Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS:

Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS

Image result for big education ape weapons of mass destruction starving schools to death
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." -- Frederick Douglass
Donald Trump thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive. In one sense (certainly not the one intended) he may be right. Douglass' words, his warning, that if we don't resist oppression, we will get it's full measure, are alive and as relevant today as they were more than a century-and-a-half ago. They were ringing in my head this week as I watched our Trumpian Gov. Rauner veto a bill that would have put $215M back in the schools.

We're now in our third year without a state budget and Rahm Emanuel's schools CEO Forrest Claypool has just announced another $46M in cuts at CPS and I'm asking myself just how much more of this death by 1,000 cuts of public space are we willing or able to endure? 

The cuts have created more chaos throughout the system, forcing principals to re-engineer their budgets in the middle of the school year and give up as much as half of discretionary money for textbooks, field trips, technology and hourly workers who staff recess and after school programs. CPS is also cutting $5 million in teacher professional development funds.

As expected, Claypool put all the blame for the cuts on the more-than-deserving, "Trumpian" Rauner. But Claypool, Rahm and the Democratic Party leadership in Springfield have blood on their hands as well. They've acceded to Republican demands for more and more cuts with little more than a whimper, and Sen. Pres. John Cullerton is currently colluding with Rauner in the Grand Plan to loot the pension fund and weaken the unions.

They are also unwilling to tax the state's wealthiest for badly-needed revenues and instead are considering other ways to save money, including shortening the school year. How ironic, Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Death by 1,000 cuts at CPS:

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