CPS approves largest school closure in Chicago’s history

May 23, 2013|By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, John Chase and Bob Secter | Tribune reporters

 

Months of argument and anguish over Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s push for sweeping school closings came to a climax Wednesday as his hand-picked Board of Education voted to shut 49 elementary schools and transfer thousands of children to new classroom settings.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett withdrew her recommendation to close four other schools at the last minute as it became clear some board members would fight to save them.

But the board gave a ringing endorsement to Emanuel’s vision for a downsized school system, which he argues will help combat a massive budget deficit and allow the district to distribute scarce resources more efficiently.

Critics were unconvinced, and many forcefully expressed objections during and after Wednesday’s board meeting. Ald. Ameya Pawar, 47th, one of several City Council members who spoke on behalf of schools in their wards, argued that schools serve as the glue of many neighborhoods.

“Closing a school is akin to closing a community,” Pawar said.

But Byrd-Bennett, in urging a vote for the administration’s proposal, said that doing nothing to address underused and poorly performing schools was harmful to children.

Note that the schools closed and neighborhoods affected are predominantly black.

Byrd-Bennet’s argument in the last paragraph above is absolutely bass-ackward. First, she says the kids in an area aren’t learning as much as they should, so we’re going to close their schools. Think about it! That’s equivalent to saying there’s too much crime in this area, so we’re going to close the police stations there … or there are too many undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S./Mexico border, so we’re going to lay off half of our Border Patrol agents.

Second, what exactly does she mean when she says the schools are “underused”? She means there are fewer kids in each class than in some other schools. So we’ll “solve” that by closing those schools and significantly increasing the class size in their new schools, thus hurting both the new kids and the kids and teachers who have been there.

I was in graduate school in Durham, NC, a few years after the city schools had been integrated. A lot of the white parents who could afford it had subsequently moved to suburban subdivisions outside the city limits (city and county were separate school systems). This meant that the city schools had fewer students overall, but the ratio of blacks to whites was higher. My wife had just started a new job at predominantly black Burton Elementary School, which had been a source of pride for its neighborhood and the nearby “projects.”

So I read a story in the newspaper saying that because their average class size was around 20, the city was going to close a number of schools. I hit the roof, because my wife’s 4th grade class had 34 students in it! The school zones had been drawn in such a way as to have significantly lower class size in predominantly white schools than in my wife’s predominantly black school.

Luckily, I knew a reporter for the Durham newspaper, and I got him to look into it. He did and wrote a story revealing what was happening. Lo and behold! In about a week a number of kids were transferred out of Burton and the average class size was more workable. One small victory. But that was over 40 years ago. Today the same stunts are being played out in big cities all over the country, on a vastly greater scale.

Parents who can afford it will begin taking their kids out of the public schools and sending them to for-profit charter schools. So more public schools will be closed. It’ll be de facto privatization.

Illinois Bans Abstinence-Only Sex Ed: ‘In Fantasy Land, We Teach Our Kids Abstinence’

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 24, 2013 at 10:30 am

Illinois public schools will be required to include medically accurate information about birth control in their sex ed classes under a measure that the state legislature passed this week. HB 2675, which Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is expected to sign into law, will prohibit health classes from teaching abstinence-only curricula.

Illinois’ current law requires sex ed classes to emphasize abstinence as “the expected norm,” and stipulates that “course material and instruction shall stress that pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are ready for marriage.” Public schools can choose between teaching abstinence-only education, using a mix of stressing abstinence while providing comprehensive information about birth control and condoms, or simply declining to provide any sex ed instruction. Under HB 2675, schools won’t be able to choose the abstinence-only option anymore — they’ll need to either offer comprehensive information about prevention methods, or decide not to offer any sex ed courses whatsoever.

Head and Heart Award for Illinois

Of course in fairness to the Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly, they are the minority party. Teabagger Wingnuts shouldn’t really blame them for this morally depraved action. The bill was passed by the Democratic majority, and will be signed into law by the Democratic governor.

Congressman: Women Should Be Forced To Give Birth To Fetuses With No Brain Function

By Tara Culp-Ressler on May 24, 2013 at 9:06 am

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

At a congressional committee hearing to discuss a proposed measure to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a Texas lawmaker told a woman who made the difficult choice to terminate a non-viable pregnancy that she should have carried the fetus to term anyway — even though an MRI had already revealed that he was missing a large part of his brain and didn’t have much chance of survival.

