Hearing but not Listening Commissions
I have been making the rounds to various CPS Hearing Commissions on school closings. Hearing after hearing has proven once again that a non-elected school board with an appointed commission does not serve the interests of the people. And so I spoke with anger at the hearing at Truman College, different from my other two remarks at previous hearings. Much had to be said in two minutes, so I stated what I could in that time but still delivered the intent.
I am a graduate of CPS, both elementary and high school. I am a teacher in the public schools. I am a parent of two children who attend a public school.
Rahm Emmanuel once stated, "Let no crisis go to waste." This is what is happening. The crisis was created by Rahm and company. He understood that in order to win elections, the party had to cater to corporate interests and sell out the public. He went on to become one of the top recipients of lobbyist and corporate funds. Afterward, he went to Wall Street, where his clan pillaged the economy and left us cleaning up the mess. This is what we are dealing with again and again.
When I went to school, we were overcrowded. I spent two years in mobile units in the school yard. Over the decades, overcrowding seem fine. Yet now when the ratio of students to teachers is down to one in which all research and my experience indicates, best serves the learning environment, suddenly you find it unacceptable. What is wrong with having a class of twenty students to one teacher, rather than your goal of 36 to one?
Money! There is not enough. Well, I could fund education if I made every board member pay their fair share of taxes. I could fund education if every corporation where a member worked, paid its fair share of taxes. I could fund education if I made the Board of Trade pay its fair share of taxes. I could fund education if I imposed a tax on financial transactions of trades, stocks and hedges. I could fund education if I dipped into the TIFF for education instead for corporate cronies.
The problem here is not one of utilization, but one of priorities.
But you don't see that. What you see are numbers. You don't see possibilties. You don't see communities. You don't see families. You don't see children. You see numbers.
I have two students who travel from the Indiana border to the northside. It's a long journey. Why? Because the board intentionally starved their community schools of resources and fed those resources to corporate backed charters, which have not been able to prove their educational value, but have proven their political value.
Why are you closing down public schools while opening up charters? Why?
Simply, public education is not a priority. The priority is corporate interests, political power and the destruction of organized labor. You are willing to sacrifice our children. You are willing to pit community against community, family against family, child against child.
What is the priority? Find the funding. Find the resources that really put children first!