Poor Black School Kids in Chicago get screwed, while illegal kids get rewarded?

[Chitownheadbusa]

Disclaimer: this is not a racist attack against Mexican people...im just calling it how i see it.

I try to school some of my Brothas and Sistas in the Chi about whats going on when it pertains to that bs Dream Act, UNO, CPS, etc.......but I guess my message isnt reaching the right people. Hence..I need to expand.

While Illegal Mexicans are in this city organizing and working through the loopholes, many poor Black folks are still sitting on their hands and only organizing when its time to stand on the side streets and wave at Obama's motorcade when he visits Chicago.

A large percentage of Black folks in Chicago voted for Rahm Emanuel..and Rahm is supporting the decisions made by CPS; when it pertains to school closings and tax payers monies funding illegals & shady side deals.

Poor Black folks in this city need to be debriefed on how to follow up after they leave their polling stations. Because for some reason we seem to think its a done deal after we vote.

While Jesse Jackson is in Chicago....trying to convince his dumbfounded flock about how we need a Black and Brown coalition....the "brown people" really aint trying to deal with Black folks like that. Instead a lot of Mexicans are identifying with the Whites that fuck us over and are using their European features to reap the rewards of White privilege. But then again..can you blame em?

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UNO works within system, gets $98 million for charter schools

fyi...a lot of these UNO guys were Mayor Daley soldiers; i.e. theyre trained to fuck people over.

The group's Mexican-American chief executive, Juan Rangel, said the organization makes a conscious effort to copy the century-old, up-by-the-bootstraps approach of white ethnic immigrants like the Irish and Italians. He renounces the more recent fight-the-power style of some African-American and Latino leaders who have sought to expand their political influence.

"Is this community going to see itself as another victimized minority or are they going to be the next successful immigrant group?" Rangel said. "There is an assumption that this community mimics the African-American community -- where it's been and where it's going. That's not the case at all. It has very little in common with the African-American experience."

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...ic-schools-latino-million-for-charter-schools


Theres some truth to what was stated by Juan Rangel, but at the end of the day we need to peep game and stop trying to unify with people that have "nothing in common" with us. How can you unify with another community when things arent right within your own community?



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Chicago Public Schools Narrows School Closures List

Chicago Public Schools narrowed its list of possible closures to 129 in a list the school system released late Thursday, as outcry against closing schools reaches a fever pitch from parents and a majority of aldermen call for a moratorium on charter school expansion during the 2014-15 school year.

CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett stressed the final list of closures would not include all 129 schools, but parents across the city, particularly on the South and West sides, are understandably nervous that the current round of closure discussions will fall on deaf ears and CPS has already made their choices.

Bennett and the school district have removed from closure consideration high schools, high-performing Level 1 schools and schools adding grades, schools with more than 600 students and a 70 percent utilization rate, and students that are considered on the rise.

Parents and other opponents of school closures argue that their neighborhood schools need to be utilized better by the district, instead of focusing on turnarounds and charter schools, and closing any schools would deprive their children of the only safe haven against violence (besides their homes) in their neighborhoods. Dwayne Truss, vice chairman of CPS' Austin Community Action Council, told attendees at a meeting Wednesday night, "CPS is perpetuating a myth that there's a budget crisis."

The meetings on school closures have become increasingly testy as CPS nears a March 31 deadline to submit its final closure list and has repeatedly said it needs to close underutilized schools to balance a $1 billion deficit next year. CPS currently has 403,000 students enrolled, but has space for 511,000 students. This has opponents of the closures focusing on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan for turnarounds and charter schools and asking where the money will come from, if the district is so strapped for cash.

The Sun-Times has published an amazing series of articles on the money given to United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), one of the larger players in the charter school game. UNO received a $98 million grant to build three schools, with much of the money being paid out in contracts to companies with ties to state Sen. Edward Acevedo, Ald. Ed Burke (14th), former mayoral candidate and Chicago School Board District President Gerry Chico, and UNO senior vice president of operations Miguel D’Escoto. D’Escoto resigned from his position Tuesday night, but UNO CEO Juan Rangel insisted the contracts awarded “followed the law.”

Below we've included copies of CPS' school closure list and an ordinance signed by 35 members of City Council Wednesday calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion during the 2014-15 school year.


fyi...a lot, but not all of the schools listed are in poor Black neighborhoods. And theyre being "underutilized" due to lack of resources; resources that are being spent of house illegals and fund shady side deals.

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<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Moratorium on School Closures on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/125477840" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Moratorium on School Closures</a> by <a title="View 's profile on Scribd" href="undefined" style="text-decoration: underline;" ></a> </p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/125477840/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" scrolling="no" id="doc_39920" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>





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UNO exec quits after grant payments to relatives revealed

The No. 2 executive of the United Neighborhood Organization quit Tuesday, eight days after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the politically influential charter school operator paid state grant money to companies owned by two of his brothers.

Miguel d’Escoto, who was UNO’s senior vice president of operations, resigned “by mutual agreement” in a letter submitted Tuesday evening, said the group’s CEO, Juan Rangel.

