Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:
Fred All Week Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
Ken Previti. What the hell is going on with Paul Vallas?
Pat “Squeezy” Quin and Paul Vallas. - Ken Previti is a retired teacher and blogger. Vallas, who was declared legally unqualified to be Bridgeport’s Superintendent of Schools by the Connecticut Supreme Court, is leaving that post to become the Lieutenant Governor candidate endorsed by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) for Quinn’s re-election. What is the present $1.5 Billion legal penalty from the Valla
Jerry Mulvihill. Tax reform, not pension cutting.
- Jerry Mulvihill is a teacher, long-time union activist and friend. This was published in the Southtown Star. In his Dec. 4 column, Phil Kadner pointed out the few Southland Democrats who broke ranks with their party line and voted against the pension reform legislation in Springfield. These legislators should be recognized for voting to protect the benefits that their constituents paid for and
Keeping retirement Weird. Democrats are the Mike Huckabees of the north shore.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, presidential candidate and TV talk show host went off Republican script the other day to call women a polite form of the word slut. Something about an active libido. The press went ballistic. Another example of the Republican War on Women. And so it was. There’s another Republican who is running up in the 10th Illinois Congressional District. Susann
Tony at the Red Line Tap.
“Dragon Stout?” Sean looks up from his worn copy of Etienne de La Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire. “Cold or room temperature?” sighed Sean as if I were asking him, a bartender, to actually serve me a beer. “Cold,” I responded with a certain puppy-dog look, as if he were doing me a great favor. “Sometimes I just hate my job,” Sean said. “Get another one,” chimed in Tony. “No, no. I me
Noble charter teams up with $35K tuition teacher certification mill.
Catalyst: A Relay representative said that Chicago is an “obvious” place for Relay to expand because of the demand for teachers and the support for new programs within the city’s education community. Relay plans to work exclusively with Noble Street Charter School for its first several years in operation here. If approved by the state, the school would begin by preparing a small number of teachers
Is my pension generous?
A pay raise for JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon. Priceless. Fred, Where do you think the money to pay for these very generous pension plans should come from? Do you think taxes should be raised to pay for these pension plans? Should the spending on everything else be curtailed to pay for the pension plans? We hear all these complaints but never any suggestions for alternatives. - Bob Kastigar IBEW
Next. Chicago public pensions in the cross hairs.
After the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1, which cut public employee pensions – including the pensions of current retirees – the Democratic legislators who voted yes were flooded with angry phone calls, emails and snail mail letters. In classic cover-their-ass mode, almost all these Democrats responded by saying something along the lines of, “Well. I don’t know. We just want the
JAN 23
The Über-Charter Commission.
Graphic: Fred Klonsky The actions by the CPS board in considering 17 charter applications and rejecting 10 is the old Rahm bait-and-switch game. Prior to closing 50 neighborhood schools last summer, Rahm had the board draw up a list of 300 that he threatened to close. But even the seven approved charters are a mix of crony real estate deals and unneeded facilities at a time when existing charte
Chicago Teachers Union on the CPS charter vote.
CHICAGO – Today, Chicago Teachers Union President (CTU) Karen Lewis said the decision by the Chicago Board of Education to approve seven new charter schools is hypocritical in the face of recent school closings and only further illustrates the predatory corporate-led agenda currently waged on public schools. She said today’s vote to approve seven new publicly-funded, privately held charter operat
EdNext interview with Dan Biss. Annotated by Glen Brown.
Glen Brown. EdNext is a right-wing journal from the Hoover Institute. They published an interview with State Senator Dan Biss, leader of the Illinois attack on public employee pensions. For those who think the attack on public employee (including teachers) is a local parochial issue for Illinois, or who somehow think it is not part of the corporate attack on public schools, the attention those
JAN 22
A fair income tax for Illinois? Dude, that’s so not cool!
Lyman Stone, Transylvania University, class of ‘13. Capitolfax is reporting that a group called the Tax Foundation will be holding a press conference today to oppose efforts to create a fair tax in Illinois. Currently Illinois is one of the few states in the country that has a flat tax, which means that Rahm and Rauner’s best bud, Ken Griffin (Illinois’ riches man according to Forbes), pays th
All is lost.
