In Philly, 'an affront to public openness and transparency'.

First -- Love and best wishes for a speedy and full recovery go out to CTU Pres. Karen Lewis who is being evaluated in a local hospital after experiencing discomfort Sunday evening. Word is that Karen is in good spirits.

"Karen is a freedom fighter, a nationally recognized education advocate and the people's champ. She'll be back on her feet in no time. She is resting well and in good spirits -- and still thinking of creative ways to secure the future and city our students and their families deserve," CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin said.

Not in such good spirits is the Little Emperor who is reportedly "more hated than Eisenhower traffic."

Of the 500 likely Chicago voters surveyed, 23% had a “somewhat unfavorable” opinion of Emanuel and 28% had a “very unfavorable” view of the mayor.

Asked why he believes so many Chicago voters don't like Emanuel, [Ald. Robert] Fioretti said, "He’s following a corporate agenda that the people of this city don’t want — from school closures to issues of crime, the No. 1 issue.

“There’s good news and bad news for the Rahm Emanuel campaign. The bad news is that Democratic-leaning Chicago voters dislike Rahm more than they dislike the Fox News cable channel. The good news is they dislike the Green Bay Packers more.”

In Philly, reform is just another name for union-busting

This is no accident. The lack of a crowd, and the lack of public debate, was an act of careful calculation. The calculation of cowards. -- Attytood

Community was missing when SRC busted the union agreement.

Paul Vallas is long gone, having left the City of Brotherly Love 9 years ago for New Orleans. In the Big Easy, he oversaw the biggest purge of public school teachers in the nation along with the de-certification of their union.

Philly's so-called School Reform Commission (SRC), the state agency that "has presided over 14 years of ruination of public education", carried on the Vallas tradition yesterday, by unilaterally throwing out it's negotiated collective-bargaining agreement with the PFT.

Today, a shocked city is waking up to what's being called, "an affront to public openness and transparency".

In a matter of seconds -- in a meeting that would last all of 17 minutes, and with one hasty comment from the public -- the SRC revoked the contract, and cut teachers' benefits.

Now the eyes of the country are on Philadelphia to see how and if the union will turn this war on teachers and on public education, into a two-sided one. So far all we have heard from AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten is some hand wringing and an angry letter.

Time to fight!

Here's the latest Daily News poll results: Do you agree with the SRC decision to cancel teachers' contracts? Yes   4561 (38.7%)  No  7221 (61.3%)  Total votes = 11782

Rahm's fundraiser -- 'Every phone call I’m on, I talk like I know it’s being taped by the FBI.'

She’s a striking Southern belle with a syrupy sweet voice that could charm the socks off a hard-nosed businessman. He’s a bull in a china shop with a cartoonlike reputation for pushiness and brute-force politics. 

So I'm reading Fran Spielman's piece on Rahm's Southern belle fundraiser extraordinaire Anne Olaimey, and thinking how much the mayor's re-election campaign looks like a mafia operation. Yes, Rahm and Olaimey can raise millions from corporate cronies for his bloated war chest, maybe even enough to buy another election. We'll see about that.

The combination of Olaimey's syrup and the prospects of doing business with the city seem to be enough to wring millions out of the CEOs of the largest international corporations and hedge funds.

... she decides whom to target and feels out corporate lobbyists to determine how much money is even available for political donations. She also talks to CEOs she knows from the trade missions they went on together during her days as business liaison for the U.S. Department of Commerce in the early years of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Ah yes, those trade missions.Those were the days.

But even Rahm's best-and-brightest somehow turn into meatheads when they talk directly to Spielman. She asks Olaimey if her campaign fundraising tactics and City Hall connections aren't "pushing the envelope" a little.

“Everything we’re doing and everything that we’re taking is completely, 100 percent legal,” swears Olaimey. 

And what about unwritten understandings of future city assistance, asks Spielman. Ah, perfect set-up question for some implausible deniability.

“We don’t do that. Every email — before I hit ‘send,’ I go, ‘How would this look on the front page of the New York Times?’ Every phone call I’m on, I talk like I know it’s being taped by the FBI."

She reminds me of my old college doper friends from San Fernando Valley State, back in the '60s, Heavy Don and Freaky Dave. Whenever they scored some weed they would call all their friends to come over to the house for a party. But knowing that their phones were probably tapped, and hoping that the narcs weren't all that bright, they would spell it out.

"Hey, we've got the D-O-P-E."

Dave and Don didn't have email back then.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The auction of a baby, from a slave narrative published in 1849.

Historian Eric Foner 

It is hardly a secret that slavery is deeply embedded in our nation’s history. But many Americans still see it as essentially a footnote, an exception to a dominant narrative of the expansion of liberty on this continent. -- A Brutal Process 

Arne Duncan

... said in an interview that Washington State had broken its commitment and had to pay a price. Some educators and lawmakers in the state say they are perplexed, given that Mr. Duncan acknowledged in August that testing was “sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools,” and announced that states could delay incorporating test results into teacher evaluations. -- NYT

 Harvard student, Blake McGhghy

 “We’re calling on Harvard to support and provide the resources for people who want want to have lifelong careers in public education, not people who want to teach for a couple of years and then go to law school or business school.”  -- Washington Post

Jeff Bryant

 There’s little doubt now that the grand bargain Bill Clinton and other leaders thought they were making with charter schools proponents was a raw deal. The deal is off. -- Answer Sheet,  Was the ‘original bargain’ with charter schools a raw deal?

