Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:
TODAY
The Madman takes care of his friends.
How do we know that Illinois public employees are not friends of Democratic Party Chairman and Speaker Michael Madigan. Because The Madman takes care of his friends. And while he has been leading the charge on Senate Bill 1, a bill that would for all intents and purposes destroy the public pensions of nearly 800,000 workers in Illinois, he has been busy writing memos for pay raises for his friend
YESTERDAY
Race.
The trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin will end today with a verdict. Or tomorrow. Or soon. To me, the evidence is clear. But this is America and race is central to the trial as it is to most things societal. Will the jury of six women give the parents of Trayvon some peace? Some justice? Make no bets when race is involved. Paul Krugman’s column this morning addresses the
Drummond Montessori forced to cut only Spanish teacher.
A follow up to Drummond parent Chris Barrett’s guest blog post: BUCKTOWN — When students return to a top-rated Bucktown elementary school in the fall, they won’t be learning how to speak or write Spanish and they will be spending less time in the library and in music and writing classes. Facing a budget shortfall, members of Thomas Drummond Montessori School’s LSC laid off their school’s only Sp
JUL 11
Guest blog. Chris Barrett on the CPS budget cuts at Drummond Montessori.
Chris Barrett is a Logan Square parent. His kids go to Drummond Motenssori in Bucktown. Chicago Public Schools. Those three words separately mean great things, yet as of late they mean quite the opposite when put together. As I write this, I think of my 2 sons that attend a great Montessori Magnet Chicago Public School. The school is great, not because of it being a Chicago Public School. It is
Unity in defense of our pensions.
Dan Montgomery, President of the Illinois Federation of Teachers and Jim Reed, Government Relations of the Illinois Education Association. Photo: Fred Klonsky Be sure to read Bob Lyons’ report in the previous post on the latest developments with the Illinois legislative Gang of Ten. Aside from being, along with our teacher representatives on the board of trustees of the Teacher Retirement Syste
Bob Lyons on the Committee of Ten.
Bob Lyons represents the retirees on the Teacher Retirement board of trustees. Considering that the current foremost goal of our state government is to produce a bill to reduce the pension benefits of public employees, we should be happy that Illinois cannot get anything done. Quinn came to government as a populist, more interested in telling people what they wanted to hear and appealing to the
CPS speak: How to explain that you cut $600 million from central office when you didn’t.
. CPS bureaucrats claim that cut $600 million from central office expenses in the current budget. But they claim they cut central office expenses every year. And yet they don’t. Or they can’t show where or how. Asked about the $600 million in savings, CPS spokespeople said they referred to central office in the broadest sense and that it includes debt service, operations, citywide units of person
Tony at the Red Line Tap.
“Look who’s back from Hotlanta,” mumbled Tony into his PBR. “Marty. Let me have an Omnipollo Nebuchadnezzar.” “Klonsky’s goin’ all Swedish on us, huh.” “Where I’m going is getting old. And fast. I retired a year ago. Got my Medicare card a couple of weeks ago. This shit is bummin’ me out.” “‘Bummin you out?’ Y’know. Using expressions from the sixties isn’t going to make you feel younger.” “Don’
JUL 10
Getting personal with me.
There was a lot of discussion at the NEA RA about whether criticisms of union leadership actions are focused on the person or the policy. Jersey Jazzman posted his thoughts the topic other day. Daine Ravitch wrote about it this morning. Be sure to read the comments that follow her post. Here’s my friend NYC Educator’s take on the matter. Let’s be clear. If I were going to get a bobblehead it woul
Springfield is lawless.
(youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC1_tdnZq1A) Following the General Assembly’s failure to pass an unconstitutional pension bill, the legislature assembled The Gang of Ten to try and put something together. Governor Squeezy ordered the committee to come up with something by yesterday. Chairman Raoul told Squeezy’s representative, Budget Director Jerry Stermer that he was offended that Squeez
More weird thoughts from Park Ridge District 64′s Dr. Dathan.
Park Ridge school board member, Dr. Dathan Paterno. Dr. Dathan Paterno is the psychologist recently elected to the Park Ridge board of education. As a psychologist, Dr. Paterno is often paid to represent those taking legal action against the Park Ridge school district. And he has a compulsion to use Twitter to share his thoughts. We should thank him for his transparency, if not for his ideology
Representing.