“Unfortunately, my being a member of UNO’s staff has become a distraction,” d’Escoto wrote. “I believe it is in the best interest of the organization and our community that I step down.”

Rangel said UNO’s contracting process “followed the law.”

“However, we want to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest,” said Rangel, who was a co-chairman of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2011 campaign.

D’Escoto was paid $200,000 a year by UNO and had worked for it for six years, public records show. He previously was a city transportation commissioner in the administration of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

D’Escoto’s brothers were paid with state funds under a $98 million grant UNO got to build new schools. The Sun-Times reported Feb. 4 that UNO’s contractors under the grant included d’Escoto Inc. — owned by former UNO board member Federico “Fred” d’Escoto — and Reflection Window Co., owned by Rodrigo d’Escoto.

Rangel said Sunday UNO would stop doing business with d’Escoto Inc. until after the organization completes an internal review of its contracting process.

Fred d’Escoto was the secretary of UNO’s board until stepping down at some point in 2010, according to public records. His company received its first payment of state grant money in August 2010 for work on the construction of the Soccer Academy Elementary School on South Homan Avenue.

D’Escoto Inc. has been paid more than $1.5 million so far for working as “owner’s representative” on that project and on two other UNO schools: in the Galewood neighborhood, on the Northwest Side, and at the Soccer Academy High School that’s under construction.

Rodrigo d’Escoto’s company was paid about $6.7 million for work on the Soccer Academy Elementary and Galewood schools, and the firm has a contract for about $3.1 million to help build the new high school.

Rangel has said UNO hired d’Escoto Inc. without seeking other bids but solicited multiple offers for the deals awarded to Reflection. UNO did not use the sealed-bid process that’s required to select contractors for new Chicago Public Schools facilities and other public construction projects.

In addition to the two d’Escoto-owned firms, other UNO contractors with the grant money included the sister of the charter group’s lobbyist Victor Reyes and the brothers of State Rep. Edward Acevedo (D-Chicago). Acevedo is a longtime UNO ally who voted to award the grant in 2009.

State officials who oversee the grant have said they are reviewing UNO’s spending. There are restrictions against conflicts of interest in the grant contracts.

^^^this is the way Daley did it. They learned from the best!!

http://www.suntimes.com/news/181877...ter-grant-payments-to-relatives-revealed.html


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Some may look at this as illegal kids being exploited for financial gains..and to a degree they are being exploited. But at the end of the day the Mexicans on the grassroots levels are about business. Hence the bulk of their people will be alright.

Im not knocking the hustle of the Mexican people. I applaud them for exploiting a system that was long exploited by mostly white folks. But still.....my thoughts are with poor Black people that are always left on the back burner.

Despite popular belief...Mexican people arent the model of unity. If they had total unity and love for one another then they would have no reason to escape Mexico. But..... they do have localized unity. Sometimes unity on one block is strong enough to conquer all sorts of things.

Black folks used to have this type of unity and organizational skills....but over time we seem to have gotten comfortable with bs. Hence the reason why we're ignored by from the White house all the way down to the Aldermans office.

Get on the Ball my Chi Town Brothas and Sistas!!!! Mexicans may not be our allies...but some of us need take notes from them on how to take care of business in the crooked USA.

 

[Chitownheadbusa]

Bronzeville parents says school closings violate kids’ civil rights

As Chicago’s top cop promises to keep children sent to new schools safe, a Bronzeville community group on Thursday called school closings not only dangerous but a violation of children’s civil rights.

Members of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization and of local school councils, who’ve filed Title VI civil rights complaints about previous school closures with the U.S. Justice Department, said that last year’s displacement of Price Elementary School students has resulted in numerous problems, including attacks on former Price kids around their new school.
(for those thats not in the Chi....one of the many factors behind Chicago's growing crime rate is the displacement of students/gang members via closing schools and gentrification)

The parents are calling for a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and with Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett. They want a neighborhood school in Bronzeville.

“We are here today to declare that school closings and displacing children primarily black and brown children is a civil rights issue,” said the Rev. Krista Alston, whose son attended Price until it closed. “It is a civil rights issue when children are denied the right to a quality education in their own neighborhood where they live.”
(The mass majority of the students getting screwed over are Black kids. But once again....they include "brown kids"; indirect cries for help from people that, as a whole, dont wanna deal with you)

Rather than send her son to the National Teachers Academy, 22 blocks away at 55 W. Cermak, she opted to homeschool him, she said Thursday morning outside Price, 4357 S. Drexel.

Now the Price building is used for weekend church services, as a training ground for a mentoring and tutoring organization and by the Chicago Police Department for K-9 training of dogs who provide school security, a district spokeswoman confirmed.

“The dogs are more important than educating our children?” Alston asked. Bronzeville has seen 22 school actions — such as closures and consolidations — since 2002. “CPS has done harm in Bronzeville,” said Falandra Amick, whose daughter attends Reavis Elementary School, one of 129 schools CPS has targeted for potential closure come June. “We should not have to go to sham hearings to beg for our schools with people we do not know,” Amick said.
(Yes...you shouldnt beg. But what you should do is strive to become more self sufficient. Educate ourselves like we did in the past. Continue to demand from your local officials, but dont become dependent on those that mean you harm)

The Kenwood Oakland organization has been fighting school closings for years, championing a plan called Bronzeville Global Achievers Village that would organize a network of neighborhood schools in the community under partnerships with universities and area nonprofits. The organization points out that 88 percent of the children affected by major changes to schools are African-American in a district that’s 42 percent black. Its members testified at a Department of Education Hearing on Civil Rights on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.

Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said last week that Chicago Police will guarantee safe passage for children who are sent to new schools.

On Monday, there was a scuffle outside the National Teachers Academy as children were heading to their bus stop — the third such incident since school started — according to Jitu Brown, an organizer for the Kenwood Oakwood group. A young man needed medical attention after Monday’s fight, he said. Chicago Police could not confirm that there had been three attacks. Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management would not provide information about 911 calls without a Freedom of Information request.

The National Teachers Academy is about 4 miles from Price, much too far to walk, the Bronzeville parents complain. CPS provided buses to transport the elementary age children between the academy and King College Prep High School, which is next to the old Price building. “That’s the only school where that has happened,” Marielle Sainvilus said, referring to the distance. “NTA was almost empty too, and it was a [high performing] Level 1 school, too.” In an emailed statement, CPS called the transition for students sent to the academy “safe and seamless,” and said “parents have expressed their satisfaction with the outstanding supports that have been implemented at the school.”

Academy Principal Isaac Castelaz said Monday’s incident was still under investigation by police and the district.

“I will say what happened was not a result of tensions within the school building, but things that are happening outside the school,” he said. The school has tried to welcome the 70 or so Price children who made the move with activities and extra support, but the transition will take time, he said. “It is a new neighborhood,” Castelaz said. “And joining a new community has its challenges. But I think that for us to do right by our kids, it means we have to work extra hard to build that sense of community.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/183834...chool-closings-violate-kids-civil-rights.html

 

[Greed]

Tribune's truancy investigation wins 2 national awards

Tribune's truancy investigation wins 2 national awards
Staff report
4:42 p.m. CDT, April 10, 2013

The Chicago Tribune today received two national journalism awards for stories that uncovered a devastating pattern of absences among African-American and disabled elementary students in Chicago Public Schools.

The investigative series, “An empty-desk epidemic,” exposed weaknesses in state law, breakdowns in communication between government agencies and the indifference of city officials who abandoned efforts to find or retrieve missing elementary students. Days after publication in November, state lawmakers began working on reforms aimed at saving thousands of children from isolation and failure.

The series earned the Freedom of Information medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors, an international organization that supports and trains journalists. IRE commended the Tribune’s lengthy battle for Chicago’s internal attendance data and for “refusing to take no for an answer.”

The series also won the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, an honor from Hunter College in New York City that highlights reporting that exposes widespread injustice and examines possible reforms.

Tribune reporters David Jackson and Gary Marx produced the series with data analyst Alex Richards and photographer Scott Strazzante.

Among the other IRE winners was “Crunch Time” by the Spanish-language daily Hoy Chicago, part of Chicago Tribune Media Group, which worked with CU-CitizenAccess.org to explore the often-tense relationship between the black communities and police departments in Champaign and Urbana, Ill.

Read the Tribune absenteeism series at www.chicagotribune.com/truancy

<iframe width="800" height="1500" src="http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/truancy/index.html" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[thoughtone]

 

[Greed]

New South Shore high school creates community rift

Black Middle Class Abandoning PG County Public Schools

As a compliment to the Maryland post, here's an example in Chicago.

New South Shore high school creates community rift
With current South Shore High School students likely not making the cut, the neighborhood is divided on what to do

I don't have kids, but this long-time shithole is my neighborhood high school.

The article is from 2011 and reports on the debate about getting rid of the old school and replacing it with "South Shore International College Prep," a.k.a. Shinier Turd. Different name, new building, same students and parents.

A new school with a new culture could attract more middle-class students from the neighborhood, he said.

Of the 3,168 public high school students in the attendance boundaries for South Shore High School, 93 percent go to school elsewhere, according to CPS figures.

The middle class parents who care about their kids didn't fall for it.

 

[Chitownheadbusa]

Re: New South Shore high school creates community rift

Attendance is a factor. Parents are lazy and truant officers are null and void now ah days. But that "attendance" issue is also being overused to justify and cover up other factors behind the school closings. The land and fund grabs hold more weight behind Chicagos school closings than those "empty chairs". What also holds more weight is the fact that Black folks are getting replaced in the workforce by "other people"; especially illegals that are willing to work without demanding much. The public school system, like the mass majority of the educational institutions in America, were designed to prepare you to work for other people...thats it thats all. When youre no longer needed...then you no longer need to be educated.

The fact that these parents have allowed themselves to be at the mercy of people that arent looking out for the best interest is the most disgusting part of it all. So many poor Black folks voted for Rahm and supported his cronies....one reason being because Obama cosigned Rahm....now all of a sudden Rahm is the enemy to many blacks in Chicago????

