Enrollment Disaster At Percy Julian High School

Things have gone from bad to worse ato Percy Julian HS, the school slain student Blair Holt attended, according to a reader email.  Twelve (12) teaching spots dismissed due to an unexpectedly large decrease in enrollment.  Check it out. 

Today we received word that twelve teaching positions
have been lost at our school. The eleven teachers (one
was an empty position where the students have had no
teacher for their classroom) were informed yesterday
and today that they would turn in their keys on
Friday.

Our Julian community has fought to overcome a great
deal of tragedy over the last year. According to our
school programmer, our enrollment dropped this year in
direct result to our losses last year and the
subsequent negative media coverage.

Throughout all of this, our students have been
extraordinarily resilient, and continued to produce
great works. Now they are being asked to sacrifice
again--in many cases losing the very confidant whose
shoulder they cried on through our pain. Come Monday,
some students will sit in unstructured classrooms or
have their entire schedules restructures.

Several of the Education-to-Careers majors have been
cutback or cut entirely from our curricula. Students
who chose Julian and travel from across the city to
enroll in our medical academy will be faced with a
very different program. The fashion design and
woodworking programs have been dropped entirely.

The teachers who were cut will report downtown on
Monday to be assigned temporary positions. They will
receive some continuing pay and benefits, but only for
a sixty-day period, or if they are able to find a new
position. The vast majority of them chose Julian
specifically as the environment they wanted to work,
often giving up other positions or leaving other
schools to come to Julian.

Last year, we appreciated the outpouring of love and
empathy that helped us through that difficult time. In
this case, we just wish that a solution would be
offered that would prevent students who have triumphed
over so much from experiencing further hardship.

Comments

I thought that CPS no longer made major cuts like this at this point in the school year - that the "20th day" deadline was history, partly because it was so disruptive, messing up student schedules so late in the fall. So why did this happen?

I would not characterize what apparently has taken place at Julian High School as an enrollment disaster. This has actually happened before at Julian. The first time it happened it was based on the change in the social economic status of Julian students, who are virtually all black. In 1991 only 15% of Julian students were low income, by 2001 the school was 85% low income.

In conjunction with this change in social economic status at the school middle income black parents bailed out of the school and we saw an overall decline in students. Hence the enrollment in 1991 was 1,843 and by 2001 the enrollment was 1,173, the school’s declined in enrollment by 38%.

Once Calumet High School stopped taking new freshman, this was prior to its conversion to a charter school, Julian’s enrollment numbers increased. So by 2006 they were up to 1,951, or an increase in five years of 66%. Now is the current decline based on bad PR due to the killing, or bad reality and parents are voting with not enrolling their children in the high school? If I was a parent in the Julian community and had other options for my child I would not send my son or daughter to Julian. Moreover, I would suspect that there are very few teachers at Julian that would send there own children to Julian if they could go elsewhere. The average ACT score of a Julian graduate last year was only 16.4, about 75% of juniors were testing below state standards in reading.

The CPS has opened up high schools like Julian to market forces. Whether the supposedly greener pastures parents are sending there children to will be any better than Julian for those students who are not high performing and accepted in prep-Academies is yet to be determined. Being cynical by nature I would suspect that the parents of many of these students will find the schools of choice, charter, contract, open enrollment, or what ever, will not turn out to be much better than Julian. But in all honesty I can not blame these parents for trying to do better for their children.

The first commenter has most of their facts right, but at the last LSC meeting, the school programmer said that the school was inundated with far more applications than they could possibly enroll last year. Most of those who had the opportunity to enroll decided to go elsewhere following the events of the second semester last year.

So this was not a school in decline. I respect deeply the commenter's commitment to seeking out the facts, but it's no coincidence that they are unaware of this reality.

So much has been focused on the negative incidents in the area surrounding the school, that it's easy to miss the triumphs within the school and the upward trajectory of the school.

Two main factors are now reversing that ascent--first the violence in the community that affected Julian students last year and now the cutting of a group of teachers who chose to help Julian improve as a school.

This is not to say that I would support the destruction of neighborhood schools that are not doing as well as Julian was, but that this idea that Julian was already a declining school is not true.

Furthermore, this all ignores the simple fact that students should not have to have their schedules shifted in the middle of a school year. That the CEO of CPS came to this school and promised to support the students through this crisis and now says, "That's just how the budget works" is incredible.

The 20th day deadline is alive and well. Teachers all over the city were cut. High school students and teachers alike are still having their programs changed. It's a disaster.

[TeacherPeon]

No teachers can be cut after the 20th day--Oct 1, 2007. Where is your union rep? Have you had union meetings? Who is laying down and playing sheep at Julian?

[Cookie]

Why is anybody surprised at this?

[George Schmidt]

I'm going to try this morning to put the recent cuts at Julian into perspective. Last year, it was Gage Park (thanks to Marty McGreal an a couple of reporters who are no longer on the beat) that focused brief attention on what is going on in the general high schools. That is basically sabotage by Arne Duncan. But this year there are fewer reporters who will write up the stories in detail, and more sychophants who will simply recycle the PR scripts that are handed out on behalf of those with power in this town. But let's take a stab at it...

"The 20th day deadline is alive and well. Teachers all over the city were cut. High school students and teachers alike are still having their programs changed. It's a disaster..."

No, actually, it's not a "disaster" It's more like the cholera epidemic that you get when somebody destroys your clean water supply (or privatizes it). It may look like a "disater" but actually it's man made. Whether it's cholera in Baghdad or the sabotage of the general high schools in Chicago, the patterans are very similar.

What is being done this week to Julian High School is the policy of the Daley administration, implemented by Arne Duncan and his "team", approved by the appointed Board of Education (all millionaires again), and praised by the media, especially TV.

