CPS sabotages Julian, other Chicago general high schools, on the '20th Day'
This issue of Substance was on deadline when we got a call that students at Julian High School were protesting on Friday, October 1. We couldn’t get out to Julian to get our own pictures of that heroic protest. The following week, students walked out of Schurz High School. A week before Julian, students walked out at Wells High School.
We did contact our friends at Julian and elsewhere and learned the horrible news quickly. Arne Duncan’s administration had ordered the elimination of 11 teachers (and closed a total of 12 positions) at Julian. Why? Because, supposedly, Julian didn’t have enough students this school year to justify the positions according to the Board of Education’s computerized staffing formulas.
And that was the line that Duncan took — and that most of our colleagues in the media swallowed (as usual). It wasn’t Arne’s fault. Julian just didn’t get enough kids, so Arne had to cut staff to follow guidelines, blah, blah, blah.
We waited for a couple of days, wondering if Duncan and the Board would try to blame the teachers’ union, but at least that didn’t happen (so far as we know).
But weren’t the staffing cuts forced on the Board because of tight finances? BS!
Arne Duncan just poured more than $10 million into rehab at Calumet High School so he could privatize it. Calumet has been destroyed after four years of lies, turned over to a private outfit with more hyper-caffeinated promises and marketing hype than actual inner city service to all but a select group of kids.
Arne didn’t mind spending that money.
Duncan has two or more principals at a half dozen high schools he’s flooded with crazy “small schools” thingies. Anyone can check out the added administrative costs of DuSable, Bowen, South Shore, Orr, or Senn high schools (to name a few general public high schools that have more than one $100,000-per-year principal in the building) and ask why that wasted money couldn’t be spent on classroom teachers for Julian High School.
Arne didn’t mind wasting all that money on a bullshit program.
And within a quarter block of Arne’s own corner office at 125 S. Clark St. is the every expanding “Office of New Schools.” “New Schools” refused to hire teachers, especially veteran teachers with actual real inner city classroom experience. Instead, it’s staffed with a bunch of shallow ideologues, each being paid between $70,000 and $140,000 per year. In other words, Arne has no problem paying his soul-mates top dollar (more than any of the teachers he cut from Julian). What Arne cuts is public school classroom teachers.
The crackpot priorities of the Daley administration — including massive privatization — is gutting public schools in Chicago — especially general high schools like Julian High School. No budget necessities justify this. And everything Arne Duncan prattles on TV to the public after that is, as we’ve said before. BS.
