Thu Nov 29, 2007 at 3:06 PMBy: former Nancy Jefferson teacher Eric Walker CPS student The Sun Times story on Eric Walker, the accused get away driver in the murder of Amadou Chase presents a picture of many CPS students. Clearly most of these students do not go down the path Eric did. The discription given of Walker fits all the risk factors for a juvenial criminal known. But if the Sun Times dug a little deeper they would find out a lot more about Eric. For example, he went to a regular CPS elementary school at one point and he got virtually no social services even though as early as a five year old it was obvious Eric was a deeply troubled boy. I saw hundreds of Erics while teaching at Jefferson, some were car jackers, drug dealers, and yes murders.

While in no way can Eric's educational failure place blame on our school system for the murder he has been accused of, it does however raise some real questions about the CPS's PR campaign over the 32 students killed this year. CPS students are both killed and are killers. The CPS wants to focus the media attention on the inocent and ignor the failures of the schools to be able to address the needs of the once upon a time primary student Eric Walker. That the needs of the Eric Walkers enrolled in the CPS are many is unquestionable, that the funds needed to provide extensive supports to such children are not in place is also unquestionable.

Healy South is a CPS school but it is also funded by the Illinois Department of Corrections. It is called an "ALOP" school. Eric and other students at the school, a few in grades as low a 4th, are either on probation or parole. Very few of these students ever graduate from high school and there is a fairly high rate of these students who end up back in either in temporary detention, where Nancy Jefferson is located, or in an IDOC Youth Center (i.e. prison). Eric may from what the article indicated have been living in a drug house which had been raided by the CPD only a few days before. The renter of the appartment was in jail and Eric along with a number of other teenagers were hold up without any oversight at all according to the article.

There is no question that Eric was violating the conditions of his probation well before Amadou Chase was murdered. Eric's probation officer more than likely has a massive case load and really had no idea what was happening with the child. Healy South has about 150 students allmost all of whom are as needy as Eric, and is unlikely to have even known Eric was in effect living in a drug house. More than likely Eric was a gang member, it is likely members of his family are also gang members.

While there is no excuse for the murder that Eric Walker is being accused of being involved in, Eric is also a victim at the same time. The CPS should broaden its PR to include its students who are perpretrators and have not had a real chance from the day they were born to be much else. Because in the world Eric and other Healy South students are in, you are either a perpretrator or a victim. This much I learned from my time teaching at Nancy Jefferson.

Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 11:16 AMBy: stop it before it starts Thursday Morning News but the former Jefferson teacher is right that somehow we have to reach the Eric Walkers before they become killers, ideally when they are very young, like preschool and early elementary.

unfortunately, kids like this don't make great PR.

Fri Nov 30, 2007 at 8:05 PMBy: Ditto Charlie Thursday Morning News I concur with Charlie. Any ideas why the needed investment is not made early, like you suggest?

Sat Dec 1, 2007 at 5:36 AMBy: George N. Schmidt Thursday Morning News I agree, too.

Now let's take it to "the next level" (as Arne and the children in New Schools like to cliche).

Eric Walker was entitled to specialized services that he didn't get, truancy protection he didn't receive, and a range of social services that Chicago and Illinois have a legal (in the case of special education) and moral (generally, in a devout nation) responsibility to provide.

I'm hoping that this will come out if the lawyers for the victims (Walker was not only part of a murder, but of several robberies that night) sue CPS for (a) knowing that this child needed and was entitled to certain services and (b) negligently failing to provide those services.

I first saw this problem with Special Education more than 20 years ago, before Corey H. Students who were known to need these services were often diagnosed, then ignored as long as the "budget" people managed staffing. The one I knew best was a student at Amundsen High School named Eddie (last name omitted). He went into a blind whiteout when he was in a rage. I once had to break one of his thumbs to help unlock his hands from around his best friend's neck after a simply disagreement.

Trouble was, he was never given the services he should have received. The best friend survived that nasty lunchroom encounter. Later, though, a guy who went to the movies over in Lincoln Square wasn't so lucky. After a disagreement inside the show, Eddie went outside and ventilated the young man's stomach and intestines, causing death.

Eddie wound up in Stateville, where he used to photograph the decor of his cell (ALKN, black and gold, etc.) and send the photographs to admirers on the outside.

We lost Eddie three times.

First, when we failed to provide him with the services for which he was staffed.

Second, when the ALKN found him and gave him a purpose in life.

Third, when nobody stopped him from murdering a guy who happened to disagree with him in a dark theater one night.

Of course, Eddie morphed from being the victim to being the murderer. At that was a half decade before Eric Walker was born!

Sun Dec 2, 2007 at 3:47 AMBy: George N. Schmidt Thursday Morning News I'd call it racism, too. But in many cases, because CPS (and Illinois) refuse to provide the services, even when all the paperwork is in, the child slowly grows from being a "messed up" (or very very very "messed up") little kid to being a dangerously messed up large young adult, etc. When the chain of services is disrupted by serial buck passing, deliberate sabotage, or silly coverups (the paperwork is in, what else do you expect me to do?), somewhere down the line something breaks open.

