A View From Both Ends of the Educational Spectrum
By JAMES WARREN
Published: June 17, 2010
James Warren writes a column for the Chicago News Cooperative.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative
Karen Lewis
Chicago News Cooperative
A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of Chicago and the surrounding area for The New York Times.
I attended my first Chicago Board of Education meeting in decades Tuesday and my first Chicago Public Schools kindergarten graduation the next morning. The inadequacies of the former were underscored by the inspiration of the latter.
The board reaffirmed the existing teachers contract, guaranteeing a generous 4 percent raise negotiated by the weak-kneed duo of Mayor Richard M. Daley and Arne Duncan, then the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools and now the United States secretary of education. The board thus eliminated the chance of a strike in the fall as it also affirmed the power of Mr. Duncan’s successor, Ron Huberman, a strong and hard-pressed manager, to perhaps lay off teachers and raise the number of students in classrooms.
“Door Open to 35 in a Class,” declared a Chicago Sun-Times headline, reflecting the prime concern of what essentially is a superficial debate.
In fact, the meeting itself might as well have been choreographed by the Goodman Theatre, given all the role-playing.
Mr. Huberman dispiritedly talked about the need for the money owed by the state and for union concessions, and he detailed a budget deficit that is at minimum $427 million. When it came to the union’s bête noire, the once-comically-bloated public schools central office, he noted the cuts he had already made and cuts still to come and that the central office accounted for just 4 percent of the budget.
Marilyn Stewart, the outgoing leader of the 32,000-member teachers union, bemoaned the imminent “educational malpractice” and the need to “stand up against the mayor and say we can’t stuff 35 kids in a classroom”
Ms. Stewart and Karen Lewis, a chemistry teacher who just defeated her, were among 15 teachers, students and activists who were given an unjustifiably fleeting two minutes apiece to vent.
“This is the start of chaos,” said a college-bound Julian High School graduate. “Don’t cut teachers, because you’re killing our students.”
There were other passionate declarations, some with erroneous accusations and naïve analyses. They included an assumption that the board is paid (it’s not); that renegotiating debt service could be a magic wand; and that tax increment financing, a controversial