MEDIA WATCH: New York Times corrects error in quote from Sarah Chambers in front page article about Rahm Emanuel's problems...
The photo of Sarah Chambers that ran with the story about Rahm Emanuel in the September 8 - 9 editions of The New York Times.On September 16, 2015, The New York Times ran a correction because it has made an error in a September 8 - 9 report on the problems facing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel during his second term. In the original story, the Times ran a photograph of Chicago teacher Sarah Chambers standing with some of her students. But the original photo caption claimed that Chambers spoke about teacher pay, when in fact she was talking against the special education cuts.
The Times correction reads:
Correction: September 16, 2015. A picture caption with the continuation of an article on Sept. 9 about the fiscal problems facing Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago misstated what the subject of the picture, Sarah Chambers, discussed during a town hall meeting. She voiced concerns about funding for special education, not teachers� pay.
The original story follows here:
Chicago�s fiscal problems dog Rahm Emanuel�s 2nd term as mayor
By Monica Davey, New York Times on line September 8, 2015. In print edition (front page) September 9, 2015.
CHICAGO � It was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill town hall meeting, standard fare for a city contemplating a new budget year.
But as Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and his top deputies presided over a gathering last week in a majestic hall not far from Lake Michigan, the crowd grew testy. A group demanding that the city reopen a public high school, including some who had been on a hunger strike over the issue, began chanting �Right now! Right now!� and swarmed the stage.
Mr. Emanuel, looking startled, was hurried off by his security team and taken out of sight. With that, the meeting was over.
The mayor, a veteran of Democratic politics here and in Washington, was forced into a runoff this year as he sought re-election, in part because of critics who complained that he was too brusque and too focused on the needs of downtown interests over those of residents from some of Chicago�s poorer neighborhoods. After an unexpectedly tense campaign, he won a second term in April, promising that he had heard the city�s message.
As it turns out, winning re-election may have been the least of Mr. Emanuel�s problems.
Just months into his new term, Mr. Emanuel finds himself grappling with Chicago�s fiscal problems, including a starkly underfinanced pension system and rising payment requirements. He is widely expected to seek a property tax increase this month when he proposes a budget for 2016. Chicago�s public school leaders have agreed to a future spending plan that relies on hundreds of millions of dollars of hoped-for help from the state, even though state lawmakers have been locked for months in their own budget impasse.
Chicago, long troubled by guns and gang violence, has had a rise in murders compared with last year, when the city reported the fewest homicides in decades. Even pressure over neighborhood issues, like the fate of Walter H. Dyett High School, have at moments overshadowed Mr. Emanuel�s agenda.
�This is about Dyett, but it�s also larger,� said Prudence Browne, one of a dozen activists who said they stopped eating solid food on Aug. 17. Ms. Browne and others want answers from City Hall about the future of Dyett, a South Side school that was closed in June after graduating a class of just 13 students.
�It�s also about privatization and squeezing the poor, and it�s about quality neighborhood schools,� Ms. Browne said. �This is a big problem for him.�
In the months since Mr. Emanuel�s re-election, he has chalked up some tangible victories. Chicago won a contest to host the Obama presidential library, which will be built on the South Side. The N.F.L. held its draft here, and the city announced that it had set a tourism record for the first half of the year. A minimum-wage increase, which Mr. Emanuel pressed for, took effect in July.�
But challenges, especially the city�s longstanding fiscal ones, loom. �The problem we�ve had is for decades when it came to fiscal issues we didn�t confront them,� Mr. Emanuel said in an interview. �So the way I look at it is we have some strengths. We�re going to double down and really invest in those � from our education to our transportation to our pro-business strategy. And we will not kick the can, but face up to the challenges and finally address them and fix them.�
As for the abruptly ended meeting last week, Mr. Emanuel said he believed people could �disagree without being disagreeable,� but he did not seem troubled by what had happened. �I�ve been in politics my adult life,� he said. �Last week is part of the process, and I understand people�s passion.�
On the lawn outside Dyett High School � named for a music instructor who once taught Nat King Cole, Gene Ammons and others � the 12 hunger strikers gather in folding chairs on most afternoons. Some last week said they were weak, and a few have required medical treatment.
Several years ago, school officials, citing low enrollment and a long record of poor performance, announced that Dyett would be closed by this year. But activists objected, saying that the Bronzeville neighborhood, a mostly black community, needed its school. Eventually, under pressure from the community, school officials agreed to consider new proposals. Among them was one for a Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, supported by the activists now involved in the hunger strike.
The case of Dyett has highlighted broader questions as charter schools have expanded and public schools have closed. In 2013, the Chicago Board of Education, appointed by Mr. Emanuel, announced it would close nearly 50 schools � a move that drew sharp criticism from some residents on the South and West Sides, who said their black and Hispanic neighborhoods had been affected disproportionately.
On Thursday, a day after Mr. Emanuel was ushered out of the town hall meeting, school officials announced that Dyett would reopen in a year as an arts-focused school. City officials framed the decision, which came earlier than some had anticipated, as a compromise that would allow the neighborhood to keep its school. The hunger strikers, though, said they were unsatisfied with the particulars of the new school plan, and they announced that their strike would continue.
Later on Thursday, Mr. Emanuel sat before another crowd for another meeting on another side of town. There, in an auditorium on the Northwest Side, less was said about Dyett. A barrage of new complaints came � about the noise from airplanes landing at O�Hare International Airport, about cuts to special education and about the prospect of a coming tax increase.
