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?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Janet Cooksey, second from right, on the killing of her son, Quintonio LeGrier, by Chicago cops:  "I used to watch the news daily and I would grieve for other mothers, other family members, and now today I'm grieving myself." -- AP Wire 

Rev. Marshall Hatch

“The problem for the mayor is that this isn’t going away. Every shooting, every unpopular decision, it’s all going to be very problematic for him.” -- N.Y. Times: Rahm Emanuel, Under Siege in Chicago, Shows Contrite Side

Kim Foxx

State's Atty. candidate Kim Foxx

We arrest more kids from CPS than we do from the street corner. We need restorative justice justice programs in the schools rather than jailing so many of them. -- Speaking at Proviso Township Democratic Organization

Poet/author Claudia Rankine

When white men are shooting black people, some of it is malice and some an out-of-control image of blackness in their minds. Darren Wilson told the jury that he shot Michael Brown because he looked “like a demon”. And I don’t disbelieve it. Blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black people. -- Guardian

CTU's Stephanie Gadlin

 "We are very strong in our call for a Democratically elected school board. We would want the same for police oversight, not somebody that the mayor picks or someone who the mayor picks who picks someone." -- Politico

Mayoral Control Has Been a Bust

It's hard to fathom why state political leaders thought it was a good idea to turn Chicago Public Schools into a wing of City Hall—surely one of the most disreputable institutions in the country—let alone placing power over the schools in the hands of one man.

Now, after two decades of destabilization, failed reforms and mismanagement, it's time to join with every other school district in the state, and nearly all districts nationally, in electing our school board.

The failed strategy was forced on our city in 1995 when Republicans, who controlled both houses in the state Legislature and the governor's mansion, threatened to withhold funding for CPS unless then-Mayor Richard J. Daley took over the schools, implemented austerity and weakened the teachers union. Sound familiar?

Their motives were questionable. Springfield's disdain for the heavily black and poor inner city and its schools was obvious. Republican minority leader James “Pate” Philip was fond of calling Chicago schools “rat holes.” They thought they had Daley over a barrel, but he was smart enough to take the deal and run with it.

To the patronage-heavy Democratic machine, CPS looked like a gold mine. It had a bigger budget than the city itself and even more jobs to hand out. Political liabilities could be taken care of by juking the test scores and dropout numbers. Daley's first handpicked CEO, Paul Vallas, was a master of media spin, and Daley soon was being called the “education mayor.”

Rahm with hand-picked J.C. Brizard, and David Vitale

Vallas was followed by Arne Duncan, who would lay claim to the “Chicago Miracle,” otherwise known as Renaissance 2010. It was the forerunner to the current mayor's disastrous test-and-punish/mass school-closings/charter expansion policies. Duncan took those polices with him to Washington and pushed them on the entire country with Race to the Top. Duncan and the Obama administration are reportedly reconsidering those policies.

Within a year of Duncan's departure from Chicago, a report from the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club called the reforms “an “abysmal” failure. Ironically, the Civic Committee had designed and financed Renaissance 2010—the very plan Duncan was hired to implement and enforce.

IT'S NOT WORKING

Duncan's funneling of federal dollars to promote this so-called “reform” agenda, required big-city mayors to serve as enforcers, leading Obama's appointed secretary of education to declare in 2009: "At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed.” Today there are basically three left: Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. In a dozen other cities, mayoral control has been junked or thrown out by the courts.

As for accountability, Emanuel's rule over the schools has become known for anything but. Scandal after scandal, from the UNO charter school fiasco to the Supes Academy no-bid-contract debacle, have led to the mayor's own implausible denial of responsibility.

One need only look at the guilty plea of the mayor's handpicked school's chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

Since the mayor's own political success is bound up with the reporting of positive school outcomes, some of his administration's claims of higher graduation rates and test scores are being challenged by the Better Government Association and others. BGA President Andy Shaw writes: “The problem with fuzzy math is that real people are behind the numbers—people who deserve a city government that confronts reality head-on, not by cooking the books and declaring Pyrrhic victories.”

The board's financial dealings show structural imbalances with an over-reliance on external borrowing policies and have helped push CPS credit ratings to below junk status.

Continuous leadership churn has led to systemic instability. There have been three school CEOs in the past four years of Emanuel's administration and six appointed school CEOs in the past eight years. The instability and the appointed board's leadership failures were critical in the breakdown of the negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union, which precipitated the 2012 teachers strike and led to then-CEO Jean-Claude Brizard's replacement.

In the past few years, nearly 90 percent of voters have passed every nonbinding ballot proposal for an elected school board. How many other reasons do we need to do away with one-man rule of the schools and bring representative school board elections to Chicago?

