Mayoral hopeful Rahm Emanuel called for longer school days in Chicago schools during a visit Wednesday to a charter school on the Southwest Side.
In a stop at the UNO Veterans Memorial High School on 47th Street, Emanuel lauded the year-old charter school as an improvement over neighborhood schools. The school is run by the United Neighborhood Organization, which has received copious amounts of public money — including a $98 million grant from the state last year to build more charter schools.
“Their hours are from 8 [a.m] to 5 [p.m], which is why their test scores are so much better,” Emanuel said after briefly touring classrooms with UNO’s leader, Juan Rangel.
Retiring Mayor Richard M. Daley has long said Chicago Public Schools should extend classroom hours, noting that Chicago has a shorter school day than other cities. He has been prevented from enacting that change by the teachers’ contract, and alternative, pilot efforts to keeping children at school later in the day have proven costly.
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said she would welcome longer school days, but she quickly added that she did not see how CPS could pay for implementing that concept.
“Does he want to pay for that?” Lewis said of Emanuel, adding that she doubted the depth of his knowledge on education issues.
She also criticized UNO because it does not have local school councils or a unionized workforce, like public schools, and she alleged that its teachers suffer from “high turnover and a lot of burnout.”
“There is no parental voice, no community voice,” Lewis said.
Emanuel, however, said the UNO school he toured is “an incredible success” where parental participation is mandatory and teachers are highly qualified and motivated.
The former White House chief of staff’s itinerary Monday not only irked teachers’ union officials but will no doubt be noted by many Latino political leaders. The Latino vote, estimated at about 15 percent of the citywide total, could be a crucial swing constituency in next year’s mayoral election.
UNO has long had very close ties to Daley, as well as other leading politicians in the state. Some graduates of an UNO professional leadership program have gone on to assume high-ranking positions in the Daley administration, including Chicago Transit Authority President Rich Rodriguez. The relationship with Daley has prompted critics to say that UNO is “the new HDO,” a reference to the now-defunct, scandal-plagued Hispanic Democratic Organization, which mayoral allies used to dominate politics in the city’s fast-growing Latino neighborhoods for a decade.
Rangel was Emanuel’s guide two weeks ago in the Pilsen neighborhood, on the first day of Emanuel’s “listening tour” after resigning as President Barack Obama’s top aide and returning to Chicago.
Emanuel has not yet officially announced that he will be a candidate to replace Daley, who announced Sept. 7 that he will not seek a seventh term in the February election. Stilll, Emanuel is hiring top campaign staff, circulating nominating petitions to appear on the ballot and formed a campaign fundraising committee for a mayoral bid.
A more complete education story with good background information would have included the test scorces to which Emmanuel referred and the teacher turnover rate for the school as compared to all CPS schools. If the story was more about Mr. Emmanuel pre-campiagn activites in the Latino community than educational policy it need not muddy the focus with incomplete data. Both stories are important and should received appropiate coverage.