Not buying the Pritzker library union bashing story

Pritzker School Loses Librarian And Union Blocks Parents From Helping Out -- DNAinfo headline

From the headline, one might think that Pritzker school librarian was lost, maybe wandering the library archives somewhere or buried under a pile of books. One might also think that the CTU, weapons in hand, were somehow fighting off parent volunteers who wanted to help out in the school. Both assumptions would be wrong.

The story gained national attention after Pritzker parent, Michael Hendershot, who is also a lawyer (I'm guessing with little time to work pro-bono in the school library), wrote an angry, and a little more ideological op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal with the headline: The Library Lockout at Our Elementary School. 

Actually, the school's newly-hired librarian wasn't lost. Like hundreds of other Chicago teachers and educational professionals and para-professionals, she was fired after the 20th day of school because Pritzker's enrollment was lower than projected. In a city that was once the center of the national small-schools movement,  schools are now being punished, closed or consolidated for being small. In 2012, the Mayor and his criminal sidekick, CEO Byrd-Bennett, closed 50 neighborhood schools, nearly all in the black community, for "underutilization".

The state's schools have been operating without a school budget for the past two years. Gov. Rauner has been holding the budget hostage, hoping to leverage his signature for a pound of flesh, meaning a cut in retiree pensions, the elimination of teacher collective-bargaining rights, and more privatization of school services.

There are currently hundreds of Chicago public schools operating without properly-staffed libraries, school nurses, special-ed paras or school social workers. Librarians are vital to the functioning of any school. If wealthy, mainly-whte suburban schools did away with librarians, replacing them with untrained, unpaid volunteers, there would be a parent revolt.

From DNAinfo:

Rachel Lessem, a member of the local school council at Pritzker, said each student used to have an hour of library a week, where they learned how to research, how to use databases and how to access other sources of information. The students had homework and grades in library as well

In Chicago's two-tier, racially re-segregated school system, libraries and librarians are considered fluff, wasteful add-ons that are the first to go in times of crisis.

School principals, like Pritzker's Joenile Albert-Reese are increasingly being forced to choose between cutting classroom teachers (increasing class size) or librarians, school nurses or field trips. Hopefully, now with Troy LaRaviere leading the Chicago Principals Assoc., more principals will find the courage to stand up to the cuts and defend their schools against these assaults. In this case it was the librarian.

In the meantime, all the teachers and staff have going for them is the CTU. When Pritzker union rep, Kevin Hough filed a grievance after Albert-Reese tried to run the library with unpaid parent volunteers, a clear violation of the district's collective bargaining agreement, the shit hit the fan. Now the union is being blamed for "locking out" students and parents from the library.

Ronnie Reese, a union spokesman, issued the following statement:

“Sadly, budget cuts and the lack of revenue for Chicago’s public schools continue to affect basic services for our students, but per the Agreement between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Board of Education, bargaining unit work cannot be delegated to non-bargaining unit volunteers. The [union] has offered and continues to offer its full support to the Pritzker Elementary Local School Council in organizing and advocating for restoration of lost funding and its librarian position."

The notion of a library run by unpaid volunteers or a teacherless classroom is a wet dream for corporate "reformers" and efficiency mongers like former Asst. Ed Secretary Peter Cunningham who has spent most of the past two days bashing the union over the supposed lock-out of Pritzker parents.

Cunningham, like Hendershot, puts the blame for the crisis on greedy teachers who won a small pay increase and are trying to protect their pensions "at the expense of students".

@mikeklonsky @KarenLewisCTU @WSJ We all do MIke. It's a money decision--a tradeoff for protecting pensions and raising pay.

— Peter Cunningham (@PCunningham57) January 10, 2017

He tries to come off as a parent advocate while playing off Pritzker's parents against the teachers. But those who have followed Cunningham since he left Arne Duncan's D.O.E., remember how hard he  and Duncan  bashed the tens of thousands of parents who dared opt-out of the nation's testing madness. His posturing as an advocate for parents is laughable.

Another bit of irony... The school is named after the late Chicago billionaire A.N. Pritzker. The Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt Hotel chain, is one of the city's most powerful families and notoriously anti-union. Penny Pritzker, now Obama's Commerce Secretary, was previously hand-picked by Rahm to sit on the school board. She voted for the mass school closings.

The irony is that if the Pritzkers and the other city oligarchs paid their fair share of taxes, Pritzker Elementary would still have its librarian and then some.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Former Peltier prosecutor calls for his release. 

Author Yaa Gyasi ("Homegoing")

 The history of America has involved figuring out new ways to subjugate black people since the beginning. In this post-election in-between space, as Donald Trump takes over, we are wondering what fresh hell may be about to be devised. -- Guardian

James Reynolds, former U.S. attorney involved in the case against Leonard Peltier

“I just thought that it was time. With all the circumstances that have gone down, both good and bad, it was maybe time for the president to grant clemency and to end the justice part of the case.” -- Free Speech Radio News

Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes

Streep  noted that one "performance" stood out this year: that of Donald Trump when he publicly mocked The New York Times' Serge Kovaleski, a disabled reporter.

"There was nothing good about it, but it did its job. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can't get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie; it was in real life. That instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same." 

"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

Rep. Katherine Clark (MA)

"After discussions with hundreds of my constituents, I do not feel that I can contribute to the normalization of the president-elect's divisive rhetoric by participating in the inauguration." -- Ward Room 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL)

"I could not look at my wife, my daughters or my grandson in the eye if I sat there and attended as if everything that candidate Donald Trump had said about women, Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims ... is OK or erased from my memory." -- Ward Room 

Rudi Giuliani

 “President-elect Trump is going to be the best thing that ever happened for school choice and the charter school movement. Donald is going to create incentives that promote and open more charter schools. It’s a priority.” -- American Prospect 

Samuel E. Abrams, director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education

The fundamental problem with the free-market model for education is that schools are not groceries. -- L.A. Times 

U.S. schools get a C on Quality Counts Report. Here's why.

