Amazing video! Parent Wendy Katten questions CPS Chief Administrative Officer. Gets no answers.

From Tim Furman’s blog:

Wendy Katten, founder of Raise Your Hand For Illinois Public Education, questions Tim Cawley, Chief Administrative Officer for Chicago Public Schools, on March 19, 2013, at CPS headquarters. Cawley came to CPS through the politically connected Academy for Urban Schools where he was a finance person. Prior to that he lead Morotorla’s North American cell phone business.

I’m not sure when I last saw a Motorola cell phone in North America. So think about that for a moment.

Cawley has no education experience whatsoever.

Cawley has no answers about who is making the decisions about which schools are going to close. Wendy Katten explains that parents can’t seem to get a meeting with an actual decision-maker, and that the utilization formula is highly flawed and based on an impoverished vision of public education.

This is the sort of exchange that would never occur in the suburbs, where the school employees understand that they work for an elected school board, and that at some point the parents have to be answered with honesty. In Chicago, the school board is appointed by the mayor and is accountable only to him, which is why Tim Cawley feels initially that he can laugh at questions and then later completely avoid them.

Filmed by Jill Wohl, of Raise Your Hand.