WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

Tim Miller

 CPAC Was the Real Republican Party All Along. -- The Bulwark

Sarah Jones

Schools need to reopen, but the process is complicated by problems created by years of underfunding, not by teachers unions. -- New York Magazine

Tim Cadogan, GoFundMe C.E.O.

  “This is a war against a virus...If this were a war against another country at this scale, it would be no question what we would do, right? We would mobilize our society to defeat it.” -- New York Times

King James responds to Zlatan

"I’ll use my platform to continue to shed light on everything that’s going on around this country and around the world. There’s no way I would ever just stick to sports because I understand how powerful this platform and my voice are.” -- Sportsnet

Gross. Mike Pompeo at CPAC, brags about under Trump, they used “beautiful tomahawk missiles” to bomb Syria. MISSILES ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL! They are killing machines.

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) February 27, 2021

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

 

“If [a metal shredder] is not good enough for the North Side,” said Gina Ramirez, referring to the area where RMG previously operated General Iron, “then it’s not good enough for the South Side.” -- Guardian

Sen. Mitch McConnell

His is a profile in cowardice. But I felt a need to quote him here.

"Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty...There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day..."We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one. -- CNN

Then he voted "not guilty".

Dr. Anthony Fauci

"I think it can be done. I mean, obviously, it's not a perfect situation, but it's really important to get the children back to school in the safest way possible. Safe for the children, but also safe for the teachers and the other educators." -- ABC's "This Week"

 CDC Director, Rochelle Walensky

"We have work to do" when it comes to reopening schools safely.

"If there's more disease in the community, there will be more in school and that most disease in school does not come from in-school transmission but comes from outside, from into the community. So what we would advocate for is to have more kids in school as our community spread comes down." -- CNN

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten tweets

For the first time in 10 months, we have a set of guidances that's based not on politics, but on public health. -- @rweingarten

 

Double win in GA could provide resources needed for a safe national school-reopening campaign

What a great double victory in GA! I stayed up most of the night watching the results come in like any good political junkie would. Now I'm trying to unwind and crank out a blog post before grabbing some badly-needed shut-eye. 

Wins for John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, against tough odds, open up new possibilities for Biden to transcend his "bi-partisan" fantasy and advance a progressive agenda that begins to undo much of the damage from the Trump era. As of this writing, Warnock has been declared the winner while Ossoff's lead of 16,370 votes is now greater than that of Joe Biden's over Donald Trump in Georgia (11,779 votes). 

I'm imagining with glee how DT must be beating up on his white supremacist toadies Loeffler and Perdue, over losing to a Jewish liberal and the Black preacher from Dr. King's old Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Thanks and some dough should go out to all the organizers on the ground throughout the state, led of course by Stacey Abrams and her statewide political organization as well as many union brothers and sisters from around the country (including Chicago) and the multi-racial movement of the poor and civil rights groups who have been plowing the Georgian political fields for decades. 

That progressive agenda includes real federal pandemic relief (immediately including $2,000 checks), rent, and debt-relief for those working, unemployed and poor families in greatest need and aggressively leading the war against COVID. 

It must also include a massive program of relief for public school systems ravaged under Betsy DeVos and her predecessors, as well as support for a national reopening of schools on the scale of the Marshall Plan. This federal initiative needs to be put in place apart from or alongside current hit-or-miss efforts by local school boards, many of which have been marked by confusion and division at a time when trust, clarity, and unity in the community are necessary prereqs. 

The key to a safe, full-scale reopening is prioritizing teachers and school staff for vaccination. They should be classified nationally as essential workers with schools used centers for vaccine distribution and community health education.

I'll be talking more about reopening our schools tonight at 10 ET on the Rick Smith Show. Tune in at thericksmithshow.com. 

Big changes needed if we are to control the global pandemic and open schools here.

OK, Merle. We've made it through December. Now what?

As we head into the new year, I'm thinking like everyone else, good riddance to Trump and 2020. I've had the words to the old Merle Haggard song, If We Make It Through December, buzzing through my brain. But by yesterday afternoon, I've had reset my expectations to... if we make it through the '20s... 

NBC reports that Pence's so-called Operation Warp Speed is moving at such a crawl that adequately vaccinating Americans will take 10 years at the current pace. Unless things change quickly, that will wreak havoc on global pandemic recovery, including school openings here in the U.S. 

Sorry to sound so gloomy at the start of a new year. I'm really not. Unlike some of my lefty friends who think the history of progress ended with Bernie's primary loss, I am bouyed by Trump's defeat and will be even more so if Warnock and Ossoff pull off victories in Georgia next week.

However, I'm definitely a school-opening person and schools can't open safely without a mass inoculation program for all teachers and school staff and ultimately, kids and parents. All that's now looking more and more out of reach -- at least for a spring school opening. 

JUST IN: 143,924 people in Illinois — including Chicago — have gotten the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Gov. Pritzker’s office. That includes all residents and staff members who consented to the vaccine at state-run veterans’ homes, officials say.

That's good, but not nearly good enough. The reason for the under-inoculation? Sabotage by the Republicans and the Trump White House who have strangled the states and cities since the start of the pandemic. The latest puny pandemic recovery bill, passed with bipartisan support, was a slap in the face for working families, the unemployed, and local municipalities overwhelmed by COVID recovery efforts. 

Without massive federal support, it will be ten times more difficult to get the pandemic under control and for schools to open safely.

ONE FINAL POINT HERE --- Vaccine nationalism has become the main impediment to containing the pandemic. Trump's December 8th executive order specifying that the Americans get first access to any vaccine, formalized with fanfare what has already been de facto U.S. policy. And it's obviously been a failure, not only in terms of spreading the vaccine globally but here as well. 

The lesson is that given the global economy, no country is safe from the ravages of COVID while the rest of the world is in the clutches of this killer disease. 

Even in China, where the virus has been under control for months, a small mutation entering the country on a visitor or in a shipment of food, can throw the entire country into chaos and another lockdown. 

With the White House withholding foreign aid and shipments of vaccine to needy countries, they are increasingly turning to China for the vaccine. 

Fighting COVID requires a global effort and global scientific and medical collaboration. Cold War, anti-China containment policies currently in fashion in both parties just won't do. The incoming Biden administration has an opportunity to tone down the Trumpian rhetoric and reach new trade and anti-COVID agreements with China for the sake of world peace, health, and stability. 