Jeremy Scahill

Brian Williams, when he was announcing, you know, the new, latest, greatest threat [Khorasan]—trademark—he had a graphic next to him that just said "the new enemy." -- Democracy Now

Gary Younge (The Nation)

 “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said shortly after being named chief of staff in Obama’s first term. “This crisis [the economic meltdown] provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Lewis is, in no small part, responsible for the crisis in Emanuel’s mayoralty. She should not let this opportunity go to waste. -- Run, Karen, Run!

The sell-out disease

SEEMS TO BE A LOT OF THIS GOING AROUND LATELY.

Maybe SEIU #73 leaders somehow spread the sell-out disease to New Jersey.

Booker & Christie

The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) is now backing former Newark Mayor Corey Booker, one of its own worst enemies, for senator. Look, they even give him a full page on their website to prattle on about his love for school vouchers. On several occasions, Booker has let it be known that he wanted to make Newark N.J. the capitol of privately-run charter schools. He's also in bed (figuratively speaking, of course), with hated N.J. State Supt. Cami Anderson and her boss Chris Christie.

N.J. Blogger Bob Braun tries to make some sense of it all here.

SAVING AND TRANSFORMING PUBLIC SCHOOLS

I just got this week's special Saving Public Schools issue of The Nation and it's a good one. But the title is somewhat misleading. It's not just about saving public schools, but transforming them and changing the entire system of public education in the process.

The lead editorial, "Our Public Education System Needs Transformation, Not ‘Reform. I would argue, it needs transformation and reform. The great lineup of ed-activist writers includes: Dana Goldstein, Kenzo Shibata, Diane Ravitch, Lee Fang, Pedro Noguera, Gordon Lafer, Daniel Denvir, Michelle Fine, and Michael Fabricant. Don't miss.

The editors write:

A truly progressive vision for public education shouldn’t focus on stories of how a few kids competed their way out of blighted neighborhoods. Instead, it should focus on taking back that stream of money going to charter chains and corporate tax cuts and redirecting it toward schools anchored in strong communities and using proven methods for teaching kids—the very methods deployed in schools where the rich send their children. Indeed, the most disadvantaged kids should get even more support for their schools than their privileged suburban counterparts.

WAR!... Rahm has declared war on the city's retirees and has found some allies in the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals which has given the mayor the green light for his three-year phase-out of the city’s 55% city subsidy for retiree health care. This will be upwards of a 50% increase in medical costs for retired city workers, many of who live on a fixed income.

But if its war he wants, it's war he'll get. As Brother Fred points out:

Bad news for the employees. But bad news for Rahm as well. These employees are voters. 28,000 retiree voters.

Chicago's legacy of top-down school reform

Looking back... You could trace the beginnings of what now passes for Chicago's so-called school reform, marked by mass school closings and privatization, to 1987 when Reagan's Education Secretary William J. Bennett called Chicago's public schools the "worst in the nation" and suggested that parents send their kids to private school.

Mayor Daley went and hired Paul Vallas, and then Arne Duncan, to steer what he called his "national model of urban school reform"-- Renaissance 2010.

It only took a decade after Bennett's proclamation before politicians and the media were talking about the "Chicago Miracle" in education. In his 1999 State of the Union address, President Clinton took personal credit for Chicago's rise to the top.

So my balanced budget triples the funding for summer school and after-school programs to keep a million children learning. Now, if – if you doubt this will work, just look at Chicago, which ended social promotion and made summer school mandatory for those who don't master the basics. Math and reading scores are up three years running with some of the biggest gains in some of the poorest neighborhoods. It will work, and we should do it.

But a decade later, Chicago test scores were flat as a pancake and departing schools chief  Arne Duncan's "miracle" was being debunked by critics from right to left. The Chicago Tribune was reporting that

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city's school system.

 The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education -- and he's taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.

From Renaissance to Dark Ages...The Rahm Emanuel era has brought new charges that Daley/Duncan school reform was a flop and that the new mayor would re-invent school reform with more seat time, mass teacher firings, the biggest school-closing move ever, and by one-upping the previous mayor on privatization.

My prediction is, that within the next few -- hopefully, post-Emanuel -- years, Rahm's top-down "reforms" will end up in the same waste bin of history as Duncan's.

The decision to turn Hancock into a selective-enrollment school was made "without any public hearings." -- Sun-Times

Here's my recommendation for one of the first to go. 

It's Rahm's fascination with selective-enrollment schools as a driver of neighborhood gentrification. In this case it's his plan to turn around Hancock High School on Southwest Side, which now is home to mostly poor Hispanic students, by getting rid of all the teachers and students and calling it a selective-enrollment school. The school will no longer guarantee any of its seats to neighborhood children, about 95% of whom are Hispanic and 97% low-income, according to CPS.

According to the Sun-Times,

Hancock is projected to need $10 million for the transformation, and that will be funded with state money. Five months ago, Emanuel announced plans to use $60 million in tax-increment financing money to build Chicago’s 11th selective enrollment high school and name it after President Barack Obama. 

That solves a political problem for Emanuel and could strengthen the mayor’s appeal to Southwest Side voters. The 13th Ward is home to scores of police officers and firefighters, who do not like Emanuel.

Hancock students speak out 

Jesse Delgado, a 16-year-old junior, said he feels bad for kids who counted on going to Hancock, but now won’t be able to. Other schools in the area are overcrowded, he said. “Some of them might not have the same chances they would have had.” | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times

Jesus Patino, a senior, said the selective-enrollment status will create haves and have-nots at an already good school. He said Hancock should be open to everyone in the neighborhood.

