I want an elected school board but this bill stinks

House lawmakers passed the Chicago elected school board bill Wednesday, dealing a blow to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, even as enough potential flaws in the measure were identified that a trailer bill with substantive changes is already in the works. -- IL Playbook

As my readers know, I've been an active supporter of an elected representative school board for Chicago for many years. Here's a piece I wrote in Crain's back in 2015 and another I wrote in Huffington Post in 2011. There were many more.

Now after 26 years of mayoral control, Chicago Public Schools is on the verge of monumental change as it looks ahead to an elected board. In 1995, a Republican-controlled state legislature gave then-Mayor Daley full authority over the schools, including the appointment of the board members who would hire the district's CEO. 

Almost a decade has passed since 87% of 80,000 Chicago residents voted in a non-binding referendum in 13% of the city’s precincts in favor of an elected school board. If surveys were taken today, support for an elected board probably wouldn't be quite that high. That's because the current board, hand-picked by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, is a far cry from the ones chosen by Daley and Rahm Emanuel in that it's not loaded with wealthy cronies, campaign donors, school closers, and privatizers. It is undoubtedly the most progressive and uncorrupt school board we've ever had in Chitown. It's also been almost a decade since a mayor hand-picked a schools chief who ended up in the penitentiary. 

But still, I think it's about time that invested parents and community members have more of a direct voice in running their schools. Chicago is currently the only district in the entire state that doesn't elect its school board. 

After all the years of failed attempts, I still favor an elected board but I'm not jumping for joy over the apparent passage of the current ERSB bill. In simple language, the bill sucks and I doubt it will fly for very long in its current form. 

First and foremost, it sucks because once passed, it won't take effect until 2025. Then in the 2026 general election, the 10 spots on the Board that were previously appointed by the mayor would be up for election to four-year terms beginning in January 2027, at which point the board would become fully elected. 

2027! That's long after many of our current pols and political players will even be around to be held accountable. State reps serve two-year terms in IL while state senators serve for four years.

This recalls the passage of the state's $15/hour minimum wage bill passed in 2019 with a six-year ramp-up. Hungry families and their children can't wait that long to put food on the table. 

So much can change in six years. Who knows what new crises or political splits will arise between now and then, or even if our vulnerable system of public education will remain intact in post-pandemic Chicago? 

It also sucks because a 21-member board, coming from 21 politically defined districts, is much too unwieldy, too politicized (in the bad sense of the word), and bureaucratic. Its size makes it too easy for big-monied, reactionary, anti-public-school political interests to influence the outcomes of small-turnout elections, as they are now doing in state after state. 

The bill sucks because it disenfranchises the thousands of immigrants who have children in CPS but are living here without official documentation. They won't be allowed to vote under the current bill. This in contrast to Chicago Local School Council elections where all parents, teachers, and community members are allowed to vote regardless of immigration status. In the current bill, teachers are forbidden to run for the board. On LSCs, they are guaranteed two seats on the council. 

There are lots more flaws in the current bill, and the funny thing is, everybody involved in the drafting and passage of the bill seems to recognize its shortcomings. Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he will sign the bill into law even while admitting that he favored a smaller board. 

Veteran progressive political activist Miguel del Valle, the current president of the Chicago Board of Education, said he’d campaigned publicly for an elected school board for a decade but couldn’t support a 21-person body. “We can’t have a school board that is twice as large as the largest elected school board in the country. Down the road, I could see dysfunction, stalemates, all kinds of issues."

Rep. Bob Rita voiced what some lawmakers were thinking: 

“I’m hoping that we’re not going to go forward and that this is going to be something that, down the line, we’re going to say our intentions were right and we did it wrong."

Lightfoot still sees "a path forward” after sponsor Rep. Delia Ramirez put a hold on the measure. Her procedural move temporarily prevents the bill from going to Gov. Pritzker’s desk, protects it from meddling opponents, and allows Lightfoot some time to talk with lawmakers about her concerns. 

House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch says the bill could be on hold for a few weeks while the mayor works with lawmakers.

So why was there such a rush to pass it in its current dismal form? The answer, in short, is that the bill was originally drafted by the mayor's sworn political enemies like State Rep. Rob Martwick and the leaders of the CTU, who have never gotten over Lightfoot's landslide election victory over their chosen candidate, Toni Prechwinkle. For them, the important thing was dealing a political blow to the mayor. 

Reporters are referring to the bill's passage as "a defeat for the mayor." I don't see it that way. In the end, the bill will be the result of a compromise. The perception of the bill as being mainly a political football, rather than a benefit for the schools, speaks for itself. But no bill is going to succeed without negotiations and compromises with the mayor. 

The mayor's opponents may be jumping for joy right now, but I'm not. 

Takeaways from yesterday's school board meeting

Sun-Times ed reporter Mitchell Armentrout's tweet seems to sum up the first meeting of Mayor Lightfoot's APPOINTED school board,

A lively meeting for this new crew: grilling CPS admins on changes to school ratings, all seven members asking questions, pushing Janice Jackson to defend proposals — things unseen from the #CPSboard in years.

— Mitchell Armentrout (@mitchtrout) June 26, 2019

You'll notice, I put the word appointed in all-caps as a nod to the RYH scribe who felt it necessary to mention it in each live tweet from the meeting. Yes, we know that this board was appointed by the mayor and that we don't have an #ESRBNow. No need to rehash all the reasons why that hashtag is little more than hash. The main one being that after 10 years of struggle for an elected board, Sen. Martwick's bill calling for an ESRB, 4 YEARS FROM NOW, is going nowhere.