Massachusetts defends schools from privatization. Ranks #1 in Quality Counts.

Edweek's annual Quality Counts report gives the nation's increasingly two-tier school system a letter grade C, as it almost always does. Thirty years of corporate-style school reform under both Democratic and Republican regimes hasn't moved the needle very much.

My problem with the report is that,in reality, there is no national school system or one set of standards for them to be graded on. This will be increasingly so during the Betsy DeVos era.  So Edweek creates its own, as well as its own grading metrics. 

As you can tell, I'm skeptical. What they've done here, as most of these studies do (without a mention of race or poverty, by the way) is to throw together into one pot the nations's wealthy schools with those with concentrated poverty, as if they were all one thing that could be graded on the same rubric. If the nation's wealthiest schools were separated out, they would likely get an A grade, using Edweek's indices. Resource-starved, racially isolated schools with high concentrations of children living in poverty would likely get an F. Mush them all together and you inevitably wind up with a C.

Here are the indices they use:

• The Chance-for-Success Index uses a cradle-to-career perspective to examine the role of education in promoting positive outcomes throughout an individual’s lifetime.

• The school finance analysis evaluates spending on education and equity in funding across districts within a state.

• The K-12 Achievement Index, last updated in 2016, scores states on current academic performance, change over time, and poverty-based gaps.

A case could also be made for giving an F for having a highly segregated, two-tier public education system in the first place.

When the study looks at schools on a state level, it's more compelling. While the national grade is always a C, there's slightly more mobility and variance in state grades. Massachusetts, for all its social inequality, is still a wealthy state and spends more on public ed and early childhood ed, has strong teacher unions, and generally defends its public sector against privatization with a cap on charter school expansion. So as expected, Massachusetts takes first place among the states for the third year in a row, with aB grade (A- in Chance for Success).

At the bottom, as you might expect, sits Mississippi with a limited safety net, itslegacy of segregation and Jim Crow, the highest concentrations of poverty in the country, few dollars spent on public ed and no teacher unions allowed.

You don't need much of a study to figure how this will turn out. Rich will get richer.  The poor will be taken over or privatized

2017 will be a year of resistance

Alabama NAACP leaders arrested after sit-in at Session's office. 

After months of suffering in despair and taking badly-needed recovery time from Trump shock and awe, many left and progressive activists, including education activists, are awakening, finding their bearings and hitting the ground running in the days leading up to the inauguration. A new resistance movement is building and gathering momentum.

Signs of the awakening this morning...

Full-page ad in today's Times

A full-page ad in the Times this morning reads: "In The Name of Humanity, We Refuse To Accept A Fascist America". The call to action is signed by activists and celebs like Ed Asner, Cornel West, Thurston Moore to Debra Messing, Saul Williams, Henry Giroux, Bill Ayers, John Landis and hundreds more. I signed it, as I hope you will, without any hesitation or concern over which "left" faction or sectarian group initiated it. When it comes to resistance, let a hundred flowers bloom.

In Alabama, six NAACP activists, including President and CEO Cornell William Brooks have been arrested during a sit-in staged at the Mobile office of Sen. Jeff Sessions, protesting his appointment as Trump's Attorney General.

Sessions's appointment is also opposed by more than 1,100 law school professors nationwide who sent a letter to Congress urging rejection. Signatories include: Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.

Organizers of the Women’s March on Washington estimate 200,000 people will participate in its inauguration weekend protest, according to a National Park Service's list of First Amendment permit applications. Same deal here. I have no idea who these march organizers are. I'm told they are mainly young women of color who are working on this for no pay. Dazzling!

Big protests are also being planned around Betsy DeVos' scheduled confirmation hearing which begins on Jan.11 at 10 a.m. in 430 Dirksen.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is calling for rallies all across this country on January 15th, in opposition to the Republican budget which calls for throwing 30 million people off of healthcare during their insurance away our part privatizing Medicare making massive cuts in Medicaid and at the same time giving you tax breaks to the wealthy.

Sanders also praised new Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) for spearheading leadership in the Democratic party.

The biggest impediment to the resistance movement is still the capitulation by many in the current leadership of the Democratic Party. Most notably, Bill and Hillary Clinton, who announced yesterday, that they will be attending Trump's inauguration. This show of class solidarity, even while countless performers, artists and celebrities have refused invitations and while hundreds of thousands are protesting outside, should make clear to most Democrats, the need for change at the top of the DNC.

Is @mike_pence on the Hill today fighting for workers? Naw. For good jobs? Nope.

He's here to take away your health insurance.

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 4, 2017

It's Trump who should be worried. #NoDAPL shows up in Pasadena

Lots of folks are worried about the fate of the #NoDAPL movement once Trump takes office. I understand their fears. But from my vantage point, it looks like Trump and Dakota Access Pipeline are the ones who should be worried. They thought the movement had gone into hibernation for the winter. They were wrong.

With hundreds of water protectors still dug in up in Standing Rock, look who showed up at yesterday's Rose Parade.

From the L.A. Daily News:

 Hundreds of local water activists, Native American tribes and veterans pushed a float adorned with a “Water is Sacred” teepee and carried the plastic black pipeline as they marched down Colorado Boulevard chanting “Water is life” and “We are water protectors,” among other things.