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Fareed Zakaria argues that the United States needs to temper its reflexive hostility toward China, recognize China’s rise as a feature of the new global order, and craft a strategy of engagement plus deterrence. I'm not sure what he means by "deterrence" but this is a much better line than the one currently holding sway. 

The consequences of exaggerating the Soviet threat were vast: gross domestic abuses during the McCarthy era; a dangerous nuclear arms race; a long, futile, and unsuccessful war in Vietnam; and countless other military interventions in various so-called Third World countries. The consequences of not getting the Chinese challenge right today will be vaster still. 

He's right. 

The path towards safe school reopenings

Chicago has plans for a phased school reopening starting in January if the spread of the virus stabilizes, but the local teachers’ union says cases remain too high. Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

I don't see any pathway to safe urban school reopenings without first classifying teachers and school staff as essential, frontline workers, and putting them near the top of the vaccine priority list. This should be part of a national campaign championed by the incoming Sec. of Education. Schools should also become centers for mass community inoculation. 

Two things are clear to me. Schools can't open without support from a critical mass of teachers and teachers aren't going to be bullied back into the classroom without evidence that those classrooms are reasonably safe. 

The nation’s roughly three million full-time teachers are already considered essential workers by the C.D.C., which means that in states that follow federal recommendations, they are already eligible to receive the vaccine after hospital employees and nursing home residents.

But, says the New York Times...

The essential worker group is huge — some 87 million Americans — and states will have flexibility in how they prioritize within that population. Many more people work in schools than just teachers, including nurses, janitors, and cafeteria workers, and it is unclear how many of them would be included on the high-priority list.

Last month, more than 10 educational organizations, including the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, wrote to the C.D.C. asking that school employees be considered a priority group.

But even after educators are inoculated, lots of other measures will need to be put in place before city classrooms can be truly considered safe learning places for both teachers and students. Even after being vaccinated, Teachers could still be silent spreaders. Schools will likely need to continue requiring masks and distancing students for many months until community spread has sharply dropped. 

Public school educators and outside experts need to consider radical school redesigns to meet community needs in the pandemic and post-pandemic era. But that kind of project will require massive federal and state resources and an effort to find common ground between school boards, big-city mayors, and the unions. Either on the national from or here in Chicago, I don't see that happening for the time being.

Certainly not without Democrats in control of the Senate, and even then... 

Cardona & Fenwick

CHOOSING HIS ED SECRETARY...It looks like President-elect Biden is finally close to naming his education secretary. His people just dropped the names of two short-listed candidates to the Washington Post -- Howard University emeritus Ed School Dean Leslie Fenwick and Miguel Cardona, the commissioner of schools in Connecticut.

I don't know much about either one. So I'll go by WaPo's description of each:

Fenwick is a Black woman, and Cardona is a Latino man. Both have experience as classroom teachers, though Fenwick has worked as a dean and scholar in higher education for many years...

...Fenwick has criticized education programs such as Teach For America — a nonprofit that for years recruited only new college graduates, gave them five weeks of summer training and placed them in high-need schools — and the move to inject competition and corporate-inspired management techniques into schools. She’s also spoken against for-profit charter schools and taxpayer-funded private school vouchers.

... Cardona sees an urgency to in-person school and has pushed districts to offer that to parents, said spokesman Peter Yazbak.

“His position has been that in-person learning is the way that we best address the educational crisis caused by the closure of schools last spring,” he said. “A lot of people who are not from Connecticut assume that Connecticut is just Greenwich. But we have a lot of urban districts with students who have social and emotional needs as well as academic needs. The best way for them to get the services they need is in school, with counselors and their teachers.”

Even though they bring different perspectives to the table, they both sound pretty good to me, especially considering the misleadership we've had atop the D.O.E. for the past two decades. I wonder if there's a way to combine the two of them in one cabinet post?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

All school districts across the state of New York are cleared to open, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news conference by phone Friday morning.

Maggie Mulqueen, psychologist

School has never been just about the curriculum. It’s also about students’ health and development...But schools can’t fill those needs while an epidemic is raging. It is quite possible that reopening schools could actually be worse for children. -- Think

Bill Gates

Commercial labs have left customers struggling with long waits, while “very wealthy people have access to these quick-turnaround tests.” -- CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS

Derrick Morgan, on jump in Black gun ownership

“Whether it was fear of a food shortage, lack of a grocery store, the short response times for law enforcement or whether people were just fearful they were going to be attacked, I don’t know,” said Derrick Morgan, national commander of the Black Gun Owners Association, to Politico. -- Black Enterprise

Trump (#OINk)...

...slammed Ocasio-Cortez as “a real beauty” who “knows nothing about the economy.” He singled out policies in her Green New Deal proposal. “She knows as much about the environment — do we have any young children here? — as that young child over there. I think he knows more,” Trump said. -- NY Post

CPS made the right decision but big challenges remain

After floating a plan for a mix of in-person and remote learning, the mayor and CPS made the right decision by starting the Chicago school year with remote learning only. It was a decision driven by rising coronavirus numbers along with resistance to an opening from the CTU and many parents. It's also a decision that may save some lives and prevent fewer COVID casualties.

According to Sarah Karp at WBEZ:

The announcement also comes amid rising COVID-19 cases in Chicago. The district said a move to remote learning was dependent on whether the Chicago Department of Public Health determined COVID-19 cases weren’t under control. Though the city hasn’t surpassed those benchmarks, there is growing concern Chicago will reach them before too long. 

Now, Chicago parents and teachers will be looking to Chicago Public Schools to put forth a robust remote learning plan.

The initial hybrid plan would have rotated students into buildings two days a week for in-person classes. But CPS officials also said all along that the plan was "preliminary" and that they wouldn’t reopen schools unless it’s safe to do so. That determination has now been made.

But keeping schools closed for the next few months doesn't even begin to deal with either the immediate or long-term educational or health issues created by the pandemic.

There are some immediate measures that CPS, together with the teachers and other stakeholders, can and must take to take to ensure that internet access, along with adequate nutrition and healthcare is available to all of its nearly 400,000 students. The needs of thousands of homeless children have to be met along with those students with special needs, mental health issues, and physical challenges. A daunting, if not impossible challenge with only weeks to plan.

I'm not sure a "robust remote learning plan" can even be considered a real thing under these conditions--without a huge influx of federal dollars and supports which aren't likely under Trump/DeVos.