Don't get me wrong. As an educator, a CPS parent and grandparent of a student with special needs,  I'm eternally grateful for all the difficult work that RYH and other groups have been doing in trying to hold CPS accountable and for their push for a democratically-elected board. I'm also grateful for their and other reporters' on-site tweets from board meetings. For one thing, it meant that I didn't have to sit through this marathon affair.

I also really like this new, appointed board. But those of you who follow this blog already know that.

So my takeaway from Wednesday's board meeting is, it did what it's supposed to do. The new board, led by its president Miguel delValle, got input from the school community, thoughtfully discussed important proposed changes in school policy, demonstrated its independence from the mayor who appointed them, and after debate and struggle, reached unity and got some good things done on our behalf.

If you read my previous post, you know I'm not thrilled with the board's decision to adopt CEO Janice Jackson's proposed weak tweaks to the school rating system. But given the choices put in front of them, the board did the right thing in adopting the changes.

For someone like me, who's been to so many of these meetings as a reporter, an educator, and school activist, the board's democratic style of work represented an important sea change from the past Daley/Rahm years.

A lively meeting for this new crew: grilling CPS admins on changes to school ratings, all seven members asking questions, pushing Janice Jackson to defend proposals — things unseen from the #CPSboard in years.

— Mitchell Armentrout (@mitchtrout) June 26, 2019

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

Mayor Lightfoot is sticking with schools CEO Janice Jackson for now. That's a good thing.

There's hope that CEO Jackson, once liberated from Rahm's self-serving, autocratic rule, will become a real change leader. 

Even though I've had my issues with CEO Janice Jackson's role as Rahm Emanuel's front person on school closings and charter expansion and her opposition to an elected school board, I think the mayor made the right move here. To replace her now, especially in the middle of contract negotiations with the CTU, would only further destabilize a system already in a state of chaos.

Jackson was Rahm's 5th CEO in six years.

Remember how Rahm changed school chiefs like he changed wardrobes, including dumping J.C. Brizard in 2012, the middle of contract talks and replacing him with Barbara Byrd-Bennett. The result was the first teachers strike in 25 years followed by a regime so corrupt that BBB wound up in prison and scandal-ridden Forrest Claypool had to flee or risk following her.

There's the hope that Jackson, now liberated from Rahm's autocratic and self-serving brand of ed politics, can rediscover her educator roots and become a real change leader. I hope so.

Next on Mayor Lightfoot's agenda will be choosing a new school board and here is where wholesale change (draining the swamp) is necessary and I am told, coming.

What a shame that we still have to wait years before there's finally an elected school board in Chicago. Rep. Martwick's ESB bill, was badly written. Even if passed as is, (without considering questions about the board's unwieldy size, raised by the new mayor) it wouldn't take effect for four more years and then have to be reauthorized. The whole setup would be phased out after the 2027 election unless lawmakers in Springfield vote to extend it. What kind of law is that?

There's some good ed news coming from Springfield (did I really say that?). Yes, the State Charter School Commission is on the way out. The unelected Commission has the power to override decisions made by local school boards that reject charter applications. A Democrat-backed bill passed the Senate in April, and a vote is expected in the House before the legislative session ends May 31, despite opposition from INCS and charter school lobbyists. Gov. Pritzker has said he’ll sign the bill. Gov. Rauner vetoed a similar bill last year.

Also House Bill 424, the bill that requires the ISBE to establish standards for interpreters for non-English speaking parents, passed the Illinois Senate yesterday on a vote of 53 yes, 0 nos, and 0 abstentions. The bill will now go to Pritzker for his signature.

Change is in the air.

Rahm's parting shots at public ed -- Goolsbee & pension theft

Austan Goolsbee

Before he leaves us, our lame duck Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking a few parting shots at the unions and progressives who helped make a third run for him a lost cause.

THE FIRST SHOT…was aimed at city workers pensions. Rahm wants to amend the State Constitution to cap cost-of-living increases for retirees and make pension theft legal. Right now the Constitution prohibits any diminishment or impairment of pension fund benefits (Article Xlll, Section 5). Previous attempts by the legislature to balance the budget on the backs of retirees have been ruled unconstitutional. Former gov, Pat Quinn lost his reelection bid to Bruce Rauner in large part because he supported failed pension theft initiatives.

THE NEXT SHOT...Rahm's appointment of former Obama economic advisor and political insider Austan Goolsbee to the school board appears to be nothing but a big "F**k you" to Chicago school activists and the CTU.

Economist Goolsbee, unlike his new boss Rahm, had a pretty good line when he was working for Obama. But he caved in after advising against extending tax breaks for the rich and for stimulating the economy as a way out of the recession rather than focusing on shrinking the budget deficit.

But no matter what you thought of Goolsbee's economic theories, we're not making macro economic decisions on the CPS board. This is all about educating our children, an area where Goolsbee has no background and has demonstrated little in the way of knowledge. I think it was Alexander Pope who wrote, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

His lackings haven't prevented him from carrying on when it comes to school issues like testing, teacher evaluation or school vouchers.

This from Chalkbeat Chicago:

In a 2015 survey of economists’ positions on public issues,  [Goolsbee] favored value-added” measures that try to isolate the impact of individual teachers on student test scores — though he qualified the approach as having “lots of noise and unobservables.”

In the same survey, Goolsbee claimed "uncertainty" about school vouchers. But Rahm and Rauner have already brought a form of vouchers into Chicago. Does anyone think that an "uncertain" Goolsbee will oppose them now as a Rahm appointee?