The protest was organized by the Bernie Sanders Brigade, which marched in support of the then-presidential candidate at last year’s parade. 

“It was important to take over the end of the Rose Parade to unify people to get the message out and most importantly to get people to defund the (pipeline),” said Lydia Ponce, a representative from the American Indian Movement of Southern California.

On Sunday, at the Bears/Viking game, some daring pipeline activists rappelled from the roof of the Vikings' stadium to unfurl a DIVEST -- #NoDAPL banner for millions around the world to see. They were released from jail Monday with charges pending.

Chicago Tribune reports:

Minneapolis police spokesman Officer Corey Schmidt said a 32-year-old man and 26-year-old woman were arrested Sunday for allegedly sneaking up on a truss connected to the roof and rappelling down to unfurl the huge banner. Schmidt declined to discuss the alleged role of a third person who was arrested, a 27-year-old woman, citing the ongoing investigation.

#NoDAPL and Fight For 15 are in the forefront of a movement for social justice that isn't being cowed by Trump and his gang of plutocrats. They're setting the tone, even while Democratic Party leaders are sitting on their hands or rendering unto Caesar. 

Happy New Year! See you in D.C. on the 21st.

Yes, people are still at Standing Rock fighting for #NoDAPL in 2017. They're standing their ground –– and being arrested—for praying: pic.twitter.com/uIIfy31UVf

— Fusion (@Fusion) January 2, 2017

NEW YEAR QUOTABLES

#NoDAPL banner dropped at yesterday's Bears/Vikings game

Shaun King

I do not know exactly what 2017 will bring. I agree that it will be problematic and fierce, but I believe in myself, I believe in you, I believe in us. We have endured, survived, and thrived before, and I’ll be damned if Donald Trump is going to stop us now. -- Daily News

Van Jones

 Naming Kamala Harris and Keith Ellison, the CNN commentator then stated that Hillary and Bill Clinon’s influence on the party was done. 

“The Clinton days are over,” Jones noted. “This idea that we’re going to be this moderate party that’s going to move in this direction, that’s going to throw blacks under the bus for criminal justice reform and — or for — for prison expansion, that’s going to throw workers under the bus for NAFTA, those days are over. You can’t run and hide." -- Mediaite

Nikhil Goyal 

 By this time next year, the US public education may look very different. With Betsy DeVos almost certain to be confirmed by the Senate as the next secretary of education, fundamental planks of public education could begin to be dismantled. -- Guardian

Jeff Sparrow

All over the world, pollsters report deep unhappiness with the institutions of liberal capitalism. Yet somehow the left – a movement dedicated to social transformation – has become the defender of a status quo that no one much else likes. -- Guardian

Peter Greene

The dream of unified national standards, measured by uniform national standardized tests, is dead. The Common Core has gone into hiding, afraid to even speak its own name, and the national testing framework is a shambles. -- Duncan's failed education legacy

Stopping the nomination of Betsy DeVos

From Thomas Garrard at Moveon.Org
Dec 31 at 3:02 PM
To: Michaelklonsky@...

Thank you for standing up for public education by signing this petition urging senators to oppose the DeVos nomination in committee. Thank you also to the National Council of Urban Education Associations for its endorsement, and to Diane Ravitch, Kim Mead, and many others for their support.

Next Wednesday I will be delivering over 30,000 signatures to the Seattle office of Patty Murray, top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee. The petition will also be delivered electronically to the other Democratic committee members, including newly elected Maggie Hassan (NH). I will send you one more email to report back on the responses we receive.

In the meantime, please consider taking these additional steps to fight this horrendous nomination:

call your senators (most effective),
email your senators,
sign the Network for Public Education letter, the joint NEA-AFT letter, and another MoveOn petition,
contact me if you can personally deliver a copy of the petition to a senator’s office in DC or in your state.

Whether or not this nomination is confirmed, the children and the country will need us to keep fighting to preserve public education in 2017 and beyond. Thanks for all you do!

Sincerely,
Thomas Garrard
garrardt@zoho.com

My advice to the Dept. of Homeland Security on malware protection

I see where two of my favorite journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Shaun King, are being accused by Twitter trolls of being "cheerleaders for the Russians" over their skepticism of the Putin fever now sweeping the country. I'm equally skeptical. But they can't pin that label on me.

I've been expressively down on the Gulag "socialists" since the '60s and the Czech invasion. That is, except for a brief stint playing and coaching baseball there during the final days of the Soviet empire in 1990. But that's a whole other story.

But even I have to admit I was shaken by news this morning that the Russians had hacked Vermont's electrical grid. For one thing, I didn't even knew Vermont had a power grid. I thought all you had to due to cut power to Burlington or Brattleboro was to snip the hoses leading from the pig's methane pits to the light bulbs. Oops, sorry Bernie and Howard.That was a bad joke.

The WaPo story goes as follows:

A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe [I used to play ball with a guy named Grizzly Steppe -- m.k.] by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.

 Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy issued a statement warning: “This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides — this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter.

 While the Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a security matter [Now see that's a problem. Loose lips...], the discovery underscores the vulnerabilities of the nation’s electrical grid. And it raises fears in the U.S. government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.[Yes, I hear both sides have been doing that since the Cold War].

But a careful read of the story shows that one laptop at the Vermont utility -- not connected to the grid -- was found to have been infected by this malware, which is available for purchase by anyone through the criminal, underground marketplaces for hacking tools.

But for argument's sake, let's say that the Ruskie hackers did penetrate the system and plant their malware. How did they do it? Simple. According to the WaPo story, they wrote fake letters.

