Last week I wrote a piece in support of the idea proposed by Karen Lewis to place a small tax on the Mercantile Exchange to generate revenue for schools (since the Merc gets millions in tax breaks).
I was interviewed on Outside the Loop Radio this week about school funding and how the lack of funding impacts schools in Chicago, but specifically my school in Englewood.
The interview is about the first twelve minutes of the show.
Karen Lewis (former CPS teacher) elected President of the Chicago Teachers Union proposed an idea to generate funding, to improve Chicago Public Schools and our city. Her idea is to place a small tax on shares bought and sold at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In an interview published in the Sun Times Lewis said, “This is an opportunity to actually make heroes out of these (wealthy) people. Instead of everybody being angry at them about their money and their greed and all these other things. This is an opportunity for them to say, ‘You know what, we’re part of the city. We love this city. We’d like to see the city work. We’d like to be a part of the process and this isn’t going to be enough to make us want to go.’”
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange issued a statement in response to Lewis saying in part, “…we do not believe the way to accomplish a strong public school system is through singling out futures traders with a tax more than 200 percent higher than what the average trader pays to buy or sell a futures contract…”
For those non-math people like myself 200 percent higher sounds like a lot of money, but in reality if shares were currently being taxed 33 cents they would now be taxed about 67 cents more to make it a dollar tax. Saying something is 200 percent more is just a fancy way of saying something is tripled.
Sixty seven cents more to improve our schools which in turn improves our whole city.
In the same interview where the Chicago Mercantile Exchange claimed it basically couldn’t afford to pay 67 cents more the Mercantile Exchange spokesperson said, “The CME Group absolutely believes that our hometown of Chicago should have a strong, world-class public education system.”
So the Chicago Mercantile Exchange wants a world class education system yet will not give a minute fraction of its wealth and revenue to actually make this a reality?
Please keep in mind that the Mercantile Exchange gets millions of dollars per year in tax breaks. Meaning that all the money that they are not paying in taxes that would go to improving our city and in part our schools stays in their pockets making them even more wealthy.
This my friends is what maintaining the status quo looks like in plain sight.
Teachers and schools are blamed for anything and everything wrong with education. Yet, when teachers demand more money for our schools and our students we are labeled as greedy and the ideas we have to improve education are dismissed.
As an educator in CPS for the past seven years working in the Englewood neighborhood it is painfully obvious that schools need more funding.
Schools need support (i.e. financial resources) for our city to truly give ALL of our students a “world class” education.
Last year Chicago Public Schools reduced the budgets by about $2,000 per student. In a small school like mine that translates to about $400,000 that we lost just last year. In larger schools that number is in the millions of dollars that schools once had that they no longer have to use for school staff, supplies, field trips, and the overall functioning of a school.
In my school cutting $400,000 translated into supplies being cut, technology not being repaired and seven people who no longer work in our building. That means there are seven less adults (teachers, security, tech coordinator, and a teacher coach) that can no longer work with students and help make their education and safety better.
So the Chicago Mercantile Exchange claims it wants a “world class education” for the students of Chicago, but in the same press release basically says it can’t find 67 more cents to invest per transaction for the youth of Chicago to better our city.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is just following the lead of our mayor who claims he wants what is best for the kids, yet steals TIF money that is supposed to go to our schools and neighborhoods and builds stadiums, parks, roads that benefit downtown while also sending his kids to a private school that has everything that ALL our schools should have.
Like Rahm Emanuel the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is just providing lip service claiming it cares about kids, while maintaining the status quo of Chicago and keeping this city a tale of two Chicago’s—One for the rich and one for everyone else.
Or as I like to interpret the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s quote, it just comes down to (millions of) dollars for the rich and pennies for our kids.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/the-chicago-mercantile-ex_b_5282766.html
I’m interviewed on Outside the Loop radio about the TEAM Englewood Spoken Word group piece from Louder Than A Bomb 2014 in which our poets wrote the piece “Hide Your Schools, Hide Your Children, Hide Your Homes, Cause He’s Wrecking it All“. This is a poem written entirely by four Englewood public high school students about all Rahm Emanuel is doing to harm this city.