This article is cross-posted at Crain's Chicago Business:  http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20151104/OPINION/151109950/time-to-end-mayoral-control-of-chicago-public-schools#main-disqussion

WEEKEND QUOTABLES Dyett hunger strike ends

Strike over. Struggle continues.

Aisha Wade-Bey

“We do have some other ways to continue to make sure we get this high school in our community, where it’s fair and that they have the resources that it needs for our children.” -- Sun-Times

Jeanette Taylor-Ramann

"I'm not an activist, nor a protester, or a hunger striker. I am a mother who wants what's best for my children and young people in my community."-- Tribune

Jitu Brown

"We decided that we will feed our bodies so that until we win sustainable community schools for all of our children, the mayor and cps won't get a moments rest,"

"We have changed the dialogue... We have exposed the inequality."

"We have had several key victories including saving Dyett as an open-enrollment public (not charter) school". -- Facebook

Biggest Weekend Laugher came from Peter Cunningham

Because Chicago does not have school board elections, board members are insulated from politics. -- Chicago Tribune

Fred Klonsky

Duncan's legacy

"It will take years to recover from the damage that Arne Duncan’s policies have inflicted on public education." -- Diane Ravitch

Arne Duncan says he will remain at the D.O.E. "until the final bell". At this point, no one really cares.

The damage is already done and with billions of Race To The Top money no longer in his back pocket, he has no more juice with states, school districts, or with Congress. According to most surveys, his version of school reform has been badly discredited (I hope I helped a little) and many feel he will be remembered as the worst ed secretary ever. 

Diane Ravitch documents the destruction left in his wake:

*He used his control of billions of dollars to promote a dual school system of privately managed charter schools operating alongside public schools; 

*He has done nothing to call attention to the fraud and corruption in the charter sector or to curb charters run by non-educators for profit or to insist on charter school accountability or to require charters to enroll the neediest children;

*He pushed to require states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, which has caused massive demoralization among teachers, raised the stakes attached to testing, and produced no positive results;

*He used federal funds and waivers from NCLB to push the adoption of Common Core standards and to create two testing consortia, which many states have abandoned;

*The Common Core tests are so absurdly “rigorous” that most students have failed them, even in schools that send high percentages of students to four-year colleges, the failure rates have been highest among students who are English language learners, students with disabilities, and students of color;

*He has bemoaned rising resegregation of the schools but done nothing to reduce it; [Here, I would add that Duncan openly opposed, what he referred to as "forced integration" and abandoned fellow cabinet member, AG Eric Holder on his deseg suit in Louisiana--mk].

*He has been silent as state after state has attacked collective bargaining and due process for teachers;

*He has done nothing in response to the explosion of voucher programs that transfer public funds to religious schools;

*Because of his policies, enrollments in teacher education programs, even in Teach for America, have plummeted, and many experienced teachers are taking early retirement;

*He has unleashed a mad frenzy of testing in classrooms across the country, treating standardized test scores as the goal of all education, rather than as a measure;

*His tenure has been marked by the rise of an aggressive privatization movement, which seeks to eliminate public education in urban districts, where residents have the least political power;

*He loosened the regulations on the federal student privacy act, permitting massive data mining of the data banks that federal funds created;

*He looked the other way as predatory for-profit colleges preyed on veterans and  minorities, plunging students deep into debt;

*Duncan has regularly accused parents and teachers of “lying” to students. For reasons that are unclear, he wants everyone to believe that our public schools are terrible, our students are lazy, not too bright, and lacking ambition.

Diane could have also included Duncan's unflagging support for autocratic mayoral control of urban school districts. He made mayoral control an essential piece of his top-down school reform model and went so far as to say he would consider his time as education secretary a “failure” if more mayors didn’t take over city school systems by the end of his tenure.

They didn't. It was and he is.

Final Note: According to a report in the S-T, while Duncan remains in D.C., is wife and two daughters returned to Chicago with the children to attend the expensive and private University of Chicago Lab School.

I leave it to Valery Strauss at WaPo to point out the obvious:

…now his children will attend a progressive private school in Chicago, a school that does not follow key school reform policies that his Education Department has set for public schools.

It does not, for example, use the Common Core State Standards (though many teachers there support them). It does not bombard its students with standardized tests or spend weeks each semester in test-prep mode. It does not evaluate teachers by student standardized test scores. In 2013, 20 Lab teachers signed a letter to Duncan protesting his policies that promote standardized test-based school reform. Also among the signatories were teachers from the Ariel Community Academy, a public school founded by a team of people that included Duncan.

