As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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In the News: CPS parents complain about robo calls
By: Cassandra West / June 13, 2012
In the wake of complaints from parents who suspected that CPS gave their phone numbers to Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform Now Advocacy Director Jake Breymaier says the phone numbers were purchased from the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen’s Association.
The group’s automated phone calls, as well as radio ads that are still on the air, encouraged parents and others to text in to sign a petition urging CTU to put the brakes on strike talk until after a fact-finding panel has recommended a settlement between the union and the district. Breymaier says that so far, about 500 people have texted in their support.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday afternoon that Back of the Yards High School, slated to open in fall 2013, will offer a “wall-to-wall” International Baccalaureate program and house a neighborhood library branch in its building. (Catalyst)
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday defended his aggressive push to make changes at the Chicago Public Schools and acknowledged that the nearly 90 percent vote by the teachers to authorize a strike is "a huge number." (Tribune)
Also: Emanuel acknowledged Tuesday that 90 percent is a “huge number” for the Chicago Teachers Union to achieve in its strike authorization vote, but he’s holding out hope for a pre-strike settlement. “Let’s work together, find common ground, find partnership, reminding ourselves …. [of the need to] work together to better serve the taxpayers and our main constituents," the mayor said. (Sun-Times)
Eric Zorn of the Tribune unpacks the CTU strike authorization vote in this blog post: "Ka-boom! Teachers destroy barrier to a strike — Reformers, school officials are hoist with their own petard."
Youth Advocate Programs, the Pennsylvania-based social service agency selected by then-schools chief Ron Huberman to run the program, has seen its funding cut and could lose its contract for the coming year because of a loss of federal stimulus money, a widening deficit at CPS and a change in focus for a new administration. (Tribune)
Related: Tribune writer Barbara Brotman recalls Devonte Flennoy, who became a part of the Youth Advocate Program four years ago and was shot to death in an alley in the Marquette Park neighborhood late Monday night.
IN THE NATION
A backlash against high-stakes standardized testing is sweeping through U.S. school districts as parents, teachers, and administrators protest that the exams are unfair, unreliable and unnecessarily punitive - and even some longtime advocates of testing call for changes, according to a story by Reuters that appears in the Tribune.
"Breymaier says that so far,
"Breymaier says that so far, about 500 people have texted in their support." hahaha!! And I'm sure abou 450 of those texts were made by employees or those people hired to lurk on blogs and make comments about how awful the CTU has become. CPS gave parent phone numbers to Democrats for Education Reform and now they're trying to distance themselves from the controversy. I hope the Republicans have a strong candidate for mayor because it looks like they're going to win my vote
Robo calls went to retired teachers, others than parents
The big picture about the robo-calls is now coming out, but a few facts and histories need to be elucidated here now.
First, as soon as we picked up Julie Woestehoff's wonderful report and ran it on our semi-crippled website (www.substancenews.net), we received a half dozen emails from retired CPS teachers, two of whom posted their comments on our site. They, too, received these robo-calls.
Second, this claim that the numbers were purchased from some "Who's on First?" version of reality is another CPS/corporate reform cover up. They got the numbers from someone at CPS, probably on the mayor's orders, and are now lying to cover it all up. With even a tiny bit of effort, the Inspector General could find out how this scandal took place, but he is probably out chasing some new teacher targets on orders from Rahm Emanuel.
Third, CPS has been providing its favored groups with this type of information since the first charter school was set up. Charter schools have been calling and contacting families to market their nonsense, with CPS help, for more than ten years that we've been monitoring it. My favorite local example in this part of town came when CICS got the Immaculate Heart of Mary school in (roughly) "Old Irving Park" and introduced the world to "CICS Irving Park Campus." CPS officials provided CICS with the contact information for the highest scoring kids from Murphy and other schools in the area, and the marketing blitz began. That has been the pattern at every charter school in town,
We happened to find out about that one not only through CPS teachers and principals, but also because then our little ones were in pre-school at the "Co-Op" at Mount Olive Church. Everyone got the CICS rush, which included home visits, on behalf of the "CICS Irving Park campus." The marketing stuff included not only propaganda (it's the only word for it; the school didn't exist so it was like an untested brand of toothpaste that was promising "Hollywood Brightness..." for you teeth...) but also bad mouthing of the real public schools in the area.
Last note, since it is timely today.
Back then, Joshua Edelman, one of the other sons of Marian Wright Edelman, was pushing the charter school privatization scam against Chicago's real public schools. Josh Edelman was "Chief of the Office of New Schools" during most of the years Arne Duncan was CEO, then fell out of favor abruptly when Ron Huberman took over (January 2009). The Office of New Schools (which has of late morphed into the "Portfolio Office" under Oliver Sicat) regularly provided the "new schools" (like CICS Irving Park "campus") with all this kind of information.
