Faked Support for School Closures Underscores Why Chicago Needs an Elected, Representative School Board
Emanuel school execs used contractors, cronies to fabricate support for closing Englewood public high schools, covering up years of chronic underfunding and neglect of school communities.
CHICAGO, IL — The following statement can be attributed to CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey:
“Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times’ story on ‘suspect support’ for closing Englewood’s neighborhood public high schools confirms what we’ve been hearing for months: that CPS has again used politically connected vendors and their cronies to fabricate phony support to shut down schools that serve Chicago’s Black and Brown students. We’re not surprised –Emanuel’s hand-picked CPS executives used paid protesters to push his racist 2013 school closures, as well. To put it bluntly, it’s more important to Emanuel to spend public dollars manufacturing fake consent than it is to invest those precious funds into improving our kids’ educations.”
“Emanuel’s contempt for Black students extends to National Teachers Academy (NTA), where three years ago he began plans to push out this low-income community of Black students to benefit South Loop real estate interests. At the same time, Emanuel has continued to undermine neighborhood schools in communities of color with deep budget cuts and chronic neglect while funneling public dollars to private charter operators who skim off millions of additional dollars to pay their own ‘management’ salaries. In Englewood alone, the mayor has cut a colossal $8.3 million from neighborhood high schools in just the last three years. The message is clear: Poor Black and Brown students don’t matter.
“It’s time to end the failed education policies that Emanuel pushes by either faking community support for school closings, as he has in Englewood, or simply refusing to listen to the appeals of Black school communities like NTA to save their schools. Yet Emanuel appoints every single member of CPS’ board of education, who rubber-stamp his racist, classist education policies. Emanuel dictates who will run CPS. His latest round of school closures and displacements mirrors his 2013 closures, where he ignored sweeping public pleas to save critical community anchors in some of our most neglected neighborhoods. Emanuel has orchestrated devastating school policies, from imposing lethal budget cuts while expanding charters and co-locations to slashing support for special education services for low-income Black and Brown children. He has appointed a series of failed CPS CEOs, two of whom have been forced to resign, although regrettably only one is serving prison time for their crimes.
“At the root of this problem is an utter lack of democracy or public accountability in our school system – a deficiency that allows Emanuel to refuse to invest in the neighborhood public schools of Black and Brown children. But Chicagoans – unlike voters in every other school district in the state – have no say in who serves on the board of education.
“Without an elected school board that is accountable to Chicagoans, our residents have no way to prevent the actions of a mayor who cares more about the interests of his donors than the working class people of this city. It’s time to ensure that our schools are run with transparency, honesty, fiscal responsibility and decency. It’s time to end Rahm Emanuel’s indifference to our students’ futures. It’s time to shut down CPS’s insider contracts and ethical failures. It’s time to put the needs of our students and their families first. State legislators can give Chicagoans the power to change our school system for the better by stepping up and passing legislation that secures the basic right that our residents have long demanded: the right to elect a representative school board that can check this mayor’s neglect of children of color.
