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Will Mayor Emanuel Close Another 50 Schools in Chicago?

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2017 //
18

Four years ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools in one day, something that has never happened before in American history. Now, with enrollment continuing to decline, reporters Sarah Karp and Becky Vivek ask if he is likely to do it again.

They write:

“Nearly five years after shuttering a record number of under-enrolled schools, Chicago once again confronts the same stark realities: plummeting enrollment and more than 100 half-empty school buildings, most on the city’s South and West sides, according to a WBEZ analysis of school records.

“Chicago Public Schools has lost 32,000 students over the last five years, nearly the same enrollment drop as in the 10-year period leading up to the closures of 50 elementary schools in 2013. Those missing students could fill 53 average-sized Chicago schools.

“This massive enrollment decline comes as a self-imposed five-year moratorium on school closings lifts in 2018. Despite that, political observers and CPS insiders said they are not betting on Mayor Rahm Emanuel closing 50 more schools — at least not all at once.

“They say if Emanuel opts to close more schools, they hope he does it more slowly and over time. In fact, that’s already underway, despite the moratorium. Since 2013, CPS has quietly shuttered more than a dozen schools, many of them charter schools.

“The school system must announce by Dec. 1 any proposed closures for its more than 600 schools. Officials have already indicated they will recommend closing only a handful of schools for next year, the first without the moratorium.”

But they note a curious anomaly: the city has been opening new schools even as it closed existing ones:

“Since 2013, a total of 39 new schools serving 16,000 students have opened, and 29 of them serve high school students. This includes several new charter high schools and 15 alternative high schools for dropouts. Those alternative schools are mostly in neighborhoods with the most severely under-enrolled high schools.”

I asked several of my friends in Chicago what was going on. Why the drops in enrollment? Who was leaving?

Mike Klonsky, community activist, responded.

He wrote:

“Why the loss of enrollment?
“Losing about 10K students/year mostly due to huge out-migration of black and poor families. New state voucher law will only make it worse.

“Where are the kids going?
“Many to inner-ring black suburbs, to neighboring states, or back to the south.

“Is Chicago losing population?
“Yes, I call it ethnic/racial cleansing. Quarter million black people have left Chicago in past few decades. Result of deindustrialization, lack of jobs, educational opportunities, resulting rise in crime and violence, tearing down of public and low-income housing, police brutality, blighted communities. Has led to a weakening in black and progressive political power within the city.

“Which neighborhoods?
“Westside, ie Lawndale and southside,ie. Englewood. Mass school closings, opposed by the communities, plus loss of social services, mental health clinics and other medical facilities, markets, police coverage, have led to further blighting of these neighborhoods, driving out more residents.

“Loss of 100k of poorest and academically challenged students has led CPS leaders to claim statistical bump in test scores and grad rates. City leaders celebrating supposed10% drop in shootings.

“This is why it’s not enough to just oppose more school closings. Must be seen for what it is — the whitenizing of the cities, as I’ve been saying for years.”

Mike added this link about the black exodus from Chicago:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-neighborhood-demographics-are-shifting-in-chicago

Jitu Brown, director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, Read Mike Klonsky’s comment and added this response:

“I agree. This is why independent, clear political leadership is so important. The whitening of Chicago has happened on the watch of a city council that has significant African American representation. This is a national crisis, as we see a similar evacuation in cities like DC, New Orleans, Detroit, Oakland, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Cleveland.

“In the case of Chicago, families are moving to the south suburbs, believe it or not thousands have relocated to the quad cities in Iowa, and as Mike stated, back to the south. The removal of black people is not just limited to the coasts and the Midwest however. The black population in Atlanta has declined in the past 5 years. Troubling is a huge understatement.“

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm

Chicago: Teachers Barred from Teaching in Public Schools Now Teaching in Charters

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2017 //
16

In Chicago, the fabled “Dance of the Lemons” shuffles ousted public school teachers to charter schools. Wait a minute! I saw “Waiting for Superman.” I though that dance was only for all those “bad” public school teachers.

