LOTS OF WORDS ABOUT HYPOCRITES
A one-day strike, a budget-stand-off, a break-up between Rauner and Rahm: I've written about none of it! I haven't had enough emotional energy. As many teachers I'm talking to are saying, this year is among the most demoralizing on record.
There are certain strains of thought, though, that never cease to capture my disdain, and one of them is when millionaire education reformers lecture the state about how to spend its money. As a teacher going on her fifth year of teaching with only precariousness to look forward to, I definitely had a cow the other week (before the latest budget proposal/rejection drama) when I read an editorial written by the IL Secretary of Education. Beth Purvis, editorializer in question, is former charter school CEO. Unsurprisingly, she published an editorial in the Tribune advocating for withholding extra funding for Chicago Public Schools in the on-going budget debate. She says, "...I cannot in good conscience recommend the adoption of any formula change that includes special set-asides for any one district." CPS has made too many blunders and mismanaged their funds too often to get any extra money now! she scolds. As a result, Chicago can count on looking a little more like Detroit next year... that is, if CPS finally makes good on the austerity threats they've been making all year. (See: 17 teachers laid off instead of 5,000,rescinding the threat to take the 7% from our paychecks, etc.) While I agree with her assessment that CPS has chronically mismanaged finances, she and I probably disagree on what constitutes mismanagement. Purvis thinks funding charter schools like hers at the expense of public schools is fine, even though public schools serve more-expensive-to-educate student populations. Like other right-wingers or the hedge-fund manager/austerity Dracula Bruce Rauner, Purvis is scolding and moralistic when it comes to doling out the dough: "Chicago shirked its own duty to pay its pensions," and Claypool is "asking for a financial bailout for the irresponsible behavior of his predecessors." But while Purvis mentions a few times she should "advocate for all students," she fails to account for the actual victims of this irresponsibility--students. But the vistas afforded by the moral high ground of balanced budgets are no match for a real argument about what we should do in the absence of adequate revenue. Purvis forgets to make any meaningful claim about what Chicago Public Schools must do for the public they are charged with educating. And she is surely facetious when she suggests that standing against new funding is also an equitable stance for children. Next year's per-pupil funding in CPS could be slashed by 40%; this means neighborhood schools will see fewer teachers, bigger class sizes, cuts to school programs and technology, and so on."We need one formula that treats all students equitably, no matter where they live," Purvis says. I agree! But our kids in CPS are nearly all low-income (86%). An "equitable" situation for school children is not just about geography; it's also about access. As prominent public education advocate Diane Ravitch often explains, we know what works for poor public school kids--the same things that work for rich private school kids! Small class sizes, lots of individual attention, well-trained teachers, quality curriculum materials, up-to-date technology, and meaningful extracurricular opportunities work for every student. And all they cost is money. You want to punish CPS for its years of financial malfeasance? Fine. Barbara Byrd Bennett pleaded guilty, and Claypool's CPS has been publicly penitent bylaying off large swaths of central office staff. But Purvis, and Rauner, and everyone who takes a moral high ground about bloated public expenditure, lack any vision for what public institutions should look like when their work is done. This is because these millionaires and billionaires don't value public institutions. They want to gut them and hang them on the walls of their wood-paneled drawing rooms, right above their busts of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, because their children will always be able to attend the best private educations money can buy. Saving money is not nearly as moral an issue as spending it, and on whom it should be spent. So, to Purvis, Rauner, and any state legislator standing in the way of a reasonable budget for school children: please consider what you'd want for your own child. The moral seriousness you lend to budgeting is not more serious than the futures of poor children. Would you want your kid to pay for the sins of their schools' managers?