Forrest Claypool, Still A Liar

Sun Times, August 10, 2015: 

"CPS already had announced $200 million in spending cuts, including $1 million in cuts from schools CEO Forrest Claypool’s executive office."

“Our goal is to protect pensions and to protect the classroom,” Claypool said during a conference call Monday morning. “To do that, it means everybody’s got to pitch in.”

Sun Times, August 11, 2015:

"In what’s likely to be a blueprint of his plan for the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool will announce Wednesday that the district will no longer pick up pension contributions for its nonunion central office employees."

The pension flip-flop didn't take long. What about the $1M in cuts from the CEO's office?

Tribune, August 21, 2015:

"Chicago Public Schools chief Forrest Claypool has hired another of his former staff members from the CTA, this time an executive charged with oversight of the district's financial operations.

Ronald DeNard, formerly the CTA's chief financial officer, joins CPS on Friday as senior vice president of finance, according to an email Claypool distributed Thursday.

Each of the district's finance-related divisions will report to DeNard, Claypool said in the email. Those responsibilities were previously handled by Chief Administrative Officer Tim Cawley."

Oversight of the district's financial operations? Ginger Ostro, Chief Financial Officer, would be the person who oversees the district's finances. One would assume DeNard will collect a similar $205,000 salary that he earned at the CTA to take up space in CPS management.

If it sounds like Tim Cawley is out the door, don't get too excited. He'll continue his accounting and contractual fuck-ups with seven other departments he oversees:

"Cawley, a former Motorola executive hired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011, will continue to supervise seven other administrative departments, according to Claypool's email...Cawley, who is paid $215,000 a year, oversees areas including facilities, food services and technology."

The other CTA hangers-on coming over to CPS:

• Doug Kucia - Claypool's Chief of Staff
• Andrell Holloway - Supervisor of Internal Audits
• Hal Woods - Portfolio Planning and Strategy Director

Six-figure bureaucrats moving from one city organization to another isn't "pitching in." If each of these managers will make a comparable salary at CPS, that's $800,000 back of the $1M cuts Claypool was crowing about ten days ago.

Once again, Forrest, you may think teachers are idiots, but we're not.

Rahm Emanuel: Out To Lunch

Bronzeville parents, activists, and educators are on day four day nine day 10 of a hunger strike to get a meeting with the Board of Ed, along with a vote on August 26th, for their idea for a revamped program at Dyett High School. There has been no public response from Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool, or any member of the Board of Education. While the hunger strikers are going without food to simply get a meeting about their neighborhood school, WCT thought we'd take a look at some of Rahm's favorite places to chow down:

• Lula Cafe, located in a trendy neighborhood populated by Chicago educational profiteers, is described as farm-to-table, funky, and eclectic. This spot offers crushed beets ($8), duck breast ($29), and poached salmon ($28). Simply bobo!

• Naha, in chic River North, is praised for having nuanced and imaginative food. Today's menu offers foie gras with a "tarte tatin" of roasted pineapple, shallot, fennel, and mountain huckleberries ($28) as well as a ribeye of beef with a fondant of "Rose Finn" potatoes ($58). Bon appetit!

• Mastro's Steakhouse, just around the corner from Naha, offers huge martinis and impeccable service. You can order up twin Lobster tails ($68) and a 48 oz. Porterhouse ($99). Cha-ching!

• Chicago's Home of Chicken and Waffles, in ignored Bronzeville, is visited only during election season to court minority votes. Here, you can get various combinations of chicken and waffles with the most expensive item going for $15.50. Great for that political cameo!

Maybe Rahm will dine at one of these spots this week with Forrest Claypool or Garry McCarthy to discuss the too-late statement they will make expressing outrage over the 5 CPS students shot on Monday or exactly how long they'll let the hunger strike continue before giving Bronzeville community members a fucking meeting.