“More than 160 Chicago Public Schools employees who were barred from the district because of alleged abuse, misconduct or poor performance were found working in new jobs at city charter and contract schools last year, according to a report from the district’s inspector general.

“The list included three workers who were fired or resigned and blocked from being re-hired at CPS because of sexual abuse accusations, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. Twenty-two were put on a “Do Not Hire” list “due to improper corporal punishment or physical abuse of students,” according to the report.

“Nearly 80 others were blocked from returning to the district due to incompetence or violating school rules. That included a list of probationary teachers who were blocked from future employment at CPS because of poor performance.

“The 163 unidentified employees — 98 of them teachers — represented a small fraction of the workforce at the city’s publicly funded but independently operated charter and contract schools, the report noted.

“But Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s office also found that CPS had no system for those schools to determine if their potential employees had been blacklisted by CPS with the “Do Not Hire” designation. Despite preliminary steps taken to fix the problem, the IG’s office said CPS has not finalized a policy on how to handle such situations.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Teachers

Jennifer Berkshire: How Closing Schools Undermines Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
3

This is a podcast created by Jennifer Berkshire (the blogger formerly known as Edushyster). Her podcast is called “Have You Heard?”

In 2013, a PhD student named Sally Nuamah attended a community meeting in the Chicago neighborhood where she’d grown up and where a public school was slated for closure. Residents talked about the issue in “life or death” terms, recalls Nuamah, who has been studying the long-term impact of the school closures. In this episode, Have You Heard talks to Nuamah about one such impact: a decline in voter participation and support for Democrats. Why would shuttering schools cause a drop in political engagement? And why would local residents fight so hard to keep open schools that, according to many metrics, were failing? Well, you’ll just have to listen and find out! To learn more about Nuamah’s work, visit her website.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools

Dark Money in Education: Stand for Children Edition

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2017 //
10

Maurice Cunningham, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, is an expert on the infusion of Dark Money into education.

He wrote several articles about the millions of dollars that poured into Massachusetts to promote the referendum to increase the number of charter schools in November 2016.

This article is about a Dark Money passthrough called Stand for Children, which began its life as a pro-public school group but turned into a pro-Privatization, anti-union, anti-teacher organization. It highlights the role of Stand for Children in Massachusetts. It does not explore its national activities, where it plays a pernicious part in the attack on public schools, unions, and teachers.

http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2017/10/6/your-dark-money-reader-special-edition-stand-children/

Those who remember the early days of SFC now call it “Stand ON Children.”

It has funneled money to corporate reform candidates in cities from Nashville to Denver. It tried to squelch the Chicago Teachers Union by buying up all the top lobbyists in Illinois. It has funded anti-union, anti-teacher campaigns.

It pretends to be a “civil rights” organization. It is not.

Categories Boston, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nashville, Privatization, Stand for Children, Teachers, Unions

Billionaire Penny Pritzker Will Join Microsoft Board of Directors

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
12

Penny Pritzker is an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune.

Rahm Emanuel appointed her to the Chicago Board of Education.

Obama appointed her as Secretary of Commerce.

Politico reported that she has been invited to join the board of directors of Microsoft. Board members have light duties and are paid $325,000 a year.

Please watch this video, where Chicago public school parent Matt Farmer put Penny Pritzker on trial in absentia for her indifference to the children of Chicago.

Categories Billionaires, Chicago, Education Reform

The Curious Connection Between Paul Vallas and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, as Told by Dan Mihapolous and Mike Klonsky

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2017 //
5

Conservative Republican Bruce Rauner appointed Democrat Paul Vallas to run financially troubled Chicago State University, at a handsome salary of $200,000 a year.

Dan Mihalopoulos of the Chicago Sun-Times explains that Vallas and Rauner have a long history together.