And (as I'll bore you with below if you want to take the time) this particular disaster is called for the most part "Renaissance" 2010. It's the biggest attack on public education through privatization, deregulation, and union busting going on anywhere in the USA outside of New Orleans. Because it is so unfair, shocking, and destructive at the places that are targeted by it (e.g., Julian this year; Gage Park last year; the general high schools -- all of which have "low" test scores -- every year), most people are too busy to step back, take out a map, and observe some patterns, then ask some questions.

In order to see Duncan's plan, though, you have to fit the little Julian High School piece of the big puzzle into the whole puzzle. Since the people at Julian this month will be too busy mourning their latest losses and sacrambling to keep from "failing" (as measured by multiple choice so called "standardized" tests) next Spring, it's unlikely they will see anything but the chaos that's just been dumped in their laps (by the same people who were getting TV time last Spring after the Blair Holt tragedy).

Julian High School is being sabotaged (like a number of other general high schools) by the Daley administration. Arne Duncan and the members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Richard M. Daley based on powers granted to Daley by the Illinois General Assembly in 1995 under the "Amendatory Act." You remember. Daley got dictatorial control over the Chicago public schools, and the miracles started flowing. Just ask the Sun-Times or Tribune (or Chicago's corporate public relations armies). Of course, things kept getting worse at the general high schools, which could never see any "miracles" of corporate school reform. But they were destined to be ignored or slandered of shut down.

Back to Julian High School for a minute.

Now that the TV cameras are off and all the diversions (e.g., Pfleger, Jackson, and Daley aiming at guns, rather than the drug gangs that use them) have gotten their TV time, it's time for them -- all of those I named, plus others -- to continue the program they've been implementing.

But that program is not a "disaster."

It's not a "disaster" because it's made by people, some of whom live in our wards (Howard Brookins; Michael Pfleger; Michael Chandler; Ike Carrouthers; Emma Mitts), many of whom live in the city but in "safer" communities (Richard M. Daley; Arne Duncan), and some of whom are working to remake the city from the mansions of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet (Patrick Ryan; Eden Martin; Bill Ford; the Pritzkers, the Gateses). Just ask 'em.

They know-- public schools are a failure.

Public high schools have to be totally reformed, from the bottom up. Etc. Etc. Etc.

The scripts are already waiting to be read, or entered into the Op Ed pieces.

Before you get stuck in the latest sabotage of Julian, please take out a map and take a tour of the iterations of this "disaster" with me.

A disaster is something like a blizzard or earthquake (or Hurricane Katrina).

What is being done to Julian (and about 40 other general high schools in Chicago this week) is the flip side of the policies Arne's been proclaiming on behalf of Daley (with support, even from people who should know better, at Julian) of a certain kind of free market "choice" based on the same scripts that are being used against the public schools (and staffs) in black communities across Chicago.

Deregulation

Privatization.

Union busting.

This is deregulation and privatization, aimed at ending public education in Chicago as we've known it for more than 100 years. As a side benefit, the people who promote it are also creating "union-free" zones (charter schools) across the city or flipping existing unions (SEIU, CTU) into their pockets as what amount to the New Company Unionism (a topic for another essay, later a book).

If you grid all of the "choice" schools Arne has put into place during this latest iteration of the campaign to deregulate, privatize, and de-unionize Chicago's public schools, you'll notice that most of them are in Chicago's poorest and most controlled black and Latino communities.

This morning, I'm only going to look at four communities in black Chicago. Here I'' try to do a little survey, from Julian northwest all the way to Austin (a distance of more than a dozen miles), of how Duncan has gotten away with it and how the primary victims have been black teenagers and their public school teachers. The project of destruction has been cheered on in the media, by corporate leaders, and by preachers and "leaders" from "Left" to "Right" on the political spectrum.

Along the way, I'll make a few suggestions about the politcians (usually aldermen) and some other public figures (usually men and women of the "cloth") who have been working with Arne and Arne's masters to do all this. Every major project like this requires a lot of corruption, but most of that corruption isn't the standard bribery type that lands Chicago aldermen and women in prison, and gives fodder to suburban Republican pundits like John Kass at the Tribune.

The corruption here is a much more poisonous intellectual and moral corruption that divides the world into "somebodies" and "nobodies" and lets those with power and the press do whatever to the nobodies along the way. "Collateral damage" is just one of the ugly words that's used in war, but here in Chicago the story is about the "leftover" children.

And what happens at the high schools where teachers and students in Chicago continue to try and serve those "leftover" children.

Let's start at Julian High School, located at 103rd and Elizabeth St. on Chicago's far south side.

Julian is so far from Chicago's major media centers that it takes a horrifying murder on a rickety CTA bus to bring out the TV cameras (which is why the current Duncan cuts are not "news" this weekend).

From the day the Julian community allowed the Board of Education to put "Chicago International Charter Schools Longwood" (a k-12 school run by Edison Schools Inc) out at 95th and Throop six years ago all the way to last September, privatization, deregulation, and union busting have been the name of the game.

Last year, when people allowed alderman Howard Brookins Jr. (21st Ward) to repeat those slanders against Calumet High School that were scripted by Duncan and Daley's media people ("nobody chooses Calumet..." etc.) the script has been unfolding and it has not been opposed by a divided community.

Let's take a tour north from Julian (way out there at 103rd and Elizabeth).

For years, all of Chicago's general high schools have taken the students who were "left over" after the magnet schools. In 1995, this was the status quo and had been for more than a decade. On the South Side, Lindblom and a couple of other schools got the "best" high school age students, and the rest got the rest.

When Illinois gave Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley dictatorial control over CPS in 1995, it was behind the same kind of smokescreen that always precedes these kinds of attack on democracy. The problem was an unmitigated disaster. The solution was a dictator. Salvation required major powers be given up (by the people) and turned over (to the boss).

Despite the fact that the schools had been improving by most measures since the last iteration of "reform" in 1988, the publicity machines (especially the Tribune, with its book "Chicago's Schools: America's Worst") were telling the opposite story.

