In this post, Anthony Cody interviews Jesus (Chuy) Garcia, who is a candidate for mayor of Chicago.
Garcia addresses school closings, the need for an elected board of education, school closings, high-stakes testing, funding, and other questions that Cody asks.
From his answers, it appears that he is a good fit for the agenda of the Network for Public Education. He understands the needs of children, of schools, and of the connection between communities and schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Charter lobbyists are getting a huge win in Ohio as a reward for poor performance. In a quid pro quo deal negotiated by their lobbyists, they’re proposing (another) huge boost in state funding and now will get local funding too, although they have private boards that are not accountable to taxpayers. In return for the increase in funding, they will have to comply with minimal reporting requirements and ordinary ethical standards.
Public schools, which educate 90% of the children in this state and outperform Ohio charter schools, got nothing. They’re not even on the legislative agenda.
This isn’t about education. If it was lawmakers would be rewarding public schools for outperforming charters while serving as the “safety net” system for charters. Instead we’re rewarding charter schools and cutting funding for public schools, again.
It has absolutely nothing to do with “merit”. The public school kids in this state just lose and lose and lose.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/gov_kasich_wants_to_add_more_teeth_to_charter_school_oversight_rules_and_let_charters_seek_local_tax_levies.html#incart_river
I think we can be sure that the corporate reform minded oligarchs are going to poor a huge amount of money into this election to get their puppet elected again. This is going to be a very expensive election that will probably break records and be much more than what was spent on the election to defeat Ras J. Baraka in Newark, New Jersey where Baraka won even after being outspent about 2 to 1.
According to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission, $2.6 million was spent on campaign ads, mailings and other support by seven groups that targeted the Newark election — the most independent spending ever reported in a state local election. More than $1.7 million of that went to bolster Jeffries, with $945,000 spent in support of Baraka.
Some of us stepped up for Baraka and donated money, and I’m willing to step up and donate to Garcia too when the time comes. I think Garcia will need every cent to combat the money that will flow from the oligarchs to his public school, teacher and child hating opponent.
The population of Newark, New Jersey is about 278K compared to 2.7 million for Chicago. Expect the oligarchs to spend at least 10 times as much than they did in Newark. This may turn out to be the most expensive mayor election in history—so far.
As long as Citizen United is not overturned, we can expect campaigns to cost more every election as the oligarchs continue to double and triple their campaign spending. The day may come when a mayor election for a big city costs $1 billion or more thanks to the oligarchs.
Every so often, I like to take a break from the real world and see what the loony Left is thinking. If elected, and if his agenda were enacted, Mr. Garcia would turn Chicago into the next Detroit – bankrupt with little hope for economic resurrection. He says he wants to protect public employee pensions, but he also doesn’t want to increase property taxes on citizens and businesses. Exactly where will the pension funding shortfalls come from? From the already insolvent state of Illinois, which has its own massive pension shortfall? Will he impose an income tax on people who work in the city, and thereby eliminate almost all new investment while chasing out existing private sector employers?
Early in his term, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a statement breathtaking for its unexpected honesty. He said that few employers will even consider Chicago, and Illinois as a whole, for expansion or relocation, because the huge underfunding of public employee pensions inevitably means massive tax increases in the future – no employer will buy into such a scenario. And if the minimum wage is raised to $15/hour, and labor costs make products and services produced in Chicago non-competitive, and employees are laid off? Oh well – at least he’ll feel morally superior.
None of this blog’s readers will have heard of economic reality in their Social Justice courses in schools of education. But here’s a tip: you can’t create Utopia on the state and local levels.
To Rodgers12:
I am sorry to ask your experienced background. Your opinion seems parroted from corrupted media.
In reality, we do not need any fitness club, or trainer, or medication (=vitamin supplements) to be healthy. However, the majority of people who get overwhelmed from advertising forget about their own resources from walking, warm-up stretching exercise, sit-up , and push-up.
Similarly, your questioning opinion states that “Exactly where will the pension funding shortfalls come from?”
According to the corrupted media, you believe that mayor should increase property tax from working people and businesses. However, IT IS about abusive mismanagement of investment. Please critically examine the source or mismanagement that causes the pension funding shortfalls. Back2basic
Rahm has a huge number of paid shills.. he even hired one with a Hispanic sounding name to regularly post opinion pieces in the trib (but he actually grew up in a suburb just outside of Chicago).
My background is in economics and financial regulation, so I have a much greater than average layman’s knowledge about the issue of public employee pensions. Public pension problems around the country largely result from deliberate underfunding. Employers – governments run by elected politicians – didn’t want to make high enough contributions to the pension plans to make them actuarially sound. Rather than raise taxes or redirect other spending to pensions, they borrowed via bond sales and/or they made unrealistic assumptions about investment returns. Anyone actually informed about this issue knows these facts – it’s not at all a matter of “paid shills.”
No doubt some pension business was given to investment firms who made campaign contributions to politicians. That happens almost everywhere, but is extremely common in the hopelessly corrupt, forever Democratically-controlled city of Chicago. The corrupt state of illinois is little better. Recite all the left-wing platitudes you want, but those facts won’t change.