The Chicago Tribune published some pre-digested results of a new public education survey they carried out with support from the Joyce Foundation.

Shockingly, the poll results, according to the Tribune, suggest that most people approve of the Tribune’s positions on teacher accountability and school privatization.

Here’s what my look at the actual poll found:

Who responded:

• 50% of those polled were white. Less than 9% of CPS students are white.

• 30% of those polled make more than $ 75,000 a year. 87% of CPS students are from low-income families that qualify for federal free or reduced lunches.

• 43% of those polled do not know a Chicago Public School teacher or teachers’ union member. Really?

Of course, the Trib claims that results were “weighted” to assure a mix consistent with city demographics…but then, like Mayor Rahm, most of the white people in Chicago send their children to private schools.

Key results the Trib decided not to tell you about: 

• The most popular answer to their question about what to do about underperforming schools was “devote more resources while keeping the staff intact” (37%). The least selected answers were “close the school and transfer students to a higher-performing school” (only 6%) and “allow an experienced nonprofit to come in and run the school” (18.8%) (question 24).

• Nearly as many people think the CPS budget should be balanced by raising taxes on businesses as by closing schools. Oops! (question 31).

One more thing the Trib left out: the Joyce Foundation also funded the notorious report, “What’s Trust Got to do with it?” which was re-titled “Giving Parents the Run-around on School Turnarounds” by the university-based National Education Policy Center in a review. The press release announcing that review said:

(T)he report never treats seriously the substantive concerns of resistant parents; it never questions the fundamental strategy that it proposes communicating about….The result is a document that’s “paternalistic and arrogant” in its “criticism of parents for not knowing what’s good for them.”

So, parents, look out when the Tribune and the Joyce Foundation team up to talk about education.

This morning I attended an excellent symposium on a variety of education issues presented by CReATE (Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education), the nearly two-year-old group of 100 Chicago-area academic experts who have already created some excellent resources to help parents, community groups, students and others to better understand the truth about corporate school reform.

CReATE’s first effort was a paper called  “Chicago School Reform: Myths, Realities, and New Visions”, which clarified some of the education issues discussed during the 2011 mayoral election.

Despite the outcome of that election — or maybe because of it — CReATE continued its work with a position paper opposing tying Chicago teacher evaluation to student test scores. I spoke at CReATE’s press conference announcing the letter the professors sent to Mayor Emanuel on the subject.

Today, CReATE gave a small but avid audience of educators, parents and community organizers an overview of several new research-based fact sheets on topics such as charter schools, school funding, TIFs, mayoral control v democratic governance of schools, etc. We then brainstormed ideas for collective action to challenge some of these damaging policies and promote a quality education for every child. You can find some of these papers here.

Thanks to these volunteer educators, Chicago takes another big step ahead at the cutting edge of real school reform. All in all, it was a good day for public education.

They say that if they tell us what they’re doing, we’ll get upset.

What are they doing? Here’s what CPS Chief Operating Officer Tim Cawley told reporters over the phone yesterday: “If we think there’s a chance that a building is going to be closed in the next five to 10 years, if we think it’s unlikely it’s going to continue to be a school, we’re not going to invest in that building.”

Here’s why they don’t want to tell us: “We know increased transparency could potentially lead to increased conflict,” Cawley said. “Somebody sees money going to one school and says, ‘Why not us?’”

Why indeed?

Well, Cawley says they do it to get “the biggest bang for the buck.”

Sure, that’s what public education is all about, after all. That’s the rationale of the power elite who think of school spending as sending money down a “black hole,” or, as the late not-so-great State Sen. “Pate” Philip called it in his push for mayoral control of the schools, a “rat hole.”

The Tribune ran this quote from me:

I think it’s deliberately starving these schools so that they become weaker and weaker before they’re killed off. It shows that they feel absolutely no responsibility toward schools that are struggling. They’re deliberately undermining them.

I called it “appalling.”

I remember a teacher from the Andersen School (now closed) who reported at a CEFTF hearing last year that, as soon as plans were made to open a new LaSalle II magnet school in its building under Renaissance 2010, the building got new tile, new lighting. new window blinds, and new whiteboards. CPS removed the asbestos (remember, bang for the buck!). During the co-location period, the new school received a new library and new washrooms. The drinking fountains in the LaSalle part of the building were fixed, but not on the Andersen side. Students from Andersen were no longer allowed to enter at the main entrance, which was only for LaSalle students.

The student body at Andersen that year was 1% white and 97% low-income. The student body at LaSalle II was 32% white and 60% low-income. You do the math – “bang for the buck,” right?

Meanwhile, the state-mandated Chicago Educational Facilities Task Force ought to call a special meeting to discuss the implications of Cawley’s admission.

For today’s Public Schools Action Tuesday, an action alert from Raise Your Hand:

Call your Alderman today!

As discussions about the longer school day continue without any answers about funding, we ask that you call your alderman to see where they stand on the tif surplus issue. Currently, there is over $800 million in unallocated tax increment financing (TIF) money, and our mayor has said he wants to return less than 10% of this to CPS and other taxing bodies. At a time when our libraries and other services are being cut, and our schools are about to be lengthened in hours without adequate resources to fund the current day, we think this is unacceptable.

You might hear tif rhetoric such as it is “not sustainable” and it is “a band-aid” and “we can’t use this money.” We disagree.  There are certain times, like when our economy is crawling out of a recession, when it makes sense to use more than a paltry 10% of this money. Perhaps our mayor and city council can use this year to come up with more creative solutions on improving the budget for next year. In the mean time, 10% is unacceptable.