“I think all kids deserve the same opportunity as someone who goes to [a] select enrollment” school, said Patino, 17. “It won’t affect me, but it will affect the community. They will get more money and better things just because they are ‘smarter’ students.”

Educating Albert and STEM

Speaking of STEM schools -- and isn't everybody -- I was talking STEM recently with my old UIC prof and colleague, Bill Schubert, who turned me on to Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein.

It seems Einstein, who was brilliant in math and science, could not pass his exams in French, literature, politics and several other subjects. His troubles seemed to stem (no pun intended) from his conflicts with his teachers. Albert had an "allergic reaction" to any and all forms of dogma and authority.

 He especially rebelled against the authoritarian approach to education that prevailed in the German schools he attended. How many kids do you know like that?

Einstein had, in the words of  Isaacson, “a deep suspicion of authority in general and of educational authority in particular...This contempt for authority did not endear him to the German ‘lieutenants’ who taught him at his school. As a result, one of his teachers proclaimed that his insolence made him unwelcome in class. When Einstein insisted that he had committed no offense, the teacher replied, ‘Yes, that is true, but you sit there in the back row and smile, and your mere presence here spoils the respect of the class for me.’” 

Pestallozi

Eventually, Einstein left (or was expelled from) that school and eventually attended a preparatory school in Aarau, Switzerland.

“It was a perfect school for Einstein. The teaching was based on the philosophy of a Swiss educational reformer, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed in encouraging students to visualize images. He also thought it important to nurture the ‘inner dignity’ and individuality of each child. Students should be allowed to reach their own conclusions, Pestalozzi preached, by using a series of steps that began with hands-on observations and then proceeded to intuitions, conceptual thinking, and visual imagery. It was even possible to learn -- and truly understand -- the laws of math and physics that way. Rote drills, memorization, and force-fed facts were avoided.

 ‘Pupils were treated individually,’ his sister recalled, ‘more emphasis was placed on independent thought than on punditry, and young people saw the teacher not as a figure of authority, but, alongside the student, a man of distinct personality.’ It was the opposite of the German education that Einstein had hated. ‘When compared to six years’ schooling at a German authoritarian gymnasium,’ Einstein later said, ‘it made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.’”

Questions worth exploring

 Ah, what a great approach that would be if applied to today's STEM education. It was the approach we encouraged during the small-schools movement of the 1990's. But where are our Pestalozzis today? And how many potential Einsteins are we losing (especially among black and Latino students) because they aren't into test-prep math and science and are bored silly by traditional approaches?

Philly's cancerous approach to school funding

As if making schools dependent on property taxes wasn't bad enough, now Philadelphia Public Schools will have to rely on cigarette sales just to make it through the year. Without the regressive $2-a-pack cigarette tax increase passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Corbett last week, the city schools and schools throughout the state are facing more draconian cuts in October. Much of the revenue generated by the new tax will be used to expand the already swelling ranks of privately-run charter schools in the city.

This from The Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

 Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Pennsylvania is not a poor state and is situated in one of the richest countries in the world. But many districts can’t provide our children with school personnel we once took for granted. Not to mention books, technology – and in some cases, soap and toilet paper.

That’s not just a Pennsylvania problem. The United States is unusual among industrialized countries in having it backward: We spend the fewest education dollars on the neediest students. If we want to spend tax dollars wisely and get results, we need to flip that script.

Three years of Rahm is enough... Andy Shaw, President & CEO of the BGA, tries to give a balanced assessment of the mayor's first three years. But he can't help conclude that Rahm's positives are mostly "low-hanging fruit" with "limited progress on the more daunting challenges, including comprehensive budget, TIF and ethics reform."

Shaw reports that under the current Chicago mayor's regime, "community participation is virtually non-existent, and there’s still a long way to go to eliminate pension woes, structural deficits, poor credit ratings and excessive long-term borrowing".

Worse yet:

The city hasn’t stopped using tens of millions of TIF dollars to assist wealthy corporations, institutions and clouted contractors in areas that aren’t truly blighted, when the money should be spent in struggling parts of the city that sorely need economic development.

Shaw might have included some mention Rahm's devastating closing of dozens of neighborhood public schools in black and Latino communities along with record levels of gun violence across the city.

Shooting the messenger

On Friday, I received the following missive from SEIU Local 73 Pres. Christine Boardman via the union's general counsel Tyson Roan.

First, I'm glad to find that the president of SEIU Local 73 is such an avid reader of SmallTalk. I remember meeting Mayor Emanuel at a social event a while back (got friends in low places) and as he shook my hand, he said to the hosts, "Yeah, I know Klonsky. I read his blog." I retorted, "...and you're still talking to me?" The mayor answered, "It's a free country. You're entitled to your opinion."

Pres. Boardman, a quasi-public figure like the mayor, is not so generous.

Not wanting to impugn anyone's integrity and certainly not wanting to face the full might and fury of SEIU's legal department (and after consulting with my attorneys at Pro, Bono & Plead), I took Pres. Boardman's charges seriously and reread my Sept. 16th post, "The rats are having a field day at CPS" (boy, are they ever). And you know what? I think Pres. Boardman raises two good points.

First, she says my statement that she signed off on an agreement between CPS and private custodial subcontractors" is "entirely false, and has no basis whatsoever in fact."

She's probably right if you take my comment literally. I have no evidence that Pres. Boardman actually "signed off," meaning signed an actual written agreement with Aramark and SodexoMagic. In fact, I'm pretty sure she didn't. So I can retract that statement.