Rahm made Goolsbee appointment only three months before his term as mayor is up. He did it without consulting some of the most important stakeholders, including the CTU.

This from CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey:

The Chicago Teachers Union, which backs an elected school board, described Goolsbee’s new role as a “unilateral appointment by a lame duck mayor. 

"Mr. Goolsbee comes into a board responsible for students and their schools being starved of resources for the last eight years by the man who appointed him,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said in a statement. “Those same neighborhoods continue to struggle from the consequences of a foreclosure crisis that the administration he served in Washington failed to address. We can — and we must — do better.” 

Why then, not leave the seat open for three months, knowing that most of the current mayoral candidates oppose Rahm's his school policies will likely replace all or most of his current board picks?

The answer seems obvious. Rahm is using his remaining power to smack his political opponents and reward his friends. That's if you can call a three-month appointment to the discredited CPS board a reward.

Finally, if you needed any more reasons to take control of the public schools out of the mayor's hands and into the hands of an elected, representative school board, Goolsbee and pension theft are pretty good ones.

Great news! @ChicagosMayor appoints @Austan_Goolsbee to the Chicago Board of Trade! ...wait, what??? #ERSBnow https://t.co/1QevDs111V

— Cassie Creswell (@cassiecreswell) December 15, 2018

If Chicago could vote, Claypool wouldn't have been CEO in first place.

Marching through the rain yesterday through Chicago Loop. 

Visitors in town yesterday from the west coast were awed by this city's political life. First by the march for immigrant rights and Fight For15 march they encountered on their drive in and second, by the vote of "no confidence" in schools CEO Forrest Claypool, they read about this morning.

The conversation made me recall the reasons I left the warmth, smog, the earthquakes and my beloved Dodgers in L.A. for the frozen winter tundra and steamy summers of the Windy City back in 1968 and then again in 1975.

Yes, I explained, if you miss the protest today, stick around. There will be another tomorrow. This is a vibrant political and cultural community, a union town and a sanctuary city. It was here that candidate Trump met his first major sign of mass resistance, turned a fled the city.

I've grown to love Chicago.

If Chicago could vote, Claypool would not be here. 

THE 99% VOTE OF CTU MEMBERS sent another powerful message both to the mayor and city and state officials, that Chicago teachers are a force to be reckoned with and that his hand-picked CEO has no juice as far as they are concerned.

The vote may give the mayor the excuse he's been looking for to get rid of this, his 3rd CEO and the 7th so far under mayor control began under Daley. We recall how Rahm Emanuel's second CEO, J.C. Brizard was hired after suffering his own vote of no-confidence back in his previous district of Rochester. Rahm and the Civic Committee must have taken that vote as a feather in Brizard's cap and a sign that he wouldn't be afraid to put the hammer down on the CTU and be a buffer for the mayor against political blow-back.

The result was Brizard's botched handling of the 2012 teachers strike leading to Rahm tossing him under the bus and J.C. himself getting back-stabbed by his own former friend and colleague, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. BBB was slipped in through the back elevator to replace Brizard in the contract negotiations. She then went on to close 50 schools four years ago this month. Then she committed fraud, bilking the city's school children out of millions.

She's on her way to prison. Claypool look like he's toast. But we will have to wait til the next election to get rid of Rahm Emanuel.

How will this vote of no confidence play out is anybody's guess. But it's already a win for the CTU, another show of unity in the face of Gov. Rauner's drastic budget cuts and the mayor's own failure to respond beyond making teachers bare the burden of the funding crisis.

It's also an indication of the mass support needed to end the budget crisis and win the right to an elected school board Chicago. If citizens could elect our school board here, Claypool wouldn't have been here in the first place.

Participatory Democracy: When voting is not enough.

Democracy is not a sport where the two teams do battle every few years and we as spectators cheer our team on, hoping for the best and then watching the post-game show on cable. We're told, the best we can hop for in this case, is a "peaceful transition" of power  -- to the new oligarchs.

On the contrary, participatory democracy requires a citizenry that is both active and educated, with the courage to stand up for its rights and freedoms regardless of which party is in power. It's a 24-7 job. That doesn't mean of course, that we neglect the ballot. But you can only win at the ballot box that which you are willing to fight for and defend on your block, in your school, workplace, and in the community.

Case in point... in 2015 Chicagoans overwhelmingly voted for a referendum supported by the teachers union, calling for an elected School Board and an end the mayor's autocratic rule over the public schools.

An elected school board bill passed the IL House in March in bipartisan fashion, by a 110-4 vote. But the measure was blocked by an unholy alliance between Rahm Emanuel, Gov. Rauner and Senate Pres. John Cullerton, who never allowed the bill to come to a needed vote in the IL Senate. You'll notice that two of the three blockers are Democrats.

From DNAinfo:

With the 100th Illinois General Assembly sworn in Wednesday, state Rep. Robert Martwick (D-Jefferson Park) vowed to reintroduce the bill "immediately" and begin working to bring it to a vote in the Senate.

Martwick has said the lack of an elected School Board has "eliminated democracy in Chicago."

The fallout... Today, the mayor's hand-picked, self-interested board basically spit on the recently-signed teachers collective-bargaining agreement and imposed a 4-day, unpaid "furlough" on teachers and staff.

CTU responds:

“It’s the second year in a row they shortened the school year and cut our pay,” said Jesse Sharkey, the union’s vice president, angry that CPS leaders still won’t seek new revenue sources. Sharkey said the days off were to allow teachers to complete grades at the end of each quarter, work he assumes will still have to be finished and handed in.

