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
Keeping retirement weird. The kids play their ukes with the old guy.
The west end of the parking lot of the huge old Harrison High School in Little Village was filling up with parents and kids when Anne and I arrived at little after six last night. These days Harrison High School is gone. The building is now divided up into smaller schools. Saucedo Academy uses one part of the old semi-classical building. Saucedo is one of the two CPS schools where most parents
YESTERDAY
Massachusetts’ Madeloni is unapologetically adversarial.
Barbara Madeloni was just elected President of the Massachusetts teachers union. This story appeared in the Boston Globe. Don’t make the mistake of talking about “teacher training” to Barbara Madeloni. “Oh, please don’t use the word training,” she chided a reporter. “We educate teachers. We don’t train them. We train dogs. And I love dogs.” Beacon Hill better get used to that sharply pointed, c
Hinsdale board member: Our salary and benefits should be lower than other districts.
As I have been reporting, Hinsdale High School District teachers gave their union leadership full backing last week in the union’s bargaining with their board. With nearly every member voting, a strike authorization vote received 100% of the members support. I can see why. The current board is now controlled by ideologues who are willing to sacrifice Hinsdale’s quality public schools on the altar
Rauner’s pension pay-to-play in Pennsylvania.
Bruce Rauner is a non-partisan pension hustler. This morning the Chicago Tribune reports that the Republican gubernatorial candidate gave $300,000 to Pennsylvania Govenor Ed Rendell with the hope of getting pension investment business for his firm GTCR. Rendell, also a former Philadelphia mayor, said it was during his tenure at the DNC that he came to know Rauner, whom he described as having been
JUN 05
New Jersey and Illinois have more in common than crooked politicians. Pension theft and a court fight.
Newark Mayor in the 60s, Hugh Addonizio. There was Frank Hague. The Mayor of Jersey City. From 1917 to 1947. Those who wanted favors from Hague would put cash in a special drawer in his desk that he would push open toward them. Despite being the subject of several investigations, Hague was never even charged for any corruption and is said to have retired a multi-millionaire. Then there were Sen.
George Schmidt. SEIU members were told by their union they had to cross CTU picket lines.
- George Schmidt publishes Substance News. It’s actually worse about the 2012 strike. SEIU members were told by their union they had to cross CTU picket lines. As you remember, CPS opened more than 100 schools, claiming that the children would starve if the schools were not opened. After the first day of the strike, most of the kids refused to cross the picket lines, and instead joined their teac
Board member attacks Hinsdale teachers for being unionized. “They’re like Karen Lewis!”
Members of the IEA and NEA affiliated Hinsdale High School Teachers Association voted unanimously last week to authorize a strike, not wanting to leave for the summer without giving demonstrating their full support for their union leadership. Meanwhile the Hinsdale school board has beating the anti-union drums. Two recent letters to The Doings, a local Sun-Times publication: One year leading Hins
JUN 04
Adam Heenan. Common Core threatens good teaching.
- Adam Heenan is a social studies teacher at Curie Metropolitan High School in Chicago. I teach Financial Literacy as a semester-long social studies course in a Chicago public high school. This quarter we focused on professional skills. My students must find living arrangements on a fixed salary, then explain their plan to the class. Students must calculate their biweekly net pay (based on last q
100% of Hinsdale teachers vote for strike authorization.
Yesterday I reported on the growing divide between the teachers and parents of Hinsdale on the one side and the District 86 school board on the other. The Chicago suburban high school district has a long history of providing quality schools in a collaborative environment. Some teachers report to me that the election of Tea Party candidates to the school board has created a toxic atmosphere.
Greg Hinz on the SEIU 73 Rahm contribution.
