What a strange bureaucracy is Chicago Public Schools. Also, like many bureaucracies, cold and heartless.
CPS fired veteran Chicago teacher Xian Barrett by informing his mother. The principal called his mother and read a script. It’s not like Barrett is a minor. Why wouldn’t they have the nerve to call him directly?
The mass layoffs follow an unprecedented mass closing of 50 schools.
Could this be payback for last fall’s teachers’ strike? Or just Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s determination to starve public education and call it reform?
“In one of the city’s largest teacher layoffs ever, the district pink slipped 2,113 teachers and other employees.
“Of those laid off, 1,036 are teachers and 1,077 are support staff, with the laid-off teachers accounting for about 4 percent of last year’s total faculty of 23,290.
“Budget cuts are to blame for 815 support staff, 398 tenured teachers and 510 non-tenured teachers; school closings for 68 support staff employees and 194 food staff employees, and changes in school enrollments account for rest, the district said.
“Another 161 highly-rated teachers from the 48 schools that closed permanently in June also learned later Friday they will not follow their students to new schools — there aren’t enough open jobs in the receiving schools, according to CPS spokeswoman Kelley Quinn. Their positions have been cut, but they’re not technically laid off since they continue to collect full pay and benefits in a teacher reassignment pool for the first five months of the school year, and slightly lower pay in the cadre substitute pool for the next five months, Quinn said.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the linked article:
“Some of the teachers could be replaced by Teach For America recruits, as the district has committed to more than doubling its investment in the TFA program that trains college graduates for five weeks then sends them into schools for two years at a time. The Board of Education voted to increase its payment to TFA from $600,000 to nearly $1.6 million, and to add up to 325 new TFA recruits to CPS classrooms, in addition to 270 second year “teacher interns”.
TFA spokeswoman Becky O’Neill said about 200 of the new recruits are destined for charters, the rest to interview for openings in neighborhood schools.
How can you justify laying off teachers and then hiring 5 week trainees to replace them. There has got to be a lawsuit here somewhere?
Thank you for posting this. TFA is not just placing new teachers in hard to staff areas, but they really are replacing veteran teachers in some areas as well. Think about how much $$$ is saved by laying off someone with perhaps 25 years of service and then replacing that person with a first year teacher. Do this several hundred times. That’s a lot of money “saved” or just used to pad other salaries. It really is happening!
Holy moley! Where will those kids go to school? My heart goes out to the teachers, students, and larger community.
tamicee–Why, doncha’ know?–all those parents will be clamoring for more charter schools–and they will be put in place. Also solving the problem of the newly vacant school buildings (that is, the ones in the areas that the developers aren’t interested in). BTW, that’s why CPS recently spent $260K+ for new lighting in many of those “abandoned” buildings–nice for the new charter school which will take up residence! “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” (Sorry–I almost forgot–children are people, not things.)
I should not be surprised. How ________
Perhaps you were being facetious, but I just wanted to point out that parents have not been “clamoring for more charters” in Chicago. They have been fighting to keep their neighborhood schools open. And the “waiting list” claims made by charter schools were revealed to be bogus last September, during the teacher’s strike, when many charters tried to take advantage of the strike by suddenly revealing they had spaces available, in case any disgruntled parents wanted to send their kids there instead of waiting for the strike to end. As I recall, reports indicated there were few takers. Most parents supported CPS teachers.
It’s just further proof of the disregard for public education, the children and community. When is this assault on teachers, students and public education going to stop? How far down will we go?
Till those DEFORMERS destroy ALL of this country, I now call the United Stasi. Where are the professional orgs? Ooops…kissing…you know what.
Professional organizations like NEA and AFT? Hahahahahaha
public education is looking more and more like the village in vietnam…”we had to destroy the city in order to save it.” The latest example of this in st. louis….Kipp is multiplying its number by 5….and acquiring real estate by using the cherry picked students, as well as future attrition casualties as bargaining tools. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/st-louis-forges-unique-partnership-with-kipp/article_65727970-07c2-560e-b2dc-b62097fd8aa5.html
Great, Kids In Prison Project coming to the midwest. Getting way to close to my district.
Brilliant analogy, Joe! Vietnam was a GREAT money maker for the military-industrial complex, and now we have the education-industrial complex to make the same people big bucks!
There’s money to be made in destruction!
