Charter school students protest what Rahm calls “special sauce” fines. Photo: PURE.
Noble Street Charter schools are Rahm Emanuel’s favorites. He includes them on his lists of Chicago’s best schools, while always leaving high performing public schools off his list.
But now it has come to light that a revenue source for Rahm’s favorite charter schools are punitive fines for violating school rules.
Noble’s discipline system charges students $5 for minor behavior such as chewing gum, missing a button on their school uniform, or not making eye contact with their teacher, and up to $280 for required behavior classes. 90% of Noble students are low-income, yet if they can’t pay all fines, they are made to repeat the entire school year or prevented from graduating. No waivers are offered, giving many families no option but to leave the school. The groups pointed to a recent Illinois State Board of Education report showing that 473 students, or 13% of the previous year’s student body, transferred out of Noble over the summer of 2010.
“Noble is forcing low-income parents to choose between paying the rent and keeping their child in school,” said Donna Moore, parent of a student at a Noble school. “This is a hidden tax on Chicago’s Black and Latino families, and it’s wrong.”
The Mayor supports this fund-raising effort, calling it the “special sauce” that pays for charter schools.
Monday students and parents protested the special sauce at City Hall.
Fred Klonsky 
The fines some charters impose on students are a way to “guide” more difficult students out of the school. As a teacher in a neighborhood public school near a Nobel charter I regularly see students who transfer out of the charter due to mounting fines or the requirement that they re-take an entire school year due to not serving detentions or failing a single course. Who gets pushed into the neighborhood schools by these policies? It’s students who have special needs, students who are defiant, students who have little support at home… and of course students whose families are too broke to pay the fines.
Let’s close the achievement gap by dealing with real issues, not by gaming the system to create a multi-tiered system.