Thursday AM News: Spelling bee, Cheating, Gay awareness, Budget, Teachers' residency

2 left standing in Chicagoland wars of words Tribune
Kiara Jones had one word to go.
"Facsimile," said the pronouncer.
Just one last word.
The Ray Elementary School 6th grader had already spelled her way through words such as lariat, recalcitrant and dahlia, making it to the final round of the Chicagoland Spelling Bee city finals Wednesday at downtown's Harold Washington Library.

Cheating a real problem in Club Penguin's virtual world Tribune

With all the qualms parents have about the Internet, from worrying about sexual predators to whether their kids spend too much time online, here's another one: It can teach them how to cheat.

Gay awareness panel roils school Tribune
Some parents have accused Deerfield High School of promoting a homosexual agenda by allowing gay students to speak before freshman classes about their personal experiences, cite research and invite questions.

Blagojevich offers big plans backed by big tax hikes Sun Times
Illinois would see the largest tax increase in its history under Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to provide health care for the uninsured and ramp up state support for education.

Teachers' residency near its end? Sun Times
The Chicago Teachers Union scored a major victory Wednesday in its two-decade fight to dump a requirement that Chicago teachers live in the city.

Comments

Let's hope the Senate rules on the residency just like the House did. If CPS has so many applicants then why are so many of our schools so understaffed? Why have we recruited teachers from other countries if there is such an abundance of applicants? Also,why are there waivers for those who teach in high needs areas that they do not have to live in the city? Also, if this was such a big deal then why is Daley starting so many charter schools that do not have to abide by a residency law? If I live in my home in the city, I am not going to pick up and leave because of this new rule as the mayor is trying to say. And if I leave my middle class home than some other middle class person is going to move into it, With the prices in the city as they are, you have to be alot more than middle class to afford them anyway! Also, every other big city (except for Milwaukee) has removed their residency requirements and they have not been destroyed by this act!

[cermak_rd]

Yes, the residency rule has no purpose anymore. The city is doing pretty darned well at attracting middle class and above citizens. I see no reason to force teachers to live in it, though I still think police and firefighters should, because their jobs are more about safety and having them able to quickly respond in emergency situations is important.

[Gay Golden Apple]

"I don't think they should be treating [homosexuality] in the same way they treat conditions that are immutable and carry no behavioral implications, like race, sex, ethnicity and disability."

Wow. Suburbs.

Chicago is already treated differently from the rest of the state by the house and senate. Will the change in the residency requirement be followed by a change in the power of the LSC's or traded for the change in power of the LSC's.

[knowyourmaterial]

Oh! Yes,we have applicants but are these applicants qualified and how long do they stay?
It is not a long term committment-we are a training ground for the suburbs especially in special education. Widen the pool-please. We do not need teachers who have failed the basic skills test multiple times. I am tired of listening to teachers who do not have a grasp of basic content knowledge.

I believe the applicants go along the lines of the exaggerations that CPS loves to sell. Get rid of the residency law and teachers who have avoided Chicago schools will now apply once that restriction is lifted.

[George Schmidt]

Thinking back across the many schools at which I worked and the many teachers with whom I worked, one thing was clear. The residency was irrelevant. Some of the "best" teachers with whom I worked lived in city, some in suburbs. Neither was less committed because of the place where he or she lived. There will still be more teachers living in 60643 or 60641 than in 60624 no matter what the rules.

Once the residency requirement is abolished, then someone can go back and finally bury that phony Chicago Reporter study (which helped frame on of the bases for the residency outcry) that claimed the majority of Chicago teachers didn't send their children to public schools. That was based on a very small samble and was invalid from the beginning, but like many lies that were convenient during those years to the teacher bashers, it was given life, over and over, by those who array against us.

The internet doesn't teach CPS kids how to cheat. They learn that in elementary school when state/city assessments come around.

I do not think that just by dumping the residency rule things will improve on the pool of applicants. But it cannot hurt.