NEA Board of Director Rainy Kaplan sent over these pictures from the NEA Retired Conference and Representative Assembly. Me, former NEA President Reg Weaver, IEA Retired members Bob Kaplan and Pearl Mack. Serious talk with NEA Retired Membership Chair Mae Smith. During a break in the action the RA floor. Bob and Pearl. That’s me and IEA VP Griffin in the background. She was being very p
Rahm’s recess: Keep it quiet, in the hallways and sell it to a private management firm.
Recess at Revere. One of the few positives in Rahm Emanuel’s demand for a longer school day was the inclusion of a twenty minute recess in the elementary schools. Many Chicago public schools hadn’t had recess scheduled as part of the school day for years. If you thought CPS students now had twenty minutes for supervised free play, think again. Catalyst reports on what has happened to Rahm’s rec
JUL 09
Ten minute drawing. Illinois Representative Darlene Senger. Pension bomber. ALEC member.
Click on image to enlarge.
ALEC is coming to Chicago. Let’s give them a Chicago welcome.
Bill Moyers and the United States of ALEC. A rally is being planned on Thursday, August 8th at noon at the Palmer House where the American Legislative Exchange Council is holding their meeting August 7th through the 9th. ALEC is an organization that advocates for legislation that negatively impacts working families including right to work legislation, stripping public employees of colle
Is it a hurricane? A tornado? Flood? Earthquake? War? Pestilence? No. It’s Rahm.
After a natural disaster it is not unusual for the call to go out for blood donations. I’ve had them stick that needle in my arm many times. Gladly. In Chicago the call has gone out once again. This time the disaster is not natural. It is man-made. The disaster that has befallen our city is Rahm Emanuel. ENGLEWOOD — A South Side hospital is asking residents to donate blood as a summer spike in ci
Watch Senator Kwame Raoul beat up on Squeezy. “Where is Governor Quinn?”
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KsjOAzL5Gc&feature=youtu.be}] The Gang of Ten, the committee that was charged with coming up with a compromise pension bill, is made up of legislators with big ambitions. Senator Dan Biss wants to be Congressman when Jan Schakowsky retires or gets a federal appointment in the remaining Obama or future Clinton administration. Representative Elaine Nekrit
JUL 08
“It was a very pleasant meeting,” said Governor Quinn.
Cullerton and The Madman. As predicted, today’s meeting of the Gang of Ten came and went. Results? Bukis. Greg Hinz in today’s Crains Springfield’s top Democrats met face to face in Gov. Pat Quinn’s Chicago office for nearly two hours today to talk about pension reform, and it appears they left the meeting exactly as they went in: stalemated. Despite two credit downgrades of Illinois’ debt in
The in box. The Jazzman: “We need to have this conversation.”
Hi Fred, I was unclear about something in my post, and I hope you’ll let me clarify it here: I think you were more than fair in all of your posts about DVR and the NEA RA. And I’ve never thought you attacked the leadership personally. You did us all a service by giving us your candid views about what happened in Atlanta. It’s clear I’ve struck a nerve, but that’s fine. We need to have this convers
Thinking about the Jazzman’s concerns about our attitude towards union leadership.
Yesterday I reposted the Jersey Jazzman. He expressed concerns about questioning the motivation of our teacher union leadership, even as we disagree with their actions. I hear this a lot from my union colleagues. Of course, I have never suggested that state leaders of the IEA or national leaders of the NEA were personally corrupt. I have always tried to frame my disagreements as disagreements in p
Hi back at ya.
A standing vote at the NEA RA. After a few years of doing this blog and now getting 3 to 4 thousand site visits a day, I feel a connection to readers. A core of you write comments regularly. Which I enjoy. A few haters show up now and then. As long they are not terribly offensive, or piss me off, I’ll post their comments too. Once in a while I’ll get a comment from someone we haven’t heard from
The return of the Gang of Ten.
The third meeting of the Gang of Ten, the Illinois legislative committee that was formed after the failure of the General Assembly to agree on the best way to cut public employee pensions, will take place today in Springfield. Nothing will come of it. If you are truly desperate for something to do, you can watch. What will not come out of the committee is a plan to address raising revenue. Maybe
JUL 07
Jersey Jazzman on my reports from ATL. “The summer of our discontent.”
Blogger Jersey Jazzman includes discussion of events in Atlanta in this lengthy post. Since he includes a post I wrote – and uses the post to address what our relationship should be to union leadership – I am reposting the entire thing. I’ll share some thoughts on the important issues he raises on this blog tomorrow. Once again, let’s play Spot The Pattern™! Can you spot the pattern in these educa
Sunday reads.