Vallas is a Rahm Emanuel style Democrat who loves privatization. Vallas is not an educator. He is a numbers cruncher. After a stint as superintendent in Chicago, he was hired to take over fiscally troubled Philadelphia schools. He launched the biggest experiment in Philly ever tried in any city. It failed, but no matter. He went to New Orleans, where he had a free hand to privatize almost every school. He was hired to run the Bridgeport schools but had to leave Connecticut when critics argued that he lacked the credentials to be a superintendent in Connecticut and won in court. At one point, he ran with Governor Pat Quinn as his Lt. Gov., but they lost to Rauner.

Vallas tried to persuade private citizen Rauner to invest in his consulting business, but Rauner didn’t go for it.

“Vallas and Rauner go back years before that election, and Vallas once even offered Rauner a chance to invest in his education consulting company, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

“Nearly seven years ago — when Rauner wasn’t yet a politician, just a wealthy private investor with an interest in public education and a friend in the mayor’s office — Vallas corresponded with and met with him, offering to help create what he described as an “ambitious new school district” in Chicago.

“In three letters to Rauner in 2010 and 2011, Vallas offered to work with Rauner and city officials. Vallas said that school “buildings would be provided to the charters at no cost.”

“Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago,” Vallas wrote to Rauner in February 2011, when Vallas was the top schools official in New Orleans.

“Vallas — who’d head the Chicago Public Schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley from 1995 until 2001 — also asked Rauner to invest in his education consulting company, the Vallas Group, according to copies of the correspondence obtained by the Sun-Times.

“You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest,” Vallas told Rauner. “Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.”

Mike Klonsky writes that Paul Vallas was one of the first people to see the entrepreneurial side of school reform.

He writes:

“Paul Vallas was never an educator, but he was a quick study. He learned from the start of his stint as Mayor Daley’s schools CEO in 1995, the power of government contracting and that there was good money to be made in the school reform business. He also came to believe that the future of school reform belonged not to the system’s bureaucrats, but to the outsider corporate reformers, wealthy, powerful, self-interested billionaires and outside consultants who they patronized.

“After Daley gave him the boot from Chicago and through a series of unremarkable stints as district school chiefs in Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Vallas assembled a team of loyalists (mostly former Chicago school bureaucrats) and developed a strategy for injecting himself and his brand into struggling urban school districts, in order to do “the greater good”. The game plan involved using political clout to place his lieutenants into power in selected districts and in return, having them bring in the big-ticket Vallas Group to “reform” district schools from the top-down. It also included a heavy dose of replacing public schools with privately-run charters and weakening or completely eliminating union collective-bargaining agreements.

“It was a plan that included perks and kick-backs to district leaders as in the case of former Vallas partner Gary Solomon, who along with former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is now doing heavy prison time on fraud and corruption charges in the Chicago SUPES scandal.

“Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy and worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates, the consulting company founded by Vallas and Solomon. Vallas not only hired Solomon and his companies when he worked in Philadelphia, but brought Solomon with him to New Orleans…

“Actually BBB’s “vision” was Gary Solomon’s vision and Solomon’s vision was Vallas’. Same dreams but different beds. Solomon’s consulting company advertised that it had “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model of education reform.” In Philadelphia, he marketed the consulting company as using the “Paul Vallas method of school reform.”

“In Chicago, Solomon used his former partner’s strategy of installing BBB as schools CEO and then kicking-back to her after she gave SUPES and $20M contract to do principal training.

“Solomon later said he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

“But Vallas had used a similar approach in Rockford, St. Louis, Philly, Rochester, Peoria and other districts and greased the wheels for the Synesi group. Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011.

“Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up.”

“He’s right and this says a lot about our justice system and media’s reluctance to make the connection.”

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Categories Accountability, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Chicago: Special Education Funding Goes to the Whitest Schools

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2017 //
31

The Chicago Principals and Administrators Association examined district data and made a stunning discovery. The ten schools with the highest proportion of white students received over $1 million in special education funding. The ten schools with the lowest percentage of white students received $0 in special education funding.

The Association is not proposing to take money away from the schools that currently receive it. Instead, they ask that all schools receive the funding they need for students with disabilities.

