August 2007: Why this special edition of Substance?
We are publishing this special edition of Substance to focus attention on the scandal of Chicago’s Board of Education budget and put into focus the lies of the past two years concerning Chicago’s school finances. We hope this will also help Chicago’s teachers and other members of the Chicago Teachers Union decide what action they need to take to achieve economic justice now.
The education of more than 400,000 public school children in the third largest school system in the USA at stake. For more than a decade Chicago’s corporate “school reform” model has also been exported to other cities across the country, while the supposed expertise of Chicago school administrators has saddled school districts as diverse as Oakland, California, and Portland, Oregon with Chicago’s retreads and rejects.
But in a major way, Chicago’s version of the “New Economy” in schools is as toxic to the public as the outsourcing of toy production to unregulated factories in China has been to the people of the USA. The most tragic example of Chicago’s terrible exports is presently taking place in New Orleans, where thousands of children are being kept out of the city’s public schools, while a crazed experiment in charter schools moves forward. Adding insult to injury, New Orleans just hired Chicago’s former huckster-in-chief, Paul Vallas, to run its public schools system.
Since Chicago began the dictatorship model of school governance for large cities with mostly poor and minority student populations, that “model” has been exported to Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Oakland, and a number of other cities. Additionally, Los Angeles is under pressure to do “school reform” Chicago style.
So what happens in Chicago is relevant locally here, but also nationally.
It’s important for at least one newspaper in this town to provide some in-depth reporting and critical analysis on the Chicago Board of Education’s $5.8 billion FY 2008 (July 1, 2007 - June 30, 2008) budget.
Last December, as we report again in this Substance, the Chicago Board of Education received, without public comment, its annual “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.” That report contained an unprecedented warning to CPS from the school system’s auditor that a large number of federal programs administered by CPS had poor or inaccurate paperwork. But reading between the lines, as well as in the report, it became clear that other problems with CPS budgeting had to come out. CPS cut millions in programs last year after Arne Duncan, CPS “Chief Executive Officer”, spent six months warning amid lurid headlines that CPS was facing a massive “deficit.” It turns out, as Substance stated at the time, that the “deficit” was massive only in that it was one of the most massive public frauds to be perpetrated on a large city in years. When the books were finally balanced for the 2006-2007 school year, CPS officials had to admit that there had been no “deficit” and that a claim that CPS was in danger of losing its stellar bond rating because it was drawing down “Reserves” was simply not true.
This should have been Page One news. But in a dictatorship, information is not going to come out that raises the most serious questions about the competence of the dictator and his courtiers.
We are also trying to provide our Chicago readers with enough information so that they can make an informed decision when and if they have to vote on whether to shut down the third largest school system in the USA with its first major strike in 20 years.
Let us know what you think of this effort. Substance will be out again in September to begin our regular publication year.
Technically, this issue of Substance, dated “August 2007” is the 11th issue published during “Volume XXXII.”
The September 2007 Substance will begin “Volume XXXIII” (our 33rd year of publication).
Our subscribers are all receiving this issue of Substance without additional charge. We want to thank our regular subscribers for their long and generous support. As many of you know, Substance is more than a job to those of us who are part of the greater Substance “family.” Thanks for your commitment, and we hope
