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Sunday evening, CTU officials posted information on their web site. It was largely an attempt to rally rank-and-file support. Hopefully they're smart enough to know better.
Negotiations won't resume. Final terms are set. Union bosses caved. A Chicago Versailles was accepted. Hopefully teachers will say no deal. For now, things are on hold until Tuesday.
Emanuel hopes to bully teachers into acceding. Lewis won't admit she yielded. Perhaps she hopes pressure and threats for another day or two will soften BoD members' resolve. Hopefully she's dead wrong.
Emanuel and officials around him want education the way it should be gutted. He wants what's most vital to preserve ended. He wants Chicago schools run like cutthroat businesses.
Sack veteran teachers. Replace them with inexperienced low-paid ones. Close dozens of schools, then dozens more. Deprive many neighborhoods of what's too vital to lose. Privatize what should stay public. Downsize public education en route to destroying it altogether.
End job security. Pay teachers less than they're worth. Cut their benefits. Keep class sizes too large to handle. Deprive kids of personal attention. Accept the canard that Chicago hasn't the resources to educate them properly. Say nothing about handing them to business friends and cronies.
Sacrifice teaching and learning. Force-feed standardized tests requiring rote memory. Mandate annual assessments. Give principals diktat authority. Let them sack good teachers because kids can't perform under a broken system hamstringing them.
Enlist high-profile self-serving figures like Jesse Jackson. He and others like him helped destroy hard-won civil rights. He chose wealth, power, and influence over doing what's right.
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