Toni Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County board, deplores the closing of 54 public schools in Chicago. She said it was a terrible idea.
She said:
“You know, schools are community anchors. They’re social centers. They’re part of a community’s identity. And often kids go half a dozen blocks and they’re in different gang territory.
“The closings are going to take place almost entirely within the African-American community, and given the problems we already have with violence, I think it’s very problematic.”
Instead of closing schools, she said, “We ought to invest a lot more in our public schools. You know, feed the kids breakfast, lunch, and dinner; have after-school activities; keep the schools open until nine o’clock in the evenings and on weekends; invest in things like the Boys and Girls Club and the Park District—I mean, everything, basically, to dramatically ramp up the investments in our children.”
Preckwinkle realizes that our values are distorted: People “would rather pay to keep somebody incarcerated than to support music lessons or soccer team memberships or basketball team uniforms for kids in poor neighborhoods.”
Please, someone, introduce this woman to Arne Duncan and Barack Obama. Introduce her to Bill Gates and Eli Broad. Introduce her to Rahm Emanuel. Or how about the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes!! For once, we have a Cook County politician who really knows what it means to be on the side of children. And she has some incredible ideas for investing in them! That’s because she’s married to a teacher and she is a former teacher herself.
If people in power had consulted with real teachers long ago, we could have seriously chipped away at poverty by now –instead of seeing it (and segregation) expand.
Yay, Toni!
Not so fast there: http://www.bettergov.org/better_government_association_takes_transparency_fight_to_preckwinkle_administration/
But then everyone would have an equal chance for success and the Rheeformers and educrats can’t have that! Remember, they want Deltas, not Alphas. I still can’t believe there hasn’t been a radical, national outcry regarding these school closings. Where are Charles Barron and Al Sharpton? Where’s the NAACP? Where are all our supporters of public education?
See the Black Agenda Report:
“Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
I am totally shocked and saddened by this. Thank you for sharing. Is there no end to what people will do for money?
Thank goodness for the Black Agenda Report,
“There Used To Be These Things Called Public Schools & Public Libraries….”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/there-used-be-these-things-called-public-schools-public-libraries
I don’t know that it is fair to say that people would rather pay for prisons than for schools. The US pays ten times more on public K-12 education than on prisons. No doubt we should be spending less on prisons, and we are starting to do that, but we do have to overcome the lobbying efforts by the public employee unions.
On the contrary, unions need to be MUCH more aggressive, demand a return to a teacher controlled educational environment and much higher salary scale. Teacher’s salaries are pathetic generally speaking, especially when taking into consideration their work environment. I remember when NYC turned to foreigners to fill vacancies only a few years ago. The notion that the U.S. spends 10 times more on public education than it spends prisons as a reason that teachers earn too much as at BEST ludicrous.
Michael,
We spend about $610 billion dollars a year on public K-12 education (or did in 2008-2009 according the the NCES) and spend about $63.4 billion a year on prisons (a 2012 report by CBS), so the numbers are about right.
I was not speaking about teachers unions opposition to reducing the size of the prison population, but the unions representing correction officers.
As an economist, you should be aware that prison spending is not limited to prisons themselves, but has a large multiplier effects, including expanded budgets for law enforcement, courts, probation and parole systems.
You are aware of that, aren’t you, or are you just seeking to misdirect the conversation?
Michael,
I am very familiar with the concept of a multiplier, but economists do not think of it in the sense you are using it.
My post was responding to the statement “would rather pay to keep somebody incarcerated…”, so the cost of incarceration seemed to be the most relevant comparison. If you want to include the cost of adjudication, the number would be higher, but that number is a probably a function of the number of crimes committed, while the cost in incarceration is a function of the sentencing practices for those crimes.
Aren’t prisons being privatized, too? Imagine the money to be made!
In Chicago, there’s really no way to know which way the wind blows with the pols here. It is unfortunate, but true. Recently, a fantastic essay about the “spineless” Chicago city council hit the Chicago Magazine: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/April-2013/The-Yes-Men/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc I urge those, including writers like Diane Ravitch, to bear the contents of this wonderful essay heavily in mind when propping up any single one of the political “leaders” in Chicago, including Toni Preckwinkle. I mean, what has Toni Preckwinkle and other so-called leadership done to combat the two major sororities that rule over the South Side and West Side Chicago Public Schools like royalty in charge of their fiefdoms? What has she done about the nepotism, cronyism, and overall corruption in these CPS schools that also blocks access to quality public education? Zilch. Remember, in cold Chicago, if you pull on a string, you’ll come up with a sweater, two scarves and all sorts of other clothes covering up the bastards! It’s a rainbow coalition of the corrupt in this neck of the woods. The money for the kids is there, it just isn’t going to the right place: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106337306/THE-CHICAGO-PUBLIC-SCHOOLS-ALLERGIC-TO-ACTIVISM
I totally agree that the schools are a critical
Part of a community. These buildings are anchors for neighborhoods. In 1978 I helped start a program that took advantage of a beautifully refurbished school in a lower middle class neighborhood. This facility housed a school from 8-3 and then was closed until the next day. We fought to have the building opened until 10 PM with programs and activities for young and adults. This successful model has been expanded and today the program services hundreds of students in all of the elementary schools in our city. 35 years later a real success story and a far cry from the Chicago tragedy.
