Tuesday, January 21, 2014

This is Why There is No Money for Neighborhood Schools: The Chicago School Board Votes on Charter School Expansion Today

So,  the mayor has money for 17 new charter schools while we wait for more additions for overcrowded 41st Ward Schools

Start asking questions about charter schools, and today's charter school expansion vote by the Chicago School Board.   Why do new schools have to be charter schools? How do charter schools impact neighborhood schools?  Where is the investment in local neighborhood schools?  Why is it taking so long to add additions to overcrowded northwest side schools?  Why does the appointed school board have all the decision making power?


http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/council-mayors-allies-kill-charter-school-hearing/Content?oid=12196607

Even the Untouchables would have a hard time slowing the mayor's charter push. The Chicago Board of Education is set to approve up to 21 new charter schools this week.

Yet I can think of a million reasons the expansion should be put on hold. For starters, the more money the mayor spends building new charters, the less money he has for existing schools that are already so broke they're worried about paying for toilet paper.

As a city, we've never had a debate on this wider issue: Should we be building new schools of any kind when we can't afford to adequately fund the ones we have?

Moreover, if Mayor Emanuel's so determined to build new schools, why do they have to be charters?
The mayor says we need to bring in private operators to give parents more choices.

Sounds great! But in reality, charters do no better than other local schools on standardized tests—which is how we judge schools these days. In many cases, they do worse.
Plus, they're privately run operations. That means they don't abide by the same standards of transparency as regular public schools.

If you don't believe me, ask Dan Mihalopoulos. He's the ace investigative reporter for the Sun-Times who went to court to try to force UNO—one of the biggest charter operators in the state—to turn over records of how they spent millions of public dollars.
Another charter operator—the Chicago Math and Science Academy—has argued in court that it's not even a public school, though it's largely funded with public money. That's part of the school's legal fight against an effort by its teachers to unionize.
Yes, that's right: teachers who want to unionize. And now we've run into the elephant in the room.
Charter operators tend to be militantly nonunion, which is why I suspect power-hungry politicians like Mayor Emanuel love them so much.
The more charters he creates, the less power the Chicago Teachers Union has—and the more power Mayor Emanuel can amass, as if he needs more.

In fairness to the Chicago Public Schools—an operation that needs all the defending it can get—the district did create local advisory councils to review the latest charter school proposals, which are supposed to alleviate overcrowding on the northwest and southwest sides.

But CPS officials told the members of these councils that discussions should be limited to the specifics of the new charter proposals. They were not—let me repeat, not—permitted to talk about the larger issue of whether we should create any charters at all.

11 comments:

  1. I see it coming...the crystal healing charter school, the creationist charter school, the "i have a right to concealed carry" charter school.....coming soon to an overcrowded area near you.

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  2. I've heard Rahm say parents should have a choice of schools. Pure bumper sticker logic. Fact is parents can send students to one of many private schools throughout the city. That is choice. Extending the choice logic of Rahm and the charter cult, I should have the right to insist the city deliver bottle water to my house daily, since my current water is delivered in ancient lead piping.

    Brilliant plan Rahm, replace experienced teachers with Teach for America low-wagers from Iowa. Are your kids teachers from Iowa, Rahm?

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  3. Hey O'Conner! Your ward soundly rejected Rahm. He was clobbered. 3 years later, his poll numbers are in the toilet. In every ward excluding the Gold Coast wards. (No surprise there). How do I know? If he where polling well, we'd never hear the end of it. So give the people what they want Mary. Or in this case, what they don't want - Rahm.

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  4. Taft High School has been overcrowded for years, and yet there is no new public high school in the works for neighborhood teens who would like to go to high school in their own neighborhoods on the northwest side, including the 41st ward. Why hasn't the Board addressed the lack of a second high school for the Northwest side?

    Where is Alderman O'Connor on charter schools? Has she ever gone on record stating she opposes them/likes them for the community. Might be a good question for an upcoming candidate forum...

    I doubt any decision will be made before the election by the mayor or the school board about a second high school. If the mayor manages to win the next election and serves a second term, we will probably see charter elementary and high schools all over the northwest side including the 41st ward.

    Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to try to get a statement about a second neighborhood high school serving the 41st ward out of Alderman O'Connor before the upcoming election.

    There seems to be an abundance of dollars going to charter schools all over the city, why not have our tax dollars be reinvested into our neighborhoods in the 41st ward.

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    1. BOE want to alleviate overcrowding at Taft by building the Noble Charter high school across the street from Prosser HS (Palmer and Long). As Alderman Sposato pointed out at the BOE meeting, the Noble Charter high school is 6.5 miles away from crowded Taft HS and that makes no sense. Mary O'Connor was no where to be seen. Clearly she doesn't care about high school students who live in the 41st ward.

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    2. Great, I send my daughter from overcrowded Oriole Pk to overcrowded Taft. I hate having to live here

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    3. And, speaking about Sposato, I wish he would have moved here to the 41st ward, and become alderman. What a decent and thoughtful man. Surely, some of you fireman and police officers in the 41st have another guy like him around.

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  5. Well, turns out that Rahm Emanuel hates everything about Chicago Public Schools.

    He hates the schools--he just closed 50 of them.

    He hates the children that go to CPS. He makes them walk through rival gang territories, risking their lives on a daily basis.

    He privately believes--which he revealed to Lewis--that 25% of CPS students will amount to nothing and he will NOT spend money on them.

    He hates the parents of the students of CPS. As he was closing them he had his CPS board member call them members of the "peanut gallery."

    He hates teachers at CPS. He tried to tack on a longer school day without paying the teachers for it.

    He hates the teachers union president. He told her to go f*** off.

    He has no confidence in the school system and will not send his children to CPS.

    When new schools are being opened, they are NOT part of the CPS, but privately run, non-transparent charter schools.

    With Rahm Emanuel hating every single aspect of Chicago Public Schools, why is such a person with such a loathing of such an important institution in CHARGE OF RUNNING IT?

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  6. What we have here is the selling of our greatest public asset. Nothing good comes from selling public assets, take a look at the parking meter debacle.

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  7. A couple of names to consider for the new charter high school -- Acme High, Thug High, Buy Me a HS Diploma High, Corruption High School, Screw U Taxpayer High.

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  8. U think you r livin in f***ing utopia? Get a grip. the alderman knows if u relieve overcrowding, build a new high school, people in the ward might actually send their kids to the cps school instead of working themselves to death to send their kids to a private school or driving them across town to a selective enrollment school.

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