Black folks need to start educating our own. Simple as that

 

[Greed]

Jailer of Taliban Deploys to Chicago School to Foil Gangs

Jailer of Taliban Deploys to Chicago School to Foil Gangs
By Mark Niquette
Jun 18, 2013 7:00 PM CT

Between scouting banquet halls for eighth-grade graduation and disciplining a boy who bit a classmate, Principal Aaron Rucker spotted five gang members near William H. Ryder Elementary and pulled his silver Range Rover to the curb.

The former U.S. Army Reserve major and Chicago cop eyed them with suspicion and familiarity. One sauntered over, clasped Rucker’s hand and asked whether he needed anything. Not today, Rucker told him, but he’d let him know.

The exchange was part of Rucker’s street diplomacy to keep violence from spilling into his classrooms on the city’s South Side. These gang members, “old G’s” as Rucker calls them, have pledged to keep drugs and fighting away from school grounds. Their younger counterparts, however, use social media to intimidate students and have turned the neighborhoods around Ryder and other elementaries into free-fire zones.

“It’s not the old Gs shooting the young kids,” said Rucker, 45. “They don’t want that on their consciences.”

Rucker’s efforts to negotiate the gang world illustrate how violence pervades the third-largest U.S. school system, complicates efforts to address its $1 billion deficit and undermines the education of its students.

Last year, there was a shootout in front of Ryder, and Rucker watches constantly for signs that gangbangers are getting a grip on his older students. In August, his job will get more difficult as he takes in children from a school about five blocks away that includes rival gang territory.

Children’s Journey

When Chicago in May moved to close 49 underused and underperforming elementaries, it exempted high schools partly for fear of making students cross gang lines. Yet those gangs don’t just threaten older teenagers in a city where 34 children younger than 17 were among last year's 506 homicides, according to a Chicago Tribune tally.

So the city, which saw 26 shooting incidents and seven homicides this past weekend alone, will hold its breath as pupils from the shuttered elementaries navigate those same gang boundaries. A wrong step can get them shot.

“Nobody wants blood on their hands,” Rucker said.

The outcome will help determine the future of Chicago’s 403,000 students and its mayor, Rahm Emanuel, a 53-year-old Democrat who was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff before getting elected in 2011. Emanuel appoints the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools and its board members.

Warped Policy

The city’s schools have improved since 1987, when William Bennett, President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, labeled them the nation’s worst. The district last month projected the highest graduation rate since it began its current method of calculation in 1999. Yet even that record was 63 percent, about 15 percentage points lower than the national average.

And in the 106 high schools protected from closing for fear of gang boundaries, fewer than a third of 11th-graders met state testing standards last year.

“If your school policy is driven by gang violence, then you’ve lost the war, and you’re not doing kids and their families a service,” said Eric Nadelstern, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University and a former deputy school chancellor in New York City.

District officials reject that criticism as too simplistic because the decision not to close high schools also considered the number of students affected, distances they’d have to travel and preparation time. The city’s plan will ensure safety and improve education, said Jadine Chou, the schools’ chief safety and security officer.

`Hard Core'

“We actually believe that we have the right strategy to protect our children,” Chou said in an interview.

In any case, the violence helps explain why the district has handed some of its most challenging posts to people such as Rucker, who draws on all his experiences, from patrolling Chicago streets to walking a prison yard filled with Taliban detainees at Bagram Air Force base near Kabul, Afghanistan.

“I’ve watched over 37 prisoners that are hard core, that would like to slit my neck,” he said. “You think I’m going to blink? Sometimes, I feel like the mentality is that I have to go to war, meaning not necessarily against another regime, but against the ideas of gangs, poverty, ignorance.”

For Rucker, that means instilling a sense of both order and opportunity at Ryder, where 28 percent of children are special-education students and 77 percent poor enough for free or reduced-price meals. The school, with pupils in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, is bounded by territories of the Black P Stones, Gangster Disciples and their factions.

Morning Patrol

At 8:45 on a May morning, Rucker made his way around Ryder’s grounds, his boyish looks belying a sometimes labored gait, the byproduct of an ankle injured while reacting to a rocket-propelled grenade blast in Afghanistan. He took note of gang graffiti on the playground’s blue plastic slide.

A year ago, a shootout erupted in front of Ryder before classes, said teacher Michelle McDaniels. The incident was unremarkable, she said; students are well acquainted with gunshots and gangs that use social media to boast and harass.

Instagram photos and Twitter postings using the hashtags #blackpstone, #gangsterdisciple and the names of other Chicago gangs depict men flashing hand signs and rolls of $100 bills with messages like “He try to rob my fam so it’s goin down.”

YouTube videos show gang members on dark corners talking about territory, including a short posting from the area around Ryder controlled by a faction of the P Stones.

“It is very difficult to avoid gang activity when you are fearful that if you don’t join them, you will become victimized by them,” said McDaniels, 45, who teaches language arts and social studies.

Playground Shaming

Rucker combats that dread with a mix of nurturing and swagger. He isn’t shy about enumerating his accomplishments, and while he jokes with his staff and rewards them with flowers, he’s also quick to write up infractions.

He concentrates hardest on children who show promise but are struggling. In February, on Rucker’s first full day as principal, he noticed a crowd on the playground gathered around a seventh-grader and his grandfather. The boy wore a sign around his neck that said, “I steal, so watch me.”

The grandfather, Renard Alexander, said he wanted to teach the 13-year-old a lesson after he was caught stealing $25 in candy from a grocery store. Alexander, 53, a social worker who counsels parolees, said he didn’t think any other punishment would get through to the boy, whose mother was sent to prison for seven years for beating him.

Lifetime Scar

“Sometimes, physical punishment only makes the child more stubborn,” Alexander said later. “If you humiliate them in front of their friends, that’s what they need. If you want to act like a clown, then you’ll look like one.”

Rucker was furious. He grabbed the sign and threw it away.

“I said, ‘Listen to me, you are not punishing him, you are scarring him,’” Rucker recalled. “I said, ‘What you did, he will remember the rest of his life. But can you honestly say he’ll never steal anything the rest of his life?’”

Three months after the incident, Rucker noticed Gothic script inked on the boy’s hands. He insisted it was doodling. Rucker saw it as a sign he was interested in the Black P Stones. The principal told him to wash it off.

“He’s still sort of soft,” Rucker said. Any Ryder pupils involved in gangs outside the school are holders of drugs and lookouts for police, he said, though there are children “on the fast track to becoming shot-callers.”

Principal’s Collar

Rucker made his reputation at the school during one of his last patrols before he left the police force to concentrate on his principal job. Rucker had told a school assembly that he was a cop, but nobody believed him, said John Walker, a 14-year-old honor-roll student. Then Rucker caught Walker breaking the city curfew, and the student spread the word.

“I treat him more like as a big brother to me, because I don’t really have anybody to look up to,” Walker said in an interview at the school. “I don’t want to be a gangbanger like some young kids over there,” he said, motioning to the playground.

When misbehaving students face suspension, Rucker prefers not to send them home. Instead, he uses a process he learned in uniform: restorative justice.

Rucker makes children explain disputes. Finding a conflict’s root restores peace, he said, and making kids talk is part of almost every encounter.

“It’s easy for them to ‘Uh-huh, uh-uh,’” he said, mimicking students’ mumbled responses. “I want them to get in the custom of speaking articulately, even in the face of adversity or when they’re upset. Because violence starts with not being able to talk.”

Staring Down

A fifth-grader sent to Rucker for making what a teacher thought was an obscene gesture stood and gazed silently at the floor.

“Look at me,” Rucker said. “I’m not mad at you. I just want you to be honest and see what she saw. Does it look like you’re doing your work? Use your words.”

“I didn’t do nothing,” the boy replied, tears welling in his eyes. “I want to call my mama.”

“Stop,” Rucker said. “This is no time to cry right now. Look at me. Nobody’s here to harm you. Does Ms. McDaniels try to teach you? Use your words, son.”

“Yes,” the boy replied.

Rucker said he learned the approach in part by trying to defuse domestic disturbances as a cop, working as a patrolman in a district that includes Ryder.

‘Spring Butt’

He was raised in the far South Side neighborhood of West Pullman and attended Catholic schools before going to St. Norbert’s College in Wisconsin.

After losing his basketball scholarship when his grades slipped, Rucker joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to pay for school. He served on active Army duty for about a year after college.

Rucker earned the nickname “Spring Butt” at the military police academy for his eagerness to answer questions. He joined the Chicago Police Department in 1991. Later he pursued three postgraduate degrees and teaching certifications, landing his first full-time school job as a special-education teacher in 1997. For years, he kept three careers going: a daytime teacher, a cop on nights and weekends, and a periodic soldier.

Respect Redoubled

Rucker served two tours in Afghanistan, arranging the transfer of troops, supplies and even an Afghan family relocated for its protection. In 2003, he said, he was part of a military-police unit that processed and fingerprinted Taliban prisoners at Bagram.

The deployment reinforced childhood lessons. He remembers hearing about a cousin strip-searched by police on a sub-zero day. The cousin told his parents, who called Rucker’s mother, who phoned his aunts. By week’s end, every male in the family had heard, Rucker said, and many were left with a resentment of police that persists to this day.

In 2002, before Rucker arrived at Bagram, two men died when they were chained to ceilings and beaten, according to a 2005 report by the New York Times, which obtained a copy of the investigative file. Other prisoners were kneed in the legs, isolated and deprived of sleep.

Rucker said he had heard mess-hall conversations about mistreatment and didn’t want that to happen on his watch. Soldiers in his detachment provided inmates with Korans, prayer rugs and even tea, he said.

“This was the Taliban and it was a heated time,” Rucker said. “I just made sure my people did everything by the book.”

Instilling Order

Returning to Chicago after his 2005 discharge, Rucker married Crystal Watson, a fellow police officer. They have a 6-year-old daughter, Carleigh, who attends a private Christian school.