[...]
Another irony is that Duncan will be sending his children to a private school in a city where he ran the public schools for seven years; he then went on to control federal oversight of the nation’s public schools for another seven years. One wonders if there is not a single public school — or public charter school — that Duncan could have chosen after being personally responsible in some way for the improvement of the public education system in Chicago.

Arne Duncan chooses a school free from his influence http://t.co/NIA1aWRXNf Because you know he has to do what is BEST for his kids

— linda (@breezydayz) July 10, 2015

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.

A 'Mussolini' for the schools?

Take your pick. Mussolini, Ivan the Terrible, or Rahm. 

An editorial in Friday's Trib calls on CPS to put a turnaround expert at the top of the school system, with "Mussolini-like powers to execute and implement."

Two things -- First, it's probably not workable. Don't we already have an autocrat running the schools? Rahm may not be a turnaround expert, but he is the Little Emperor. Does the Trib board want another dictator under the mayor? Who would dictate to whom?

Secondly, who was it on the editorial board that thought the Mussolini reference was a good idea? I mean, did one of the board members actually say: "Hey, I've got a great idea. Let's recommend that the schools be run by someone like Hitler. No...that might be pushing it a bit. How about Mussolini?"

They could have just said, "You know. We really need an education czar," and no one would have blinked. Czarism is still very popular in this country, even after the dismal performances of the White House drug czars, energy czars, healthcare czars, economic policy czars, and even the ebola czar, to name but a few. Here's a complete list of White House appointed czars.

How about someone like Ivan The Terrible to run the schools? Enough of this child-centered crap. Right?

A final thought... Mussolini didn't really make the trains run on time. And even if he had, I would gladly have waited a few extra minutes and been late for work, rather than endure fascism. Wouldn't you?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rahm Emanuel attends a 2011 fundraiser at the Chicago home of Rajiv Fernando, the CEO of Chopper Trading, a firm that has donated to Emanuel and ultimately benefited. (Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune)

Rahm is vulnerable

 "It's easy to see he's vulnerable by the amount he's raising that is absolutely obscene by any standard," said two-term Alderman Bob Fioretti, a frequent voice of dissent on a City Council that often backs the mayor's ideas. -- AP

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis

“We've had 25 years of this mayoral control and it's not working,” CTU President Karen Lewis says, noting that a union poll last year said 65 percent of Chicagoans favor an elected school board. -- Crain's

Meeks: Test or else

PARCC or else

“Therefore, we are directing you to administer the PARCC assessment to all students. If any district does not test, ISBE will withhold its Title I funds. We will also seek to recoup the state funds spent on any test booklets unused by the district, as well as any restocking fees charged to ISBE by our testing vendor.” -- ISBE Chairman Rev. Meeks and State Supt. Koch,  Sun-Times

Sugata Mitra

"We need a pedagogy free from fear..." -- TED

Public support for Obama's school policies is plunging

That's the good news.

If you combine Bush and Obama, which is easy to do when it comes to education policy, we're coming up on 15 years of No Child Left Behind/Race To The Top (with waivers).

That will make 15 straight years of corporate-style, top-down, metrics-driven, test-based reform. That includes more than 6 years of Arne Duncan's unfettered, single-handed use of federal dollars to impose a system which promotes  mayoral control of   the schools, coupled with the closing thousands of public schools and replacing them with privately-run charters. This strategy, based on the notion of a speedy "radical disruption," has steamrolled along like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with no need for a bipartisan consensus and with token opposition from Republicans.

It's likely that, in upcoming mid-term elections, it will be the Republicans who benefit from the growing public disenchantment with current education policies. (This despite the fact that mainline Republicans like Bush and Christie have been strong supporters of Duncan-ism.)

The Hill reports that Obama/Duncan school reform is faring poorly in the arena of public opinion -- meaning among the folks who use and pay for the nation's public schools and the folks who vote. Public support for President Obama’s education policies is plunging, according to the latest Gallup/PDK survey.

Only 27 percent of people give Obama an “A” or “B” for his support of public schools, down 9 percent from last year, in a new poll from PDK/Gallup that was released Wednesday. An equal amount of people — 27 percent — said Obama deserves a failing grade on education.

The survey shows a growing disenchantment with top-down reform including imposed Common Core standards. Opposition to Common Core seems evenly distributed between right and left.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they believe their local school board should have the greatest influence in deciding the curriculum. Only 28 percent of Democrats said the federal government should have the greatest control, while 45 percent of Democrats said the local school board should be in charge.

The Gallup poll found that 81% of the public had heard of Common Core, with 60% opposing it. The most common reason cited for opposition was the belief that the standards limit the flexibility of teachers.