Chicago's schools -- if you look carefully across all 600 of them -- have suffered for more than 40 years from a kind of vicious social triage. A large number of them are muddling along in the city's vast middle class communities. A smaller number (usually, the selective enrollment schools) are doing quuite well, year after year producing some of the best students and most impressive measures anywhere.

Then there are those schools (about one-third of the total) that would embarrass a Third World dictator, except they have been allowed to exist in one of the "great cities" of the USA generation after generation.

Situated in neglected communities, racked with povery, violence, and every other social and economic problem imaginable, these 100 to 150 public schools (most of the families, the LSCs, the principals and teachers, even the custodial workers and engineers) have tried, valiantly over generations, to serve children who did not choose to be born into such poverty and challenge, but who were dumped into the "bottom" of a ruthlessly class divided society literally from birth. The Patrick Ryans, Maggie Daleys, and Eden Martins of the world may pray for the poor at the Communion rail on Sunday, but they make sure their bottom line is fed by the misery of the poor the rest of the week.

The same conditions that created Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas ("Native Son") during the Great Depression in Chicago had been creating a generation of Bigger Thomases since. (And, uniquely, the same white supremacist institutions -- albeit with more black participation and New Age "diversity" today -- like the University of Chicago were enabling the continuation of the thing. "Native Son" really does need a re-read at a time like this).

Instead of noticing that in a city with 600 schools, between 100 and 150 of them had been allowed to decline (almost always in the roughest communities), Chicago was brushed over, top to bottom, as "America's Worst." Instead of saying that the schools that were trying to patch up the wounds committed on children by a vicious class society needed more resources, Chicago declared they should do more with less -- and be closed for "failure" when it didn't work. Hence, "tight staffing" and position closings in the general high schools on the 20th day.

Hence Gage Park's overcrowding last year.

Julians "disaster" this year.

And dozens of others equally now.

Oh, but I forgot. We're in the middle of a miracle as wonderful at Fatima -- Richard M. Daley's salvation of Chicago public schools.

Which were, as everyone knew, "America's Worst."

One of the interesting things about that "America's Worst" slander is how it has been used over the years since it was first uttered 20 years ago by another Bush appointee.

"Chicago's schools are [probably] America's worst" was first said by William Bennett when he was U.S. Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush.

For a few years, Bennett was quoted directly in places like the Tribune. After all, this was the guy who wrote the "Book of Virtues" and was an expert on educating children, etc., etc, etc.

But after it became clear that Bennett was a raving eugenicist racist (remember that remark about lowering the black birth rate that got him dumped from his own corporation -- K-12?) and a greedy "entrepreneur" behind all that prattle about "virtue", editors began shortening the use of the slander. Instead of "William Bennett said Chicago's school are America's worst..." the sentence became "Chicago's schools, which were once dubbed 'America's Worst'..." in the usual Orwellian morphing.

When Richard M. Daley and Paul Vallas expanded the magnet schools by creating the "academic magnet high schools" from Northside College Prep (Brwyn Mawr and Kedzie) all the way out to Brooks College Prep (111th two miles south and east of Julian), Julian was being squeezed. With the expansion of the college prep high schools under the first half of the Daley years, the number of "leftover" students became more intensely concentrated in the general high schools. But to admit that the whole "miracle" that had raised elementary test scores was a lie (it the scores were so great, why were the majority of 9th graders at the general high schools still reading and doing math so poorly in the face of "high school" work?), the lie twisted again.

With Arne Duncan, the word "choice" became almost pornographic in its impact on the poorest communities in the city. Duncan declared in his first "State of the Schools" address that he wanted every school to be a school of "choice." Most people thought this meant that every Chicago community was going to get a quality community elementary and high schools. Wrong. Duncan was using "choice" in the sense developed by his own family and his neighbors at the University of Chicago -- as something that functions in the economic "market place." "Choice" was going to be used in Chicago to deregulate, privatize, and de-unionize as much of public education as possible as quickly as possible. And if anybody wanted to know why a former second rate professional basketball player with no teaching experience was suddenly ready to be "CEO" of the third largest school system in the USA, it had everything to do with the politics of marketplacing Chicago's schools and nothing to do with the complexities of educating the pooret children in the poorest communities.

In that context, what happened on Friday, October 12, 2007, at Percy Julian High School in Chicago is not a "disaster" but the latest piece of a very nasty plan.

Julian of late has been impacted by CICS Longwood, by the "magnets" (including the mini-magnet, Morgan Park) and more and more by the Perpsectives charter high school that ousted Calumet from the Calumet building more than two miles to the north. For now, we'll ignore the recent contortions of Lindblom.

The formula's been the same for more than ten years. Force a "disaster", then blame the victim and flip the building, public to private. Don't forget, all that rehabilitation (more than $10 million) that Duncan said there was no money for when Calumet was a public school. The dollars came pouring in (with overtime by last Spring) as soon as Calumet had been flipped, privatized, and scoured free of its unions.

One last note before we head north, because this one will be interesting to watch as it unfolds in the "Black Community."

Anyone who thinks Chicago will be better with Howard Brookins Jr. as its State's Attorney should take a close look at the gang bangers infesting Brookins's ward (especially the northern and eastern ends of the ward, although their impact is ward-wide, so to speak).

Brookins was teacher bashing and union busting last year from Calumet High School to the Wal Mart he's begging for. But one of the more interesting things about his "law and order" posing (and the scripts repeated on his behalf by people like Judge Pincham) is Brookins's relationship to some of the street level bad guys out there.

Chicago's communities are not being terrorized by Osama Bin Laden.

But there are terrorists in many communities and in the general high schools. Before jumping on the Brookins Jr. bandwagon, ask why the drug gangs are so powerful (some would say ubiquitous) in more than half the 21st Ward. Those were Gangster Disciples trying to scare away voters from the precinct I worked (84th and Racine) at on election day in February. They were helping Howard Brookins Jr. The guy who cut my tire (causing a nasty breakdown halfway to Detroit, a truly professional job) knows every GD in the three precincts he works. And he works for Howard Brookins Jr.

