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
Hinsdale’s Richard Skoda also causing trouble at the College of Du Page.
Hi Fred, He’s not just trying to screw up D86, he’s also spearheading the effort to bring down COD. He’s going to meetings with his old buddies Roger Kempa and Dianne Barret and disrupting the meeting, heckling the board and speakers, and just making up any kind of charges he can. The guy is a sociopath. First a link to the Preisdent of COD’s response which is pretty good, then some info from a p
Running.
If you are a member of IEA Retired you should have received your nomination form in the mail for IEA Retired delegate. The IEA Representative Assembly will be in April of 2015. We are back in Rosemont. This year we retirees only get 20 delegates out of the over 1,000 delegate seats. To be heard, we need loud voices. To run, your IEA membership must be current AND you must be a member of an IEA Re
Keeping retirement weird. Civility.
Me and State Rep-elect Will Guzzardi being more than civil. Some people say that I have mellowed in my retirement years. I’m not sure. And I’m not sure it’s a compliment. Is it kind of like someone saying I’m not as fat as I used to be? Reader writer Ben Joravsky called me Fred “The Hammer” Klonsky after I yelled at Representative Christian Mitchell for voting to cut our pensions. I admit that I
YESTERDAY
Breaking. Hinsdale teachers file Unfair Labor Practice.
Hinsdale, Ill. – Sept. 5, 2014 – After enduring months of unnecessary delays and a series of public relations stunts by the school board, the Hinsdale High School Teachers Association (HHSTA) has filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB). In the complaint, the teachers allege a series of bad faith negotiation practices by the board’s repre
Logan Square rally for an elected school board. Then the rains came.
The Logan Square Neighborhood Association organized a rally at the Centennial Monument to support an elected school board. Tim Meegan, second from the right, is running for 33rd Ward Alderman. 39th District State Representative-elect Will Guzzardi (center) and me at the rally before the rains came down. They said it would rain. And it did. So featured speaker, CTU President Karen
Quinn is a one trick pony with no message for angry state employees.
I keep saying that if Pat Quinn has a chance to beat Bruce Rauner, he needs to say something to those who are so angry with his born to kill pensions mantra that they will trust him for the next four years. I know the polls showing that the gap between Rauner and Quinn is shrinking. But that just means that a few thousand still-angry state employees will be the difference between a Governor Quinn
State school funding. Reduce the size of the pie. Slice it into smaller pieces.
Illinois school funding is a cruel joke. Since we already ranks at the bottom in state school funding, the burden falls on local districts to raise money locally. Rich school districts do fine. Poor ones, not so much. To fix the situation, several things are required. Reliance on local property taxes to fund schools must change. State revenue must increase with a tax system that doesn’t punish wo
CTU endorses Quinn.
News that the CTU House of Delegates endorsed Pat Quinn for Governor over the Napa wine connoisseur comes as no great surprise. I will not vote for either one. However, the CTU endorsement certainly reflects the views of most Chicago teachers. In that regard, the Rauner panic-machine has been very effective. Although I am not a member of the CTU and I am certainly not privy to their internal disc
SEP 04
Judge Belz on pension theft ruling. “The faster the better.”
Judge Belz is the Sangamon County judge who is hearing the pension theft case. Speaking at today’s status hearing he said that the Illinois Supreme Court’s Kanerva ruling that upheld the constitutional prohibition against diminishing or impairing pension obligations will be a factor in his ruling on the legality of SB1. And he thinks he will rule before the first of the year. The State Journal-Re
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia talks testing turkey with Obama.
New NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia. NPR Ed: A former elementary school teacher from Utah took the reins of the nation’s largest teachers union this week. As president of the National Education Association, Lily Eskelsen Garcia represents nearly 3 million teachers. Her No. 1 one priority? As she puts it: “Roll back standardized testing before it does more damage than good.” The NEA has been cr
Robin Potter. Karen Lewis at the National Lawyers Guild.
- Chicago activist and attorney Robin Potter sends this: The National Lawyers Guild is holding its national convention starting Thursday in Chicago. The NLG is a pivotal progressive organization of lawyers and legal advocates, and provides legal defense at mass rallies and demos, including during the CTU strike and our marches. The NLG honored our many CTU lawyers at its annual dinner in 2013. I h
Rahm’s paid “volunteers.”
Karen Lewis comes to Logan Square tomorrow. Training for her volunteers starts Saturday. The problem for Rahm is that Chicago politics is not like it was in the old days. When Dick Mell ran this ward, if you wanted a job with the city you had to “volunteer” to, among other things, collect signatures for Da Mayor. Or buy tickets to fund raisers. Or work election day. It wasn’t direct pay. It was m
SEP 03
Retired teachers are not just about pensions. We had a lively charter discussion.
This blogger, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and S.O.R.E. organizer, Harriet Sheeley. We often discuss politics at our Skokie Organization of Retired Educatators (S.O.R.E.) luncheons. We are a chapter of the Illinois Education Association’s Retired section. I’m president of our local chapter, but that’s not the reason we talk politics so much. And it’s not just talk about the politics of pensions.
Bev Johns. NCLB required all students to be proficient ontate tests by 2014.
- Bev Johns is a Special Education advocate and activist for has contributed frequently to this blog. NCLB required all students to be proficient on State tests by 2014. Failure of the public schools to reach that goal has been widely viewed as the failure of public education, requiring movement to charter schools and even increasing the talk of vouchers in the name of choice. Failure of the publi
A new blog from Bloomberg, Broad and Walton. Did somebody ask for this?