This administration, despite its call for "better" tests, will go down as the greatest over-testers of children in history. The attachment of Common Core to a never-ending battery of standardized tests doesn't sit well with teachers or parents, and has cost Obama a splintering of his previously formidable base among teacher unions--the largest unions in the land.

An area where a majority of Democrats and Republicans agreed is a negative view of standardized testing. A majority of all respondents in the poll — 54 percent — said they don’t think standardized testing helps schools or teachers. And parents of public school students viewed testing even more negatively, with 68 percent saying it isn’t helpful.

Among the likely political victims of Duncanism are a group of big-city mayors who capitalized on the mayoral-control fad to push local versions of corporate-style reform. In addition to control of school policy, these mayors captured control over school contracts, prime real estate, and thousands of patronage jobs.

Case in point:  Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is now heading into an election campaign with sinking ratings, mainly resulting from his faithful implementation of Obama/Duncan school policies--despite massive public opposition.

Remember, it was Duncan back in 2009, who promised that he would make mayoral control his number-one priority.

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed." 

Prophetic. 

Budget vote: Another reason to get rid of mayoral control of the schools

WGN'S WALTER "SKIPPY" JACOBSON says he's seen everything now that the board has decided to hire more press secretaries as a way of dealing with the current fiscal crisis at CPS. 

Note to "Skippy: All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again. Never before has a mayor spent more city money on press releases, only to have his ratings sink lower and lower with every dollar spent.

AS IF WE NEEDED ANOTHER REASON to replace mayoral control of the schools with an elected school board, yesterday's approval of Rahm's $5.8B smoke-and-mirrors school budget gives us reason #842 by my count.

The budget once again cuts funding for neighborhood schools and programs serving kids with special needs, while funneling millions more into the pockets of privately-run charter school operators. It was passed by the mayor's hand-picked minions (at least by those who showed up) of bobble-heads despite loud protests from the gallery of angry parents and school activists.

The Tribune reports:

Board members seemed miffed over criticism about increased spending from two watchdog groups, the Civic Federation and Access Living. The budget is 3 percent higher than last year’s, despite the ballooning deficit.

The Civic Federation said Wednesday it could not support the spending plan, which it called “shortsighted” for not addressing the fiscal crisis with long-term solutions and increasing spending by $400 million.

Access Living, a disability rights group, said that while the district increased funds for special education programs, it failed to develop a plan to address the structural deficit.

George Schmidt does a good job of calling out no-show board members.

Considering that they only have to perform that public duty one day a month, and at a location conventient to their downtown offices, the seven members of the Board have seemed since the year began to be alternating "days off" so that they don't have to listen to the public criticisms of their hypocrisies and craven subservience to the mayor's privatization programs. And so it was on what is arguably the most important meeting of the year, July 23, 2014. That was the meeting at which the Board was to approve its annual budget. Deborah Quazzo, the millionaire financial planner, was missing, just as Andrea Zopp, Henry Bienen and Mahalia Hines had been during the previous months.

But I don't see why they all don't just phone in their always-predictible votes since the public sessions bounce off them like water off a duck's back.

George Schmidt photo from Substance.

Board President David Vitale runs meetings like a military tribunal. He allows little for public voice since members serve entirely at the pleasure of the mayor. Parents and community members are allowed only in strict 2-minute sound bites which have no weight in the minds of the bobble-heads. And when the dialogue gets real --well, this picture of CPS parents being carried out of yesterday's meeting says it all. You can watch the video clip of the Board's actions here.

Door cracks open to stripping Rahm of mayoral control of the schools. Travis' near win reverberates.

DID YOU HEAR THAT... The House opened the door ever so slightly Tuesday to stripping Mayor Rahm Emanuel and any of his successors of the sole authority to appoint the Chicago public school system's board of education.  By a 108-5 margin, the House approved legislation sponsored by Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, to create a task force to study whether the board should be appointed, elected or mixed. Ford’s bill now moves to the Senate.

... Some legislators are nervous about voting for Rahm's pension-busting bill because of Jay Travis' CTU-backed near defeat of Christian Mitchell. This according to Chicago Sun-Times Springfield Bureau Chief Dave McKinney who was interviewed by Carol Marin on Chicago Tonight. I confirmed it with McKinney on Twitter.

Mike Klonsky ‏@mikeklonsky 

@davemckinney123 Did u tell Carol M that legislators were worried by CTU-backed near defeat of Christian Mitchell? Or did I hear you wrong?

 Dave McKinney ‏@davemckinney123 

@mikeklonsky I had one House Dem suggest that was a factor giving some heartburn today given where the CTU was on the bill.

Thanks again Jay and CTU for fighting the good fight. It continues to reverberate.

