Rahm Emanuel has made clear that he favors charter schools over public schools, as do many of his campaign contributors. So it should come as no surprise that the city plans to cut $60 million from the budget of the public schools while adding $30 million to the charters.
Public schools are losing enrollment. Charters are gaining. This is the result of the Mayor’s decision to close 50 public schools in a day. Mayor Emanuel is whittling away at the public schools. When all the public schools have been privatized, he can claim victory. The hedge fund managers and equity investors no doubt will throw him a party and pledge more for his next campaign. Rahm compares favorably with Scott Walker as a killer of public schools and unions. I doubt that FDR or Harry Truman or JFK would recognize Rahm Emanuel as a Democrat.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
According to Raise Your Hand, a tremendous grass roots organization doing great work in Chicago holding the CPS, Rahm, and his appointed school boards feet to the fire, there are currently 12,637 empty “seats” in charters in Chicago which is 1,131 more than the previous year. There is no significant demand for charters here let alone more of them, yet the mayor and his cronies plan to open more. That’s right, after closing 50 schools based on a concocted underutilization crisis, the underutilized charters here stay open and more are planned. No supply and demand in Chicago, no “free market” competition, just hostile takeovers. PS. in middle class communities, the push back against charters coming in to further burden the neighborhood schools has been fierce. The only hope the charters have in those places are backroom deals, a sure winner with the public who has already made their anti-charter choice clear.
States should look at changing the receivership laws that give corrupt governors too much power, especially when rigged standardized tests and bogus teacher quality formulae are being used to justify the takeover. They should have to put such a big decision to a public vote.
That does not surprise me. But they will all claim long waiting lists.
It’s so tough to get the real story on charters. I’m to the point in Ohio where I have zero faith in anything the “choice” lobbyists say about our charter system.
I wonder if ed reformers have given any thought to the “death spiral” effect. They probably can’t run a system that takes all comers alongside a system that has special favorable rules or the “public” system will suffer from adverse selection and fail.
Maybe that’s the goal- who the heck knows? It’s ALL spin.
This latest must be particularly galling to public school parents because they were promised the remaining public schools would benefit from the closure of 50 of them. Another lie they were told by the mayor. Remember how they were all getting gardens and libraries and additional supports? Instead they get a funding cut. So much for that promise from the mayor.
This is the new solution to the state pension problem: starve the schools of dollars and/or students, and this quickly reduces the need for teachers. Fewer teachers on the city or state payroll means less money needed for the pension programs, insurance, etc. It is tragic that both Democrats and Republicans have teamed up to wage war on public school teachers and the unions, and if the children’s education has to suffer, that’s just too bad.
I call it abrogation of duty of a service for the general good. Fire enough people, and you won’t have to do your job. I am not a litigious person, but I am afraid people are going to have start filing more lawsuits. I can foresee some potential civil rights challenges.
The latest is Rahm’s appointment of Forrest Claypool as the new superintendent of CPS Thursday. Claypool has turned out to be Rahm’s go-to guy in Chicago….chief of staff for Rahm, CEO of the Chicago Transit Authority, an attorney….in other words, nothing remotely related to education. But he’ll have the help of a former principal who says Claypool will run the schools like a business (which he has virtually no experience doing, either) and she’ll handle the education stuff. On top of that, Rahm appointed some business croney as the new President of the school board – another political appointment that seems unrelated to any knowledge about education. Good luck, students, teachers, and parents in Chicago….
I believe eventually this corrupt dismantling and stealing of American treasure will receive serious consequences. My question is will the Democratic party survive its complicity?