The interview is from 12:00-22:00
A poem written by 4 TEAM Englewood Public High School students about all that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is doing wrong in Chicago. These students wrote this piece and took part in the Louder Than A Bomb spoken word competition put on yearly by Young Chicago Authors here in Chicago.
Hammer in one hand paint brush in the other
Rahm Emanuel is single handedly destroying our city
Mr. wreck it Rahm
look what Chicago is becoming
bending the rules to fit in the lie of building a new chicago
building new streets
when his own plan got some pot holes
Tearing down our dreams
its getting really windy in these streets
Red X’s mark the spots where his wrecking balls are next to drop
We are not included in the Blue Print of the New Chicago: we’re being pushed out
our buildings transformed into condos – and we know those AINT FOR US
Thermal shock is setting in from the whipping wind of the heartless sins
of the mayor
Norfolk Railroads is pushing us southern folk out
Homes replaced with tracks
that will be laid
where our heads used to
If dry wall could talk
it would speak many prayers to keep our homes
now vacant lots that hold lots of remnants
of 60 years of backyard barbeques
baby showers
and when electric sliding was the super power of the summer
55th and Normal
we are losing all of this
Torturing, tormenting us as we choke on the ashes of our memories
*Cough Cough*
Let’s hope we don’t get sick
Because he’s closing all our clinics
He needs to get treated
And then maybe we can sew back on the other half of the middle finger
that he has been giving us
Its almost as if he’s E Manuel of E-Limination
Exportation!
Extermination!
Eradication!
Step one: Take away our schools
Step Two: Put them out their home
Lastly: Destroy it all and
Deny Deny Deny
But remember, to always keep a straight face when you lie!
Try to pour the cheap paint over our eyes while stealing dollars from under our mattresses
There’s not enough? Close their schools
But he’s building a new DePaul stadium
Using our TIF funds to Transform the South Loop into the Promised Land of redevelopment
and some river walk
of course downtown
The paint is starting to streak.
Building a new Chicago or extending a new lie!
How can a city so in debt blueprint something so expensive?
Banneker Elementary – Closed
Woods Elementary – Closed
Yale Elementary – Closed
The paint is cracking:
From every west side basketball brotherhood
To south side sisterhood bonds through pom-poms
And every poetry team that had dreamed of being on this very stage
has been ripped apart,
Goodbye
Bad foundation for our future generations
struggling with 40 students in one class
so they learn from the streets
There’s not money for our schools, but, there’s enough to build a New Chicago
But that New Chicago is NOT for us.
The paint is wearing thin and so was our patience
Irreparable damage has already been done
Time to stop the destruction of OUR city
Prevent the further corruption of our already twisted politics of Chicago
25% of Chicago school children won’t amount to anything
25
50
75
100% sure that we will be something
See Rahm we are mathematicians
your lies are adding up
and this new Chicago is just another one of them
Our poets featured in the HuffingtonPost Chicago:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/team-englewood-spoken-word_n_4941587.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago&ir=Chicago
Our poets featured in the Chicago Reader:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/03/12/englewoods-message-to-mayor-wreck-it-rahm
Featured & interviewed on CBS Chicago:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/03/14/youth-poetry-team-obliterates-mayor-wreck-it-rahm-in-viral-youtube-video/
Our poets discussed on Outside the Loop Radio show:(14:45-20:40)
http://www.outsidetheloopradio.com/2014/03/13/otl-episode-387-louder-than-a-bomb-poetry-slam-mayor-emanuel-needs-to-hear-from-the-kids-story-club-chicago/
Like & Follow our Spoken Word Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/TeamEnglewoodSpokenWord
We teachers teach, because we love the kids we work with. Yes, we may complain about the kids at times, but they are the reason we stay late, bring work home, and get up early. Thousands of teachers in Chicago put up with bad administrators or broken copy machines, because we love the students that we work with so much that we try to block out all the things that “leadership” of Chicago Public Schools does wrong.