Defeating Rahm, Taking back Chicago. Tough, but It can be done.

Community groups rally to Take Back Chicago.

Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington paints a pretty grim, if not discouraging picture of Chicago's political future ("Despite woes, Rahm tough to beat"). She's right, of course. When it comes to elections in the Citizens United era, money doesn't just talk, it swears, to paraphrase Dylan.

Washington does a service by sizing Rahm up from a two-Chicago's perspective.

In one Chicago, they say Emanuel inherited and then revived an ailing city. He is an incorruptible, whirling dervish of government efficiency and accountability, single-minded about making Chicago a world-class city. Many in that Chicago dwell in the city’s prosperous inner core and are the wealthy and corporate interests Emanuel assiduously courts. 

The “other” Chicago — in the ’hoods — retorts that Emanuel disrespects those who disagree with him, governs by fiat and spin, and wields power to benefit his elite cronies, at their expense. 

She also could have mentioned the chaos and instability that have come along with Rahm's control of the city's public schools, his assault on the unions, especially those of teachers and public employees, and the pandemic gun violence plaguing the neighborhoods.

Mayor 1%

I would take issue with her on a couple of points. Even among Chicago's rich and powerful, there are factions who dislike Rahm (including the Daley clan) and some in business sector unhappy with his performance. The collapse of the Midway privatization deal is just the latest example of Rahm's ineptitude, from their perspective. The chaos, the tainting of the city's image and loss of business during the NATO summit is another. And then there's the dismal failure of his misnamed Infrastructure Trust.

Also remember, the mayor who is tied nationally to Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party hierarchy, has thrown in with Republican Bruce Rauner in the governor's race. Some Democrats, including some of his usual union allies can't be happy about that. While they will render unto Caesar, campaign contributions, many would like nothing more than to see him fall -- depending of course on a viable alternative.

And speaking of "incorruptible," let's wait and see how high up federal investigators are willing to go in the UNO scandal, Rahm's appointment of former comptroller Amer Ahmad, who was recently indicted in Ohio on conspiracy charges about directing state investments in exchange for bribes, and other City Hall contract mis-dealings. I could go on and on. But the point is, this is a regime up to its ears in conflicts of interest, Eddie Burke-style tax hanky-panky and political patronage. We'll see what happens when and if those who are plundering the city start rolling over on each other and jumping ship, and when those who have been kept away from the feeding trough start taking their revenge.

As for the "other Chicago", they we have problems of our own. While Take Back Chicago was an inspiring event, reminiscent of the early days of the Harold Washington campaign, which at least for a time, did take back Chicago, our weaknesses are transparent. Most notably, a movement still largely racially dis-unified and isolated like the city itself, and the lack of a viable candidate with name recognition, fund raising potential, and the ability and willingness to lead the kind of unified crusade necessary to pull and upset.

Fioretti

But I also think Washington is too quick to write off Ald. Fioretti as that candidate. While a progressive African-American, female candidate like CTU prez Karen Lewis or Toni Preckwinkle would obviously stand a great chance in a face-to-face battle with Rahm, neither has shown a willingness to run and each would have a lot to lose. In my mind, that leaves Fioretti who, along with the rest of the City Council's Progressive Caucus has been out front in standing up to Rahm, especially around support for public education and against TIF give-aways and the all-out privatization of city services. Could Fioretti be Chicago's Bill de Blasio? We'll see.

It will take a lot of work, lots of money, and a perfectly-run campaign (is there such a thing?). But I'm certainly more upbeat than Laura Washington. She's right. Rahm is a two-Chicago mayor. Let's hope he's a one-term one as well.

Time is running short. Let's get moving.

Chi-Town hustling

Billy Daley, the man from J.P. Morgan, who's apparently running for IL governor, claims that lots of people are asking him about Syria. No they're not.

Getting rid of the IG

I've met Chicago's Inspector General Joe Ferguson and he seems like a decent and honest enough guy. So it's no wonder that Rahm Emanuel has spent the better part of the year trying to get rid of him. I mean, who needs somebody, nobody sent, right?

Rahm's former comptroller, Amer Ahmad.

But as one corrupt deal piled up on top of another -- from the UNO charter school fiasco, to robbing the schools of TIF funds to pay for DePaul's planned basketball arena, to the Midway privatization, to the forced drop in the city's bond rating, and on and on  -- the mayor has been losing the PR damage-control battle and his ratings are sinking lower than owl poop. The topper of course, came when his former comptroller, Amer Ahmad was indicted in Ohio.

So Rahm was forced to back off under pressure from his own guys, and rehire the IG for another 4-year term. The deal is that Ferguson will only be allowed to serve one of those years (til the heat cools down). And get this --- his job description will be limited to getting the city out from under the Shakman Decree and the "costly constraints of a federal hiring monitor."