Maybe it’s time for teachers and parents to do what people did in Madison, Wisconsin and occupy city hall, but NOT make the fatal mistake they made in Madison and count on a recall getting rid of Rahm Emanuel.
Instead, they should stay in place until he resigns office in disgrace, which would also put enough stink on him to end his political career.
And if whoever replaces him follows the same policies, the process must be repeated until politicians come to heel.
In the slightly longer term, voters need to figure how to boycott the companies pushing this agenda and teachers need to take the additional step of divesting their retirement funds from those companies.
Then voters will have time to figure out how to fix our profoundly broken political system.
I agree, maybe boycotting those corporations and businesses who are promoting the destruction of public Ed would be effective. If Rahm ever tries to obtain another position in the state of Illinois, make sure his record of destroying public Ed goes along with him.
Another example of the hardship the Common Core is imposing on the school systems. By now everyone knows that David Coleman is the
architect of the Common Core hired by the NGA funded by the Gates Foundation. We don’t need CC; it is unconstitutional; the cost is too astronomical to
implement and sustain; it is not research based; is causing more harm than good; and it is giving the Gates Foundation and the Pearson Company control of our schools .
Gates is funding Charter Schools and destroying our public school system:
“Gates Foundation Invests Nearly $25 Million in Seven Cities Dedicated to Bold Collaboration Between Public Charter and Traditional Schools”
“Foundation Provides $30 Million Credit Support Agreement to Secure $300 Million in Charter School Facility Financing – Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”
“Gates foundation funds group to help charter schools”
Charter Schools are considered an alternative to our public schools. But we already have alternatives: private schools, parochial schools, and
home schooling. The Common Core is bankrupting our public schools. The cost of implementing and the testing program doesn’t leave
enough money for the states and in turn the districts to support the teachers and staff. Teachers and staff have to be excessed and schools
closed. Charter schools skim off the top of a neighboring school and leave the At Risk . Of course with tactics like that Charter school should
really have great test results. ( see Petrilli: What’s Wrong With Skimming the Best Students? /Diane Ravitch’s Blog ) Charter School, however, are not out shining the neighboring schools where children and funding are equal.
Charter schools have no unions to protect anyone who wants to differ with the administration. If a teacher voices her opinion she could easily
be fired. There is no increment in the initial low salary teachers resort to accepting because they need a job. Enrollment in higher ed. is drastically
decreasing, non tenured faculty are first to lose their job. Staff members are being excessed leaving an insurmountable work for a few. Who wants
to go into a field that is so restrictive, ruthless in their evaluations, low pay, and unsupportive of their employees, with no security?
The govt. and foundations keeps pouring money into the system and basic changes still are not being made. In fact, where ever there is mandatory
retention, disruption in the classrooms are getting worse. It will keep getting worse and there will be an increase in drop-outs. If a system destroys
the students self-image and in turn their desire to learn why sit in a classroom where everyone thinks you are a failure?
Research has shown over and over again that it is the family that has the biggest impact on a child. Instead of spending billions on testing and Common Core, help parents and caregivers develop a nurturing home environment – only then will the Achievement Gap close. Children don’t need to come from wealthy homes only homes where education is valued. Dr. Carmelita Williams, former president of the NRA, words keep ringing in my ear. “You do not have to read every night-just on the nights you eat.” It has proven successful in my family. All my grandchildren picture read by the age of three and read independently
at the age of four. My one grandson at the age of three had Chica Chica Boom Boom memorized and now at the age of four can read all of Eric Carle’s books independently plus numerous others. The Commission on Education in A Nation of Readers states, “The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.” Reading in a dramatic way followed with a brief discussion adds to the enjoyment. All my grandchildren are/were readers before entering kindergarten and several became writers at the age of five. At the age of three, they already had a sense of story structure.
Mary DeFalco
I know that 25 million or even 300 million seems like a great deal of money, but we spend upwards of 640 thousand million on public education annually. Any spending by Bill Gates is swamped by spending on public education.
TE, your defense of Gates is exactly what he says. But you are both wrong. The Gates money is discretionary, and he uses it to set the nationl agenda. When he decided that large schools were obsolete, 2,500 schools followed his lead and divided into small schools. Then he decided that was not a god idea, and he decided that teacher evaluation was the nation’s biggest problem. He and Arne Duncan together have created a multi-billon dollar fiasco.
