WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Cédric von Niederhäusern

David R. Stone, special education teacher, Gallistel Language Academy

Yet the biggest sacrifice of all is one we tragically share with our students and their families. Violence increases when after-school programs, counseling services, special education, tutoring, and social workers are sacrificed due to CPS budget cuts. Since joining CPS, I personally have lost three of my students who were murdered before they could graduate. Nobody should be asked to share such sacrifices. -- Chicago Sun-Times | Sunday Letters

Kesi Foster, a reform advocate with the Urban Youth Collaborative in N.Y.

“Yesterday, we felt that, even if the city wasn’t ending the school-to-prison pipeline, it was committed to some progress. After last night, we’re not sure we’ve taken a step at all.” -- The Atlantic

Cédric von Niederhäusern

Maureen Dowd

The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary. -- New York Times

Ben Jealous, former NAACP president

“Secretary Clinton’s decision to aggressively court Mitt Romney’s base has her looking more and more like Mitt Romney every day. That’s not a good thing.” -- New York Times

Neil Gross

Union decline has left the working class politically and economically vulnerable, and it’s this vulnerability Mr. Trump has been able to exploit. -- NYT Sunday Review

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Courageous Saucedo student speaks out against ISAT.  

Sun-Times editorial

...CPS damaged its credibility with parents, and undermined the trust that is so essential to good schooling, by choosing, foolishly, to interview small children on such a sensitive matter without even informing their parents — the ones who made the final decision on skipping the test. CPS had the law on its side, but wisdom was nowhere to be found. -- Terrible idea to interrogate kids 

Drummond Teacher Juan Gonzalez

 Drummond teachers have said they are afraid of losing their jobs, but felt obligated to take a stand. “I stand strong  in my decision. I feel I’m on the side of right,” Gonzalez says. “This boycott of the ISAT is not about the ISAT alone,” he says. “It's about the incredible amount of testing that we give our kids.” -- WBEZ

Liberal Teacher

Then I blew my stack and asked who is really paying you to say this. How can your daughter’s charter school be closed when it never opened in the first place? Mayor DiBlasio did not close any schools. How can one close a school that was never even opened? By the way, with all the money being paid for your fake grass roots campaign, jingoistic ads and commercials, your pal Eva could build ten more charters. Of course, she hung up in the middle of my rant. -- The Public Educator

CTU Vice-President Jesse Sharkey 

 “What we see are schools that are in the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. We see schools that are as a group 97 percent African-American. These policies will hurt the students they are meant to help and it will punish the dedicated educators that have made a point in their life to dedicate their lives to working with the student population.” -- Sun-Times, CPS CEO recommends turnarounds for three schools

Veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that  “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. -- WaPo, Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

DE BLASIO LEADING THE WAY ON INCOME GAP AND SCHOOL INEQUALITY

Mayor de Blasio delivers his first State of the City Address. Offers "a future of greater equality and opportunity,” 

N.Y. Mayor Bill de Blasio isn't folding his post-election cards as many predicted, despite stiff opposition from Gov. Cuomo's gang up in Albany and even some attacks from some lefties on his plan for universal pre-K.

AP reports:

By virtue of a campaign focused on income disparity, de Blasio has become a leading spokesman in the global movement to address fiscal inequality but in order to enact some of his signature ideas, he must first get approval in a city 150 miles to the north. Albany lawmakers must sign off on de Blasio's hopes to raise the minimum wage for city residents and for the centerpiece of his agenda: a tax hike on the rich to fund universal pre-kindergarten.

B-BYE... New York's charter hustlers are borrowing a page from from their corporate uncles by threatening to leave town if BdB goes through with his plans to make parasitic privately-run charters pay rent in public school buildings and enforce tighter restrictions on how they operate. I hope the mayor calls their bluff.

De Blasio's administration has already revised it's education budget, reportedly pulling $210 million away from the charter hustlers and directing it to expanding preschool programs. He's even placed a moratorium on new charter school co-locations.

In his State of the City Address yesterday, the Mayor said New York would become the largest municipality to offer identification cards to residents regardless of their legal status, making it easier for undocumented immigrants to open bank accounts, lease apartments or borrow library books.

Jay Travis

AFSCME BACKS TRAVIS… Community organizer and Chicago Bronzeville neighborhood native Jay Travis on Monday announced a key campaign endorsement by AFSCME Council 31 (my union) in her Democratic primary race against State Rep. Christian Mitchell. Mitchell is being targeted by organized labor for defeat after taking money from Stand For Children union-busters and for  voting for pension-robbing SB1 legislation.

In addition to AFSCME, Jay has been endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union and Citizen Action Illinois.

On Friday, Travis reported $22,000 in campaign contributions from labor unions, including $10,000 from AFSCME; $5,000 from the CTU; $5,000 from the North Suburban Teachers Union COPE; and $2,000 from LCFT – COPE Local 504, IFT-AFTAF CIO.

'Oh, no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors'
I'm humming that old Charley Rich tune this morning as I'm reading the DNAinfo account of Rahm Emanuel's secret meeting with Chicago south side pastors. Probably should have been watching re-runs of Let's Make a Deal, at the same time. I wonder what it will take to head off any real opposition from an African-American opposition candidate (Toni Preckwinkle) as 2015 approaches?

Whatever the cost, Rahm can easily afford it. His campaign coffers have been swelled by big donations from city real-estate developers to the point where he has amassed a $6.2 million campaign fund more than a year before a February 2015 election in which there is no announced opponent. John Kupper, the mayor's political adviser, explained why Emanuel takes big campaign checks from developers.

"First, these are legal contributions," Kupper wrote in an email. "Second, the mayor does not take anything for granted relative to his election campaigns."

