CN March 24, 2016

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Ken

 

Steve Rhodes, reacting to the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court this morning calling Mayor Emanuel’s pension plan for City workers unconstitutional, tells us -“Now there’s no wiggle room whatsoever. Now there’s no negotiation that can take place.”

The Editor and Publisher of the Beachwood Reporter says the decision certainly wasn’t surprising.

“Every indication is that they knew this was going to go against them,” he explains. “So what you have is a couple of years, really…of just wasted time in which the hole has been dug further instead of finding some way to bite the bullet. And a lot of that, I think, is political theater. It’s so we can say, well, we tried. And I said I wouldn’t raise property taxes…unless it was a last resort. And even if you know that’s what’s coming down the road, playing out the string like this was kind of reckless, really.”

Rhodes also has some thoughts about the Illinois Primary, in which Governor Rauner’s heavily-backed candidates lost very badly.

“Bruce Rauner thought, from his comments in the past, that he could create enough misery by holding back  spending on social services and not getting this budget passed, to drive a wedge between Michael Madigan and Democrats who would finally say – we give up, because we need to take care of these people and these constituents of ours.” But it didn’t work out that way, Rhodes explains. “Instead, he’s only united the reformers and the progressives with the establishment people. So you see Chuy Garcia backing Michael Madigan in a case like this. It reminds me of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. As grotesque as his existence is, we need him on that wall!

Rhodes also offers some thoughts about selecting a new police superintendent, a decision that will be among the most critical Rahm Emanuel ever makes as Mayor. “If you take a job like this you have to know that Rahm is really the show and he’s on you. He is on you every minute of the day and you’ve got to be willing to put up with that,” he says.

But, he adds, there’s another impediment facing a new chief. “With the Department of Justice embarked on their probably year-long investigation,” he explains, “That’s going to consume your first year here.…and then when that’s done chances are good that there will be a consent decree in which the DOJ will essentially run the department for a while. So it may not be that attractive of a job.”

A couple of weeks ago, Steve Rhodes authored an op/ed for Crain’s entitled “Michael Ferro is Killing Chicago Journalism.” He tells us that the piece garnered lots of positive comments. An important aspect of his contribution was a discussion of Mr. Ferro’s philosophy of appointing individuals to the position “editor/publisher.” This, Rhodes says, is troubling.

“The demarcation is pretty clear; the editor runs the editorial content,” He explains. “The editor oversees the editors and the writers and the reporters and is involved in that sort of thing. What the publisher does is so different than that. The publisher has under him or her the ad staff, sales staff, circulation people dealing with if you have a print product, all of the business functions, so they are completely different functions.”

It was the old church and state of newsrooms, he says, but this combination job “…is usually done in order to ensure that no church and state exists, in order to ensure that the business goals and the editorial goals are aligned.”

And here’s Michael Miner’s story on the editorial change at Chicago Magazine.

Rhodes has much more to say on the subject, and you can watch the entire show above or read the transcript as a Word document here: CN Transcript March 24 2016

Or you simply read the transcript in full beyond this break. Continue reading →

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CN March 17, 2016

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Ken

 

Mary Ann Ahern says she’s surprised that John Escalante didn’t make the final cut when the Police Board announced its three finalists yesterday.

“You’ve got to give him credit for sort of holding the line,” says the veteran NBC5 political reporter, and for “being a completely different personality than Garry McCarthy. He certainly has the support of the rank and file. They like him, but they’ve decided, the police board has gotten to these three and said these are the best that they’ve seen.”

That said, Ahern asserts that the Mayor has another important consideration. “If he does not pick an African American police superintendent I think he’s got a problem.”

So who has the edge, in her view?

“You know the Mayor in this respect does have a bigger world view having been a congressman, having been the Chief of Staff to the President. So I think that he… I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, but I think the outsider, Dr. Cedric Alexander, would be the frontrunner,” she tells us.  Alexander, from the Atlanta area, is African American.

“But here’s the real key for him,” she continues. “Very close with Charles Ramsey. Charles Ramsey is now being paid quite handsomely to be the advisor to CPD. And if you’ve got Charles Ramsey saying, “Here’s my guy”… Now I don’t know, perhaps  Deputy Superintendent (CPD Deputy and fellow candidate) Eugene Williams is also close with Ramsey. But as an outsider with a Ramsey link that says a lot.”

