Jan Resseger nails the central issue in the Chicago mayoral race: school reform. Pail Vallas tried to make the race about crime and his promise to control it. But the deciding issue was education, and their very different visions for improving it.
How do we know? Vallas has no record as a crime-fighter. He has a long resume as a school superintendent, starting in Chicago. He was the ultimate technocrat, who ruthlessly imposed his test-and-punish and school closing-choice ideology, regardless of how parents, students, and teachers felt about it.
Brandon Johnson was a social studies teacher and then a community organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. He was the antithesis of Vallas. He knew that the root of school problems was not in the schools but in the social and economic conditions in which children were growing up.
Brandon is the heir of the late, great Karen Lewis. She changed the narrative when she led a citywide strike in 2012. She organized communities and teachers. She continues to be our greatest visionary of what education should be.
How about that, Brandon!
For another account, read Chalkbeat Chicago.
Johnson’s win marks a stunning achievement in the grassroots movement started by Chicago Teachers Union leadership roughly a decade ago to focus on issues beyond the classroom, such as affordable housing, public health, environmental justice, and police reform.
“We have ushered in a new chapter in the history of our city,” Johnson said. “Whether you wake up early to open the doors of your businesses, or teach middle school, or wear a badge to protect our streets, or nurse patients in need, or provide child care services, you have always worked for this city. And now Chicago will begin to work for its people…”
Vallas, a torch bearer for school choice and charter schools who has supported voucher expansion, faced criticism and applause for his complicated schools’ legacy. Johnson taught at Jenner Academy of the Arts and Westinghouse College Prep before becoming a union organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. His education platform, which aligns closely with the teachers union, promises more staff, free transit for students, and green schools…
The CTU called Johnson a “protege” of the late former union president Karen Lewis, who almost ran for mayor herself in 2015 before being diagnosed with a brain tumor.
“You don’t have a Brandon Johnson without a Karen Lewis,” said CTU president Stacy Davis Gates said. “She transformed the political debate in our city. She showed Chicagoans how to stand up and demand what their schools and their city need and deserve. Tonight affirms Karen’s dream of a city that works for us all, not just a privileged few.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You found my funny bone with that last line, Diane.
Please reread the article, as I added to it in the last 10 minutes.
I was tempted to end with “Let’s go, Brandon” but didn’t want to mislead.
:o)
I watched an interview with Brandon Johnson on CNN and was impressed with his ability to articulate that “very different vision”. I hope that he is successful in putting some programs in place that address the systemic causes of crime in Chicago.
Johnson’s election is a hopeful sign for Chicago and the rest of the nation. Despite MAGA madness, creeping fascism and billionaires that buy political will, people can see beyond it all to what really matters, and what must matter in the country is democracy. Independent media, grassroots organizing and support from progressive politicians matter in elections, but what matters most is for people to show up to exercise their right to vote.
Any time school issues seem to rise to the surface of a political campaign, the supporters of public education win (Chicago). Any time reproductive rights are on the surface of an election, supporters of these rights win (Wisconson and Kansas).
Sometimes the good guys win– even without guns.
A blast from the past.
“Jabbertalky” (based on “Jabberwocky”,
by Lewis Carroll)
The billionaires with the usual names
Did lie and dissemble in the press:
All flimsy were Deformer claims,
And the charter rats did nest.
‘Beware the Jabbertalk, my son!
The laws that bite, the Cores that catch!
Beware the Vallas bird, and shun
The felonious charters, natch!’
He took the opt-out sword in hand:
Long time the testing foe he sought —
So rested he by the Knowledge Tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in dovish thought he stood,
The Jabbertalk, with test and VAM,
Came rifling through the teaching wood,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and
through
The Opt-out blade went snicker-snack!
He left test dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
‘And hast thou slain the Jabbertalk?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
The billionaires with the usual names
Did lie and dissemble in the press:
All flimsy were Deformer claims,
And the charter rats did nest.