Brookins joined in the teacher bashing and union busting against Calumet High School leading up to the privatization of Calumet and the placing of Calumet into the hands of "Perspectives" (after more than $10 million in rehab they said wasn't available -- until the privatizers came).

Let's bet here and now that when they go after Julian, Brookins will be back up there with Father Pfleger bashing Julian the same way he bashed Calumet.

But the take in the "Black Community" will come from a different angle if Brookins is blessed. He'll be hailed for his Burge words.

Brookins took a clear stand on the Burge (police torture) case, and more credit to him. If Richard M. Daley had listened to Howard Brookins Jr. six years ago, we could have saves a couple of million dollars in legal costs. But anyone who believes that his career can stand a close look at street level should decide what are the criteria (public schools? unions? communities safe from drug gangs?) before jumping on the "Community" bandwagon for the guy.

But this story doesn't end out at Julian (and the Brainerd and Chatham communities), where real estate "development" (south of Julian), the Wal Martization (over by the Dan Ryan), and the cocaine and heroinization of desperately poor black Chicago (Lowden and Princeton Park Homes, two of those CHA project that are too far from the lake, Loop or the United Center to face the axe) are part of the real name of the game.

Englewood: Go north from Julian and you see the same game being played at Englewood. Englewood High School has now been privatized through "Urban Prep", that kinky little thingy run by the controversial (but highly touted, at least in the Tribune) Tim King.

Urban Prep and "Team Englewood" (both untested ideas with nothing but teacher bashing attacks on the public schools and hyper marketing plans behind them) have now taken over Englewood's building.

So the pressure is now on elsewhere -- from Gage Park to Tilden to (especially) Robeson. It's only a question of which one will be declalred the next "failure" while the Tribune's privatization department continues featuring "news" stories (like the Page One thingy last year on Urban Prep) about how horrid the public schools are and how great these untested, unproven, but highly publicized and funded "choices" are.

Every year, the Tribune opens a new school year with a page one story about a miracle school that doesn't yet exist. It's a tour de force that nobody seems to notice because of the fairy tale way the story is told. Last year it was "Urban Prep" before its kids had taken one examination or been through one semester. This year, it's the new cloned LEARN charter school and its chattering (privatizing, teacher bashing, union busting, deregulating) principal. Watch for the next version of the same fair tale.

Just like out around Calumet and Julian (Calumet and Julian were at opposite ends of Brookins's ward), the alderpeople were key to the destruction of Englewood and its public schools.

In Elglewood, the schools are Englewood (which has now been given away to hucksters), Robeson (which is being sabotaged every day), and Lindblom (which sits precariously in a very "bad" community but gets to select its kids again).

The two alderladies who helped Daley orchestrate the teacher bashing in Englewood were Shirley Coleman (16th) and Arenda Troutman (20th).

Troutman and Coleman are no longer in City Council.

Coleman was defeated for her love of Wal Mart, despite enormous effort by Richard Daley on her behalf.

Troutman, famous for her bullying and bluster, has added an unforgettable page to the lore of Chicago City Council braggadocio and Chicago quotables: "We're all Hoes".

She was defeated because she got so greedy it was caught on tape in an FBI sting. Troutman was the alderperson who told the feds -- although she didn't know she was talking to the feds at the time -- that all alderpeople are "Hoes".

But that was after Arenda had helped Arne destroy Englewood High School. Troutman was also the alderperson who showed up with Arne Duncan to orchestrate a "community forum" to help murder Englewood High School three years ago. Arne and Arenda, shoulder to shoulder, united to put down community protest. (This particular analysis leaves out the role of the University of Chicago, up the street from Arenda's house, which is privatizing from a different angle, soon to be expanded).

If you go north from Julian and Englewood, you can see the same pattern (deregulation, charterization, de-unionization, destruction of the public schools especially the large high schools that are centers of the community) in Lawndale.

At this point, in Lawndale, we are no longer on the "South Side" (read black Chicago) but on the West Side (still, black Chicago).

In Lawndale, Alderman Michael Chandler (24th Ward) was ousted in part because he became a fan of charter schools. For two years, Michael Chandler false flagged those who were organizing agains the "Renaissance 2010" school cloisng juggernaut. After teaming up briefly with those who opposed closings and "Renaissance 2010" to oppose school closings, Chandler reneged on his own City Council resolution. It was an amazing performance, really, because Chandler actually managed to forget to support his own resolution, thereby guaranteeing that it would never come to a City Council vote. Some people thought that the whole reason Chandler introduced the resolution in the first place was to waste everyone's time (and it wasted thousands of organizing hours), but nobody knows his motivations. What is known is that Chandler found comfort with the privatizers, charterizers, and union busters -- the ran for re-elction on a platform similar to that of Brookins, Coleman, and Troutman.

Too late, Chandler realized he had gotten enough voters in his ward angry at him so that he was suddenly out of a job.

But Chandler's legacy will long stick like a sword into public education and democracy in the 24th Ward. Chandler's backflips came just at the time that Arne Duncan was destroying Collins High School and putting "North Lawndale College Prep" into the Collins building in the middle of Douglas Park. Chandler talked against the closing of Collins High School (another one of those general high schools that "failed"), then helped the privatization of the building Collins had been in. Chandler also went along with all the other charters in that part of town.

Collins High School, at 1313 S. Sacramento, is now officially "North Lawndale College Prep Charter High School."

And North Lawndale College Prep could be a case study in itself.

