Thursday Morning News, Part 1
Church leaders step up to stop the violence ABC7Chicago.com
Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan and a group of area ministers are repeating their call for an end to the violence.
Slain teen sought to change life Tribune
"I can graduate,' " said Myra Sampson, principal of Community Christian Alternative Academy, a charter school in the Chicago Public Schools system that Greer
Youth Violence Hits Charter School Hard WBEZ
The bloodshed has hit a small high school in the North Lawndale neighborhood especially hard.
Teen fatally shot during dice game Sun-Times
A 17-year-old Chicago Public Schools student was killed during a dice game on the West Side on Tuesday.
$100 for a seven-year-old gangbanger Medill Reports
In 2006, the Chicago Crime Commission worked with the Chicago Police Department, Chicago Public Schools, the FBI and other experts to publish “The Gang Book .
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Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 1:25 PM
Thursday Morning News, Part 1
In today’s news we have two stories posted by Alexander Russo on the district 299 blog. One was Medill School’s Erin Halasz’s interview with James Wagner from the Chicago Crime Commission and the other is the Tribune’s Mary Owen’s report on Marcus Greer who is listed as the twenty-fourth CPS student killed this school year.
Before I go any further I need to disclose that I was once a member of the Youth Connections Charter School (YCCS) Board and that Marcus Greer was a student at one of the schools YCCS subcontracts with, the Community Christian Alternative Academy (CCA). YCCS as many of you know grew out of the Alternative Schools Network and the work of Jack Wuest. I resigned from the YCCS Board when I became employed by the Corey H Monitor’s Office due to potential conflicts of interest.
James Wagner in the interview points out the reality of street gang recruitment and clearly states that the vast majority of murdered CPS students were some how gang-related. He indicates that gang affiliation begins as early as second and third grade. He indicates that many youth are recruited to gangs by family members and he points out the money involved.
I have seen significant numbers of CPS students identified as emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and mildly cognitively disabled recruited into Chicago’s street gangs. In many ways because of already low self-esteem and poor economic prospects they are easy pickings for recruitment. On any given day up to thirty percent of the youth in Cook Count Juvenile Detention have identified disabilities, with many being emotionally disturbed and some are actually given disability labels while in detention. Detained youth are overwhelmingly gang affiliated to one degree or another.
The cross correlation between CPS students finding themselves in YCCS as Marcus did and having a disability, identified or not identified, is significant. YCCS has the highest percentage of students with disabilities of any charter school in the state according to the January 2007 charter school report produced by ISBE, about 14%. According to CPS reports filed with the US District Court in 2007 about 10% of YCCS’s disabled student population have an emotional disability. This compares with the school district as a whole where the average school (not including special schools and students tutioned out to private schools) has only about 6% of its disabled population with emotional disturbance.
I have no idea if Marcus had a disability, but according to the details in Mary Owen’s report it is very likely Marcus was at one time or another associated with a gang. If that is the case and James Wagner from the Crime Commission is correct then this gang association began long before Marcus dropped out of Crane High School and came to YCCS. While YCCS provides social work services and counseling in many respects their efforts are triage, the problems begin much earlier in elementary school.
Here is where I have a problem with the current focus of the CPS administration on gun control as a solution to the killing of CPS students. There is no question that reducing the availability of weapons will reduce the numbers of students murdered, but it will not necessarily reduce the numbers of youth associating with gangs and entering the criminal justice system. The CPS can do something to help this situation; they can dramatically increase social work and psychological services at the elementary school level. Currently elementary school social workers are assigned to multiple schools with massive case loads and a significant portion of their work days are devoted to completing social work assessments for the special education process. CPS school psychologists find themselves largely doing assessments with little or no time to work directly with children on very major emotional issues.
Currently young students who are technically considered to be just “socially maladjusted” may not qualify for special education services. Services for so called socially maladjusted youth are largely driven by the IL Department of Human Services, DCFS, and the criminal justice system. What I have found from my years working in and around special education systems is that enormous numbers very young unsupported so called maladjusted children become formally identified as emotionally disturbed by junior high. The pediatric psychological system in Chicago is largely divorced from school based social work and psychological services for young children.