I'm not sure why Ferguson bent and agreed to such a slimy deal. But if there was ever a reason to keep a city under the "constraints" of Shakman, it is Rahm Emanuel.

Need another reason for un-making CPS a wing of Rahm's City Hall and replacing mayoral control with an elected school board?

'Gettable'

Oh, and speaking of Syria, my favorite quote yesterday, coming out of the let's-bomb-the-Syrians congressional debate, came from Chicago's own progressive Dem, Jan Schakowsky who has been so good on so many issues. But here she tells Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet, "While undecided, “I’m gettable".

Have we really made CPS a wing of City Hall?

It's like a bad dream...

A foul-mouthed megalomaniac is given autocratic control over the schools in the nation's third largest city. He doesn't particularly care for public education and certainly wouldn't send his own children to a public school -- especially to one that had implemented his own version of school reform.

"Reforms" like diverting public school funds to privately-run charter schools, a longer school day with fewer teachers, bare-bones budgets, over-sized classrooms, no libraries, banned books, and with less art and music. These "reforms" are for THOSE kids, not for the Emanuels'. He and his wealthy patrons are sworn enemies of public employee unions and he's fond of dropping F-bombs on the African-American woman president of the CTU.

The demolition of La Casita

This is a mayor who, like his predecessor, wants to privatize or sell off all things public, including the schools and their programs, while in the process, eroding public decision-making and collective bargaining rights.

What he can't sell, he closes, even if it means violating the civil rights and equal protection rights of the poor, those with special needs and communities of color. His massive school closings in those communities has put some 30,000 students in harm's way. 

In response to public outcry, Rahm has posted hundreds of Safe Passage signs and militarized the routes kids will have to take to their new, overcrowded receiving schools. Yesterday, in a scene that's becoming more and more familiar to parents and students, 5 people were shot in the shadow of one of these signs.

Why would we entrust our schools and our children's education to the corrupt patronage plantation that is Chicago City Hall? To a political machine that feasts off of public funds while bankrupting its public institutions? To an autocrat who operates with impunity and without public accountability?

Safe Passage

His latest attempt to neuter the city's Inspector General, in the wake of perhaps the largest scandal yet, even has his own loyalists shaking their heads in disgust. His misuse of  in public TIF money, meant to bolster economic development in under-resourced communities, as his own private slush fund -- funneling billions to cronies,  rich property owners and lakeshore developers for a DePaul basketball stadium--or to his pals at American Demolition to pay for the destruction of La Casita and Whittier School...

And the list goes on. The bad dream continues. Time to wake up and put an end to mayoral control of the schools, redirect that TIF money, get an elected school board, and take back City Hall in 2015.

No food at the buffet table

I like Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey's  response to Rahm's version of the longer school day. 

"The schools are getting shortchanged.  Having a full day of school while cutting back core classes is like inviting somebody over for a buffet and there's no food on the table." -- DNAinfo

Fritchey

Fritchey emphasized that it's not the North Side fighting to take funding from the South Side or West Side, but that everyone has to work toward solutions for all.

Nice words.

I hope the northsiders mean it because you know that Rahm will find a way to play the neighborhoods off against one another, restoring cuts for some and not for others. That's just what he's doing now, closing dozens of schools on the south and west sides, blaming his budget shortfall on greedy pensioners and claiming that cuts can't be restored until pension "reform" is successful.

Instead, Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th), who hangs out on the periphery of the council's Progressive Caucus, is calling on the city to draw on surplus TIF funds set aside for economic development as a "one-time fix."  That makes much more sense so long as the funds are distributed equitably. The CTU has been pushing a similar solution. Chicago aldermen have 10 weeks to pass an ordinance giving TIF funding to classrooms. How much funding depends on the extent of budget cuts facing each school, says Pawar.

But the mayor considers TIF his own personal slush fund to be doled out to business community pals as a form of patronage. The real elephant in the room is still the state's regressive tax system. There will be no long-term solution to either city school funding or to the pension crisis so long as Illinois remains a virtual tax-free zone for the largest corporations.

Then there's the whole question of City Hall's control of the schools and the need for an elected school board to replace Rahm's hand-picked board of privateers. How many more reasons do we need?

This week's revolt of northside LSCs, who have formed the Common Sense Coalition against the budget cuts, threatens Rahm's last remaining stable base of support in the city. New polls show he's ripe for picking in the 2015 mayoral primary, providing a unifying progressive opponent has the huevos (gender neutral) to jump out there.