Second, she points to my statement, "Ugh! She's dirtier than a a CPS bathroom," as evidence that I impute "a want of integrity" on her part (who talks like that?). It's true that I may have imputed such a want of integrity. But to say a politician or union leader is "dirty", means that they are actually on the take or selling out their constituents for a price or political reward. Since I have no physical proof of any such quid pro quo, I retract the "Ugh! She's dirtier than  a CPS bathroom" statement.

As my wife often reminds me: "Honey, you're better than that."

Also, have you been in a CPS bathroom lately? There's nothing dirtier.

Okay, so I'm trying to be better. I'm a work in progress.

But after watching hundreds of those hard-working and often, life-saving school custodians lose their jobs, after Rahm privatized CPS' custodial services (not to mention the hundreds of library custodians and lunchroom ladies before them), leaving schools filthy and dangerous, and all this without much of a peep from Boardman and the Local 73 leadership, I may have been overcome by anger. I'm working on that as well.

Chicago teacher Michelle Strater Gunderson makes a great point:

All of the coverage so far, though, has been focused on building conditions and mismanagement. I see yet another side of this issue – workers’ rights. The privatization of the work has made it almost impossible for workers to do their jobs. The hours and personnel in each building were cut drastically, and to make matters worse, Aramark just laid off 468 janitors last week.

So somebody tell me -- where was the outcry from the custodial unions defending their own members? I searched in vain, including on the Local 73 website, for any sign of protest or public resistance. If I'm wrong about that, show me. I welcome any and all public statements or actions taken by President Boardman or other Local 73 leaders,  critical of Rahm for his privatization or for recent firings. I will gladly post them without comment.

Rahm sells his pension deal. But who was buying?

Now Pres. Boardman might argue that her union doesn't represent the fired privatized custodians and indeed she would be correct. Over the years, CPS has reduced the number of its janitors through attrition. The board now employs about 800 and private companies about 1,800, according to union officials. The former belong to SEIU Local 73, while the private-company janitors belong to SEIU Local 1. But still...

Ben Joravsky writes:

You might not think that belonging to different SEIU locals would matter much, but lately it does. Among union activists, Local 73 is known as the mayor's—well, let's just say union activists aren't too thrilled with Local 73.

REMEMBER this all came after Boardman broke ranks with the broad coalition of union leaders who were fighting back against Rahm's attack on public employees retiree pensions. The mayor wanted to raise property taxes by $250 million — and increase employee contributions by 29%. One after another, union leaders and activists spoke out, from AFSCME to the FOP to the CTU.  But Boardman went along.

This from the Sun-Times:

 Christine Boardman, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, said she supports the “basic constructs” of the pension deal that impacts 10,000 of her members. “We’re in support of the increase in employee contributions. We’re in support of the Emanuel plan to try to fund it through property tax increases. The bill is going to pass. I know that. You know that,” she said. “We’re not gonna work against the bill. We’ve told that to Speaker [Mike] Madigan. We’re gonna be neutral, only because of the effect it has on retirees.”

Neutral indeed.

I guess the icing on the cake for me was when Boardman then kicked in with $25,000 of her members' hard earned money as a gift to Rahm's already swollen campaign fund. A real punch in the gut, not only to the mayor's needy progressive opponents, Bob Fioretti and fellow union president Karen Lewis, but to the janitors and pensioners being screwed by the mayor's privatization deals.

Brother Fred

More Joravsky

I guess I should have seen this donation coming. Earlier this year, Local 73 broke ranks from most of the other public employees' unions to endorse Mayor Emanuel's proposed pension plan. And last month Mayor Emanuel put Matt Brandon—secretary/treasurer of Local 73—on his minimum-wage task force.

To sum up -- I retract the two statements, as requested by Pres. Boardman and her lawyers: 1) that she "signed off on an agreement between CPS and private custodial subcontractors" and 2) that she is "dirtier than a CPS bathroom."

As for her claim that she has been a consistent advocate for the rights of the custodians, I'll leave that for her members and the readers to decide.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rich Miller

A quick note to Bruce Rauner: The next time you try to claim that Gov. Pat Quinn is "personally" under federal investigation (an allegation that, as far as anyone can tell, is not true), it's probably best not to say it while standing next to a different governor who actually is "personally" under federal investigation. -- Crain's

Marian Wright Edelman

Racially discriminatory school discipline policies contribute to the Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis with a Black boy born in 2001 having a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime and a Latino boy a 1 in 6 chance of the same fate. -- Huffington

Chicago Trubune Columnist Eric Zorn 

I see that Emanuel's supporters are nervous enough about the prospect of a challenge from Lewis that they're already dialing up the histrionics, clutching their pearls and fanning themselves with premature and utterly phony concern over a "conflict of interest." -- Tribune

Doing "their jobs"

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson

 "I'm truly sorry for the loss of your son. I'm also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street. Investigators were doing "important work" trying to uncover the truth and collect evidence during those four hours...They were simply trying to do their jobs." -- CNN

NYT Columnist Frank Bruni

Around that same time, there were movements on scattered college campuses to attach so-called trigger warnings to texts whose evocations of, say, anti-Semitism or rape might prompt emotional turmoil in students. This echoed moves years earlier by officials at some elementary, middle and secondary schools to prune standardized tests of words that might distress students, either by summoning life’s harshness, reminding them of their deprivation or making them feel excluded. “Poverty,” “slavery,” “divorce,” “hurricanes” and “birthdays” were on a list drawn up by New York City educators, who later abandoned the plan. -- The Wilds of Education

Lesson Plans

Nice piece of writing by Chicago high school teacher and Louder Than a Bomb poetry coach, Dave Stieber at Huffington, "Lessons Learned in Englewood: 8 Years of Reflections From a CPS Teacher". Worth sharing with my students and fellow educators.

Dave Stieber's I Teach website is here.

THE POINT OF PRODUCTION... I did some classroom walk-throughs and observations (not evaluations) with a middle school principal yesterday. Watched him interact and give good, welcomed feedback to teachers. He's trying to help build a professional community based on trust and collaboration.

The classroom, for him, is where most good discussions of school improvement and teaching/learning start. But few principals I see are prepared or have the time or inclination to be instructional leaders, coaches, connoisseurs of good teaching, and many of the new ones, coming out of the power philanthropists' training programs, have little teaching experience themselves. They're increasingly sent in to become building managers and ramrods. Walk-throughs and observations, little more than gotchas, trying to affirm the dominant narrative about "bad teachers" being the problem. 

Thanks for that narrative, Arne Duncan.

ANOTHER REASON I'M A FAN of Karen Lewis. She's carrying on the legacy of our first black mayor, Harold Washington.. Chicago Reporter's Curtis Black writes:

The New Era Windows Cooperative was the perfect setting for Karen Lewis to deliver her core message to an enthusiastic group of supporters: What Chicago needs is “a restoration of participatory democracy.”

“When you have participatory democracy, people can determine what’s best for their communities, as opposed to waiting for years for some development from on high that may or may not be meaningful” in addressing issues faced by residents, the teachers union president and prospective mayoral candidate told a gathering sponsored by the McKinley Park Progressive Association this week.

Karen's rap got Black to remark:

 It sounds like she would restore something like the community hearings on the city budget that Mayor Harold Washington instituted in 1983. Mayor Richard M. Daley continued those hearings, though their number was reduced sharply and they became rather perfunctory. Mayor Rahm Emanuel canceled them after his first year in office.

Remarkable isn't it, that 30 years later, Harold's name is still invoked by all sides as the model of good government.

More name dropping

Jitu Brown and 10 other protesters say their arrest at City Hall Tuesday night forced the mayor to provide services for Dyett High School students. (DNAinfo)

"I f**ked up." -- Rahm Emanuel

Rahm's dream of a two-tiered public school system -- one tier for gentrifying neighborhoods and one for the rest of us --- is turning into a political nightmare.

The mayor has once again gotten himself into deep doo-doo with Obama's people over the naming of another proposed expensive new selective-enrollment high school for Lincoln Park. As I pointed out last week, Rahm thought that naming the school after the president would help mend his election campaign fences, both with Obama's people who dislike him and with black voters still irate over his notorious mass school closings.

But the response from White House staffers was quick and to the point. Valerie Jarrett reportedly told Rahm in no uncertain terms -- don't drag Obama's name into your mess. He's got enough problems of his own. And just like that, Rahm walked it back.

Yesterday, you could almost feel for the Little Emperor as he had to stand before the media, like a spanked child, and do his forced self-criticism. I'm only human, feinted the mayor, claiming that he had “made a mistake” in his “rush to honor” President Barack Obama — which is why he's now dropping plans to name the new, $60 million selective-enrollment high school on the Near North Side after his former boss.

A "mistake"? What mistake? Rahm never says.  Honoring his boss? With TIF money? Who on Team Rahm thought this was a smart way out? And now he's even tarnished Obama's library project with his buffoonery.

The Sun-Times reports:

Despite the naming controversy, Emanuel said he’s not wavering on his commitment to build the school and “probably in that area because that’s where the [TIF] resources are.” Ald. Will Burns (4th), one of the mayor’s closest  African-American allies, said Emanuel’s rare mea culpa can only help the mayor politically.

Fiddling while Rome burns (pun intended)... Ald. Burns has been carrying Rahm's water on the south side by closing Dyett, which will leave Bronzeville, Oakland and Kenwood without a neighborhood public high school while upscale Lincoln Park becomes saturated with elite high schools.

Help the mayor politically, indeed.

A SmallTalk Salute goes out to Ald. Rick Munoz who has reportedly pilfered asphalt from various city work sites this week, loading it into the back of his car and using it to patch the most egregious of the hundreds of potholes in his Little Village ward that have gone unfilled.

Taking back Dyett and Chicago

As I'm posting this, south-siders, CTU members and community activists from around the city are sitting-in outside the mayor's office demanding that Dyett High School not be closed. If Rahm and Byrd-Bennett carry out their plan to close Dyett and turn it over to private operators, they will leave Bronzeville, Oakland and Kenwood without a neighborhood public high school.

Community activist Bob George writes from the sit-in:

For three years now Dyett students have been without the courses, staffing and funding afforded “normal” High School. They are being phased out. Turned about. Taunted and tempted to attend alternative schools. Abandon your neighborhood school. Close the doors. Shut the windows. Leave your memories behind. Dyett, the Mayor, the Superintendent, and the School Board, deem will not continue to exist. At present, Dyett is the only remaining Neighborhood High School available to the students in the Historic Bronzeville Community. This school is the only one in which students have a legal right to admission. Other learning institutions  insist that students qualify for admission, win a lottery to enroll, or be selected to enter after a rigorous screening.

You can help by calling or texting 312 399-5370 to tell deputy @ChicagosMayor to #SaveDyett high school! 