Then there are some in leadership at CPS who think a robust remote learning plan means returning to the same old sorting, tracking, and testing system that failed so many students in the past, only doing it remotely.

According to WBEZ's Kate Grossman on FB:

Chicago Schools CEO Janice Jackson announced that every teacher would provide live instruction every school day. The district also will return to its regular grading system, with all students receiving letter grades. 

I know a better plan can be produced, but it can't be done without a close working relationship between CTU leaders and Mayor Lightfoot. There's lots of divisive, sectarian baggage to be shed if such a relationship is to become a reality. Time is running out. But it can happen.

It seems to be happening in L.A. where L.A. Unified and the teachers union reached a tentative agreement Sunday night on procedures for distance instruction in the fall. Details to come. Now New York remains as the only one among the big 3 cities still moving forward with face-to-face teaching.

I was slightly encouraged to read what seemed like an olive branch being extended by CTU Pres. Jesse Sharkey today. His tone towards the mayor was hostile and divisive as ever yesterday:

 “The mayor does not have the guts to close schools,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said Monday. “They’re putting it on us to close the schools. That’s what we feel like is happening.”

But today, Sharkey was congratulating the mayor for "being willing to listen to the concerns of families, educators, community groups and health professionals."

A good sign if I'm reading it right. We'll see.

Until the pandemic is under control and Trump and the Republicans are out of the White House and Congress, local school districts will be faced with lots of bad choices, like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

On the bright side is the movement in the streets, unprecedented ferment from below which has always been the key force behind progress in this country. Without this ferment, our vision of education and social transformation remains limited to maintaining the status quo or empty reforms.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Trump's federal cops descend on Portland. Chicago is next. 

Nearly two dozen lawmakers blasted Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara's letter in a joint statement Sunday.

"We resoundingly condemn FOP President John Catanzara's request that President Trump intervene in Chicago. This is a blatant attempt to instigate further violence against the young people who are leading the fight for real safety and justice in Chicago, and is particularly frightening given the situation in Portland, where unidentified federal agents have been throwing protestors into unmarked vehicles," the elected officials' statement said. "Yet as terrifying as the reports from Portland are, we must situate Catanzara's letter in the Chicago Police Department's own history of civilian torture and kidnappings. We stand with the organizers and activists who have called for an immediate end to such practices by the CPD, and the closure of Homan Square and all CPD black sites." -- ABC7

Trump tells Chris Wallace...

“I'm not losing, because those are fake polls."Not only did Trump deny the hard data, he also refused to say if he will accept the result of November’s presidential election if he comes out the loser.
“I have to see,” he said. “Look … I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no..." -- Fox News Sunday

I don’t, for the life of me, understand why ppl ask @realDonaldTrump of he will “accept” the results of the election if he loses...Did I miss something in believing that it’s not up to him one way or the other...and that asking him so politely makes him believe its optional?

— Keith Eric Benson, Ed.D (@KeithEricBenson) July 19, 2020

Joe Biden
...called on Congress to provide billions of dollars in emergency funding for school districts, which say they cannot openly safely without federal assistance to make the changes necessary and purchase enough protective equipment.

“If we do this wrong, we will put lives at risk and set our economy and our country back,” Biden said in the video. -- Washington Post

Rep. Al Green (D-TX)

"America's race problem demands radical solutions like a Department of Reconciliation." -- Think

Prof. Nathaniel Persily, Stanford Law School

 It’s Not Too Late to Save the 2020 Election. Avoiding a debacle for U.S. democracy will require getting as many Americans as possible to vote by mail and ensuring that polling places are safe, convenient, and plentiful. -- Wall Street Journal

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

“Mark Curran’s public attack on John Lewis just days after his death is disgusting. To disparage Congressman Lewis, a truly selfless hero and relentless fighter for civil rights and equality is a new low for Curran. It is time for responsible Illinois Republican Party leaders to clearly repudiate Curran’s hateful rhetoric.” -- NBC5 

Yikes: A day after John Lewis died, Republican Senate candidate Mark Curran blasted him, says he may have been “instrumental” in civil right fight “at one time” but “got in bed with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.” Links it to Chicago gun violence.

— Gregory Pratt (@royalpratt) July 19, 2020

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Gov. Rick DeSantis orders Florida schools to open despite his state shattering the U.S. record for increased COVID cases. If Florida were a country, it would rank fourth in the world for the most new cases in a day behind the U.S., Brazil, and India, according to a Reuters analysis.

Ed. Sec. Betsy DeVos echoes Trump's threat

"American investment in education is a promise to students and their families," she said. "If schools aren't going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds." -- Fox News

 U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley to Betsy DeVos on schools reopening

"I wouldn’t trust you to care for a house plant, let alone my child." -- Boston Globe

Naomi Klein

When you slow down, you can feel things; when you’re in that constant rat race, it doesn’t leave much time for empathy. From its very beginning, the virus has forced us to think about interdependencies and relationships. The first thing you are thinking about is: everything I touch, what has somebody else touched? The food I am eating, the package that was just delivered, the food on the shelves. These are connections that capitalism teaches us not to think about. -- Guardian

Sam Nunberg, GOP political consultant

“While voters may push away from Trump if he loses, it’s not that they didn’t like his agenda. They won’t like that he failed in implementing it and failed at getting re-elected.” -- Guardian

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

...said that even with the rising rates, he still wants the schools to reopen as scheduled next month, saying children have not proven to be vectors for the disease in states and countries where campuses are open. He said while each county will have to come up with procedures, depending on their local infection rate, not opening the schools would exacerbate the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students. -- Chicago Tribune

Hi dipshit, I’m a pediatric ER doctor who has treated children who have #COVID__19 https://t.co/wNUQpQHbRx

— Lydia Holm MD (@MommyFourBoys) July 11, 2020

Teacher talk has shifted from cops to corona

Two weeks ago, the battle was raging over cops in the schools. Who should decide whether Chicago schools get to keep or lose their SRO -- the school board or the city council? Or should it be left up to each local school council to opt-in or out, as the mayor had argued?

Should the $33M contract between CPS and the CPD be broken or renewed? And if it were broken, could that money be better spent on vital school needs like nurses, social workers, and peer mediation counselors?

Things got hot and at times personal, which is the Chicago way, it seems. As the late, great Harold Washington used to say in response to his own council wars, "Politics ain't beanbag."

