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Saturday, October 18
By Dave Stieber
A few days ago my son and I took juice to the 12 parents and community members who are performing a hunger strike. They are protesting Chicago Public Schools' decision to close one of the last public schools in their neighborhood. Frustrations are intense towards CPS, who has not been listening to their proposal to open a new public school, which they created with real community input.
— Mechanics
By Dave Stieber
Last night I read an article in the Chicago Tribune in which the columnist and editorial board member Kirsten McQueary "metaphorically" wished a Hurricane Katrina would wipe out Chicago. I wish I were making this up, please read this piece. Even while I and many others were tweeting her about how offensive her column is, she sent out the following tweet:
What Hurricane Katrina did was kill nearly 2,000 people and displace and relocate 1 million people throughout the Gulf Coast. In New Orleans the population of the city fell by half due to loss of homes and displacement. Fifty percent of the city's residents' homes were uninhabitable or lost, and multiple generations of New Orleanians were forced to move. Historical and proudly black communities were wiped out.
Now some people like McQueary will likely say, but New Orleans is back! Who is New Orleans back for? For people who look like me (i.e. white people). Not the people who lived in those predominantly black precincts.
— Mechanics / Comments (8)
By Dave Stieber
Recently Governor Rauner said, "...the Chicago Teachers Union shouldn't have dictatorial powers, in effect and causing the financial duress that Chicago Public Schools are facing right now."
This statement from Rauner comes just a few days after Forrest Claypool, our newest CEO, said that teachers need to have "shared sacrifice" by taking a 7 percent pay cut.
The shared sacrifice Claypool speaks of means that my wife (also a CPS teacher) and I would lose about $11,000 in combined income for this year alone.
I could go on and on about how Claypool is just another puppet of Rahm, in a long line of puppets appointed by the mayor, or how Chicagoans demand an elected school board (remember Chicago is the only district in the entire state without an elected school board). But since Rauner thinks a union run by 40,000 teachers is a dictatorship and Claypool says teachers need to sacrifice, I will share my stories, so that maybe, just maybe, they both (along with Rahm) will realize what it means to really sacrifice.
— Mechanics / Comments (4)
Intrinsic Schools has sent a letter to the North Side Neighborhood Advisory Council (NAC) informing that they are withdrawing their proposal for their third charter high school in Chicago.
The letter was addressed from Intrinsic CEO Melissa Zaikos and came one night before a scheduled "Capacity Interview," which would have essentially been an interview of the charter operator by the NAC.
— Phil Huckelberry
By Phil Huckelberry / 2 Comments
It's now been 11 days since the carbon monoxide leak which sent over 80 Prussing Elementary School students and staff to the hospital. While officials from Chicago Public Schools have partially answered some questions, and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool has informed that he will be visiting the school to field more questions on Nov. 16, many parents remain irate at the CPS response to date. More...
By Ramsin Canon / 2 Comments
It's not surprising that some of Mayor Emanuel's sympathizers and supporters are confusing people's substantive disputes with the mayor as the effect of poor marketing on his part. It's exactly this insular worldview that has gotten the mayor in hot... More...
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