- UNO was once Chicago’s most powerful Hispanic organization. It launched numerous charter schools and won a grant of $98 million from the state legislature to add more. Its leader, Juan Rangel, was the co-chair of Rahm Emanuel’s election campaign. Everything went well until it was discovered that UNO was giving contracts for the new building to family members, friends, and lobbyists. Then its leader stepped down. Now its financial straits are such that it may have to declare bankruptcy. Six of its charters serving 4,000 students may be affected. Others were gathered into a new chain called UNO Charter School Network.
Meanwhile the Chicago Board of Education is set to close four charter schools with low performance.
Whoever thinks that turmoil is good for children does not know much about children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can’t figure out why the public doesn’t own the charter facilities they paid for. Why would the charter school buildings be an asset to be sold to pay creditors in UNO’s bankruptcy? Why does UNO own them? The state of Illinois has no secured interest in the facilities they paid 98 million dollars to build? That can’t be right, can it? I hope they didn’t just turn 98 million dollars over to a private entity for a service.
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Chiara: I didn’t know you were such a fan of Ionesco…
“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
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To restate part of what you wrote: why is rheephorm failure rewarded with success? They get to walk away with the loot while the staffs, students, parents and their associated communities [if the last apply in this situation] are robbed literally and figuratively?
I await, probably in vain, for the shrill and strident pro-rheephorm voices on this blog to defend this sort of creative/disruptive innovation as sound pedagogical practice. *Note: I am not referring to business practices that ensure ROI, whether openly for-profit or disguised as non-profit. That’s a different discussion.*
And don’t try to pull a “Deasy” on us. You know, where rheephormsters apply a wrecking ball—from within!—to public schools/districts and then later claim that this just goes to show how public schools and their advocates are wasteful and inefficient and incompetent. This is rheephorm all the way—
Own it. Explain it. Defend it.
Otherwise your silence is compliance with the notion that corporate education reform is simply a business model that employs worst practices but masquerades as an education model superior to public schools.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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How many similar scandals have been linked/connected to Rahm Emanuel’s administration in Chicago—is anyone keeping track? Even if the legal system can’t find evidence to link Emanuel directly to these crimes, after awhile it becomes obvious to most people that Rahm is the focal point simliar to a mafia don who has all of his crimes done by subordinates and assassins.
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It’s funny because Ohio just had the big front page scandal on the charter management company who said they owned the equipment the public purchased. They demanded we buy back the property we purchased, and they won! We’re buying it twice. We bought it and gave it to them and now we’re buying it again, from them.
Who owns these schools? They’re buildings. There has to be a record owner. Is the owner UNO or a public entity?
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This post is not accurate. UNO the neighborhood organization is nearly bankrupt, yet it no longer has anything to do with the charter schools. The charter schools are run by a totally separate company, UCSN. The two organizations have been split for more than a year and don’t appear to have a very good relationship.
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Please post some links so we can get more current information if such is needed.
TYIA.
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I cannot think of anything that can be said that has not been said over and over and over again.
ONLY when the American people stand up and scream in sufficient numbers will anything change. That is why, among other things, I have learned to get behind Bernie as he has had the courage to say that and he is trying his best to get that started.
Ralph Nader tried, and still is trying to do that but he lost credibility with a lot of people when he refused to bow out in a few states which would have made a difference in the presidential election. I LOVE Nader and respect him but he lost that credibility with so very many people over that.
Hopefully Bernie can pull it off. Most do not give him a chance of getting the nomination and maybe he won’t but he sure is getting a LOT of people excited
AND
he has said and worked for the things which he is saying now for a VERY long time.
TOO
I saw something the other day. I believe it was in the Republicans pointing out the number of times that the others had missed vote, the percentages.
Bernie has missed 2% of the votes he could have cast.
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Be more careful with your reporting! The UNO Charter School network isn’t close to bankruptcy, and is no longer affiliated with UNO, the community organization that is. Only 4 campuses out of the 16 run by UNO are going to be affected.
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