Quit crying, Houston. At least you're not Chicago.
Chicago makes Houston's school wars look like tiddly winks.
Chicago Lincoln Park High School, Wikimedia Commons
Houston has suffered through a genuinely difficult year coming to grips with reforms imposed by the state to fix its public school system. Now that the reforms are producing positive results, perhaps the city can heave a sigh, sit back and look forward to a less contentious school year next Fall.
In the meantime, Houston can always comfort itself that, even at its worst, even when things seemed as if they couldn’t possibly have been more messed up, it could have been worse: Houston could have been Chicago.
Chicago, in fact, is the place Houston needs to keep in mind. It’s what happens when school wars really go off the rails – badly enough to wreck an entire city.
The Chicago Teachers’ Union is about to enter into negotiations with the Chicago Board of Education on a package of demands worth $50 billion. That’s not a typo. It’s a B. To put it in perspective, the entire tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.
So that’s a joke, right? The teacher’s union couldn’t possibly mean it.
Sure they could. Because when they sit down to deal with the school board, guess who will be sitting across the table from them? The school board are all appointees of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. And guess who Brandon Johnson is?
Brandon Johnson is a ten-year veteran organizer for the teachers’ union. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the union continued to pay him his $75,000 a year salary while he ran for mayor. By the way, during that same time according to the Sun-Times, Johnson spent $30,000 in campaign funds on hair styling. For himself.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Creative Commons
It was not like he was spending it on hair styling for needy children. This hair was all on his own head, if that gives you some insight.
The Chicago Teachers’ Union was the main political force behind running off former mayors Rahm Emmanuel and Lori Lightfoot to make way for Johnson to become mayor. The union’s main issue with Emmanuel and Lightfoot was school reform. They’re against it. Way against it.
Hand it to them. They elected their own mayor. Now they’re going to sit down at the table with their own mayor and divvy up $50 billion with him. Every kid in the system will drop whatever else he was doing and go into hair styling.
When Johnson was still in the union, he was a leader in its extreme radical wing opposed to school reform. He helped purge union leaders suspected of being soft on reform.
Why does Chicago need school reform? As an entity whose mission is education, the Chicago public school system is a massive utterly shocking failure. One in five eighth-graders can read at grade level. The other four in five are destined for what the child advocacy groups call the kindergarten to prison pipeline.
By opposing and defeating every significant attempt at reform, the Chicago Teachers’ Union perpetuates a slow-rolling holocaust of minority children.
So how did the guy get elected mayor? A big reason is the feckless cowardice of conservatives, moderates and liberals in Chicago. And what makes them so feckless? Well, for one thing, if and when they do dare open their mouths, the teachers’ union eats them up like fat gooey pizza slices.
Fox News: Teachers' Union President Raises Eyebrows
In a recent interview, Chicago Teachers’ Union President Stacy Davis Gates labeled people who question the union’s $50 billion demand as “conservatives,” but she obviously meant anybody who gets in her way:
“Conservatives don’t even want Black children to be able to read,” Davis Gates said. “Remember, these same conservatives are the conservatives who probably would have been championing Black codes, you know, during reconstruction or thereafter.
“So, forgive me again if conservatives pushing back on educating immigrant children, Black children, children who live in poverty, doesn't make my anxiety go up. That's what they're supposed to say. That is literally a part of the oath that they take to be right wing.”
In other words, they’ve got their guy in as mayor. They’re going in for the big haul. If you put your hand up to ask, you’re a KKK racist.
And what if they do get their $50 billion? It will tank the city. But tanking the city will bother them about as much as those thousands of kids they’re sending out the door every year functionally illiterate. Chicago teachers will cry all the way to the salon.
I don’t think Houston has any idea how lucky it is.
So far.
Philip Howard will be proud of you for writing this story. Spot on
Democrats and unions care only about themselves and not the people they are supposedly serving