“I’m hearing hearing from teachers who are outraged because they see this as a reduction of pay without a reduction of work,” he said. “We’re looking into whether it’s wage theft.”

No point in looking into it. Wage theft it is. Question is how will the CTU respond? Bigger question is, how will we force a senate vote on an elected board?

Last point... Donald Trump's victory, albeit with a massive loss in the popular election, followed by shrinking poll ratings, and Republican control of congress, necessitates an electoral strategy for the upcoming 2018 and 2020 elections. But it also calls for mass actions in the streets and in our communities, beginning with mass protests at Trump's inauguration.

Voting is not enough. #Resist

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Trump's real estate flop in Chicago

Film maker Carol Black 

Science is a tool of breathtaking power and beauty, but it is not a good parent; it must be balanced by something broader, deeper, older. Like wind and weather, like ecosystems and microorganisms, like snow crystals and evolution, human learning remains untamed, unpredictable, a blossoming fractal movement so complex and so mysterious that none of us can measure or control it. -- Answer Sheet, What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning

Leanna Diggs

We can no longer teach a whitewashed history. We can no longer pretend we live in a post-racial society. Not in math class, not in any class. -- Washington Post

Pastor Bullock

David Bullock, Highland Park, MI pastor

“I think one of the things emergency management does, if it doesn’t destroy democracy, it definitely suppresses democracy. It suffocates the civic impulse. Why would I be engaged in a process where there’s no accountability for the person who runs the school? The school board has no power.” -- School takeovers leave parents without a voice

Trump's appeal to black voters

"What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose? You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?" -- Washington Post

Maureen Dowd does Trump apology

 I’m sorry I asked African-Americans “What do you have to lose by supporting me?” in front of a crowd of white people. I’m sorry I can never find my African-American. -- New York Times

This year's IL corruption awards go to...

Dick Simpson, Tom Gradel & team document IL's "Banner Year of Corruption". Isn't every year? I suppose their annual report is like the Academy Awards of corruption.

While the Hastert indictment and conviction garnered national news headlines and was the most significant corruption story of the year, Illinois experienced many additional corruption events in 2015. In this report, we document 27 convictions, 28 indictments, and the launching of 11 corruption investigation. In addition we cover the sentencing of 30 public corruption convicts last year, most of whom were convicted in a year or two before 2015.

Chicago City Hall has long been awash in corruption and with the public school system directly under  control by the mayor, thievery, fraud, bribery, and no-bid contract kick-backs have become a way of life at CPS. The cost to school budgets is enormous.

The big one last year of course, so far as Chicago schools were concerned, was the FBI investigation launched exactly one year ago, leading to the arrest and indictment of Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked schools chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. The U.S. Attorney charged her with steering $23 million worth of contracts to her former employer, SUPES Academy. Two executives, Gary Solomon and Tom Vranas, who owned SUPES, the company itself, and another company they owned were also charged. On October 12, BBB pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.

Yesterday it was announced that Rahm and his CPS board are suing BBB, SUPES and Synesi for $65M. Synesi is the consulting company behind the SUPES/BBB scandal. It was originally started by former CPS schools CEO Paul Vallas in partnership with Gary Solomon and other members of Vallas' Chicago team. Vallas was the master of soliciting no-bid consulting contracts from his network of pet district superintendents. Lucky for him, he fell out and split with Soloman before the shit hit the fan.

The suit made front-page headlines in Cleveland, where BBB long ruled the public schools, and in Detroit, where the SUPES kick-back scheme was originally concocted.

In the lawsuit, the Board of Educations states, "In plain terms, defendants have stolen money from CPS and the schoolchildren of the city of Chicago, and that money should be returned."

But I would argue that the investigation was stopped, as usual, before it got up too high, leaving BBB to take the fall herself. Board members like Andrea Zopp (now running for senator) who voted for the SUPES no-bid contract, and the Mayor himself, were complicit and should be held accountable.Why aren't they included in the suit?

More important, the suit should be a clarion call to end City Hall's direct control over the public schools and to pass the Elected School Board bill.

Trump to enter the belly of the beast is the headline on Natasha Korecki's story in POLITICO this morning.

There should be thousands on hand this afternoon to protest the Trump rally at the UIC Pavilion. The university should have never agreed to hold the rally here in the first place. Trump rallies have been marked by violence and thuggery directed mainly at black protesters.

Thousands of students have already signed up to be part of today's protests.
Korecki writes:

Doesn't know what he's in for: "Other immigrant groups, religious leaders and young African American protesters are expected to join forces in a public rebuke of Trump before his 6 p.m. rally. One group ... built an altar on Thursday and demonstrators planned to hold vigil all night in preparation for Trump's arrival.

'I don't think Donald Trump knows what he's in for here in Chicago,' UIC pre-med student Miguel Del Toral told POLITICO. 'We are very very active in our communities. We will not stand for bigotry, we will not stand for racism. He should expect to find this kind of resistance coming into a university with such a large minority population.'

People will gather at 4:30 p.m. in the parking lot across from the Pavilion.

Rahm's longer school year has morphed into furlough days for teachers

When Rahm Emanuel first ran for mayor of Chicago in 2011,  his education policy platform consisted of a demand for a longer school day and school year. As I pointed out back then, he made the case using  a bogus research model and Houston as his protype, a city where supposedly a longer school year had led to students "gaining three years" of learning time on Chicago students by the time they graduated.

But now, faced with a new budget crisis, Chicago, like Houston, is shortening its school day and year.  A new memo from CEO Forrest Claypool, tells principals to "stop spending" immediately.