According to the report by the FBI and DHS, the hackers involved in the Russian operation used fraudulent emails that tricked their recipients into revealing passwords.

That's right, fraudulent letters. I imagine they went something like this:

Tovarich, I mean recipient. I am a high school student doing my term paper on Vermont's power grid. Pleas send me all your пароли, I mean passwords. Thanking you in advance for your help. Spasibo, Boris

Now I'm no expert, but I've come up with a few relatively easy-to-follow suggestions for the Dept. of Homeland Security on how to avoid Russian malware and password theft, short of a no-win cyber war with the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, ISIS and the rest of the rest of the worlds' hack crazies.

1. Send a memo out to all state electric company personnel advising them not to give out their passwords over email, especially to high school students named Boris. 
2. Change passwords every so often. 
3. Subscribe to malware protection. I use Norton. They're pretty good. Runs me about $49/yr. 

To all the rest of us, I suggest we get our eyes back on the prize. 

See you on Jan. 21st. #ResistTrump

If all of this was a fictional story it would be called the dumbest, most outrageous, unrealistic story ever written. https://t.co/p5Tz7TteoO

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) December 30, 2016

The specter of war on civil society

To paraphrase Karl Marx, a specter is haunting America, Europe and the world. No, it's not the "spectre" of communism Marx was signifying in his Manifesto, but rather the specter of Trumpism. 

The rise and seizure of political and military power by a narrowly-based clique of white supremacists and neo-fascists, in the U.S. and much of Europe, combined with an inadequate response on the part of liberal democrats, is plunging the world closer to a global conflagration than it's been since World War 2 and Trump hasn't even been inaugurated yet. The Trumpists are too weak and their base too narrow to rule primarily through diplomacy and negotiation. Their strong suit is their control of military (including nuclear capacity) and police powers (including an apparent willingness to use torture). 

Like the German revanchists following that nation's defeat in WW1, the Trumpists are waving the bloody flag from U.S. military defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan with their call to, "Make America Great Again", while scapegoating the emerging "minority majority" and immigrant workers as the supposed cause of American job loss. 

In the past week alone, the Trumpists have declared "war" on the United Nations. Their Israeli counterpart, Netanyahu has declared "war" on New Zealand. And in response to Trump's apparent partnership with Putin and his oligarchs, outgoing Pres. Obama is threatening a new Cold War with Russia.

Then there's the Trump's war on the press; trade war with China; Betsy DeVos's war on public schools; Trump's war on science; Trump/Pudzer's declared war on labor unions; Trump/Perry/Tillerson's war on the environment; Sessions' war on civil rights; and so it goes.

The Trumpists' predisposition to war on civil society puts them in conflict with the great majority of people here in the U.S. and worldwide. The U.N. vote condemning Netanyahu's expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the dropping of a 2-state solution as a peace plan, demonstrates this broad-based opposition to the drive towards war. The resolution passed 14-0 in the Security Council (U.S. abstained incurring Netanyahu's wrath) with Britain, France, Russia, China, Japan, Ukraine, Angola, Egypt, Uruguay, Spain, Senegal and New Zealand all voting yes. This broad coalition of nations shows the global potential of the resistance movement.

As for teachers and educators, we have a significant role to play in resisting the Trumpists drive towards war and in defense of civil society. War is the enemy of education, families, children, women, and democracy. Resistance to Betsy DeVos' war on public education will be a key part of the opposition movement. Defense of public space and of public decision-making, teaching students to think critically and to become shapers of their own future, are some of the essential pieces of the resistance movement based in the schools.

It all begins on the day after Trump's inauguration on January 21 with the Women's March on Washington. Millions of people in more than 30 cities worldwide are expected to take part.

Trump on global warning in 2012...

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2012

Prophetic Trump in 2014...

The global warming we should be worried about is the global warming caused by NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of crazy or incompetent leaders!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2014

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King." -- RNC Chairman Reince Priebus

Thom Hartman

With so-called “unregulated free markets,” the rich become super-rich, while grinding poverty spreads among working people like a heroin epidemic. This further polarizes the nation, both economically and politically, which, perversely, further cements the power of the oligarchs. -- Salon

Donald Trump

"Let it be an arms race...We will outmatch them at every pass... and outlast them all.”-- CBS News

Rahm Emanuel

 “Golf memo for Potus.” -- Rahm emails reveal secret golf course planning 

Delia Arreola, Noble Charter Exec. Asst. 

“Hello!! Happy early xmas!!!” Arreola wrote to the principal and vice principal of her school. “I have the list of rising 8th graders for the fall and wanted to send it your way so we can hit the ground running on recruitment for next year’s freshman class. Enjoy!!” -- Sun-Times

Rockette Phoebe Pearl

“Finding out that it has been decided for us that Rockettes will be performing at the Presidential inauguration makes me feel embarrassed and disappointed ... I am speaking for just myself but please know that after we found out this news, we have been performing with tears in our eyes and heavy hearts #notmypresident.” -- CBS News

Rahm's email dump tells little we didn't already know.

Brother Fred captures Rahm boasting about pension theft. 

Yes, he did use his personal email to conduct city business. So if Rahm ever runs for president (not likely), he will never hear the end of it. But if you were hoping Rahm's forced email dump would produce some new revelations or deep insights into the workings of the Chicago mayor's anything-but-transparent regime, forget about it. This was no Wikileaks, but rather a carefully planned dump of personal emails that mostly reads like a collection of the mayor's news clippings assembled by his overstaffed press office. Nothing revealing about the mayor's cover-up in the Laquan McDonald killing.