. I said at the time that the Robert Redford movie, All is Lost, was among the worst films I have ever seen. Even worse that Pooty Tang. Which I actually never saw, but love writing the name. It was so obviously a set-up for the aging Redford to get a late-career Oscar nomination other than another one of those honorary ones. He’s never received an acting Oscar. Only for directing the endlessly d
Fighting Rahm and The Hawk to stop Chicago charters.
Sue Sadlowski Garza, Kristine Mayle, Sarah Chambers and Nathan Goldbaum pull an all-nighter outside CPS HQ. The Polar Vortex is rolling through Chicago again and the temperature dropped to minus four degrees last night. But that didn’t keep parents and union teachers from camping outside of Chicago Public School offices over night. Today the board will follow Rahm’s directive and approve 21 ne
JAN 21
Bev Johns. ISBE class size rules are dead. For now. But Koch is still spreading lies.
- Bev Johns frequently contributes information on special education issues. She is an education activist and advocate. ISBE now says the special ed class size rule is dead, but is stillspreading the absolutely false idea that the current rules somehow restrict “access to the most rigorous classes.” ISBE told the Chicago Sun-Times, “The rule process is such that these proposed rules will expire and
Breaking: ISBE pulls class size limits off their agenda again. Good work.
The Chicago Teachers Union’s Kristine Mayle is reporting that the proposal to remove special education class size limits has once again been pulled from the agenda of the Illinois State Board of Educatiion. They were planning to address the issue today. But a huge mobilization of emails and phone calls by parents, teachers and special education advocates across the state appears to have had impact
Coffee with Aaron Goldstein.
Candidate for the 40th Illinois House seat, Aaron Goldstein. Former Machine Democratic Boss Dick Mell gave his daughter the 40th State Rep seat on Chicago’s north-west side. Machine bosses do that kind of thing. Just like Cook County Democratic Chairman Joe Berrios. He gave his daughter, Toni Berrios, the 39th district. When Dick retired from the City Council, he gave his aldermanic seat to his
JAN 20
It’s pension theft. In California the courts and the people agree.
From AFSCME: In years past, public employees paid into their pensions, confident their savings would be intact when they retired. After all, these deferred earnings were often protected by state law. However, municipalities too often reached into their employees’ retirement savings for easy cash, something we call “pension theft.” Recently, pension theft was averted in San Jose, Calif., where a ju
Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and my father.
Martin Luther King, James Baldwin and my father (sitting on Baldwin’s left in the bottom pictures) at a fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. My father was one of the organizers of the event, held in Los Angeles around 1964.
Illinois election choices.
Bev Johns is a frequent contributor to this blog. She mostly keeps me and you up to date on the attempts by the ISBE to raise the class size limits that currently are in place for special education students. She also writes frequently about the election for governor of illinois. The primary is March 18. The general election is next November. We are allies on the class size fight. She is frustrate
JAN 19
Let us turn our thoughts today to Martin Luther King.
. Randy Fritz writes: A missive from my frustrations this morning that I won’t be teaching until Wednesday (still on an 8-block schedule): As I sit here today, not teaching because of the celebration of Martin Luther King day, I think back on that tumultuous time in American history—the decade of my teens. It was so long ago but it seems so recent. This is a holiday, that is, time off from our w
Bev Johns. We need you at the ISBE board meeting on January 22nd.
- Bev Johns, Special Education advocate and activist. We need you at the ISBE Board meeting on January 22. Whether the ISBE Board eliminates special ed class size limits AND the 70/30 rule DEPENDS ON YOU. Will you offer testimony this Wednesday? If you cannot go, try to get other people to go: retired teachers, parents, relatives, etc. that could give THEIR OWN testimony OR read YOUR testimony (ma
Sunday reads.
Saturday dozen of Chicago teachers and parents walked the precincts for Will Guzzardi. More than 90% of the variation in student gain scores is due to the variation in student-level factors that are not under the control of the teacher. Chris Christie and the firing of Newark principals. Colbert talks to Brooklyn KFC worker fighting for a $15 an hour minimum wage. 1963 March on Washington part
JAN 18
Keeping retirement weird.
This is the time of year that Anne and I try to catch up on the movies nominated for Oscars. There are a few I have no interest in seeing. Like the one about a guys love affair with his iPhone. But in the last few weeks we have seen American Hustle and The Dallas Buyers Club and Inside Llewyn Davis. Yesterday we caught a late afternoon showing of 12 Years a Slave. I thought 12 Years a Slave is