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Arne’s Chicago plan to blow up schools mirrors Daley’s plan to blow up neighborhoods
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Mayor Daley II
The cat is out of the bag; we now know former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Arne Duncan contributed directly to the biggest problem in Chicago: kids-killing-kids in the shadow of our public schools. Yes this city has the highest sales taxes in the country, most expensive gasoline in the nation, and now the owns the record for high public transportation costs, but all that collective urban mismanagement (they we re-elect time after time) pales when it comes to children in body bags.
Even venerable head-in-the-sand publications like Education Week have finally pushed back the pitcher of Duncan/Obama education Kool-Aid. In an early October article titled: CHICAGO SCHOOL REFORM BLAMED FOR TEEN DEATHS, the K-12 establishment finally comes to grips with a fragment of the truth. Duncan’s mindless implementation of the Daley real estate initiative in the guise of school reform, dubbed the Renaissance 2010 plan, closed down troubled schools in one place, and sent students to other troubled schools in another place; and in the process violated street gang boundaries. The CPS student death rate tripled immediately thereafter on Duncan’s watch.
From the very first day our brilliant mayor appointed this sociologist who knows nothing about the science of urban education to replace the accountant who even knew less, very few employees in the system took him seriously. They should have. I have publicly asked why didn’t the credentialed educators working for Duncan tell him what he was doing was dangerous. It is slowly coming out now from city sources, including Congressman Bobby Rush, that his employees did tell him.
So why did Duncan persist? To begin with Duncan wasn’t running the schools; the mayor was. Duncan was just a blow-up doll sitting in the CEO office. Daley was doing, is doing, to the schools what he did to the poor black neighborhoods on the South side. He is blowing them up. If you think not, drive over to State Street on or about 5100 South and look at the devastation. The notorious Robert Taylor Homes and most of the other housing projects for single-parent moms have been torn down. If you drive east on 47th street, you can see how the Mayor has replaced low-rent housing with overpriced condominiums that start at $400,000 for a bloody studio. It is all very attractive, and I am sure the mayor’s pals who had early notice of his intentions have gotten wealthy; that is all very nice. Like any other Chicagoan, I prefer to look at new cracker box condos rather than the institutional architecture of the Ida B. Wells-type housing projects and all of the aimless teen-agers that run amuck within them.
So where have all these urban poor gone? To the south suburbs under the Section 8 subsidized housing plan. The feds have assisted Daley in this debacle by relocating project folk and setting them up in modest homes in the communities like Country Club Hills, just a few miles up the 1-57 trail. Hills’ Mayor, Dwight Welch, though a ’made’ member of the Cook County Democrat Politburo, fought the displacement of broken families from Chicago’s ghettoes to his community in court. Welch lost. If you’ve been paying attention, the schools in the black suburbs have all gone to hell too. Every housing project dynamic that manifest itself at DuSable, Robeson and King High Schools are now at Rich Township, Bloom Township, and knocking at the door of Crete-Monee. But then, diversity is our strength, isn’t it.
The hypocrisy is amazing. Daley stands before us bemoaning the death of one fatherless black child after another and tells us we must do something to stop the school homicides. Perhaps the first thing we should do is to free ourselves of the political catalysts for these deaths. Maybe President Obama has a job for Richard II so we can get rid of him like we did Duncan, but no; when I scan the City Hall landscape for a possible replacement for Daley, the vision that pops up before me is the bar scene from the first Star Wars film.
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