The Blame Game: CPS edition

In a sparsely attended Chicago Public Schools budget hearing tonight at Malcolm X College, about twenty speakers addressed funding questions to BOE VP Jesse Ruiz and CPS chiefs Ginger Ostro and Dr. Markay Winston. Assorted other CPS bureaucrats shared the stage, but they did nothing but nod or smile when appropriate. Tonight's theme: blame Springfield! Lack of pension parity? Springfield. Cuts to Special Education? Springfield. Decreased funding for CPS? Springfield.

Bruce Rauner likely doesn't know or care that all fingers are pointing at him as he had a grand old time at the Illinois State Fair today. To prove he has the biggest stones (and checkbook) of anyone, he purchased a prize steer at auction for $61,000. Then, he moseyed over to the dairy barn to get himself a raspberry milkshake! It sure must be hard work trying to bust unions and implode public education, but you'd never know it from his insipid grin.

Something else Bruce Rauner doesn't know or care about: the families who are already bracing for the impact of CPS budget cuts. In particular, families who send their kids to Jackie Vaughn Occupational High School were vocal about the loss of 23 paraprofessionals and 5 teachers at this school which serves the needs of 208 students with cognitive and developmental disabilities. While $61,000 is a drop in the bucket for Rauner, students who attend Vaughn will be hard-pressed to earn this much in the workforce. A 2014 article notes that only 11% of people with a cognitive disability work full-time, while 33% live in poverty.

Some of the more pointed remarks Vaughn parents directed to the coterie of assembled CPS brass:

• Do any of you have a child with disabilities?
• How would you feel if you had a blind child going down stairs at school without an aide?
• Have you visited Vaughn? You'd be pleased and proud.
• I'm pleading to your humanity to stop cutting to the bone, we're the bone.
• I want my child to be able to fill out a job application and be productive.

One woman, a 33 year old single mother, spoke with a trembling voice and begged to have some positions restored at the school. Her son, she said, is 16 years old with Cerebral Palsy and she equated the slated cuts to limiting her son's life.  After this, all Dr. Winston could guarantee was that one position at Vaughn has been restored.

Tomorrow will likely bring another round of dire warnings, finger-pointing, and tough talk. Meanwhile, Bruce Rauner will continue living out his State Fair dreams as parents and students appear to be the unfortunate losers in this blame game.

Concede, Teacher Pigs! Part 2

In today's installment of teachers better make some fucking concessions, Bruce Rauner picks up where Forrest Claypool left off. We learn:

• Rauner is selling faulty idea that the CTU is a dictatorship and controls everyone from the mayor to the mayoral appointed School Board and is responsible for the financial malfeasance of Chicago politicians. Rauner:  “The power of the teachers union has been overwhelming. Chicago has given and given and given. It’s created a financial crisis that the Chicago schools face now...” Unlike Bruce Rauner, the CTU can't issue Executive Orders rescinding laws, as Rauner did 10 weeks into his term.  Maybe Rauner was at his wine club when Mayor Daley issued pension holidays to divert the funds.

• Rauner finds the notion of destroying teachers' unions and all public-sector unions empowering. Rauner, "We believe the right answer is to empower the people of Chicago, the voters, the mayor...should be enabled to decide what gets collectively bargained." Wisconsin residents likely don't find it empowering that dismantling unions has meant lower median incomes and average earnings growth.

• Rauner sees no value in students who attend our schools as he talks about the benefits of outsourcing (i.e., firing everyone's union ass) to save money. No doubt he's ensured TFA's contract is paid-in-full so a steady stream of replacements are at the ready.

Online comments continue to show Rauner and Rahm's highly effective manipulation of the media and public perception continues:

• "It is those CTU thugs that have failed children."
• "Amend the constitution to eliminate those outrageous pensions."
• "Entitlement! Give me more than I've rightfully earned! Screw everyone else, I want mine!"
• "Too bad we can't eviscerate the CTU...they're all corrupt, inefficient, radical leftists anyway."

Thugs! Outrageous pensions! Entitled leftists! Yes, everyone still fully on board with Plan A: concede, swine.

CPS's Acute Case of Confusion Concern

According to Transparency International, "As a principle, public officials, civil servants, the managers and directors of companies and organisations, and board trustees have a duty to act visibly, predictably and understandably to promote participation and accountability and allow third parties to easily perceive what actions are being performed." Right on! 