What is revealed is the easy access to the mayor for the state's corporate and hedge-fund muckety-mucks (Pritzker, Rowe, Griffin, Rauner...), especially on matters of privatization, unions (CTU) and pension-busting and the privileging of charter schools (especially Noble Network) over neighborhood public schools.

Here, for example is a missive from former Exelon CEO John Rowe to Emanuel on public school reform efforts.

The first line has Rowe coming to bury former Mayor Daley, not to praise him, in a statement that reads like it was from Shakespeare's Caesar. 

Here's another by former ComEd CEO Frank Clark, now President of Rahm's hand-picked school board.

And another from Clark bashing union teachers:

From: Frank Clark [frank.clark@fmcenergy.com]

Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 4:25 PMTo: Rahm EmanuelCC: Spielfogel, DavidSubject: Schools

I strongly support CPS's position with CTU. The strike is regrettable but could have been avoided if representatives for the teachers put education for kids ahead of job protection and outdated seniority rules.

Interesting side-note here. Both Rowe and Clark have a Noble charter school bearing their name.

And then there's more Rahm boasting to city billionaires about how he screwed city workers.
From Chicagoist: 

Emanuel’s controversial call to phase out Chicago’s retiree health program will leave some 10,000 of workers on the hook for coverage—a move he publicly touted as a regrettable but necessary cost-saving measure. In the email, however, Emanuel comes off as downright boastful about the move. Wealthy investor Henry Feinberg asks, “Since when did Rahm Emanuel let a judicial ruling get in his way and not find a creative work around solution[?]” Emanuel replies, “Never which is why I eliminated health care. Only elected official to eliminate not cut or reform a benefit. Thank you vey much. A 175 million saving!”

There's a few other interesting tidbits, like Rahm's Public Affairs Director Lisa Schrader assuring the mayor that indeed, the SUPES/Byrd-Bennett scandal is a big story.

Rahm’s email dump can be found here. You can search by subject. For example, put Rauner in the search box.

Was Moskowitz running to Trump for cover?

Last month, charter schools' biggest hustler, Eva Moskowitz, who pulls down a half-million/year as the operator of N.Y. Success Academies, was in the running for Trump's Sec. of Ed post. She didn't get the job. Trump gave it to fellow plutocrat and religious zealot Betsy DeVos instead.

The Trump transition team may have been frightened off by the spate of negative press about her schools' discipline practices and internal workings and the ongoing federal investigation conducted by the Office of Civil Rights, as well as mounting criticism from local elected officials. It is unclear whether Moskowitz could have even been confirmed as a cabinet official of an agency that is investigating her schools.

But that didn't stop Mokcowitz, a Clinton supporter, from swearing loyalty to Trump and his plan for market-driven public schools.

Moscowitz bought the ground floor for $68M

Then, no sooner had she plopped down $68M in school money for the purchase of ground-floor classroom space in a glitzy Midtown tower, when the auditors caught up with her.

Today she is under fire for financial mismanagement and allegedly ripping off the taxpayers and even her own Success Academy schools for millions of dollars, including thousands that were supposed to have been spent on services that were never delivered to students with special needs.

The Observer reports: 

An audit  by city Comptroller Scott Stringer discovered rampant inaccuracies in the financial reports of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter school chain—including internal assessments that created the appearance of lower administrative costs, bills to the city for special education services the company could not prove it ever provided and duplicative payments that the chain’s management arm collected from its schools.

 The audit found that in fiscal year 2015, Success Academy schools paid the Success Academy Network an extra $624,342 for services that the Network should have provided in exchange for its $18.3 million management fee. Those services include staff training and professional development, printing, copying and student assessments.

All this has me wondering if this was the real purpose of the Moskowitz's flirtation with Trump. Was she running to him for cover, offering fealty and rendering unto Caesar in exchange for protection? Was she looking at a possible job in the Trump administration as an escape route from the arms of city prosecutors?

We'll soon find out if her gambit worked.

Cross-posted at Schooling in the Ownership Society blog.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

New Yorker 

Pres. Obama

"You've got a situation where they're not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose," Obama told NPR. "And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election." -- CNN

John Podesta, Clinton campaign chairman

"...you know I'm not saying that it's everybody else's fault. We bear responsibility for the outcome as well...So it will take a while. But I think we owe it to our supporters to say what we think we did right, what we think we did wrong. I think Wisconsin, we could have done better. There's no question about it... And-- but there's no question that we didn't make every right decision." 

Reporter Yamiche Alcindor responds

"What struck me most was the fact that he sounded really flustered when you asked [Podesta] about Wisconsin, and you asked him about their decision making within the campaign... He had all those other answers, but when it came to his own campaign and how it was run, he wasn't as strong." -- Meet the Press

 Thomas E. Mann, resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies

“The old notion that somehow there are all these impostors out there, people not eligible to vote that are voting — it’s a lie. But it’s what’s being used in the states now to impose increased qualifications and restrictions on voting.” -- New York Times

Mitchell Robinson, MSU Prof

Let me explain why giving Betsy DeVos and school choice “a chance” is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.-- Why we must NOT give Betsy DeVos and school choice “a chance”

Columnist Ryan Cooper

 Just look at how North Carolina Republicans kicked out the public and the press before passing their anti-democratic bills. They know what they're doing, and many are probably ashamed, deep down. They would wilt before a popular front of sufficient size and power. -- The Week

But spelling is not his main problem. 

If teacher unions are the problem, why are wealthy suburban parents trying to clout their kids into CPS?

Rauner wasn't the first or last to game the system.