The family lives in a two-story brick house in the Beverly Hills neighborhood, a 10-minute drive from Ryder but a world away. He can point out all the homes of cops and firefighters who are his neighbors.

Ryder parents wanted Rucker as principal because they liked his resume and because he’s a male authority figure, said Gwen Holland-Hunter, the mother of a second-grader, who sits on the Parents Advisory Council.

“There’s a sense of order in the schools now,” she said.

That will be tested in August when Morgan Elementary, which is closing, sends students to Ryder. Some will have to cross boundaries between Gangster Disciples and Black P Stones.

War Children

Dropping off her fifth-grade daughter at Morgan on the May day after the Board of Education closed the school, Naiela Buckner pointed to apartments where she’s seen gang activity.

“It’s war going on,” said Buckner, 33. “The kids are going to get caught up in the crossfires.”

District leaders are vowing to keep them safe with customized security plans. That includes spending more than $15 million citywide on a “safe passage” program that pays community residents to monitor routes where students walk.

Administrators decided that no high schools would be shuttered to avoid “placing students in great harm,” Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Emanuel’s hand-picked superintendent, told a closing commission in January.

Yet independent hearing officers raised the same concerns about elementaries.

Ryder and Morgan “lie within depressed neighborhoods with histories of violence,” and students would have to cross gang lines and pass alleys and abandoned buildings, David H. Coar, a former federal judge, wrote in a May report. “Violence is a fact in the City of Chicago and in the neighborhoods involved in this school action in particular.”

City’s Gamble

At the May 22 meeting at which the board voted on the closings, Byrd-Bennett said that the district must reallocate resources because it has 145,000 fewer school-age children than in 2000. The closings are expected to save about $43 million a year in operating expenses while allowing the system to avoid $438 million in capital costs during the next decade.

Alderman Walter Burnett Jr. said at the meeting that savings didn’t allay his fears.

“It’s very challenging to say that we know that these young people are going to be safe,” said Burnett, whose family lived in Cabrini-Green, the mostly demolished project that long defined Chicago public housing’s reputation as violent warehouses for the poor.

Mayor’s Promise

Emanuel has said his administration will “ensure every child in this city has access to an education that matches their full potential.” As part of that effort, the mayor has tapped local companies to help raise $50 million in private money to pay for youth-violence prevention and intervention.

Besides the costs for increased school security, Emanuel has beefed up police patrols, which the city says has helped reduce crime. Through June 16, Chicago had 162 homicides and 738 shootings, declines of 31 percent and 27 percent, respectively, over the same time the year before, according to police statistics.

In hopes of making that trend hold as Morgan combines with Ryder, Rucker is working with police and school administrators on a transition plan. “Community watchers” will stand post, Morgan’s security officer will join Ryder’s, and Ryder will have access to a metal detector and enhanced camera system, according to a draft plan.

Even so, not all of the parent-patrol members monitoring Ryder’s grounds are optimistic.

“Let’s be real,” said Ronald Jackson, 50, a member who opposed the school closings. “It’s not going to really be a safe passage.”

Childhood Dreams

Rucker, walking to his car on a recent night, pointed to several boys playing basketball on the playground. He suggested the scene showed they’re not worried about safety, and he recalled Army commanders who ingrained in him the idea that fear is something that can be controlled.

Inside the school, it isn’t so easily dismissed. A first-floor bulletin board displayed Martin Luther King Day essays by fourth-graders asked to write about the civil-rights leader’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

All five children had the same dream: to survive.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...-deploys-to-chicago-school-to-foil-gangs.html

 

[Greed]

Harper High School

Be aware - Each link connects to a web page with embedded audio that may or may not autoplay.

Harper High School, Part One
FEB 15, 2013
We spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. We went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances.

PROLOGUE
At the first day assembly, the freshman seem confused and nervous while the seniors are boisterous and confident. It's exactly the kind of first day stuff you'd expect at any school. Until Harper Principal Leonetta Sanders calls for a moment of silence to honor the students Harper has lost in the last year. Then Harper doesn't seem so ordinary. In the clean and orderly halls of Harper, we meet the staff as they shepherd the students through new schedules and rules while they also try to reassure parents about the frightening rise in shootings in the neighborhood. (7 minutes)

ACT ONE - Rules to Live By.
So many of the shootings in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, the neighborhood where Harper High sits, are characterized as "gang-related." Often, the implication is that gang-related means there is a reason to the shooting — huge, established gangs shooting it out over drug territory. Gang-related often implies you must've deserved it, a certain level of 'what goes around comes around.' Reporter Linda Lutton talks to dozens of Harper students who say adults don't understand that that's not the way it works. Gangs don't operate the way they used to. (13 minutes)

ACT TWO - A Tiny Office on the Second Floor.
Reporter Alex Kotlowitz spends time in the social work office, where the effects of gun violence are most often apparent. Early on in the year, social worker Crystal Smith spends time with a junior named Devonte, talking him through his grief and guilt after Devonte accidentally shot and killed his 14 year old brother last year. Crystal also meets with Devonte's mother, who has some understandably confused feelings towards Devonte. (16 minutes)

ACT THREE - Game Day.
By early October, it's been pretty quiet at Harper, as far as gun violence goes. But on the day before the homecoming game, during a pep rally, a senior named Damoni who is both on the football team and nominated for Homecoming King, gets word that a good friend of his, James, has been shot. James is also a former Harper student with many ties to the school. Reporter Ben Calhoun follows Principal Sanders and the rest of the Harper staff as they jump into action and try to ward off more violence, keep the students safe and grapple with whether they need to cancel the Harper High School Homecoming. (18 minutes)​

Be aware - Each link connects to a web page with embedded audio that may or may not autoplay.