**

You might wonder what the principle of transparency has to do with anything, at least in Chicago. A reader emailed to let us know our links to the CPS Supplier Reports were not working. Sure enough, there's not one CPS Supplier Report to be found online. These reports list listed awards to vendors not found in the Contract Award Report. WCT enjoyed browsing the vendors in the Suppliers Doing Business with the Chicago Public Schools Report because it was a clear list of how much money was going to which profiteer, kick-back artist, and scammer cashing in on CPS and taxpayers. Thanks to such reports, it was obvious who the biggest and best shakedown artists infiltrating CPS were. 

Let's time travel, reader. In 2011 Rahm Emanuel made a transparency pledge to, "...make the city government more accessible to everybody," and, "to create the most open, accountable, and transparent government the City of Chicago has ever seen." Ironically, any evidence of Emanuel speaking these words has been removed from the internet, so WCT has to rely on references to this statement. WCT also assumes the transparency pledge was strictly a first-term pledge.

In a February 2012 Tribune interview, Rahm Emanuel used some form of the word transparent 19 times. A sample:

" I did talk about transparency and I feel — to what I said — I am achieving it. Achieving, not achieved. And I don't put any period at the end of the sentence. This is only nine months into it [Emanuel administration], but there is no doubt given the backlog of potentiality from a transparency standpoint, I am making government information available, I am making sure people have access to it, I am bringing back a level of trust."

**

Let's see where Rahm's "backlog of potentiality from a transparency standpoint" has brought us. In August 2015 the city finances are shredded, Chicago Public Schools in disarray, and pensions disappeared. Residents would like to know exactly how the city has accrued such a sizable debt, where the money went, and why it keeps going. Documents, like the Supplier Report, while maddening to read, clearly show whose pockets are getting lined. 

Harkeing back to Rahm's transparency pledge, WCT emailed the CPS Purchasing Department inquiring about the missing reports.

The legalese response: "This report used to be required by a city ordinance, but that ordinance was repealed and the report is no longer legally required.  We actually took the link down from the website quite a while ago after the ordinance was repealed, but we learned recently that the direct link still worked, even though the data was stale or incorrect.  We recently have removed the old file to eliminate the confusion, as it was not accurate." 

Accuracy! Obeying the law! Non-confusion! Suddenly, City Hall and CPS have taken it upon themselves to not confuse people who are seeking day-ta, stale as it might be. Yes, let's remove the information so nobody is confused. Let's get all revisionist and hide information, substituting one piece of nonsense for another. God forbid anybody know anything in case they ask questions or attempt to hold the people doling out the money accountable. 

This must be an acute onset of Confusion Concern, as there is a long history of Chicago's confusion-inducing decisions:

October 16, 2009 headline: Calendar confusion--Or Citywide Chaos

May 23, 2013 headline: Confusion follows CPS school closing decision

February 24, 2015 headline: Confusion continues over standardized-testing in Chicago

May 24, 2015 headline: CPS forgot 22 schools in estimate for Aramark at a cost of $7M

Fortunately, for those of us who don't mind being confused, the internet is crawled frequently and pages cached (saved). As our Thought Partners would chirp, "daaay-ta!" Here are the cached Supplier Reports (copy and paste into browser) so you may be predictably, visibly, and understandably angered:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150402185313/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2015.xml

http://web.archive.org/web/20150402182046/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2014.xml

http://web.archive.org/web/20150530200734/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2013.xml

http://web.archive.org/web/20141111132437/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2012.xml

http://web.archive.org/web/20120107043404/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2011.xml

Cha-ching!

        Graphic credit: Chicago Tribune, July 25, 2015

Wow! A big WCT shout out to the financial geniuses at the City of Chicago who've accrued $1,052,300,000.00 in fees, settlements, and bad investments.