Bruce Rauner emerged from Tuesday’s primary a significant loser, according to Ahern. He lost three significant high-stakes, big-money contests, including the closely-watched Ken Dunkin/Julianna Stratton race.

“I think it is time for him to blink,” Ahern claims. “And he also has to look ahead, does he really want to be a one-term governor? One year of the standoff. Here’s your time. The primary is over, let’s make a deal.”

“Are they going to get past the egos and get over this and move on? ” she asks. “I know there’s no one more entrenched in what he thinks is going to happen on his behalf than Rauner – than we’ve ever seen before. But honestly, is he going to get term limits? Is he going to get the Union…a lessening of the Union roles? All of that is not going to happen.”

We talk about Bernie Sanders’ loss to Hillary Clinton in Illinois. The race, she explains, was far closer than it may have appeared. “If he had perhaps just a bit more time, you know what helped Hillary Clinton – early vote. Early voters still went for her, and as it got closer his surge came so late that folks finally over the weekend Monday Tuesday went, “Well maybe he’s got a chance. What the heck, it’s not a wasted vote.” If he had had perhaps another week it might have been a different story.”

And we touch on Mayor Emanuel’s diminished – some say non-existent – role in the election. His severe unpopularity forced him to sit on the sidelines. Ahern got to watch it up-close.

“Bill Clinton in town three-four times, I mean how many times could they bring the guy back even on election day?” she asks. “So the first time he was in I asked one of the Mayor’s staff, “Where is the Mayor? The Mayor loves Bill Clinton. Where is he?” “Oh they met last night.” I said, “Oh,” Included that in my story. I find out later the Clinton folks were not happy to hear that. They basically said, “Stay away. Stay away.”

Ahern says one of the cruelest ironies for Emanuel is that, while his own popularity lags, his old adversary is finding a new voice.  “At the time, she explains, “Chuy Garcia, perhaps there were people that had a lot of reservations, but it is so interesting to me that a year later Chuy has grown, has emerged as this rock star. Mike Madigan wanted Chuy Garcia’s endorsement. That just said it all.”

We talk about he strenuous challenge Kim Foxx now faces after her stunning win over Anita Alvarez. With numbers like these, we agree, it can be difficult to overcome unrealistic expectations.

“Let’s hope that she has some excellent staff,” Ahern opines. “Because I think even within the State’s Attorney’s office there is concern. There are 900 attorneys. They’ve been there a long time. They look at her resume and say, “Ooh, it’s a little thin. Are you going to be able to do this?” And yet she has a very… You know her compelling story, her personal story is just amazing.”

You can read the entire transcript of this show in a Word document here:CN transcript March 17 2016

Or read the full transcript below.

Continue reading →

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CN March 10, 2016

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Ken

 

Bruce DuMont was at a Bernie Sanders rally a few weeks ago, “And one of their delegates was making the point that Hillary Clinton’s top surrogate, top supporter in Illinois is Rahm Emanuel. She was making the point that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for Rahm Emanuel…So this was an opportunity for the black community to send a message to Hillary Clinton. So should she fall below what would be expected for her to do in Chicago that could be a factor.”

We talk local and national politics on this week’s show.

The shock of Clinton’s loss in Michigan, the role of NAFTA and super delegates in the 2016 contests, the perhaps surprising resilience of Anita Alvarez, the Tribune Editorial Board’s endorsement of, wait for it, Marco Rubio, and how, exactly, Trump happened.

(Note that this conversation happened just before the canceled UIC rally on March 11.)

DuMont says Trump’s success is due in large part to his mastery of media and message. His key message, DuMont says, is “I’ll fix it”.  And, he adds, “Donald Trump knows the media better than anyone that has ever run.”

“I mean Donald Trump is a celebrity,” he says. “We cannot forget that for almost 15-16 seasons he was host or the star of a top 10 show. He was a much bigger television personality than Ronald Reagan was a movie personality. And so built into that is 15-20 years of the American people, many of whom are demographically correct, they would tune in every single week and they would see this guy. He would be demanding of 8 to 9 people accountability. “You’re fired. Why did you do this?” And I think they see in that person they see a take-charge guy who is going to fire people and dump them if they’re doing their job.”

