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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat:

800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat



This week we're celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta which is widely considered the foundation of parliamentary democracy, human rights and the supremacy of the law over autocracy. It established the principle that the monarch is not above the law.



Meanwhile in Chicago, where the public schools have been placed by law under the autocratic rule of one man --the mayor -- there's much being made over questions of who approved the decision to hire now-disgraced CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett back in 2012 and who approved that $20 million no-bid contract to SUPES. Everyone knows the answer to these questions but they are still the topic of the day for federal investigators in the midst of grand jury hearings. It's doubtful that indictments, if any are brought, will reach anywhere near the fifth floor of City Hall.



As Rahm and his predecessor might have put it: "We don't need no stink'n Magna Carta".



The only reason there's even a question, is that mayoral control of the schools, which was intended to bring greater transparency and accountability to a bureaucratic system, brought instead its very opposite. Since CPS was made a wing of City Hall, there has been a cloud of Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: 800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat: