The mayoral election in Chicago is tomorrow. What’s at stake: the future of public education in that city.
The Chicago Teachers Union predicts more school closings if Tahm is re-elected. A major campaign contributor said he should have closed 125 schools, not just 50. This donor, Ken Griffin, is a Republican who also has given to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
PRESS RELEASE
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Ronnie Reese
April 6, 2015 312-329-6235
School closings inevitable if Emanuel wins second term
If Rahm Emanuel is re-elected, more school closures could come before moratorium ends in 2018
CHICAGO—Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.
Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.
“Rahm’s pledge not to close additional schools for five years, which he refused to put into writing or pass into law, will conveniently run out if he wins a second term,” said CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey. “In Ken Griffin, who is among the top donors to both Emanuel and his friend, Bruce Rauner, he has a billionaire puppet master for whom he’ll have to do a lot of dancing if he is fortunate enough to retain his office.”
In return for Griffin’s generosity, Emanuel has rejected holding the city’s most wealthy accountable for their growing untaxed income while he simultaneously fleeces working class families with regressive taxes. Emanuel also has committed millions of dollars in tax increment financing to one of Griffin’s hotel investments and remains silent on suggestions for a millionaire tax that nearly 2/3 of the state of Illinois voted to support.
In deference to his central contributors, Emanuel has refused to claw back losses from toxic swaps, capital appreciation bonds, TIFs and other forms of predatory finance that will cost the city $3 billion—money that would be better used in meeting pension obligations and expanding city services.
If Griffin himself were taxed at the individual income tax rate before it declined from 5 percent to 3.75 percent on January 1, 2015, his $1.2 billion annual income would have garnered $60 million. That amount alone would have saved 30 neighborhood public schools from closing, according to the Chicago Board of Education’s own calculations. If this same formula was applied to members of the Pritzker family, Grosvenor Capital Management CEO Michael Sacks and other financial titans financing Emanuel’s campaign, there would be substantially more resources available to the district to offset its projected $1 billion shortfall.
“If the mayor had the courage to take on the banks’ toxic swaps for market manipulation, unfair dealing and misinformation—along the lines of what the Department of Justice has done federally—we could recoup nearly $1.2 billion for our schools and the city, eradicating the current deficit,” Sharkey said. “Instead, CPS will face more mass school closings, more layoffs, more losses of retirement security for educators and more students in our already overcrowded classrooms.”
If the district closed the additional 75 schools that Griffin has called for, Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education would have to layoff approximately 9,000 teachers, which would result in class sizes of 50 or more in most schools. Emanuel has threatened such actions in the past. If Chicago had a mayor who chose the city’s residents, their schools and communities over the interests of wealthy benefactors, the pain and suffering that Emanuel has caused can be avoided in the future.
Emanuel is the bankers’ candidate, for it is the bankers who are most enthusiastic about his willingness to defend their interests. His refusal to hold them accountable is an indication that future budget cuts and school closures are a certainty.
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It becomes increasingly clear why Obama was a conspicuous no-show in Wisconsin when Walker’s anti-teacher and anti-union tactics generated a mass populist movement for his recall. Obama and Emanuel and the rest of the DINOs have been corrupted by the same money which has bought Walker and his ilk.
Walker loves Duncan:
“Walker has gone to lengths to praise Duncan as the best member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet. He seemed to take no particular offense at Duncan’s comments, saying afterward that he thought Milwaukee Public Schools would be a good test because the teachers’ union contract will remain in effect until June 2013, giving plenty of chances for the union and management to collaborate.”
Duncan is the favorite of conservative governors across the country. It may not matter what Democrats think about education. They’ve lost so many state level seats Republicans are running the table on education anyway. They’re almost irrelevant in the majority of states and they’ve lost almost the entire Great Lakes region, with the exception of Minnesota.
People don’t rush out to vote for technocratic, out of touch “agnostics” who deliver droning, patronizing lectures from DC on the “skills gap”. People want advocates.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/129597103.html
This is the new sport in America, closing public schools and firing teachers (especially unionized public school teachers, a la New Orleans, post-Katrina). I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes an Olympic sport with the USA garnering all the gold medals.
Does building schools in Iraq and Afghanistan count against us in the medal conpetition?
#morons Rahm and his money buddy.
Is this why no one came out to vote for Quinn? Because there’s absolutely no difference between the two parties on economic issues?
How many state-level seats do Democrats plan to lose, anyway? They’re down to, what, 20 governors?
Does Cuomo count as a democrat governor?
Touche, M!
If our state and federal lawmakers oppose our schools, do we still have to let them in when they’re campaigning?
I don’t know why we should have to host people who want nothing more than to close the public school they’re using as a photo op. That’s nuts.
Excellent point! If either the AFT or the NEA had any guts, THIS would be the perfect thing have them sponsor: NO candidates in public schools unless they have proven track records of supporting education.
Chicago, Chicago, close those schools down.
Maybe model it after the Baroness Bomburst’s kingdom of a child-free utopia.
Hello Diane,
This is not a comment about this post; it is only informational to you.
1. Start here: http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=12152
To Diane Ravitch, I note that none of the 50 education bloggers that I follow have discussed the implications of the TPP on Pearson’s ability to possibly become the de facto provider of testing materials for all public schools in America through a quirk in the TPP law that may be signed as early at the end of this month. I sent a version of this letter this morning to my senators.
This edited version will be sent to Ralph Nader by a teacher friend who knows him. Please encourage any educational bloggers that you know who are keen on public policy to try to disprove my thesis. I hope I am wrong and that the TPP will not hand Pearson this power by corporate tribunal fiat! Here is the text of my altered boilerplate letter to my two senators:
Dear Senators Murray and Cantwell:
I am writing you to request a copy of the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The TPP would be the most significant international commercial agreement since the World Trade Organization with broad implications for U.S. jobs, food safety, financial regulation, medicine prices and more.
Here is my urgent concern. Pearson LLC has 40,000 employees in 80 countries, many of which are in TPP locations. Should a school board, state or the DOE in Washington D.C. decide to cancel a Pearson PreK-12 testing contract it would be, as I understand it, be possible for Pearson through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement System to take the contract cancellation up with a corporate run tribunal. This could result in overturning the wishes of a school board, state or federal DOE without any formal oversight by our state or federal legislatures or the Supreme Court.
Thus, Pearson or any other foreign corporation who had operations in a TPP location could, with the aid of the TPP Tribunal become the de facto corporation in charge of public school testing in America.
Please send me a copy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership draft texts, and information about your leadership to represent the public interest throughout this process.
Thank you. Don Bunger, retired H.S. teacher
Don, you are absolutely correct. I have been following the TPP (also the proposed Trans-Atlantic treaty as well). Both would basically hand over all our governance, from education to Social Security to the environment, to for-profit multinationals.
You can take it one step further. Pearson might argue that having flesh-and-blood teachers is hurting its ability to expand into virtual K-12 education. TPP and its trans-Atlantic partner can make things get ugly for us 99 percenters real fast.
Obama is pushing these deals because his sponsor, Penny Pritzker, wants the deals to go through.
Heaven help us all if these “free trade” agreements are passed.
Ralph Nader? Ironically he is the last person I ever voted for. He doesn’t seem so crazy after all now does he? In fact he was right about everything he was saying all along but the two party monopoly along with the monopoly that is our corporate run media painted him as a loony and many idiots fell for it hook line and sinker and just look what you guys ended up with. If anyone continues to vote for ANY Democrat or Republican you deserve exactly what you have coming to you. There are no goods ones left and there haven’t been any for over fifty years. How can anyone with a moral conscious willingly remain a member of either of these two so called political parties while knowing exactly what they are doing to our Country?
I love Ralph Nader and I agree with you. Too bad he was a little too soon for his time. Nader and others – real intellectuals I might add- (Chomsky, Chris Hedges, etc. ) have been marginalized by the bought popular media and deemed “goofs,” but their predictions are coming to pass.
Ralph Nader also predicted Cuomo’s destruction of public education and the middle class.
Don-These are scary possibilities!
“By the people” has become America, Inc. The question is to what lengths will the new leaders in America go to hold on to power. I am always amazed so many Americans decry “big government” to the point of self destruction, but have no trouble turning over control to corporations like Pearson – and a foreign company at that.
I have a very simple rule and that is if the media portrays a candidate to be crazy vote for the guy.
Ronald Reagan was the actor hired by corporate america to play the role of the anti-government government official. It was his most successful role. He starred in only grade ‘B’ movies before being handed the role of president.
How did the people in this country become so twisted that voting for an anti-government government seemed like a good idea?
Good point but the best actor so far has been Obama. Since when did voting for the guy with zero skills other than good teleprompter reading capabilities become a good idea? Let’s face it after Kennedy the options we’ve had presented to us as presidential candidates have been nothing but actors hired by corporate america and that is the root of the problem. Vote green or suffer the consequences.
As reported by David Sirota, “The “independent” official overseeing Chicago’s vote count on Tues is a lobbyist who got city deals from Rahm Emanuel”
http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago-elections-chief-got-lobbying-contracts-rahm-emanuels-administration-1869898
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-bruce-rauner-statewide-tour-met-0407-20150406-story.html#page=1
More from Illinois… this new governor is going to use disaster capitalism of sorts to build business… and in the process crush anyone in the way… just like Rahm-y boy… don’t want to waste a “good crisis.”
To me, this is just more evidence that our country is being run by more and more sociopaths… ruthlessness rules… love they neighbor not so much… sigh.
thy*
I loved his quote about ripping the economic guts out of Indiana…We’ve attracted sooooo much new business with our new-found right-to-work status! I guess he can go for one of the many restaurant chains that inhabit my neck of the woods.
Rauner is just another massive t*rd merchant…
So hoping that justice prevails today along with good old fashion democracy and that the People vote so that Chicagoans can say “good riddance” to Rahm Emmanuel and “hello” to Chuy Garcia. I think this would give many people around the nation some hope that there is a fighting chance for democracy to represent the will of The People. I also think it would serve to put any future politicians (aka presidential wanna be’s) on notice that the People of this nation are becoming disgusted with the erosion of democracy.
I hope so as well artseagal. I’ve felt so disheartened by what’s been happening… I hope for hope.