Prince Ea -- I JUST SUED THE SCHOOL SYSTEM !!!

Staff At Four Chicago High Schools Falsified Student Attendance Records -- NOT TEACHERS

There are two more school days before the teaching professionals of the AFT Local #1 strike.

Yes, I'm hell on wheels back about the situation students and teachers find themselves in. Democrats of this city need to take a hard look at this corporatist mayor’s tactics.

FOUR OUT OF 176 HIGH SCHOOLS IS A PATTERN??

Then what is the accuracy of records in the other 98% of CPS high schools called -- ANOMALY??

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/staff-at-four-chicago-high-schools-falsified-student-attendance-records/328da520-a0d6-46c4-91b1-c9ac1bc92186

?w=670


If anyone seriously cares about good public schooling in the fourth largest district in the United States, then consider that Rahm is not unveiling any REAL corruption, because it’s literally in CPS’s central office. Rahm engages, instead, in pre-strike hype to stigmatize classroom professionals before the public.

Consider Rahm's appointed inspector general, Nicholas Schuler, former police for nine years, working the CPD gang unit in Rogers Park, two brothers still cops, father worked in homicide.

Schuler is now one of at least 900 -- 900(?) -- non-classroom employees who make over $100,000 a year at Chicago Public Schools. Most of that one group make between $125,000 and $160,000 -- Schuler makes $133,000/year. Sounds like salaries in Republican counties.

Give or take a few million – way more than overpaid Schuler finds at a few schools out of 660 -- $50 million a year has been charged to Chicago's taxpayers for its 900+ six figure salary "administrators" since the days of Arne Duncan in 2001 -- for at least FIFTEEN YEARS, at $50 million per year. CPS has become an area of patronage moved to downtown, out of the wards during Daley, Jr.'s terms in office. Mayors and their superintendent tools have now made CPS the repository of much of city hall's patronage, a reality that didn't used to map so clearly.

Less than 20% of these six figure employees are actual principals in the communities. Principals are the most truly accountable and competent of all non-classroom CPS employees on so many levels, that to shadow any one of them for a day would eliminate all doubt that they are the only six figure earners worthy of such salaries from the public.

Chicago Board of Education's contract period is again upon us. An AFT Local #1 strike begins October 11.

Unions do not decide on contract negotiation time frames -- the Chicago Board of Ed does. When each side makes any public report or appeal, what’s usually telling is how the Board avoids public discussion of its misspending billions away from direct services to Chicago's children. It affords it’s non-classroom bureaucrats and patronage on behalf of its political bosses. For the fifteenth year. Those are just the years I know of.

This strike year is Mayor Rahm Emanuel's year to unleash Nick Schuler’s skills to earn his keep hyping the "fraud, waste and corruption" of education field professionals. Chicago media help. What you're seeing here is another of the same tired media dictation “story” from corporate privatizer Rahm's appointed hatchet man. Don't believe it.

It's Rahm's year to have Schuler comb through school level contracts while the year long, randomly interrupting crass context of companies constantly peddling business to high schools -- pressing kickbacks to drum up school business for sports or extracurricular events like proms and graduations -- is conveniently kept away from the public eye.

It's Rahm's year to get Nick Schuler and his people to fine tooth comb attendance records -- four out of 90+ high schools! -- so he can be Rahm's media heavy, call any mistakes in constant daily attendance across six classes and a division period a "pattern," "falsification" or "fraud."

Schuler claims these schools "Engineered" their data. Anyone who has visited any school for more than a fifteen minute report card pickup knows this: Professionals doing even a mediocre, 'satisfactory' job in front of children all day hardly have time to fix their mistakes (but they do, constantly), nevermind "engineer" data.

"Engineer," doesn't even describe their lesson planning. Four out of 176 public schools is a very good error rate. It is by no means any "pattern" Schuler claims.

You might want to believe that attendance records are fraudulent, but you must know that every rating of every teacher every year depends on accurate records. Even with a 20% student transience rate across the 4th largest district in the U.S., even with unenforced, high truancy rates, even with no recourse for teachers for student class cutting.

Not one attendance mistake from teachers is tolerated -- and they are mistakes fixed daily -- even though students move in and out of overcrowded classrooms and schools daily. The state's demand for school-level accuracy assures that records are a major issue for principals.

The truth is that the Rahm’s city hall-sponsored, 7th floor of lawyers should be examining the monetary incentives that only exist at CPS central office's accounting.
Nick Schuler is Rahm's tool for ramming austerity down the union's throat, stigmatizing, criminalizing the only professionals whom the public gets any direct benefit from -- its teachers and principals. No wonder there is a teacher shortage.

Why does Rahm do this? Why do teachers strike? Because schools have been turned, by design, into a big business pot o' cash and assets for business and the politically connected. Like an insurance company that takes premiums but denies coverage, Rahm gets to expand his patronage army of lawyers and bureaucrats, please Business Round Table warriors, while demanding cuts and general austerity for the rest of us – communities, teachers and kids at school levels. No wonder there are more non-classroom employees than classroom professionals.