While I was hoping that the school board would vote to ditch the contract, I've been more inclined to leave decisions like this one to the individual school community. Having said that, I thought the board members had a pretty good, spirited debate, with open hearings and protests taking place outside, before voting narrowly (4-3) to keep the contract and leave the decision up to the local schools.

So far, only one school, Northside College Prep, has opted out, but schools have until August 15th to make their decision.

Kenwood Academy, on the city's south side, has decided to keep their cop.

This from the Hyde Park Herald:

Interviews with local school council members, including teachers and parents, and elected student body leaders at Kenwood Academy describe a school where stationed police officers play a limited, necessary role, and all interviewees support their continued presence at the school.

The board is scheduled to revisit the issue in August when the contract runs out and the city council will also get to vote on it. By then, conditions may have radically changed.

Real life, meaning COVID-19, keeps rearing its ugly head, and the only teacher talk I'm hearing these days is not about cops in their school, but whether Chicago school buildings should even reopen in the fall. If they do open in the midst of a swelling, deadly pandemic, the SRO in the school will be the least of our worries. And if schools can't open safely, then the cop issue becomes moot, for now at least, and there will be no need for the board or the city council to renew the CPD contract in August.

The CTU polled its members and found that more than 85% of them feel they should not or might not go back to work in the fall without a detailed plan and resources that will help guarantee the safe re-opening of our schools.

“Our members have made it very clear that they are not willing to put the health—and the lives, quite frankly—of their students, or their students’ families, or their own in jeopardy under any circumstances, and especially now if the Trump administration is talking about using them as guinea pigs to help jumpstart the economy,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said. 

Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot each seemed to be in step with Sharkey in targeting Trump's threats to withhold funding to states and districts that resist his reopen-schools mandate.

Lightfoot pushed back on Trump's demand that schools reopen regardless of the COVID threat.

“It doesn’t make any sense” for the president to make such a sweeping announcement when he doesn’t know how coronavirus is impacting individual school districts. “I don’t put much weight into what President Trump says,” the mayor told reporters.

That unified messaging may provide a good framework for reaching some badly-needed agreement in the ongoing negotiations between CPS and the unions.

Could we stop saying “reopen schools” and instead say “reopen school buildings”? Because there were a lot of us teaching and guiding student learning, coaching, giving feedback...for months after buildings closed.

— Jennifer Ansbach (@JenAnsbach) July 9, 2020

The AAP's school guidance principles don't align with Trump/DeVos mandated reopening.

In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2020

President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are threatening to cut federal funding if schools don't fully physically reopen in the fall, regardless of the state of the pandemic and with or without required CDC safety measures being in place.

They may think they think their reckless mandate is supported by the highly respected American Academy of Pediatrics. But it isn't. At least not if I'm reading the AAP's planning recommendations for school reopening correctly.

The AAP, the professional organization of pediatricians, would like to see schools reopen safely in the fall, as would most of us, especially most working families. But the timing of this report left some wondering if these experts on pediatric care were fronting for Trump and the mainly Republican early-openers who have driven up the deadly coronavirus caseload numbers across the country.

The organization “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with the goal of having students physically present in school” -- and the reasons are not just about academics.

The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020. Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation. This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality. Beyond the educational impact and social impact of school closures, there has been substantial impact on food security and physical activity for children and families.

But the AAP guidance goes on to present an extensive list of key principles that should be considered in the course of any reopening. The list includes elements like physical distancing requirements, protective equipment, cohort crossovers, school visitors, common and outdoor space (playgrounds and hallways), on-site health and counseling, special education services, block scheduling in high schools, cleaning and disinfection, and virologic testing and screening and much more.

This one is interesting.

The personal impact on educators and other school staff should be recognized. In the same way that students are going to need support to effectively return to school and to be prepared to be ready to process the information they are being taught, teachers cannot be expected to be successful at teaching children without having their mental health needs supported. 

Do you know of any schools or school districts that can have all or any of these in place in the next six to eight weeks, especially with existing budget and personnel constraints? I sure don't.

The list is comprehensive and makes for a great framework or checklist for educators and school planners. A serious review of the guidance should make it clear that its scope and required planning time and the extra resources needed for implementation fly directly in the face of the Trump/DeVos demands for a fall opening with no money or prerequisites attached.

Can schools open safely in the fall? Discuss...

Can schools reopen in the fall? And by open, I mean with children, educators, and staff safely occupying school buildings which are now shuttered because of the pandemic. If we're just talking about distance learning, then we have to say schools are already open and teachers have been hard at work since the outbreak of coronavirus, trying under near-impossible, inequitable conditions to rebuild their learning communities solely via the internet.

And if schools do reopen, which in one form or another now seems likely, will the educational value being offered and received outweigh the risks to the health and very lives of millions of students and their teachers?

It's complicated. But right now, I would say no.

As the end of summer approaches, Trump and his know-nothing ed secretary Betsy DeVos are threatening school districts that don't fully open.

SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2020

Florida’s Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, a Republican, issued a sweeping executive order Monday requiring all schools in the state to reopen their buildings for in-person instruction for the coming school year, even as coronavirus cases in the state continue to skyrocket.

A piece in The Atlantic by former Obama Dept. of Homeland Security Asst. Sec. Juliette Kayyem correctly calls reopening schools "an afterthought."

Schools do not have a simple on-off switch. To reopen schools will not just take a lot of money. Classroom layouts, buildings, policies, schedules, extracurricular activities, teacher and staff assignments, and even curricula must all be altered to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission.

But having said that and showing she understands the depth of the safe reopening problem and the obvious lack of planning and resources as fall approaches, former  Kayyem says, do it anyway.

Recognizing that the massive resources and planning needed for a safe reopening in the fall aren't coming, she writes:

Americans must learn to manage around the virus, to mitigate its potential for spread. Fall isn’t far off, and school systems nationwide need to make up for lost time. A bar doesn’t need a groundswell of public support to reopen, but schools most certainly do.

Maybe we need to hear more from educators and others most directly affected on this topic, and less from homeland security experts.

The teacher unions have taken a strong stand on the need for more school funding and the for extra staffing, but seem to also be calling for a "safe reopening" in the fall, as if that's likely or really possible. But to their credit, they also are pressing school districts to allow teachers to opt out of teaching in person.

Kind of like Major League Baseball or the NBA. It makes sense.

In Chicago, the reopening discussion has been mainly focused on cops in the schools, with little public discussion coming from any side about the pressing issues above.