QUESTION... If Chicago Public Schools are so awful -- the fault of the teachers union of course --why are so many wealthy suburbanites trying to get their kids into CPS/CTU schools through the back door?

Yes, we all know how our billionaire Gov. Rauner did it back in '08 when he made his now-famous phone call to then-CEO Arne Duncan. 

From Greg Hinz at Crain's:

Mr. Rauner changed his voting residence from Winnetka, where his wife continued to live, to a condominium on East Randolph Street. I kept asking why, not content with the answer I got back that the Rauners just were getting more active in the city.

As it turns out, in establishing residence in the city, Mr. Rauner also established the right of his daughter to attend a Chicago public school. But not just any school. She could have gone to New Trier, since mom still lived in Winnetka and New Trier is pretty highly rated itself. But Payton is rated better.

There only was one problem, the sources say: Her test scores, academic record and other factors weren't good enough to get her into Payton...Her application was denied. So dad called Mr. Duncan, a Duncan aide called the Payton principal and she was admitted. 

IG Tom Sullivan claimed he investigated but never released his report. Something about "privacy rights". Then Rauner made the whole thing go away when he dropped a $250,000 donation on Payton.

Now IG Nicholas Schuler says that rich parents are still trying to game the system.

Eighteen students were caught trying to get into selective schools using sham addresses within Chicago to give them an advantage by disguising their wealthier addresses in neighborhoods like Edgebrook, Forest Glen and Beverly. One family even changed their address to one in a poorer neighborhood after their son received results from his admissions test.

 The public school system affords more leeway in its admissions to poor children to give them a fair shot when competing against wealthier families for a spot in one of the district’s elite test-in high schools. But Schuler called CPS’ requirement to prove residency once, when the child applies, instead of looking at the family’s historic socio-economic situation is a “critical weakness of the tier-selection system.”

No, they're not trying to buy or clout their way into the host of non-union, privately-run charter schools, not even the one that bears the governor's name. It's the limited spots in the selective-enrollment schools they're after. A better class of students, they think. And after all, isn't that what a two-tier, market-driven education system is all about?

S-T's Lauren Fitzpatrick's addendum to the story:

Noticeably absent [from Schuler's report] were updates about two pending cases: The contract fraud case of former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who awaits sentencing on a federal fraud charge in April, and a separate probe into possible ethics violations by the board’s general counsel, Ronald Marmer, who, the Sun-Times has reported, has overseen work awarded to his former law firm that continues to pay him severance.

In an unusual public airing of grievances, Schuler told Board of Ed members last week that the Marmer case had stalled after CPS officials withheld documents and witnesses, citing attorney-client privilege.

Big Pharma's Baxter replacing laid-off CPS teachers with retired execs

In line with the times, CPS is moving further into the ownership-society orbit.

The latest is the board's deal with pharmaceutical giant Baxter Int'l. The Sun-Times reports that Baxter will be funneling retiring execs into CPS classrooms to teach health science classes. This while 1,000 teachers and staff has been pink-slipped.

The company was introduced to the idea by Alan Mather, who heads CPS’s Office of College & Career Success. He worked with Baxter when he was principal at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, where he was honored with a Golden Apple award.

 The idea came about more than a year ago when Mather was in New York. It was a personal trip, but he made time to visit with IBM to hear how it pays employees to go back to school to become teachers. “I thought it sounded like something we could try,” Mather said.

How it works: Companies contribute $15,000 for employees nearing retirement or preparing a career change to earn a teaching certificate. 

They’ll then move into the classroom, where they can talk from personal experience about how these technical subjects are used in the real world.

Real world, indeed. I doubt that CPS students will be learning much about global health care or health industry ethics from these Baster execs.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to single out Baxter and there's nothing wrong with Chicago companies contributing money and personnel to help support public schools.

Baxter's role in CPS goes back to the Daley administration. They should do more of it. Paying their fair share of taxes would be a great start.

The problem comes in when we turn public schools into beggars, more and more dependent on corporate support for survival, and when corporations move their retirees in as replacements for existing teachers and their training programs in as replacements for existing programs which have been destroyed by budget cuts.

Looking back on when Rauner clouted his kid into an elite selective-enrollment school.

In the same vein (no pun intended),...CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler says that wealthy families are still scamming their kids into the city's selective enrollment schools. Nobody is really shocked at such news. We remember how Gov. Rauner made that notorious phone call to Arne Duncan to make sure his unqualified daughter would be put on Duncan's secret VIP list for back-door admission to selective Walter Payton High School. And it wasn't just Rauner. The city's rich and powerful clouting their kids into elite schools worked then and is still working says Schuler.

CPS's Emily Bittner basically told Schuler to stuff it.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Glenn Greenwald

THE PHRASE “FAKE NEWS”... lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it. -- The Intercept

Bob Dylan

Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, “Are my songs literature?” So, I do thank the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to consider that very question, and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer. -- Nobel Prize acceptance speech

Donald Trump

“The African American community was great to us. They came through big league. And frankly, if they had any doubt, they didn’t vote. And that was almost as good. Because a bunch of people didn’t show up, because they felt good about me.” -- Think Progress

Anti-pipeline activist Tabitha Tripp  

“I think it’s important for people to realize that … we don’t have to drive 17 hours to North Dakota to see the extraction issues that are causing so much pain to people in our communities. We don’t have to look far to find issues to work on locally that have to do with water rights and protecting our environment for the next generation, which is what the people at Standing Rock are doing.” -- Southern Illinoisian 

