Chicago Public Schools say they are out of money, but look where they are spending money freely.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Representatives available for print or broadcast media interviews
Contact:
Amy Smolensky, 312-485-0053
Parent Group, Raise Your Hand Blasts CPS for Budget Priorities –
Cuts Disproportionately Hit District Run Schools while Charter and Central Office Spending Increases
CHICAGO, AUGUST 21 2013 — With just days left until school starts, parent group Raise Your Hand is calling on the city and CPS to stop the attack on district-run schools and restore funding so that children can start school with a dignified school day.
After reviewing the budget, Raise Your Hand is alarmed to find many areas of increased and spending to Central Office including:
· $8.8 million for Family and Community Engagement Department – increased from last year
· $50.4 million for Office of Innovation and Incubation – $22.2 million increase
· $41 million for new school development (after CPS closed 50 schools due to a “utilization crisis”)
· $68 million for Talent office – $22 million increase
· $20 million for no-bid SUPES contract
· $19 million Strategy Management Office – $10 million increase
· $14 million Accountability Office –same as last year despite claims that CPS is making significant reductions in standardized testing
Cuts to traditional district run schools are at $162 million while charters got an overall increase of $85 million dollars.
“CPS says they have no alternatives but to make these school-based cuts,” says parent Jeff Karova of Darwin Elementary. “Clearly CPS has chosen to increase spending in certain areas very far away from the classroom while cutting essential programs critical to the development and learning of our children.”
*Raise Your Hand has analyzed cuts to programs across the district and has found:
At the elementary level:
· 68 schools lost an art position
· 47 schools lost a music position
· 19 schools lost a performing arts position
· 51 schools lost a librarian position
· 22 schools lost a technology position
· 77 schools lost a reduced class size position
At the High School Level, cuts include:
· 90 English positions
· 28 Music positions
· 14 Art positions
· 37 History positions
· 28 Librarian positions
· 22 Social Studies positions
· 21 Biology positions
· 6 Chemistry positions
· 3 Physics positions
· 50 Math positions
130 bilingual positions at the elementary and high school level and 530 special education positions.
*The above is not a comprehensive list. There are other program areas impacted by budget cuts. RYH found these cuts on the cps budget site under “Budget by Program/Instruction/School”
“The ‘full’ school day is full of rhetoric,” says Wendy Katten, Executive Director of Raise Your Hand. “It is unclear how CPS and the mayor plan to have the children of Chicago college and career ready, let alone fully engaged in school with these kinds of devastating cuts. We have called on the mayor to restore some of the TIF surplus all summer but after seeing the amount of money spent in extraneous areas, we feel the mayor has more than one option for restoring these cuts.”
Raise Your Hand recognizes that a long term solution for revenue is critical and the pension holiday that CPS took for 3 years has impacted the deficit, yet the group insists that the problem can and must be minimized for the 2013-14 School Year and can be addressed before school starts.
The following parent/Raise Your Hand Representatives are available for interviews:
Wendy Katten -773-704-0336
Dwayne Truss – 773-879-5216
Jeff Karova – 312-316-8054
Cassie Creswell – 716-536-9313
About Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education: Raise Your Hand is a growing coalition of Chicago and Illinois public school parents, teachers and concerned citizens advocating for equitable and sustainable education funding, quality programs and instruction for all students and an increased parent voice in policy-making around education. http://www.ilraiseyourhand.org.
Amy Smolensky
amysmolensky@comcast.net
312-485-0053
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“$20 million no-bid SUPES bid . . .”
Here in CT, Paul Vallas was notorious for issuing no-bid contracts. This certainly indicates where the interests of the entire corporate reform movement reside; in the bank accounts and wallets of profiteers.
Bill Morrison is right. Reform is about funneling billions into the wallets of the profiteers. There’s no value for students or neighborhood schools. Follow Chicago’s no-bid contracts handed over to buy Wireless Generation’s progress monitoring nonsense (now owned by Rupert Murdoch). File FOIA requests for all corporate contracts and share the information through social media.
Here’s a link to one of the Wireless Generation multi-million dollar no-bid contracts signed by Arne Duncan.
Click to access 08-0723-PR16.pdf
And don’t forget, of late, some $700,000+ in principal bonuses! (Reference to Fred Klonsky’s Blog, August 23rd)
I thought the PR stunt to award the bonuses backfired. The principals spoke of the teachers who were fired and the lack of resources at the schools.
Mayor Emanuel sounded a little out of touch with reality when he told them to spend the money at expensive restaurants when the principal said he would donate the money back to the public school he runs.
So much of “reform” is marketing and campaigning. I’ll have to give them a “D” on that PR stunt. Reform marketing ran right into reality. Always risky when you let a non-politician speak at a media event! You never know what true thing they’ll say!