In the case of the accused murderer(s) of Amandou Cisse, the chain of pain and blame stretches back back back into CPS history. At some point, all those budget cuts and all those platitudes can lead to this. Maybe the right services years ago couldn't have broken the chain, but the refusal of CPS to provide those services as a matter of policy and the constant refrain of coverups as a matter of praxis has to be put into the public debate. From the day Mayor Daley abolished truant officers to the day Mayor Daley's cronies at CPS made the most recent special education services cuts (or privatizations, at huge expense) this city failed many people in the Cisse case.

Finally, when it was too too late, the Chicago Police devoted an enormous amount of time and professional services to solving the crimes that took place in and around the University of Chicago that night. Had public policy and public dollars been invested as the law requires and humanity demands in the years before that terrifying night (imagine Cisse's last hour, from joy to death and imagine that he wasn't the only victim that night, just the most dead), all that fine professional police and EMT work would have been unnecessary.

Oh, I forgot.

That's the part of town we're going to use to host the Olympics because under this administration we've "reformed" welfare, public housing, and public schools to create a miraculous 21st century global city.

Sun Dec 2, 2007 at 2:08 PMBy: pragmatist Thursday Morning News Let's take a look at the lad's parents. Who are they? What did they do to help their son?

Mon Dec 3, 2007 at 6:13 AMBy: Pragmatist Thursday Morning News If parents want help, they can get it, if they advocate for themselves and push for it. If you're too stupid or weak to advocate for what you need, maybe you deserve what you get -- nothing.

Mon Dec 3, 2007 at 9:39 AMBy: Rod Estvan Re: Eric Walker and Healy South data I can not tell you whether or not Eric Walker recieved special ed services, because Eric has been charged as an adult in this case the CPS may be able to legally release his records based on the school records Act. One thing that I do find interesting is that Healy South for a school composed of only students who are on probation or parole has very few students who are identified with disabilities.

According to CPS documents filed with the District Court for Northern Illinois on June 15, 2007 Healy South had 127 students of which only 17 or 13.4% had identified disabilities. Jones College Prep actually had a higher percentage of students with disabilities than Healy South, it had 13.5% in the 2006-07 school year.

Most of the research on juvenile justice that I have seen indicates that nationally at least 50% of these youth have one or another type of disability. Healy South's percentage does seem on the face of it to be very low. So posters, like George, who are speculating based on prior experience that Eric Walker did not recieve appropriate special education services while a CPS student certainly do have legitimate reasons for concern given the data from the CPS for Healy South.

Rod Estvan
Access Living

Mon Dec 3, 2007 at 2:09 PMBy: Charlie Thursday Morning News Sure, since I'm apparently speaking for all of "charterdom" we'll take them. Some of us will do an excellent job of providing the needed services for them, mostly in using an inclusive model with lots of team teaching, some of us will try and try and try and then decide that this student simply cannot "hack it" with the culture of "XXXX" charter school.

I don't think this is or needs to be a charter vs. traditional public school argument (in fact, if it weren't for the neo-conservative anti-union ideologues currently trying to kidnap the charter movement, I don't think we would ever have to have that argument).

It comes down to a simple fact, as a society we have to make the decision to prioritize responsible, proactive education instead of knee-jerk, reactive penalties. You see this every where from education to our country's current stance on international relations. If you don't support the funding of troops in Iraq you're a traitor and a terrorist, but if you don't support the funding of education and social services you're a fiscally responsible pragmatist (if you do support it, you're a crazy left-wing socialist).

As much as it has to do with investing in education, however, it has as much to do with investing in communities. Whether that means continuing to develop better models of community schools that address the social service needs of the community as well as the educational needs of its students, or some other model it needs to happen now. It, however, is not a question answered simply by improving education.

I'm not necessarily an anti-Olympics in Chicago person, but I do wonder how much of this we could accomplish with the money being poured into that project, and what sort of changes we might see around the city if that was the case.

Anyway, enough of this post, I'm spending too much time agreeing with all the same people whose feathers I usually enjoy ruffling.

Wed Dec 5, 2007 at 12:08 PMBy: cermak_rd Thursday Morning News Does anyone know if the services that the killer didn't receive had anything to do with the murder? It seems odd that school should be responsible for teaching a student who lacks it self-control (as in the case of George's student Eddy.) I thought the school was to teach history, geography, math and literature (the student's world in time and place using logic and basic rules and what others have thought about it through the ages). Can schools provide that classic liberal education while also being responsible for providing social services? Who decided that schools would be the place that children receive counseling or that the school should stand in for the parents because the parents are screwed up? I'm not arguing that children shouldn't receive these services or supports, I'm just wondering if school is the most effective or practical delivery method for them.