Michael Klonsky covered the crucial Board of Education meeting about the budget for Chicago schools and says it demonstrated why mayoral control is a failure.
The board decided that one way to deal with the fiscal crisis is to hire more press secretaries!
“The budget once again cuts funding for neighborhood schools and programs serving kids with special needs, while funneling millions more into the pockets of privately-run charter school operators. It was passed by the mayor’s hand-picked minions (at least by those who showed up) of bobble-heads despite loud protests from the gallery of angry parents and school activists.”
Mike quotes George Schmidt, who wrote:
“George Schmidt does a good job of calling out no-show board members.
Considering that they only have to perform that public duty one day a month, and at a location conventient to their downtown offices, the seven members of the Board have seemed since the year began to be alternating “days off” so that they don’t have to listen to the public criticisms of their hypocrisies and craven subservience to the mayor’s privatization programs. And so it was on what is arguably the most important meeting of the year, July 23, 2014. That was the meeting at which the Board was to approve its annual budget. Deborah Quazzo, the millionaire financial planner, was missing, just as Andrea Zopp, Henry Bienen and Mahalia Hines had been during the previous months.”
Mayoral control makes a mockery of democracy, especially when the Board is run by the mayor’s pals and parents are disregarded.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Politicos are notorious for being asked a question about schools by responding with a blank stare or a smirk. “Bobble-heads” who spend money on PR. Chicago is out of control; the corruption called government is perfectly manifested in the school board members. If the members are self-serving enough, they will follow Penny Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce.
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Chicago “school reform” is straight out of the “Three Penny Opera,” grotesquely absurd, hideously comical, dada performance that is all too real, too heartbreaking to fully comprehend.
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My god…this is happening in the nation’s 3rd largest city. Where is the public outrage? Why are the good citizens of Chicago not marching in the streets?? Are we collectively blind?
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When you click on to Mike’s blog, make sure to listen to the Walter Jacobson commentary–he’s been around for-absolutely-EVER, & even he states, that he’d “thought he’d seen it all.”
And, Tony–don’t worry–even the PRESS is starting to favorably (in our favor, that is!) cover all the craziness–BOTH the Tribune & the Times. Did you read John Kass the other day? Eric Zorn today? Keep the faith–help is on the way, Chicago IS “the city of the Big Shoulders,” & the people–BY the people (not BUY the people!) of Chicago are NOT going to stand for this anymore. Keep your eyes & ears open, & stand ready, NPE!!!
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The top story this weekend at substancenews.net is not the lengthy (20 pages if printed out) report I did on the Board meeting (and votes), but the story we broke free to cover when the Board ordered its beefy security squad to take out Rousemary Vega and her husband Jesus while their four children watched. I was able to get an angle and photograph them hauling Jesus out (three guys, all twice as large as Jesus, were on him) and David Vance, who works with Substance and Labor Beat, got a photograph from a farther distance of them pulling Jesus through the door in a choke hold!
As in Staten Island, etc.
Jesus and Rousemary were not the only people hauled out of the Board meeting. At least six others were pulled away physically from the podium and the microphone when they went over their “two minutes” (the time for human beings to speak to the Board, after which the secretary shouts TIME! and the security goons go after the speaker who doesn’t back off…).
Since early this year, the Board’s chief of security has warned me that I would be arrested (or simply evicted from the Board meeting) if I “disrupted” the meetings by going across the room to take photographs. Jadine Chou, the current security chieftain at CPS, was hired by Rahm Emanuel’s Board because of her qualifications and experience as an “educational leader”, Chicago style. Like a large number of the latest administrative hirelings, she has an MBA from the University of Chicago and had never taught in a real public school. Chou told me the threat, which she said came from Board President David Vitale, and I told her that the government (her) had no right to tell reporters (me; others) where the “news” was.
We broke out of the “press pen” when the shouting began across the room, and I was followed by a dozen news photographers and TV camera people, while CPS security cried “Stop!” We didn’t.
Every news organization in Chicago has photographs and video showing the same vicious attacks that we published at substancenews.net Thursday morning, when I uploaded my photos and ran the first draft of the story about the attacks on Rousemary and Jesus.
See if you can find that dramatic story about the attack on the First Amendment in any other Chicago “news” media and let me know.
It’s why I cringe when some people quote The New York Times and other bourgeoise corporate news operations as if that is the facts and the truth. This is just one example, among many, of how completely they lie, even when they have the truth.
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So what else is new? Don’t confuse me with facts. My mind is already made up – with the help of like minded politicians.
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Geoerge Schmidt is the best, but I have to disagree with his remarks as quoted in Mike’s blog on a small but important detail. The policies being ramrodded down Chicago’s throat are not Rahm’s, he is but the figurehead making them happen. As in so many other places, Rahm is just functioning as the pipeline through which this sewage flows, he’s going along to get along with he cronies who are behind all this. This is the real Lemon Dance, a game of musical chairs where those in charge of implementing deform are interchangable and impossible to get rid ofas they go from place to place in that pursuit. Rahm brought Brizzard to Chicago after he had been evicted from Rochester by their elected school board, and when Brizzard failed just as badly in Chicago, BBB, another Broad superindendent slid into the chair to take his place.none of these shills are leaders by any definition, they are just teh Judas Goats leading teh schools to slaughter.
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Where is the AFT in all this?
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In Ohio, Rahm’s ex-controller is in the news. On the heels of resigning from his position in Chicago, he faced charges, pled guilty to a kick back scheme and fled. The crime occurred while the guy was Ohio’s Deputy Treasurer.
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