Side Note -- Pawar and 10 other alders have created the Asian American Caucus. The group formed with the stated goal of building legislation around issues affecting the fast-growing Asian American community, particularly immigration, advocacy and language barriers. Problem is that Pawar is the only Asian in the Caucus (we need to elect some more). The rest are pretty much a gaggle of the mayor's yes men, ie. Solis, Mell (retiring),  Moore, O'Connor, etc....

Rahm's budget cuts spark LSC revolt

Arts, foreign-language classes and even recess are among the first programs being shed by principals trying to deal with budget cuts of 10 percent or more. Many of those were added for this school year as part of Emanuel’s promise to make the longer school day that he demanded an improved “Full School Day.” -- Sun-Times columnist Greg Brown

Several Chicago Local School Councils are openly resisting the Mayor's draconian cuts and rejecting their school budgets. A full-scale LSC revolt could take place unless funding is restored.

DNA Info reports that Blaine's council has voted to reject the budget, "with Principal Troy LaRaviere abstaining, a move that was loudly applauded as the community agreed to fight for more money from the system." Expected losses at Blaine include the elimination of art, music and a middle school teacher position, LaRaviere told the group. Non-staffing expenses must be cut by 37 percent.

Reports are coming in that similar actions are being taken by the LSCs at Roosevelt H.S. and Whitney Young, where Principal Kenner has threatened to charge students $500 tuition for taking 7th period class.

Burley students protest cuts

At Burley Elementary, one of the city’s top-scoring neighborhood schools, parents and teachers gathered to protest elimination of all art programming and cuts to English, reading, technology and physical education programs.

“Our mayor talked about a full school day in terms of a broad curriculum,” parent Amy Smolensky said, referring to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s extended school day that was implemented this year. “With these cuts, the school day is going to be an empty day, not a full day,” Smolensky said. -- Sun-Times

S-T also reports:

Lake View High School principal Lillith Werner told her Local School Council that “CPS put her between a rock and a hard place,” said LSC member Jackie Rosa. “She made it clear that the principals don’t have autonomy,” Rosa said. “They’re given this dismal budget and they’re told to work with it.”

At Lake View, a neighborhood high school in CPS’ top performing Level 1 category, the budget was sliced from $9.2 million to $7.7 million. It will mean no new textbooks and 14 teachers laid off.

Greg Hinz at Crain's:

Some folks, I guess, are just slow learners.I'm referring to the preliminary budgets that CPS sent to hundreds of local schools a couple of weeks ago, budgets that contain lots of bad news that CPS is going out of its way to hide, rather than use it as a rally to urge parents to lean on state lawmakers to come up with more money.

CPS Liar-in-Chief Becky Carroll says that, "the overall impact on schools is minimal.” But by now, nobody's buying anything she says.

How many more reasons do we need to get rid of mayoral control of the schools and this mayor in particular?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 "I believe this was when I was telling the press I was embarrassed as a Jewish woman to have a Jewish mayor experimenting on black children after listening to a bunch of board members say that black parents don't know how to raise their children." -- Wendy Katten, RYH

Oklahoma teacher, Jennifer Simonds

"The children were asking why a train was coming through the school.The next thing we knew, the entire roof of the building was torn off and we were being pelted with all this stuff. I laid myself over my students to protect them, and I remember praying that God be with us and keep us safe, and asking please — let it be me who dies if something happens — and not any of the kids.” -- Sun-Times

NEA Pres. Dennis Van Roekel

What is a "safe passage route"? Google the term and you'll find essentially two definitions: It either refers to the designated routes Palestinians may use to travel from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, or it refers to special routes created by the city of Chicago so children can more safely navigate through gang territory to get to their new schools. -- Huffington Post

CTU V.P. Jesse Sharkey

“We must derive truth from facts here, so … we need the Board of Education to commit that you will not lose any students, that is to say, you should be able to account in one year’s time for where every student went. We need you to commit that you will own up to the declines in academic progress that will happen.” -- Sun-Times

Jitu Brown of KOCO

“There’s a legislative strategy and a street strategy. We are organizing in our communities to stand up for our children, to stand against disinvestment — which is what this is.” -- Curtis Black, Newstips

 Erica Clark, Parents For Teachers

“I don’t think anybody thinks this is the end.” -- Curtis Black, Newstips

 Anthony Cody

A few months back, Chicagoans discovered the Broad Foundation actually had published a detailed guide explaining how to go about closing schools in your community. -- EdWeek

Weiner discipline

Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner is planning to run for mayor of New York, a position that would also put him in control of the schools. Why New Yorkers would want to put this creep anywhere near school children is beyond me. But then, Mark Sanford was just elected in South Carolina, so what do I know?