It doesn’t matter where in the city you teach or the “types” of kids that you work with, teachers come to school to enrich the lives of our city’s children.
It is with this love at the absolute forefront, that what the teachers at Saucedo, Drummond, and many other schools are doing truly proves the love teachers have for their students.
The teachers that are refusing to give the ISAT have been threatened to have their Illinois Teaching Licenses revoked. There is no worse threat than that. The threat of taking away the thing we have dedicated our lives to….the ability to teach our students.
Yet, the love that these elementary teachers have for their students is so deep that they realize their refusal to give a pointless test, used for nothing, counting for nothing, and wasting ten days of real teaching and learning is worth that risk.
In your profession how often do you just do things because you are told you have to do, even though you don’t agree with the directive? Why do you do it? Likely because you have bills to pay, a family to support, want a promotion one day, and want a job now. So you follow this directive because even though it is a waste of time and pointless you don’t want to rock the boat. You want the “American Dream” so you most often do what you are told.
Teachers in Chicago have realized for years that the “American Dream” is not a reality for most of our students to reach. This inability to reach the ‘American Dream” is because of the barriers put in place by this city, such as an appointed (not elected) school board, mayoral control over our schools, the stealing of TIF funds from our schools and neighborhoods that really need them amongst a litany of others.
The “American Dream” is much tougher to acquire if you are black or brown living on the South or West sides.
So teachers at Saucedo and Drummond have stood up, not for themselves, but for their students. They want to remake a new Chicago. They want to remake a new educational system in this city. They want their children to question, reflect, and think. They don’t want ten lost days of mindless bubbling for their students. They want ten days to continue the amazing curriculums they have created and put in place for their students.
They want these same students twenty-thirty years from now to not have to do something because they are told to. They want these students to be people who lead not be followers. In this country we talk about children being the future of our country, yet we know that by “children being the future” those children really mean the elite, often times rich, often times white children whose families have led this country in some way or another since its founding.
Teachers believe and demand that ALL children are the future of this country; it just takes brave teachers to really show us what making that possible really looks like.
Thank you Saucedo and Drummond teachers for doing what you do best….Teaching!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/what-it-means-to-love-you_b_4920637.html
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2014/03/11/what-it-means-to-love-your-students/
A little over a year ago I was on the bus headed downtown from the South Side, a lady next to me on the bus struck up a conversation. Eventually she found out that I was a teacher and where I worked. As soon as I finished the last syllable of Englewood, her face showed complete disgust and she promptly said, “Englewood! Those people are animals you should never go there”. I responded, “I’ve worked there 5 years (at the time) I have good kids and parents, have a nice night. “ Thankfully it happened to me by stop.
Sadly, many of the other teachers that I work with have had similar experiences to the one I described. If you’ve never spent time with kids from Englewood and believe the stereotypes about everyone in the neighborhood then I can understand why this lady said what she did.
I could provide many examples during my 7 years of teaching in Englewood to easily disprove the statement made by this person, however let me share my most recent and by far most personal and emotional experience to disprove her mass and faulty generalization.
My partner (also a CPS teacher) and I were expecting our 2nd child. She was 17 weeks pregnant. About a week ago while getting a checkup we found out that we had lost our baby.
I do not have the words nor the desire to describe the pain we felt and the emotions we still feel about our loss.
We took some time off of work to spend time together and with our young son so we as a family could grieve this loss. While going through the grieving process I became upset that we had told so many people about the pregnancy. All of our friends, family, co-workers, and all of my 120 students knew.
Every email we sent to our family and friends explaining there had been a late miscarriage was painful. I had asked my friends at work to tell the students what had happened, because I knew I wouldn’t be strong enough to and I didn’t want them asking about it.
I was hesitant to return to work because my emotions were still all over. My first day back while standing in the hall before the start of the first period, nearly every student I had taught or am teaching this year came and hugged me, gave me a handshake, or just simply asked if I was okay and said they were glad to have me back.