Donate the money back to the school???? What school/Principal did that. At our LSC meeting, our schools Principal got approval for a pay out to treat the Teachers because she didn’t do this alone (referring to receiving the bonus).
I knew charter and private and public schools wouldn’t be evenly funded under “choice”. If the policy preference of a city, state, or national leader is charter and private schools, private and charter schools will get the funding.
The current weasel word used by Democrats that they’re “agnostic” on schools is baloney. They’re advocates for a very narrow “reform” agenda and the money follows their policy preference. Public school funding was cut in Ohio to advantage charter schools, and the same is true in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
I wonder what this will do to communities. I think it probably gets ugly when reform pits one group of parents against another to fight for funding. I wonder if reformers set this up deliberately or if it’s just another example of the recklessness and “wrecking crew” approach to our schools; an unintended negative consequence. It’ll destroy communities, as if they weren’t broken enough.
Ohio reformers just changed our laws to allow private schools to participate in public school extracurriculars. It isn’t fair to the public schools because private school kids (many of them) come from outside the district, which means their parents don’t pay local tax levies that fund the programs. Private school kids aren’t subject to the rules that say one must earn a certain GPA to participate either, and the KIDS don’t think that’s fair. I think it will be a disaster, because it’s divisive. They’re not treating the children and schools equitably. Advantage: private schools. That isn’t “agnostic” on public v private. It’s a private school preference expressed in policy. That’s “reform” in action.
The disproportionately high 520 special ed position cuts is very suspicious to me. CPS had been monitored by the court for over a decade due to the Corey H settlement agreement in the late 90s, in which the city was sued because CPS had been segregating, not serving and outsourcing kids with disabilities. (The state was sued, too, due to lack of oversight.) The monitoring program resulted in placements based on individual student needs and many more kids served in general ed classes with supports, so monitoring.was discontinued –just a few years ago.
Now, with all these cuts in special ed positions, I can’t help but wonder if kids with disabilities are being dumped in general ed classes without the necessary supports, which would set them up for failure, is likely to bring down test scores and, thereby, provide more reason for the Board to close neighborhood schools…
P.S. I wonder if the 130 Bilingual position cuts (and possibly the 90 English position cuts) might do the same kind of thing for English Language Learners in need of supports.
The corporate reformers have done precisely that here in Hartford, CT. We are stuck with full inclusion with very little Special Education support. Our SpecEd teachers work hard, but there are so few of them. We also have few paraprofessionals to help. It can be a real nightmare.
The goal is clear; the corporate reformers come into a system, fire most ELL and SpecEd teachers, cream off the best students to new Magnet Schools and Charter Schools, destroy the previously rich curriculum by creating very limited small-learning academies, increase testing requirements, and proclaim public school failure. Then, they create more charter schools, in which they are all personally invested financially. When the system collapses, they go elsewhere to repeat the cycle.
Same in other big cities. It’s so blatant and in your face. And no press investigating any of it
Short answer is yes. I have been told my son doesn’t qualify for services, despite our past 5 independent evaluations and that his challenges are MY fault for pulling him out of school for outside OT. granted he should be in gen Ed classed but he needs accommodations & OT and is being denied based on a 10 minute observation. Where is the districts or states monitoring? Where is the accountability?
CPS a.k.a. beauracracy first, stand for overhead, no administrator left behind
When the budget was cut (numerous times) in the Buffalo Public Schools, the result in Middle and High School was more study halls and less course offerings. It was hard to offer the required curriculum, state exemptions were made, and electives were eliminated.
The current cuts were in instrumental music (each principal had to decide which staff could be eliminated to meet reduced budget guidelines). This was not an acceptable choice and Mayor Byron Brown came up with five million dollars to restore some of the positions. It’s an election year. To complicate matters, the musical instruments had been donated with the stipulation that the music program would remain intact. If the music teacher is eliminated, they want their instruments returned. The BPS is trying to find the monies to continue instrumental music in their elementary, middle, and high schools. Please note: not all schools participate in this program, but the ones which have a strong music department are providing a successful service to inner city students who would normally not have access to instruments to be able to play in a band or orchestra.
This has been planned all along (see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kog8g9sTDSo&feature=youtu.be)
Terry Manzany is quoted it’s all about $$School$ (whoops real e$sate)
Terry Mazany, CEO of Chicago Community Trust described the connection between schools and development of the area this way: “[Bronzeville’s] a great physical location, so close to the lake and downtown,” he said. “It’s a delicate balance to pull something like this off. You can’t do it just with the housing and retail development. You have to get the third leg and that’s the schools.13
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Thanks to Danny Weil for getting this quote into the newspapers.
They go after the schools, close them down, like Pinochet did in Chile
Arne Duncan is pleased that Katrina did it for him.!!!!!!
destroy