Our mayor and city council have the authority to declare an annual surplus up to a certain percentage. A group of aldermen are supporting a tif ordinance that supports giving 40-45% of the unallocated tif money back to CPS and other taxing bodies. Call your alderman’s office and ask if he/she is supporting this measure, and if not, why?

TIF is something we should all be informed about. Lack of transparency when it comes to property taxes means that often money that should be going to CPS, the library and park district, are instead being put into TIF accounts for development. Sometimes this development includes the building of new schools and capital improvements to existing schools, but often it doesn’t.  Instead it goes to fund corporations, such as the bathroom remodel project at the Board of Trade, or the soon-to-be Mariano’s in Greektown. The bottom is line is that we should all know where our tax money is going, and have a voice in whether we support these projects. When money is diverted into tif accounts, we often see a rise in property taxes to make up for the loss.

Now is the time to contact your alderman.  Here are some talking points:

• Recently the city council passed a resolution to extend the school day without any discussion about funding. How much of the tif surplus to do you support returning?
•  Tell your alderman about the programs that your school needs and doesn’t have, or the programs not provided by CPS that parents have to fundraise for.
• Ask your alderman how many TIF districts are in your ward – you should have this info.
• Ask how much of the money from TIF has gone to the schools in your ward.

Find Your Alderman:

https://webapps.cityofchicago.org/StickerOnlineWeb/pageflows/wardLookUp/WardLookUpController.jpf

WWRD? Now Mayor Rahm is giving local ministers the text for their sermons this week. This morning at a clergy event organized by CPS, Father Rahm urged pastors to call for a longer school day from their pulpits on Sunday.

“I ask each of you … to speak in your sermon this Sunday about education,” the mayor said at the event at U.S. Cellular Field. “I want you to specifically speak about the need for a longer school day and school year.”

Of course, it’s nothing new for City Hall to have a bunch of ministers in its hip pocket, ready to deploy as a front for whatever soul-killing initiative our mayor wants to foist on our most vulnerable communities.

Take that “protest” out in front of CPS during the Board meeting yesterday. There were several ministers and a group of other folks with printed signs demanding not just more time in school but EXACTLY 90 minutes and 2 weeks extra – the very numbers on Rahm-Claude’s scorecard.

It’s not that I don’t want a longer school day, as long as there are enough high-quality programs to fill the extra time and enough money to pay for them. But somehow this was never a big deal back when we might actually have been able to pay for it. Somehow during Mayor Daley’s entire tenure as Chicago schools czar it was OK for Chicago to have the shortest school day in the state and possibly the nation. Somehow it’s only a desperate need now, when implementing a longer school day must necessarily involve taking an ax to teacher salaries and other critical programs. Hmmm. Wonder what the real goal is???

Anyway, as a minister’s wife, I take particular umbrage at Rahm’s edict. In light of the situation, though, I’ve selected a few texts from this week’s Common Lectionary (the list of selections from scripture that many preachers base their sermons on) that may be more appropriate:

“I do not sit with the worthless, nor do I consort with hypocrites.” (Psalm 26:4)

“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19b)

“Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23a)

Now, go in peace.

I’ll be talking tonight on CBS-2 news about the CPS proposal to lengthen the school day by 90 minutes. My quote in this morning’s Sun-Times was

“Any citizen of Chicago needs to ask how it’s going to be paid for. I don’t see how they can do it without raising class sizes to 45 kids. This is not a real plan. This is a politically motivated plan. It’s a plan to back the teachers union in a corner” and “make the teachers look like the bad guys for bursting the bubble.”

Let’s look at the numbers. According to Catalyst magazine, the CPS Office of Management and Budget estimated in 2009 that adding an hour to the school day would cost $280 million. Make that 90 minutes and you get $420 million. Figure that costs have gone up since 2009, add on the extra two weeks, and it’s pretty clear that the extra time will cost well over $1 million per school for CPS’s 482 elementary schools. We’re not counting in charter schools because they’re already doing everything right, right?

Now, we have a system that is already looking at a $700 million budget shortfall. CPS has already cut back on many of the programs they are now promising to add back in with the longer school day, such as art, music, sports, and professional planning time.

As if only time, not money, was holding them back.

Well, time and those money-grubbing teachers.

It’s absolutely absurd to propose a plan that would ask teachers to work an extra 90 minutes every day while offering them only half of the raise they were supposed to get for their current work day. And it’s cynical beyond belief to publicly trumpet a plan for a longer school day and year with more services and programs without mentioning how such a plan is to be funded. But then, that’s school reform Rahm-style.

For those who fell for this one, I have a gift horse whose mouth I just know you’re going to want to stick your head into.

This may seem like a PSAT you see every month, but the new Chicago Board of Education is pretty much the same as the old Board, so we need to keep the pressure on.

One upside is that the Board’s June meeting is often not as busy as meetings during the school year, so you might not have to get up at 5 am to get there and get in line to speak – maybe just 6 am.

Here’s the plan:

Last week, thousands of us refused to pay for corporate greed. Keep the movement going Wednesday, June 22 at 9:00 am at CPS Headquarters, 125 S. Clark.

Now, more than ever we must come together to fight this injustice. Please join the protest at the Board of Education from 9:00 – 10:00 am. We plan to FIGHT the refusal to honor commitments to teachers and school professionals who help educate our children.

You can RSVP for this event here.