The bigger problem is that many suburbs now pay as much or more than CPS. Moreover, one does not have to work in combat zones to get that money. One does not have to as often deal with a parent coming to school for a conference about their child's behavior who is stoned. Teachers working in many suburbs get paid as much or more for working in less stress filled schools.

I think the residency requirement has to go just to give CPS employees a choice. I doubt most will just pick up and leave the city just because they can but it is nice to have the option to live where you want in a free country no less.

How long until the State Senate rules on the residency requirement, now that the House passed it as illegal?

[George Schmidt]

Next, Senate vote. Then, Governor signs bill into law.

Than Daley spends a million dollars (directly or through CPS) on pinstripe patronage challenging the law and tying things up.

Don't call Century 21 yet if you're planning a move to a place where decent homes cost less than $500,000 and come with parks and schools that don't need a decade of backed up repairs.

I was just reminded of this because the CPS and Chicago Park District baseball, soccer and football fields are now coming out of hibernation, and those dangerous surfaces will again be bared for all to see. The Olympic Committee should have done a walkabout between Hanson Stadium and Prosser or across any of the playing fields in Washington Park to see how much Daley and his rich buddies care about city kids who wants to play sports in this town. Even the kids who play basketball are in danger (concrete surfaces in too many place; bad for knees and ankles).

Mayor Squeaky Squawky, imperial and all that. A cruel joke. Loves kids. As long as their Daddies have enough money -- like Patrick Ryan and Eden Martin -- to pay for privatized sports programs.

Otherwise, broken ankles and torn knees from bad fields, and sprung backs from those rubble-like pitcher's mounds.

[The Anti-George]

George: Who/What do you like? Care to share some ideas and/or people that you don't complain about?

George:
If the Senate passes it and the Governor signs off on residency. Will a challenge by Daley stop it from becoming law or will it become law and then he has to try to change it? The only difference is, I think if he tries to fight it, alot of people will be against him, making it a hard sell

If Daley gives in to residency, he will expect something in return--and he will get it.
Also, brace yourself people--we will get the Olympics and we will pay for it--another reason for people to move OUT of the city.

[George Schmidt]

"Will a challenge by Daley stop it from becoming law or will it become law and then he has to try to change it?"

In that challenge, he would have several priorities. The most important one will be to continue to build up the fees of the outside law firms that do so much of Chicago's outsourced pinstripe work. After that, anything he'd do would reasonably discourage anyone who might want to (a) move outside Chicago or (b) take a job in CPS while living outside Chicago (aside from those in the ever growing number of exceptional fields, which have made the residency as airtight as a sieve the past couple of years).

Then there is the "court" question.

This being Illinois (and Chicago) the question about whether a Daley challenge to the Illinois General Assembly repeal of the Chicago teachers residency law will do "X" or "Y" is really a question of which judge will get the case. As a favor to a friend, I once had a sign on my lawn on behalf of a judge candidate who was, by all accounts, not very literate, let alone knowledgeable about the law. His job was like the job of that judgee in "The Miracle on 34th Street." Wait for the nod from someone you know sitting in the back.

Anyone who thinks the LSC elections pose interesting civic challenges should spend some time in some of the courtrooms of Cook County. (And I'm also a fan of voting for judges... not just for LSCs...).

RAMBLING BELOW THIS POINT. ADJUST ACCORDINGLY...

As to "Anti-George" -- What difference does that make?

This blog has enough members of the Richard M. Daley fan club and the Arne Duncan cheerleaders to go around.

And anyone who wants hagiography can Google "Daley" and read the various praises for him going back years in local media. The TV talking heads alone give him enough air time (and never a serious question) to keep even his thin ego puffed. When you Google, see especially "school reform," "housing reform", and "welfare reform." They call it miracle management.

I call it ethnic cleansing.

That's more than a difference of opinion.