Trust me, Diane, all those folks know Toni Preckwinkle already! She and Obama and Duncan are all Hyde Parkers. They also know where she stands, and it doesn’t make a difference to them. Yet I am proud to have her in our city in the important position she now is in. There are a lot of Chicagoans who want her to run for mayor and who think she might be one of the few who could defeat our current king, I mean mayor.
And what does the Better Government Association have to say about Toni? http://www.bettergov.org/better_government_association_takes_transparency_fight_to_preckwinkle_administration/
As Preckwinkle said on NPR the other day, she began her career as a high school teacher,which provided the foundation for everything she has done in the political sphere. She is also married to a teacher. Experience + Understanding= Rational Policy.
A whole day of reason is coming to Chicago on April 15, when Pasi Sahlberg of Finland and other notable advocates of PUBLIC education lead the charge for Reframing Reform: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=onw87zaab&oeidk=a07e76zkw70f24fea5c
Thought I shared this article:
“Opinion: Why Elites Don’t Think Public Schools Important to City’s Future”
By Edward McClelland Wed., March 27th, 2013 nbcchicago.com
I don’t know if anyone else shared this but I feel a need to because it is really sad:Last week, I was talking with a man who has devoted a lot of time to studying Chicago’s rise as a global city. As we were discussing how Chicago can remain a global city, he made a statement even he knew was incredibly cynical.
The public schools aren’t important to Chicago’s standing in the world, he said. The universities are.
Chicago’s great universities — Northwestern, the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago — house the scholars who win Nobel Prizes and sit on the Supreme Court. They train the attorneys who run Sidley and Austin, the economists who sit on the Board of Trade and the businessmen who meet at the Commercial Club.
The people who run this city are not products of the Chicago Public Schools. Mayor Rahm Emanuel graduated from New Trier High School. President Obama arrived here from Columbia University. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle came to Chicago from St. Paul, Minn., to study at the U of C.
Even native Chicagoans who hold power are products of Catholic or private schools — Gov. Pat Quinn attended Fenwick High School, Attorney General Lisa Madigan went to Latin, and all the Daleys are educated at De La Salle. In the 2011 mayoral election, Emanuel ran against three CPS graduates — Gery Chico of Kelly, Miguel del Valle of Tuley and Carol Moseley Braun of Parker — and received more votes than all of them combined. It’s hard for public school graduates to maintain successful political careers because their backgrounds haven’t enabled them to develop ties to people with money. The highest-ranking CPS graduate is U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky. An alumna of Sullivan High School in Rogers Park, Schakowsky is the only member of Illinois’s congressional delegation to have graduated from a Chicago public high school.
In this city divided between a small overclass of lawyers, consultants and IT professionals, and a large underclass of cashiers, dishwashers and landscapers, the local elites see the public schools as a training ground for service jobs that require little education. Chicago’s status as a regional hub enables it to poach college graduates from surrounding states, thus allowing the city to maintain an educated class with no public investment.
Close 54 public schools and cram the dispossessed students into overcrowded classrooms? Emanuel, who is Chicago’s quintessential global citizen, knows it won’t affect Chicago’s standing as a global city. Today at 4 p.m. in the Daley Plaza, thousands of students, parents and teachers will rally to keep the schools open. Their voices won’t reach the top of the Richard J. Daley Building.
To add to my post above, here’s what the Better Government Association had to say about Toni Preckwinkle: “When it comes to government transparency, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has talked the talk, but she hasn’t always walked the walk.” And here’s a link to that organization’s investigations: http://www.bettergov.org/better_government_association_takes_transparency_fight_to_preckwinkle_administration/
Obama, only because he is prez., needs to be totally shamed for what he is doing and politically forced to defend children and not corporations and privatizers as he has done since 1995. The rest should be thrown out onto the street and get the rotten garbage and eggs treatment as that is all they deserve.
I am a Northsider now, but I lived and taught in Hyde Park and South Shore for 20+ years.I have been a supporter of Toni Preckwinkle since her first UNsuccessful run for alderman. She has never disappointed me. I don’t know what luisgabrielaguilera has against her, but she has run the most transparent office that has ever been seen in Chicago. She rid her office of all the entrenched nepotism that she could, and has truly represented the citizens of Chicago., No, she has not accomplished everything, but she is NOT the mayor with greater parameters of that office.
Perhaps she knows Obama and Duncan, but she is never afraid to stand up to them. Witness her statement on closing schools.
Do not disparage people based on who they might know. The Republicans tried that with Obama and Bill Ayers..
I forgot to congratulate Toni Preckwinkle for her statement supporting public education.