The mayor's  own children were attending the prestigious Lab School, which had one of the shortest school days and years. Rahm himself had graduated from suburban Winnetka schools, where school days and years are far shorter despite spending double per student.

Funny, you don't hear anyone talking much about Houston schools these days. There hasn't been another "Texas Miracle" since George Bush was governor and Rod Paige was Houston's superintendent.

It is not the length of time but the quality of time that truly matters here.” -- CTU President Karen Lewis

After his election, Rahm went ahead and imposed his faux-research-based plan on resistant schools, teachers and principals. He did it despite having no money in his budget to pay for it and without any plan for how the extra seat time could actually improve teaching/learning. It didn't take long before lack of funds and parent protests forced Rahm to scale back his program, ending it completely for elementary schools.

Now we see the chickens coming home to roost. More seat time not only failed to produce better learning outcomes for students, the added costs have contributed to the current budget shortfall and a resulting 3-day furlough for city teachers and canceling school on Good Friday (a Catholic religious holiday). In other words, a shorter school year and more chaos and confusion for teachers, parents and students.

Oh yes, and guess what's happening in New York's Success Academies, the corporate-reformers' favorite charter schools network? That's the one that distinguished itself from district public schools by the length of its school day.

Big News... Elected Representative School Board Bill Passes the House 110-4

It still has to pass in the senate and then get the governor's signature, but this is a major victory. It's also another major blow struck against MRE whose autocratic rule over the schools has been an educational and financial disaster.

After the vote, applause broke out in the chambers.

Should the legislation make it through the Senate, Chicago’s public schools would be overseen by 21 democratically elected members of the public rather than the seven the mayor has chosen.

Chicago is the only district in IL and one of the few in the nation, to have an appointed school board. Voters have passed several resolutions in support of ESRB sending clear messages to Springfield as to the will of the people.

Problem is, even if passed, the bill doesn't go into effect until March, 2018, leaving Rahm's autocracy in place for nearly all the rest of his term in office. Let's hope we still have a CPS by then.

Amazing. Never thought I'd see the day. Elected school board passes #ilhouse 110-4 #ersb #twill

— Will Guzzardi (@WillGuzzardi) March 3, 2016

Rep. @robertmartwick thanks Speaker Madigan for his support and community groups who believed they couldn't give up the fight for #ERSB

— Lauren FitzPatrick (@bylaurenfitz) March 3, 2016

Jay Travis: Yesterday was a good day

Jay Travis is the progressive hope, running for State Rep in the 26th Dist. against corporate reformer and pension grabber, Christian Mitchell.

JT reports from Springfield:

House Bill 557, calling for an elected representative school board for the people of Chicago, was passed out of committee by a vote of 15-9. That same morning, Chicago public school students, parents, community residents and teachers staged 'walk-ins' at more than a hundred neighborhood schools across the city to bring critical attention to the need to invest public dollars in our neighborhood schools instead of giveaways to wealthy, politically connected elites.

More on Mitchell...Chicago Reporter's Curtis Black, writes:

Indeed, Mitchell has been one of the top recipients of funds both statewide and nationally from Stand For Children, a group brought to Illinois by Rauner in an effort to undercut union influence and bargaining rights; it’s backed by a bevy of billionaires including Republican Ken Griffin.

But particularly on education policy, Mitchell does seem to have aligned himself with Rauner. ­(He’s also aligned on school policy with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose campaign committee gave Mitchell $28,000 last year.) This is a political vulnerability for him: Schools are a flash point, especially on the South Side, and especially under Emanuel. On the state and local level, in terms of the neoliberal agenda of privatization and union busting, school policy is where the rubber meets the road.

In Bronzeville, parents have felt under siege as they’ve watched school after school close, many to be replaced by charter schools, said Jitu Brown, national director of Journey for Justice and a longtime colleague of Travis’s. Mitchell provided no support for parents in his district fighting school closings, Brown said, or undergoing a hunger strike to save Dyett High School.

Mitchell refused to support a moratorium on school closings; opposed an elected school board (reversing himself after Travis declared her candidacy); and opposed a bill allowing parents to opt their children out of high-stakes tests. He’s backed charter schools down the line, repeatedly opposing efforts to give local voters final say in approving new charters and even opposing a measure requiring charters to follow federal regulations protecting special education and English learning students.

What more do you need to know?

Rahm's mea culpas don't extend to school closings and wild charter expansion

Given all Rahm's recent mea culpas, the one he hasn't made is about his wholesale school closings, mostly in the black community and his replacement of them with privately-run charter schools. CPS's publication of a new list of supposedly "underutilized" schools, indicates another round of closings and charter openings is coming.

His appointment of Jaime Guzman, a shill for the charter operators, to the CPS board, shows that Rahm's game plan remains intact. Guzman takes Jesse Ruiz' spot as the lone Latino on the seven-member board.

The amazing thing about that appointment is that Guzman previously sat on the State Charter School Commission, the group that has the authority to create charters even when they've been rejected by local school boards, including Chicago's.

That's the same group, acting under pressure from House Speaker Mike Madigan, that actually reversed CPS's rejection of Concept (Gulen) charter schools' application at a time when the FBI was investigating Concept's operations.

Last year, the senate voted to abolish the commission on grounds that it had become "too politicized" and a purveyor, rather than an objective evaluator and authorizer of charters. Yet it still survives. Guzman says, he will resign his post on the commission, which is set to hear appeals from three more charter schools that the district has slated for closure at the end of the academic year.