We talk about the hour-long, rambling “victory speech” Trump gave after Tuesday’s primaries. It looked more like a home-shopping network show, DuMont says. “But there was not one cable network that pulled away. They did not carry Hillary Clinton (live). You know why? Because when he is on camera, love him or hate him the numbers go up, and the news media and television it’s about ratings. It is about ratings. Period.”

It’s a wide-ranging conversation, but we find some time to assess Rahm Emanuel’s current political status. Dumont tells us an interesting story about a time when he used to have Rahm Emanuel on his radio show as a regular, perhaps 30 years ago. Afterward Emanuel would often join Bruce and others for dinner. “So we got to know each other pretty well. But I said to him at one point, ‘Rahm,like every mother has told her son, you’ve gotta be nice to people going up the ladder, because you’re gonna meet the same people coming down.’ And he stopped me, I’ll never forget this, this is almost a direct quote. He said, no, Bruce, if I get up the ladder, I’m not coming down.”

You can read CN transcript March 10 2016 as a Word document.

And, the transcript is included in full below. Continue reading →

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CN March 3, 2016

Posted on March 7, 2016 by Ken

 

What’s the future of Chicago’s planned manufacturing districts? Does anybody care? Do we still even need them?

These are more than academic questions in at least one part of Chicago – the vast tract of gradually emptying land between Clybourn and Elston on either side of the Cortland bridge.

Preserved as a manufacturing district in the early 80’s to protect it from the encroaching residential and commercial development,  the area’s changed dramatically in the past couple of years as two massive plants have moved out and their old buildings demolished.

The area was incorporated into the new 2nd Ward a couple of years ago. The new Alderman has sent strong signals that he’s ready to let the market dictate retail development, along with condo and apartment towers that could take advantage of potentially beautiful river views.

But North Branch Works sees a very different opportunity. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, executive director Mike Holzer tells us, to redefine industrial corridors and manufacturing districts to accommodate modern manufacturing processes. A new community could rise there, he says. A web of tech-based jobs for today’s economy, all in a city that desperately needs to put people to work.

It’s a big battle, brewing just beneath the surface of public attention. But it says a lot about what we want our city to be in the next few decades.

You can see North Branch Works’ proposals HERE. 

 

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CN Feb 25 2016

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Ken

 

 

If Bruce Sagan has anything to do with it, the Sun-Times and the Reader will be around for a long time.

Sagan started in journalism in 1951. He bought the Hyde Park Herald in 1953 for $2,500. He is still, 63 years later, its publisher. During his career, he has been something of a tech entrepreneur, being among the first to incorporate lithography into his printing process, import images using facsimile, and help create the national distribution infrastructure for the New York Times.

Today, in his 87th year, he’s been called upon to head the new Board that operates the Sun-Times and the Reader.

We spent an hour talking journalism, distribution methods and the future. Especially the future of the Sun-Times.

And that’s the big news. Bruce Sagan believe there is a future for the Sun-Times.

“What we have to do is we have to make the Sun-Times viable in the present economic circumstance,” he explains. “We have to figure out how it moves over the 10 or 20 years from print to the web, and we have to find out how you keep second voices. Because the funny part about it is that if you think about where the web is going and that you can get paid on the web the way the New York Times is, conceivably second voices are easier to maintain than they are now in a circumstance in which the economic model is dying. And if we can figure that out and survive the transition, you know 25 years from now there will still be a journalism portal called the Sun-Times and it will still be turning City Hall over.”

Sagan says the economics for a brand like the Sun-Times  look better and better as the company moves away from print. Journalism, he says, was never the big cost.

“The average American daily newspaper budget, when it was in the best of times – the  1980s – (journalism) was 20% of the newspaper’s budget. 80% was spent on manufacturing and distribution and selling,” he claims.

Guess what number that 20% is close to, he asks. “The amount of money you paid at the newsstand. In other words, if you would pay on the web a dollar to some branded good newspaper site like the Sun-Times, if you would pay that dollar a day that you now spend on the newsstand you would give us the best newsroom we’ve ever had. That’s all we need is your dollar. We don’t even need the advertising.”

Well, you got me at the 20%, we tell him, but how realistic is it to expect people to pay that dollar?

“Very,” he replies.

It’s a matter of convincing the public that they should support the actual creators of content, he says, and he remains confident that, with the passage of time, consumers will be increasingly willing to pay for quality content digitally as they do now at the newspaper box.