I think that the juxtaposition of the two articles Alexander Russo today posted on the District 299 blog bring up much to be contemplated. CPS pupil support services are overwhelmed in low income communities and schools are correctly reluctant to label huge numbers of very young poor children as disabled. The Alternative schools attempt to save a few, but sadly very few, because YCCS has only a 77% attendance rate with a drop out rate of 46.5%. Only 17.9% of YCCS juniors can read at or above state standards. I am not writing to criticize YCCS, because they are attempting to teach those students the standard school system has already failed. But am writing to say CPS needs to do far more with troubled elementary school youth before they sadly become the murders of tomorrow, be it with baseball bats, knifes, or guns.
Rod Estvan
Access Living
Before I go any further I need to disclose that I was once a member of the Youth Connections Charter School (YCCS) Board and that Marcus Greer was a student at one of the schools YCCS subcontracts with, the Community Christian Alternative Academy (CCA). YCCS as many of you know grew out of the Alternative Schools Network and the work of Jack Wuest. I resigned from the YCCS Board when I became employed by the Corey H Monitor’s Office due to potential conflicts of interest.
James Wagner in the interview points out the reality of street gang recruitment and clearly states that the vast majority of murdered CPS students were some how gang-related. He indicates that gang affiliation begins as early as second and third grade. He indicates that many youth are recruited to gangs by family members and he points out the money involved.
I have seen significant numbers of CPS students identified as emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and mildly cognitively disabled recruited into Chicago’s street gangs. In many ways because of already low self-esteem and poor economic prospects they are easy pickings for recruitment. On any given day up to thirty percent of the youth in Cook Count Juvenile Detention have identified disabilities, with many being emotionally disturbed and some are actually given disability labels while in detention. Detained youth are overwhelmingly gang affiliated to one degree or another.
The cross correlation between CPS students finding themselves in YCCS as Marcus did and having a disability, identified or not identified, is significant. YCCS has the highest percentage of students with disabilities of any charter school in the state according to the January 2007 charter school report produced by ISBE, about 14%. According to CPS reports filed with the US District Court in 2007 about 10% of YCCS’s disabled student population have an emotional disability. This compares with the school district as a whole where the average school (not including special schools and students tutioned out to private schools) has only about 6% of its disabled population with emotional disturbance.
I have no idea if Marcus had a disability, but according to the details in Mary Owen’s report it is very likely Marcus was at one time or another associated with a gang. If that is the case and James Wagner from the Crime Commission is correct then this gang association began long before Marcus dropped out of Crane High School and came to YCCS. While YCCS provides social work services and counseling in many respects their efforts are triage, the problems begin much earlier in elementary school.
Here is where I have a problem with the current focus of the CPS administration on gun control as a solution to the killing of CPS students. There is no question that reducing the availability of weapons will reduce the numbers of students murdered, but it will not necessarily reduce the numbers of youth associating with gangs and entering the criminal justice system. The CPS can do something to help this situation; they can dramatically increase social work and psychological services at the elementary school level. Currently elementary school social workers are assigned to multiple schools with massive case loads and a significant portion of their work days are devoted to completing social work assessments for the special education process. CPS school psychologists find themselves largely doing assessments with little or no time to work directly with children on very major emotional issues.
Currently young students who are technically considered to be just “socially maladjusted” may not qualify for special education services. Services for so called socially maladjusted youth are largely driven by the IL Department of Human Services, DCFS, and the criminal justice system. What I have found from my years working in and around special education systems is that enormous numbers very young unsupported so called maladjusted children become formally identified as emotionally disturbed by junior high. The pediatric psychological system in Chicago is largely divorced from school based social work and psychological services for young children.
I think that the juxtaposition of the two articles Alexander Russo today posted on the District 299 blog bring up much to be contemplated. CPS pupil support services are overwhelmed in low income communities and schools are correctly reluctant to label huge numbers of very young poor children as disabled. The Alternative schools attempt to save a few, but sadly very few, because YCCS has only a 77% attendance rate with a drop out rate of 46.5%. Only 17.9% of YCCS juniors can read at or above state standards. I am not writing to criticize YCCS, because they are attempting to teach those students the standard school system has already failed. But am writing to say CPS needs to do far more with troubled elementary school youth before they sadly become the murders of tomorrow, be it with baseball bats, knifes, or guns.