You see these Englewood animals, I mean Englewood kids, I mean kids reached out to me (as they always have) and showed their care and love.
These kids, my kids that are labeled as thugs, gang bangers, and criminals have made the toughest point in my life easier.
The beauty of my students sadly reminded me of the vile spewed by this lady on the bus. If I ran into her now I would just ask her to picture the darkest point in her life and think about who came to her side and supported her.
Because for me during my darkest point, it was 120 “animals from Englewood”.
**And if my personal example was not enough one of our students from our school, TEAM Englewood decided to donate his kidney to a stranger, because his mom has needed a kidney transplant for years and he is not a match for her.
(Feel free to share this piece, but due to the very personal nature of this post, please do not tag me if you share via Facebook)
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2013/11/19/englewood-those-kids-are-animals/
After the story in The Guardian about my experiences working in Englewood, I was contacted by the Mike McConnell radio show on WGN radio. After doing some background I was a little hesistant to go on, because Mike McConnell is on the more conservative side and has a history of attempting to bully his interviewees. Other than him trying to get me to talk bad about my student’s parents, calling my kids gang bangers, and implying that because I worked in Englewood I must not be a good teacher, because I couldn’t get a job somewhere else, the interview went pretty well.
I was featured in The Guardian in the “A Day’s Work” section. I had to answer 6 questions then live respond to questions from the readers.
Please make sure to read the comments as that was the most fun part of the whole thing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/03/chicago-teacher-south-side
Over the past 6 years I have seen the public high school I work at on the South Side, TEAM Englewood, lose funding little by little, that is until this year. Our school was part of Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 plan which was based on the faulty premise that one could simply make education better by closing schools, firing everyone that worked in the building and opening a new school. Being new to Chicago and not knowing anything about this plan, school closings and turnarounds I decided to work at TEAM Englewood (which replaced Englewood Tech Prep). I chose to work in the Englewood community, not because I didn’t have job options of where to work, but because I wanted to work in the Englewood neighborhood.
Our school’s motto is simply “Opportunity”. We want to give our students in Englewood the same opportunities that students all across the city get. I am one of the original teachers who started at this school when it first opened.
During the past six years I have seen our school do amazing things. Maybe the most impressive is that we average about a 93% graduation rate for our senior classes. However, the opportunities that we are able to give our kids are slowly dwindling and being taken away by CPS and this city in the name of “mandatory” budget cuts.
These cuts started small. 4 years ago we had two counselors, we had to cut one. In that same year, we had to cut our librarian (we are “lucky” to be a school that actually has a library). 3 years ago we cut our Assistant Principal position. Last year we did get an Assistant Principal back, but we cut our College Readiness Coordinator. Also that year we had to cut our attendance clerk, school accountant, and tech coordinator.
The implied message from CPS was to do more with less.
Obviously little by little our computers stopped working, school staff had to take on more and more roles. Our Curriculum Coordinator now became in charge of fixing technology, organizing all the CPS mandated standardized testing we are forced to give, helping teachers, observing classrooms, acting as an administrator, among other roles.
All these cuts though very large and detrimental at the time now pale in comparison to the cuts CPS is forcing our school (and all CPS public schools to make) this year. Our school of 500 students had our budget reduced by about 15%, which translated into a $400,000 budget deficit. So now our school, due to the CPS budget, is being forced to eliminate 3 teaching positions and 3 non-teaching positions (for example: clerks, deans, assistant principal, curriculum coordinators).
Now that we have less staff, larger class sizes, and less resources our school will be demanded to improve or have the threat of being “turned around”.
Every neighborhood school in the city is facing similar or even worse cuts.
Our city claims it doesn’t have money to fund schools or teachers’ pensions. Yet our city has money to build new stadiums, river walks, give $85 million to charter schools, and a host of other “necessities”.
I agree with the late John Henrik Clarke who said, “Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.”
The people who run this city truly do not want a fully educated public. They want great magnet schools that are fully funded with experienced teachers for a select few and neighborhood schools that are poorly funded with an inexperienced teaching staff for the majority.