(N.Y. Post pic)

Monday, protesting NYC students made it clear that they want no part of Weiner's ideas on public education. Those ideas were laid out in a policy booklet released last month. In the document, titled “Keys to the City,” he wrote that his first educational priority was to “streamline the process of removing troublesome kids from the classroom.” What he would be "streamlining" is Mayor Bloomberg's current policy which emphasizes using suspensions and arrests to enforce school safety.

The students did their homework and found that arrests and suspensions in NYC schools disproportionately and unfairly involve black and Hispanic students.

According to the Times:

“Instead of proposing an ineffective and harmful policy for student safety, you should embrace successful and proven strategies like restorative justice that improve safety, reduce conflict and increase learning,” the groups wrote in a letter to Mr. Weiner, which protesters tried to hand-deliver on Monday. (A doorman would not allow them inside the building, at East 20th Street, but took the letter.)

Aside from keeping Weiner-style discipline out of the mayor's office, how many more reasons do we need to end mayoral control of the schools?

Day 6

Out on the picket lines I saw teachers in small groups, reading the tentative contract, line-by-line and discussing it. Talk about your participatory democracy. Here it is, right on the mean streets of Chicago. No wonder Rahm and his corporate pals are horrified. No wonder he's asking for an injunction. Reading a contract before you sign it is a concept so beyond anything that ever takes place in Rahm's City Council or in his hand-picked Board of Education, it seems downright revolutionary. Or to quote Rahm, "a threat to public health and safety."

Best headline in the S-T today: Judge punts on forcing teachers back; no school likely Tuesday. 

Makes you wonder what's happened to the city's once-powerful political machine when the mayor can't even find a judge willing to do him a favor -- NOW! Old man Daley must be turning in his grave. 

Best column comes from Laura Washington,‘Shadow strikers’ marched with CTU , who spotlights the CTU's deep base of support in the communities, in large part a result of the city's many community-based organizations.

Community organizing is embedded in Chicago’s DNA. Jane Addams, Saul Alinsky, Harold Washington and Barack Obama all tapped the strategy to force social change at crucial moments in the city’s history. This is one of those moments. Organizing took a big hit when Mayor Rahm Emanuel took City Hall. During the 2011 mayoral campaign, Emanuel ignored “countless” invitations to community forums and requests for meetings to hear their concerns.

Once again I'm thinking back a few years ago when Arne Duncan made mayoral control of the schools his own personal hill to die on. "At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed," Duncan told a forum back in 2009.

Chicago is now into its third decade of mayoral control. CPS is now a wing of probably the most corrupt City Hall in the country, and Rahm has become the poster child for the toxicity of autocratic control by the mayor. This can also be said of  Bloomberg in New York and half a dozen others. I don't hear Duncan giving such speeches today and I sure didn't see him rushing into town to support his mayor pal in his moment of distress.

As soon as this strike ends, community activists can get back to their so-far successful petition drive to have an elected school board in Chicago and finally put an end to one-man rule over the schools.

Cleveland's corporate reform bill signed by Kasich

Ohio Tea-Party Gov. John Kasich and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson hug after Jackson talked about the agreement that was reached on the Cleveland reform plan. (Plain Dealer)

Privatizers' dream, union goes along

Two things are predictable when states pass school reform laws that only apply to one city. First, that city has a largely poor, black and brown school population and second, the reform is more about privatization, charter schools and "turnaronds" than it is about anything affecting teaching and learning.

Such is the case in Ohio where T-Party Gov. Kasich just signed the Cleveland Plan For Transforming Schools into law. "Cleveland is now leading the way in school reform," Kasich said to cheers from reform supporters and groups that helped create the plan.

After much lobbying and negotiation, the plan -- which applies only to Cleveland as the state's sole district under mayoral control -- was approved by the state legislature last month. -- Plain Dealer

The new law overrides the union's contract and discards previous board-union agreements governing teacher pay and layoffs, does away with tenure, lengthens the school day and year without accompanying compensation, evaluates and pays teachers based largely on student test scores, and pushes the biggest move yet towards privately managed charter schools along the lines of the Philadelphia model. The new law is also an affront to parents, requiring them to attend meetings under penalty of law. It will take badly-needed funds away from neighborhood public schools and line the pockets of politically connected consultants.

 Calling the shots will be corporate reformers based at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the Cleveland and George Gund foundations, Breakthrough Charter Schools and others.

The worst part of this mess is that it was supported by the Democrats and by the AFT and the Cleveland Teacher Union --not only supported, but hailed as "a model of collaboration" for the entire nation. The last time we heard that kind of talk from state union bureaucrats was here in Illinois after the passage of the anti-union SB-7 bill.