Did I say Chicago Board of Ed misspending -- MANAGEMENT -- has cost Chicagoans $50 million a year for the last 15 years? No wonder class sizes go up. No wonder schools get closed.


Nick Schuler. Building boss Rahm's case. Socialism for politicos, free market capitalism for the next generation. No wonder Illinois is at the bottom in education spending. But it’s in the top ten in income. (Rahm’s golfing partner, governor Rauner, needs to get that DAPL through to Patoka. No connection, I’m sure.)

More context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Teachers_Union

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Public_Schools

Rahm's appointed board's austerity budget pays for its top heavy bureaucracy in District 299. Demand an ELECTED school board and the elimination of that bureaucracy, and your better funded schools' teachers and students will not feel a ripple.

Keep pubic education spending for the public.

School is NOT business. Schools are NOT sites for publicly stigmatizing professional unions.

School is systematized human development.

Thanks for reading this far.

Stuxnet = Old Cyberwar = Why We Need A Serious President

Ava DuVernay’s 'The 13th' Opened Yesterday at The New York Film Festival

U.S. History Must Be Revised To Stop Glorifying Indian Killers

I know this argument won't be accepted around here, but give this some thought. Please.

This includes our public spaces and the US military, particularly the Army.

Most people here remember our majority consensus on the removal of Confederate military statues in the South. Well, that has raised a related issue for my friends there.

And that issue of public concern is, just as importantly, that we US civilians have to stop thinking war statues in public spaces are a good thing. An occasional statue, you say? But have you traveled, seen how they are everywhere? How Mount Rushmore sits on Indian tribal land against the repeated protests of Indigenous America?

When we glorify the memories of men known for their Indian killing on behalf of the US's white settler government, we are no better than Confederate battle flag wavers and statue defenders of slavers.

Yes, Southern and Northern generals look powerful, even protective. They meant well for their own people. And so, while we support the removal of much Confederate statuary, we still allow statues that romanticize leaders in this country's monstrous, land stealing project. Our forebears were so into the vision of "Manifest Destiny" and other doctrines, that they didn't know any better about the larger scope of the grand project that others designed.

We do now.

This is the commemorative statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square, New Orleans. There are many more around the country, including across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC.



Jackson killed off thousands, drove off several Indian nations in his day, aided and abetted by US presidents as the tools of business, stealing their land to farm and establish plantation ownership for cotton agriculture.

New Orleans is also the site of one of the two legal slave shipping ports of the United States.

My friend, Chuck Perkins -- marine veteran, business owner, radio talk show host, father of college educated, activist women -- and other residents of NOLA have decided that, along with Confederate monuments, this monument to Jackson must, too, be taken down.

Apparently the local rulers think such protests are, at best, "too soon," and so recently he was hauled off to jail.



In defense of Chuck and all those who want to restructure our history to better match our increased knowledge of US history:

Memorializing Indian killers because "it was their job" is like memorializing Nazis because killing Jews was their "just following orders" job.

Indian killing, scalping them, enslaving their women and sending their children off to be brainwashed as 'wrong' was wrong. Stealing their land was the wrong way to settle land.

White Euro settler forebears here did what the Israelis are doing right now -- settler imperialism -- counterinsurgency stalking, raiding, setting fire to housing, food supply and water of old land occupants -- aided and abetted by counterinsurgency white horse riding militiamen called "rangers," bankers, and their tools in government, commanders-in-"chief."

Statues ain't okay cuz it's in the past. Because that past, memorialized, validates a continued hateful, racist present -- toward black people, Indians, women. With our military abandoning the continental landbase and moving its war control centers onto the oceans on naval carriers, with our country being officially, legally designated a "battleground," we have even more evidence that the military agenda and the military industrial complex's agenda was never to really serve US citizens, anyway. We have to re-see public space so that it no longer supports a racist, wrong present culture.

We're not denying our past with statuary removals. They can well go into great Military Museums. But we have to think about a public self, and public space that inspires The People's future children every bit as much as glorify past "heroes." We will need better statues.

There are so many other great accomplishments of this country to memorialize beyond war in a new Works Progress and Infrastructure Project. We must build our public imaginary away from war and mass murder. We said these things to our Southern neighbors. It's time to say it to the rest of us.

No, there is no "draw the line" argument. As history is researched, and new, relevant actions, events and racial politics come to light, so must our public spaces reflect our better, changed selves today.

That national self says: Wrong is wrong. We must admit it. It is never too soon to do what we know is right.

Bill Maher: "Welcome to Another Week Of 'Yes, This Is Really Happening' "

Maher's New Rules are usually the best part of his show, but tonight it was his opening monologue.

Favorite line: "Stamina? She was Bruce Springsteen just getting warmed up after 90 minutes!"

Second favorite line: "Republicans out there, thank you so much for this, thank you so much, you must be so fucking proud..."