By the time it got the Collins building, North Lawndale College Prep had already been used to strangle the life out of Howland Elementary (which now houses that Irish Christian Brothers -- as in Daley's Alma Mater-- charter school, "Catalyst"). North Lawndale College Prep was also the favorite anecdote of Michael Scott. Michael Scott, the Jesuit educated product of North Lawndale, was President of the Chicago Board of Education during the heyday early days of mass privatization on the West Side. Chandler alone can't be blamed for what it took Daley's team to do to Lawndale's public schools. Scott deserves more credit for that than Chandler, actually. And that is probably why when Scott left the Board of Education, he was able to make sure his son got a top job in "Sports Administration" (at CPS) after having held a top job in "Parks Administration" (at the Chicago Park District). Scott is presently working on making his first million dollars as a "real estate developer" out on the West Side. The crash in sub-prime mortgates has made Scott's economic prospects a little more dubious, because much of the development he's involved in rested on relationships with outfits like New Century Home Mortgage (and its ghetto clones) and those ripoffs of the poor.

Anyway, back to Douglas Park in Chicago's Lawndale community.

Like Englewood and Calumet high schools, Collins High School got all the rehab dollars it needed — once it was privatized.

And now Collins is no longer Collins (that "failed" public school) but "North Lawndale College Prep" -- all hype and kink, some of it along the same lines as Tim King's outfit out in Englewood.

There's nothing like deregulation to open new markets for educational entrepreneurs -- and those who really really really "love children."

Mother and fathers, keep a very close eye on your kids if you send them to these places. Remember: part of this whole thing is deregulation, which means that charter schools can hired (and underpay) uncerfitied teachers with dubious credentials and even more dubious backgrounds (which won't be checked as carefully).

Well, anyway, you can't get on the Local School Council at the "new" Calumet, Englewood, or Collins -- because there is none.

Of course, it doesn't end in Brainerd, Englewood, or Lawndale.

A reall set piece to exemplify Arne Duncan's attack on black teachers, black principals, unions and democracy -- and the public school education of black children -- is Austin, the city's largest community (in terms of population).

The Austin community this school year opened without a general high school for the children of the community to attend. The Board of Education is building a new vocational high school (Westinghouse) on the north edge of the community. To the east, a specialty small schools thingy (Al Raby) currently occupies the old Lucy Flower Vocational High School building.

And since Austin High School officially closed (beginning in September 2004, finalized in June 2007), Austin hasn't had a public high schools. It's had "choice" all around (like New Orleans) but no public school that had to take any high school age kid (also like New Orleans).

Those 9th graders who didn't get into the "choice" schools in Austin have been forced to go between three and five miles (on an already overpriced and crumbling Chicago Transit Authorty, thanks to Daley's miracle management) because Austin High School is now a "school of choice" -- meaning it's been privatized, turned over to academic hucksters with a marketing plan and guaranteed positive PR from the Tribune and Sun-Times, and absolutely not record of performance.

Last month (September 2007) the Austin building opened with two "choice" schools inside its (now being rehabbed, finally again, see above, "Calumet" and "Collins" rehabs in time for privatization) walls.

They are a nice balance politically, Right to Left.

American Quality Schools (AQS, Mike Bakalis's outfit) was clawing its way into Austin as early as the Vallas years. AQS got the "Entreprensuership Academy" for its profit lines. In September 2006, the very very small "Austin Entreprensuership Academy" -- overseen by Michael Bakalis, former Illinois Schools Supt. and now an entrepreneur himself.

A very small school you have to apply to to get in and conform to to stay in (unlike the true public schools, these outfits all kick out "bad" kids).

In September 2007, the Left Wing arrived in the form of the "Austin Polytechnical Academy". One might say that the new "Polytechnic" anchors the left wing of the attack on public schools, with friends all the way to the local Fans of David Axelrod (and his latest clients) and a bunch of residual 1960s veterans still working on Utopia (only this time with a bit of a profit thrown in).

Like New Orleans, Austin no longer has enough public high schools for all the public high school students who should be allowed into its public high schools. There are plenty of "schools" in Austin for high school age children, but every one of them is either a private school, a charter, or a "small school" that requires an admissions application. While public schools serve everyone living in the community, these places exclude (which is really what this brand of Duncan "choice" boils down to).

Right now, as has been reported at meetings of the Chicago Board of Education and in only three Chicago newspapers (all small, not dailies, including Substance) there is no general high school for the graduating 8th graders in the Austin community.

The non-charter public high schools -- Douglass, Michell Clark, and one of the the Austins -- are all "choice" schools (you have to apply; they kick you out if you "underperform" -- that's the charter school formula, after all).

Oh. And Austin really has the best of the politicians that Daley carried around in his pocket pals Ike Carrouthers (29th) and Emma Mitts (37th Ward).

Mitts and Carrouthers have been in Daley's back pocket for so long that they've convinced themselves that Daley's farts are Chanel No. 5. So they've seen no problem, either, as thousands of kids from their precious communities have been deprived of a public education, while the families of those children are depriived of the right to serve on Local School Councils -- while "choice" reigns in Chicago.

This geography lesson could go on, but it has to end here. Another chapter will be the slightyly differnet angle taken in Chicago's "Latino" communities (and the wonderful roles of UNO among the Mexican Americans and Aspira in the Puerto Rican -- and other -- parts of town).

But that's enough for one night's musings.

[George Schmidt]

Yesterday I spoke at an NAACP meeting on the South Side, and I began my remarks outlining what had just happened at Julian. Later in the meeting, a parent from Julian came to the meeting and provided more horrifying details. What none of us knew at the beginning of the meeting was how much of the sabotage of Julian was the direct result of things Arne Duncan and his "team" did to Julian. That meeting took place less than two miles from Arne's home, and his people knew about it.

Now to get to a few reality based questions as we head towards Halloween (and all that ghoulish behavior that will unravel some schools when the gang bangers -- all of whom are now in school -- start to kick it this month).

