Tag Archives: DePaul Stadium

Rahm Hoping Chicago Forgets Everything in Time for 2015

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The city of Chicago is littered with historians. Depending on where you are in the city, people can remember and share stories of buildings, businesses, train lines, or movie theaters that used to be in certain locations that are no longer there. For example, many people on the South Side can remember how the Green Line used to stretch all the way to Stony Island, but has now been reduced to only going as far as King Drive. No matter where you are in the city if you talk to enough people you will find out what used to be at certain corners or how certain buildings used to look.

Our Mayor Rahm Emanuel though is betting that the citizens of Chicago will not remember and will forget everything he has done.

Rahm Emanuel is betting that we will forget how he closed the most schools in the history of the United States. He is hoping we forget how neighborhood schools are the backbone of communities.

You see since Rahm has been elected (by less than 25% of all the eligible voters in Chicago) he has become infamous. On top of closing the most schools in the history of our country, he has also been mayor as Chicago has become the murder capital of the country, or as my students say ChiRaq (Chicago + Iraq).

He gives press conferences where he talks about his “great” new initiatives, but has little follow through. Remember when he promised to get rid of Chicago’s food deserts?

Through his time as mayor, Rahm has been taking public money and investing or giving it to private businesses or organizations, like Depaul’s new basketball stadium. He also made sure that bad privatization deals like the parking meter contract stayed in place. Another privatization scheme by our Mayor that has slipped under the radar is the fact he has leased the Port of Chicago to a company based in Denver for 62 years. Just another move by our mayor to make a select few wealthy while allowing money to leave our own city. He almost privatized Midway Airport, but the deal thankfully fell through at the end.

Yet when he wants to (which is often) Rahm claims the city has no money for, in his eyes, not important things like public schools, CTA employees, and fire and police people. He has implied these public workers to be greedy.

He has slashed school budgets which often resulted in 15% of an entire school’s staff being cut. Schools are reporting there is not enough money for basic school supplies like paper and books. And now reports are coming out that schools do not even have enough money for essential sanitary supplies like toilet paper.

But now all of a sudden Rahm is changing his tune. He is announcing the building of a new school on the far South East Side.

Never mind that is on a toxic site.

As Rahm proudly says, ““For all of you that have been asking for this for years, this is your day. Take pride in it.”

Wow, surely Rahm is now finally listening to the people right? Wrong.

As Jackson Potter from the Chicago Teachers Union said, ““Most of these projects are getting completed in 2015 when he’s running for re-election.”

I couldn’t agree more. Rahm is betting that the voters of Chicago will forget about the countless things he has done to continue to harm working class communities across the city. He is attempting to do a few “good” things just in time for his attempt at a 2015 re-election.

Unfortunately for Rahm he doesn’t realize that Chicago is a city of historians, that don’t forget. (I hope)

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2013/09/25/rahm-hoping-chicago-forgets-everything-in-time-for-2015/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-stieber/rahm-hoping-chicago-forge_1_b_3983580.html

The Real Status Quo of Chicago Public Schools

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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/