Clarice Berry, President of the Chicago Principals Association. A shill for the union?
A few days ago the principal at Blaine elementary school on the City’s north side blasted Rahm Emanuel as a bully.
First with a piece on the op-ed page of the Sun-Times.
Then with a blistering appearance on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight.
In the Sun-Times’ piece Troy A. LaRaviere wrote, “I did not travel across an ocean and risk my life to defend American freedoms only to return and relinquish those freedoms to an elected official and his appointed board of education.”
Damn.
In response Rahm’s political adviser John Kupper attacked the Sun-Times for publishing the op-ed piece and then attacked the President of the Chicago Principal and Administrators Association for being a union shill.
Referring to LaRaviere, Kupper wrote, “First, this guy got a full page in the Sun-Times on Saturday. Now, a story as well? When does he get a column?”
Kupper went on to chastise the newspaper for quoting “at most, four disgruntled principals” without mentioning there are more than 600 CPS principals given more authority by Emanuel.
Clarice Berry, president of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, has argued that, while LaRaviere is “one of the few principals willing to stand up” to City Hall and the central office, he “may have opened the floodgates” among those who feel the same way about intimidation, budget cuts and unfunded mandates.
To that, Kupper wrote, “Clarice Berry is not representative of all principals. She’s a CTU shill.”
Damn!
Clarice Berry was not amused.
“I am appalled at the demeaning and disrespectful characterization by Mr. Kupper and, by extension, to my principals,” Berry said.
“I want the mayor to direct his employee to make a public apology to me and to my members, whom he insulted in public. I hope the mayor reprimands him. He should work on the political side — not the education side. We want the politics out of our job.”
Berry accused Kupper of “engaging in the same kind of intimidation and repression of principals” that her organization and its members have been complaining about for the last week.
“What credentials does he have to assess that my principals’ complaints don’t have validity just because he works for the mayor? l invite him to shadow a principal in an urban school to see how tough the job really is.”
Ooh.
Damn!
Fred Klonsky 
I wonder how long Kupper will continue to believe that a lame and obviously political raspberry constitutes an effective response to the well earned criticisms of his bosses control of the schools via those he appointed to run them.
Reblogged this on Dolphin and commented:
God Bless the Chicago Teachers Union, the Principals, the involved parents…
I love how the rhetoric is continuing. As long as it does, we can be assured that a Rahm staffer will step in something. Moreover, it affirms in the minds of progressively more principals that the waters of political change are “just fine”. Why not jump in?