirth" of the city?

But the S-T (partially owned by the CFL) just seems to be missing the mark out of ignorance, rather than ideology. Today's editorial calls on the CTU to drop their demand for more teacher planning time and get back to work.

While I have been at odds with CTU leaders over their tactics, especially their abusive, personal attacks aimed at Mayor Lightfoot and her supporters (me included), I have been walking the picket line and supportive of the teachers' demands for better pay and working conditions, including full support staffing for every school.

I am hopeful that they can settle this thing, hopefully by today, by agreeing on a fair contract which includes provisions for adequate, teacher-directed planning time.

But for some reason, this demand for more and better teacher planning time has become a minefield and one of the last barriers in the way of a tentative agreement between the board and the union. The S-T editorial, by mischaracterizing the demand, just adds fuel to the fire.

According to S-T editorial,

The CTU has repeatedly insisted on a terrible idea: Giving elementary school teachers an extra 30 minutes of prep time every day, though this would meaning cutting 30 minutes of teaching time every day. Forget it. 

No, it not a terrible idea. It's a great one and one that doesn't have to cut into classroom teaching time. But even if it did, research shows, that's not so bad.

S-T claims,

Chicago once had the shortest school day in the country, which was a national embarrassment. When kids are not in class, they cannot learn. But since 2012, thanks to the effort of many parents, educators and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago has had a longer school day — something closer to the national average — and we cannot go back.

This is all bullcrap. Chicago didn't have the shortest day in the country and wasn't a "national embarrassment." That was all a fabrication of Rahm Emanuel's who made a longer school day his election campaign mantra so there would be more time for test-prep rather the prep time for teachers and staff.

Rahm even dragged Arne Duncan back to town from Washington to campaign for his longer school day plan. I gagged when I heard Duncan call Chicago's school day, a "disgrace" and a "badge of shame." Duncan had autocratically run the schools here for the seven years previous and with a compliant union leadership behind him, had never implemented a longer school day.

As one observer wrote in a letter to the Sun-Times in 2011,

 A longer school day without structure is like a restaurant serving “lots” of food — if the food is not tasty — who cares if you get a lot of it!

If less seat time for students was a "national embarrassment", why wasn't the Lab School, where Rahm sent his kids, embarrassed? They had a shorter school day and year than did CPS and still do. So do the wealthy suburban districts to the north of us. None of them equate more seat time with more learning.

S-T claims:

Yes, teachers need time to plan. But since when do salaried professionals watch the clock like hourly workers on an assembly line? True professionals — teachers, doctors, college professors, and even journalists — agree on an annual salary and get on with the job.

Have the S-T editors ever been inside a Chicago Public School? If they had, they would know that unlike other professionals, our teachers punch a time clock every day, just like factory workers (remember them?). No, teachers are still not treated as professionals. Real professionals have time to plan, much greater autonomy over their work and the time and wherewithal to collaborate with their colleagues.

Can you imagine a lawyer defending a client with inadequate prep time? Or doctors being told to spend more time in the operating room with less time to prepare? Or either of them punching a clock?

As I said up top, I hope the strike gets settled today and I hope teacher prep time is part of the deal. It shouldn't be that hard to reach an agreement on this.

Day 9 of Chicago teachers strike. Sun-Times gives a full page to the charter hustlers

In the wake of horrific Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Univ. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman called the event "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.”

For all my radical friends out there, by "radically reform," Friedman didn't mean fully democratizing public ed. Rather he meant nothing less than replacing all public schools with privately-run charters. With the help of fellow free-marketeers like Paul Vallas, who became the head of post-Katrina New Orleans schools, that's exactly what happened.

It was Vallas's successor at CPS, Arne Duncan who, as U.S. Secretary of Education, dotted Friedman's i's and crossed his t's by calling Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

It was then up to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to sum things up with his 2012 catchphrase, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

Naomi Klein would later expose this shock-and-awe strategy of "disaster capitalism" in her best-selling book, The Shock Doctrine.

I'm recalling the shock-doctrine mentality while reading a full-page pitch in this morning's Sun-Times by the far-right Heritage Foundation, proposing to replace Chicago's public schools with privately-run charters in order to avoid the inconvenience of teacher strikes. Ironically, S-T is partially owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor.