The Tribune alerts residents to the slew of new taxes and fees they can expect to pay for such gross mismanagement. At the same time, hedge-fundies have also been alerted to this "lucrative" debt and have invested more in Chicago's debt because of the city's ability to raise revenue and cut expenses. This is Newspeak for increase taxes and reduce services for residents.

Chicago, known for record-breaking violence, is now also known for record-breaking interest rates on bond offerings, an apparently unheard of 5.69%.

We're counting down to see when city unions get blamed for this.

Truth Alert!

It's happened again readers, our newspapers are publishing items that reveal some truths about the lives that many students who go to CPS experience.

Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington writes:

In a new published study, Dr. Bell and a colleague examined 611 patients at a family medical clinic on the South Side. They identified 237 as "having profiles consistent with neurobehavioral disorders associated with prenatal alcohol exposure." That's 39%.

Washington goes on to report the additional findings by Dr. Bell and his colleagues. Those affected by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome often have explosive tempers, bad judgement, and "they are doing stuff that doesn't make sense. Explosive violence."

Some other unpleasant realities that Dr. Bell has observed:

• Black communities are saturated with liquor stores.
• Black women have high rates of unplanned pregnancies.
• Women drink unknowingly during pregnancy.
• Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome often go undiagnosed.

As Washington points out, these observations are difficult to hear, but a place to start. This would also be a problem which could be described as systemic, intractable, and an issue which contributes to the generational poverty urban students experience. 

These students are likely also some of the same who experience violence on a regular basis. Despite students with explosive tempers, impulsivity, and poor judgement, these students are expected to sit through hours of tests, and additional reform-y hoops as put forth by CPS.

 WCT wonders where in Noble Street's mission of, "scholarship, discipline, and honor...to lead exemplary lives and serve as a catalyst for education reform in Chicago," the school addresses this. Wait, they don't. Neighborhood schools, currently starved of resources and funding, are expected to not only address issues like these, but reverse them.

Gary Solomon: B3's Babysitter

It's amazing what happens when reporters are able to investigate stories instead of reviewing Bruce Rauner's talking points for inclusion in any and all editorials. Such is the case with the excellent investigations the Sun-Times continues into the ceaseless connections between City Hall and its contractors. In this week's installment, readers  learn about Gary Solomon: SUPES CEO and B3 "conduit." 

Solomon's emails to Beth Swanson, Emanuel's then-deputy chief of staff for education issues were so frequent that Swanson described him in an interview Friday as, "Barbara Byrd-Bennett's conduit--an extension of her team who pushed for her hiring."

Conduit seems like a polite word for someone who, according to the article, complained on B3's behalf that she was kept out after midnight by high-ranking CPS officials (waah!), lobbied the Mayor's office for her "Wish List" (all charters please!), and negotiated how exactly how many days B3 could be counted on to be physically present in the district (zero!) though she would be serving as the CEO. Aside from k being a "serial networker who emailed constantly," Solomon served as nanny-in-chief for Triple B.

Solomon's judgement is questionable--and kickback likely steep--for him to proclaim Bennett would "nail" the top post in CPS. She nailed it, right out of the district and into a Federal investigation as a result of SUPES. Chicago taxpayers and anyone employed by CPS is still getting nailed thanks to the $20.5M contract Bennett and Solomon are now infamous for.

CPS officials, when asked about the glaring conflicts, answered with variations on the theme of huh?

Truth Time

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Happy Independence Day!

"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers." 

-Aristotle

Rahm's Pension Wizardry

As Bozo Show fans from way back, WCT immediately thought of Wizzo the Wizard when we read about Rahm Emanuel's latest pension follies. Wizzo did card tricks, magic tricks, and used sleights of hand to entertain thousands of children. He would do all of this while saying do-di-do-di-do and waving his fingers right before the big payoff. Rahm Emanuel, just a day after funding the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, directed the city's new CFO to ask for $500M of the $634M back. Now you have it, now you don't. Magic! 