The real threat to student and teacher safety this year, however, doesn't come from the SRO posted in the school but from the corona wildfire pandemic itself. Until a vaccine is available, the resources and planning necessary for a safe reopening are too great to be put in place in the next eight weeks.

CONUNDRUM...Resource-starved local school districts just aren't up to the task. But neither have they been able to offer equitable resources, professional development, or viable programs for stay-at-home kids and teachers. Today's version of Catch-22.

HARVARD...Even with their $41B endowment and some of the smartest people in the educational field, the university has still not found a way to open its classrooms to live instruction this fall. Incredibly, their students are still being charged full tuition of $50K to take online classes.

And speaking of Catch-22, Trump is taking full advantage of the crisis in post-secondary ed by threatening immigrant students with deportation unless they enroll in regular classrooms.

This might be the right time for undergrads in high-tuition colleges to take a gap year or to enroll in a community college.

An even better alternative might be to spend the fall and into the winter marching and demanding the things we need to save public ed. The Movement is a fine classroom.

I'm reviving my nearly-dormant Small Schools twitter page to encourage a more focused discussion on schooling in the corona and post-corona era. Feel free to follow and post or repost. 

In times like these...

Students at Chicago's Little Village Academy as CPS school ordered closed. 

"The system is not really geared to what we need right now. That is a failing. Let's admit it." -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

With virus and science deniers Trump/Pence misleading the war against COVID-19, it's become impossible for local governments to rely on the feds for leadership out of the crisis. The bumbling and total incompetence of the Trump regime along with years of GOP assaults on the very idea of government has left us with a system totally ill-prepared and in full chaos mode.

Currently, the number-one concern is the lack of tests available to even begin to identify potential coronavirus patients and deliver adequate healthcare.

As yesterday's guest on Hitting Left, State Sen. Robert Peters pointed out, with the breakdown of federal support, resource-starved states, cities and local municipalities are forced to try and fill the gap. Peters, who along with States Atty. Kim Foxx, is championing efforts to get rid of cash bail, is also concerned about the plight of vulnerable prisoners and staff in the state's jails and prisons as the pandemic grows. A large percentage of these prisoners are simply there awaiting trial.

An open letter from dozens of concerned local community groups to Cook County calling for immediate decarceration of Cook County jail, the largest of its kind in the U.S.

Curtis Black, in the Chicago Reporter, reports:

Gov. J.B. Pritzker should act quickly to review the cases of elderly and infirm inmates in jails and prisons and provide medical furloughs or compassionate release to “as many of them as possible” in order to prevent a devastating outbreak of coronavirus in the prison system, according to a letter initiated by a prison educators group and signed by over 1,500 educators and health professionals.

They point out that prisons “are known incubators and amplifiers of infectious disease.” According to other advocates arguing for immediate steps, an outbreak of coronavirus would “cripple an already broken [prison health] system” and result in deaths of elderly inmates, who are particularly vulnerable to the virus.

Gov. Pritzker did what he felt he had to do yesterday when he ordered all state and CPS schools temporarily closed sending 2.2 million school children home for at least the next two weeks. Mayor Lori Lightfoot had pushed as long as she could to keep schools open as centers for delivering needed meals, healthcare and safe havens for children and families. Lightfoot said she was deeply worried about students whose parents can’t take off work and those who are dependent on breakfast and lunch at the school. About 76% of students in Chicago Public Schools are low income.

At her own news conference following Pritzker’s announcement, Lightfoot said the governor needed to consider the entire state’s needs and not just those of Chicago Public Schools. Though she insisted she and Pritzker were in “lockstep."

The temporary school closings were done only after a belated advisory was issued from the CDC authorizing local districts to temporarily close their schools. Until now, the CDC had advised that schools stay open and issued a set of guidelines for their operation during the crisis.

Here in Chicago, the closings were demanded by the CTU.

The state will view these as “act of God” days, meaning school personnel are expected to be paid during the next two weeks. The governor also waived the requirement that schools be in session for 180 days to receive state funding, meaning no district will lose tax dollars as a result of cancellations.

A plan has apparently been put in place to deliver food and other supports to children and families who are normally served by in-school programs. But I imagine that many teachers are still torn about once again being separated from their kids during this crisis.

Now Pritzker should follow Ohio and Washington state's lead and suspend statewide standardized testing.

A salute goes out to the heroic Chicago librarians and park district workers who are trying to fill the gap while putting themselves at risk, keeping libraries and park programs up and running during the school shutdown.

Nationally, Senate Democrats are expressing concern over the negative effects that K-12 school closings could have on students and families and demanding answers from Trump's Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos.

"In K-12 schools, many families rely on the Federal School Lunch Program and may experience food insecurity if they can no longer access meals at school," they explained.

"Few school districts have experience providing wide-scale educational services online for all students, and not all families have access to home computers and high-speed internet to take advantage of such online options. Online learning cannot substitute for a number of services provided in the school setting, and it raises particular challenges to ensuring equity in access to education for all students," they added.

All this while the Fed is about to bail out Wall Street with weekly injections of $1.5 trillion (with a T), to try and revive a crashing stock market. The next time you hear a politician tell you that we can't afford healthcare for all or abolishing student loan debt, tell them to go f**k themself.

We at @uplcchicago co-signed this letter. To prevent disastrous spread of Covid-19 to people in Cook County Jail, the best solution is to release anyone who can be released w/o endangering community, & allow those on monitors access to doctors w/o delay https://t.co/iZ3zEPsOsX

— Alan Mills (@alan_uplc) March 14, 2020

Thousands of children receive two meals a day at school and many live in food deserts. How will children in closed districts receive proper food security? We deserve answers from DeVos. https://t.co/hgkLHE3Ven

— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) March 13, 2020

QUOTABLES

Wow! Cool photo from Daytona 500, posted by Trump's campaign manager. Only problem is, it's from 16 years ago. 

Common at the All-Star Game

"If this city could talk..." -- NBA on TNT

James Taylor

"It’s like the Confederacy has won the civil war.” -- Guardian

1,143 former Justice Dept. officials

Each of us strongly condemns President Trump’s and Attorney General Barr’s interference in the fair administration of justice...Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies. -- DOJ Alumni Statement

Bernie Sanders 

“It is unacceptable that we are closing public schools in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Together alongside Washington Teachers’ Union and teachers across the country, we will make transformative investments in our public schools, our teachers, and students.” -- Washington Post

Amy Klobuchar

Q: Do you even know the Mexican President's name?