The city is currently in the ninth day of a teacher's strike, with little prospect of a settlement in sight, and today's prophets (profiteers) of unregulated free markets are once again trying to capitalize on a city's crisis.

The logic behind their sales pitch is that since Chicago charter teachers are forbidden by law from being in the same bargaining unit with CTU Local 1, the city's charter schools have remained generally union-free. Thus, if you have no unions, you will have no strikes. No strikes, no inconvenience for parents. Voila!

Charter schools, public schools where families can choose to send their children instead of to an assigned district school, have remained open during the strike. Though some Chicago charters are unionized, differences in their contracts have allowed charters to keep students in school, saving families from having to make other arrangements to meet work and family commitments.

Passages Charter School

How convenient! Except for one thing. Charter schools, funded by the state, are facing the same funding crisis as public schools. Illinois is 50th of the 50 states when it comes to equitable funding of school districts.

Charter teachers, who are generally working for less pay, with less autonomy and with far worse working conditions than the teachers in regular Chicago public schools, are slowly-but-surely getting organized and speaking out against their exploitation by charter operators. And unlike traditional CPS schools, where the union bargains with a publicly-elected mayor and her appointed school board, charter teachers and their unions must each face-off with their own privately-appointed and unaccountable boards of directors. Often these not-for-profit boards actually sub-contract the operation of the schools to for-profit operating companies.

Not only have the charters failed to produce better results than the public schools they are replacing, but charters are no more immune to strikes than are the schools in so-called right-to-work states like Arizona, Oklahoma and West Virginia, where strike waves have recently rocked the system.

The last paragraph in the Sun-Times piece (which reads like a last-minute add-on), makes my point:

Unfortunately, teachers in Chicago’s Passages Charter School chose to strike and called for higher pay. These striking teachers, who have since settled on a new contract, undermined the value that charter schools bring to students and families, especially during union demonstrations in district schools. And remember that CTU demand to stop charter-school growth in Chicago?

Yes, and a good demand it is.  The Chicago teachers’ union secured a cap on charter school expansion in their last contract negotiations in 2016. That should also be embedded in the new contract.

Thanks for reminding us.

Sun-Times' phony support for CPS sports teams

Sun-Times says, Simeon needs the teachers strike to end sooner than the rest of the Public League 

We have to wonder, if the strike continues through the coming week, how many students this school year will score just a little lower on standardized tests, hurting their chances of getting into a top college or winning a scholarship. -- Sun-Times editorial

I expect anti-union, anti-teacher rants from the likes of Greg Hinz at Crain's or Kristen McQueary (and now Eric Zorn) at the Trib. But I must say, I flipped out after reading today's editorial in the Sun-Times, a paper owned in part by the unions, which hit too close to home.

The editorial calls on striking CTU teachers to return to work immediately or risk hurting CPS sports teams.

If the strike does not end on or before Tuesday, all 78 CPS football teams — some 2,300 kids — will not play their Week 9 games.

It's not just football. Girls tennis teams will miss their scheduled tournament and Class 2A and 3A boys soccer teams had to forfeit every game this weekend.

And the topper...

...if the strike continues through the coming week, how many students this school year will score just a little lower on standardized tests, hurting their chances of getting into a top college or winning a scholarship.

The best solution there is, stop giving them.

First, let me say that as a former CPS basketball coach and IHSA referee, I am sympathetic to the coaches and players whose games have been put on hold, just as I am with inconvenienced parents and teachers who long to be in the classroom with their kids.

But I've always thought that educators talking to their students about a teacher strike and about the whole collective-bargaining process, can provide just as authentic a learning experience on democracy than the ordinary goings-on in the school building or out on the football field for those few days.

But I still have to call B.S. at S-T's sudden phony concern for CPS sports programs. This is a newspaper that remained silent when Mayor Rahm Emanuel was slashing sports programs for all but the elite schools.

