Chicago Public Schools CEO announces Latino Advisory Committee–with no Latino teachers
By Ray Salazar, NewsTaco
In her January newsletter to teachers, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett announced a Latino Advisory Committee designed to “provide counsel in the following focus areas in particular: Early Childhood Education, Teacher Certification, Dual Language Programming, Seal of Bi-literacy, ELL Funding and Accountability, and Interdisciplinary Latino Curriculum.” Despite the fact that the decisions will completely affect the day-to-day instruction carried out by teachers–not one teacher is included on the committee.
A few of the Latino Advisory Council members were classroom teachers once–just a few. But that was once upon a time. Again, we see how devalued and disrespected teachers are on a regular basis. Educational expertise is determined by degrees and titles–not by proven success in our schools. Or, perhaps, expertise rests with what’s politically correct.
Furthermore, we see what we’ve seen in Latino leadership over the decades: the same people, the same voices rise to say what’s best for our community. Considering our educational challenges as a community, it’s time to bring in qualified teacher voices–not necessarily the loudest ones–to the this decision-making table.
Here’s what Byrd-Bennett did not include in the committee’s list of responsibilities:
1. Preparing more low-income Latinos for admission in the top selective enrollment high schools. In a December post, I wrote about the decreasing number of low-income students at selective-enrollment schools–enrollment that dropped as gentrification in our city grew (see the graph near the middle of the post).
2. Addressing the fact that not one selective-enrollment high school exists in a predominantly Latino neighborhood–look at the population in Jones College Prep‘s neighborhood, North