But if a principal or teacher had tried to do the same thing, the IG would have investigated, the Law Dept. under Patrick Rocks would have disciplined, and the Board would have suspended or fired the "offender."
This kind of hypocrisy and double standard, in other words, pre-dates Jean-Claude Brizard, Jonah Edelman's famous foray into Illinois politics, and the Reign of Rahm. The policy, in other words, and the practices (like giving out what should be private information) has long been part of the CPS attack on the city's real public schools and the teachers who teach in them.
Anyone want to take a bet on whether the Inspector General investigates this one?
Oh, isn't that the same I.G. who set out months ago to investigate the payments to the Rent A Preachers and Rent A Protesters?
Where is our David Simon?
George S... may I call you Chi-town's David Simon? I am just impressed that Catalyst covered this issue... Thank YOU!
Chicago's version of "The Wire"
It's an honor. One of the things we studied at the Chicago Teachers Union and in Substance a year ago when people were just beginning to organize was "The Wire" start to finish.
The second season reminds me of home (my family raised me in Linden, New Jersey in a little house six blocks from the ESSO refinery that Bruce Springsteen wrote about). The third season is CPS. The fourth is Rahm, etc., and of course the fifth is corporate media, Chicago style (and the hack "reporters" who keep the plutocracy's nonsense alive and well in their writings...).
Some of us have memorized entire portions of "The Wire." We only regretted that nobody did it for Chicago. AS to the first season, I still carry around with me one of the death stories written about one of those dozens of gang kids I tried to work with while I was at Bowen and Amundsen before Paul Vallas proudly fired me and Chicago's corporate media proudly blacklisted me. This stuff goes as deep as the bullet that went through the head of Antwan Jorden (whom I watched die outside Bowen in December 1997) back the last time our civic leaders declared another — FANFARE! — war on gangs and all things evil.
As to the fifth season, it's always nice to read who got the latest awards for Chicago-style "reporting" nowadays. But, then, Chicago loomed over all of it because the Tribune owned the Baltimore Sun, which provided the same level of grotesque hypocrisy for Baltimore that their greedy parent corporation has been providing for Chicago.
Robocalls
CPS should pay a whole bunch of the kids' money to robocall all the parents to apologize for the robocalls.
Jean-Claude cuts off when a parent goes to "Click 1..."
I was home last night from work at the Merchandise Mart and took a Robo Call from Jean-Claude, who invited all us parents (my two littles ones, getting bigger all the time, have just completed another good year at O.A. Thorp; my big guy -- Whitney Young, Class of 2007 -- is now working in California) to join him at community forums on the collective bargaining stuff around town.
All I had to do was "Click 1" for further information from Jean-Claude's staff, according to the robotic Jean-Claude who was talking at me at that time.
So I did the "1" click, waited about 60 seconds, and then found myself cut off. And they didn't even have the courtesy to play Moon River over and over while I was on hold, or tell me "Your call is important to us..."
I was tempted to change hats to my reporter hat and call my friend Becky (who never, by the way, NEVER returns a call from anyone at Substance) at 553-1620...
But what's the point? I'd either get a dozen of the latest iterations of THE TALKING POINT or have someone with a practiced speaking voice take the call back information and then never call back.
We could probably develop a whole Second City two hour skit with just Rahm Emanuel, David Vitale, "J.C." (you gotta believe to hear Rahm repeat that little bit of blasphemy), Becky Carroll, the seven dwarfs of the Chicago Board of Privatization (er. sorry, "Education"... sure), and a few dozen of the ever-shifting but always expensive Broads on stage (maybe Jennifer Cheatham poised on one side sitting on a chair chanting "That's Dr. Cheatham" and one of the latest Network underlings on the other, both wearing signs with their salaries for this year).
If the audience were all CPS teachers, students, and parents we'd bring down the house.
Trouble is, I'm too large to play Rahm, too short to play "J.C." — and too lacking in the mendacity DNA to play my buddy Becky. Sigh.
I still haven't heard back from Jean-Claude about where that "community meeting" for us parents is going to be. Anyone know?
reminds me of the webinars CPS make principals watch
you wait and wait and no picture-then no sound then both. Then, when you are allowed to ask questions, they are either glosssed over or they avoid them since they are sticky subjects. Or maybe CPS does not know the answer.
Webinars
I bet he says "send me an email, and I , or my staff, will look into it!" hahahaha
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