“Somebody is going to figure it out,” he insists. “The issue obviously is that you could support an editorial department from the pennies for a single story to the annual subscription at $500 without any difficulty, if the reader wants you.”

We ask Sagan about the Reader, which also falls under his purview at the new holding company. We tell him we’re worried about them.

“We’re worried about them too, like we’re worried about the Sun-Times,” he responds.

He says he’s known the Reader’s staff from the very beginning.  “The Hyde Park Herald office was down the street from Bob Roth’s apartment,” he laughs.

“The Reader problem is exactly the same as all the other newspapers in the country, including the weeklies, including the Hyde Park Herald,” he continues. ” I mean everybody has got the same problem, which is that the electronics and the change in retailing together are having an impact on the economic models of all kinds. You know, take the classifieds. Well, granted the Reader gave a lot of it away free, but they made a lot of money from the business stuff.”

He says he meets regularly with the Reader staff and the Board is “revising the work on the staff on the sales end of it.”

But To Sagan, the bottom line is, “We intend to keep it. We intend to make it run.”

That being said, the life-long Hyde Parker sighs as he tells a story. “My granddaughter came to the University of Chicago to go to graduate school in history, and she found her apartment on Craigslist.”

We ask Sagan about the account of a staff meeting at the Sun Times documented by Neil Steinberg. At that meeting, Sagan said of the Sun-Times, “If I have my way it will be here forever.”

“Right,” he responds.

We ask,  Do you base that on anything other than just wishing?

“At the moment, basically no. I mean tell me what the circumstances are ten years from now. If you said to me what do you see in the future, where I’m describing an internet circumstance where everything is on the internet and there’s no print, okay. But there’s a brand called the Sun-Times and they are still writing for it, and there’s a newsroom called the Sun-Times and they are the second voice in the community and people trust them.”

“What I’m saying to you is that what’s now in the Sun-Times is terrific. They wrote an editorial on Rauner last week which was devastating. I don’t think anybody else has done that and said really out front what’s happening down there in Springfield? That’s the Sun-Times.”

Which brings up editorializing in political campaigns.

You know very well, we ask,  that there was a day when the editorial staff was ordered to write an editorial in favor of Bruce Rauner at a time when the paper was operating under a Board mandate not to write editorials endorsing any candidates.

“Yeah,” he replies. “That was a learning experience for someone who suddenly discovered that doing endorsements was important, important for the newspaper and its position in the community.” He was obviously referring to investor Michael Ferro, who at that time played an active role in directing the paper.

Sagan regrets that the company had to divest itself of all its community and suburban papers, especially since community newspapering is his background. But he says the past few years of cuts have been necessary to get to a debt-free situation.

“The truth of the matter is that we didn’t have enough resources to do all of that. We were doing everything badly, and now I think that we’re concentrating on the Sun-Times and we’re doing a better job,” he insists. “So what we’re saying is we are specializing in these areas of sports, of government, of politics. Clearly that’s where our direction is and we’re good at that.”

Finally, we ask about the Sun-Times’ Web site, which is criticized by almost everyone who uses it. Here’s his response.

There will be a new site in March.

Ken:      That soon?

Bruce:  Yes. It won’t be perfect, but it will be good and it will get better and we will grow to do all of the things a site can do.

 

Meanwhile, Bruce Sagan has been in his role for about two weeks, and he says he’s having lots of meetings. But the meetings are about finances, not journalism.

“The journalism of that institution is pretty good. They don’t need me. They need me to see to it that it’s viable and continues.”

A full transcript of the show is here: CN transcript Feb 25 2016

 

 

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CN Feb 18 2016

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Ken

 

George Schmidt was a teacher in the CPS system for 28 years. He’s been affiliated with the CTU for much of that time. He’s currently a member of its House of Delegates. He’s also the founder, and still the driving force behind, Substance News, now entirely on-line. He has more than 40 years of observing the system, agitating for change and union organizing.

Schmidt was deeply involved with the response to the “Tentative Agreement” between the CTU and CPS that was floated about two weeks ago. He gives us an inside account of the intense lobbying that went on before the “Big Bargaining Team” vote that rejected the offer unanimously on  February 1.

“Democracy intervened in an explosive way,” he begins.

