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BOARD WATCH. CENSORED SPEAKERS GET THEIR TURN, J. N. THORP ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: The comments one J. N. Thorp School supporter was barred from delivering

David Vance - October 29, 2009

[Editor's note. Substance is willing to publish the prepared remarks of every person who was signed up to speak at the October 28, 2009, meeting of the Chicago Board of Education on line here at www.substancenews.net. Those who wishing to have their remarks published as you prepared them mush send them to us via email at Csubstance@aol.com. The remarks will be published under your byline with a photograph of you or your group without editorial alteration here at www.substancenews.net. George N. Schmidt, Editor].

At least 50 parents, students, and younger children showed up at the Chicago Board of Education meeting to demand "Hands off Thorp!" — in support of the J. N. Thorp Elementary School (8914 S. Buffalo in South Chicago). None of them ever got to appear in the Board Chambers on the 5th floor of 125 S. Clark St.. Instead, when they arrived they were shunted to the 15th floor "holding room" where they had to sit for hours watching the Board meeting on closed circuit TV. They were then sent home before their speakers were reached on the list of people signed up to testify before the Board of Education on October 28, 2009. Board President Michael Scott simply stopped public participation at the only Board meeting of the month without regard to the sacrifices people had made to participate in what they thought was an open and democratic process. The Thorp parents from South Chicago, a community or working class white, black and Latino families, could have been representing families from Carpenter Elementary School (on the city's Northwest Side) or De La Cruz Middle School (in the Pilsen Little Village area of the Southwest Side) over the past three years. Careful planning by CPS officials — center in the "Office of New Schools" — is utilizing any pretext to displace working class families from areas where real estate speculators like Chicago Board of Education President Michael Scott or their colleagues have an interest in gentrification. South Chicago, which is home to the vast tracts of land that used to house steel mills, is now in the path of another round of land speculation and gentrification. Under a smokescreen of "school choice", CPS officials, allied with aldermen and other public officials, try to claim that a portion of the "community" is demanding more choice, when, in fact, the members of the New Schools "Transition Advisory Committees" (TACs) are usually political and economically dependent on those who are trying to close public schools and privatize public services. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Hello Board members of CPS.

My name is Dave Vance. I reside in South Chicago, two blocks from J. N. Thorp elementary school. As you know the Office of New Schools has proposed a “new” school in the J. N. Thorp building.

With critical words and debate, I served on the Transition Advisory Council, the TAC. I am here with a minority report on the J. N. Thorp “new” school proposal.

But the truth is and you all want to know the truth right, this minority report is really the majority report. Standing here with me are just 25 of the hundreds of parents and community members that have signed the “Hands Off J. N. Thorp” petition.

We do not buy your idea to force Thorp to share space with a “new” school. We believe that shared space will lead to the phased closing of Thorp. We don’t want disruption of our school. We don’t want disruption of our neighborhood schools either. We think a charter elementary school will lead to stress in the surrounding neighborhood public schools because of dropping enrolment in all the surrounding schools.

In addition to manipulating "community" support for charter schools and other privatization schemes through the appointment of political patronage people to the TACs, the Office of New Schools also packs as many seats as possible so that actual community groups such as the J. N. Thorp parents never get to be seen in the Board Chambers on the 5th Floor of CPS headquarters at 125 S. Clark St. Above, Lynn Klikuszewski (face half covered) shies away from the Substance camera as she dutifully fills a seat in the "public" section of the Board Chambers on October 28, 2009. Klikuszewski was one of several people who vacated the "New Schools" offices to make sure that the "public" seen on television was not the public that had been shunted ten floors away to the holding room at 125 S. Clark St. Officially on the clock as a senior administrator at the Office of New Schools, Klikuszewski, like a number of her colleagues, spent half the work day on October 28, 2009, holding a seat at CPS that could have gone to a parent who had ridden a bus for an hour that morning to participate in democracy, Chicago style. To the left in the same photograph above is Audrey Donaldson, a retired CPS administrator (pension, nearly $100,000 per year) who works for the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL). AUSL is one of the corporate groups that is now overseeing Chicago's highly controversial "turnaround" programs, such as the one that destabilized Fenger High School by removing all of the school's teachers in June 2009, causing the disruption during the opening of school in September 2009. The objective of those who assign seats during the brief meetings of the Chicago Board of Education is to provide a television audience with the appearance of support for the policies of CPS and the claims by Board President Michael Scott that there are "two sides" to every story, even if one "side" actually consists of people directly or indirectly on the payroll of CPS or those who are working to privatize as much of Chicago's public education as possible. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. Repeating — This is not a minority report, but a majority report. Hands “Off” JN Thorp. We will defend our school as we love our children. We are poor, but we know the value of our public school. Even with boarded up homes and empty lots everywhere we know our school is the bedrock of our neighborhood. We know equal opportunity starts with equal education. We value our teachers. We value our poor looking neighborhood compared to the disaster you have created in the Fenger neighborhood.

All of our neighborhood schools are struggling. And this is my second point. Let’s make better schools and let’s really mean it.. But, your plans of turnarounds, closing and privatizing is disrupting to the students and teachers trying to work under difficult conditions. We need more resources not less.

You heard so many speakers before me today, warning you about your Ren 2010 plans. We heard how your turnaround policy destabilized the school environment at Fenger HS.

You have put Thorp parents in a worried state of mind. We are worried that the same chaotic environment will be repeated in South Chicago . From my working class neighborhood, we are speaking up to warn you. Stop now and listen to parents and educators. We urge you to postpone your vote on JN Thorp and the “new” school.

Actually, postpone is not enough. We want you to stop!! Stop right now!! The public has no confidence in this board or Mayor Daley who appointed you all. The community around JN Thorp is worried.

This is the majority report. Hands Off J. N. Thorp! 

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