PHOTO/SARAH JANE RHEE
CHICAGO, IL — Now that school is back in session, principals wait to the end of the first 20 days to calculate their enrollment. Schools that show a drop in enrollment below last year suffer further budget cuts. At opening, Gale school was down 40 students from last year. After 20 days, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) could cut another $200,000, meaning the loss of teacher positions and possible combining of classes and grades.
Despite these funding cutbacks, and despite money transfers to privately run charters, CPS students in traditional public schools are improving faster than students in comparable charter schools. Gale has been on probation for poor academic performance, but the school is leading, or close to leading, all the other nearby neighborhood and charter schools in growth, despite losing $300,000 last year.
To add insult to injury, CPS ended its citywide contract with its unionized janitors. CPS contracted with Aramark, the 23rd largest employer in the Fortune 500, with revenue of close to $14 billion. Schools have reported a decrease in janitorial staff with this shift. In many cases teachers and parent volunteers had to scrub the schools to get ready for opening.
Anxiety is intense. At the first Gale School Local School Council (LSC) meeting of the year, LSC members and others objected to a facility where students’ lives are at risk because fire alarms don’t function properly. What will happen, they asked, when the heating system can’t keep children and teachers warm this winter? CPS claims it has removed the lead paint in the school, but no effort has been made to monitor either teachers or students exposed to lead.
What’s true about one school is likely true throughout the system. I talked with one former CPS teacher who left her job after 15 years, partly for safety reasons. CPS again and again ignored health and safety issues such as asbestos; other teachers throughout the system routinely complained about it.
CPS won’t listen or act, and that’s why so many teachers and parents have turned to the political arena to get answers. School by school battles have not worked, because the cause is systemic. The first step is electoral: independent candidates stand a good chance of winning aldermanic battles in a number of Chicago wards. Once in office, they will be blocked by a city facing bankruptcy.
Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis has filed to run for mayor. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has a plummeting approval rate. Should she win office, will Karen Lewis be free to take on the Wall Street thugs who are dictating the municipal workers’ pension crisis?
The mayor and aldermen are all Democrats. Any challenge to the established order can become a challenge to the Democratic Party, as they maneuver to corral their base. The February election will give us a glimpse of how the electorate sees the possibility of independence, and how deep the fissures are in the Democratic Party itself.
Let’s get in this campaign and make it part of a battle for a new society.