CTU President Karen Lewis issued a statement indicating the CPS had put some major new issues on the table, and that the two sides might be approaching an agreement.  As we now know, the so-called “tentative agreement” collapsed a few days later when the “Big Bargaining Unit” unanimously rejected it.

But Schmidt tells us the inside story. The Big Bargaining unit, he says, was deeply divided.

“At that moment, according to my sources on the big bargaining team, the team polled itself internally and it was 26 to 14 “no” already,” he claims. “It was not unanimous, but then every day after that – Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to Monday, every day after that as the yes votes got a closer look at the pieces, like this no economic layoffs, but, or community schools but-and, you know, people kept saying, “We’re not getting anything. We’re taking a 7% pay cut. We’re supposedly getting these things we want to make the school better, but we’re really not getting those either because they’re bullshit.”

It took a couple of days for the “yes” votes to change their minds, Schmidt says. “So finally between the Wednesday of the week when Karen said, “We’ve got a deal,” or Jesse was saying, “We seem to have the framework for a deal,” they were saying slightly different things, very different in reality, the big bargaining team people debated it so that by Monday, which was the day the executive board was supposed to meet, the big bargaining team voted unanimously saying, “No, 40 to nothing, no.”

And Schmidt says that was just the beginning. The “no” sentiment was strong at every stage of the process. “But I’m convinced,” he reports, “at every point the no vote of the big bargaining team, the 40 to nothing would have been reflected at every other level where we have democratic representation.”

So why the apparent disconnect between the bargaining team and the members? Didn’t the Board of Ed agree to eliminating layoffs for the duration of the contract? “The selling point supposedly to the big bargaining team was we’re getting contract language that says no economic layoffs,” Schmidt explains. “And people said, “Well what about other kinds of layoffs?” …Well, there’s 1,000 synonyms that you could use for reducing forces without saying it’s an economic layoff… And people started asking and the answer was well, right. …people have now lived under the contract that we won in 2012 after the strike,” he says, “and have pretty much seen the holes in that, and there are a lot of them.”

“I mean just to take one example of an explosion that happened from the previous contract. At the end of 2015 the Board of Education’s medical insurance was reorganized because the Board was allowed to. And a lot of us found out the hard way that things had changed radically.  The members at this point having won the strike in 2012 and lived under the contract since 2012 are really demanding that every paragraph not only be explicit but explained. And I don’t think any vote is going to get through the members until that happens, until the leadership can give you everything that’s in the deal and explain it in a way that’s going to be satisfying.

In the current environment, Schmidt tells us, it might be more acceptable to go for a two year contract, instead of four. “I think two years would be sellable because there’s too much suspicion and the suspicion is not going to go away. You know it’s not bad faith. Forrest Claypool walked into a minefield…” says Schmidt.

Can anything be learned from this exercise?  Schmidt offers some advice to top managers. “…it may even be an argument for a less open collective bargaining, a little more secrecy that you don’t go around saying things until you’re sure you’ve got the deal,” he speculates.

But more important to Schmidt is his assertion that teachers have fallen behind economically in the past four years, particularly after the contractually-obigated four-percent raise was simply rescinded by the Board in 2012.

“No contract is going to be acceptable to the members of the Chicago Teachers Union who vote on it, if it includes a pay cut of any kind, period.”

 

We also ask for Schmidt’s reaction to Governor Rauner’s Wednesday budget speech. He says he understands the arguments CEO Claypool and Mayor Emanuel are making that CPS schools don’t get a fair share of state funding, but he says State aid is a secondary, and much smaller portion of overall CPS funding. The vast majority comes from Chicago taxpayers. “In fact,” he asserts, “Chicago property taxpayers, – that’s residential, residential to commercial and industrial taxpayers as its four main categories – we’re paying less proportionately, as the Civic Federation’s been pointing out for years, than our neighbors. If you go to the six county Chicago area the majority of school districts have proportionately much higher property taxes than we do.”

And that hurts CPS, he says, when it goes to the Capitol looking for money.

“So you do have that argument and that’s what Chicago runs into when you get to Springfield and say, “Well we want more money from Springfield and if you don’t give it to us you’re a racist.” You know the average state legislator no matter what his diversity composition maybe would just say, “Wait a minute, let’s look at this fact. The people in Wilmette are getting what they’re paying for. Why aren’t you willing to pay for that too? At least look at the local property taxes as well as constantly saying Springfield Springfield Springfield.”