As a coach, taking my players to suburban schools, only six miles up the lakeshore, was always a lesson in class warfare. My westside kids would walk into carpeted locker rooms in suburban schools that looked like health-club spas, past fancy offices for large athletic departments, training tables where opposing players were having their ankles wrapped by professional trainers. Courtside was often a doctor or at least a skilled nurse so injuries could be treated on the spot.

These wealthy public schools all had expanded counseling services, full-time nurses, psychologists, and well-staffed libraries. Not just because it was written into their union contracts, but because these districts received two-to-three times the per/student allotment as did city schools.

Back at CPS, I was given a tiny stipend for the hours I spent each afternoon and evening after school and at games. I often came out-of-pocket for after-practice bus fare home or for a meal at McDonald's, or for new Nikes so our players wouldn't have to play in their streetwear. We asked players' parents -- often unemployed or minimum-wage workers -- to kick in for new uniforms that fit the kids. I even had to collect the unis after each game and launder them at home.

I had to purchase a $60 book on first aid, told to read it and then given an online, true-false and multiple-choice test to pass. I was then left to my own devices, with no equipment or first-aid materials (maybe ice from the kitchen) or resources to treat ankle sprains, open wounds, asthma attacks, splint broken bones, or things much more serious until the ambulance came. All this while the game was going on.

CPS has a two-tier system of highschool sports, where the gap between the haves and have-nots was noticeably widened by Rahm Emanuel. He made sure that there were always plenty of resources for elite sports schools like Simeon (see S-T's "Why Simeon needs the teachers strike to end sooner than the rest of the Public League"), Whitney Young and Phillips, but not for the rest of us.

See also: How did a CPS high school get in line for a $13M gym to lure a star basketball coach? All one of Rahm Emanuel’s campaign donors had to do was ask.

Sun-Times sports writers help widen the gap by covering the high school sports star system as if it were big-time college or the NBA or NFL.

On the strike line this morning.

As my readers know, I have been out on the picket line supporting the just demands of the teachers for better pay and working conditions, including nurses, social workers and librarians in every school.

I don't equate our progressive mayor with Rahm. Nor do I know what the current budget will allow for sports programs. But oh, how I wished for a full-time nurse to treat sports injuries back then.

However, we were lucky enough to have a wonderful librarian who I often sent my struggling student/athletes to for extra academic help in order to keep them eligible. Yes, we need one of those in every school as well.

Today, at a union news conference, CPS sports coaches talked about the need for higher stipends, better staffing, facilities and busing for sports programs. That's something worth fighting for, during the strike and after. I'm out of the game now, but I hope they get them.

I also hope the Sun-Times editorial board members get their heads out of their rear ends. 

Big corps not "fleeing" IL over $15/hr minimum wage after all.

Crain's begs Amazon: "Come to Chicago. We have plenty of low-paid workers here."

Last year we defeated the Rahm/Rahner plan to bring Amazon HQ2 into Chicago. Why? Because they are among the worst low-road, abusive, union-busting companies with the poorest working conditions of any corporation. Plus, we knew that their promise of 50,000 new jobs was BS. Plus, despite raking in superprofits, they would have ended up paying no state or city taxes to help support our schools and city services. Preckwinkle and Daley were the only mayoral candidates who supported Rahm's plan.

Good riddance, right?

Chicago being a strong union town, along with our push for a living wage, then led to a fear campaign in the media by Rahm/Rahner claiming that other companies would now flee the state and the city if we made them pay fair taxes and a living wage to their workers.

Fast forward --  With Rauner and Rahm gone, Gov. Pritzker signed a bill in February, passed in the IL Legislature, that would raise the state's minimum wage to $15/hr. Not a living wage, but good news just the same.

The bad news is that under the new law, minimum-wage workers won't see $15/hr under for six years. Why such a compromise with Republicans in a Democratic-dominated legislature? You'd have to ask the progressive house members who crafted the bill.

But now comes the news that since the passage of the bill, corporations are coming back to IL rather than running away. In fact last week, Amazon announced plans to open a fulfillment center in Channahon, Illinois, supposedly creating more than 500 new, full-time jobs. The project, developed by Venture One Real Estate, will add a new distribution center of over 1 million square feet in size—the sixth in Will County for the online retailer, after properties in Crest Hill, Joliet, Monee and Romeoville.