How are the two images alike? How are they different? In both cases, what’s the significance??

Congressman Who Gets Millions in Farm Subsidies Denounces Food Stamps as Stealing ‘Other People’s Money’
Aviva Shen
Think Progress / News Analysis
Published: Wednesday 22 May 2013

 

While Fincher interprets food assistance for the needy as “stealing,” he has not similarly condemned the Farm Bill’s massive agricultural subsidies. In fact, he supported a proposal to expand crop insurance by $9 billion over the next 10 years. Fincher has a great personal stake in maintaining these particular government handouts, as the second most heavily subsidized farmer in Congress and one of the largest subsidy recipients in Tennessee history:

USDA data collected in EWG’s 2013 farm subsidy database update — going live tomorrow –shows that Fincher collected a staggering $3.48 million in “our” money from 1999 to 2012. In 2012 alone, the congressman was cut a government check for a $70,000 direct payment. Direct payments are issued automatically, regardless of need, and go predominantly to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country.

Fincher’s $70,000 farm subsidy haul in 2012 dwarfs the average 2012 SNAP benefit in Tennessee of $1,586.40, and it is nearly double of Tennessee’s median household income. After voting to cut SNAP by more than $20 billion, Fincher joined his colleagues to support a proposal to expand crop insurance subsidies by $9 billion over the next 10 years.

UPDATED: Virginia GOP Nominee For Attorney General Introduced Bill Forcing Women To Report Their Miscarriages To Police

By Ian Millhiser on May 20, 2013 at 10:35 am

 

If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) had become law.

And yet, the Virginia Republican Party wants to make Obenshain into the state’s top prosecutor. This weekend, Virginia Republicans selected Obenshain as their nominee to replace tea party stalwart Ken Cuccinelli (R) as the state’s attorney general.

Under Obenshain’s bill, which was introduced in 2009,

When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf shall, within 24 hours, report the fetal death…. Any person violating the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Under Virginia law, a Class 1 misdemeanor carries a maximum sentence of “confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500,” so Obenshain’s bill could lead to a woman who decides to take a day to grieve the loss of a pregnancy she’d hoped to carry to term spending a year of her life in jail for that decision.

[Obenshain has said the bill was not intended to be that broad, and he has withdrawn it.]

You know how we grew up hearing about American democracy, majority rule, honor, and all that? Well, I did, anyhow. But I’m a pre-boomer, so… All lies.

Remember when everybody mocked the NRC after Clint Eastwood’s stunt with the empty chair? Well, maybe the joke’s on us. Advise and consent. Yeah! But what if it’s advise, but don’t hold your breath waiting for consent? Sure, the president can get the consent of a majority of senators. However, because Republicans have chosen to destroy democracy by abusing of the “gentlemen’s agreement” of filibuster, a majority isn’t enough. The minority rules. We mocked the NRC Convention, Ho-Ho. But they’re mocking our system of government. Nothing to laugh about there.

From Huffington Post:

Larry Cohen

President, Communications Workers of America

 

No NLRB, No Voice

Posted: 04/12/2013 5:51 pm

 

 

Today Congress essentially told working Americans to drop dead. House Republicans pushed through a dangerous bill that would paralyze the National Labor Relations Board, blocking the only path that workers have to workplace justice.  

H.R. 1120, the “Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act,” is designed to advance a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision, known as Noel Canning v. NLRB, challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the board.

Under the decision, the NLRB only has one Senate-confirmed member – Chairman Mark Pearce, a Democrat whose term expires this August.

Now H.R. 1120 seeks to freeze all activities of the NLRB that requires a full quorum, or three members. It would also bar the NLRB from enforcing any decisions it has made since Jan. 4, 2012, when Obama made those disputed recess appointments.

How did we get here? The blame mainly falls on the broken Senate rules.

So here’s the Republicans’ dream meeting of the NLRB, an essential protection for the rights of American workers in particular, and for human rights and justice in general. Think of it as an application of the Clint Eastwood ideal.