When Arne Duncan begins prattling before the TV cameras (never to be asked a factual question he hasn't been rehearsed on before, since our "reporters" are keeping this slow pitch puffball) we're in, as people noted in another context, a "faith based" zone.

The students at Julian High School were traumatized majorly (and ultimately on national TV last year). The TV part even gets the attention of the CPS spinmeisters. Last school year (the Holt murder made TV, but the other attack were generally less mediacentric), Julian was national. Sort of like CNN during Hurricane Katrina. But this year? Why didn't someone push the red STOP button on the staffing machine when the bells started sounding that Julian was going to face those cuts?

This is like the aftermath of Katrina, with Julian being wrecked by the same kinds of people who are currently "reforming" public education in New Orleans.

But you'd think with Chicago trying to primp its whorey self for the Olympics come common sense would have prevailed when the CUTS CUTS CUTS programs started pouring out last week's mess (remember: Julian isn't the only general high school being whacked this week).

(Now, a digression into higher math for the Olympic bid. I mean, if we're talking Olympics, consider this simple fact. The difference between the dividend tax and capital gains taxes that Patrick Ryan paid last year and the one he would have had to pay before the Bush tax cuts would have paid for the entire staff cuts from Julian High School this year. That's the math we're really in the middle of in this Olympic Village of ours. Don't let it bufuddle. Read the Aon proxy statement instead of fantasizing about how much you resent the people from Orland Park. So the guy who is running Mayor Daley's Olympic Committee -- and who also employs the mayor's wife -- has benefited much more greatly than a bunch of teachers from the reorganization -- er, "reform" -- of everything lately. At least take a close look at how all this works).

But back to the village and away from the Olympic Village. Back to the microeconomis of CPS and away from the macroeconomis we can't afford not to listen to, if not understand...

Doesn't anyone at Clark St. notice that reorganizing an entire high school during the sixth week of school (and the gutting of the staff requires a complete reorganization) adds to the trauma already inflicted on the kids (and the staff, which absorbed a lot of the grief last year silently, as we're supposed to do for the sake of the children)?

This isn't Sim School like they require in order to hire you to work in the Office of New Schools development. This is 103rd St. in Chicago. Where kids still have to ride those (soon to be cut back, thanks to the geniuses who ran CTA into the ground under two technnofreek Daley clones -- Frank Kruesi and Ron Huberman) buses every day!

(The multi-million dollar "New Schools" outfit is relevant any time CPS makes school based-cuts. If anybody can tell me the name of one top ranking person in "New Schools" with five years' inner city teaching public school experience, I'm buying dinner at the Kinzie Chop House or Nick's Fishmarket for you. But bring your proofs. That New Schools crowd is as vapid in the face of the real world of Chicago as Paul Bremer's "team" of Heritage Foundation clones was while "reforming" the economy of Iraq in Baghdad four years ago).

But none of these facts matters in the real world of Chicago (and CPS) unless it gets on TV. That's why the CPS "Communications" budget is greater than the cost of the teachers just cut from Julian. So let's make this easy for TV "reporters".

Given that every media and headline grabber was at Julian less than six months ago to get TV face time piggybacking on the 103rd St. bus tragedy, everybody knows how to get to Julian High School (it's not Bowen, or Washington).

So let's ask a few reality based questons that can easily be made visual (and even, if we're patient, get our mayor into the frame, see "Principal for a Day" at Orr below).

Why aren't the media stars who care so much about the community there at Julian from dawn until dusk now demanding that Arne roll back those cuts? Why not bring back those teachers and let Julian have, everything considered, the school year it thought it was going to be having from September 4 until October 11 (when the axe fell)?

And, not least, but it's a busy day ahead...

Don't let anyone say that it's a "tight budget" that's causing these cuts. CPS today has the greatest number of dollars in its "Reserve" in history. Nearly $400 million and increasing. That's the macro level.

But even at the micor level the economics demand that Julian (and the other general high schools) not be sabotaged by Arne Duncan this school year?

Let's take one small example (small, as in "small schools").

How can anyone who can read allow CPS (i.e., Arne Duncan) to sustain the cost of three principals at the South Shores "campus" and cut teachers from Julian.

How can anyone sustain three principals at the Bowens and say that Julian (which only has one principal) should lose teachers (and some of its most exciting vocational programs, which require the special skills of those teachers to make work)?

Can anyone seriously say to the TV cameras with a straight face that Chicago needs two or three "principals" at the Orrses a few weeks before Mayor Daley goes back there as "principal for a day"?

Are we really ready to explain why we have two principals and a "military commandant" at the Senns -- and then claim with a straight face and that flat sociopathic affect Arne Duncan practices in front of the mirror -- that there is "no money" and that's why Julian had to lose 12 "positions" (eleven of which were filled with real teachers who a week ago were in front of full programs of kids)?

Forget the Reserve for a minute, which only those who love reading spreadsheets and asking questions about those mendacious numbers could fathom.

Even a TV reporter can go from Julian east to the Bowenses, and then swing north to the South Shores and the DuSables and locate nine or ten $100,000 per year "principals: in three "school campuses" while Julian is being strangled and Arne and Mayor Daley are prattling on about their vision to make CPS "the best school system in the USA".

By my count, the surplus principals at just four high schools (alone, I could list more, as you know) that have been forced to become "small schools" cost at least $100,000 each. Those dollars could more than pay for the cost of the teachers who will not be reporting to Julian High School tomorrow morning.

The money being wasted on vapid Yuppie visionaries (with absolutely no teaching or urban educational experience) working out of "New Schools" on the Fifth Floor at 125 S. Clark St. would provide another visual to tell the story in stark contrast to those now empty classrooms and labs and studios at Julian High School at 103rd and Elizabeth on Chicago's South Side. Even the dumbest TV talking head can to to Google Map Quest and find his way from 125 S. Clark St., to Julian, to Bowen, to South Shore, to DuSable, than up to Orr (wouldn't that be great when Mayor Daley stages his annual "principal for a day" media event at the Orrs) and then finally up to that militarization program at Senn. Even if the CPS directory is wrong, the addresses are all in directory assistance.

