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*** UPDATED x1 *** CTU points fingers at city and state, but won’t budge on pension pickup

Thursday, Jun 2, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Chicago Teachers Union held a press conference today…

Jesse Sharkey calls Claypool's statement about schools not opening on time is an "admission of failure"

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Sharkey: the mayor and Claypool refuse to go after new revenue, both have a "lack of vision" for CPS

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Sharkey: running to Springfield to point fingers and beg for money is not fair to legislators.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Sharkey: the mayor is asking the general assembly to take extraordinary risks without putting much skin in the game himself.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Sharkey: the mayor is trying to blame everybody else.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Stacy Davis-Gates: legislators outside Chicago keep saying the city needs to put more skin in the game.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Good points about the city. The CTU has proposed several local taxes, but the mayor refuses to discuss them.

* Others were not immune, however…

Sharkey: it's crazy to hold the children in the entire state of IL hostage for a budget.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

* But this is contradictory…

Q: will you set a strike date if the district takes away the pension pick up? Sharkey: yes.

— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) June 2, 2016

Yes, the city needs to put some skin in the game. And, yes, the state has a very real responsibility for its largest school system. But the CTU has to do its part as well. And that pension pickup is a huge cost-driver for CPS. Huge.

*** UPDATE *** Greg Hinz…

Claypool, in a quick interview, reacted very negatively to the comments.

“I’m shocked that the CTU is surrendering to Rauner and letting him off the hook for the state’s responsibility to fund education,” Claypool said.

36 Comments

*** UPDATED x2 - Goldberg slams Claypool - CPS responds with an insult *** Purvis demands CPS take a position on Rauner proposal

Thursday, Jun 2, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Sun-Times…

Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool, who banked the financial future of the troubled district on a now-failed legislative session, said Wednesday that “the fight’s not over” as he implored parents statewide to lobby the governor.

“We still need them to stay involved because we have another obstacle to overcome, and that’s Gov. Rauner. They should remind the governor of his pre-gubernatorial history as someone who supported education funding, equality and reform. And I’d like to see that governor come back,” Claypool said by telephone. “The strategy of trying to divide the state around the issue of education just isn’t going to work.”

* Which resulted in this memo…

June 2, 2016

Mr. Forrest Claypool, Chief Executive Officer
Chicago Public Schools
42 W. Madison St.
Chicago, IL 60602

Dear Mr. Claypool:

I know you share my concern that without a balanced state budget, many schools may have difficulty opening in the fall. As I’m sure you are aware, the General Assembly adjourned Tuesday without passing a balanced budget for fiscal year 2017.

Earlier this week, the Governor and Republican leaders introduced an education funding bill that increases total PK-12 education funding by more than $240 million and ensures no school district loses money. In this time of great uncertainty, will you support a fiscal year 2017 education funding bill that keeps CPS funded at the exact same level as fiscal year 2016, including keeping funding for the city’s block grant and after-school programming in place?

If your answer is yes, then you support the plan introduced by Governor Rauner and the Republican Leaders this week – and I would ask you to advocate for its immediate passage so that all schools in Illinois can open in the fall. If your answer is no, then you need to be honest and tell the people of Illinois that you are holding up school funding for the entire state so that Chicago will receive hundreds of millions more than it did last year – despite declining enrollment in Chicago Public Schools and a state in deep fiscal crisis.

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Sincerely,
Beth Purvis
Secretary of Education

I’ve asked CPS for a response.

*** UPDATE 1 *** Here’s the response, which is more of an insult than anything else…

June 2, 2016
Dear Secretary Purvis,

As the highest paid official in Gov. Rauner’s administration, I’m sure you are aware that Illinois is near dead last in education funding.

I’m also sure you are aware that the current education funding formula punishes students living in poverty. This double whammy is a brick on the back of Illinois’ middle class and working families.

We understand the governor wants to turnaround Illinois. We urge him to start with education. Bring Illinois out from the bottom of the barrel and stop the insanity of an education funding system that punishes the poor.

Sincerely,
Forrest Claypool
Chief Executive Officer

*** UPDATE 2 *** Claypool was hired at a $250,000 annual salary plus benefits, which would be more than Purvis. So one insult deserves another. From Gov. Rauner’s deputy chief of staff Richard Goldberg…

Forrest Claypool doesn’t like it when women make as much money as he does. What a wonderful role model for Chicago students.

77 Comments

*** UPDATED x1 - Maybe not *** Today’s number: 5 months

Thursday, Jun 2, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller

* SJ-R…

Schools in Illinois, on average, could stay open for five months without state funding, a recent survey by the Illinois Association of School Administrators found.

The possibility of schools shuttering continued to linger after state lawmakers on Tuesday evening, in the final hours of the spring legislative session, failed to reach a deal on a K-12 education-spending bill. […]

Even though they could open, [Mike Chamness, IASA’s director of communications] emphasized the consequences would still be devastating.

“If you spend all your reserves to stay open for five months, those reserves would not be replenished and at that point in time you would have no safety net whatsoever,” he said.

Yep. That very same thing has already happened to social service providers and higher education institutions.

*** UPDATE *** From the IASA…

Rich,

I wanted to clarify that the survey we did at IASA was an informal survey in our magazine. While the 5 month average might or might not be truly be representative of the statewide situation, I wanted to make it clear that we have districts from one end of the spectrum of not being able to open to the other end of districts that can survive the whole year but then might have no safety net remaining. Obviously, the districts most dependent on state aid are impacted the most. The closer we get to August, the more troublesome the scenarios become, financially and logistically, for schools. We realize that the ongoing budget impasse has had real consequences and suffering for innocent people. We would hope that common sense will prevail and the 2.1 million children who attend public schools in Illinois would not be used as political bargaining chips by either side.