Bernie Sanders

In defeating the Dakota Access Pipeline, we had to take on the entire fossil fuel industry and, once again, a majority of Congress. When faced with a strong grassroots movement, led by the Native American community and environmentalists all across the country, President Obama did the right thing — and deserves credit for it. -- Blueprint for defeating Trump

Rev. Dr. William Barber II

Along with much of the rest of the country, North Carolina fell victim this year to the extremism we’ve not yet experienced in Donald Trump. But we could not be deceived by the extremism we have endured under Pat McCrory. Though we know too well that America faces some tough days ahead, this moral victory should give all Americans reason to hope that we can revive the heart of our democracy and move forward together to a more perfect union. -- The Nation

Author Steve Coll on Exxon

But when the question involves the human factor, building trust with your communities where you’re drilling, or convincing people that fracking is not going to ruin their water, or dealing with political environments in 150 different countries with lots of supply problems, or dealing with violence on the ground around your oil fields in Africa — in all of those areas, I think they have a habit of not really taking anybody’s advice. They keep the windows closed." -- New York Times

I suspect liberals who write we aren't empathetic enough w/Trump voters will eventually write we were too weak to resist U.S. neofascism.

— Rafael Yglesias (@rafaelyglesias) December 11, 2016

Trump's charade

No, it's not the companies he's after. It's their workers' standard of living. It's a political bait-and-switch. On the campaign trail, the billionaire populist rails against against corporations on behalf of the "little people". But it's all done with a wink and a nod.

Trump's staged fight with Carrier was never about exporting jobs to Mexico. Carrier is still doing that and will continue to do that, or threaten to do it with impunity under the Trump regime. The very threat sparks a Trumpian sweetheart deal including fat government contracts for giant parent company United Technologies and a whopping tax break in exchange for a promise to retain a relative tiny number of those jobs here.

In the case of Carrier, many of the "saved" jobs were never going away in the first place. To put it another way, I'll quote USW Local 1999 Pres. Chuck Jones, whose union was never even consulted in the negotiations between Trump and Carrier.:

“But he got up there,” Jones said Tuesday, “and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off.”

Turns out, there were never any 1,100 jobs on the line. But those whose jobs were "saved" are grateful for Trump and Carrier's benevolence. It's as if having a job that pays a living wage is some sort of gift to workers from the almighty "job creators". The media buys the narrative, without even looking at the real numbers. The phony war ends up being a win-win for Trump and the company.

The same hold's true with his phony spat with Boeing over the $4B price tag on the new Air Force 1. There was never a $4B price tag. Trump made that up. In fact, the plane they were talking about won't even be in production until 2020. Trump has no intention of voiding the Boeing contract. Trump even flies around now in his own private Boeing-made jet. It's the one he charges taxpayers $1.6M to fly his secret service protectors around on.

So what is this staged fight really all about? It's just another way to put downward pressure on wages and living standards of those "greedy workers" and their unions (what's left of them). Trump is and will continue to blame union workers "forcing" companies like his own, out of the country.

Cases in point...

If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana. Spend more time working-less time talking. Reduce dues

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2016

Chuck Jones, who is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing workers. No wonder companies flee country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2016

Since Trump went after Pres. Jones on Twitter, Jones has received hundreds of death threats. No one knows how the cowardly callers got his phone number. You can guess.

Yes, Trump's fight with the company was just a charade.

Federal workers hold one-day strike in D.C. 

But lots of workers aren't buying it. Yesterday in D.C. hundreds of federal contract workers held a one-day strike calling on Trump to fulfill his campaign promises to American workers.

This from Think Progress:

While workers across the country are fighting for a higher minimum wage and better benefits, federal contractors said their situation is particularly dire. The federal government funds more low-wage workers than McDonald’s and Wal-Mart combined, according to a 2013 study. And a report released earlier this week found that federal contractors stiff workers of billions of dollars each year by violating minimum wage laws, misclassifying workers as “independent contractors,” and denying them paid leave and other benefits.

Of course, this isn't Trump's doing. But it's a sign that working people and their families, including many of those who voted for him, are going to hold Trump's feet to the fire. 

Dems leave teacher unions hanging on DeVos

IEA graphic.

Hillary has her picture on milk cartons since she went missing after election day.  SNL even picked up on it. Seems like the entire old-guard leadership must be out in the Chappaqua woods with her, especially when it comes to resisting the Trump juggernaut.

Most notably, at least from this educator's perspective, is their deafening silence around Trump's nomination of Betsy ("Make America Christian Again") DeVos for Ed Secretary. While NEA and AFT leaders, Eskelsen-Garcia and Weingarten, have been outspoken in the opposition to DeVos, they have been left dangling in the wind by the very Clinton wing of the party they risked their reputations for with their premature endorsements of Hillary.  

As you might expect, this rift is reflective of much broader post-election inner-party conflicts over who will lead the Dems forward towards the mid-term congressional elections. Of note is Weingarten's defense of Keith Ellison who represents the Sanders/Warren progressives against the Podesta old-guard faction, for party chairman. That seems like a big shift to me. But time will tell. 

For the unions, it's not just a matter of the mid-term elections. DeVos represents an existential threat to public education itself as well as to the entire teaching profession. Her history in Detroit as an active supporter of privatization, Christianization, and vouchers has even garnered support from supposedly anti-Trump reformers and think-tankers like Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli and former Arne Duncan aide, Peter Cunningham who calls DeVos the "champion of choice".  

Thankfully, the teacher unions aren't alone in their defense of public ed from the Trump/DeVos assault. The NAACP and other civil rights groups like Black Lives Matter and the Journey for Justice Alliance, have also been clear in their opposition to the DeVos program of vouchers and un-capped charter expansion.


