The Piccolo Occupation celebrates a victory last night when the CPS agreed to actually talk to parents and teachers at the school before closing it down. Photo: Katie Osgood.
The tactic of occupation chalked up another victory last night as community members triumphantly walked out of Brian Piccolo school in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood. The school was occupied Friday night after CPS and Mayor Emanuel refused to meet with parents opposed to handing the school over to private management.
What timing! I retire in June. Presently state retirement pensions are not taxed by the state. This bill, just introduced in Illinois, would change that. Give an old guy a break. Let your state legislator know. No on HB5488.
This past summer, while traveling through mostly beautiful Wyoming, we stopped to pay our respects at Heart Mountain. 11,000 families of Japanese decent were jailed in a concentration camp located there during World War II. Today is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the order by Franklin Roosevelt.
My friend Matt Farmer on Ken Davis’ Chicago Newsroom deconstructs the use of fines at Noble Street charter school. What the Mayor calls “special sauce.”
Did you know that a prisoner in one of the overcrowded prisons of California died while on a hunger strike?
Being a Wall Street banker is not good for your health reports the WSJ. It hasn’t been really great for the rest of us either.
One of my finest teachers was near tears the other day. Her student had asked her, “You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?” Within the context of this teacher-bashing climate, that remark was just too much to bear, and I hugged her as she cried. Less than a mile away, her Governor had thumped on a podium at Molloy College saying “if they want the money, perform” as though she and her colleagues were trained seals.
Words will soften as elections near. Fingers will wag as politicians admonish the public to “not bash teachers.” What educators and those who love them will remember, however, are not the words, but the actions. Those who doubt that should just ask the kids in my cafeteria. They will tell you that is so. – Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York. She was named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State.
Fred Klonsky 