More Philanthropy For Chicago Schools

Sometime this week, two big foundations are going to announce "a major investment that will help support a promising new network of high-quality high schools to underserved students in Chicago and several other urban communities around the country." Who do you think that could be, and what will they be funding?

UPDATE:  Yes, Gates - and the Ford Learning Institute.  Here's the press release announcing the event tomorrow below.

Major New Investments to Help Henry Ford Learning Institute Launch National Network

of Innovative Schools in Chicago and Other Urban Communities

 

Chicago, IL – On Wednesday, October 3^rd, at 10:00 a.m., community partners will join Bill Ford, Executive Chairman of the Ford Motor Company, representatives from the Henry Ford Learning Institute, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to announce major new investments to help bring the successful Henry Ford Academy model to Chicago and to expand this promising new network of high-quality high schools to underserved students in several urban communities.

 

               

What:	Press   conference to announce:   · New educational partnership that brings together Ford   Motor Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chicago Public Schools,   and the local community   · Launch of national network of schools based on the Henry Ford Academy   model   · Details for the new Henry   Ford Academy:   Power House High in Chicago
Who:	· Richard M. Daley, Mayor, City of Chicago   · Arne Duncan, CEO, Chicago Public Schools   · Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company   · Steve Seleznow, Program Director for Education, Bill   & Melinda Gates Foundation   · John Nichols, Vice Chairman, The   Marmon Group, and Chairman, HFA of Illinois   · Linda Wing, Deputy Director, University of Chicago   Urban School Improvement Initiative   · Sabrena Davis, Principal, Henry Ford    Academy: Power House   High
where:	Great Hall of Homan Square Power House   931 S. Homan Avenue   Chicago,    IL 60624   Parking is available at 3330 W. Roosevelt Road       (Limited Parking will be available for Media   Trucks on S.     Homan Avenue in front of the Homan Square   Power House.)
When:	Wednesday,   October 3, 2007   9:30   a.m. registration, 10:00 a.m. program begins

 

Comments

It will be the Gates foundation. There is a bigger questions. Where will the high schools be located? If they can create a network of effective high schools, why can't it be done with existing high schools? This grant will provide CPS to follow up on their plans of franchising high schools. Since more and more elementary schools are producing a higher achieving student and there are only so many magnet/selective enrollment schools, these parents are pushing CPS for a high school other than ther neighborhood hoigh school. CPS is also seeking additional high schools that will be placed in the gentrication areas.

"More and more elementary schools are producing a higher achieving student?" How about of the Southeast side of the city? Is it happening there too? Or is it just the high schools letting down? With elementary school children coming out of 8th grade with 9's or 10's on their 8th grade Explore tests, but then, it's the high schools that are failing right? No wonder.

The shell game never stops. Some of our students never stop getting screwed out of their right to an equal education. Joyce Foundation, Gates, CHSRI, Ren 10, the Consortium, blah blah blah. Nothing much is allowed to change. New money, same game, same results.

[George Schmidt]

I just got back to covering the "Powerhouse High" media event, attended by more than 150 various luminaries and hosted by a hadnful of the most powerful people on the planet.

After about a half hour, my thought was...

The madness of megalomania.

They are converting a HUGE structure that should not be used into a "high school" for, they say, 480 children.

Within three miles of that spot (931 S. Homan), there are buildings they say they can't afford to repair (Spalding) and buildings they refuse to upgrade (Marshall, Manley). If there were any true accountability in this town, that cavernous tomb on Homan would have been ringing with laughter -- gales of it -- while all the wealthy and powerful intoned about "Powrhouse High." One of my favorite photographs was looking through that hole in the floor two floors down into the sub-basement. Some of those rats have to be the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the ratdaddies that were moving into the place when Henry Ford was visiting the stockyards to get the idea for the assembly line (and the University of Chicago to get the ideas of the books and newspaper articles he wrote that so anamoured the Nazis).

But back to our current version of social Darwinism and eugenics...

Anyone who sat in that cavernous space (more than a block long and three stories high) and even thought for a second about the crazed notion that it should be "converted" into a high school would have had to laugh. And then laugh again.

But no laughing here. These are some of the most powerful men on earth (Richard M. Daley) and the most wealthy (Bill Ford; the Pritzkers; the Gates people).

So don't giggle too loud.

Of copurse, like their preedecessors, you have to think about how they couldn't make the trains run on time (CTA) despite all that Mussolini strut.

Or that they've managed -- in their wisdom and with all that wealth -- to create another Edsel.

Stephanie Banchero did a good job in discussing the national debate over this Chicago brand of fascism.

But locally the idea that we should spent $30 or $40 million to make the "powerhouse" into a high school is ridiculous, no matter how many retainers are whispering to the emperor that his clothes are beautiful.

[Charlie]

Can you cut the allusions to the fascist dictators of World War II? If we were living in a fascist state, people like George wouldn't just lose their jobs, they would be killed. Instead he's free to blog in incomplete sentences and non sequiturs all day long, and put out his little advocacy newspaper once and a while.

Instead of having a middle school like obsession with taking irresponsible and generalized jabs at the people in power and the people with money (mostly the same people, or at least the good friends of the same people) cut the socialist propaganda and get to the point.

There are times when I really want to agree with you George and think you have some great points, but for god sakes man, you'd be a lot more successful in communicating your point if it didn't always mean slandering everyone in Chicago that you don't agree with.

