After 50 CPS schools were closed in the spring of 2013, the Board of Education is now ready, next Wednesday, to vote on opening 22 new charter schools operated by nine different companies. Hmm, I wonder if any of the 9 are for-profit enterprises? We'll find out.
Why is this disgusting? On one level, the children and families of those who saw their schools shuttered must really be scratching their heads. Let's see, they are untold that the school was underutilized yet magically within a year plans are rolled out opening new charters!
On another level the proposal (it's the Friday Chicago Sun Times) has the feel of some real deal-making. The article reports that two of the "landlords have ties to Rahm." I have been affiliated with public education for a long time and these sorts of deals aren't part of our heritage of a public education.
One other thought,towards the end of the article, which deals with the goal of the CPS brass. It is stated that "meeting the goal of providing a high-quality education so our students are 100 percent college ready and 100 percent college bound." Providing a high-quality education is enough. To say that you will make them college ready and college bound, to me, flies in the face of the fact that a true public education needs to do far more than make students college bound. That is a short-sighted view of education.
Dick
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