Rod Estvan
Access Living
Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 2:18 PM
Thursday Morning News, Part 1
Rod,
Thank you for pointing out the value of specialized service in our school system (Even though you left out the school nurse:-) )
More and more children with special needs are mainstreamed into the general education population, but there has been no marked increase in the number of specialized service teams. Children are attending school with mental, physical, psychological, emotional problems and/or a combination of many. Research has proven that schools that have a full time nurse, social worker, psychologist, counselor and speech pathologist show very positive student outcomes. The students know they have someone who is there for them as a person, not just a reading score. They know that someone is concerned about the reoccurring headaches, which are the result of sleep deprivation as related to parental fighting all night because of missing drugs. Or the fact that a students sleeping in class may be the result of anemia brought on by “female problems” and there is no mother at home to discuss this with. I could give examples for days but I won’t. The point is made.
These teams are over worked and bogged down with paperwork and the servicing of charter schools. There are actually school nurses who are assigned to 6-8 schools per week. There are only 5 days in a week. Social workers may not be quite as bad, but they are also spread very thin.
If CPS had an entire team (nurse, social worker, psychologist, counselor, speech therapist) per school we could be much more effective.
Perhaps that could be a pilot program...assign permanent complete teams to schools and watch them soar.
Now, instead of increasing ancillary services, the state is voting on bills, which would place the care of children with chronic illnesses in the hands of the principal’s designee. This could be anyone working for or contracted by the school system, teacher or paraprofessional. These bills were originally named the Care of Students with Diabetes Acts and stated that the designee would be responsible for calculating carbohydrate intake, administering insulin injections, daily blood glucose monitoring. In the future if passed, the same law will mandate that school employees give rectal suppositories to students with seizure disorders.
As if the teachers and paraprofessionals are not already overworked; give them more duties which are way out of their expertise.
So you see, the system is getting worse and providing less service. How many of our children have to die before we really get it?
LAS RN
PS. Those bills are HB 5960 and SB 2799 for anyone who wants to call their legislator and tell them to VOTE NO. increase service by professionals, not
Thank you for pointing out the value of specialized service in our school system (Even though you left out the school nurse:-) )
More and more children with special needs are mainstreamed into the general education population, but there has been no marked increase in the number of specialized service teams. Children are attending school with mental, physical, psychological, emotional problems and/or a combination of many. Research has proven that schools that have a full time nurse, social worker, psychologist, counselor and speech pathologist show very positive student outcomes. The students know they have someone who is there for them as a person, not just a reading score. They know that someone is concerned about the reoccurring headaches, which are the result of sleep deprivation as related to parental fighting all night because of missing drugs. Or the fact that a students sleeping in class may be the result of anemia brought on by “female problems” and there is no mother at home to discuss this with. I could give examples for days but I won’t. The point is made.
These teams are over worked and bogged down with paperwork and the servicing of charter schools. There are actually school nurses who are assigned to 6-8 schools per week. There are only 5 days in a week. Social workers may not be quite as bad, but they are also spread very thin.
If CPS had an entire team (nurse, social worker, psychologist, counselor, speech therapist) per school we could be much more effective.
Perhaps that could be a pilot program...assign permanent complete teams to schools and watch them soar.
Now, instead of increasing ancillary services, the state is voting on bills, which would place the care of children with chronic illnesses in the hands of the principal’s designee. This could be anyone working for or contracted by the school system, teacher or paraprofessional. These bills were originally named the Care of Students with Diabetes Acts and stated that the designee would be responsible for calculating carbohydrate intake, administering insulin injections, daily blood glucose monitoring. In the future if passed, the same law will mandate that school employees give rectal suppositories to students with seizure disorders.
As if the teachers and paraprofessionals are not already overworked; give them more duties which are way out of their expertise.
So you see, the system is getting worse and providing less service. How many of our children have to die before we really get it?
LAS RN
PS. Those bills are HB 5960 and SB 2799 for anyone who wants to call their legislator and tell them to VOTE NO. increase service by professionals, not
Thu Apr 17, 2008 at 2:55 PM
Thursday Morning News, Part 1
Privatization is the real issue.