Maybe Rahm and Chicago's CFO Carole Brown were looking at spreadsheets saying, "do-di-do-di-do," as they hit upon the idea to ask for 78% of the pension payment back. Brown called the request a, "big ask." We'd call it another accounting scam, but okay. Brown's wizardry continued as she used words like "cash-flow relief" and "assumed actuarial return." You can almost see her waving her fingers and saying "do-di-do-di-do" to Charles Burbridge, the CTPF's executive director, as she explained the details of her big ask.

In the fine print of Rahm's pension proposals, he suggests combining CTPF with the state's pension fund for more equity. The writers at International Business Times detected a sleight of hand with this change, too: 

What the mayor did not say is that the initiative could end up shifting billions into a fund whose portfolio is run, in part, by Grosvenor Capital and Madison Dearborn Partners, two firms whose executives have together given over $4 million to the mayor's campaigns and affiliated PACs. That includes over $2.7 million from Grosvenor CEO Michael Sacks and his wife, Cari. Sacks has been called Emanuel’s “fixer” and “go-to guy;” he was appointed by Emanuel to serve as vice chairman of World Business Chicago, an economic development group that Emanuel chairs.

The IB Times also notes that, "In fiscal year 2014, Grovesnor collected over $3.2M in fees from the state's Teachers Retirement System, and Madison Dearborn Partners over $370,000." Cha-ching!

Today's 3 part trick is as follows: 1) Take back 78% of a payment you just made, 2) Suggest combining pension funds under the guise of equity, and 3) Make sure to further enrich hedge fund pals and campaign donors in the process. Yes, and don't forget to go full-tilt Wizzo and finish with a flourish and the signature, "do-di-do-di-do" so we know when the trick's over.

Here A Cut, There A Cut

Photo credit: WBEZ

WBEZ posted this memo from CPS to their Twitter feed today.

While WCT does not have the benefit of 9 data strategists at our disposal, here are some "takeaways" (admin-speak for conclusions) from this release:

*Two groups of schools are virtually untouched: magnet schools (save for how students are transported to and from) and selective enrollment schools. How plutocratic that the best resourced schools--like the kind Governor Rauner clouted his kid into--get to stay that way. 

*Neighborhood and elementary schools seem to be disproportionately affected since they often have a greater need for Special Ed services. 

*Newspeak alert: the the Orwellian terms "transform" and "rightsizing" are used to explain how Special Ed services will be delivered.

*Funding has also been cut for turnaround schools--those schools whose entire staff has been fired because of chronically low performance--which is at odds with providing resources to help failing schools improve their performance.

*Hope everyone puts a toolkit and plunger on their back-to-school shopping list as many repairs in buildings will suddenly be D.I.Y. thanks to a 25% reduction in repair and maintenance. What's a botched $260 Aramark contract between friends, especially now that engineers will be shared.

Rahm, ever the steadfast blowhard, says he does not regret his decision to close 50 schools. Clearly. He's making fast moves to put schools into such turmoil, collapse, and chaos that he will get free reign to do just what his buddy Ken Griffin suggested: close 125.

CPS Waste, Exhibit C: Charter Payments [Update]

While the political stalemate drags on in Springfield between Mike Madigan, Rahm Emanuel, and Bruce Rauner, CPS's fate hangs in the balance. No matter the outcome, increasingly toxic comments will populate every article written about CPS, which boil down to: 1) teachers are greed crazed loons, 2) let the greedy bastards go bankrupt, and 3) fire all the greedy, lazy teachers.

At no point during this time has there been any discussion of what suppliers are doing business with Chicago and how much they're getting paid. 

Here are some payment highlights from the FY 2015 report (this report is no longer online, but a cached version can be viewed by cutting and pasting this link into your browser: http://web.archive.org/web/20150402185313/http://www.csc.cps.k12.il.us/purchasing/supplier_report_2015.xml).