Birthplace of the Reverend Matin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta, Georgia. Trayvon Martin was one of the few guys who didn’t tease Rachel Jeantel. The rich are not like the rest of us. Because, well, they’re rich. The NSA knows everything about you. But if you try to find out what corporations and the government are up to, crickets. It is easier and more expedient for politicians and naysayers in gen
JUL 06
The in box. Peter Kuttner’s Richard Mell moment.
Fred, In my Richard Mell moment, no one calls him an “asshole politician”, he just acts like one. I also lived in his 33rd Ward and was working for Washington at Lathrop Homes, the low-rise public housing project down the street from my house. We knew there were lots of votes for Harold there. So did Mell. I was in the polling place when he was making his rounds, checking in with his precinct work
Saturday coffee.
I’m drinking coffee from a paper cup in the ballroom of the Omni Hotel in Atlanta. It is the last day of the annual meeting of the NEA. Tomorrow morning I fly home. Sweet home. I’m ready. As a retired delegate I had the privilege of doing all this for longer since they hold the annual Retired Conference for three days prior to the start of the Representative Assembly. But being with the my retired
Reprint: My Richard Mell moment.
In the days after Harold Washington’s death, Alderman Richard Mell rises to help the Chicao Machine stage a City Hall coup. Chicago Alderman Richard Mell announced the other day that he was retiring from his City Council job. He has been Alderman for 38 years and his retirement was not unexpected. This is a post I ran in February. I may have told you about my Richard Mell moment before. But in ca
JUL 05
NEA RA. Common Core, common sense and common ground.
When I voted with the majority in favor of a New Business Item that called for an end to assessments driven by Common Core standards, I thought about the relations of standards to high stakes tests. When the NEA Representative Assembly began, I overestimated the degree to which there would be debate on the RA floor over the Common Core standards. I did not make that same mistake when it came to th
The changing nature of teacher unions.
At the Atlanta NEA RA we will be voting on a Constitutional change that if passed would end the practice of having a prescribed percentage of teachers on any body or committee of our union. This may appear to the outsider as pretty inside stuff. But this organizational change is but a small reflection of the changes that are going on inside both national teacher unions. The changes are significant
JUL 04
Why I will vote to raise dues tomorrow.
It is no news to anyone in the Atlanta convention center that educators, our bargaining rights, our union and public education are under ferocious attack. In Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has closed 50 schools – the largest shutdown of public schools in American history. Our brothers and sisters up the road from Chicago in Milwaukee no longer have collective bargaining rights thanks to Governor Scott
Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association President Bob Peterson: “Sometimes those hands must become fists.”
Bob Peterson, President of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. NEA bylaw amendment 1 would increase annual NEA membership dues by three dollars and allocate the increase to a fund to assist NEA affiliates to, in the words of the proposal, “advance great public schools for all students.” Bob Peterson, President of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association took the mic to speak in favo
New Business Item 12.
NEA will send a letter to the National Conference of State Legislatures urging legislators of its member states to take the standardized tests of the state in which they live, especially when such tests are required as part of a “high stakes” environment in which portions of teacher evaluations are based on student test scores. The letter will emphasize that legislators should take the test under
Dear Senator Biss.
Dear Senator Biss, As a retired teacher, I very much appreciate your update. Especially on this date, I am reminded of how important it is to respect our Constitution – both the responsibilities and rights it affords us. I sincerely hope your committee does, indeed “respect(s) this clause,” as you note, and does not focus on finding a letter of the law means to circumvent such an important pro
Senator Biss revises?
July 3, 2013 Dear Friends, Thank you very much for contacting me in my capacity as a member of the pension conference committee. A small number of legislators are charged with crafting a bill that will impact hundreds of thousands of public workers across the state, and I take very seriously my responsibility to consider the opinions and concerns of all Illinois citizens. As you know, our
JUL 03
Black history.
Me, Reg Weaver, Bob Kaplan and Pearl Mack. “How was your evening?” I asked Pearl Mack as she sat down in the IEA Retired section of the Illinois Caucus this morning. “Oh, I was at the Human Rights Dinner. I always go. It celebrates the merger of the ATA and the NEA.” One of the benefits of sitting in the retired section is that if you listen and if you ask you will learn some history that you w
Stormy Atlanta outside. Anger and common sense from the delegates inside.
The pounding of thunder outside the Atlanta convention center was so loud it could be heard inside the room where 7,000 delegates and 3,000 non-delegates met in the first large session of the RA. From the preliminaries I was concerned that a push by the national leadership and President Dennis Van Roekel of the Common Core standards would cause a big unfortunate fight. I had written earlier about
JUL 02
Short day.