One or two bills and phone calls might slow down the process but there needs to be a consorted effort to attack the powers pushing to take away all public control of education.
What you do is great and you are knowledgeable about the issues but we need to take control of our union, stop the spending and make a statement (job action, media, pulling all PAC $$, blue flue...etc) to show what we can do. Otherwise we are fighting a loosing battle.
Last, we need a leader that unconditionally is in the face of all those that are against the union and seek to harm our livelihood.
One or two bills and phone calls might slow down the process but there needs to be a consorted effort to attack the powers pushing to take away all public control of education.
What you do is great and you are knowledgeable about the issues but we need to take control of our union, stop the spending and make a statement (job action, media, pulling all PAC $$, blue flue...etc) to show what we can do. Otherwise we are fighting a loosing battle.
Last, we need a leader that unconditionally is in the face of all those that are against the union and seek to harm our livelihood.
Fri Apr 18, 2008 at 2:27 AM
Thursday Morning News, Part 1
Although some gang bangers are suffering from disabilities, many of them are among the more intelligent of our children, and by "Middle School" they are able to see through the hypocrisy of what we're offering them as a society. In the following, I'll discuss the young guys I've known and worked with. The young ladies are a similar but somewhat different reality, as people who know them know.
The continuing privatization of specialized services, as all three people (all in their own names, by the way) here point out, is at the root of much of the increase in the gang violence we're seeing at this point in history. Another is the privatization of public housing and the overall destruction of public services, period. Basically, there are no professional services left for these children, nor public places for them to find alternatives. Even the Chicago Park District programs are now so expensive as to eliminate poor children from programs as important as Little League Baseball.
And the energy and intelligence of these kids will find an outlet.
I would like to contradict one impression that might be left by the comments Rod makes above, however.
Most of the gang bangers I knew and worked with over nearly 20 years at several high schools (most notably Bowen during the late 1990s, before Mayor Daley and Paul Vallas went after me and blacklisted me from teaching) were among the more intelligent among their peers.
Of those I knew who ended up dead long before Chicago's ruling class decided to make this list (apparently to promote Mayor Daley's diversionary attack on guns as a way of avoiding accountability for gang expansion during his more than 25 year reign), several come to mind because of their intelligence. And all had the same conversation with me, over a period that spanned more than two decades:
"What sense does it make to study for the next ten years -- assuming we could afford college at some point -- so that we could wind up like you, Schmidt?" (Basically, a ____ year old teacher driving a ten year old car and with no more equity than a small home with a large mortgage).
I can remember the names of some of those young men (and one young woman), all of whom are dead now.
Alex Rosalio (aka, "Flaco") Insane Unknowns, Amundsen High School, 1980s.
Edwin Castenada (aka, "Negro") Latin Kings, Amundsen High School.
Stephen Wilbourn (aka, "Steve"), Black P. Stones, Bowen High School.
Even one of them, when they studied, was an above average student. Partly as a result of their gang training, they had a very sophisticated understanding of the market economy in which we were all working. We had the "three boxes" conversation that was once a trade mark of my work in school security and safety --
Viz., "There are three boxes in your future. Do you want the one you're in here as a student, called a school. The steel box someone will eventually lock you up in (spending more than they'd ever spend on you as a student) when you finally get into the prison system? Or the (usually) wooden box they'll put you in if someone lights you up one of these nights?..."
One of the few honest portrayals I've seen of these fiercely competitive market realities -- in Chicago at least, the gangsters are within a corporate capitalist structure -- has been in "The Wire", which is why I've been recommending it, to the dismay of friends who have heard me make the suggestion once too often.
And if we're asking for portrayals of character (literary, remember, but based on real life) and one liners, I suggest two, both from "The Wire".
1. "He's worse than a drug dealer. He's become a real estate developer..."
2. And the scene in which the cops find the library at the apartment of a deceased drug dealer, and one of them pulls a copy of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" from the shelf.
Rod is right about some of the lower ranking bangers out there.