Troy LaRaviere, president of the Association, writes:

The racially discriminatory behaviors of the Emanuel appointees at CPS uncovered in our analysis are profoundly disturbing. However I want to make it clear that although this report highlights disparities between resources allocated to schools serving white students and those serving black and brown students, this is not a call for people of color to protest the resources given to white students; it is a call for all people of good conscience – regardless of race and ethnicity – to voice our profound discontent with the race and class based decision-making of the Mayor’s appointees at Chicago Public Schools: In addition, the woefully inadequate base funding that created the need for the appeals process is depriving all schools of critical resources they needed to develop the full human potential of their students because it pits schools against one another to beg for a share of an artificially low pool of funds.

To say it more directly, majority white schools like Mount Greenwood and Edison Park should not be the targets of our discontent. On the contrary, it is my hope that the majority white community of Mount Greenwood will express its outrage at the denial of resources for majority black schools like Mount Vernon, and that the families at a majority white school like Edison Park will voice their discontent with the abject neglect with which CPS treats majority Hispanic schools like Hanson Park.

We must not let our political leaders pit us against one another. We must not let them set us up to fight over the scraps they throw behind for our children after doling out multi-million dollar contracts, tax breaks, and interest payments to the profit driven selfish corporate interests they serve. We must see our common destiny as families of Chicago and work to build a city and public school system that invests in the realization of the potential of every single child.

Categories Chicago, Funding, Special Education

Chicago: Emails Suggest Rahm Emanuel is Open to Considering a Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2017 //
39

Rahm Emanuel is considering a voucher program for Chicago.

This may–or may not–seem surprising but when I read this, I remembered the only time I met Rahm Emanuel. I was invited to the White House in 2010 to meet with President Obama’s Domestic Policy Advisor, Melody Barnes, his education advisor, Roberto Rodriguez, and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. They wanted to get my reaction to the Common Core standards and their $1 billion proposal for merit pay. I was totally opposed to merit pay because, I told them, it had failed repeatedly for a century. As to the Common Core standards, I suggested that they offer grants to three or five states to try it before imposing it on the entire nation. Find out if it helps narrow the achievement gap or widens it. Learn how it works. They were not interested in my suggestions because they wanted the Common Core in place before the 2012 elections.

Rahm Emanuel was rude. He said he had one question for me: Why do Catholic schools perform better than public schools and should we do anything to help them? I tried to explain the differences between private schools and public schools to him. Whatever I said to him didn’t interest him, and he left the meeting early, letting me know that he had better things to do with his time.

That meeting came back to me when I read that he was open to the idea of vouchers. If nothing else happens in Chicago, Emanuel will go down in history as the only mayor in the United States to close 50 public schools in a single day. One thing is certain about Rahm Emanuel: He has no interest in improving public schools and no hesitation closing them and replacing them with private alternatives.

A recently released cache of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s private emails reveals he had been open to discussing a controversial voucher-like program that could divert millions of taxpayer dollars to private schools.

The release of an April email exchange with Cardinal Blase Cupich about such a program being floated by the Trump administration comes as state lawmakers continue closed-door negotiations over how to fund public schools across the state. The impasse over school funding threatens the delivery of nearly all state education money weeks before the start of a new school year.

WBEZ has learned the discussions among lawmakers include the kind of tax credit scholarship program Cupich had emailed the mayor about this spring. The state-level proposal could divert up to $100 million in state tax revenue to special funds that would help families pay for private school tuition, or help send their children to a public schools outside their home districts.

When asked if the mayor would support an education tax credit program in Illinois, mayoral spokesman Adam Collins said Emanuel “has been clear publicly that his priority is the state’s education funding formula.”

In Cupich’s email exchange with Emanuel, the cardinal referenced U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ push to expand private school choice by creating a federal education tax credit program.

The Trump administration hasn’t released specific details, but the idea is to give tax credits to anyone donating to a fund that would allow eligible students to attend a private school of their choosing. The same concept is now being discussed by Illinois lawmakers in the negotiations to overhaul public school funding across the state.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Chicago, Emanuel, Rahm, Vouchers

Mike Klonsky: Rahm Emanuel Will Lay Off Nearly 1,000 Staff in Chicago

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2017 //
9

Mike Klonsky reports that Mayor Rahm Emanuel intends to lay off nearly 1,000 staff, including 350 teachers.

