“He will face Tammy Duckworth, a former state and federal Veterans Affairs official, who was appointed by Rod Blagojevich to a job she could hold while waiting to run for office. And Raja Krishnamoorthi, a lawyer turned businessman and former state deputy treasurer, responsible for losing millions of taxpayer dollars in the Brightstart Swindle”

1. Two of three namedemloyees were also tenured faculty when they retired. Their retirements were dictated in part by long-standing union contracts.

2. Two of the three retiees with payments for unused sick days had their retirment packages approved by the current Chacelloor (retained by Mayor Emanuel) and approved by the current Board of Trustees (also appoited by the current mayor). For the current mayor to say after the fact that it is ourageous is nothing less than hypocrasy.

It is also nothing less than hypocrasy for the current mayor to question this pactice when Vice Chancellors and Associate Vice Chancellors are hired based on their connections to Rahm, Barack, Michelle, Mike and Lisa (Madigan), etc. and so forth and so on get appointed to jobs they are in no way qualified to hold. But then again, based on donations to campaigns, the are magically and mysteriously qualified. As an aside, how did the former president of Governor’s State University end up on the Board of Trustees despite a “checkered” presidency that ended in resignation end up on the CCC Board?

If Mr. More had done his homework (and BGA as well), they would have found that these practices were part of negotiated union contracts. And if if Mr. More and BGA had actually looked into CCC, they would have found worse. For instance, they would have found that the new presidents have all recieved “salary adjustments” that put their salaries at $156K (yes, $156,000) after only six months on the job and having done nothing. They may have also found that these “adjustments” did not need CCC Board approval. They may have also found that the COO may or may not live in the city as required under city rules.

“Under the new sick day policy, [non-union] employees will not be able to ‘cash out’ sick days at the end of employment,” City Colleges Vice Chancellor Laurent Pernot said in an email. The change was made to “save taxpayer resources,” Pernot said.

Saving taxpayer dollars? How much has Mr. Pernot’s salary and title ballooned since he was hired? Lok at the CCCs Board reports and you’ll see Mr. Pernot wallowing in the slop be handed out by the Chancellor (with the current mayor’s approval).

Is it truly Emanuel’s position that our children don’t deserve professional, experienced educators in the classroom, but should make do with fresh-out-of-college Teach for America interns who have all of five weeks’ training and who are in the program primarily for a resume entry?

The CPS educators I know – who Emanuel says are “only doing a job” – spend hours beyond their classroom time grading papers and devising lesson plans in the evening – and often spend their after-school hours with students doing tutoring or advising the few extra-curricular programs that survive in the CPS system. They do all of this for wages that often don’t allow them to meet the city’s residency requirement without considerable sacrifice, or having a spouse or partner with another full-time job.

Emanuel’s belief in charters and their “mission driven” teachers carries forward the erroneous and near-libelous belief that anyone who is employed by government is, by definition, incompetent and lazy and undeserving of a fair wage and working conditions. (I’d like to hear his response if the same sort of conclusory thinking was applied to his tenure as a public servant.)

It’s particularly galling now that charters are being forced to report on their actual track records & graduation rates – which often are no better than the so-called “dysfunctional public schools” they replaced, even when they cherry-pick their students. When are we going to admit that the public school system standing alone cannot cure the ills and dysfunctions caused by poverty and class & educational differences?