But the children we're failing at least as greatly by decimaiting public services (especially public schools) and relentless teacher bashing are the "smartest" kids, the ones who wake up one day and say (like the character in Nelson Algren's "Never Come Morning"), "I knew I wouldn't make it to [age] twenty-one."
We kid ourselves if we don't see all the relationships in this. My fierce opposition to Arne Duncan's babbling hypocrisy is partly rooted in these experiences. Teacher bashing of the type that is now the dominant narrative in Chicago's official educational discourse (it's no longer a debate; when was the last time you saw my point of view head-to-head with any of the talking heads officially prattling?). It's one of the causes of the current waves of violence, and the people who have been doing the teachers bashing, led by Mayor Daley, his corporate sponsors, and the Chicago Tribune, are the problem, not one of the solutions.
The continuing privatization of specialized services, as all three people (all in their own names, by the way) here point out, is at the root of much of the increase in the gang violence we're seeing at this point in history. Another is the privatization of public housing and the overall destruction of public services, period. Basically, there are no professional services left for these children, nor public places for them to find alternatives. Even the Chicago Park District programs are now so expensive as to eliminate poor children from programs as important as Little League Baseball.
And the energy and intelligence of these kids will find an outlet.
I would like to contradict one impression that might be left by the comments Rod makes above, however.
Most of the gang bangers I knew and worked with over nearly 20 years at several high schools (most notably Bowen during the late 1990s, before Mayor Daley and Paul Vallas went after me and blacklisted me from teaching) were among the more intelligent among their peers.
Of those I knew who ended up dead long before Chicago's ruling class decided to make this list (apparently to promote Mayor Daley's diversionary attack on guns as a way of avoiding accountability for gang expansion during his more than 25 year reign), several come to mind because of their intelligence. And all had the same conversation with me, over a period that spanned more than two decades:
"What sense does it make to study for the next ten years -- assuming we could afford college at some point -- so that we could wind up like you, Schmidt?" (Basically, a ____ year old teacher driving a ten year old car and with no more equity than a small home with a large mortgage).
I can remember the names of some of those young men (and one young woman), all of whom are dead now.
Alex Rosalio (aka, "Flaco") Insane Unknowns, Amundsen High School, 1980s.
Edwin Castenada (aka, "Negro") Latin Kings, Amundsen High School.
Stephen Wilbourn (aka, "Steve"), Black P. Stones, Bowen High School.
Even one of them, when they studied, was an above average student. Partly as a result of their gang training, they had a very sophisticated understanding of the market economy in which we were all working. We had the "three boxes" conversation that was once a trade mark of my work in school security and safety --
Viz., "There are three boxes in your future. Do you want the one you're in here as a student, called a school. The steel box someone will eventually lock you up in (spending more than they'd ever spend on you as a student) when you finally get into the prison system? Or the (usually) wooden box they'll put you in if someone lights you up one of these nights?..."
One of the few honest portrayals I've seen of these fiercely competitive market realities -- in Chicago at least, the gangsters are within a corporate capitalist structure -- has been in "The Wire", which is why I've been recommending it, to the dismay of friends who have heard me make the suggestion once too often.
And if we're asking for portrayals of character (literary, remember, but based on real life) and one liners, I suggest two, both from "The Wire".
1. "He's worse than a drug dealer. He's become a real estate developer..."
2. And the scene in which the cops find the library at the apartment of a deceased drug dealer, and one of them pulls a copy of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" from the shelf.
Rod is right about some of the lower ranking bangers out there.
But the children we're failing at least as greatly by decimaiting public services (especially public schools) and relentless teacher bashing are the "smartest" kids, the ones who wake up one day and say (like the character in Nelson Algren's "Never Come Morning"), "I knew I wouldn't make it to [age] twenty-one."
We kid ourselves if we don't see all the relationships in this. My fierce opposition to Arne Duncan's babbling hypocrisy is partly rooted in these experiences. Teacher bashing of the type that is now the dominant narrative in Chicago's official educational discourse (it's no longer a debate; when was the last time you saw my point of view head-to-head with any of the talking heads officially prattling?). It's one of the causes of the current waves of violence, and the people who have been doing the teachers bashing, led by Mayor Daley, his corporate sponsors, and the Chicago Tribune, are the problem, not one of the solutions.
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