Principal For A Day - How Did It Go?

Sure, Jackson Language Academy got "Friends" actor David Schwimmer.  And Bears cornerback Charlie Tillman was with Mayor Daley at Orr HS.

But who did the other schools in your neighborhood get, and were they any better (or worse) than in previous years? 

Click here for the full list (pfads_2007.xls), courtesy of CPS, and let us know what your PFOD experience was like.

Comments

[d-lo]

Ours canceled

Northwest side HS - three excellent principals for the day. One banker, one non profit manager and a Chicago author. Most engaging and interested group in recent memory. We lucked out this time.
Wonder what they thought?

Northwest side HS - three excellent principals for the day. One banker, one non profit manager and a Chicago author. Most engaging and interested group in recent memory. We lucked out this time.
Wonder what they thought?

[Craig Flanner]

Hopefully it went better than the Jones Open House.

It was ok, coffee and donuts in the teachers lounge.
The guest walking around giving compliments.
The pupils clueless!
Nice PR, the PFAD asked what we needed and when the principal
read her list he looked at her like, you weren't really supposed to answer that!
I guess no art supplies and band equipment for us!

[Cookie]

Glad that's over!

[George Schmidt]

Last year, I had fun at Orr watching the dogs and ponies line up for the Mayor Daley show. That was back when "Small Schools" had their own Area and Cynthia Barron had to hang out within snarling distance of hizzoner. My favorite part of the day, however, was Lafayette Ford and Arne's personal Blackwater team -- heading off a student tiff within earshot of the Daley show.

This year, both CPS and City Hall forgot to put Substance on the itinerary distribution list (oversight, of course, no blacklists in Chicago), so I decided to spend the day taking photographs of schools that Daley's closed to flip or otherwise screw just since Arne began his reign six year ago. That list, by the way, includes 36 schools, from Riis (June 2001) to Austin and Calumet (June 2007). Amazing how that's not "news".

After Mulligan (closed as "Arts of Living" most recently, and now terminally dusty) and Near North (boy you can spend a lot of money keeping a school in mothballs), though, I took a diversion to Oscar Mayer and Lincoln Elementary. Beautiful day. Why photograph tombs and monuments to greed?

It was fun.

Both schools have recess, it was a nice day, lighting was great for photographs, and for the first time in more than a month I was getting pictures of the reasons we do all this -- happy children. Usually, I'm covering some staged media event with all those prattling monsters. (Hey. It's Halloween. And if you look at them long enough and listen to them carefully enough, they are monstrous).

Sorry Rich and Arne, but I had better things to do on Principal for a Day day.

Did I mention we're going to sue both the Mayor's press office (Jackie Heard) and CPS Communications (Celeste, how could you?) for that blacklist. Oh, right, some peopole are always, er, misplacing those notices?

Count on it. First Amendment and all that.

[SW Side HS]

Yesterday was Principal For A Day? You don't say! We had no clue, really.

[we don't know nothing]

It was a regular day. No one rung our bell or said anything on the intercom.

[Witness to David Schwimmer]

I was at the lucheon and sat a table away from Daley, Schwimmer, and Billy Dec (Rockit Bar club owner). After the "show" David Schwimmer and Billy Dec ran so fast out of there - it was hilarious. God forbid he actually mingled with the regular folk.

[curious]

I'll bite....What happened at Jones?

[Lulu]

Billy Dec was the PFAD at the school where I taught last year. He was actually really charming and friendly.

I don't quite get the point of PFAD though; people come in, tour around, meet a few of the highest performing kids and leave. And...?

[George Schmidt]

"...I don't quite get the point of PFAD though; people come in, tour around, meet a few of the highest performing kids and leave. And...?..."

It depends on the school and the PFAD. There are (roughly) three kinds of PFADs.

1. Really rich people, some of whom are celebrities.

2. Celebrity athletes, media, etc.

3. Political clout people.

Everyone is required to pay attention, where it actually happens. The rewards are disbursed according to who can pass out the goodies.

For example, a cheapskate (unless you're a charter school or Notre Dame) like Patrick Ryan (the billionaire Aon chief who subsidizes the Daley family and also serves as Olympic chief) gives out pencils and bookmark type stuff, like he was handing nickles to beggers and expecting them to kiss his royal feet. The guy is everything you'd want from someone who subsidized the creation of "Left Behind" (the Civic Committee attack on public schools that was the script for "Renaissance 2010").

Actually, straight out of Dickens (Hard Times; Nicholas Nickleby).

On the other hand, there are rich people like the chief of Walgreens (jornt) who once attended public schools, made it big, and want to give back. You can't judge a book by its portfolio. That PFAD resulted in some dollars for Amuundsen High School and Winnemac Park (which resulted in the renaming of Winnemac Stadium).

The celebrities serve the usual purposes that celebrities serve. A guy like Tillman (Bears) really is trying to use his dollars through his foundation for the kids who are (today) like he was once. Others are just too stuffed with themselves to do much of anything but pose.

The politicos can help in other ways, this being Chicago. Use your imagination.

And then there is the Daley Show.

Last year at Orr Daley arrived and went through the building like a State Department hocho leaving the Green Zone. There were about three layers of security, starting with those smarmy smiles you always get from the Mayor's office, moving "up" through Daley's CPS Blackwater (the Lafayetee Ford team, which was working independent of CPS Security and Safety), and then the CPD. The whole thing was orchestrated as carefully as one of those George W. Bush spontaneous community meetings, with adaptations if anything looked like it was going to go off script.

Daley usually arrives in a convoy that includes the point car, the main car, and the slack car -- just like Blackwater doctrine. Same beefy guys in each (except for the person who rehearses his scripts in the back seat of the middle car).

Last thing PFAD wants is to place a VIP in a not VIP school.

Therefore, some places (you can guess, based on triage analysis) get nobody out of all those somebodies.

[Sine Nomine]

A useful post for some unusual reasons...

How often do you see a list of CPS schools in Excel format?

How often do you see an influential list of "Who's Who" for the CPS dog and pony shows?

I kept the Excel file. Thanks.

[George Schmidt]

It's a list of CPS schools, but it's not a complete list, nor does it include all the properties owned by CPS.

I suspect that CPS, for all its "data driven" drivel, has a department of complexification and obfuscation just to keep everyone from knowing the simplest answers to the simplest questons: like how many school buildings does CPS own today, where are they located, and if they are not owned but leased, how much do they cost?

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