Thanks.

Michael Chamness
IASA Director of Communications

Turns out, this was just an online survey. Not exactly scientific.

20 Comments

“Racially tinged attacks” denounced

Thursday, Jun 2, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Emphasis is in the original…

Today Alderman Howard B. Brookins Jr., Chairman of the Committee on Education and Child Development of the Chicago City Council, blasted Governor Bruce Rauner for racially tinged attacks on Chicago’s public schools.

It was reported in the media that Rauner said the following, “‘The Senate and the House were competing with each other – who can spend more to bail out Chicago with your tax dollars from southern Illinois and central Illinois and Moline and Rockford and Danville, the communities of this state who are hardworking families who pay the taxes,’ [emphasis added] Rauner said. ‘The taxes should go into our communities, not into the Chicago political machine. That’s where Speaker Madigan and his allies want the money to go.’”

Brookins responded:

“I’m appalled that Governor Rauner would say that Chicago families are not hardworking and don’t contribute to the tax base of Illinois. In fact, we pay a larger percentage of our incomes in taxes than the Governor or his billionaire friends, who he continues to protect from paying their fair share while ordinary people suffer,” said Brookins.

“Perhaps Governor Rauner believes there’s something about the 84% of Chicago Public School students who are African American and Hispanic that makes them undeserving of the full funding provided to other communities in Illinois,” Brookins continued. “Or, perhaps he is trying to stoke racial resentment with these divisive and misleading attacks.

“There is no so-called ‘bailout’ of the school system being proposed. Chicago taxpayers provide 20 percent of the income tax money that funds public education in our state, our children make up 20% of the state’s enrollment, yet our students receive only 15 percent of the state’s spending on education.

“These inflammatory comments are designed to conceal the budget mess Rauner purposefully created in an attempt to break institutions like organized labor and social service providers that are a lifeblood to middle class families in Illinois.

“In our state’s nearly 200-year history, Illinois has never experienced such a tumultuous period where it couldn’t even pass a budget. That is Governor Rauner’s failure, and one he has repeatedly tried to cover up with ridiculous attempts at misleading the public. The hardworking, taxpayers of Chicago will not stand for his reckless rhetoric any longer,” Brookins concluded.

Whew.

* Mayor Rahm Emanuel also got into the act…

“Yesterday people across the state were looking for solutions,” Emanuel’s statement reads. “Instead of uniting the governor was dividing. Instead of leading he was playing politics, pitting parents and students in one part of the state against parents and students in another. Right now schools across Illinois need a leader, and instead Bruce Rauner is following the Donald Trump playbook of demonizing one group of people for his political advantage.”

* As did the mayor’s CPS honcho…

Very disappointed that Gov. Rauner is pitting IL regions against each other. He was elected to lead all IL + we all need #fairschoolfunding

— Forrest Claypool (@ClaypoolCPS) June 1, 2016

…Adding… Emanuel’s Trump comparison is kind of rich since his own brother was apparently doing a deal with the guy.

54 Comments

Downstate non-pandering leadership tour continues

Thursday, Jun 2, 2016 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Vienna, by the way, has a population of just 1,434 people…

“The Senate and the House were competing with each other over who can spend more to bail out Chicago with your taxes,” Rauner said during an appearance in Vienna. “The money shouldn’t go there, it should go here.”

The two chambers were, indeed, competing with each other the other night. No argument there. But Chicagoans, unlike the residents of Vienna and everywhere else in this state, directly make the vast majority of their own school pension payments.

* A Senate leadership stipend was an award from Madigan? Way to stretch it, dude…

In a campaign-style speech, Rauner took aim at House Speaker Michael Madigan; Senate President John Cullerton; and state Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, who is assistant majority leader of the Senate. […]

A handout sheet passed along by Rauner’s office said Sullivan has gotten $1.75 million during his political career from Madigan, Cullerton and the “Chicago machine,” but it failed to specify whether they were campaign funds. The handout also was written in a way that made a leadership stipend — which Sullivan and all leaders in both parties receive — look like it came from Madigan and Cullerton.

“We need you to call Sen. Sullivan and have him stand up” to the Chicago political machine, Rauner said.

When reminded that Sullivan did not vote for a Senate education bill that would have boosted funding for Chicago Public Schools by nearly $1 billion, Rauner said that more was needed. He suggested that Sullivan demand a vote on an education bill and a social services stopgap bill crafted by the governor’s office.

I asked the reporter about his “Rauner said that more was needed” line because I didn’t quite get it. “Rauner wanted more from Sullivan, as in his support for the governor’s two budget plans,” was his explanation.

* So, are they really saying that the Chicago schools will receive no more money? Because, frankly, I don’t see how the heck they intend to get anything at all done if that is the case…

Republican Senator Jason Barickman of Bloomington is on the tour with Rauner. He says House Speaker Michael Madigan’s budget plan would “bail out” the city of Chicago and its school district.

“Us downstaters need to stick together… so that we don’t enable Mike Madigan to bail out Chicago.”

The post-May 31 magic numbers are now 71 and 36. Those can’t be reached if CPS isn’t part of the mix. Period.

* And yet as far as I know he did zippo during the session to pass a bill…

Gov. Rauner calls upcoming closing of @ExelonNuclear plants in Cordova and Clinton a "travesty." Hear more from @GovRauner on @wqad at 11

— Jared Ransom WQAD (@WQAD_Ransom) June 2, 2016

…Adding… Related…

* CEO: Chicago schools won’t open without education budget

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