Bloody Days Increase in Chicago's General High Schools
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Extra! Mayor’s Miracle Management Team Creates 31-day April! Substance See Page 23 www.substancenews.com 12/06 Volume XXXII, No. 4, December 2006 $2.00 per copy Daley’s ‘Renaissance’ concentrates rival gangs, violently destabilizes neighborhood schools... Bloody days increase in Chicago’s general high schools By George N. Schmidt Despite intense efforts by pub- lic relations staff at the Chicago Board Destabilizing of Education and the some of the edi- tors at Chicago’s daily newspapers, in- Chicago’s creasing gang violence in Chicago’s gen- eral high schools couldn’t be completely remaining ignored during the opening months of the 2006-2007 school year. public But even the most attentive public citizen would have had difficulty schools. figuring out what was true from the con- flicting reports provided by public This month: schools officials, the Chicago Police De- Part One: Undermining partment, and the major media. By No- general high schools through vember 2006, the main story line, re- gang transfers via school peated by the school board’s public re- lations staff and repeated as news from closings. the front page of the Chicago Tribune, was that things were better as far as vio- January 2007: lence went in the city’s public schools. Part Two: Chaos and gangs “Student arrests drop” pro- in the largest neighborhood claimed a page one Tribune headline on November 14. The lengthy story left the elementary schools. impression that an alleged reduction in violence at Steinmetz High School (3030 February 2007: N. Mobile) was real and was the result Part Three: How the charter of new programs which focused on so- Many teachers, parents and community leaders are concerned that Chicago’s schools selectively enroll cial work rather than arrests of students Roberto Clemente High School, at 1147 N. Western Ave. (above), is the next tar- — even those who had committed vio- get of Mayor Daley’s school board’s plan for charter school expansion. Critics their students and kick out lent crimes in the school. charge that the Duncan administration has created a racial and gang security cri- their problems (then blame Less than two months earlier, sis at Clemente by funneling gang members from the Austin High School area into the public schools). Continued on Page Five Clemente since September 2004. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Duncan’s Continued privatization of public schools... Massive charter expansion huge By Lotty Blumenthal and George N. Schmidt SNAFU If each meeting of the Chicago Board of Education had it’s own theme song, the November 15, 2006, meeting’s wrecks song would have been “Hey Look Me over...” Although the Board has been carefully orchestrating the regular ap- pearance of teachers, students and par- retiree ents from its charter schools at every meeting, the November 15 meeting was a first. Not only did highly paid central security office administrators reserve seats for By George N. Schmidt the charter school people queuing up for the meeting,, but one $110,000-per-year Anyone who didn’t know the bureaucrat even served donuts to the dictionary definition of SNAFU should charter school people — but not to any- have been looking it up at the end of one else who arrived at 7:00 a.m. to sign November 2006, and the word should up to speak at the board’s monthly have been spray painted across the en- meeting. trance to the headquarters of the Chi- And while the increasingly as- cago Public Schools at 125 S. Clark St. sertive President of the Chicago Board The largest breach of personal of Education, Rufus Williams, criticized data security in the history of Chicago’s students and a former teacher from one Continued on Page Seventeen of Chicago’s top high schools for speak- ing out at the Board, he had nothing but In November 2006, what one observer called the “warm and Chicago’s schools CEO fuzzies” for every group that stood be- mailed the Social fore him to proclaim how great their schools were going to be —even though Security numbers and the schools did not exist except in the addresses of 1,739 imagination of Williams, his fellow retired teachers and Board members, and the ideologues administrators to who populate the growing bureaucracy addresses across the in the Board’s “Office of New Schools November 22, 2006. A tattered American flag flies over the University of Chicago Development.” charter school housed in what was once the Donoghue Elementary School on USA — and nobody was By the end of the board meet- Chicago’s South Side. The school dismissed students for the entire Thanksgiving fired for the mess! Continued on Page Twelve week, a sign on the door reported. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Page Two Substance December 2006 Editorials ™ The cruelty of Substance Duncan’s ‘data The newspaper of public education in Chicago driven’ special 5132 W. Berteau Ave. Chicago, IL 60641-1440 education Phone: 773-725-7502. FAX: 773 - 725 -7503. Email: Csubstance @ aol.com. Website: www.substancenews.com ‘bottom line’ Copyright © December 2006 All Rights Reserved More than a year ago, a small Substance™ (USPS # 016-073) is published team in the Chicago Board of monthly except July and August by Sub- Education’s budget office — led by stance, Inc. Editorial offices at 5132 W. Pedro Martinez and Tyra Newell — be- Berteau Ave., Chicago, IL 60641-1440. Ad- gan an attack on special education ser- dress all correspondence to Substance, 5132 W. Berteau Ave., Chicago, IL 60641-1440. Pe- vices for Chicago children using com- riodicals postage paid at Chicago, IL. POST- puters. Instead of asking what special MASTER: Send address changes to Sub- services the children needed, the bottom stance, 5132 W. Berteau, Chicago, IL 60641- line specialists in the Budget Office es- 1440. tablished a bunch of abstract matrices Editor-in-Chief George N. Schmidt —very much like the now-discr edited Deputy Editor Rosagitta Podrovsky Resistance Editor Susan Ohanian formulas used by Donald Rumsfeld in AssistantEditor Terry Czernik his management of the Pentagon — and Managing Editor Sharon Schmidt decreed that no child would be left be- Contributing Editor Grady C. Jordan hind when the abolition of services was Contributing Editor John M. DelVecchio complete. The project, as absurd as it was Reporters: Board of Education Lotty Blumenthal evil, pushed ahead, driven by comput- Local School Councils Joseph Guzman ers and accountants, with no regard for Elementary News Michael Brownstein children’s needs. Like so many of the High School News Jesse Sharkey, decisions made by the miracle manage- Jackson Potter ment team at CPS during the past de- Chicago City News Frank Coconate, Josephine Perry, Jim Vail cade, this was driven by ideology, not International News E. Wayne Ross by reason or a concern for children. National Resistance News Rich Gibson, Carol Last month, more examples Holst, Jim Horn, Juanita Doyon came to the public, even if they were Research Leo Gorenstein ignored by most of our colleagues in the Retiree and Pension News Marybeth Foley Al Korach press. In October, it became clear that Sports Dan Schmidt children at the Blair Early Childhood Union News Theresa D.Daniels, Center would die if there was a fire be- Allegra Podrovsky cause of the cuts in Child Welfare At- Web Wizards Bob Simpson, tendants at the school. Other schools Estelle Carol faced similar problems across the city, Cartoonist Sandra Gordon attorneys for the Chicago Board of Edu- Circulation & Advertising Larry J.MacDonald but as long as the media cover up con- Mayor Richard Daley and his miracle Special Assignments Dan Van Zile tinues, those problems don’t concern the management team have done miracu- cation and the Illinois State Board of Policies. Confidentiality. Substance maintains the data driven tyrants who run Chicago’s lous things for Chicago’s public schools. Education will again tell the judge the confidentiality of news sources. Confidential in- public schools. Although CPS bureaucrats lies they have been telling since last formation must be verifiable through additional summer, when the budget cuts were news sources or from public information. Basically, Arne Duncan and his have been caught red-handed trying to Mailing List. Substance does not share, sell, leak, mismanagement team are trying to take deprive children of services to which made and Chicago’s school board or market its mailing list to anyone of any entity. away human services and replace them they are entitled and replace those ser- claimed that special education children Policies Available. Copies of Substance policies had not been hurt. on news development, letters, confidentiality, re- with robots and medicines. In October, vices with untested and unproven production, and mailing list security are available staff at the Jahn school tried to take away chemicals (some of which have led to Added to the lies are the cruel- . Send SASA with $5.00 and ask for “The Substance the one-on-one aide who had helped a children’s suicides), the frenzy to drive ties at places like the Jahn school, where Manual of Style, Usage, and Muckraking.” the Valenzuela family was put through Free lance materials. Unsolicited free-lance edi- kindergarten child last year and replace down “personnel” costs and the wor- torial materials are subject to the editorial poli- the aide this year with a part-time ser- ship of the “bottom line” by both CPS what can only be described as a cies of Substance, Inc. Follow the style guidelines vice and medication. officials and the media who are sup- Kafkaesque nightmare in trying to de- outlined in “The New York Times Manual of Style fend the rights of a seven-year-old to an and Usage” and “A Manual of Style” (University The family, after a heroic posed to provide a check on such insani- of Chicago Press).