Just to tease this question along, though (a little time never hurt anyone) ---

I don't like dictatorships, and have spent a lot of time opposing them in favor of democracy. Long before we had WMD and Walter Reed (or worse for those children injured every day in Baghdad) we had the Gulf of Tonkin incident and My Lai. Sorry about that. "All governments lie..." the man said.

My thing about dictatorships and democracy now goes back a long way and continues fairly consistently across a considerable time span. If you're 20-something and not in the Army, you still haven't thanked me for helping to end the Draft. Take it from one who knows, there's a big difference between registering and getting the famed "Induction Notice."

You're welcome.

I was happy when Nicolai and Elena Ceausescu got what they deserved outside Bucharest Christmas Day 1989 -- and when the other collapses were taking place across those eight time zones from Berlin to Irkutsk the year my eldest son was born on May Day. And I'm happy that the files of the Stasi and all those other nasty people are open for purusal, although it makes some families (and a few bishops and archbishops) mighty uncomfortable.

I'm happy that I was on the BOSS persona non grata list in South Africa before Nelson Mandela was released from Robin Island.

I will be similarly happy (and let you know) when Richard M. Daley gets his proper place in the history of America's tinpot dictators and vicious segregationists.

That's a start.

I really like baseball and the White Sox (despite some of that macho silliness and that retro "Rambo" motif this year).

I like I.F. Stone's reporting and most of what Edward R. Murrow did. Even though they get my teeth edgy, I'm glad The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporters are doing their jobs. (I was sort of happy when my little Chicago story appeared on page one of The Wall Street Journal six years ago).

I like the dialectical complexity of the 30s through the 60s and the New Deal. Those were the years when we pushed back (only for a few decades) all that eugenics and social Darwin nonsense that had a major home in Chicago (and at my alma mater) until some nasty guys in Germany gave it a bad name.

"Choice" I don't like if it's a cruel joke played on people too poor to get all the way to the next meal without hoarding the last rice and beans. Balzac and Dickens and Zola and many others wrote about those kinds of "choices", so from the moment I first heard Arne Duncan parse that phrase so carefully at the City Club I was ready for what's come since.

"Choice" -- a nasty word. Especially when the word comes rolling off the tongue of some vapid Yuppie whose lived a spoiled life of privilege. It's like telliing one of the latest generation of legless veterans they have the "choice" to run in the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.

Definitely like the White Sox, but I wish the White Sox would spend some time checking out the condition of the baseball fields they built (mostly in the Park District parks) through Sox Charities a few years ago.

Daley's neglect of playing field maintenance -- baseball, soccer, football especiallly -- is another thing I don't like. Privatization and all that.

I don't like kittens or puppies. Some cats and dogs, but not kittens and puppies. Little children definitely, although less so at diaper changing time.

Thanks for asking.

And since we know what you don't like (my reporting), how about listing what you do like (other than the Daley Dictatorship)? Kittens and puppies? Crocuses trying to bloom through tie ice in your yard? Baseball in the abstract? Grecian military societies? Poetry slams?

Big world out here.

Come clean.

We're in Daylight Savings Time and it will soon be Spring. Along the lakefront people will be ooing and aahing. I'll be parked outside CVS (er., CVCA) or Hyde Park or Robeson waiting for the next interesting photo op that my colleagues will miss -- just as they missed those freezing Alltown buses a month ago.

Hopefully, if those rushes between Carson and Gage Park take place this spring, someone other than me will have the photographs to trace the whole thing back to those hypocritical prattlings last summer when they dumped Marty McGreal for trying to prevent Daley (er, Duncan and the "Board of Education") from sabotaging Gage Park.

Yeah. If "shots fired" and "battery in progress" echo around 2:30, I'm going to try to be there. I like keeping a record of the things that others have tried long to sweep under the rug. And had I been in Washington, D.C., I would have liked to take those mold photographs that stirred things up when they appeared in The Washington Post a few weeks ago.