Peter Cunningham left the Duncan Department of Education and has launched an education blog, Education Post. There is room on the internet for lots of blogs on education. But did anybody really ask for this one? If parents could ask their leaders for one thing on education this school year, it would be this: stop playing politics with education and work on results. We don’t have time for name-cal
Local teachers are holding Democrats’ feet to the fire on pension theft.
Teachers confronted Representative Michelle Mussman just prior to her vote for pension theft. On the eve of the vote on pension theft, I made the rounds to the district offices of many north suburban state representatives and state senators. 56th District Democrat Michelle Mussman was one of them. I joined a crowd of about 100 teachers and other state employees, most of whom had voted for her. Mu
SEP 02
Mark Anderson. Minimum wage gimmicks.
- Mark Anderson writes for NBC’s Ward Room. As part of a national conversation about inequality and the potential for raising the minimum wage, it’s become something of a trend for politicians of all stripes to try living on poverty wages for a while. In February, a group of Minnesota lawmakers tried to live on a minimum wage budget for a week. In July, three Democratic politicians—Reps. Tim Ryan
The power of oldness.
Anne sent me a video this morning produced by Australian Human Rights Commission to combat age discrimination. Their tagline is The Power of Oldness. I’m feeling that power this morning. And I will explain in a minute. Meanwhile I read my friend John Dillon’s blog. John’s a retired teacher and blogger. And has spent a good part of his time over the past years meeting with legislators, patiently e
I’m always optimistic.
National Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and me at the NEA RA in Denver. The new school year has started. The third without me. How have they survived? For me, the start of a new school year was a moment for optimism. It is like the optimism I felt leaving this year’s Representative Assembly of the National Education Association in Denver last July. We had just passed a stinging rebuke
Troy LaRaviere. Drop CPS’ reform strategy. Neighborhood school growth outpaces charters. (Sun-Times)
Blaine Principal Troy LaRaviere. - Troy LaRaviere is principal at Blaine Elementary School, a parent at Kellogg Elementary School, a graduate of Chicago Public Schools and Chairperson of the Administrators Alliance for Proven Policy and Legislation in Education (AAPPLE). When mayor Rahm Emanuel recently heralded a small gain on the average Chicago Public Schools elementary “MAP” test results, I k
SEP 01
Greg Hinz. Both Quinn and Rauner bob and weave on pension fix.
Reader Rick Klimes points me to Crain’s Greg Hinz. Hinz says neither Quinn or Rauner are willing to say what Plan B is when the Illinois Supreme Court rules, as expected, that SB7 is a constitutional offense. The problem for many state employees is that Quinn has a record. Rauner’s is that he advocates for a ponzi scheme to replace a defined benefit. Both incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn and GOP chal
Life in Rahm’s Chicago. The death of a nameless homeless man in Logan Square.
The Kennedy overpass at Belmont and Kedzie. DNAinfo: A man who police say was homeless was beaten to death in Logan Square Saturday evening. Around 10:50 p.m., the man, 59, was in an alley in the 1900 block of North Ridgeway Avenue when two people got out of their car and beat him with their hands and feet, according to Officer Janel Sedevic, a police spokeswoman. The 59-year-old was taken to M
AUG 31
William Greider. Happy Labor Day, Mom.
- William Greider’s column appears in The Nation. I know this sounds absurd—it is absurd—but for some odd reason Labor Day reminds me of my mother. She was a school teacher, and I think she would have a good laugh to learn that so-called “education reformers” are accusing school teachers of being too powerful and protected. My father, who was himself a long-time member of our local school board, w
Sunday reads.
Art Spiegelman in The Nation. Feeling sorry for Terrence Carter? Not me. Did you get your loyalty scorecard from Rahm? Hinsdale community rallies to “86 the majority” on the board. Teacher asks students to split into two groups to simulate ideal class size. Democrats? Republicans? Who will win? Wall Street. From Glen Brown’s blog: We Need a “Fighting Opposition” by Fred Klonsky “I believe that th
Sunday reads.
Art Spiegelman in The Nation. Feeling sorry for Terrence Carter? Not me. Did you get your loyalty scorecard from Rahm? Hinsdale community rallies to “86 the majority” on the board. Teacher asks students to split into two groups to simulate ideal class size. Democrats? Republicans? Who will win? Wall Street. From Glen Brown’s blog: We Need a “Fighting Opposition” by Fred Klonsky “I believe that th
AUG 30
Keeping retirement weird. The color line.
On our road trip we stopped at the boyhood home of W.E.B. du Bois. Naturally. There was no parking space in front of our house when we got home yesterday afternoon. We had to unload the car from down the block. It was a small price to pay for the last two weeks and a road trip that took us to Block Island and time with the kids and grand kids, in-laws and friends, several ferry crossings, swimmi
Frustrated? No. We are people with a vision of a city that works for its people.
Our friends came for Bagels with Karen. Representative-elect Will Guzzardi did the introduction. About a month ago Anne and I, my brother Mike and sister-in-law Susan invited our friends to have Bagels with Karen Lewis at their house in Logan Square. Among those who came was our new 39th House District Representative-elect, Will Guzzardi. In fact, Will gave a warm introduction to the President o