Chicago School Kids Blast Rahm Emanuel In Poetry Slam

Chicago public school kids lambaste Chicago's own Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel during a 2014 spoken word group piece. Video link below. Transcription from YouTube page.


TEAM Englewood Spoken Word 2014 Group Piece


Hide Your Schools, Hide Your Homes, Hide Your Children, Cause He's Wrecking it All

Hammer in one hand paint brush in the other
Rahm Emanuel is single handedly destroying our city
Mr. wreck it Rahm
look what Chicago is becoming
bending the rules to fit in the lie of building a new chicago
building new streets
when his own plan got some pot holes

Tearing down our dreams
its getting really windy in these streets
Red X's mark the spots where his wrecking balls are next to drop

We are not included in the Blue Print of the New Chicago: we're being pushed out
our buildings transformed into condos - and we know those AINT FOR US
Thermal shock is setting in from the whipping wind of the heartless sins
of the mayor

Norfolk Railroads is pushing us southern folk out
Homes replaced with tracks
that will be laid
where our heads used to
If dry wall could talk
it would speak many prayers to keep our homes
now vacant lots that hold lots of remnants
of 60 years of backyard barbeques
baby showers
and when electric sliding was the super power of the summer
55th and Normal
we are losing all of this

Torturing, tormenting us as we choke on the ashes of our memories
*Cough Cough*
Let's hope we don't get sick
Because he's closing all our clinics
He needs to get treated
And then maybe we can sew back on the other half of the middle finger
that he has been giving us

Its almost as if he's E Manuel of E-Limination
Exportation!
Extermination!
Eradication!

Step one: Take away our schools
Step Two: Put them out their home
Lastly: Destroy it all and
Deny Deny Deny
But remember, to always keep a straight face when you lie!

Try to pour the cheap paint over our eyes while stealing dollars from under our mattresses
There's not enough? Close their schools
But he's building a new DePaul stadium
Using our TIF funds to Transform the South Loop into the Promised Land of redevelopment
and some river walk
of course downtown
The paint is starting to streak.
Building a new Chicago or extending a new lie!
How can a city so in debt blueprint something so expensive?

Banneker Elementary - Closed
Woods Elementary - Closed
Yale Elementary - Closed

The paint is cracking:
From every west side basketball brotherhood
To south side sisterhood bonds through pom-poms
And every poetry team that had dreamed of being on this very stage
has been ripped apart,
Goodbye

Bad foundation for our future generations
struggling with 40 students in one class
so they learn from the streets
There's not money for our schools, but, there's enough to build a New Chicago
But that New Chicago is NOT for us.
The paint is wearing thin and so was our patience
Irreparable damage has already been done

Time to stop the destruction of OUR city
Prevent the further corruption of our already twisted politics of Chicago

25% of Chicago school children won't amount to anything
25
50
75
100% sure that we will be something
See Rahm we are mathematicians
your lies are adding up
and this new Chicago is just another one of them

And Chi-town is Obama's old stomping grounds.  And remember this: Chicago black activists blasting Barack Obama's State of the Union.

Watch the kids on YouTube  here.

The Chicago Public School Strike, From The Teacher's Perspective

I wrote about the Chicago Public School strike, and from what I had read my sympathies did not lie with the teachers. However, I saw this link to a Chicago Sun-Times article with a series of letters to the editor- including one from a former CPS teacher- on a 'friend's' Facebook page. Her husband is a teacher in Chicago and agrees with everything said. Now I question who is right, so I thought I would present the other side of the story. There always is one, after all.

I worked for eight years with the Chicago Public Schools, and while I am beginning my first year of teaching with a district outside of Illinois, I thought it important to point out some of the reasons why these teachers are on strike, and why I chose to leave this difficult, dysfunctional district.

