Jan. 25--As leaders debate a course for the embattled Chicago Public Schools system, readers weigh in on a column I wrote last week lamenting that the leaders in question don't have kids enrolled at CPS.
Emails have been pouring in steadily since Thursday. Below is a sampling, edited for length and reprinted with the authors' permission.
As a retired educator, I appreciate your sentiment that our schools are a vital part of our community and that policymakers should enroll their children in public schools to better understand community schools. Every child should be compelled to attend their neighborhood school. We need to ignore the siren call of school choice and attend to the health of our school communities. Your anecdotes describe the sense of community that results when parent volunteers, teachers and administrators embrace the singular goal of sheltering and educating the community's greatest asset, their children.
When public schools compete for children, public education becomes divorced from community, and schools begin to take on the character of commuter colleges. Policymakers fail to acknowledge that when we encourage people to flee their neighborhood school, parents in the community shift their focus and energy from helping their local schools to searching for and sharing information about the best school for their children.
Policymakers know that it is much less expensive to sell the public on the idea that it is OK to have failing schools as long as good schools are available. They abandon the struggling schools and shore up the charter schools. Our goal should be to make every school the best school. Bankrupting our schools bankrupts our communities. It is time to begin the conversation about what it will take to pay for an excellent education for all of Illinois' children.
-- Charles "Chip" Staley
Four generations of my family have lived in Chicago and, with the exception of kindergarten, never set foot in the public schools. Nor have we spent a day on welfare or a night in jail. As one who has paid 67 years of tuition (on one salary), please excuse my not crying crocodile tears over your being asked to make a small contribution toward the cost of your child's education. The fact is that Chicago would be another Detroit were it not for the parochial schools, and the sooner you and those of your ilk understand that education is too important to be left to politicians and their union enablers, the better off our children will be. If your child is receiving a good education in a public school, he's one of the few. I'm in favor of educating the public, not public education.
-- Charles Roth
I have been a property-tax payer and resident in this city since 1996. I work as an inspector in the aircraft maintenance business for one of the major airlines at O'Hare and my wife is completing her 26th year as an elementary (school) teacher with CPS. We have three boys, all of whom have attended or are attending Lane Tech High School.
The pension holidays, budgets that outpaced the revenue to support them, the scandalous borrowing to keep the dam of debt from bursting, the corruption that exists in CPS and the pension system for the public sector are just the tip of the iceberg of appalling fiscal mismanagement by our local and state governments.
I have been through bankruptcy as an employee of a major airline. Why did we go bankrupt? Simply put, our revenues could no longer support the years of mismanagement of the airline and the contracts negotiated with the labor force. I am one of the lucky ones so far. My pension was not dissolved. Instead it was frozen, which means when I do retire the money accumulated to that point will be there, at least for now. As for my wages, I lost 17 percent at the time of the bankruptcy signing.
But you know what bankruptcy allowed my company to do? Take a deep breath, put in a new management team, renegotiate contracts, restructure debt, move to a 401(k) matching pension program and become profitable. Sure, there was pain in the form of lost jobs, reduced wages, work rule changes, etc., but it was the only way to get on the right track and provide for many who survived the bankruptcy and for those who would come after us.
The insanity of paying more in taxes to a corrupt government or completely inept bureaucracy such as the city of Chicago and especially CPS is nauseating. A total gutting of the leadership and business model must take place either through collective bargaining or bankruptcy. And since collective bargaining means maintaining the status quo in the form of more taxes, the latter is the only way to go. And I will add this, just the threat of bankruptcy as an option is an effective motivator to collectively bargain. For its absence only fosters the mindset that now exists with the out of touch Chicago Teachers Union, CPS and the government.
-- Sean Delanty
My grown son spent four incredible years in the CPS system. We both are still in awe of what the exceptional teachers and staff were able to accomplish in their classrooms every day. He noted as a seventh-grader in prestigious District 181 (Hinsdale) that he missed the panoply of strengths, weaknesses and cooperation he lived in those CPS classes with the full spectrum of student abilities.
-- Lisa Laidlaw
I'm not convinced that you sufficiently understand the nature of what's happening in Chicago Public Schools, and you are conflating the CPS budget with other problems of the CPS, namely teacher quality. For this reason, the article reads like a diary entry that blindly supports union teachers.
Whether or not filing for bankruptcy is required is a separate issue from how hard the teachers work. The lack of money flowing to the CPS is a function of the growth of so-called "for-profit" schools in Chicago: charter schools. (They aren't "for-profit," in fact. This rhetoric is part of the spin cycle generated by the CTU. Teachers at charter schools must satisfy all of the CTU and Illinois teaching requirements and have all of their paperwork filed through the CPS.) These charter schools are actually diverting students away from schools at which CTU teachers have failed to make a difference. Thus, parents in the poorest areas of town finally have a chance to better their situations, and they are, according to a recent Stanford study.
You raise an important point about our leaders' personal connections to the problem, but the statement itself deflects attention away from poorly performing teachers with tenure. How many doctors working at Cook County Hospital would opt to get surgeries done there rather than at a boutique outfit? I make professional recommendations all of the time, but my own personal opinions, finances and lifestyle often preclude me from applying these suggestions to myself. Sure, it would be admirable if Rahm sent his kids to the public school, but his kids, especially, would get such hassle from the teachers, parents, etc. I've been to a few Parent Teacher Organization meetings at my kids' CPS school, and the meetings inevitably turn into a gripe session about how terrible City Hall is. My kids sometimes come home indoctrinated with the union rhetoric, often inaccurate. Teachers cross the line when they're using the classroom as a bully pulpit. It's not a proper use of class time, and it's manipulative.
-- Matt (last name withheld)
I have worked for or with Chicago Public Schools since 1991, and the educators and administrators that I have worked with, all over the city, are 80-90 percent dedicated professionals who have their students' interests front and center throughout their long days and evenings of work. The system's problems are a function of past political mismanagement by the city, noneducator or unqualified superintendents, a state budgeting system that is unfair and unjust, and (to a lesser extent) union leadership that has overzealously protected mediocrity in the classroom. It is not the fault of the 80-90 percent of professionals working in schools all over the city, every day, for the kids. And it is those professionals -- and the children -- who are now being subjected to blame and potentially disastrous repercussions. Those responsible for the deep financial problems -- and those currently in the leadership roles -- are, as you rightly point out, not on the firing line.
-- Leslie Lynn