 A: No -- Noticias

Ald. La Spata needs to dump Moreno's plan for Von Humboldt School

Von Humboldt closed in 2013 when the district shuttered 50 schools. In July of 2015, IFF (formerly known as Illinois Facilities Fund) bought the school for about $3.1 million 

This from Mina Bloom at Block Club Chicago:

Nearly 200 Humboldt Park residents, teachers and teacher advocates packed into the Von Humboldt Elementary School auditorium this week to weigh in on a long-stalled plan to turn the shuttered school into an apartment complex geared toward teachers. At the chaotic two-hour-long meeting Monday night, the majority of residents who spoke during public comment lambasted the developer behind the project, East Coast-based RBH Group, and Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st). 

They took turns slamming the project, saying it doesn’t address Humboldt Park’s gentrification-fueled displacement problem and that teachers won’t be able to afford the apartments. Some said they’d much rather see officials reopen the school, which closed in 2013 when the district closed a record 50 schools.

“We would like to see the school be back open,” local teacher Jhoanna Maldonado said to cheers. “Whether there’s 10 kids, 100 kids or 2,000 kids in this neighborhood — every kid should deserve to go to their neighborhood school. If that’s not the case, it should be housing for families who have been displaced from our neighborhoods.”

 My note this morning to Ald. La Spata...

I'm surprised to hear that you are continuing your corrupt predecessor's backing for the Von Humboldt condo plan. The current version of plan was originally part of a deal indicted Ald. Joe Moreno worked out with RBH developers, a self-interested community group [that used to oppose gentrification], and with Teach for America (TFA) to house charter school teachers contracted to CPS to replace those lost to Rahm's mass school closings. Once media caught wind of it, the charter school plan was dropped and shifted to this so-called "teachers housing" scheme. It should be rejected and the building used for public good, including a new smaller public school.

Side note... RBH announced back in April, that it started a $700 million fund to invest in Teachers Village projects in Opportunity Zones. The firm already has developed a Teachers Village in Newark, New Jersey. It includes three charter schools, a daycare center, apartments and more than 70,000 square feet of retail. 

Ald. La Spata responded promptly:

It seems there’s still a lot of misinformation out there on what this project is. I’ll make sure to respond later with more details.

Thank you for the quick response, Alderman. And thanks for opening this up for community debate and discussion. I look forward to continuing the conversation. I trust you will do the right thing.

We need a radical change in the way we rate our schools

You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house. 

"Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." -- John Dewey

Watching my 2-year-old granddaughter, Izzy, learn is one of the great pleasures in my life. Whether she's helping her grandma cook up some eggs, finding a worm while digging on the lawn, pedaling a trike, or stomping around with a tap dancer at a recent birthday party, it's a joy to actually watch her grow and develop physically and intellectually at the moment it's happening.

It's authentic learning. No standardized testing required.

I bring this up once more after reading about another CPS plan to tweak the way the system rates its schools; i.e., Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, etc...  in a high-stakes competition where the loser may have their school closed. I always thought these ratings were more for the benefit of realtors than educators. You know, buy a house near a Level 1 school and pay $20K more for not much of a house.

The new tweaked plan will be presented at Wednesday's first meeting of the mayor's newly-appointed school board.

According to Chalkbeat:

Chicago Public Schools has proposed tweaking its school rating policy to reflect how well elementary schools prepare students for high school and how well high schools help students plan life after graduation — and the district also will finally grade dozens of specialty high schools that had lacked rating systems.

CPS says its School Quality Rating Policy (SQRP) is "a five-tiered performance system based on a broad range of indicators of success, including, but not limited to, student test score performance, student academic growth, closing of achievement gaps, school culture and climate, attendance, graduation, and preparation for post-graduation success."

To tell you the truth, I don't care that much whether or not the board tweaks or doesn't tweak. Neither do I care what indicators they add or take away behind student test scores -- the only ones that really count in the current system.

I certainly don't know what is meant by "post-graduation success." Success at what? Do schools even track their former students to find out if they have been successful (as good, productive citizens, small-d democrats, parents, lovers, artists, poets, scientists, athletes...)?

This whole approach to rating schools and pitting them against one another should be dumped as it does great harm to children and educators and hits especially hard at communities of color which have been devastated by mass school closings.

But there is one part of the current policy I especially take issue with. I don't like the language of preparation and how it's used in its narrowest form. The purpose of current schooling, it seems, is to prepare the student for the next grade, the next school, college, job training and then life. What that language misses is the value of authentic learning ("education is life") and the relationship between school, teacher, student, parent and society. Children learn best when they are engaged with other children and adults in important, meaningful, enjoyable work. Adults do as well.

If by preparation we mean preparing students to be good citizens and active participants in a democratic society, then I am down with it. If it's simply job training for prep for the next round of testing, then I'm not.

Yes, schools do it differently and some do it better than others. But current standards and tests don't seem to get at that. What the scores do reflect much more, is poverty.

I wish the new school board the best of luck in their effort to save and transform CPS. The mayor couldn't have picked a better group to take on this enormous task. I hope the board includes in its agenda, plans for a radical change in the way we evaluate schools.

Progressives split in Chicago race. Can they unite against Daley in a runoff?

With the first round of the mayoral election only a week away, things are starting to get hot and heavy. Progressives are split at least three ways (Toni Preckwinkle, Lori Lightfoot and Amara Enyia) and there's lots of vitriol back and forth among their camps..

Cook County party boss Toni Preckwinkle, with early support from many progressives, including the CTU and SEIU seemed like the clear front-runner a month ago.  The SEIU endorsements alone translated into roughly $2M in cash and in-kind contributions to Preckwinkle and nearly two dozen full-time campaign workers and upwards of 500 part-time volunteers.

Bill Daley, the man from JP Morgan and the candidate without a shred of progressive pretense, has replaced Rahm Emanuel as the darling of Chicago's 1%-ers. They've gone all in on Daley because, 1) they fear a takeover of the city by left-wing insurgents of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type and 2) his early lead in fundraising has them believing he's a for-real candidate, who can win.

The irony is that the modern notion of Democratic Partyinsurgency they're so afraid off, goes back to Harold Washington's victory over the Daley machine in 1983. But the latest attempt at building a progressive electoral coalition petered out after the collapse of the Bernie Sanders coalition in 2016 leading to the election of J.B. Pritzker as governor with no real progressive opponent.