Worth a read is John Warner's Just Visiting blog series, Excellent Sheep Run the World, Parts 1&2). Writes Warner:

There are perhaps no better exemplars of the products of our current meritocratic system than three of the most important recent figures in the education reform movement: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “Common Core architect” David Coleman, and one-time chancellor of the Washington D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee.

They are also all near-perfect examples of what William Deresiewicz labels as “excellent sheep,” in his new book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite.According to Deresiewicz, one of the chief problems with this miseducation is in these so-called “elite” individuals mistaking “being in charge” with “being a leader.”

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Lots of teachers among 400,000 who marched in N.Y. yesterday. 

Linda Darling-Hammond

“The poverty rates of countries in PISA are associated with how kids do overall on the tests. The United States poverty rate far outstrips the other countries with one out of four children here living in poverty.” -- AZED News

Laura Washington

 If Chicago voters really want to divorce the mayor, a Lewis/ Fioretti union could be a marriage made in heaven. A Lewis entry would up the 2015 ante and deliver a potent one-two punch to Emanuel. Lewis and Fioretti would be friendly opponents. They talk, and they agree on most issues, such as taxing the city’s bigwigs and calling for an elected school board. -- Sun-Times

Ben Joravsky

It doesn't matter if Bob Fioretti or Karen Lewis or Bob Shaw or Amara Enyia or Brian Urlacher (why not?—the dude just quit his TV gig) are aiming for the same anti-Rahm vote. The only real issue is whether the anti-Rahm vote outnumbers the pro-Rahm one. If so, Mayor Rahm won't get the 50-percent-plus-one vote he needs to win outright. And we go to the runoff... Actually, in my moments of delusion, I convince myself that the anti-Rahm vote is so large that Rahm won't even make the runoff. -- Politics Early & Often

Janet Garrett

Public education is one of the foundations of our democracy. It is, arguably, the only equalizing force in an otherwise unequal system... People ask me from time to time what I think of the state of public education. I tell them we desperately need educational reform. What children need is not to be taught how to pass endless tests. They need to be taught problem solving, creativity and, most of all, a love of learning. We must give them the tools they need to learn. We are teaching children, today, for a world we cannot foresee. What we need is a new, child centered, not profit driven, education agenda. -- WaPo, "Why a kindergarten teacher is running for Congress"

Name dropping

The throat-slash sign? Really?  It's a 15-yard penalty in the NFL.

“It’s one more desperate attempt at trying to be relevant in places where he’s not relevant. You can’t look at a list of insults to certain parts of town — closing police stations, closing mental health clinics, closing schools — and make it seem like this one act is gonna change something right before an election. People are not so easily fooled.” -- Karen Lewis

 “I’m not gonna put words in his mouth. But, he [Pres. Obama] knows about it and he’s excited about it. That’s all I can say.” -- Rahm Emanuel

No matter what they call it or don't call it, one thing is clear. We don't need another selective-enrollment high school on the north side.

Now we read, first in the N.Y. Daily News of all places, that Rahm has dropped plans to name his expensive new Lincoln Park school — bankrolled by $60 million in tax-increment financing (TIF) money — after his former boss. Rahm had hoped that calling the new school, Obama College Prep, would help mend his fences, both with Obama's people who dislike him and with black voters still irate over his notorious mass school closings devastated their communities, leaving the mayor's polling numbers on the south and west sides in single digits.

He was wrong.

Fran Spielman writes:

The about-face came after Emanuel did what he, too often, fails to do before unveiling his grand plans: listen to the community and build consensus from the ground up... To potential and current mayoral challengers, it was one more stop in Emanuel’s rehabilitation tour—a pre-election effort to rebuild bridges burned over the last four years with alienated interest groups. But they argued that it won’t work with African-American voters because, while the name of the school will change, the location of the showcase high school will not.

Questions still remain: 1) Did the change come as a result of a phone call from Obama's people who may not want the president associated with Rahm's crumbling political fortunes? 2) If there's a rule against naming Chicago public schools after living people, why the exception for charters, allowing billionaires to buy naming rights? Aren't charters supposed to be public schools? Does allowing naming rights improve measurable learning outcomes?

The White House did not respond to Tribune's request for comment.

Deasy didn't start L.A.'s school militarization, but he didn't end it either.

Fred Klonsky

Readers have begun to ask me about LAUSD's acquisition of machine guns, grenade launchers and armored military vehicles and its connection with current embattled Supt. John Deasy. Deasy is already up to his ears, and ought to be, over his discriminatory suspension policies, the district's wild expansion of privately-run charter schools, and the ongoing ipad scandal.  But some have suggested that Deasy should get a pass on the militarization scandal because most of the combat equipment came to the district back in 2001, back when Deasy was still trying to scam a phony doctorate from the University of Louisville. I don't agree.

Adm. David Brewer III

In 2001, the district was led by former Governor of Colorado and Democratic Party chairman Roy Romer. It was Romer, himself a former U.S. Air Force legal officer, who made the original deal with the Pentagon to accept used military battlefield equipment under the 1033 Program, created by Congress in the early 1990s. The program was originally intended to bolster the crowd control capacities of local police departments in the face of impending civil unrest. But soon public school districts' security departments joined in the arms race.

Romer left L.A. in 2006, replaced by David L. Brewer III, a former Navy Vice-Admiral who served as head of the Navy's Education and Training Division and was in charge of the SeaLift Command. With no previous educational management experience, Brewer lasted only a year and a month. Then came Ray Cortines who was appointed acting superintendent after the school board decided to buy out Admiral Brewer's contract. And so it went right up to Deasy. The point being that L.A.'s school district has spent the past dozen years accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Deasy is only the latest to keep and build the stockpile. 

