Staff At Four Chicago High Schools Falsified Student Attendance Records -- NOT TEACHERS
There are two more school days before the teaching professionals of the AFT Local #1 strike.
Yes, I'm hell on wheels back about the situation students and teachers find themselves in. Democrats of this city need to take a hard look at this corporatist mayor’s tactics.
FOUR OUT OF 176 HIGH SCHOOLS IS A PATTERN??
Then what is the accuracy of records in the other 98% of CPS high schools called -- ANOMALY??
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/staff-at-four-chicago-high-schools-falsified-student-attendance-records/328da520-a0d6-46c4-91b1-c9ac1bc92186
?w=670
If anyone seriously cares about good public schooling in the fourth largest district in the United States, then consider that Rahm is not unveiling any REAL corruption, because it’s literally in CPS’s central office. Rahm engages, instead, in pre-strike hype to stigmatize classroom professionals before the public.
Consider Rahm's appointed inspector general, Nicholas Schuler, former police for nine years, working the CPD gang unit in Rogers Park, two brothers still cops, father worked in homicide.
Schuler is now one of at least 900 -- 900(?) -- non-classroom employees who make over $100,000 a year at Chicago Public Schools. Most of that one group make between $125,000 and $160,000 -- Schuler makes $133,000/year. Sounds like salaries in Republican counties.
Give or take a few million – way more than overpaid Schuler finds at a few schools out of 660 -- $50 million a year has been charged to Chicago's taxpayers for its 900+ six figure salary "administrators" since the days of Arne Duncan in 2001 -- for at least FIFTEEN YEARS, at $50 million per year. CPS has become an area of patronage moved to downtown, out of the wards during Daley, Jr.'s terms in office. Mayors and their superintendent tools have now made CPS the repository of much of city hall's patronage, a reality that didn't used to map so clearly.
Less than 20% of these six figure employees are actual principals in the communities. Principals are the most truly accountable and competent of all non-classroom CPS employees on so many levels, that to shadow any one of them for a day would eliminate all doubt that they are the only six figure earners worthy of such salaries from the public.
Chicago Board of Education's contract period is again upon us. An AFT Local #1 strike begins October 11.
Unions do not decide on contract negotiation time frames -- the Chicago Board of Ed does. When each side makes any public report or appeal, what’s usually telling is how the Board avoids public discussion of its misspending billions away from direct services to Chicago's children. It affords it’s non-classroom bureaucrats and patronage on behalf of its political bosses. For the fifteenth year. Those are just the years I know of.
This strike year is Mayor Rahm Emanuel's year to unleash Nick Schuler’s skills to earn his keep hyping the "fraud, waste and corruption" of education field professionals. Chicago media help. What you're seeing here is another of the same tired media dictation “story” from corporate privatizer Rahm's appointed hatchet man. Don't believe it.
It's Rahm's year to have Schuler comb through school level contracts while the year long, randomly interrupting crass context of companies constantly peddling business to high schools -- pressing kickbacks to drum up school business for sports or extracurricular events like proms and graduations -- is conveniently kept away from the public eye.
It's Rahm's year to get Nick Schuler and his people to fine tooth comb attendance records -- four out of 90+ high schools! -- so he can be Rahm's media heavy, call any mistakes in constant daily attendance across six classes and a division period a "pattern," "falsification" or "fraud."
Schuler claims these schools "Engineered" their data. Anyone who has visited any school for more than a fifteen minute report card pickup knows this: Professionals doing even a mediocre, 'satisfactory' job in front of children all day hardly have time to fix their mistakes (but they do, constantly), nevermind "engineer" data.
"Engineer," doesn't even describe their lesson planning. Four out of 176 public schools is a very good error rate. It is by no means any "pattern" Schuler claims.
You might want to believe that attendance records are fraudulent, but you must know that every rating of every teacher every year depends on accurate records. Even with a 20% student transience rate across the 4th largest district in the U.S., even with unenforced, high truancy rates, even with no recourse for teachers for student class cutting.
Not one attendance mistake from teachers is tolerated -- and they are mistakes fixed daily -- even though students move in and out of overcrowded classrooms and schools daily. The state's demand for school-level accuracy assures that records are a major issue for principals.
The truth is that the Rahm’s city hall-sponsored, 7th floor of lawyers should be examining the monetary incentives that only exist at CPS central office's accounting.
Nick Schuler is Rahm's tool for ramming austerity down the union's throat, stigmatizing, criminalizing the only professionals whom the public gets any direct benefit from -- its teachers and principals. No wonder there is a teacher shortage.
Why does Rahm do this? Why do teachers strike? Because schools have been turned, by design, into a big business pot o' cash and assets for business and the politically connected. Like an insurance company that takes premiums but denies coverage, Rahm gets to expand his patronage army of lawyers and bureaucrats, please Business Round Table warriors, while demanding cuts and general austerity for the rest of us – communities, teachers and kids at school levels. No wonder there are more non-classroom employees than classroom professionals.
Did I say Chicago Board of Ed misspending -- MANAGEMENT -- has cost Chicagoans $50 million a year for the last 15 years? No wonder class sizes go up. No wonder schools get closed.
Nick Schuler. Building boss Rahm's case. Socialism for politicos, free market capitalism for the next generation. No wonder Illinois is at the bottom in education spending. But it’s in the top ten in income. (Rahm’s golfing partner, governor Rauner, needs to get that DAPL through to Patoka. No connection, I’m sure.)
More context:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Teachers_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Public_Schools
Rahm's appointed board's austerity budget pays for its top heavy bureaucracy in District 299. Demand an ELECTED school board and the elimination of that bureaucracy, and your better funded schools' teachers and students will not feel a ripple.
Keep pubic education spending for the public.
School is NOT business. Schools are NOT sites for publicly stigmatizing professional unions.
School is systematized human development.
Thanks for reading this far. 