Harper High School, Part Two
FEB 22, 2013
We pick up where we left off last week in our second hour from Harper High School in Chicago. We find out if a shooting in the neighborhood will derail the school's Homecoming game and dance. We hear the origin story of one of Harper's gangs. And we ask a group of teenagers: where do you get your guns?

PROLOGUE
Principal Leonetta Sanders is worried that in the wake of a recent shooting, some of her students at Harper might be in danger of retaliatory violence. The threat is so real, she's considering canceling the school's Homecoming football game and dance. The possibility of canceling is heartbreaking to her, though, as all she wants is to give her students one normal high school dance. On Homecoming day, she gathers her staff to announce that there has been word of more shooting in the neighborhood. (5 minutes)

ACT ONE - The Eyewitness.
Most murders in Chicago happen in public places — parks, alleyways, cars. Scores of Harper students will tell you they've actually seen someone shot. Reporter Alex Kotlowitz talks with a junior named Thomas, who has seen more than his fair share. Thomas meets with his social worker, Anita Stewart, and tries to explain what it feels like to hold all of these images — and feelings — inside of him. He worries he can't hold on to them much longer. (10 minutes)

ACT TWO - Your Name Written On Me.
Reporter Ben Calhoun tells the story of Terrance Green, a 16-year-old who was killed three years ago but is still an iconic presence at Harper. Ben asks Terrance's dad and his best friend: Why did this one kid's death lead to slickly produced songs, tribute videos, a gang in his name, assault rifles on the street and an entire remapping of the violence in the area around Harper High School? (15 minutes)

ACT THREE - Get Your Gun.
Chicago has strict gun laws but, obviously, teenagers are somehow getting their hands on guns. Lots of guns. We've all heard about straw purchasers and gun shows but 15-year-olds aren't spending hundreds of dollars to buy guns, or exploiting gun show loopholes. Reporter Linda Lutton gathers together a group of Harper boys and asks them: where do you get your guns? They tell her not only where they get them, but where they keep them, too. (6 minutes)

ACT FOUR - Devonte, Part Two.
In the first hour of our Harper High School shows, Alex Kotlowitz talked to a junior named Devonte who a year earlier had accidentally shot and killed his 14-year-old brother. Devonte was forming a strong relationship with Crystal Smith, one of the social workers, and beginning to come to terms with both his grief and guilt. Alex checks back in with Devonte and finds out that his life has taken some troubling turns. (8 minutes)

ACT FIVE - Reverse Turnaround Backflip.
Late in the semester, Principal Sanders takes a look at her budget. It doesn't look good. She talks with Ben Calhoun about what is going to change — and who won't be at Harper — next year. (7 minutes)

ACT SIX - We Are Harper High School.
Harper High School isn't alone. (3 minutes)​

...

 

[Greed]

Lewis Points Finger At ‘Rich White People’ For School Problems

This reminds me of Kanye West's "George Bush doesn't care about black people" moment.

Very pointless and ineffective.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis Points Finger At ‘Rich White People’ For School Problems
June 19, 2013 6:53 AM

CHICAGO (CBS) – A day before the first set of school closings was set to begin, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis had some harsh words about how the Chicago Public Schools are funded and managed, blaming much of the district’s problems on racism.

WBBM Newsradio’s Nancy Harty reports, at a luncheon on education reform, Lewis told members of the City Club that Chicago is the most segregated city in America.

“When will there be an honest conversation about poverty and racism and inequality that hinders the delivery of an education product in our school system? When will we address the fact that rich white people think they know what’s in the best interest of children of African-Americans and Latinos, no matter what the parents’ income or education level?” she asked.

Lewis said minority neighborhoods are disproportionately disinvested by the city, and see more foreclosures and school closures.

“It’s as if there were a concerted effort to make sure that these are not walkable, thriving, healthy communities,” she said.


Lewis also blamed banks for driving people out of their homes through illegal foreclosures, resulting in underutilized schools and a smaller tax base.

“If the banks had not crashed our economy, the district would now have nearly $180 million more to invest in our classrooms,” she said.

As for efforts to reform schools, Lewis said CPS should work with teachers to improve schools, and not appointed board members who’ve never stepped foot in a classroom.

“When did all these venture capitalists get so interested in the lives of minority students in the first place? There’s something about these folks who love the kids, but hate their parents,” Lewis said. “As long as the status quo of elites continues to impress upon our district, these horrible policies that may work very well in corporate environments – but are simply not good for children – the Chicago Teachers Union will be portrayed as oppositionists.”