Crain’s Chicago Business political columnist Greg Hinz today reports on the $25,000 contribution to Rahm Emanuel’s campaign by SEIU Local 73 as if it were breaking news. It isn’t. I did a cartoon about it days ago. Click on image to make it larger. Hinz made it sounds as if this contribution and tacit endorsement of Rahm by the renegade SEIU 73 President Christine Boardman was a secret. While $25
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We headed over to the Hideout last night for Joravsky and Dumke Second Tuesdays. The panelists were my rep-elect Will Guzzardi, AFSCME lobbyist Adrienne Alexander and pension thief State Rep Christian Mitchell. Mitchell was why I wanted to go. I think we should confront these guys every time they show their faces. Which reminds me. Our retired SORE members will be at a Town Hall with State Reps R
JUN 03
John “No Nose” DiFronzo. Park Ridge District 64. Running schools like a business.
Johnny “No Nose” DiFronzo. When wealthy Park Ridge foot doctor Dr.Anthony Borrelli and right-wing psychologist Dr. Dathan Paterno were elected to the Park Ridge District 64 school board, they promised a tough line towards the the teachers union. They would run things like a business. A Chicago business. So, naturally the facilities director Scott Mackall hired a mob-connected company for air co
Breaking. Shocking. New study disproves the theory that throwing money at schools doesn’t do any good. It does.
How much money do you think was spent on a new study that demonstrates that spending money on schools that serve poor kids will result in the poor kids doing better at school? Headline in Education Week: School Spending Increases Linked to Better Outcomes for Poor Students Sound of palm smacking my forehead. In districts that substantially increased their spending as the result of court-ordered c
Strike vote. Things are heating up in suburban Hinsdale. A sign of things to come in Chicago suburbs?
It’s not that it never happens. But it is rare for a strike vote by teachers before the old contract has expired. That is the case in suburban Hinsdale District 86, where the school board appears to be acting more adversarial than usual. “The issue we are trying to communicate today is not about (contract) negotiations,” said David Lapetino, president of the teachers’ association at South. “It’s
JUN 02
UNO charter schools charged with securities fraud. All of Chicago is not surprised.
Chicago’s largest charter school operator is UNO. At the time of the fraud UNO’s boss was Juan Rangel, Rahm’s 2011 campaign chairman. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the United Neighborhood Organization, was charged today with defrauding its charter school investors. Sun-Times: The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced it had charged charter school operator UNO with defraud
Representative Christian Mitchell is a part of the Eli Broad collection.
When Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke host their monthly show at the Hideout tomorrow night, Eli Broad will not be appearing on stage with them. But he will be there in spirit. State Representative Christian Mitchell will be channeling Eli Broad (rhymes with toad), a charter member of the Billionaire Boys Club, the group of philanthropists who have declared themselves school reformer, but who despise
JUN 01
John Dillon. John ponders the meaning of Lisa Madigan’s assertion of police powers for pension theft.
- John Dillon is a retired teacher, pension rights activist and blogger. In her argumentative response to Sangamon County’s Judge Belz concerning petitions by We Are One and other legal teams seeking a stay or injunction on the implementation of SB1 (PA 98-599), Attorney General Lisa Madigan provided a summative assertion of the legitimacy of PA 98-599, given the State’s Police Powers. In other w
Sunday reads.
Akili Academy in the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Supporting Cuomo? “Labor itself, as represented by UFT leadership, doesn’t appear to support labor.” Bob Bailey. From the days when Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Armstrong performed at Las Vegas strip hotels. But couldn’t stay at them. Harris v. Quinn. A personal view. Chicago’s gun violence. A teacher shot down. “She was all bout t
MAY 31
Did you know IEA leadership thought SB7 needed fixing? Me neither.
Former IEA President Ken Swanson lobbied for SB7 in 2011. Now it turns out even the IEA thought it needed fixing. Both the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Education Association reported out on their analysis of the General Assembly session that adjourned officially today. One bit of surprising news was that they reported on a fix to Senate Bill 7. In case you forgot, Senate Bill
Keeping retirement weird. Free stuff.
This morning I took this selfie with my new iPhone. I told this story of Facebook yesterday. Since I have drawn a series of cartoons about Mark Zuckerberg, I expect that I will be expelled from Facebook at any moment. Which may be a blessing in disguise. A few years ago Anne and I discussed getting DVR. I wasn’t sure we were missing anything that needed recording, but it seemed as though everyone