Think-tankers go thumbs up on DeVos

While there are many unknowns about Betsy DeVos I'm going w/ 2 thumbs up, especially considering the alternatives @PoliticsK12 @caitlinzemma pic.twitter.com/bRtaUFWxFV

— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) November 23, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Victory celebrations at Standing Rock. Struggle continues. 

Tom Goldtooth

“This isn’t our first rodeo with the forces of genocide,” said Goldtooth, a great-grandfather with long black braids sticking out from under the hooded sweatshirt ...Capitalism feeds on unlimited growth. It’s like this monster that’s always hungry and thirsty and devouring the earth. That’s what our message is here: We have to live in balance; otherwise we’re going to perish.” -- Voices from Standing Rock

Jim Peterson, leader of a delegation of more than 120 WA veterans

“There is a lot of praying, singing, dancing, fireworks; the camp right now is kind of a madhouse. There are so many people showing up, busloads, it’s mass confusion. But there is so much love.” -- Seattle Times

Energy Transfer Partners & Sunoco Statement

"Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way." -- Business Wire

Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser Center for Strategic and International Studies

 “My guess is that Trump himself doesn’t have clue...Having this mishap occur before he is president is better than having it occur after he is president. I expect Beijing to find a way to give him an education on Taiwan.”  -- China blasts 'petty' Taiwan call

Peter Cunningham, former aide to Arne Duncan

DeVos "has a lot of influence in the reform community. She is unequivocally a champion for choice."  - The Case for Betsy DeVos 

Great statement from David Archambault, inspiring eader of Standing Rock Sioux. "Historic decision" "We look forward to celebrating" #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/Nz131xOjr5

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) December 4, 2016

The bailout of Exelon nukes comes right out of the schools

Jobs creators -- 30 years after the nuclear meltdown, the Great Arch at Chernobyl is finally completed.

Natasha Korecki in this morning's IL Playbook: 

It’s probably fitting that the Legislative veto session concluded Thursday with just about everyone going nuclear. Gov. Bruce Rauner dropped the first bomb by vetoing a Chicago Public Schools bill that blows a $215 million hole into the school’s budget... Then there were the actual nukes. A bitterly divisive Legislature came together to pass a massive bailout of two unprofitable nuclear plants...

Almost the exact amount...

The measure provides Exelon with $235 million a year as a reward for the carbon-free energy its nuclear reactors produce — a prize Exelon argued it was just as entitled to as the "clean" energy producing wind and solar industries. Without the money — financed by an increase in electric rates — the company threatened to close nuclear plants in Clinton and the Quad Cities.

Yes, "carbon-free." Tell it to the people of Fukushima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island.  Yes, a taxpayer bailout for nuclear giant Exelon, who raked in $29.45B in revenue last year. Yes, another assault on teacher pension funds.

CPS Board Pres. Frank Clark.

So there you have it. An even swap. Nukes for schools. A win-win for former Exelon CEO Frank Clark who now is president of Chicago's Board of Education and even has a privately-run Noble charter school named after him, as does current Exelon CEO, John Rowe, and Rauner himself.

I'm sure Democrats in the Legislature and environmental lobbyists believe they did the best they could. I might agree with them on the school budget. This was the work of our Trumpian governor and his fellow Republicans, buoyed up by Trump's victory last month. And Dems no longer have a veto-proof majority in Springfield (not that Boss Madigan was ever strong enough to use it when they did).

I'm sure IL Dems (even the progressives) will tell us that rates would have gone up or that they saved some jobs that would have been lost if they voted NO. That's questionable. Nuke plant closings are labor-intensive and take years. But giant taxpayer bailouts of unprofitable nukes (like private prisons) are not a solution to structural unemployment. The towns around the nukes all suffer from high unemployment and Exelon doesn't hire many unskilled workers. DeWitt County and Quad Cities unemployment remains higher than the national average despite the presence of the nuke plants. Maybe that's because of massive cuts to school budgets and the laying off of thousands of teachers and school staff and social workers statewide. There's also no guarantee that these plants will stay open long after the bailout or that layoffs won't happen.

I'm sure Dems and even some environmental groups like the People's Lobby, will say that I don't understand realpolitik and will explain how they managed to finagle millions in green money into the bill for wind and solar R&D and that nukes are cleaner than coal. I guess that's an example of the kind of choices we're faced with these days. A touch of green in exchange for corporate bailouts of potentially devastating nukes and lung-choking, cancerous coal companies (now supported by the Trumpians). Look at this as a follow-up to the Trump scam in IN with Carrier and United Technologies.

Democrats nationally have long been complicit is this charade. It was Pres. Obama who, in 2013, made G.E. Chairman Jeffery Immelt, a Republican, his top outside economic adviser as head of the now-defunct Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. G.E., the largest corporation in the U.S., a giant in the nuke industry, and a company that rakes in about $15 billion/yr., yet pays not a penny in U.S. taxes. They're also a big underwriter of corporate-style school reform. Funny how things work out that way.

It's lose-lose for the people of IL, especially children and parents of CPS and the rest of us living downwind from the leaky and dilapidated nukes.

WHERE IS THE HUMAN SERVICES BAILOUT? -- The National Association of Social Workers released this statement: “We commend the hard work put into the bailout for a corporation who posted a 2.27 billion profit last year, but humbly ask where is the bailout for the human service sector providers who are running up large amounts of debt to cover the state’s commitments? … We applaud the environmental groups who are getting entirely new spending on green initiatives through a ComEd rate increase, but inquire from the general assembly where is the bailout to pay for the spending for contracts that human service providers have already delivered on?”

I would add -- and for schools?