The Board's computers may not be able to generate programs for kids in a timely and efficient manner.

The Board's computers may not be able to pay teachers accurately and on time.

And the geniuses who contracted for and built (and touted) those massively expensive software packages (and sub sub sub contracted all of the outsourced messes that followed) are still holding $150,000 to $200,000 per year jobs (led by Robert Runcie and Arne Duncan).

But Chicago -- that pretentious education miralce on Lake Michigan -- can't find the dollars to pay for teachers in a school that was a national poster child less than six months ago for every social pathology and unctuous hypocrisy in this city of miracles?

But those same computers can certainly generate teacher staffing cuts when ordered to.

Those computers were certainly able to screw up Julian High School this month.

Or am I missing anything?

[responding to 5:12]

The improvement in measureable outcomes at Julian from about 2001 to 2006 are very limited by any standard. Based simply on the data we all have to admit that the average Julian graduate, and more Julian students have been graduating than droping out, cannot get admited to any four year college. The only real option is city college.

As most of us know many are called to Chicago's city colleges and few graduate with AAs or go on to four year colleges. Most of these Julian students will upon arrival at city college not be allowed to take either college level math or english due to low scores on placement tests. They will be sent to remedial classes which they must pass inorder to go on with college. Most will not pass these classes.

There is a reason why the black middle class abandoned Julian years ago. Like all middle class families they want their children to graduate from college. The poorer the school became the lower the standards the school had.

The increased enrollment at Julian was not based on a preception of the school having improved, but rather on the elimination of other options for poor students who were academically behind.

George and others can point to Julian's cuts as being related to Ren 2010 and they are in part. But they are also related to the reality that all parents want is a good education for their children, they are not interested in the larger implications of the introduction of market forces into the school system.

This attempt to improve educational outcomes for poor children using choice and the market will fail. It will fail because the market driven charters, contract schools, or magnet school copies, will not have any more resources over the long run to educate poor children many of whom come from families that are not functional based on middle class norms. It is these norms that establish the gates to economic success in our society.

The extra funds being sent to schools like Nobel Street or U of C charters will at some point dry up. Gates, and other do gooders will eventually move their money elsewhere. These schools will become much like the schools they are replacing and the circle will remain unbroken.

[George Schmidt]

"...The improvement in measureable outcomes at Julian from about 2001 to 2006 are very limited by any standard. Based simply on the data we all have to admit that the average Julian graduate, and more Julian students have been graduating than droping out, cannot get admited to any four year college..."

What is sad about this statement (posted yesterday) is that it refuses to view this as a system where human beings -- from Blair Holt to the kids currently at Julian -- are involved. Public schools are not amassments of data sets to produce measureable outcomes. The days people began using language like this to talk about human high schools in the face of the human realities (for both the teachers and the students) at places like Chicago's Julian High School was the day we took the first steps towards the horror we are now creating from Baghdad to 103rd and Elizabeth.

You can measure the outcome of the production of screws or Ford Tauruses using some of these "metrics." When you apply them to human beings and human activities, you are bordering on insanity. When you try to discuss schools in these terms you are talking babble. And, from a hisorical point of view, your antecedents are not the people I suspect you want to be in the company of.

We need to update George Orwell's Essay "Politics and the English Language" and Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" for contemporary use. Even if we can stop people from brainwashing themselves into thinking that those sentences above have meaning that should become policy, we can innoculate others.

What will happen at Julian later this morning is that the lives of hundreds of our fellow Chicagoans will be disrupted, again. For some (the teachers) the disruption will have become routine (although some are becoming cynical). For the majority (the students) they have had their educations murdered by Arne Duncan's policies as certainly as that underage gunman murdered Blair Holt.

The difference is that Duncan's crimes are surrounded by a night and fog of verbiage like that quoted above, whereas the child who gunned down Blair Holt was caught in the "matrix" of Chicago politics and policies that allowed the drug gangs to proliferate despite the best work of men like Blair Holt's own father.

Our children are not data sets or potential "outcomes."

But if you are using statistics to measure Julian High School, then next April the Prairie State exam scores should be adjusted to take into account that approximately 25 of the 175 days of instruction this school year was murdered by Arne Duncan and his babbling colleagues for those students at Julian.

That's how to utilize the data sets -- plug in all the real variables, instead of just taking the numbers you are force fed by those who operate the corporate "school reform" machine.

[Lou Pyster]

FYI: State Law 105 ILCS 5/34-84 provides "There shall be no reduction in teachers because of a decrease in student membership or a change in subject requirements within the attendance center organization after the 20th day following the first day of the school year, except that: (1)this provision shall not apply to desegregation positions, special education positions, or any other positions funded by State or federal categorical funds, and (2)at attendance centers maintaining any of grades 9 through 12, there may be a second reduction in teachers on the first day of the second semester of the regular school term because of a decrease in the school membership or a change in the subject requirements within the attendance center organization."

Both the old and new contracts provide in 23A-3.2 ".... A teacher's reappointment for the following school year is subject to the '20th Day Rule' set forth in 105 ILCS 5/34-84. A probationary teacher who is displaced in accordance with the '20th Day Rule' will become a cadre substitute for the remainder of the school year."

The old contract provides in Appendix H, Section 2-Selection of Teachers for Removal

A. In Attendance Centers/Programs That Are Not Subject to Reconstitution

"If changes in the attendance center or programs require removal of some but not all teachers, teachers with appropriate certifications will be selected for retention based on system-wide seniority.
Provisionals, Day-to-Day substitutes, Cadre substitutes, FTBs and Probationary teachers within the attendance center or program will be removed before any regularly certified and appointed teachers with the appropriate certification is removed, in that order. Within each group, system-wide seniority shall be the determining factor."