You can read a full transcript of today’s show here: CN transcript Feb 18 16

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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CN Feb 11 2016

Posted on February 12, 2016 by Ken

Do you favor school reform? Peter Cunningham does. For more than 20 years, he’s been a spokesperson for the Chicago Public Schools and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Now his own non-profit, funded by “pro-reform funders”, helps to “drive positive narratives about education reform.”

For example, Education Post, Cunninghan’s non-profit, is out with an opinion piece in Catalyst this week decrying the CTU’s rejection of the Tentative Agreement with CPS by a 40-0 vote.

We note that “school reform” has become a sort of brand, owned by the well-funded advocates for charter schools and government programs such as Race to the Top. But Cunningham says he keeps an open mind. “I think that there’s a lot of common ground between those on the reform side and those who are opposed to reform,” he explains.

We begin by talking about February 29, which promises to be a very difficult day for both district-run and charter schools. CEO Forrest Claypool has ordered about  hundred million dollars in cuts at the school level. But Cunningham says it had to be done.

“I read something the other day about one school that’s got to make up $108,000. That’s in the middle of the year. Now this is a school with probably a 5 to $10-million budget, so it’s a lot of money but it’s not an overwhelming amount of money. These are not really really really deep cuts. These are – everybody’s got to do some sacrificing, everybody’s got to share,” he tells us.

We ask Cunningham for his reaction to the rejection of the tentative agreement. “President Lewis was bargaining in good faith,” Cunningham claims. “She believed it was a pretty good deal. She does believe – I think she is convinced that we are in a higher state of crisis than we had been in the past and that shared sacrifice is required. Notably she had really lowered the rhetoric.”

Cunningham affirms his admiration for Lewis’ rhetorical skills. He notes that the union successfully made the point that it didn’t “trust” CPS.

“You know there’s probably examples in the past where that’s justified,” he concedes. “I know in 2011 one of their annual raises was rescinded, so that’s certainly not something that builds trust. But you have to look at what’s happened in the last couple of months with Forrest. I mean he closed down three charter schools. He opened two. He reopened the neighborhood Dyett High School and agreed to it… He’s fighting very hard to protect their pensions. I mean this is a deal that would protect their pensions. You know I think they have to give him the benefit of the doubt and they should look at his record. He doesn’t have a long record of being a Union buster. He’s got a record of being a strong efficient manager and that’s what the district needs.”

A major point of contention in the tentative agreement was a call by CPS for a buyout of older, more experienced teachers. In order for the proposed contract to succeed, more than 2,000 teachers and para-professionals would have had to agree to it. Teachers complained that the deal would rob the system of its most valued professionals. But Cunningham believes the CTU leadership wanted the deal.

“The folks at CPS told me this, but Karen has not challenged it, is that this was her idea, and the reason why she wanted this was because the step and lane increases stop for older teachers. Some of them are at the top of the pay scale, and this was a way to give something to her older teachers. So you know, that’s what I was told,” he asserts.

Cunningham says that the buyout could have been good for the system. “The goal isn’t to get rid of great teachers, it’s to get rid of the ones who are tired and who want to take this bonus and move on, and a lot of people reach that point,” he explains. “So, it didn’t require all of them to take it, but you know they were very explicit about it. If a whole lot of higher paid teachers took this buyout they would be able to preserve more lower-paid teachers and that would reduce the need for – that would help reduce any pressure to layoff or close positions, etc.”

We differ sharply on the role and value of charter schools, and our conversation gets fairly deeply into the effect of charters on CPS overall. But Cunningham, while expressing some reservations about charters, is an unabashed fan. He reacts to our assertion that in some communities charters are a kind of hostile takeover.

“If it’s a hostile takeover by anybody it’s by parents,” he responds. “Parents are choosing these schools, right. We give parents a choice in making those choices. They are saying, “We are really frustrated with schools where half the kids don’t graduate. We are frustrated with schools where there’s no AP. We’re frustrated with schools that don’t get kids into college. We’re frustrated with schools that send kids to college and find out they need remedial education.”

We react by asserting that in many communities it’s really a false choice when the district-run school is in pathetic condition and a shiny new school opens a block away. And the debate continues.

