Chicago Teachers Union President warns Bd of Ed to stop business-as-usual...

[Hannah Bell]

Behind the smiles, it was, to use a metaphor, knives out, as Chicago Board of Education President Mary Richardson Lowry and Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman tried to smile while the newly installed President of the 30,000-member Chicago Teachers Union, followed by dozens of teachers and students, warned the Board that business-as-usual would no longer be tolerated....

Since the beginning of the summer of 2010, Huberman's administration has claimed it had to fire hundreds of teachers (they are still refusing to give the number in public) while retaining one of the largest armies of expensive patronage hirelings in the city, and planning to replace hundreds of veteran teachers with youthful corporate trainees who are likely to leave teaching within a couple of years.

The President of the teachers union tried to explain why the Board's policies this summer were a very bad thing for the education of children, the hopes of parents and families, and the morale of teachers. The Board President and board members listened impatiently and then proceeded to return from their monthly secret deliberations and approve their complete agenda as if nothing had been said and no problems existed across the nation's third largest school system...

Despite the fact that Lewis alone, with two decades experience in the classroom, had more teaching experience and knowledge than any dozen members of Huberman's highly paid administrative team, minor level Board officials were calling "time" on Lewis before the two-minute time limit on "public participation" was ended for her. Sitting to Lewis's right... were ten CPS bureaucrats, half of whom had been hired in the past 18 months, all of whom were being paid $150,000 or more while CEO Huberman and President Lowry claimed that the Board was facing a "budget crisis" which had to be solved by firing teachers who, after 20 or more years in the classroom, were being paid half of what the members of Huberman's newly minted "team" were getting thanks to patronage...

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1570§ion=Article


Teachers protest before Board of Education’s July 28 meeting

More than 110 people, most of them teachers and members of the Chicago Teachers Union, protested in a spirit picket line outside the headquarters of the Chicago Board of Education an hour before the Board’s montly meeting on July 28, 2010...

Teachers who attended the protest and the Board meeting promised that regular protests were going to continue until the Board stopped scapegoating teachers and privatizing much of public education in Chicago.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1571§ion=Article

[Catshrink]

1. This is Arne Duncan's legacy

coming soon to a community near you.

[txlibdem]

2. Have you figured out their agenda?

Privatizing schools does not improve student achievement. This has been shown. So what is the benefit to privatizing? Aside from killing off another union, that is.

[4_TN_TITANS]

4. The 'benefit' is a handful of highly paid administrators

making all the rules. The NEA has been asleep at the wheel since Obama's election and appointment of Duncan. Until people wake up and realize that their public schools are being hijacked, it will continue.

[mopinko]

3. this whole mess is about pensions. and anti-daley.

and the mess the state of illinois is in. we are in the worst shape of any state. but this is most of all about underfunded pension funds. this has been going on for years, and they are doing everything they can to get out from under them now.
in this case, i join the outrage. but i will say that i suspect that this is partly an accounting thing, where they are taking them off the books knowing they will take them back in september. but in the meantime they are making the black hole looks slightly smaller.

this is not about anyones agenda, tho. this is about being flat f'ing broke.

[Hannah Bell]

5. oh, please. the records show chicago isn't broke.

[mopinko]

6. what records would that be?

[Hannah Bell]

7. ....Deficit: $655 million. TIF accounts hold: $1.2 BILLION (Daley's little slush fund)

"Reports over the weekend suggest that Mayor Daley might consider using some of the $1.2 billion held in the city's tax-increment financing (TIF) accounts to help close the estimated $655 million deficit the city will face in the coming year."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/02/daley-tif-money-could-be_n_667521.html

and that's just for starters. Quick taste of more: CPS funding adminsistrative teambuilding retreats to Lake Geneva Switzerland while laying off teachers because there's "no money".

lol.


Substance News has covered Daley's corrupt budget antics & those of CPS for years: you can add it to your reading list.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=700§ion=Article

[mopinko]

8. ugh. tiff money.

i get into bigger arguments about tiff money than i do about schools. i will say that it is a complicated subject that is easily demagogued, but imho has been well run. it has brought some amazing improvements to the city. and it is not that easy to just dip into it. there are rules about how it is spent, news stories about how ritchie doles it out notwithstanding.
the tiff program is a big part of the city's blossoming, literally and figuratively, under daley. earlier mayors really had no set funding for the kind of improvements that make life here really livable. ritchie has spent it wisely and well. nobody was coming to chicago for vacations when daley was elected. now they do. and bring multi-millions with them. the arts flourish here thanks to tiff money spent to create a theater district. the fine arts market is among the best in the world, and is supported from 1% for art in city financed building to affordable housing for artists. the business of education is big here, encouraged by investments in downtown properties for offices, classrooms and dormitories. when i moved here no one in their right mind would be caught downtown after dark, now it bustles 24/7, and the college kids are a big part of that.
and the gardens. unbelievable. the trees. migratory bird habitat. and park improvements from one end of the city to the other.

i think that he may need to dip into that money. he refuses to hike taxes because elections are half a year away. i don't think anyone really wants to lease the airport. and the state is broke.