On to my questions...Where did you get the $30 or $40 million number? That seems like a bit of a wide range to be an official number. How much of this money is coming from private philanthropic sources (Ford, the Pritzkers and Gates) vs. How much will come from public funds? This especially makes a big difference, because I agree with higher levels of accountability if there is a much greater amount of public $ being dumped into this project than there would be if they were simply reusing one of those other buildings you referenced, but if this is primarily private money, than its not like anyone in CPS or anywhere in the city has the sway to tell these people to put their money elsewhere.

[George Schmidt]

"How much will come from public funds? This especially makes a big difference, because I agree with higher levels of accountability if there is a much greater amount of public $ being dumped into this project than there would be if they were simply reusing one of those other buildings you referenced, but if this is primarily private money, than its not like anyone in CPS or anywhere in the city has the sway to tell these people to put their money elsewhere..."

No. Actually it makes no difference at all. If privatization is being foisted on urban school districts by "philanthropy" it's a public policy question. Should every "charity" dollar be lapped up in media events by starving people just because the rich and powerful decide to slum for a day. You'll be making me long for Teach For America before this night's out.

What the hell are you talking about -- "public funds" versus other?

This is a public project. If they wanted to start a private school, fine. None of our business. But they are pushing a privatization agenda that the majority of people oppose. It's never been voted on. Heck, it's never even been discussed.

But, beyond that, more than half the people at the Powerhouse yesterday were public employees (there were at least two people from the Mayor's Press Office and two people from the CPS PR department, plus dozens of others).

This was a public event, kid. Mayor Daley and Arne Duncan and that new principal of the Powerhouse were sitting on stage. Every one of those people has their salary paid by taxpayers. Those acolytes of power were your tax dollars at work, from Richard M. Daley and Arne Duncan to Jacqueline Heard (Daley's press secretary) and the guys who drive Daley's limosines (that's a plura, by the way) and Arne's (presently, that's a singular).

You insist on getting me angry here, Charlie, because you are so obtusely naive, in such a pompous way.

That "private" money at this point in history is public money that's been redirected towards the richest people by the changes in the tax codes since the Bushocrats took over six years ago. Specifically, the combination of the reduction in the capital gains and dividends taxes (to 15 percent; how much are you paying on your salary Charlie) puts enormous amounts of new money in the hands of the richest people (forget Ford from yesterday; my favorites were the Pritzkers and their Marmon Group chieftan, actually). Those dollars should be going into taxes so they could be allocated democratically. Instead, we're supposed to beg for charity and then say "Thank you Massa" when the rich guys come around.

Which is just what was being said yesterday at the Powerhouse.

It's gotten to be such a scandal ("charity" as a way of manipulating policy by the rich) that even The New York Times featured it (in a Page One story that had a photograph of Eli Broad) and even Warren Buffett has noted that the structure is dangerously imbalanced (his famous comment that he pays taxes -- because his wealth gives him income from dividends and capital gains, which are presently taxes lower than wages -- than his secretaries).

Now as to the various costs of the Powerhouse renovations.

I'll stick with my range, Charlie, whether the dollars are public or private. I'll let geniuses who post ratshit on blogs but who've never gone through a contract file thick as your arm get their (young but certainly all knowing) political feet wet trying to get public information on such things.

Spalding still sits there empty (Washington and Ashland).

Manley and Marshall could use a lot of work today. Or ten years ago.

So the richest and most powerful guys in the world come into Chicago (with blocks under tight security) to get a bunch of praises for spending "their" money as they see fit -- not for the public good but to push their privatization agenda at the expense of the community.

While an audience composed of their hirelings sits and cheers them wildly.

As to the question of fascism.

If you don't know what it was and how it worked, spend some of that devotional time while your worshopping its contemporary iteratons checking out both its roots and its several branches during its heyday. The various iterations (from Mussolini and the Agnellis on) all had one thing in common: corporate plus political authoritarianism.

My main reference was to the fact that Bill Ford's great grand daddy was a devout fascicst when the term was literally being invented (by Benito Mussolini, another strutting nasty whose image I see in the view finder every time I have to listen to one of those carefully staged events sponsored by our supreme leader). Henry Ford's writings (some inspired by the eugenicist social "scientists" from my alma mater, which was also represented on stage yesterday) in Dearborn Michigan were praised by guys around the world who thought that an authoritarian (anti democratic) government where the big corporations and the singular leaders bossed things around...

Ah, I have a few other things to do tonight.

Enjoy your apologetics for the rich and powerful.

There is a lucrative future in them.

[Charlie]

If you want to advocate for socialism go ahead, but at least come right out and do it. And I don't think I'm the naive one here. This power dynamic isn't new, its the way things have worked in this country for as long as there has been a country. If someone with private money wants to use their money in some public way, they have every right to choose which public project their money is going to be a part of. You think if someone donates the money to have a building named after them on a public university campus that they are not going to have the opportunity to hand pick some of the details of that building, its use, the architect picked to work on the project, etc., etc. What is the difference here?

I'm not making apologies for the rich or the powerful. But guess what, you don't get a vote on how they decide to donate their money. If I had a vote I would urge them to put their money toward improving existing neighborhood schools, but it is not the responsibility of the Pritzkers or the Fords to do that. It is a public responsibility which involves the restructuring of public education funding, not the private money of some wealthy philanthropists.

It sure would be nice though if we could have a civil dialogue about this instead of having to be cursed at and called names every time someone gets your blood boiling.

[George Schmidt]

OK. Let's do it.

1. Civil diagloue.

2. Socialism.

You start.

Everyone dip your bucket in the public trough, and get your fill.