Cunningham, who has so often been “at the table” for policy duscussions about public education concludes  by telling us that the outlook is not good. Americans are gradually disinvesting in public education, because they’re participating in it less and less.

“Public support for public education is declining, and it’s really at risk,” he explains. “I think if you look around the country you see first of all 3-million kids in charters, almost 2-million home schools, and 5-million in private schools. That’s 10-million kids who are not in the traditional public school system. And you have something like 28 states now that are doing some kind of a voucher and you have something like 30 states that are still funding education at pre-recession levels, pre-2008 levels. I think there’s frustration with the education system and taxpayers are saying they’ve had enough. Only about 20% of taxpayers have kids in the public school system.”

“I say this is why we need accountability. We need accountability to be able to make the case that we’re getting results, and without accountability you can’t go to Springfield or state capitals around the country and say, “Listen, we’re doing the right stuff here for kids. You’ve got to do a better job of funding us.” In fact, what most of the politicians are saying is you know we’re frustrated. We give you plenty of money. We spend more than any state/country in the world, blah blah blah, and they don’t want to fund education, so I think it’s a real problem.”

Read a full transcript of today’s show here: CN Transcript Feb 11 2016

other notable links:

A deep dive into Noble Charters at Catalyst

Cunninham in the Trib: Beware of elected school board

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CN Feb.4, 2016

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Ken

 

Here’s a quote from one of David Kidwell’s most recent Tribune stories about Chicago’s red-light camera saga.

For years, city officials have been unable to explain how camera locations were chosen when Bills was running the program.The trial portrayed a brazen scheme in which some of the most important camera placement meetings occurred over corned beef lunches at Manny’s deli, and often ended with a stack of $100 bills passed from bagman to Bills in a manila envelope.

The “Bills” mentioned here is John Bills, who was recently convicted on 20 counts of tax fraud, mail fraud, extortion, conspiracy and bribery.

If you’d like to better understand who John Bills is, and how he got to run the whole program that netted the City 6/10ths of a billion dollars in mailed-in traffic fines, please watch this show.

How did it work?

“He had a handler,” says Kidwell. “Redflex had hired a consultant friend of his in Chicago who was acting at the bagman. He was meeting with the CEO of the company and the top salesman of the company on a regular basis. They bought him a condominium in Arizona near their headquarters. Not only were they giving him cash bribes, they were sending him on vacations and paying for hotel rooms and golf outings and they bought him a car, they bought him a boat, they bought him a condominium in Arizona. All this time he is talking to them about how he was going to expand this and we were going to have speed cameras. We’re going to have more red light cameras. We’re going to have school bus cameras. The list went on and on and on.”

The program billed Chicagoans more than 600 million in fines, but remarkably there was never a study conducted on whether there was a rationale for a given intersection getting a camera. And over the years, thousands of fines were paid for tickets that shouln’t have been issued.

“We have been able to uncover,” Kidwell explains, that “almost every time you turn around there are literally tens of thousands of tickets that should have never been issued in both the Red Light Camera Program and the Speed Camera Program. It essentially illustrates how the people of the City of Chicago have been plugged into a cash machine and the City Hall has walked away in a lot of instances.”

In the course of our discussion we try to define the boundaries of where the press is entitled to have access to City documents, such as memos, emails, texts and phone logs.  Kidwell takes the position that any and all documents should be available for scrutiny, uness specifically exempted for legal reasons – and even those should be released after an appropriate period of time. That even includes documents created during the discussion, or deliberative phase of decision-making.

“What that does,” Kidwell insists, “Is it puts everybody at City Hall on notice. Look, when you say something don’t say something stupid or embarrassing and don’t be corrupt. But it also forces decisions and debate out into the open.”

Needless to say, the Mayor and his attorneys don’t agree. At several points in our discussion, Kidwell says the City’s attitude is “It’s none of your business.”

We ask Kidwell about the infamous interview he had just nine months into Rahm Emanuel’s first term. He was seeking documents, and the Mayor wasn’t being cooperative. It’s a remarkable exchange, and the Tribune later transcribed the full interview and posted it. You can find it HERE.

Also, read a full transcript of this interview HERE:CN transcript Feb 4 2016

 

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CN Jan 28, 2016

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Ken

As we post this show we’re hearing that the CTU and CPS may have come to some sort of tentative agreement that could, among other things, avert a teachers’ strike.

