Protests planned for December 7 Board of Education meeting, earlier hearings on the 'revised CPS budget...'
With more than a week to go before the "November-December" 2016 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, protests are already being planned against the Board's continual destruction of the city's real public schools. One set of those will be a "Protest to Save Special Ed & Clinicians at CPS Board of Education, Wednesday, December 7 at 9 AM, 42 W Madison St, Chicago, IL 60602-4309..."
What should also be protested, but isn't yet, is the fact that for the first time in decades, the Chicago Board of Education is holding meetings every two months, instead of every month. No meeting of the Board of Education of the nation's third largest school system was held during November 2016.
The protests against special ed cuts are planned by many. "WE ARE FIGHTING TO RESTORE SPECIAL EDUCATION AND CLINICIAN SERVICES," shouts a message from Tammy Viunson and Sarah Chambers. They are circulating the notice.
Left out of the protest planning is the question of why many of those who are now planning on protesting the CPS attacks on special education (and "clinicians") failed to mention those same attacks when the Chicago Teachers Union's sellout contract was being rushed through votes of the so-called "Big Bargaining Team," then the House of Delegates, and, finally, the union's membership.
"This year, CPS has made drastic cuts to special education hurting our students with disabilities," the organizers say in their announcement. "CPS also wrote a new procedure manual..." But nothing is noted about why there should be protests against the Board, which only proposed the cuts, while ignoring the complicity of the union's leadership, which went along with those cuts.
