HIT LIST 2013: The year 2013 was the year Chicago's mayor and school board declared that March was really April... the Chicago Board of Education postponed its March 2013 meeting from March 27 to April 3! Did that just coincidentally happen when word of the March 27 protest began?
The propaganda script for the ruling class always requires that they portray themselves as "tough guys" making all those "hard decisions" for the good of all. Courage. Heroics. All that. George W. Busn and Dick Cheney doing their Draft Dodger Rag version of reality ten years ago against Iraq... Proof of his courage is why Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel headed to Utah to ski while his subordinates released his long-awaited 2013 Hit List...
And it's also why the six remaining members of the Chicago Board of Education ducked their regular monthly meeting, scheduled for March 27, an rescheduled it until April. If this were a cartoon, the bubble would read "Grrrr... " In the Hollywood version, these guys and gals eat raw meat when nobody's looking. But they dive for cover and cringe in the face of reality they can't script.
Every time anyone reads one of those Sun-Times and Tribune (and pundits') editorial pontifications about how the members of the Board of Education -- and that Mad Hatter's Tea Party, the ever-changing CPS administrative "team" (currently under "CEO" Barbara Byrd Bennett) -- and Mayor Emanuel are showing "courage" should note the graphic here.
Once the Chicago Board of Education knew it was going to screw more than 50 schools on Rahm's orders they made sure they were not going to have to face the massive protest planned for their March meeting. So they changed "March" basically to April to evade the March march.
That decision coincides with a series of incredible, incoherent, and at times illiterate public "explanations" (as Karen Lewis note, changing from day to day and week to week) about the Hit List.
Once again, the heroes on the Chicago Board of Education made sure they could leave town the week of the big protests.
Only in Chicago would "March" morph into April and the news cycle would still be dominated by the adulation of Rahm Emanuel and the deft adherence to the Hollywood scripting coming out of the multi-million dollar Mayor's Press Office.
This tough guy macho stuff has been around in Chicago for a long time. The less a guy can stand up and face reality, the more he craves the slavishness of the scripts. It was almost precisely ten years ago, when Arne Duncan scapegoated the first three schools for a "renaissance" (that year, with a small "s") and the Sun-Times did this whole article and series of sermons about how Arne was showing "courage," making the "tough decisions," and all that same boilerplate propaganda. So nothing's changed except the cowards and tyrants in charge.
The lead graphic with this article is a "Board Report" voted on at the February 27 Board meeting changing March until April.
The Board Report changing the date of the March 2013 meeting of the school board of America's third largest school district from March 27 to April 3.A "Board Report" is the form every official action the Board members do takes before it becomes law. The agenda includes a "Board Report." Once the Board members vote on it, it happens. There are currently six Chicago Board of Education members following the resignation of Penny Pritzker. All are appointed by the mayor under the "Amendatory Act" law Chicago has been surviving since 1995.
Anyone who wants to go back over the record of school closings, "turnarounds," and all that other stuff can find it (partially) at the CPS website under the "Action Agendas" under Board of Education. It takes a bit of time to wade through all the Board Reports, but it's worth it for the attentive citizen.
Don't don't expect to see any of their actions before the 21st Century, however. Chicago's Board members don't believe in keeping an accurate history of what they've been up to any more than others who try to manipulate history do. If "March" can become April in Chicago to avoid a big protest, and Rahm Emanuel can still parade around as a tough guy, everything's possible.
