BOARDWATCH... December 7, 2016 Chicago Board of Education meeting approves revised budget, while hearing from dozens of charter school advocates... who took up half the 'public participation' speaking agenda of the meeting...
Speakers from the "Chicago International Charter School" (CICS) lined up behind one of their many speakers during the December 7, 2016 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Like most of Chicago's charter schools, they got around the limit on the number of charter schools by creating so-called "campuses", often, as is the case with CICS, from one end of Chicago to the other. The vast expansion of Chicago's charter schools began under former Chicago Public Schools "Chief Executive Officer" Arne Duncan. After Duncan became U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama administration in January 2009, he expanded the "Chicago Plan" for massive charterization across the USA, except in those states which blocked the Obama-Duncan project. Long before Donald Trump's selection Betsy DeVos takes office in 2017, Duncan and Obama pushed the massive privatization attacks on the nation's real public schools as part of the policies of the Democratic Party. Substance photo by David Vance.Although the main news story from the December 7, 2016 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education is that the Board approved its revised budget and the Chicago Teachers Union contract despite the refusal by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to support additional state funds for Chicago's public schools, veteran observers at the meeting noted that charter school proponents and officials had dominated the list of speakers for the "public participation" part of the meeting. In all 32 of the 60 people allowed to speak were charter school people. As readers know, the Board of Education refuses to allow more than 60 people to sign up in advance of the meeting to speak, no matter how many citizens wish to do so.
The renewal of some of the Charter school contracts was voted on at the Board's December 7 meeting. And to impress the un-elected Board of Education, Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) had 14 speakers listed to speak. Up for renewal and signed up to speak were CICS, Legal Prep Charter Academy, KIPP, Perspectives Charter School, Montessori School of Englewood, Catalyst Maria charter schools, and Noble Network's "Butler campus."
Of the 32 charter named speakers signed up, between 10 or 15were actually allowed by the Board to speak. Press coverage has failed to report that Board of Education President Frank Clark has been a long-time supporter of the "Noble Network of Charter Schools" (his name is part of the name of their "Rowe-Clark campus"). Many citizens also are unaware that Beth Purvis, who served for years as head of CICS, is now Governor Bruce Rauner's chief education aide.
It took some digging in 2015 before reporters were able to reveal the fact that Purvis had gone to work in the new Rauner administration, at an annual salary of a quarter million dollars per year (reportedly nearly double the salary of previous eduction aides in Springfield). Rauner's "reforms" include attacks on unions and the privatization of as many public services as possible, and include the expansion of charter schools across Illinois. (Currently most charter schools and charter students in Illinois are in Chicago thanks to the policies of the Daley and Emanuel administrations).
