In reaction to news that the Chicago board of education approved the closure of 50 schools, part of what Mayor Rahm Emanuel says is an effort to close a $1 billion budget shortfall in the city made prudent by school underutilization and lack of enrollment, pro-union operatives lashed out with two responses: it’s racist and it’s undemocratic.
Immediately following the decision Wednesday, the Chicago Teachers Union filed a lawsuit “on behalf of the parents” claiming the closures “single out African-American students.” CTU representative Brandon Johnson said:
What we find most disconcerting, is that black parents in particular, have overwhelmingly rejected the mayor’s plan. He has decided to draw a line in the sand and refused to negotiate with the parents.
Jesse Jackson, ever seeking the spotlight, views his exclusion from the decision-making as “undemocratic,” referring to the unelected board, saying at his usual Saturday meeting:
They’re closing schools without offering a place at the table for those with a real stake in the issue. So we have imposed upon us a process that is ultimately undemocratic.
Rahm isn’t backing down either, saying after the lawsuit (and another) were filed:
I will absorb the political consequence so our children have a better future.
And CTU President Karen Lewis went subtly Sicilian against Emanuel:
Clearly, we have to change the political landscape in the city. We have to go back to old-style democracy.
“Old-style democracy?” I suppose she’s referring to the old-style of perhaps the old country? Where her union operatives can be turned out at a moment’s notice to instill fear in the residents, clog up city streets with weeks of protests, train her teachers at local Marxist conferences, and generally destroy not only the already pathetic education her teachers have been providing but also the economic prospects of those who pay her teacher’s salaries. “Old-style democracy” where when Lewis doesn’t her way, she moves heaven and earth to cloak pay raises in the guise of “air conditioning for students” and pensions that make your eyes bulge in the guise of “smaller classrooms.”
It is power, above all, that the Chicago Teachers Union operatives and Jesse Jackson fear losing to Rahm; the children are merely caught in the crossfire of two leftists factions’ internal war.
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One look at A Karen Lewis picture shows that she is still feeding at the public trough.
As to this: “went subtly Sicilian against Emanuel”
Omerta.
Are they going to be closing the school Rahm Emanual’s kids go to?
or is it just other kid’s schools only??
You think the little tutu wearing commie has kids in public school? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
What? Chicago Can’t Afford Liberal Payola? To what are the Democrats coming?
I hate to say it, but Rahm is my favorite Dem. Anyone who stands up to Karen Lewis is ok in my book.
well this is what happens when reality collides with fantasy
Karen Lewis is everything wrong with unions, Chicago Democrat politics and progressive thought, made manifest.
We’ve settled on October 5th as the date we shall rid of ourselves of this pestilent, oppressive, festering boil of a city in favor of taking our chances with Garcetti in L.A.
I lived in Chicago when there was a big controversy over closing down the Projects. These were big, trashed-out skyscrapers full of gangs, drugs, and violence. Some people wanted the subsidized housing to be spread out — for women and children in need of housing, they said, it’d be cheaper to just find little places here and there among normal people, and pay their rent.
The politicians were straightforward enough about it: this would dilute their voting base, and they’d rather have their constituents live in tenements.
[…] meet the needs of an expanding government, the left defends these abuses of power. They have to. The blue model is failing. The, Country. Is. […]
I’ve said it before here at LI.
I’ve been in quite a few Japanese schools.
Bare bones. In our oldest daughter’s classroom when she was attending school in Japan, you found a chalkboard and individual desks. That’s it.
No air conditioning, they just opened up the windows (and Japan is so hot and humid for a few months of the year, you’d wish you could visit the Amazon for a little respite).
In the winter, they had a camping-style kerosene heater for the classroom … I kid you not. And they had to open up the windows every so often to let the cold wind blow out the fumes.
I asked my wife one time while we were driving by a typically drab and gloomy Japanese high school, looking like a throw-back to the war years … maybe bombed out at one time … why they never spruced their schools up … maybe paint them once in a while.
She asked me how that would help the kids learn. She said that would be a waste of money.
In a homogeneous country like Japan … the race card will get you nowhere.
Bare bones facilities and none of our worshipped “diversity” …
… but learn, learn, they do.
LukeHandCool (who suddenly has an early Beatle song in his head)
As a navy brat I grew up living in naval housing part of the time. Some of the kids would talk about the overseas military schools in which BS was not tolerated.
No PC or talking about diversity, it was all about learning with a little bit of military discipline. Many of the kids would be one to two years ahead of those who never attended any military school. Public schools could learn a few leasons themselves.
“lessons”
WLS interviewed the attorney filing suit and it was a hurl experience. His answer to any challenge was “Raise Taxes”. The schools being shut really are underutilized. 200-300 students per school. There has to be the same number of teachers and staff in those schools.
And if there was a way to save those kids from worrying for their lives in their own homes, I would fully support the effort. I believe that the violence is truly the challenge, not the schools.
[…] of Leaks Being Set at ‘Top of This Administration’ Never let a good leak go to waste Chicago school closings expose left’s internal war With again using blacks to make their point, the public education truths hurt Stockholm riots […]
Chicago should try to get the lawsuit thrown out due to lack of standing. How can the CTU represent the parents? Of course, it was just a PR statement made by the CTU. But it would be great to make the CTU argue in court against their PR statement.