The Guzman appointment and Rahm's commitment to wild charter school expansion may seem puzzling to anyone looking at the underutilization list. The list contains dozens of supposedly underutilized high schools appearing side-by-side with underutilized charter schools.

Among those on the list are several from the Noble Charter Network. That's the group that was pushed back in its attempt to invade the north side recently. They just opened a new charter high school directly across the street from Prosser, even while many of their existing schools are stilling partially empty. Now Prosser is completely surrounded by competing charter schools.

Among the many other charters on the list, are highly-touted Urban Prep, three Perspectives charters. and three KIPP charter schools.

Isn't it clear by now that CPS has to be taken out from under the control of City Hall?

One thing nearly all Chicagoans agree on. An end to mayoral control of the schools.

After Wednesday's forum on an elected school board for Chicago, DNAinfo conducted a survey. The results were pretty much in line with how citywide voting went in recent elections.

Do you think Chicago should have an elected school board? Forum with @RepAnnWilliams is covering that tonight.

— Kelly Bauer (@BauerJournalism) November 12, 2015

For those who missed it, here's the piece I did last week for Crain's on the topic. I've been hammering away on this for the past decade. Here's a piece I did at Huffington Post exactly five years ago. Back then, even before the board's devastating mass school closings and before the UNO and Byrd-Bennett/SUPES scandals, I pointed out:

After a decade and a half of Daley's top-down reform efforts, seven of those years with Duncan as the CEO, neighborhood schools remain pretty much as they were. Scores have flattened out. The so-called "achievement gap" continues to widen. Violence has reached pandemic proportions and the school system is on the brink of insolvency. Daley's pet reform project, Renaissance 2010, has been discarded and the phrase banned from usage within the bureaucracy.

Daley's appointed school board has been riddled with scandals, including probes of patronage and civil rights violations. Daley's former board president Michael Scott committed suicide when faced with an investigation of his misuse of school board funds.

Now spring forward to 2016, systemic corruption and instability have only grown worse under Rahm Emanuel's one-man rule. CPS is in steady financial free-fall and measurable learning outcomes have fallen even further.

Chicago's next Elected School Board Forum will take place  November 19th at 6:30 p.m. at the Armitage Baptist Church, 2451 N Kedzie Blvd. Rep. Will Guzzardi presiding.

In The Mailbox: From State Rep. Will Guzzardi

Mike --

As you may know, in August I joined over 40 of my fellow legislators to co-sponsor HB 4268, which will create an elected school board for Chicago Public Schools. This has been an issue of the upmost importance to me for many years, and I’m happy to see the legislature finally respond to the thousands of dedicated parents and organizers in this fight. In an effort to help educate my constituents more about why this reform is so necessary — and to hear directly from you on the issue — I'm holding a forum on Thursday, November 19th at Armitage Baptist Church, 2451 N Kedzie Blvd, at 6:30pm.

As I've stated before, CPS is the only school district in the entire state (and one of only a few in the country) that doesn't have an elected school board. That means that we're the only school district where the mayor gets to single-handedly decide what’s best for our students, teachers and parents. In every other district in Illinois, the people making decisions about our school are directly accountable to the communities those schools serve. Given the track record of CPS leadership, there's no reason why Chicago should be any different. We've had over 20 years of mayoral control, and it hasn’t produced any better outcomes. In fact, all we've seen is scandal after scandal, insider deals, massive over-testing of our students, and ever more money being dumped into charters with no positive results.
Let's discuss a better way forward!
What: Elected Representative School Board Forum
When: November 19th at 6:30pm
Where: Armitage Baptist Church, 2451 N Kedzie Blvd, 60647

State Rep. Will Guzzardi
http://www.willguzzardi.com/

This goes way beyond Byrd-Bennett

The Sun-Times lays it out perfectly:

Consider this sequence of events:

In October 2012, Byrd-Bennett was hand-picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be CEO of the public schools. Byrd-Bennett’s appointment was approved by Mayor Emanuel’s hand-picked school board. 

On the same day the mayor’s hand-picked board signed off on his hand-picked CEO, the board also awarded a $2 million [later $20M] no-bid contract to Byrd-Bennett’s hand-picked education consulting firm, SUPES Academy. 

Did the board have reason to question that no-bid contract? You bet. The board has reason to question every no-bid contract. But more specifically, just weeks earlier a nonprofit group, the Chicago Public Education Fund, had declined to fund SUPES for that very same purpose — to train school managers — despite entreaties from Byrd-Bennett. The Fund was not convinced it would be money well spent. 

Unfortunately, hand-picked boards do not challenge hand-picked CEO’s. That’s the point of picking by hand.

You couldn't ask for a better argument for doing away with mayoral control of the public schools and for a democratically-elected school board. Funny, but as I recall, the S-T editorial board has always been opposed to an elected board. Back in February, they mustered up enough courage to call for a “hybrid” board -- with a majority of members still Rahm's hand-picked cronies. Yes, they're okay with elections, so long as they're only cosmetic with no shift in power. 

The other newspaper in town is more explicit. Their call is for the school system run by an all-out fascist -- a "Mussolini-type" dictator -- if you will. 

"Don't look at me."

Rahm: "Don't look at me."

Rahm Emanuel on the other hand, wants to retain autocratic rule over the schools. He just doesn't want to be held accountable and probably won't be. Asked by a reporter whether he felt any responsibility for appointing Byrd-Bennett, the mayor did a "no comment". But then he commented anyway:

“The U.S. attorney said this himself . . . [this] is about Barbara Byrd-Bennett, it’s about the executives at SUPES, and both the actions they’ve taken and the attempts to deceive others.” 