“Illinois is a great place to do business and we are excited to continue our growth and investment in the state with our new fulfillment center in Channahon,” said Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon’s vice president of global customer fulfillment. “Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than $4 billion in the state through its local fulfillment center and cloud infrastructure, research facilities and compensation to thousands of employees in the state. We are excited to create more than 500 new full-time jobs, in addition to the 11,000 current employees across the state, who receive industry-leading pay and benefits starting on day one.”

And this from Gov. Pritzker:

“This significant jobs announcement is another sign that Illinois’ future is bright, and I’m excited to see Amazon build on its investment in Illinois with 500 new jobs in the south suburbs,” said Governor J.B. Pritzker. “Illinois is the transportation hub of the Midwest, and our workforce is among the best in the world."

I guess the big corps like Amazon aren't scared off by Pritzker's Fair Tax initiative. I didn't think they would be, even with Indiana and Wisconsin right next door.

And the great irony is that starting salary at the new center will be (you guessed it) $15/hr. Six years before the new law takes full effect and with no union representation for workers.

This should also bring some organizing-the-unorganized jobs for union organizers.

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.

Clock is ticking for victims of Rahm's closing of mental health clinics.

Dr. Leticia Villarreal Sosa, a clinical social worker and professor of social work at Dominican University, said at Thursday’s forum, “It has been difficult to account for what has happened to those folks who were receiving services at clinics that were closed, and what has happened to people who are continuing to need access to services.”

Time is running out for many of the victims of Rahm Emanuel's closing of our mental health clinics seven years ago. Many have already fallen through the cracks as public health care becomes less and less accessible. Now is the time to reopen the clinics.

More than half of the city’s mental health clinics were shut down in 2012, "leaving a void in parts of the city most susceptible to trauma", according to a report from last year.  Rahm also used the closings as a union-busting tactic.

Many of us took to the streets back then to protest the closings. We were met with abuse from the mayor who screamed at protest leaders, "You will respect me" (laughing as I write this).

In January, the City Council established a task force, led by Ald. Sophia King, to "take a hard look" the situation. But now it's June and still no movement to reopen the clinics. Enough with the hard looks. There's already an abundance of evidence showing the need and the community is demanding that the clinics and other cut social services be reestablished.

Now there just needs to be some will and determination on the part of our new city leaders.

Rahm's Health Commissioner Julie Morita is one of those who's been trying to prevent the reopening. All those clinics means more work, "more fires to put out" for the bureaucracy, claimed Morita. What nonsense! But she's on her way out the door this month, leaving it open for the mayor to replace her with someone who takes the task seriously.

I'm hoping this won't be another one of those four-year ramp-ups, like the $15 minimum wage.

Clock is ticking.

After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

The elite get all the breaks and are shown all the shortcuts. In the meantime, ordinary people are forced to pay full freight. -- Rahm Emanuel in The Atlantic

Rahm’s announcement of his new Wall Street gig comes on the heels of his phony legacy tour where he tried, with lots of media help, to rebrand his term in Chicago as a “progressive” era of good governance. It included this piece of centrist populism in the Atlantic where Rahm fakes a hit on "American elites" but actually goes after the growing "socialist" insurgency within the Democratic Party.

As many of us expected it would, the story ends with Mayor 1% laughing and flashing his middle finger at all of us as he boards his limo to the Wall Street investment firm Centerview Partners LLC, whose leaders are mainly Rahm cronies and campaign donors. They include Centerview founder Blair Effron, who contributed $61,500 to the former mayor’s campaign fund, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who has donated more than $70,000 to Emanuel’s campaign, and Robert Pruzan, another Centerview founder and Rahm pal for the past 20 years.

This so-called "boutique" investment firm Centerview (centrist Democrats -- get it?) is one of the most profitable on Wall Street. The company brags on its website that it has advised on nearly $3 trillion worth of transactions.

In 2014, Centerview served as an adviser to Time Warner on its proposed merger with Comcast that drew opposition from many who argued the deal would hurt consumers.

According to the Tribune, Emanuel penned an August 2014 letter to the FCC, encouraging regulators to support the deal, writing on city of Chicago letterhead that he believed the proposed merger would not “reduce choice, elevate prices or otherwise harm customers.”