[Hannah Bell]

9. i'm not going to get into an argument over what he spent tif money on.

"broke" = no money.

but there is money, there's tax revenue too, & there's the option of targeted tax hikes & cutting out administrative paid vacation-by-another-name jaunts to switzerland for "teambuilding" as well as a great deal more (documented in substance news).

it might also be a good idea to open the full budget data/calculations to the public (daley & his cronies have repeatedly refused such access to the teachers' union, for example).

[mopinko]

13. the city does not fund the schools. they have their own

levy in the property tax, and their own governance. if the tiff fund were to be used to fill the gaping hole in the city's budget, tho, since it is property taxes, the usual apportionment goes to the schools, parks, etc.

and just for the record, i googled around for this switzerland thing and found nothing. even at catalyst, which is a chicago publication that reports on the schools. i'm not saying it didn't happen, but rumors do go around. catalyst would likely have reported on it. not even the reader had it, and they love a good scandal in any part of the government.

[Hannah Bell]

17. my error. lake geneva -- wisconsin. a junket to a luxury hotel but closer to home.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=1574§ion=Article

http://www.grandgeneva.com/


your comments implying that cps funding is completely separate from the city = lol. the city siphons off about 300 million in levy monies annually & has used for development projects in upscale wards. Daley has mayoral control of chicago schools, CPS CEO is his handpicked toady, & CPS budgeting is non-transparent.

But to get a clear sense of the Daley administration's priorities, and find out where waste might exist, Lewis stressed that the budgeting process needs to be considerably more transparent to teachers and parents alike.

It took repeated Freedom of Information Act requests, for example, for the city to post basic payroll information online. And they've ignored consistent appeals to provide serious internal data on the effect of the city's tax increment financing system (TIF) on schools. From her acceptance speech this weekend (watch it here):

"Now, back home here in Chicago, we need to put all the financial details on the table, because teachers got pink-slips this week -- and yet Chicagoans have not seen a clear, transparent and detailed CPS budget. We don’t know the details behind this claimed $600 million deficit, that’s just what we’ve been told.

It’s time for the Board to give citizens all the specifics -- how CPS spends our money, on what and to whom; how the $250 million in TIFs that should go to schools each year are really spent. Chicagoans need to know how charters spend their taxpayer dollars because to date, we have not seen one charter school’s financials. Not one."

http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2010/06/16/chicago-teachers-increasingly-complaining-about-tif


And it's TIF, not TIFF.

[YvonneCa]

11. Chicago is beautiful. I rediscovered it several years...

...ago. But ALL major cities have been investing this way...'downtown re-development.' Now that the economy has tanked...it can't be maintained...without cuts. It is sad.

[YvonneCa]

10. But it isn't just Illinois. California is...

...in the same boat. So are other states. This is about getting rid of expensive workers (with DB pensions) because states can't afford them any more.

[mopinko]

12. i will not be at all surprised if the teachers here get hired

back come september. unfunded pension liability is the biggest hole in the state budget, not just teachers, but cops and fire. illinois is as close to fiscal collapse as california. i think they are shifting this around just to get it off the table so they can pass a budget. they have been playing around with this shit since i can remember. come sept, they will put it back. although in the meantime, lots of the teachers who were laid off will have a break in their employment that will fuck up their vesting.

[YvonneCa]

14. Some will come back in September...

...but each year, administration uses that to pressure older workers to retire so that they won't have to 'lay off' their friends and colleagues. They are pushing out babyboom workers to save money on salaries and benefits...everywhere.

[mopinko]

15. a few years ago the offered a big early retirement package

which many took. i bet they are all glad now. i have no idea how the state is going to get out of this mess.

[YvonneCa]

16. Sometimes it's not an...

...'offer.' It's a push...done by school districts (or others) who are being told their budget is massively shrinking. The idea of an offer doesn't bother me...that's respectful of service and a CHOICE. If that were the only way this is being handled, I'd have no complaints.

My district came up with a criteria to use to push people out...and a list of people to target. They used cost of the employee in $$, years to retirement anyway, test scores, bi-lingual or not...etc. That is not right, IMHO. I don't want to see that done elsewhere...although I'm pretty sure it's already happening.