9486 in the collection
Chicago Board of Education votes to destroy another 16 public schools in near-secret 'public' voting
Check in at SubstanceNews online each day for the latest chapter in the extraordinary public protest of the corrupt corporate politico control--and destruction-- of public schools schools. There are great pictures of parents, children, and (gasp) teachers protesting. Teachers have broken the silence in Chicago!!
Now more than ever, we need to pay attention to Chicago. This is where our current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan learned to toe the corporate politico line.
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by George N. Schmidt
When the public 'vote' -- such as it was -- came at roughly 4:15 p.m. on February 25, 2009, at the chambers of the Chicago Board of Education at 125 S. Clark St. in Chicago's Loop, there were no more than five or six people in the room (out of more than 60) who realized that the vote had been taken, and no more than two who knew precisely what had just been voted on.
"...and I will apply the last favorable roll call vote," millionaire heiress Clara Muñana intoned from under the Great Seal of the Chicago Board of Education.
Muñana's words came after the Board's diminutive secretary, Estela Beltran, had carefully read through a nearly incomprehensible script that she had enhanced in four colors for her use during the meeting.
Muñana was serving as President of the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and chairing the meeting because the Board was between two presidents. For three years, the scrappy Rufus Williams, a graduate of the city's public schools, had served as president. Then, for reasons that are still unexplained to the general public, Rufus Williams was forced out of office by Mayor Richard M. Daley, and Daley returned to a previous Board President, West Side Real Estate Developer Michael Scott, to return to the Board and become president again. (Scott had served as President of the Chicago Board of Education from July 2001 until 2006, working hand-and-hand with Arne Duncan to establish the powers of the Board to do what it was doing on February 25, 2009. For some reason, however, Scott was not chairing the meeting on February 25, Williams was nowhere to be seen, and Muñana wound up chairing.
The script consisted of the "Board Reports" which had been included in the 246-page agenda that the Board had released to the public at 10:00 a.m. on February 23, 2009. But the agenda had been revised so much that Beltran used color cues to try and keep up with what she was reading, rapidly. The part of the script Beltran had just completed when the key vote took place consisted of a series of letters and number, such as "EX3". For the previous five minutes before the 'vote,' Beltran had been reading that series of obscure numbers ("EX32 appeared in DRAFT form in your agenda, but will be in final form in the Action Agenda..." Etc. Basically, Beltran was annotating out loud for the legal record, sometimes explaining how something to do with one of the numbers was different from something else. Only a handful of the dozens of citizens in the audience had a copy of the agenda for the meeting as Beltran rushed through her numbers and letters. Despite having one of the largest "communications" staff of any governmental agency in the State of Illinois, the Chicago Board of Education did not provide copies of the agenda to those members of the public who waited until the actual business portion of the meeting took place.
Nor did the Board utilize the eight overhead television monitors that had broadcast a Power Point summary explanation about one part of the agenda to provide any clue to the public as to what Beltran was talking about. Although the Chicago Board of Education routinely broadcasts a version of its monthly public meetings and maintains a large video center at the back of the Board's "chambers", no effort had been made to provide the public with any information about what Beltran was talking about.
For the rest of this dramatic story, with great pictures, go to SubstanceNews online.
— George N. Schmidt
Substance
2009-02-26
http://substancenews.net/articles.php?page=646§ion=Article
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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