The current internecine warfare over mayoral choices results from progressive groups not being able to unify around candidates for mayor and governor two years ago.

Instead, Rahm, their main electoral target with plummeting poll numbers following his Laquan McDonald cover-up and his school-closing debacle, pulled a slick move and abandoned the race altogether, before we had a chance to beat him. Even though #RahmResign was exactly what progressives had been demanding, it took many of them them by surprise, as Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative admitted on our show on February 1st.

Without Rahm as a unifying target, the door was left open for a gaggle of old-line, well-financed Democratic Party regulars to jump in and suck up all the money and organizational support.

Mendoza, Chico, Daley and Preckwinkle, none of whom dared enter the race while Rahm was still in it, all jumped in and immediately got the support and credibility from the party bosses and powerful donors who had been sitting on the sidelines. Daley was the biggest beneficiary with $7M in big-donor money. $2M coming directly from Republican billionaire Ken Griffin.

But the good news is that despite their swollen campaign coffers and TV advertising, none of the party machine regulars or great-white-hope alternatives (Paul Vallas & Gary McCarthy) have been able to create any excitement at the base and break from the pack.

If the vote were taken today, undecided or none-of-the-above would be the clear winner. According to most recent polling, the top 5, including underdog and party outlier, Lori Lightfoot are all with a few points of each other and any two could make it to the runoff, especially if this becomes a low-turnout election.

Lightfoot, who if elected, would become the city's first black, woman, lesbian mayor, is a clear underdog. But she's gained momentum and funding in recent weeks, especially after picking up the Sun-Times endorsement, while Preckwinkle and Mendoza have failed to improve their numbers since being connected to the Burke/Solis scandal.

Progressive Preckwinkle supporters, including those in the CTU and SEIU, who backed her early when union haters Rahm, Vallas and McCarthy seemed like her main opponents, probably did so more because they thought she would win rather than  because of fundamental political agreement. But now they're stuck with her even as her campaign falters and stumbles towards the finish line.

They fear a Lightfoot victory next week will lead to Daley's election in the finals and are training all their tactical guns and money on Lightfoot. For her part, Lightfoot sees Preckwinkle as part and parcel of the Burke/Berrios party machinery and has been gunning for her from the start.

Lori Lightfoot goes head to head with Toni Preckwinkle ally, Rep. Martwick: “You were a Joe Berrios surrogate for the entire campaign. You filed this bill [to appoint rather than elect assessor] to profit yourself. Who benefits from a system that’s not changed?” Lightfoot said.

Things really came to a head this week when State Rep. Rob Martwick, closely tied to Berrios and Preckwinkle, tried to disrupt a Lightfoot presser and ended up in a well-photographed head-to-head, David vs. Goliath confrontation with the candidate. Martwick is authoring a bill that would make the County Assessor an appointed, rather than elected position. The bill is obviously meant as payback against anti-machine guy, Fritz Kaegi who defeated Boss Berrios in the assessor's race.

But the damaging confrontation instead meant more bad press for Preckwinkle and the machine. Martwick had to back off, claiming that his bill was only meant as a "conversation starter" while Preckwinkle was forced to issue a joint statement with Kaegi, opposing the Martwick bill.

If all this has your head spinning as you enter the voting booth, join the crowd. Daley seems like the main beneficiary of all this mayhem in the progressive camps, if he and Preckwinkle wind up in a runoff. A Daley/Mendoza runoff is also possible if Preckwinkle continues to stumble.

Amara Enyia, running with big campaign donations from rappers Chance the Rapper and Kanye West, hopes to pick up support from young black activists and hard-left organizers. But she doesn't seem to be gaining traction as the race draws to a close.

But if somehow, Lightfoot pulls an upset on Feb. 26, the whole thing is up for grabs. The progressives only hope is for some kind of reconciliation between Lightfoot, Preckwinkle and Enyia supporters and that's not likely.

But in a close, low-turnout election, anything can happen.

Buckle up and vote.


I'll be AWOL for Friday's Hitting Left show when brother Fred tries to make some sense of all this with Chicago campaign strategist, Joanna Klonsky and Progressive Caucus leader, Ald. Scott Waguespack. But I'll be tuning in to WLPN 105.5 FM, via live streaming on www.lumpenradio.com from 11-noon CT. I hope you will join me. 

Rahm and his schools CEO try and sell their discredited reforms in D.C.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is so discredited on his education and policing policies that he's been forced out of a re-election bid. But that didn't stop him and his ever-faithful schools CEO Janice Jackson from putting in an appearance in D.C. on WaPo's Education in America forum recently to spread the good news about all things terrific going on in Chicago's public schools.

Jackson offered a few comments when she could get a word in, but it was obvious that Rahm had her there as window dressing.

Was there any discussion of the regime's continuing disastrous mass school-closings policy mostly in underserved black communities, or the dramatic plunge in CPS enrollment during Rahm's tenure? Glad you asked. No.

District officials report a loss of 10,000 students since the last school year, one of the largest single-year declines in more than a decade. In the last three years, 31,000 students have ghosted CPS classrooms. But the Post's Jonathan Capehart never asked about that.

But he did ask Rahm about his closed-door meeting with Ed Secretary Betsy DeVos. At first, Rahm and Jackson giggled as if trying to distance themselves from the right-wing buffoon who currently occupies the D.O.E. That was followed by a seemingly unending speed rap about all the great ed initiatives flowing out of the 5th floor at City Hall; i.e. longer school days, not allowing "failure," onus on the principal, full-day Pre-K and free community college (if you get B's on your report card)...and the list goes on.

"We explained to her [DeVos\ that this was not about choice, but about quality...", Rahm assured Capehart, as if he actually believed it.

As we later learned, the secret Rahm/DeVos meeting was ALL about "choice," meaning Rahm's willingness to push a school voucher program into Chicago in exchange for federal dollars and a release by Republican Gov. Rauner of the state's school budget.

But Rahm's cover was blown when the Sun-Times got hold of his emails through an FOIA request. It turned out that Cardinal Blase Cupich had emailed the mayor after learning that U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was scheduling meetings with big-city mayors on Trump administration education priorities.