Noble Street Charter School:                              $111,428,107.00

Chicago Charter School Foundation (CICS):         $88,695,497.00

UNO Charter School Network:                              $79,868,697.00

Youth Connection Charter School (YCCS):            $47,987,585.00

LEARN Charter School:                                        $28,308,409.00

Perspectives Charter School:                                $22,617,774.00                          

University of Chicago Charter School Corp.:          $16,637,216.00

Urban Prep Academies:                                       $13,332,826.00 

KIPP Chicago Schools:                                       $10,015,987.00

North Lawndale Charter School:                           $8,762,081.00

Chicago Virtual Charter School:                             $7,362,227.00

Concept Schools:                                                 $7,247,686.00

Total payments to listed schools:                     $442,264,142.00

Total overdue pension payment:                      $634,000,000.00

Payments to charters as % of overdue pension payment:  70%

Projected layoffs as a result of pension payment:  1,400 employees

This doesn't include payments to any charter raking in less than $5M, assorted other profiteers who are consultants, or various small-time kickback artists. 

This yearly spending is 70% of the overdue pension payment. It should be noted that as of April 2015 there are 13,000 empty charter seats.

Where are the calls for mass closures, investigations into who the money is really going to, and the accusations of the greed crazed loonies running these schools? In short, why is this spending going unchecked, while a constitutional obligation like a pension payment is suddenly debatable?

Update: Rahm Emanuel dutifully funded the pension obligation and directed more money to buddy Ken Griffin whose company, Citadel, manages a portion of CTU's pension. As a result, Emanuel projects 1,400 employees will lose their jobs with CPS.

The above questions still apply, and questions about mass closures and greed crazed loonies running our schools now apply directly to Jesse Ruiz and Rahm Emanuel. Their Wednesday press conference to explain exactly how all this happened will likely be an Orwellian display of epic proportions.

CPS Waste, Exhibit A: The Talent Office

While the media's solution to everything CPS revolves around: 1) declaring bankruptcy or 2) massive layoffs of the teaching and support staff in schools, we humbly suggest all reporters examine the CPS Talent Office (Newspeak for HR) for some possible places to save money.

According to their own website they have no accomplishments to date.

For a department that doesn't hide their uselessness, they are certainly well staffed. 

We took a "deep dive into the data," as our Thought Partners are wont to say and discovered the following:

• 4 Broad Center residents on staff at $95,000 each. The Broad Center bills itself as tran$formative by pushing for charter expansion and merit pay. Broadies actively perpetuate the notion that urban school systems can only succeed by removing the teaching staff and replacing them with disruptive leaders from outside the education field.

• An Orwellian Education Pioneer Analyst fellow apparently on staff to explore the uncharted territory of data as a profiteering mechanism. The Education Pioneers have investors from the plutocrat hall-of-fame including: the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation and a donor from Chicago named Anonymous (Bruce Rauner or Ken Griffin is that you?)

• Numerous Talent Generalists, Talent Specialists, and Executive Directors who collect 6-figure salaries.

• Managers of managers of managers who oversee the up-and-coming profiteers earning close to 6 figures.

Potential candidates report months long waits for returned calls, convoluted steps in the hiring process, and no answers to questions.  Clearly, the Talent Office is hard at work ignoring qualified candidates and soliciting those who only see teaching as a stepping stone on the way to something better. This tidily continues the urban district-as-failure myth (No qualified candidates, better privatize!) whilst lining the pockets of numerous profiteers.

Tribune Crusades for Rahm. Again.

The Tribune's monthly quota of articles that begin to frankly address the problems of the urban poor must be exactly three (lead poisoning, poverty, and corruption). Or, maybe now that Rahm Emanuel's Blackhawks bromance is waning, his lackeys are back on high alert for anything less than glowing written about Emanuel's management of Chicago. Whatever the reason, the Tribune's hot streak of truth-telling comes to a screeching halt with Monday's editorial posting (paywalled) that is a direct response to the CTU's charge that CPS is broke on purpose.

The Editorial Board helpfully reminds readers, "The value in the stark report prepared for CPS by Ernst & Young is that the firm has great credibility. The report, released over the last few days, underscores that this is not a manufactured crisis. It is real; it is happening now."

The CTU never said it was not real, they've simply outlined--ad nauseam--the many repeated missteps that Mayor Daley and David Vitale, among others, have taken along the way to ensure a crisis. Toxic debt swaps? Check. Rampant cronyism? Check. An open checkbook to any and all but traditional schools? Check. Fat checks to charter operators and opportunists? Check and check.