On today’s show we talked with CPS finance expert Rod Estvan (Policy Director at Access Chicago) about the whole sweep of thirty years of schools financing. If you’ve ever wondered how we got where we are today, let Rod explain it.

“The first thing we have to accept as citizens of Chicago,” he asserts, “is, our property tax rate for schools is lower than anywhere else in Cook County. That’s a bitter pill.”

That’s been the case here, he says, since before Richard J. Daley.

“If you compare our rate to poor towns like Harvey, Illinois,” he continues, “It’s not even comparable. So we have a lot of money we could raise that way, but there’s real pressure not to raise those taxes – not even to discuss that issue.”

But if it were to happen, he explains, it might open the door for the grand compromise that could be on the horizon. Chicago gets the money it needs for its pension contribution, the poorer suburbs and towns finally get an equitable share of state revenues, and, as Governor Rauner insisted in his State of the State, no community is harmed, meaning wealthier municipalities get to keep their support for their own schools as contributions for poorer municipalities rise.

There are no details yet, but the CTU statement last night seems to indicate that the union might be willing to give up some portion of their “pension pickup” in exchange for job security measures and changes in the teacher evaluation regimen. If that is the case, it would affect teachers financially.

“Oh yeah,” Estvan says, “This would be a real cut to teachers if they take it. And it’s a decision that I think the members of the CTU have to make on how much this will help them keep their jobs.”

There’s been come speculation that both CPS and CTU may have been driven to an agreement because the threat from Governor Rauner to introduce legislation allowing the State to assume control of CPS presents a far more dire scenario.

“Well, the proposal in the Republican bills – there’s one in the House and one in the Senate – has no containment of what that entity that would take over CPS would do. And I think it’s unconstitutional and I’ll tell you why. The Constitution of Illinois requires our state to support public education. It’s in the Constitution. This bill specifically exempted liability from the State of Illinois once a takeover took place. So we have a takeover with no money, with no accountability,” Estvan explains.

We’ve often discussed the pension mess on Chicago Newsroom, and most of our guests have agreed that today’s massive deficits have their origins in the pension-payment “holidays” authorized in the 90’s and beyond. But Estvan, whose academic studies of the system go back much further, adds a different dimension. The Chicago teachers, he says, never merged their pensions with other systems.

“The reason that these teachers kept a separate pension fund, and Chicago was created in I think 1895 and the statewide pension fund for the rest of the state was 1933. And they had a chance at several points to merge, and they didn’t because they didn’t want their funding to be part of the political process,” he asserts.

By “political process,” Estvan is referring to the fact that the teachers’ pension fund had always been a separate line on Chicago tax bills. But that changed in the mid-nineties when Mayor Daley assumed control of the school system.

“Now Daley makes it part of the political process,” Estvan explains. “Everybody approves it. And the most cynical part of this whole thing is that it was a Republican governor and Republican members of the House and Senate that all supported this takeover and a changeover of the money.”

So is a grand compromise possible? Yes, Estvan says, but it’ll cost a lot of money.

“You have to have at least $400 to $500-million in additional revenue. And if you don’t have that there’s going to be losers. And so the question (Senate President) Cullerton asked yesterday after the speech is great if he wants to do this, but if you want to hold harmless all your districts in the State we’re talking a lot of money, and where’s he going to get the money from except from taxes?”

If you’d like a rich history lesson about pension holidays, the Schools Finance Authority, politicization of Chicago’s pension money and lots more, this show is for you.

You can read a full transcript of the discussion HERE: CN transcript Jan 28 2016

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CN Jan 21, 2015

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Ken

Such a wonderful conversation today with Ethan Michaeli about his remarkable, sweeping history of the Chicago Defender (and of Chicago itself). It’s called, appropriately, The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper  Changed America.

It’s an hour long, without interruption, and there were still hours more to talk about.

The Defender started on Robert Abbott’s landlady’s dining room table in 1905. It grew and grew until it was a major force in the election of aldermen, mayors and even presidents. It tracked the growth of the modern civil rights movement from its very beginnings.  It was a major force in Chicago politics and culture, yet so much of its story was completely unknown in present-day Chicago. Until now.

Watch it now, or download the audio podcast and take an hour-long walk on a brisk winter day.

Also, here’s a full transcript of today’s show: CN transcript Jan 21 2016

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