Deasy didn't start the militarization of L.A. schools. But he hasn't ended it either. 

New school supplies from the Pentagon. Deasy in L.A. grabs some M16s and grenade launchers.

All San Diego schools got from the Pentagon was this one lousy armored vehicle.

But the Wall St. Journal reports that LAUSD did much better. Supt. John Deasy has stocked up 61 M16 assault rifles, three grenade launchers, and a mine-resistant vehicle from the Pentagon.

But the district is getting rid of the grenade launchers, which it never intended to use to launch grenades or use in a school setting, said Steven Zipperman, chief of the Los Angeles Schools Police Department. The launchers, received in 2001, might have helped other police in the county disperse crowds by shooting rubber munitions, he said.

Hollywood High in L.A. 

As for the massive MRAP armored vehicle. Mr. Zipperman said his department thought it could be useful for evacuations and to save lives in a "sustained incident." Maybe like an ISIS attack or a sharp decline in test scores.

In Texas, near the Mexican border, the sprawling Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District has 34,700 students and operates its own SWAT team, thanks in part to military gear it received in recent years from a federal program. The gear included two Humvees and a cargo truck, as well as power generators, said district Police Chief Ricardo Perez. The district applied for weapons, too, but wasn't given any, so instead purchased its own M4 and AR-15 assault-style rifles, he said.

The weapons are given to schools through the 1033 Program, created by Congress in the early 1990s to allow law-enforcement agencies to obtain excess Defense Department supplies, paying only for shipping. The program has transferred $5.1 billion in items, including $4.5 million worth in 2013.

Granite School Dist. Police Chief Randy Johnson checks out new school supplies. 

At the Granite School Dist. in Salt Lake County, Utah, spokesman Ben Horsley said the security department carefully thought out its request for a handful of M16 rifles. "It would be irresponsible to send our officers into an active shooter situation with just a handgun," he said.

ARMING TEACHERS?...Speaking of Granite School Dist., a Taylorsville, UT elementary school teacher somehow shot herself in the leg last week while in a school restroom.

"Student safety is our primary concern and we are grateful that the injuries sustained by this teacher are not life threatening and that no students or other faculty were injured," the district said in a written statement.

Granite School District policy requires concealed weapon holders to have their guns on their person and "in their control" at all times.

Rahm Love and the Mess at CPS

GOOD READ...And at home I found a separate culture of intellectual achievement. This is the tradition of Carter G. Woodson, Frederick Douglass, and Malcolm X. It argues for education not simply as credentialism or certification, but as a profound act of auto-liberation. This was the culture of my childhood and it gave me some of the greatest thrills of my youth. -- Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Acting French"

RAHMLOVE...If you're an alderman looking to win Rahm's love, the Reader's Ben Joravsky shows you the way. All you have to do is kiss his ass and answer all the questions right on (former CPS liar-in-chief) Becky Carroll's Chicago Forward questionnaire.

Chicago Forward is run by my old pal Becky Carroll, who used to be the mayor's chief spokeswoman at the Chicago Public Schools. In the last few months, it's raised more than $1 million from some of the mayor's closest and richest chums, including Michael Sacks, Kenneth Griffin, and other gazillionaires.

THE MESS AT CPS..."Aramark’s top priority is to make sure that CPS students, faculty and staff have clean, comfortable learning environments." -- Company spokesperson Karen Cutler

One way to win RahmLove is to shut up about the whole filthy mess at CPS caused by the mayor's privatization of custodial services, including the firing of hundreds of janitors. Principals and parents are outraged by the conditions schools are in. After hiding under his desk for a week and leaving the hemming and hawing over the privatization deal to Byrd-Bennett, Rahm is all of a sudden talking tough  to his buddies at Aramark, the company he funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to in his privatization frenzy (like he played tough guy for a day or two with Chicago Parking Meters LLC). He tells them, "if you don't clean up that mess by next month, why I'll, I'll, I'll..." What?

Aramark can't keep the schools clean because their custodians are spread too thin. Only real solution is to end the contract with Aramark and SodexoMAGIC ("Magic my ass" as I call them), apologize to the fired workers and rehire them. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis,says the privatization isn’t working, and that both contractors, Aramark and SodexoMAGIC, should be fired.

There it is.

The rats are having a field day at CPS

Dead rat, one of many at a Southwest Side elementary school having problems with rodents and roaches since janitorial services were privatized.

Aren't the 476 custodians being thrown out of their jobs by Rahm and his Aramark subcontractors, represented by SEIU Local 1? Can't help but wonder, where the hell is the union in all this? Why has it taken an all-out principal's and parent's revolt to push back on the mass firings which have left schools ratty filthy dirty? Rahm's mayoral opponents, Karen Lewis and Bob Fioretti, have each spoken out forcefully against the firings and the privatization of custodial operations. Blaine Principal Troy LaRaviere and other principals are also raising some hell. But hardly a peep out of Local 1. Why?

It was SEIU Local 73 leader Christine Boardman who first signed onto Rahm's $340 million sub-contracting deal with Aramark and SodexoMagic (magic, my ass) in the first place. These two contracts combined make it one of the largest privatization moves of any school district in the nation. Under the agreements, SodexoMAGIC oversees 33 schools, while Aramark oversees the remaining 500-some district-run schools.

Boardman then put icing on her sell-out with a $25,000 contribution to Rahm's campaign war chest. Ugh! She's dirtier than a a CPS bathroom.