According to the new contract language provided to the members, FTBs were replaced in the paragraph cited above by Temporarily Assigned Teachers {TATs) and between the words appointed and teachers the word "tenured" was added. Both additions were not in bold print. Also, the last sentence of the above paragraph was lined out.

Hopefully, this information will be helpful concerning the Julian staff cuts.

[responding to George]

I am not going to personally attack George or any other CPS teachers. But CPS teachers unless they have no other choice do not send their children to Julian. Many of us send our own children to selective schools, I know I do and George has admited he has done the same.

Julian is not a significantly improving school, unless the PSAE scores to be released shortly show something different. I did not hear George contest in anyway the reality of what an average ACT score of 16 means. George knows that it is a rare low income student with a 16 ACT score that survives college.

It is easy for those of us who have children who are getting ACT scores from the middle 20s into the 30s to talk about the test data being "babble." Again I understand why several hundred more families pulled their childen out of Julian. Again I will say I do not believe CPS through Ren 2010 or any other options programs will be providing anything better in the long run for low performing low income students.

Those of us who are teachers know what a high performing safe school is and we send our children to these schools. Our chidren, be they black, white, brown, or whatever have numerous advantages. In particular we teachers are gaming the CPS enrollment system from our children's first day in Kg. Others of us have opted out of the CPS for our own children.

Parents of lower income children attending Julian feeder schools have the same right to opt out. Clearly the killings set off an avalanche of families leaving Julian. As the parent of one of the Julian students who was killed is quoted in the Sun Times saying of the enrollment decline "it's understandable considering what happened over the past year."

George and most CPS teachers would not send their children to schools where other students have been murdered on buses on the way to or from school. These parents have the same right to opt out.

Am I the only one who realizes that a) this isn't just Julian and b) this isn't new this year. I work at a general high school and some years we lose teachers and some we have a surplus of children, classes of 40 - 45 and mass reprogramming after the 20th day when they send us new teachers. Either way, we are always program changing well into October. I agree that this practice is horrible and should be changed, but I don't understand all the talk about the "disaster atJulian" as this is, and has been, taking place all over the city...well unless you work at Payton, Northside....

[A]

Dunbar HS cut five positions, including two English teachers who were in their second and third years of employment. But brand new teachers with no years of service were not let go. Does that make any sense? How can you fire experienced English teachers and keep new Spanish and art teachers? And exactly where will these kids go? I'm waiting for my new schedule to arrive any moment. Ridiculous. What is the point of the union???

[Lois]

These position cuts at this point in the school year just shows what a mockery "Children First" is. These teacher cuts result in a gross disruption of the educational process for hundreds of students. Just because it has been going on for years does not make it right. If enrollment is down whether it be at individual schools or system wide, the cuts need to be made so that the educational process is not disrupted. Cut positions starting at the top. Maybe start with the head of payroll since that person obviously cannot figure out what a 4% raise is. Then maybe go to the tech department that has given us this wonderful IMPACT without sufficient testing or research. I can guarantee that us teachers will be able to do our jobs just as well, students will have teachers in front of them (not substitutes for a week or more while the programmer try to figure out how to reschedule the students) and just maybe CPS will attract and retain teachers for all the schools. A big push to get students to class from day one yet the system cannot provide them with a stable education. Children First is the biggest and worst deception the board puts out.

[George Schmidt]

"...A big push to get students to class from day one yet the system cannot provide them with a stable education. Children First is the biggest and worst deception the board puts out..."

Fewer than two dozen schools, most of them general high schools, were hit by these position closings. They were targeted.

The Board has plenty of money to spend this year, but the cuts were made as a matter of policy. Arne Duncan is sabotaging the general high schools so he can close more of them and flip them to privatization via charter schools and other exotic unproven hyped alternatives. Visit Englewood "campus," Collins, Austin, or DuSable today, to cite just a few general high schools that have been raped and murdered through sabotage, lies, "standards," and privatization since Arne became CEO in July 2001.

"High school reform" (for urban schools that serve poor black children) is what Bill Gates, Bill Ford, Eli Broad, and the Pritzkers want and that's what they're paying for. There are still no charter schools or "small schools" or "turnaround specialists" plying their lucrative trades in Glen Ellyn (the Glenbards, notably but not exclusively West), Winnetka (New Trier) or the Glenbrooks or even Evanston Township.

This is a Chicago thing and everyone's supposed to maintain a disciplined focus on where Arne and Daley point the cameras.

Within the CPS budgt, the cost of the executive staff at "New Schools" -- none of whom has ever suffered more than a year of classroom teaching in real challenging urban public schools -- would have paid to salaries of every teacher who was cut last week. Arne can walk from his office for about ten minutes and pass people who are being paid more than all the teachers kicked out of the dozen general high schools that were nuked last week.

Arne is doing his job.

TV, radio, and the newspapers are singing his praises.

That's "Truth" Chicago style. And next Spring, Arne will be chirping about how these schools have "failed" and the media will again talk about how much "courage" he's showing by teacher bashing and privatizing another round of schools. The script and the narrative have worked since April 2002, so why change it now?

[Responding to George]

As a Chicago taxpayer and a teacher, I understand why positions are cut in a school where enrollment declines. We all live with a budget. CPS makes a budget with a certain number of teachers district-wide. The number of teachers is based on revenues (taxes). If schools have higher than expected enrollment they should be able to hire more teachers. If schools have lower than expected enrollment, teaching positions will have to be reduced.

As a Chicago taxpayer, I do not want to pay for more teachers because parents decided to send their child to a magnet school. I sent my child to a magnet school. Maybe the neighborhood school where I lived counted my child in their population. Should I have been forced to send my child to the neighborhood school?

The number of principals might be too high, I don't know. From my perspective (and I work in a neighborhood school with 1 principal and 3 assistant principals) all our principals seem to work long hours.