Toussaint Losier

A SMALLTALK SALUTE... 
This one goes out to Chicago housing activist Toussaint Losier who is out of jail this morning, after being arrested yesterday afternoon at PNC Bank on 87th and Cottage Grove. Toussaint was arrested without charges after being assaulted by a bank security guard during a petition delivery on the behalf of a homeowner currently fighting to keep her home.

****** 

Special thanks to Dr. Shelly Davis-Jones, Supt. of Dist. 149 (Dolton/Calumet City) and author of, Filling the Seat: The Pathway to the Superintendency for one African American Woman, for speaking in my class last night.

More on Fariña pick: You can't go wrong expecting the worst from Duncan.

In yesterday's post on de Blasio's appointment of Carmen Fariña as schools chancellor, I implied that pressure from Arne Duncan and his assistant, Jim Shelton (a Gates Foundation insert at the DOE), was being exerted on the new mayor to appoint a corporate reformer type. As it turns out, I was right on the money. I've learned long ago, that you're almost always on safe ground when anticipating unethical behavior from the Duncan gang.

Yesterday's Washington Post reports:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and at least one other Education Department official urged New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his team not to choose Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Joshua P. Starr as the city’s next schools chancellor, according to several people knowledgable about the selection process. It was an unusual move by the nation’s top education official and came in the wake of Starr’s vocal criticism of some of the Obama administration’s school reform policies.

Starr was reportedly on BdB's short list that included Rhee disciple, Maya Henderson and Chicago's school-closing CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Credit both Starr and de Blasio for not giving in to Duncan's bullying. BdB reportedly offered Starr the number 2 job on the assumption that he would soon take over for the 70-year-old Fariña. Starr declined, opting instead to continue his work in Montgomery County, where he earned the wrath of Shelton by criticizing Duncan's Race To The Top.

Duncan used his position to stump for Rhee and Fenty in D.C.. 

Duncan and Shelton were both big fans of Michelle Rhee in D.C. and Duncan even tried to provide cover for her in the D.C. test-cheating scandal.

According to the Post,

In January 2011, while D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) deliberated on who would succeed Michelle A. Rhee as D.C. schools chancellor, Duncan said publicly that he hoped Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s deputy, would get the job. She did.

Thoughts on de Blasio's choice of Carmen Farina as his schools chancellor

The educators and activists I know and whose opinions I trust in N.Y. all think Mayor BdB made a great choice, and that Carmen Fariña will be a breath of fresh air in a school system stinking from Michael Bloomberg's corporate pollution.

So do I, especially considering the other names that were being floated around. I'm sure the DFER hedge-funders, corporate reformers and charter profiteers like Eva Moskowitz, were all exerting pressure on the mayor to pick a Michelle Rhee-type like D.C.'s Kaya Henderson or even (yikes!) Barbara Byrd-Bennett, whose credibility string in Chicago ran out long ago. I don't doubt more of the same was coming down the pike from Arne Duncan and the Obama team at the DOE.

I'm also thinking back to the pitiful string of  corrupt, corporate-style union busters (Joel Klein), know-nothings (Cathleen Prunty "Cathie" Black, remember her?), and neer-do-wells (Dennis Wolcott) that Mayor Bloomberg sicked on N.Y. teachers and parents over the past decade. Seen in that light, the choice of a democratic-minded, highly competent, career educator like Fariña should bring a smile to faces of the school community and rightfully so.

I also like that she's a small-schooler and helped create several new, small middle schools within District 15, a tactic de Blasio has praised.

Having said that, and listening to the great exhale all the way from Chicago, I'm also reminding myself that education, like politics, like democracy, isn't a spectator sport. The changes we need don't begin and end in either the mayor's or the chancellor's office.

The de Blasio victory and the independent movement that led to it in New York, are all worth celebrating -- like the Occupy Wall St. movement that preceded it. I hope we can learn the appropriate lessons here in Chicago. As the new year approaches, the future looks a lot brighter for New York educators than it looked before.

Side Note:  I'm taken by the fact that Fariña (like me) is 70 and that she's the daughter of immigrants from Spain who fled the Franco regime. I feel a certain kinship there and wish her well.

Good riddance Bloomberg (and Carlos Danger)

Bill de Blasio wins NY primary.

There's a couple of reasons why I woke up on the right (left?) side of the bed this morning.

One: We are not lobbing missiles into Syria, much to joy of 90% of Americans, 100% of families and children living in Damascus, and the chagrin of war mongers in both countries and on both sides of the aisle.

Two: It looks like a progressive mayor has been (or will be -- still waiting on the final count) elected in NYC. Congrats to primary winner Bill de Blasio who had to overcome vicious, racist attacks on him and his family by stop-and-frisk mayor Bloomberg. De Blasio offers some hope to a NY's public school system which has been devastated by Bloomberg's charter school and privatization fanaticism.

WaPo reports:

Bloomberg’s dreamscape became the Democrats’ dystopia. In their telling, he was not a refreshing, fearless leader but an overbearing father who thought he always knew best. “The mayor,” de Blasio said Tuesday, “has been increasingly unwilling to address inequality in this city and that this is the central issue of our times.”

I, along with many other progressive educators, are still puzzled by the teachers union leadership's lack of support for de Blasio. I still have to analyze the vote count but it's already clear that many of UFT's own rank-and-file voted for him. Big disconnect there.

De Blasio is a pro-union guy with a good line on public education.

DeBlasio has made universal pre-K a centerpiece of his campaign, pushing for a tax increase on the wealthy in order to pay for it. He’s also the foe of charter schools — he’s said several times that the city has enough charter schools and that they should have to pay rent to use public property. -- Politico

GothamSchools has more on DeBlasio’s views on education issues: http://bit.ly/1dDGOjQ