Thank you, Reverend Thomas, for explaining why the 50 Chicago public schools are REALLY gone...no, it wasn't a tornado....but it might as well have been one!
From John Curry, May 23, 2013
"Unlike the teachers in Moore, Chicago
teachers’ schools are not gone because of some capricious act of nature. They
are gone because of decades of very deliberate decisions by public officials,
corporate interests and ordinary citizens that have eviscerated the
neighborhoods of Chicago, displacing people with the demolition of public
housing, gutting communities with foreclosures and the elimination of jobs. The
schools are gone because they have been replaced by charter schools, the
darlings of politically well-connected school reformers making a profit on tax
money while public officials eliminate the inconvenience of teachers unions.
The schools are gone because poor African Americans and Hispanics in Chicago are
disenfranchised by school governance that is appointed by the mayor with limited
accountability to the communities. The schools are gone because public funding
in this country remains tied to real estate taxes that benefit wealthy suburbs
at the expense of the urban core. The schools are gone because years of school
reforms imposed from the latest outside savior have left front line teachers
abused and demoralized. And the schools are gone because white flight that
began decades ago has left the cities brown and black and poor."
"Who makes decisions about public schools today?
The president who attended the prestigious Punahou private school in Hawaii and
who sends his daughters to the University of Chicago Laboratory School and the
Sidwell Friends School in Washington. The secretary of education who attended
the same Lab School in Chicago. An appointed school board whose membership
until recently included billionaire Penny Pritzker, now the appointee to be
secretary of commerce. She attended the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, where
415 girls in grades six to twelve enjoy the attention of 70 full and part time
faculty members. In Chicago that school would be deemed “underutilized.” And
where do the mayor’s kids go to school? No threats from school closings for
them. They, too, are at the University of Chicago Lab School. These powerful
gurus of public school reform didn’t go to public schools and don’t send their
children to public schools. They benefited from the growing educational
apartheid in this country and they participate in it today."
The Rev. John Thomas: No act of God caused Chicago
schools closings
By Valerie Strauss, Updated: May 23, 2013
Chicago officials are
going ahead with the largest mass closing of public schools in the country’s
history despite polls showing that a majority of city residents oppose it and
looming questions about the rationale offered for the action.
The final decision was made Wednesday by the Chicago Board of Education,
which decided to close 49 elementary schools and one high school program
because, the board said, they are underutilized (though critics argue that
point).
Here is an eloquent piece on the closings, by the Rev. John Thomas, the
former general minister and president of the United Church of Christ, who is now
a professor and administrator at the Chicago Theological Seminary. This appeared
on his
blog.
By John Thomas
Two articles in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune provided a revealing, if
unintended reminder of the injustices lying at the heart of America’s public
schools. At New Trier High School in one of the wealthier suburbs of Chicago,
students will have iPads for their course work
by the fall of 2014. The district will pay about 40% of the costs, leaving
families to come up with the remaining $350 in purchase or leasing options.
School officials justify this by touting the educational benefits and by
pointing out that this will allow the school to phase out some of its 1200
laptops. One page away is an article about the school board of the City of
Chicago which voted yesterday afternoon to close 50 public elementary schools.
In thousands of districts like New Trier, students are getting iPads; in
Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and many other places, students are getting
moving orders and teachers are losing jobs.
Later on in the same paper The Tribune revealed its editorial bias,
offering Mayor Rahm Emanuel space to justify the closings, devoting its editorial to a cynical and shameful attack
on Chicago teachers. Praising the “heroic” teachers who saved lives in Moore,
Oklahoma, The Tribune called on teachers in Chicago to abandon their protest
against the massive school closings and become “heroes” by obediently
implementing the policies of the Chicago Public School Board and its leader, the
mayor. Excuse me! Chicago Public School teachers are already heroes. They
don’t need the condescension of The Tribune. And they don’t need to be unjustly
demeaned as less worthy than teachers in Moore. Today they need our gratitude
for speaking the truth about the nature and impact of these school closings.
Unlike the teachers in Moore, Chicago teachers’ schools are not gone
because of some capricious act of nature. They are gone because of decades of
very deliberate decisions by public officials, corporate interests and ordinary
citizens that have eviscerated the neighborhoods of Chicago, displacing people
with the demolition of public housing, gutting communities with foreclosures and
the elimination of jobs. The schools are gone because they have been replaced
by charter schools, the darlings of politically well-connected school reformers
making a profit on tax money while public officials eliminate the inconvenience
of teachers unions. The schools are gone because poor African Americans and
Hispanics in Chicago are disenfranchised by school governance that is appointed
by the mayor with limited accountability to the communities. The schools are
gone because public funding in this country remains tied to real estate taxes
that benefit wealthy suburbs at the expense of the urban core. The schools are
gone because years of school reforms imposed from the latest outside savior have
left front line teachers abused and
demoralized. And the schools are gone because white flight that began
decades ago has left the cities brown and black and poor.
Who makes decisions about public schools today? The president who attended
the prestigious Punahou private school in Hawaii and who sends his daughters to
the University of Chicago Laboratory School and the Sidwell Friends School in
Washington. The secretary of education who attended the same Lab School in
Chicago. An appointed school board whose membership until recently included
billionaire Penny Pritzker, now the appointee to be secretary of commerce. She
attended the Castilleja School in Palo Alto, where 415 girls in grades six to
twelve enjoy the attention of 70 full and part time faculty members. In Chicago
that school would be deemed “underutilized.” And where do the mayor’s kids go
to school? No threats from school closings for them. They, too, are at the
University of Chicago Lab School. These powerful gurus of public school reform
didn’t go to public schools and don’t send their children to public schools.
They benefited from the growing educational apartheid in this country and they
participate in it today.
I don’t suggest that these policy makers sat down and said, “Let’s close
the schools of poor Black and Hispanic kids in Chicago and make sure that New
Trier kids have iPads.” But here are the facts: The schools closed today in
Chicago are 88% black, 10 % Hispanic, and 94% low income. And next year the
kids in New Trier will all have new iPads. Almost 60 years after Brown v. Board
of Education our schools are more and more separate, and more and more unequal.
Please don’t tell me that this is a complex issue, that there are no good
solutions, that anguished appointed school board members merely did what they
had to do given the economic circumstances. I’ve read the reports. I’ve seen
the studies. I’ve talked to experts. I can tell you what the real story is
about charter school performance. I think I have made a pretty good effort to
understand what’s going on. Whatever the specifics, this is about race and
poverty and antipathy to unions and political influence and public indifference
(how telling that for a time yesterday morning while the Board was deliberating
on its closure vote, the lead online story for The Tribune was Bear’s football
hero Brian Urlacher’s retirement announcement).
I have no doubt that the Chicago school teachers will do as much to protect
their children this September navigating new routes to schools across dangerous
gang lines as the teachers in Moore did for their students when the tornado came
earlier this week. They don’t need editorial writers to tell them to do that.
But when their students ask them why their school is gone, just as students in
Moore are no doubt asking right now, Chicago teachers won’t have a changing and
dangerous climate or the proverbial “act of God” to point to. Their answers
will be equally sad, but far more sinister.
John H. Thomas
posted by Kathie Bracy at 9:40 PM
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