Day two of the RA is a short one. At least in terms of formal meetings. I’m just back from the two-hour Illinois Caucus meeting. And that’s it for the day. The first general session isn’t until tomorrow at 10:30 AM. Apparently the big dogs have met to revisit what Dennis Van Roekel speechwriter Melinda Anderson calls the “intended messaging.” When the NEA Board of Directors’ member from New Jersey
Revenue. The gorilla in the room.
Subscriptions to Jim Broadway’s Update can be found here. Broadway wrote this as part of his report on last week’s Illinois General Assembly Pension Committee public meeting: Which brings us to the unspoken idea – the revenue side of the equation. Rep. Lou Lange (D-Chicago) broached the topic at last week’s committee meeting, suggesting that the temporary income tax increase of 2011 should be mad
Differences emerging on the Common Core at the NEA RA.
I will be heading down to the second state caucus meeting of the Illinois delegation in a few minutes. NEA Board of Director Rainy Kaplan reminded me that when I said Bylaw Amendment #1 was presented to the caucus yesterday, that wasn’t precisely true. It was distributed, but the presentation of it will be today. So far the IEA steering committee takes no position on it and the caucus has yet to h
Fire all the teachers.
Which one is John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute? - By Todd Mertz Yes–fire all Illonois teachers and public employees. I am not kidding. More on that in a minute. The Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) calls themselves a “leading independent research organization.” Far from the truth. They are a right-wing, conservative group with very serious agendas to influence Illinois law and
TRS board of trustee Bob Lyons on the first meeting of the Committee of Ten.
“As other reports on the first meeting of the conference committee on pensions have already been circulated, I will only add some personal observations. First, I will agree with all of those that have said there is no reason to expect they will have a well thought-out bill to be introduced for possible passage on July 9, the date the Governor expects a special session to “at long last to solve th
JUL 01
Roll the video tape and the mysterious three dollar assessment.
It’s twenty-four hours since I wrote a post on NEA President Dennis Van Roekel’s remarks to the NEA Retired Conference. I reported what I heard. DVR positioned advancing the fight for collective bargaining on one side of an equation. Quality and the Common Core on the other. He said that the NEA would be focused on quality and Common Core implementation. I was reprimanded for quoting what DVR said
Shut up and go to bed.
Who is Melinda Anderson? On Twitter she describes herself as writer for @NEAPresident. On her blog she is described as “the creative force behind opinion-editorials, blogs and articles on behalf of a great cause. Ghostwriting pays the bills, but makes it easy to get lost in the shadows. An oversized ego told her it’s time to elevate her own voice. She is a bundle of contradictions. Cynical and hop
JUN 30
DVR’s speechwriter: “This is a gross misinterpretation.”
Melinda D. Anderson This is gross misinterpretation of Dennis Van Roekel’s remarks easily avoided if you had simply ASKED him what he meant! @fklonsky Were you there? Melinda D. Anderson I was not, yet well aware of pre-conf messaging and your “take” is way off-base. Again, did you ASK meaning when you had chance? @fklonsky He left the hall Melinda. Announced he was late and had
Quality control at the NEA RA.
The Retired Conference is over and now I have moved to an upper story room at the Omni at CNN Center. Tomorrow afternoon is the first Illinois and other state caucus meetings. The first general meeting of the NEA RA will be Tuesday. This morning retirees listened to speeches by VP Lily Eskelsen and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. I posted on Facebook about DVR’s remarks. And it has caused somethi
Changing room.
Mae Smith is an energetic woman who is membership chair of NEA Retired. She’s from Illinois. Michigan before that. When we met the other day she greeted me like we knew each other for years. “Oh, I read your columns,” she said with a smile. She was polite enough not to say whether she agreed with them or liked them. But that’s her way. Her job is building membership among retired educators in the
JUN 29
Saturday coffee.
It is coffee in the lobby of the downtown Atlanta Hilton. Atlanta is an appropriate city to hold the 2013 Representative Assembly of the National Education Association. I was talking to a fellow delegate to the Retired Conference yesterday who thought it was wrong to hold our national meetings in so-called Right-to-Work states. Which Georgia is. But so is the rest of the South. And with Koch brot
Statement: Progressive reform caucus on Chicago public school budget cuts.
Alderman Ricardo Munoz, member of the Chicago City Council’s Progressive Caucus. CHICAGO (June 27, 2013)–Chicago City Council Progressive Reform Caucus members released the following statement on Thursday in response to the news of massive cuts to Chicago Public School budgets across the city. “Even after all the supposed cost-savings arising from the closing of 50 public schools, Chicago Public