My post is not defending Gates, but more an attempt to get the scale right. Posters often talk about millions of dollars as a large amount of money in K-12 education when it is a tiny tiny fraction of what is spent every year.
TE, Gates Foundation doesn’t have millions. It has Billions. And it works in tandem with the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. Are you feigning ignorance?
My comment was directed at the concern the poster had for the 25 million invested and the 300 million in financing.
Yes the Gates foundation has billions of dollars. From the figures I have seen the foundation could increase spending on k-12 public education by about 10% for one year. After that all of the foundation money would be gone.
It’s also the same defense that Arne Duncan gives. He says that the federal government only provides 10% of what’s spent on education so he doesn’t have much influence. But regardless of the proportion, the influence of Duncan and Gates on the national agenda is tremendous. It’s all about leveraging and no one knows that better than those two.
At least the federal government provides 10% every year. The Gates Foundation could only do it for one year and then have to close.
TE, no one believes the Gates Foundation is paying the full cost of education. They are using their billions to leverage control of the system. They have turned the quest for the perfect system of metrical evaluation of teachers into a national obsession. It hasn’t worked anywhere, though our nation has spent billions trying to make it work. Five years from now, Gates will fasten on some other big idea. Your pretense of ignorance is extremely annoying. I won’t waste my time responding to you in the future.
If this small piece of unprofessional action is a prelude to how they will handle relocating 50 schools, I don’t think it takes much imagination to think what could go wrong next fall.
It’s over, folks. Start putting your resume together and get out there in the job market while it’s still early in the game. This will be coming to all our schools in the next 5 years.
Rahm is evil. His aim is to destroy the CTU. He’s getting even with Karen Lewis for standing up to him. Too bad he’s more powerful than she.
Chi-Town Res–to answer your 7/20, 5:42 PM response to my comment: Yes, I was being sarcastic. I am from the Chicago area myself, and that’s why I was able to give the info. about the vacant buildings and the $260K+ lighting, as well as the real estate
insight (from reading The Reader, the area blogs, the 2 dailies, Crain’s Chicago Business, WGN News, etc.) I was also at the March 27th Thompson Center rally, then went on the march from there to the CPS Board Building. It’s hard to miss all the heartache and disruption of lives that’s been going on here. Disgraceful.
And to daveeckstrom: Clark County has been advertising heavily and has even held a job fair here. “Teachers! Come to work in beautiful Las Vegas!”
The irony? Nevada is a right-to-work state.
N
Yes, Clark County is hiring. Last year we had 400 pink slips go out while 150 TFA were hired. CCSS is hard and heavy here. We are a RTW state, but we are under the wing of huge unions within our community from the service and construction industry. We have solid collective bargaining rights. But teachers are under attack, and we just had a staggering legislation bill pass making 50% our evals to be based on high stakes testing. We never recovered from the boom of Las Vegas, which is what brought me here. We have a high transient population and many promoted prematurely to take in the 5,000 a month that were moving here. We were ‘rallying’ all of last year, as we cannot strike.
Xian is absolutely a wonderful person. He has been wonderful to me, but to see what he is doing with the students is priceless. He has created the independent thinkers that society says it is looking for a teacher to give students in public education. This is an injustice, for society’s future members to such lose a great influence. I will be there on August 8th to rally behind CTU and their great teachers, to give my full support. Love to CTU! Lisa-Las Vegas (Clark County)
Xian Barrett is very well known and outspoken. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why he was fired and why they brought his mother into it. I’m betting it wasn’t just a bureaucratic screw up.
Also, it should be pointed out that CPS’s rationale for this latest round of firing – once again, the budget deficit – is false. CPS has a substantial surplus. This is pure shock doctrine at work.
Regarding Rahm Emanuel, I guess this is angle not many people will feel at liberty to take, but I do. I’d like to call out Rahm Emanuel for contravening the wise words of our ancients regarding teachers (and class size). I am not one to take all ancient words as wise, but the ones invoked here certainly are. Why a man ostensibly rooted in his traditions has chosen to throw these particular values to the wind is a puzzler:
http://www.torah.org/features/par-kids/teacher.html
As a matter of fact, contractors are busy fixing the closed schools. Yes, the charter schools will have remodeled buildings thanks to the mayor….:(