Anyone can write puffery.

Before it was rescinded, Chicago had a City New Bureau and some ways of getting news. And the motto of that place was, "If your mother says she loves you, check it out!"

I like that. Especially a year after Arne Duncan told us, over and over and over on page one after page one after page one, about that ginormous egantic budget "deficit" that forced him (and the "Board of Education") to cut all those people who used to diaper crippled children and help them navigate regular classes.

I like the best stuff written by Charles Dickens and George Orwell and think everyone could use to reread "Politics and the English Language" once a year. Especially in Chicago.

[willie g]

the surplus of applicants is at the magnet and above average cps schools. I've seen the piles of resumes that they receive for every position that opens.

Compare that to the number of jobs that cannot be staffed, or are staffed by someone not very qualified at one of the 'war zone' schools.

I'm in favor of getting rid of the residency requirement, but it isn't going to create a stampede of good teachers into bad schools.

On top of all of that, the requirement is only enforced when there is someone who wants to enforce it against a specific teacher. I know many teachers who live outside the city and don't hide it. As long as they remain valuable to the principal they serve, no one questions where they live.

we already have a waiver for math and special ed teachers, and that hasn't brought in huge numbers of good teachers.

I agree with you willie g about how they only go after people who fall out of favor...legally it is referred to as selective enforcement and it is illegal. Just imagine all the money that is spent on following people for residency...it could actually be used on academics!

In the February Chicago Union Teacher from the CTU, page 2, the editor, John Ostenburg states that he is supporting Obama. Then, as quoted:“ …my preference is to have an African-American president first, and then a woman president.”
Shame on him and Stewart! The high majority of CTU members are women John or haven’t you noticed and as your support of Obama—long before either presidential candidate has spoken with the Chicago Teachers Union, shouldn’t you have waited just a little and found out what was best for the Membership of the CTU?
Surprise John, Obama supports charter schools. Yes, John, he does.
Doesn’t anyone at CTU proofread what this guy puts in the monthly Union paper? Classic!

[methusaleh]

Many young teachers leave after 2-3 years when the novelty of renting in the city wears off or they get married and the spouse says, "I am not paying $400,000 for a 1930's Georgian on the north side!" If the residency requirement is lifted maybe they will stay.
Yes, there are many teachers who are teaching in the shortage areas and have been granted waivers but those waivers can be rescinded at any time! Who wants that albatross hanging around one's neck?

The whole residency requirement is stupid, plain and simple! If it is such a great idea, why did all the other districts minus Milwaukee get rid of it? Hey Mr. Mayor, just as you chose to NOT send your kids to CPS schools, let us choose where we want to live!

This requirement HAS been good for the city--housing prices will fall if we loose this to CPS teachers--they will--less demand for city houses and condos.

I agree, 8:06; I don't care who John Ostenburg supports, as long as he confines his 'preferences' to his MySpace page and saves the Editorial page for official endorsements. Don't be a Debbie Lynch and state the union's position when you don't yet know what rank and file want, or before you have polled the candidates for their platform positions on issues that are important to educators.

How will house prices go down if the residency requirement is gone, when most CPS teachers can not afford housing in the city? My family owns buildings and CPS teachers apply to rent and they can't qualify on their salaries. Other middle class people will buy the homes, prices will not go down and if the prices stabalize that will be good for everyone. How can prices drop when even the places near all the torn down housing projects start at a half a million dollars and the low income people are being pushed out? If you love your home there will not be a mass exodus if the requirement goes away, but it would be nice to have the OPTION. Anyway quite a few teachers live in the suburbs and were grandfathered in anyway and God only knows how many use bogus addresses anyway!

There is housing available to teachers --just check out the housing fairs. Also, I find it hard to believe that the teachers who apply to your apartments do not qaulify--maybe your rent is too high or, you would think that since teachers are a stable and educated population, you would wnat them as renters.