The Tribune dutifully points to Ernst & Young's claim (a week before the CTU contract expires) that, " 'CPS teachers are well remunerated compared to their peers in other large US/Midwest school districts.' " This, despite the 2012 report by arbitrator Edwin Benn that suggested pay be commensurate with increased work.

The Editorial Board further carries the mayor's water by suggesting that CPS seek bankruptcy authorization, "No one would relish a bankruptcy declaration; the repercussions would be difficult to predict. But the Illinois General Assembly needs to pass legislation to allow that, just in case." Needless to say the charter operators who are already making a windfall of profits would relish such bankruptcy proceedings so they can gleefully continue to make private a public good.

The writers plant a nice wet one right on Rahm's ass when they can't even be bothered to suggest getting rid of David Vitale or suing the rubber stamp Board of Education for orchestrating the tidal wave of financial malfeasance the families, students, and teachers are now bracing for.

Chicago: The Fascist Detroit

Chicago vs. Detroit

Republican Senator Mark Kirk issued a dire warning in March: re-elect Rahm or become Detroit! The 40% of registered Chicago voters who voted chose Rahm. 

Chicagoans will be spared the urban blight, bankruptcy, and emergency management that has befallen Detroit, right? Let's see:

	Chicago	Detroit
Year of first charter school	1997	1994
Year of first mass school closings	2002	2002
Current charter enrollment	60,982	58,612
Current public school management	Interim CEO	Emergency Manager #4
New solution to "fix" schools	Turnaround specialist	Divide district
Future of public school system	???	???

Rahm Emanuel's second term is off to such a grand start that an editorial (pay-walled) in Friday's Tribune beats the bankruptcy drums ever-harder and suggests a Mussolini-like turnaround expert to manage the schools. In Chicago education, turnaround is code for privatize.

In order to efficiently dispatch any ounce of public ownership of the schools, one would need a tyrannical, opportunistic, and ideologically dishonest--all various ways Mussolini's rule has been described--to come in as CPS's leader to usher in the new age of anti-democracy.

Junk in the Trunk

Double Junk

Hey, City. Hey, CPS. Do you two have a minute? We don't want to hurt your feelings, but you've gotten a little big in the, ahem, interest rate.

Between Mayor Daley's financial deviance and Mayor Emanuel's continued pension dallying, the City's bond rating is now at junk status. Emanuel's mayoral challenger was accused of, "lacking gravitas with the bond market." After two downgrades, seems there's not an ounce of gravitas to go around as investors have little confidence of bond repayment should Chicago or CPS iwant to issue bonds to raise much needed money. Junk status means a higher cost of borrowing that is, of course, passed along to the taxpayer. Thanks, gents!

While Rahm is busy pouting over the downgrade, Governor Rauner has decided to go the disappointed dad route saying, "It (CPS) has not really served the families and the parents of the children in a very long time." CPS seemed to be serving parents just fine when Rauner clouted his daughter into selective enrollment Walter Payton. If CPS isn't serving families and parents it's not because of bond downgrades, but because of constant defunding, school closings, and chaos created by Rahm and his appointees as they go about happily dismantling public education in favor of profiteering charters.

Chicago's Newest Grinch: Mary Weaver

 

The above pictures bear a striking resemblance to each other, don't you think? While one of these images is a fictitious character described as, "a bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature, with a heart two-sizes too small..." the other is an image of an actual bitter, grouchy, cave-dwelling creature with a heart two-sizes too small (no, not Rahm Emanuel) who resides not on Mount Crumpit, but at Scammon Elementary. 

The alleged grinchiness of Scammon's principal, Mary Weaver, was outlined today in a Federal complaint charging the Board of Education with discrimination based on pregnancy. The complaint alleges that Weaver targeted teachers who became pregnant with lower evaluations and derisive remarks, such as: "I can't believe you are doing this [having a baby] to me!" While WCT tires of the Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work bullshit we're treated to on a regular basis, this seems a little too angry parent.

