Wednesday, January 29, 2014

1-29-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher

Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.:







CTU answers Squeezy.
CHICAGO – In today’s State of the State address, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made multiple references to “getting the job done” and also claimed to have ended the culture of instability that existed in Illinois government. He highlighted the strides that the state has made in working with women and minority-owned businesses. The problem is that his claims about the benefits of education reform and


Another challenge to an incumbent pension thief.
I asked Bob Galhotra to respond to John Cullerton’s statement that cutting Chicago public employee pensions would be the General Assembly’s job one. Bob is running in the 40th Senate district on the north west side and suburbs.


40th House District candidate Aaron Goldstein on the threat to city pensions.
  House candidate Aaron Goldstein. Aaron Goldstein is a candidate for the 40th State Representative District on the north west side of Chicago. In the wake of Senate President John Cullerton’s declaration that cutting Chicago public employee pension was job one for the next General Assembly, I asked Aaron for a reaction. He told me this: Senate President Cullerton recently stated on Chicago Tonig

Breaking. Chicago CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett threatens teachers and parents on opt-out.
  Dear Teachers, As a former teacher and principal, I understand how important it is to maximize our instructional time with students. But I also know that rigorous, high-quality assessments are valuable in measuring student progress. Our challenge, then, is to strike a balance between the two. This year we reduced our number of required assessments from 25 to 10, allowing schools to focus on th


Rob Schwartz. A word to my followers. Be happy? Shut up? Hell no.
A word to my followers. Raise hell. Fred, Been following you for quite awhile and I’m happy with you fighting the fight, but not with any indications of you encouraging others to be proactive when it comes to $$$. Our pensions got “jacked.” No question. Unfair? Certainly. But what do you expect immoral, unconscionable, felonious lawmakers to do? They do what’s in their best interest. No one else




The President on education. Waist deep in the big muddy.
“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans, today in America, a teacher spent extra time with a student who needed it and did her part to lift America’s graduation rate to its highest levels in more than three decades.” That’s how the President began his State of the Union Address last night. On education, it was brief and downhill from there. I couldn’t help but t

1-28-14 Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher
Fred Klonsky | Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.: Soup Kitchen and half a cola at Robyn Gabel’s office.This afternoon our chapter of IEA Retired, the Skokie Organization of Retired Educators (SORE) had planned another pension protest outside the Evanston district office of State Representative Robyn Gabel. We had planned to set up a soup kitchen and