Burns fiddles, Rome burns

Rahm's puppy-dog Ald. Will Burns (4th), who runs the City Council’s Education Committee, calls BBB a "role model for inner-city kids". He claims the scandal is no big deal.

So, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think Barbara’s indictment is hurtful. Part of the reason why is there is new leadership at CPS,” he said.

Yes, new leadership will fix things. Except Forrest  "The Fixer" Claypool is the 4th CEO under Rahm in 4 years. Changes without a difference.

My take is that the SUPES scandal goes way beyond BBB and her crew. Mayoral control of the schools has created a culture of corruption that goes all the way up to the top of the system. Turning CPS into a wing of City Hall -- one of the most disreputable institutions in history -- with an autocratic mayor in charge, was a mistake for which we all now will pay a tremendous price.

Feds turn over another rock and the plot thickens

Today's Sun-Times story by Lauren Fitzpatrick takes us even deeper into the seamy underbelly of Chicago's pay-for-play contracting process under the current system of mayor control of public education.

The most interesting part of the story for me was the way CPS practically stuffed it's $20.5 million, no-bid contract into Synesi/SUPES founder Gary Soloman's pocket. This after the State Board had found the group(s) unqualified to help the city's schools improve.

Though CPS touted Synesi’s past work in other urban districts, the Illinois State Board of Education found that Synesi failed at a fundamental level to show how it would actually help the schools improve if they were awarded the money, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

“No indication of a daily work experience that garnered results,” is how another state scorer summed up a segment of the review, awarding just 362 points out of a possible 580. In another graded section of its application, Synesi got just 5 points out of a possible 40, the records show.

 In April 2013, grant applications were submitted for Carver Military Academy, Corliss, Farragut and what then was called Marine Math and Science Academy, now the Marine Leadership Academy at Ames. Each planned to pay Synesi $270,000 per year for its help, according to the schools’ proposals. None of the principals answered Sun-Times questions.

CPS leaders contracted with them anyway, coming out-of-pocket after being turned down for state grants. The reason for such a giant waste of taxpayer money becomes obvious as the feds begin turning over rocks, ultimately leading to the cancelling of the SUPES contract and Byrd-Bennett's hasty departure.

Here once again, I feel this overwhelming need to keep reminding people that Synesi was from its very start, connected to Paul Vallas.  I don't mean to dwell on Vallas other than to show the origins of this shady approach to winning district contracts. It was always Valls' M.O. but an approach not just used by Synesi/SUPES, but throughout the entire system. Vallas continues to deny the connection and Solomon claims he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

But the idea from the time Vallas left for Philadelphia after being booted out of town by Mayor Daley, was for Synesi to capitalize on its Chicago connections and have Synesi offer districts a free consultation with Vallas in hopes that it would lead to a fat consulting contract. And it usually did. But not just because of Vallas.

The Synesi/Vallas connection was revealed back in 2005 by Sheila Simmons and Paul Socolar from the Philadelphia Public Schools Notebook.

The trail suggesting a business arrangement involving Vallas and Solomon began with SolTyra, a Chicago-based online marketing firm, which on a web page displaying a “case study” of its work, stated that its services were called upon by Solomon Consulting, “when some of the most successful leaders in educational reform came together to form a for-profit enterprise upon the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model.”

Now we learn (actually many of us already knew) that Soloman and others sweetened the pot by offering both current and former top district administrators jobs as high-paid consultants, as in the case of Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and her head of strategic services (whatever the hell that is) Tracy Martin, in exchange for those no-bid contracts.

Back then, Soloman touted the "great Chicago successes" under Vallas' leadership and listed on his Synesi roster, the late Phil Hansen, Vallas' chief accountability officer in Chicago; Cozette Buckney, Chicago’s chief education officer under Vallas and now a senior consultant for SUPES; Sue Gamm, chief specialized services officer in Chicago during Vallas’ tenure, who also went with Vallas to Philly; and Gery Chico, who served as chair of the Chicago Board of Education during Vallas’ tenure.

More on this as the rocks continue to turn.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"I'm not 'The Scream' in Edvard Munch's painting." -- Tribune

Rahm Emanuel

There are a lot of hands on the bloody knife, not one. . . . Sun-Times

Curtis Black

So according to the Illinois Supreme Court, when the state constitution says pension benefits shall not be diminished, it means pension benefits shall not be diminished. And somehow this bit of elementary logic comes as a huge shock to the state’s political leadership. -- Chicago Reporter

Rhoda Rae Gutierrez

 “The policies of the appointed Board of Education have exacerbated historical educational inequalities. This presses us to ask: Whose interests does the Board serve?” -- The Promise

Elizabeth Warren to California Dems

 "This country isn't working for working people. It's working only for people at the top. That's not the American dream. That's the American nightmare...We don't win what we don't fight for." -- L.A. Times

Dave Zirin

If this Waco shit (9 dead. 100 guns) happened in Baltimore, they'd be occupying Maryland w/the Nat Guard, the Canadian Mounties & the IDF.

— Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) May 18, 2015

Hey Little Emperor...

Hey little Emperor, come down from your throne

The hourglass is empty, your time has come and gone
The battlements are crumblin’ the walls are tumblin’ down
Your counselors and concubines are getting’ out of town 

-- Steve Earle

Even though I didn't drink last night (honest) I feel hung over this morning after 14 hours of poll watching and then hitting Carlos Rosa's victory party at the Levee. I can't remember a victory like this since Harold Washington won the Democratic mayoral primary in 1983 (Yes, we once had party primaries in Chicago). Yesterday's citywide defeat of Rahm's overstuffed political machine, and Chuy Garcia's forcing of Rahm into a runoff, was as close to being on par with that as it gets.