Things I did while a teacher with the Chicago Public Schools:

1. Bought 90 percent of students school supplies every year. With my own money. Every year.
2. Bought a projector with my own money.
3. Bought a document camera with my own money.
4. Bought a copy machine with my own money because the teachers at my school were not allowed to use the one in the office.
5. Went weeks without getting paid due to mistakes made by the board. Multiple times.
6. Dodged bullets. Literally. More than once.
7. Packed my belongings in plastic bins the minute I walked in the door of my class due to a bed bug infestation that was ignored by the administration.
8. Saw an attempted murder on the school’s security camera.
9. Had two cell phones, one iPod and an iPod dock stolen from my locked room.
10. Was “given the option” to purchase my own classroom key after a substitute walked off with mine. I was told the school could not afford to purchase one for me.
11. Taught a class with 41 seventh-grade students in it due to a teaching assistant principal’s decision to not teach that year.
12. Spent hours on the phone during peak times when CPS mistakenly dropped my newborn from my insurance plan.
13. Bought supplies and awards with my own money for an entire middle school’s science fair because the company who supplied awards refused to work with CPS due to unpaid bills.
14. Broke up a fight between two pregnant seventh graders.
15. Raised test scores every year. The Chicago Teacher’s Union fights not only for pay increases, but for fair working conditions and fair learning conditions. The teachers have made great gains in achievement over the past few years. Imagine what they could do if the above issues were a thing of the past.

Jen Knoblock, Edgerton, Kan.

Read the other letters here.

Greedy Chicago Public School Teachers Strike

For the most part, teachers are overworked and underpaid. Yes, they work short hours and they get 3 months out of the year off, plus all those other vacation days; but they have to prepare lesson plans and grade papers, and oftentimes deal with troublesome kids. Depending on where they teach, that is. Most also have to pay for supplies out of their own pockets.

The average K-12 grade teacher's salary is a paltry $42,000.00, with an average starting wage of $39,000.00. That's not much for shaping the minds of our youth. And according to this NY Times opinion piece, those salaries are dropping:

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender.Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

So how much do you think those striking 30,000 or so Chicago Public School teachers make per year?  Must be pretty dang low, right?  Wrong!  The average teacher's annual salary- not counting benefits- is a whopping $74,000.00 to $76,000.00! That's almost $7,000 to $9,000 more per year than the average salary of someone who has toiled as a teacher for 25 years. And almost double the national average.

So what are they striking about?  Mayor Rahm Emmanuel already upped the salary increase to 16% over 4 years, though the union had wanted 30% over 2. Some of the concessions the union (CTU) is demanding seem fair enough:

We have restored some of the art, music, world language, technology and physical education classes to many of our students. The Board also agreed that we will now have textbooks on the first day of school rather than have our students and teachers wait up to six weeks before receiving instructional materials.

and

“We are demanding a reasonable timetable for the installation of air-conditioning in student classrooms--a sweltering, 98-degree classroom is not a productive learning environment for children. This type of environment is unacceptable for our members and all school personnel. A lack of climate control is unacceptable to our parents.

This has more to do with the kids than the greedy teachers. But the rest of the sticking points have to do with the teachers. As expected, there are differing opinions as to what the major sticking points are. Emmanuel says it now boils down to two issues:

From Emanuel's perspective, after weeks of negotiation, only two issues remain unresolved. The first is a principal's right to choose the teachers that work in his or her school. "It's essential that the local principal who we hold accountable for producing the educational results not be told by the CPS bureaucracy ... and not be told by the union leadership who to hire," he said.

Second, he added, is the impasse over how to implement a recent law that requires standardized tests to count for, initially, one quarter of all teacher evaluations. "I'm telling you, these were the final two issues," he said, exasperated.

Longer work hours are also a bone of contention- they have one of the shortest school days at a little over 5 hours- as well as health benefits. They don't want any changes to their benefits since they have it pretty darn good.

It should also be noted that Chicago teachers pay only 3% of their health insurance premiums. [snip] The CPS is possibly trying to raise that amount by 7% so the teachers would be paying 10% for their health insurance premiums (note: the majority of taxpayers footing the bill for these teachers are paying 25% or more for their own health insurance).

Chicago schools have a huge fail rate with about 40% of students dropping out, and they want their salaries raised?  No wonder they don't want evaluations. They want to sit back on their haunches getting premium pay for few hours.  At least Emmanuel is bucking for the kids (he feels longer hours are helpful) the teachers obviously are not.