Parents, educators and other Chicagoans disgusted with authoritarian control of public education organized their own Board of Education, which held a public meeting one day before the mayor-controlled board held its meeting. The agenda was the same, but the tone and process were very different.
For one thing, the “People’s Board” met from 6-8 pm, in contrast to the regular board’s “banker’s hours.”
The star of the evening was a high school junior. Read her comments in full.
They start like this:
“Hi, my name is Dalia Mena. I’m a student organizer from the Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools, and I am a junior at Steinmetz High School. Last week Rahm Emmanuel gave Lincoln Park Elementary, a school in a rich neighborhood, $20 million. But when the problem is in a poor Black or Latino community suddenly CPS and the city are broke.
“We are a group of students that are not required to meet, but we do anyway because we deserve more than what CPS is giving us. This year, CPS took millions of dollars from neighborhood schools while giving more to charters…..”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What an exciting turn of events. A rediscovery of the power of reclaiming a lost possibility of human agency and democratic action. Damn, I would have enjoyed attending!
I was not able to attend that Board meeting. I hope to attend the next one.
May we civic participants be inspired by this movement to form our own third party apart from the disgusting GOP and Donkey party (save for only a few from both sides of the aisles) . . . .
BELOW is the entirety of Dalia’s speech:
(NOTE how Emma Mitts, Dalia’s alderman
(—the term is actually alderman, regardless
of gender, in the City of Big Shoulders—)
was once on the parent / community council
of Prosser High School, the traditional
public school.
However, after being bought off by Mayor
Emanuel & the privatizers, Mitts had to quit the
council, cut off all her contacts with it,
then vote to gut that traditional publics school’s
funding, then push publicly for the un-needed
charters to take its place—in order to follow
her new masters’ marching orders and
collect Rahm Emanuel’s forty pieces of silver
for services rendered.
(Dalia attends Steinmetz, another school being
slowly starved and choked so it can be
replaced by a private charter. She’s protesting
this treatment of all traditional public schools,
including Prosser in Alderman Mitt’s district.)
When a group of students and citizens, including
Dalia, show up at Alderwoman Mitt’s office
to voice objection to her destruction of Prosser
and other public schools such as
well as Steinmetz, Dalia’s own school,
the protesting teens, citizens, and parents
were thrown out in the street…
Democracy—Chicago-style… with Alderman
Mitts calling in the Chicago cops to get them.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Last week, almost a 100 parents and students
were outside Alderman Mitts office trying to talk
to her about why she quit Prosser’s LSC and
supports charters.
“But her staff just kicked us out in the cold and
called the cops. Her staff talked about how we
needed to learn respect and to be quiet.”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Ooohhh… big tough alderman/woman…
calling in the cops to beat up on
citizens and teenage girls who are just
trying to save their 100 year-old school—one
that’s educated generations of Chicagoans—
from privatization at the hands of
Rahm Emanuel and his money-mad
“corporate reform” privatizer allies…
What integrity!
For anyone who’s interested, here’s
that sell-out / charter whore’s “Contact Us”
webpage with a comment form, where
you can share your opinion with Alderman
Mitts.
http://aldermanmitts.com/#/contacts/
Here’s the phone number: (773) 745-2894
Here’s the article Dr. Ravitch cited:
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=4638§ion=Article
The page includes a picture of Dalia.
As promised, here’s Dalia’s speech in its entirety…
————————————————————
DALIA MENA: “Hi, my name is Dalia Mena.
“I’m a student organizer from the Chicago
Students Organizing to Save Our Schools,
and I am a junior at Steinmetz High School.
Last week Rahm Emmanuel gave Lincoln
Park Elementary, a school in a rich
neighborhood, $20 million.
“But when the problem is in a poor Black or
Latino community, suddenly CPS and the
city are broke.
“We are a group of students that are not
required to meet, but we do anyway
because we deserve more than what CPS
is giving us. This year, CPS took millions of
dollars from neighborhood schools while
giving more to charters.
“Just from Steinmetz alone CPS took $1.4
million this year, yet CPS still has money to
build a new charter school right across the
street from Prosser High School. Building
more charters is pointless! CPS wants to
build a Noble school right across the street
of an already existing neighborhood high
school.
“There are already four neighborhood
schools that are starving for resources
within a 1.5 mile radius of that site.
“Unlike public schools, charters are
privately run. They do not serve all the
students in the neighborhood. They push
out students they don’t want — and this
includes English Language Learners and
Special Education students — just because
they don’t want to lower their test scores.
“Charters are just here to make money not
to educate students. We need CPS to
invest in already existing neighborhood
schools that really need it.
“In Steinmetz we see the need. I’m in a
computer class in which half of the
computers don’t work and in a band class
that took four months to get instruments.