Eventually, the teachers either quit or were fired. We wonder if this behavior falls under Pillar Four--Committed and Effective Teachers, Leaders & Staff-- of CPS's five pillars? If so, much like the ousted teachers, we'd have to E3 Ms. Weaver's entire tenure at the school.

Weaver is just one of many bully principals within CPS who intimidate employees at their whim to remain in positions of power and to win high ratings within a discredited system.

We'd suggest some reading for Weaver and her ilk which suggests being a nice boss is better than being a horrible boss, but something tells us photo-ops with Rahm far outweigh any need to be liked.

A Thin Line Between Love & Hate

It's been a fascinating 48 hours in the life CPS: three cash-starved schools privatized, other neighborhood schools praised for improving a never-before tracked statistic called Freshman On Track, and the Northside discovering they are, yet again, the lucky recipients of a new Selective Enrollment school to be named after Barack Obama. Do CPS & Rahm love students, families, and teachers or do they hate students, families, and teachers?

Though our heads our spinning, let's take a deeper dive into the data, shall we?

• The three turnaround schools--Dvorak, Gresham, and McNair--will all be run by AUSL despite strong community protest. Up until 2009, David Vitale, current Board of Ed. president was also the chairman of AUSL's board. Conflict of interest, anyone, anyone?

• While the turnaround schools were starved of cash, AUSL gets a one time profiteer fee of $300,000 for each school they improve implode. It makes one wonder how CPS can suddenly find close to $1 million dollars to give to AUSL, but couldn't find that money to fund these schools at a functional level. Yep, that goes in the hate column.

• WCT hates to nay-say, but it's pretty suspicious that University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research "discovered" the Freshman On Track metric, and also published the study declaring such a metric, "the key to solving the dropout crisis." Sort of like a doctor diagnosing you with an unheard of ailment and then restoring you to health. Rahm Emanuel, too, was all emboldened talking about a new Chicago of neighborhood schools that can get the job done. So, we'll take the love where we can get it.

• Barack Obama College Prep will be built near the former Cabrini-Green public housing complex. The area is now described as burgeoning and will not be a school open to the neighborhood, but instead a $60 million TIF-financed selective enrollment. Rahm has been intractable about touching TIF funds for schools, but suddenly he can loosen the purse strings for a school in Lincoln Park. The irony is lost on no one that these funds could be used to keep teaching positions at schools that serve the other 99% of Chicago. It also seems undeserving to name a school after the president who's let Arne Duncan try to dismantle what's left of the public school system. This action has to go in the psychological warfare column since they're spending money on schools, but not in any areas that are in dire need.

Emanuel, touting the big turnaround  in Chicago education, offered former Secretary of Education William Bennett, "a one way ticket" back to Chicago to see the progress.  Instead, we'd like to offer Rahm, B3, and the entire Board of Education a one way ticket away from our schools.

Beware the Zombie Ideas

In Sunday's New York Times Paul Krugman talks about zombie ideas: "an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die." While Krugman's op-ed is about an overstated skills gap in the American workforce, his point fits perfectly with CPS's current obsession with ideas that refuse to die. 

Some of these ideas are:

• B3's insistence in her latest From the Desk of the CEO that the school closures over the past year have been successful, "Data is encouraging and trends are promising." As our Thought Partners are wont to demand, "Show us the day-ta!" B3's newsletter is a little spotty on the, ahem, numbers.

• AUSL knows how to staff schools better than currently employed teachers, administrators, support staff, and maintenance crews. In fact, AUSL was just recommended to be the manager of three new turnarounds closings. This, despite a study from the organization Designs for Change which states that schools with democratically-led governing systems outperformed turnarounds. While we know Rahm and his ilk are likely to say, "Democracy, shmasocracy," this study shows how school-based democracies can be effective.

• Teachers created the pension crisis. Wrong again. The CTU lays out some facts and figures which illustrate the consequences of "successive pension holidays" between 1995 and 2005.

Zombie ideas are everywhere, arm yourself properly!