She said inequality has prevented people from embracing more revenue for schools through higher property taxes.

“If you look at the majority of the tax base for property taxes in Chicago, they’re mostly white, who don’t have a real interest in paying for the education of poor black and brown children,” she said.

She offered suggestions for school funding instead of more cuts and layoffs – pointing instead to TIF funds, taxes on commuters and financial trades, and what she called a more equitable tax system to bring in billions of dollars for schools.

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/06/19/lewis-points-finger-at-rich-white-elites-for-school-problems/

 

[Greed]

Guards help escort Chicago kids to new schools

So, it's been obvious for a while that the main opposition to the school closings, by parents, did not revolve around the education the child was getting at the old school and the education the child will be getting at the new school. The concern revolved around security. People wanted their kids to stay at bad schools, so the child wouldn't have to cross gang territories. And of course, that problem will be the one addressed least effectively.

Guards help escort Chicago kids to new schools
By DON BABWIN | Associated Press
3 hrs ago

CHICAGO (AP) — Thousands of Chicago children whose schools were shuttered last spring walked to new ones on the first day of school Monday under the watchful eye of police officers and newly hired safety guards there to provide protection as the kids crossed unfamiliar streets — many of them gang boundaries.

No incidents of trouble were reported, police said. While that didn't surprise parents and grandparents, they said they were still concerned that the city's obvious show of first-day force won't keep their children safe in the weeks and months to come.

"I think it's just show-and-tell right now," said Annie Stovall, who walked her granddaughter, 9-year-old Kayla Porter, to Gresham Elementary School, which is about five blocks farther from home than Kayla's previous South Side school. "Five, six weeks down the road, let's see what's going to happen."

Kathy Miller stood in front of Gresham Elementary with her three children, waiting for a bus that would take them to another school. She scoffed at the Safe Passage program, in which guards clad in neon vests line Chicago streets, saying it won't be long before brightly colored signs announcing the program's routes will be riddled with bullets.

"Those signs don't mean nothing," she said.

The preparation and show of force shows what's at stake for Chicago Public Schools, the nation's third-largest school district, after it closed almost 50 schools last spring in the hopes of improving academic performance and saving millions of dollars. About 12,000 of the district's 400,000 students were affected by the closures.

For months, parents, teachers and community activists have warned that forcing children to pass through some of the city's more impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods — where some already walking in the middle of the street to avoid being ambushed by gang members — to get to school puts them at undue risk.

Statistics suggest those concerns are valid. An analysis of Chicago crime data by WBEZ-FM found that in 2013, there have been 133 shootings and 38 homicides in and around areas that have been newly marked as Safe Passage routes. And on Monday morning, sanitation workers discovered the body of a man inside a garbage can about a half-block from one of the South Side's Safe Passage routes. Police said they think he died overnight, but provided no other details.

If the attention Chicago received after a 15-year-old honor student was killed about a mile from President Barack Obama's home in January is any indication, there is no doubt a similar media firestorm will occur if a child is caught in gang crossfire on the way to or from school.

One officer standing outside Gresham Elementary summed up the pressure the police department and City Hall are under this year, joking that children "better not get a splinter or we'll all be out of a job."

With the hope of preventing problems, the financially strapped city hired 600 workers at a rate of $10 an hour to supplement a Safe Passage program that has existed since 2009, — launched the same year a Chicago honors student's beating death was videotaped.

Police worked with residents and CPS to map out routes near 52 of the so-called "welcoming schools" that are taking in students from the closed schools. Along those routes, the city has put up scores of "Safe Passage" signs.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel also deployed city departments to repair sidewalks, replace street lights, paint over graffiti and board up nearly 300 abandoned buildings.

On Monday, Emanuel didn't mention Safe Passage, focusing instead on changes that have been made for this school year, starting with a full day of kindergarten. But last week, he told about 1,000 people at a training session that the program is "about more than just building a route to school.

"It is about building a route to college, career and beyond ..." he said.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday he was pleased with how things were going, particularly in what he saw as evidence of community and parent involvement.

"I'm seeing small groups of kids being walked to school by their parents, or their older brothers or sisters," McCarthy told reporters. "This goes to the heart of what we've been talking about since I've been here, which is . to me, this is an opportunity. This is true community policing."

But crime statistics and shootings, like the one in the Uptown neighborhood last week along a Safe Passage route, only underline what parents say is a fact of life: Danger lurks.

"They will ride to school for the rest of their life, as long as I'm in Chicago," Jennifer Press said, explaining her determination to keep her kids out of harm's way and from gangs from preying on them. She was at Gresham Elementary to register her 4-year-old daughter there because the pre-Kindergarten class at a school closer to her home is full.

For her part, 9-year-old Kayla professed she wasn't worried about all the gangs and the dangers of the streets that she's heard her grandmother, Annie Stovall, and other grown-ups talk about — as long as her grandmother and aunt who walked with her to school are nearby.

"I'm going to be OK, as long as they're with me," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/guards-help-escort-chicago-kids-schools-161610038.html