Where was Chicago mayor when school closings were announced?
Rahm Emanuel / Paul Beaty (AP)
Where was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel when city officials made the controversial announcement that the district would close 54 public schools this year, the largest number of public schools to close in a mass action in the country’s history?
Emanuel wasn’t in Chicago on Thursday. He wasn’t in Illinois. He was on a skiing vacation out West with his family because his children are on spring break, Chicago media reported.
This isn’t to begrudge the mayor a vacation with his family, but it is to wonder why the controversial decision to close 54 schools — most of them in the African-American and Hispanic communities — was made when he wasn’t in town. Shouldn’t the mayor have been there to announce such a historic moment in his administration of Chicago?
Chicago Teachers Union President Nancy Lewis, who blasted the closings in this statement