Good riddance, we hope, to all that.

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

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ald. Maldonado

Ald. Robert Maldonado, new chair of the Latino Caucus

“Some of our communities are being completely gentrified. We need to stop that, we need to slow it down.” -- WBEZ

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"This awful, untrue line got boo'ed for a full minute. John Delaney, thank you but please sashay away." -- The Hill

Howie Klein

Maybe the tent really is too big. If it's big enough for John Bel Edwards to be stinking it up from the inside, why would a normal Democrat even want to be inside it? -- Crooks & Liars

Elizabeth Warren

 “It’s not just the mass shootings. It’s the ones that never make the headlines. It’s the kids who are shot at the playground, on the sidewalk, in their own homes. Gun violence touches families every day." -- Rolling Stone

Fritz Kaegi after corporate lobbyists kill his reform bill

 “Asking our office to continue using a broken system goes against the reform taxpayers and voters want. Opponents of the bill would prefer we wait longer, knowing that the longer we wait, the less likely the bill is to pass. Delays favor a broken assessment system, however, that prolongs inequality.” -- Tribune

Kevin Durant to rapper Drake

Drake was walking in the tunnel near the Warriors' locker room with his head down when Durant trolled him. "Keep your head up young fella. It's alright, it's ok. We have more games to play." -- ABC 7

Thank god former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel finally has a platform to do something about all this inequality pic.twitter.com/hWWkGFl9lo

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) May 21, 2019

Summing up Rahm's role as the arts mayor

Rahm sold off this public art masterpiece by Kerry James Marshall...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is on what I call, his image rehabilitation tour. In the process, he's trying to repaint his image from that of a closer of schools, libraries and public space, into a patron of the arts and philanthropist.

...and fought a losing battle for this. 

It's sad watching local media play along with this charade. See for example, Mary Mitchell's recent column with the headline: Mayor Rahm Emanuel to put his money where his heart is. 

Two things wrong here. One, the money wasn't his. It was a million bucks left in his campaign fund. Two, his heart is where his money is, not the other way around.

It did my heart good to hear that Mayor 1% is still pissed that we ran his pal George Lucas, along with his hideous Star Wars Museum out of town.

" It became a jihad," cried Rahm, reverting to his IDF persona. 

"You had the power of Lucas Films and someone willing to give $150 or $175 million to the city in philanthropy". 

Funny, I never saw that offer in writing. What I saw was a mayor willing to give a billionaire movie mogul public park land for his for-profit amusement show.

Anyway, whenever Rahm's pissed, I'm happy.

But it turns out, losing that gross-looking museum wasn't the mayor's biggest "arts" regret. That one was rightfully his shameful selling off of the great Kerry James Marshall work of public art.

Here's how Marshall took it:

“It just seemed like a way of exploiting the work of artists in the city for short-term gain in a really shortsighted kind of way,” he said of the plan to auction off “Knowledge and Wonder,” which Marshall painted for the Legler Branch public library on the West Side, in order to reap an expected multimillion dollar windfall that would pay for upgrading the Legler. “And so I made a decision at that time I would never do another public work.”

So to sum up Rahm's history as a steward of Chicago arts: He fought like hell for the Star Wars Museum in order to kiss a billionaire's ass in exchange for hoped-for philanthropic handouts while selling off a public arts masterpiece by one of the great African-American artists for a quick hit of cash. 

More empty advice for Lightfoot. This time from Mayor 1%.

Lightfoot talks with south-side residents at Kennedy-King College.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot has so far been good at soliciting input from community members. But along with that has also come lots of empty, self-serving advice from the old guard. I guess it goes with the territory.

Last week it was Bill Daley's flack Peter Cunningham counseling the incoming mayor to think small, forget the "black, gay, female agenda" and city corruption, and focus instead on garbage collection and pothole repair. 

The latest bits of wisdom come from Rahm Emanuel, Mayor 1% himself, urging Lightfoot to copy his autocratic style of leadership in handling the city council. I call it the S & M model or what Freud called the pleasure principle (Lustprinzip). 