Rosa's stunning win over a Rahm-backed incumbent was but a small piece of the pie (which I'm still digesting). In my diverse Logan Square neighborhood, it comes on the heels of Rep. Will Guzzardi's devastating rout of  machine daughter Toni Berrios last March. Rosa, a 26-year-old community activist, more than doubled the vote of the mayor's guy, discredited incumbent Rey Colon.

DNAInfo reports:

Ramirez-Rosa was joined on stage at The Levee, 4035 W. Fullerton Ave, by 39th District State Representative Will Guzzardi and a crowd of friends and family around 8:30 p.m. The incoming alderman then claimed his victory in the ward, which represents portions of Logan Square, Avondale, Hermosa, Irving Park and Albany Park.

"This is not about switching one alderman for another; it was about a movement," Ramirez-Rosa said following his acceptance. "We aspire to more — a city that uplifts working people. That's the message the 35th Ward sent today. We proved tonight we can begin the first step of that progression."

Yes we did.

Carlos & Chuy

Citywide, Rahm failed to carry a majority in any ward except for the lakefront and a couple on the far southwest side. His superPAC proved worthless. And his toady incumbents, like John "Petcoke" Pope in the 10th, Deb "Boss' Daughter" Mell, have been forced into runoffs by progressives Susan Sadlowski Garza and Tim Meegan.

My alderman, Scott Waguespack, a leader of the Progressive Caucus, who was singled out for defeat the so-called Chicago Forward PAC, defeated it's candidate Dooty-Jones (I love saying that name, like I love saying Huck-a-Bee, Huck-a-Bee) with 80% of the vote.

The Elected School Board referendum, which was a dagger aimed at the heart of mayoral control of the public schools, carried in ward after ward with numbers around 90%. Makes you wonder who the other 10% was?

More to come on this as my head clears and the final numbers come in.

UIC study makes compelling case for an elected school board in Chicago

In 2012, 87% of 80,000 Chicago residents voted in 13% of the city’s precincts for an elected school board in a nonbinding referendum. A similar referendum is on the ballot next Tuesday in 37 of Chicago’s 50 wards.

A new study out of UIC's College of Education makes a powerful case for junking mayoral control of Chicago's public schools and replacing Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked school board with a representative, elected board.

Chicago is currently the only district in the state that doesn't elect its school board. In 1995, the state legislature gave then Mayor Daley, full authority over the schools, including the appointment of the board members. But UIC researchers, Pauline Lipman, Eric (Rico) Gutstein, Rhoda Rae Gutierrez, and Tirzah Blanche, find that after two decades of  of mayoral control, the appointed Board’s policies have become increasingly contentious, leading parents, community and education organizations, academics, civil society leaders, politicians, and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) to call for an elected representative school board.

The study finds that after 20 years of mayoral control in Chicago, the research paints an alarming picture—Board policies and actions have resulted in a school district that is more unequal on nearly every measure leading to the recreation of a "two-tier" school system.

Here's what else it finds:

• There is no conclusive evidence that mayor-appointed boards are more effective at governing schools or raising student achievement. 

• The Board prioritized selective programs and schools while neighborhood schools serving low-income students of color lost resources and bore the major impact of misuse of tests to enforce punitive accountability and narrowed curriculum, and to close schools. 

• Under the mayor-appointed Board, racial disparities in educational outcomes persisted and in some cases widened. 

• The Board’s policy of closing neighborhood schools has not improved education for the majority of affected students and has had harmful consequences, particularly for African American communities, students, and teachers who were disproportionately impacted. 

• The Board’s privatization agenda has not generally improved education. Charter and contract schools are on the whole doing no better and are more punitive than neighborhood public schools. Privately operated schools are also further removed from public accountability. However, the Board turned over one-quarter of the district’s schools to private operators. 

• Chicago’s Board engaged in questionable and risky financial arrangements and was a poor steward of public resources. 

• Mayoral control and Board structures and processes limit public input and democratic accountability. The Board has been markedly unresponsive to outpourings of public opposition to its policies and essentially indifferent to advice and proposals of parents, teachers, and others with expert knowledge and who have a primary stake in students’ education.

The study makes the case that  an elected board that is representative of the community it serves is no guarantee—but it would be a significant step to strengthen and improve public education in Chicago

Alternatives to closings...For me, one of the most interesting parts of the study, focused on the appointed board's disastrous closing of 50 neighborhood schools. The study points to significant attempts at reform before and after the 1995 take-over that might have posed an alternative to the closings, but were scuttled by the appointed board after Gates and the big Chicago foundations pulled their funding. Among those cited was the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI).

Before CPS embarked on a broad policy of closing neighborhood schools, the district embraced small high schools through CHSRI, creating 23 small, neighborhood high schools between 2002 and 2007. These were not special programs or selective enrollment but whole school initiatives. In August 2008, the Board ended the program with 17 of the original schools still in existence. Yet, a comprehensive 2010 report on CHSRI outcomes found that CHSRI schools offered a promising alternative for low-performing students in the city.

CHSRI was a promising initiative to improve educational opportunities and outcomes inneighborhood public schools open to all students. However, the Board dropped CHSRI and directed resources to closing neighborhood schools, expanding charters, and opening turnaround schools.

The UIC researchers conclude with a question: "The Board’s policies under mayoral control are so educationally insupportable that we are pressed to ask: Whose interests does the Board serve? The majority of CPS students, or political and financial interests?"

The question answers itself.