Five reasons why Chicago should have an elected School Board not a Rahm appointed one

[yurbud]

I have never been too happy with the elected board that overseas my community college district, but reading this, it sound like a board appointed by a corporate boot lick like Rahm Emanuel is not only more corrupt, but incompetent at even things you would expect business people to be good at like keeping up their credit rating.

Is it going to take a million teacher march on Washington to get Obama and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party to stop implementing right wing education "reform that" is ultimately about turning our kids education (and our tax dollars) over to the Wall Street hedge fund managers who broke the world economy?

If they can't do finance right, which is their actual job, why should we trust them with our kids?

1. The CPS board members are appointed by the Mayor and not elected by the people. They answer to the mayor and ignore the community.
   
   
2. Some members of the board voted to raise the CPS property taxes to the highest amounts allowed by the law. At the same time, they have lobbied to lower property taxes for themselves.
   
   
3. Some residents of communities like North Lawndale have seen their property taxes increase at a faster rate than people from other parts of the city, in spite of the fact that property values are decreasing and many home owners are on fixed incomes.
   
   
4. North Lawndale is the target area for school closings, turnarounds and other educational experiments that can distract our students. Yet, there is not one person on the CPS board from the West Side.
   
   
5. Even though the board is made up of business people, Chicago Public Schools just proposed a budget that will spend all the cash reserves for next year. As a result, their credit score was lowered. CPS must now pay higher interest rates. The more money they spend on interest, the less money will be available for the classroom.
   
   http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/2012/10/22/20522/five-reasons-why-chicago-should-have-elected-school-board

[Drale]

1. They NEED to split Chicago into several different districts

The single district currently in Chicago is far to big to run effectively and efficiently.

[frazzled]

2. The school board has been appointed here since 1872

Were you okay with it when either of the Mayor Daleys (father or son) were appointing it for forty-some cumulative years? I just want to be clear that the problem—and yes, it is a problem—of appointing rather than electing school boards in Chicago has little to do with Rahm Emanuel per se. It is not something new that he started. And the whole charter school movement, here as elsewhere, started long before he took office.

On No. 5: the budget will spend all the cash reserves for next year has quite a logical explanation; they were left with a huge deficit by the former Mayor and have just negotiated a fairly generous new contract.

[yurbud]

3. Rahm is clearly on board with the corporate education reform movement

An appointed board may have worked somewhat in the past, back when at least some of the wealthy had a sense of "noblesse oblige," but the current generation of the very wealthy seem to view the rest of us the way a shark views a night time skinnydipper.

[frazzled]

5. Boy, I guess you didn't live through two Daley administrations

Both J. and M. I lived in Chicago during both of them.

[yurbud]

4. Also, the fact that a tradition exists doesn't mean it's a good one

slavery and Jim Crow had long histories before they were torn down too.

[frazzled]

6. Read my post: I didn't say it was

I specifically said it was a problem. Just trying to dispel the myth that the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Rahm, bogey man for all things, invented it somehow.

[yurbud]

7. with Rahm, you can see why someone would make an assumption like that. He thinks he's Karl Rove, but

only has Rove's ability to collect money from the rich, not to connect with actual voters (however deceitful Rove may be in that connection).