But what about progressive SEIU Local 1 Pres. Tom Balanoff? Why so quiet, Tom?

WBEZ reports:

CPS Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley sold the idea to board members as making schools cleaner with new equipment, such as “zamboni-like” floor cleaning machines, and making principals’ lives easier, with “Jimmy John’s-like” customer service when supplies run low.

But so far, the outsourcing seems to have led to dirty schools, property damage, poor communication and janitors being laid off. Those complaints came to light in a survey of more than 230 principals conducted by the Administrators Alliance for Proven Policy and Legislation in Education, or AAPPLE, a member-driven arm of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

Chicken-Poop Rahm who always seems to disappear in times of crisis, has once again dumped everything on Byrd-Bennett's plate. All a sputtering BBB can say is:

“Obviously it has not been as smooth as we would like. We have met with principals. We continue to do so and I think in a very short time, you will see a change.”

A change? What change? How about dumping the contract with Aramark, apologizing and hiring back the fired janitors for starters?

The bloody shirt. 

The holes are from 'natural wear and tear'...Count on Urban Outfitters to try and cash in with a faux-vintage blood-spattered sweatshirt with bullet holes that appears to reference the May 4,1970 shooting of unarmed anti-war protesting students at Kent State. Ads for the shirt, priced at $130, caused such an uproar that the company had to first list the shirt as "sold out" and then pull it from their website and offer a public apology, claiming--

 "The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray." 

Now some are popping up on eBay for as much as $2,500.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bethlehem, Pa. NAACP President Esther Lee 

"We could end up with segregation in another form," [Esther Lee] said of charter schools. "It's not 1909, but it's close." -- Express Times

Chicago principal, Troy LaRaviere

The [custodial] cuts mean “residents of Chicago lose out, and the corporations profit from our losses." -- Chicago Public Schools to lay off 476 custodians

Karen Lewis meets Ras Baraka.

Karen Lewis

Lewis, a former chemistry teacher, pointed to Newark as a learning lab for the right formula for political victory. "Money doesn't vote, people do. I believe a lot of hedge fund folks dumped money into [Newark mayoral candidate] Shavar Jeffries' campaign. Baraka was outspent, but he won," Lewis said. "The key is how do you connect with people and the others that are important to them. That's what elections are about, ultimately." -- Chicago teachers union leader and mayoral hopeful comes to Newark to learn from Mayor Baraka

Bob Fioretti

“Our current mayor promised so much, and like many of us, I hoped he would deliver. But our schools are being gutted, our streets are not safer and so many are missing out on economic opportunities and jobs.” Fioretti promised to listen to teachers and make CPS class sizes smaller while striking against school closures that were “against the will of our citizens.” -- Ald. Bob Fioretti announces run for mayor, attacks Emanuel

Lesson from Teachout: It won't be as easy for Rahm to buy the next election

You've really got to go back to Bloomberg's narrow escape in his 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative unknown, Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum without equal in the history of municipal politics that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. He won by only 5%.

Without Bloomberg's billions in the race, money wasn't a big factor in Bill de Blasio's landslide victory last year. BdB won because he ran as a progressive and had strong organization on the ground in the form of the Working Families Party.

Teachout a winner.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT just ran a strong race for governor against Republicrat Gov. Cuomo despite the fact that she was outspent 100-to-1 by Cuomo's Wall Street patrons. Cuomo raised $40 million to Teachout's $40,000 and political neophyte Teachout sill got 35% of the vote.

The New York Times described Teachout's strong performance as "an embarrassing rebuke to Mr. Cuomo, and it could put a dent in any national aspirations he may hold." I have no doubt that Cuomo, the favorite of the charter school hedge-funders and school profiteers like Eva Moskowitz, could have been beaten had Teachout received support from N.Y.'s chicken-poop teacher union leaders who are tied to Cuomo and the Democratic Party leadership by a thousand threads. Her defeat was also a defeat for the WFP which lost credibility when they endorsed Cuomo.

Lincoln Mitchell writes in the New York Observer:

Ms. Teachout’s strong showing, however, demonstrates the enduring relevance of the activist wing of the Democratic Party, reinforces the ability of a smart but poorly resourced candidate to use social media and less expensive forms of communication to significantly balance out a huge fundraising disadvantage, and shows that establishment Democratic candidates would be well served to run with clear and compelling messages, rather than simply on inevitability and incumbency.

In Illinois...The more of his own money billionaire Bruce Rauner pours into his campaign for governor, the worse he seems to be doing. Latest polls show him blowing his lead and now trailing incumbent Pat Quinn. It seems that the more money Rauner spends on TV ads, the more people remember how much they dislike him and what he stands for. Quinn's biggest problem isn't lack of money. It's the fact thousands of the state's rank-and-file union members and retirees (who all vote) still remember his sellout on the unconstitutional pension-robbing bill and want to punish him for it. He can still squeeze out a win simply because so many IL working people righteously fear devil, Rauner.

Similar problems exist for Rahm Emanuel even with his $11 million war chest and his huge army of professional media spinners. The more press he gets, the more his ratings suffer, especially in minority communities. Even as he tries to slide to the left, cut last-minute deals with ministers, the police union, and his few council opponents, Rahm seems vulnerable in the face of two likely credible, progressive opponents, Karen Lewis and Bob Fioretti -- no matter how many TV ads he buys.

A REVOLUTION OF VALUES...With the latest run-up to war, I'm remembering to words of Dr. Martin Luther King who spoke continuously about the "triple evils" of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King (1967),  “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”