“I am personally interested in the proposal to fund a $20 billion federal education tax credit as part of the federal tax reform. I am convinced that this could be an enormous boost to the Chicago schools and the thousands of parents who use our [Catholic] schools,” Cupich wrote. “I am grateful that you understand the importance of school choice for poor families who see this as a viable way for the family to move out of poverty.”

The "tax credit" for the state's wealthiest turned out to be a voucher program to benefit Catholic and other private schools at the expense of public school students.

In his letter to Rahm, Cupich laid out the rationale that moved Rahm and the Democrats to support the bill. He claimed that by enticing students and families out of CPS, Rahm would save taxpayers $1 billion a year through lower public school enrollment. By extension, one can only imagine how much money taxpayers would save by getting rid of public education entirely. Zero students, zero cost per/student to taxpayers.

Who would have thought that blue state Illinois would become the showpiece for DeVos' "school choice" agenda?

I shouldn't have implied that Capehart never mentioned school closings. He did ask Rahm if the community's negative response to the closings accounted for him not running for a third term. Rahm did his usual. "Do I look like someone who runs from a challenge?... No, I just wanted to spend more time with Amy and the kids." OK.

More to come on this. Stay tuned

Camelot charters and the politics of 'disruption' at CPS

Camelot Education takes the students public schools have given up on. But the for-profit company’s approach to discipline has led to allegations of aggression and abuse. (Slate)

Disruption has become a centerpiece in the lexicon of school reformers. It starts from the faulty assumption, held by both liberals and conservatives, that public schools, public space in general, and public (democratic) decision-making are all broken remnants of a bygone era, and that the crisis of stability ("status quo") created mainly by unions, must be shattered by "radical" intervention from the top.

This is a far cry from democratic or revolutionary "disruption" by progressive, grassroots social movements or the breaking with old ideas (mental slavery) through critical thinking and building habits of the mind.

Corporate-style reformers use the term disruption in various ways as it suits them. Some use it to talk about modern technology interventions such as Uber. Or as a way of replacing traditional teaching models with computers or with computers replacing schools entirely. Others call for value-added teacher evaluation, merit pay, mass school closings, teacher firings, union-busting and wholesale privatization.

A case in point: The latest charter school corruption scandal in Chicago has the IG reporting that for-profit charter school operator Camelot Education colluded with former schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a pay-for-play scheme that put $67M in public school dollars into Camelot's pockets.

This brand of disruptive corruption is nothing new in a school system run autocratically by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board. It was precisely this style of "reform" that landed BBB and her partner in crime, Gary Solomon (Paul Vallas' former partner) in prison.

Speaking of Vallas, it was he who brought Camelot into Philly and New Orleans when he was schools chief there. But that's a whole other pay-for-play story. In 2015, Camelot reported more than $77 million in revenue, more than a third from contracts with the school districts of Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago.

The Tribune reports:

Schuler’s examination of Camelot centers on behavior that largely occurred between 2012 and 2013. Authorities also investigated Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Vranas for steering multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to the SUPES Academy education consulting firm in exchange for the promise of lucrative kickbacks during the same time period.

The trio were eventually indicted for their roles in that scheme, pleaded guilty and are now serving federal prison sentences. Schuler said the completed criminal cases against Byrd-Bennett and her co-conspirators allowed his office to finish the Camelot probe.

According to the Sun-Times:

Camelot paid nearly $700,000 to get “access and favor” to Byrd-Bennett, including $294,000 to Solomon and Vranas. Byrd-Bennett allegedly was in line for a job with Camelot when she left CPS — except she left instead for a cushy federal prison in West Virginia.

But what especially caught my eye was not the crime itself, but the reaction to it by the mayor and the press. As expected, once the story broke, the conversation turned to what kind of punishment should be meted out to Camelot. Some favored debarment from CPS and revoking their charter, while others called for an outside monitor to take over operations. Then there were Rahm and the Sun-Times editorial board calling for a slap-on-the-wrist fine and for keeping Camelot's Chicago charters up and running.

Rahm didn't mention "disruption" when he closed NTA.

And here's where disruption comes in. Rahm claimed that the debarment of Camelot would cause "disruption" in the education of the Texas-based company's 800 Chicago students spread across 6 schools. Of those 800 zero were white.

Of course, he's right. (Incidentally, that comes out to 133 students per school if you're counting.) That's quite an intervention at a time when the system is "broke" and when dozens of CPS schools were closed for being too small ("under-utilization").

The S-T editorial calls for a "negotiated settlement" rather than giving Camelot the boot.

CPS says it plans to negotiate fines — hefty fines, we hope — against Camelot, and that would be a start in making this right. The district also has begun debarment proceedings, meaning Camelot eventually could be prohibited from doing business with CPS.

As we see it, what matters most is what’s best for the students, and the sudden closing of the four schools could disrupt the last chance at a decent education for hundreds of young people who sorely need it.

A better solution would be to hire an independent monitor to oversee Camelot’s contract, and then re-bid that contract once it’s up, as the inspector general recommends. 

A do-over or Mulligan, if you will, which would keep this corrupt company in business.

The S-T editors claim "Camelot has a reputation for doing good work in a tough field: educating former dropouts." BTW, the link in that quote offers no evidence of Camelot doing "good work". (Shameful reporting, editors.) Actually, Camelot has a terrible reputation, including charges that they operate "like a prison".

The abuse allegedly occurred in Camelot programs in Reading; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; New Orleans; and Pensacola, Florida. Jandy Rivera, for instance, a former teacher at Camelot-run Phoenix Academy in Lancaster, says that on multiple occasions staff members, including administrators, “baited kids so they could hit kids.” For the most part, staffers who allegedly assaulted students have faced no criminal charges or internal discipline; some have even been promoted.

Three points here...One is that Rahm, who closed 50 schools, mainly in the black community, has a lot of chutzpah to talk about the "disruption" caused by school closings, especially after closing every high school in Englewood and about to close the National Teachers Academy.

Two, even though CPS claims state law prohibits them from closing Camelot schools at least until August 2019, crooked and abusive Camelot can certainly be immediately removed from management without closing their (our) schools. The schools could then be returned to CPS where their abusive approach to discipline can be hopefully ended. Those responsible for their pay-for-play scheme could then be forced to pay back their illegally gotten gains and/or be prosecuted.

Third, Rahm's appointed school board and the mayor himself should be held accountable for the lack of oversight on outside contracting and investigated for their role in contracting with Camelot. One place to start is the upcoming mayoral race. Both Rahm and Vallas are running.