Rahm advises Lightfoot...

“You have to not so much walk in somebody else’s shoes [as] you have to think about what’s the benefit [for them]. … What’s the pain to pleasure?”

For Rahm and old-line machine pols like Eddie Burke, this has meant buying loyalty from obedient  aldermen with TIF money and re-distributing funds from the big downtown developers. Crumbs from the super-profit table to dole out to some and not others. The pain/pleasure principle.

On point, S-T's Fran Spielman writes this morning:

But being mayor isn’t only about making tough decisions and giving people what you deem to be in their best interests. It’s about listening to disparate views with sensitivity, building consensus and giving people at least some say in their own destiny. On that test of leadership, Emanuel failed.

Hopefully, the mayor-elect, who ran and won handily on a promise to make a clean break from Rahm's pain/pleasure style of politics, will follow her own course and Rahm will save his advice for his patrons at his new job.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Noble Charter Network connected to Ed Burke real estate deal. 

Noble Charters spokesman Cody Rodgers

“We did not know that Alderman Burke was the tax lawyer for the property until reading about it in this email. We have not been contacted by the FBI, U.S. attorney’s office or any other law enforcement agency regarding Ald. Burke.” -- Sun-Times

Rahm has no regrets about Ed Burke

 “If I got rid of Ed Burke as Finance Committee chairman, I would be creating an organizing force against me and I have other problems,” he added. While he saw that as a “threat” early in his tenure, he also saw an 'opportunity.' “He has tremendous knowledge about things,” Emanuel said. ” -- Sun-Times

Democracy for America Chairman Charles Chamberlain

“[Biden's] been a corporate Democrat for years, and I think the Democratic Party is recognizing that our nominee and our party moving forward really has to be prepared to challenge the D.C. power structure,” said Chamberlain, whose group has supported Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders in the past. For Biden, he said, “The wheels are going to come off the cart.” -- Politico

The Madman

 “The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” -- New York Times

Prisoners send handwritten letters to NYT

Alabama prison inmates

No one feels safe here. Not the inmates, nor the officers. No one feels safe here when supervisors up to the warden level stand behind the fence of the barricaded, secure area and tell inmates who have fled there looking for protection that they need to go get a knife. -- New York Times

Morgan Carroll, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party

GOP cries of socialism are “Cold War stuff” that’s irrelevant to most voters. -- Sun-Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

After more than $1billion was easily raised for the repair of  Notre Dame Cathedral, thousands marched in Paris, for the 23rd week in a row, over the lack of economic equality in France  

Father Michael Pfleger

 “It’s being reported a lot of money to rebuild Notre Dame is coming from the United States. Well, consider the fact that America hasn’t finished rebuilding the 9th Ward in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We still don’t have clean water in Flint, Michigan. We still have not rebuilt Puerto Rico since Hurricanes Maria and Irma in 2017. Up until recently, little money was raised to rebuild three black churches burned to the ground in Louisiana. Poverty is raging in communities in Chicago and the state.” -- Sun-Times

John Barnett, Boeing whistle-blower

“As a quality manager at Boeing, you’re the last line of defense before a defect makes it out to the flying public. And I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy.” -- New York Times

For the first time, Chicago top execs are all women of color. 

Lori Lightfoot

 “We are very focused on making sure … that we are creating opportunities for diverse young people to get a seat at tables that they wouldn’t ordinarily have a seat at. I think that’s reflected in our transition committees — we’re matching up people who are notable with people who are laudable and unsung and everything else in between.” -- Sun-Times

Anand Giridharadas, author of  'Winner Take All"

And he lambasted the notion, frequently championed by the likes of Bill Gates and Barack Obama, that Silicon Valley’s innovations would disrupt old hierarchies and spread capitalism’s rewards. “Really?” Giridharadas asked. “Now five companies control America, instead of 100! And a lot of those companies are whiter and more male than the ones they disrupted.” -- Washington Post

Dick Simpson, political science prof at UIC

Simpson noted that the woman Emanuel affectionately called “B3” was “held out to be a reformer who was improving the schools....There should have been red flags, given some of her previous involvement, as came out in the court case, with her former employer." -- Sun-Times