This is not some conspiracy there is historical precedent for the actions of limiting educational opportunities in lower income communities of color around the world. What this city is attempting to do is a human rights violation. If what was going on here in Chicago was happening in a different country we would easily classify the actions of this city as a human rights travesty.
As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon in which you can use to change the world.” Our city clearly agrees as it is restricting the education of the majority to keep in power a powerful largely white minority.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/the-intentional-impoverishment_b_3671623.html
Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Mayor Emanuel, and Becky Carroll the CPS spokesperson have used the justification (among many others over this year) that we must close schools that children are in under-utilized schools. They have even blasted the Chicago Teachers Union saying that, “union leadership remains committed to a status quo that is failing too many children trapped in underutilized, under-resourced schools.”
As a high school history teacher in Englewood for the past six years I agree that we must break the status quo. We (parents, teachers, and tax payers of this city) must break the status quo that CPS and our Mayor allow to go on. The status quo of having a mayor control the school system. If as a mayor you have to close any schools you obviously are failing at running the schools. If as a mayor you have to close the most schools in the history of our country you have obviously failed at running the schools.
The status quo that allows the Mayor to give lucrative deals to his friends like dodgy head of UNO Charter Schools Juan Rangel who in turn has had millions of dollars of state funding cut off, because he was caught giving tax payer money to his relatives businesses.
We have to break the status quo of having the dubious distinction of being the only school district in the entire state with an appointed handpicked NOT elected school board. The mayor not only controls the schools, but then he gets to pick who will be on his school board. The appointed school board is made up of people who do not send their children to public schools and in some cases do not even live in the city. As I teach my students this is called Paternalism. An outsider who claims to know what is best for everyone.
Speaking of outsiders and the status quo we also are on our 4th CEO in 5 years. Barbara Byrd-Bennett who replaced Brizard, who replaced Manzany, who replaced Huberman in 2009 is not even from Chicago. In fact she is still registered voter in Ohio. So like the school board someone not from Chicago telling Chicago parents and students what to do. To see Byrd-Bennett’s true policies just look at her brief but damaging time spent in Detroit.
The notion that students are trapped in under-resourced schools is partly true. I disagree with the trapped part of the statement but the under-resources part I strongly agree with. CPS and the Mayor say to get more resources for our schools we must close 50 schools. Yet the status quo is allowing some schools to be fully funded using TIF money and other schools like mine and many in the black and brown neighborhoods of this city to not be fully funded.
You see with TIFS the neighborhoods with more political clout are allowed to keep their TIF money and have it used for the purposes it was intended such as funding schools. In other neighborhoods the TIF money that is supposed to be used for schools is actually be siphoned from the neighborhoods that really need it and that money is taken downtown for building things like the $100 million River Walk, $300 million to a private university to build DePaul’s new stadium, $55 million for the new Maggie Daley Park.
The status quo allows the mayor to take from the poor and give to the rich. The status quo allows school board members like Penny Pritzker to use TIF money to build new hotels while having her bank accounts located in the Bahamas. This means that the status quo allows her to make decisions for schools, take money earmarked for schools, and then not pay taxes that in part should be helping schools.
So when the regurgitated rhetoric comes from our CEO, Mayor, or anyone high up in CPS about the Teachers Union wanting to keep kids trapped in the status quo, remember that the Teachers Union is made up and run by 40,000 people who work with students and have committed our professional lives to improving the opportunities for our students. We want our kids to have every opportunity and resource possible. We have a plan for education in this city unlike the Mayor. We demand that instead of closing schools to get the resources our kids should have had all along that the status quo of how the resources are allocated be changed. Since teachers are forced by law unlike the appointed school board and certain higher ups in CPS to live in Chicago these are our children. Barbara Byrd Bennett while talking a good game and using catchy sound bites is really just pretending to care about other people’s children, because like her CEO predecessors she will be gone shortly too.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/the-real-status-quo-of-ch_b_3359636.html
http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2013/05/31/the-real-status-quo-of-chicago-public-schools/
I Teach 