The Chicago Teachers Union responded:

Once again, Mayor Emanuel has topped Governor Rauner’s ruthlessness towards Chicago’s public school students with his own savage, short-sighted response, by further stripping to the bone schools that he’s forced to function in a climate of civic abandonment and the violence that his neglect has caused. — CTU Blog

Mike Klonsky writes:

“Yes, it’s true that the lion’s share of the blame for the devastation of public education now taking place statewide, falls on our sociopathic Republican Gov. Rauner who just last week, vetoed the emergency school-funding bill. Then there’s a Democratic-Party-dominated legislature, has long been gutless when it comes to making the state’s wealthiest shoulder their fair share of the tax burden.

“But when it comes to racist duplicity, the buck stops at the fifth floor of City Hall. Why? Because this latest round of cuts, which hits hardest at predominantly African-American and Latino high school students, comes on the heels of Rahm Emanuel’s plan to make it more difficult for city students to receive their hard-earned high school diplomas.

“The mayor mandates that kids without a job offer or college acceptance can no longer graduate from high school. There’s an exception to the new rule. Enlisting in the military can fulfill the graduation requirement which could make CPS the nation’s number-one military recruiter of black and brown youth.

“Yesterday’s layoff of hundreds of staff, follows last year’s round of layoffs of 1,000 teachers and staff, including counselors, and will condemn that many more students to academic failure and loss of future college and job prospects. They’re losing the very support network needed to help them fulfill the new mandates.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Teachers

Illinois: Join the Protest at Gov. Rauner’s Home!

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
10

MEDIA ALERT: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

“SB1 IS NOT A CPS BAILOUT!”
CPS Parents and Students Cry Foul on Rauner’s False Rhetoric and SB1 Veto

Protesters Descend on Gov’s Neighborhood with $6.9 Billion Collection Notice

WHAT: CPS parents and students respond to Governor Rauner’s veto of SB1

WHERE: Governor Rauner’s block: 720 Rosewood Ave, Winnetka, IL

DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 2017

TIME: 10:00 am start

Chicago Public School (CPS) parents and students will gather at Governor Rauner’s house to reject his veto of SB1 and to present a collection notice to him for $6.9 Billion in unpaid pension payments to CPS.

Parents and students will bring attention to Governor Rauner’s false statement that SB1 is a Chicago ‘bailout,’ by pointing out that the state has for years failed to pay billions in dollars due to Chicago for pension support.

Raise Your Hand Action (RYHA) has determined that the state failed to pay at least $6.9B in payments to Chicago Public Schools that they intended to pay according to statute 40 ILCS 5/17-127, item B. Under this standard, and according to information from TRS’ annual reports, the state should have paid a total of between $6.9B and $10.3B to CPS for pensions since 1995.

The group will also canvass in the Governor’s neighborhood, sharing facts about the lack of pension parity for CPS, which contributes greatly to the plight of Chicago children, who attend one of the most financially-disadvantaged districts in the country, just miles from some of the most well-funded schools in the US, those in Rauner’s hometown.

Chicago is not asking for additional taxes or extra money, just its fair share of what the state already allocates to schools. SB1 was designed using recommendations from Rauner’s hand-picked panel to do just that.

The Better Government Association (BGA) conducted an analysis this week and found Governor Rauner’s claim regarding the pension ‘bailout’ language to be false because “it [SB1] only gives CPS what every other school district already has.” It now seems that Rauner would rather demonize CPS than see schools open on time or provide the fair resource allocation that will give kids a chance.

Back of the Yards College Prep High School student Veronica Rodriguez says, “To stop the rise in violence in our communities, we need investment in our schools. We need counselors, teachers and afterschool programs. I need the governor to stop playing politics with my future.”

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Education Reform, Funding
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