One of my friends had to steal a psychology
book just to do her homework at home
because there were not enough book for
everyone in the school who takes the class.
“It is evident that neighborhood schools
are in way more need than a private
company like Noble and other charter
schools.
“Last week, almost a 100 parents and
students were outside Alderman Mitts
office trying to talk to her about why she
quit Prosser’s LSC and supports charters.
But her staff just kicked us out in the cold
and called the cops. Her staff talked about
how we needed to learn respect and to be
quiet.
“I am here today because every time a
new charter opens, neighborhood schools
will lose students and therefore, lose
money.
“This is an injustice! What we need
to do is invest in the success of our
neighborhood schools, not build more
charters.
Whose schools?
“Our schools!
“Thank you.”
One more thing to keep in mind:
this is a 16 year-old girl—
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD (!!!)—getting
up and giving this speech that
she wrote… okay? People like
Dalia are the folks most immediately
impacted by so-called “corporate
reform”…
Imagine if we had hundreds… nay,
THOUSANDS of Dalia’s… or
TENS OF THOUSANDS… an army
of Dalia’s… who, along with their
parents and other adult relatives
and friends, say,
“Enough!!!! You bastards aren’t going
to take our precious public school system
away from the people!!! You’re not
going to line your pockets while you
destroy our schools… and turn them
into test-prep factories that leave
people only educated enough for
service industry jobs, while your
own children attend tony private
schools that have everything,
and that are the opposite of
what you subject millions of others’
children, too in the Brave, New
Charter-ized, Privatized,
Educational World!!!
“We’re not going to let you!!!… and to you
political whores who take the money
from privatizing scum…. we know
who YOU are, we know WHO is funding
your campaigns… and we’re going
to expose YOU to the world, and
no one’s going to vote for you!!!”
We could put an end to this all shit
forthwith.
Reading her remarks, can anyone say that the public schools are failing?
partly in fun, partly in seriousness, some of us here created the Seattle Shadow School Board, or S3B (as per astro turf ed reform org practice)….
a group of us were meeting about math education issues – we knew each other from efforts to stop school closures, stop standardised testing, push back against the Broad Foundation and TFA infiltration etc…
we joked about all the astro-turf lobby groups springing up, none with any real legitimacy, all funded by ed deform billionaire dollars…
the idea of creating S3B just popped into our minds and we laughed and laughed and then took it on as a kind of satire/irony, for a joke….
we put out press releases, commenting on school board and ed reform issues…
we got media attention for the issues; reporters still sometimes call me for input…
though some of us were interested in formalising it and appointing shadow directors (like a shadow cabinet in the opposing political party in parliament) and putting out alternative policy ideas, we didnt pursue the idea into solidity… too much going on already ….
In Seattle, don’t you have an elected
Board?
In Chicago, they don’t. What they DO
have is akin to a rubber-stamp
phony parliament or legislature in a
Third World dictatorship—one
appointed by the Mayor without
any input from citizens.
As it is currently constituted—
the goal of the Chicago Board
of Ed., as well as the current
mayor’s goal, is to destroy any
truly public schools, the ones that
are transparent to the “public”, that
educate all the “public”, that are
accountable to the “public” via a
democratically-elected board—
and then replace them with
privately-controlled charter
schools that are totally
unaccountable to the public.
It’s made up of people with ZERO
background in education as teachers
or administrators, or anything. They
actually funnel ed money out of
education into TIF funds, which are
then used to subsidize the building of
high-rise hotels constructed by some
companies owned by someone on
the board—i.e. former Chicago
Schools Board Member and Hyatt
Hotels executive Penny Pritzker.
It’s so corrupt it staggers the imagination.
For another great speech, check out
parent activist Matt Farmer calling out
then Board Member Penny Pritzker
for her hypocrisy in gutting the arts,
phys. ed., libraries, etc. from the
traditional public schools, while
simultaneously raising millions for a
new library and other facilities
at the Chicago Lab School where
her own children attend.
He begins by quoting from an
interview where Pritzker states that
that the traditional public schools—
where her kids do not attend, but
the children of middle and working
class kids do—are only responsible
for providing the bare minimum
required to perform at low level
jobs in the workforce… and no critical
thinking education, God forbid!…
and that’s all that Pritzker believes
that the children of the middle and
working classes “are entitled to.”
Matt then brings the facts, and
brings the fire. Since Matt is
a lawyer (and journalist), he
“cross-examines” Pritzker in
abstentia. In the process, he
delivers one of the greatest
speeches against so-called
“corporate reform” and
privatization ever given.
It’s a classic:
Good for them! People in other reform areas should follow their example.