Charter Schools Retain Catholic School Mission - Rockford's Mayor Larry Morrissey Moves School Reform

Two weeks ago I attended a lunch in Joliet, where I heard Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey* speak to the issue of school reform and his focus was on competition, accountabilty and the horrors of fighting in-bred complacency. Public Schools devolved and once vital Catholic Schools disappeared.

Rockford was once a powerful industrial town, like Peoria, Decatur and Kankakee. Its public schools needed a shot in the arm. Charter Schools offered that possibility.

Charter schools are publicly-funded schools that trade greater accountability for autonomy. They are often founded by groups of master teachers who enter into a charter, or contract, with a school district for five to 10 years.

Performance goals are established in the charter and they are reviewed periodically by the authorizing school district. Of the 43 charter schools established between 1996 when state law authorized charter schools in Illinois and 2007, 21 percent folded.
http://www.rrstar.com/homepage/x565327016

Once vital Catholic schools like St. Patrick's were reorganized as Charter Schools. Rockford Star Register's Chuck Sweeney reports:

When I was a kid my parents sent me to St. Patrick’s School, back when that school had 972 students, and was the largest school in the Rockford Diocese. We had two sites in those days — the early 1960s — the “new building” on School Street and the old school on Royal Avenue, which housed 7th and 8th grades.

As the Catholics left the area, the school gradually dwindled to no more than a couple hundred students when the church pulled the plug in the ’90s.

It’s been sad to see the sturdy School Street building, constructed in 1953-54 with another wing added in 1958, empty of school kids all these years. The church has kept it up and running, and has used it for various purposes. So it it hasn’t been allowed to fall apart and is still in good shape.

Tonight I drove by the old school — and it was lighted like a Christmas tree. There were people inside, turning it into — a school! Ah yes, the same green chalkboards were there. Green boards? Yes. It’s St. PATRICK’s School, after all.

The old St. Pat’s will become the Galapagos Charter School later this month.

Does my heart good to see my old school back on line again. I hope the new kids enjoy the building. I know I did.

http://blogs.e-rockford.com/sweenyreport/

Reform can happen. Leaders Like Mayor Larry Morrissey make Reform happen.


*Lawrence J. "Larry" Morrissey (Born in 1969 in Rockford, IL) is the Mayor of Rockford, IL. As an independent, Morrissey defeated Democrat incumbent Doug Scott in the 2005 mayoral elections after trying in his first run in 2001 with a populist campaign promising road improvements, education reforms, lower property taxes and a revitalized downtown. In an attempt to reduce the city's reliance on property taxes to fund road projects, Morrissey proposed an increase to the city's sales tax. A sales tax increase referendum was defeated in the March 2006 primary but passed in the April 2007 election

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Morrissey

Andy Stern's SEIU Murders School Reform and Buys A Lotto!

Here's Andy looking down on his membership! They can Blackmail a Bank, Buy a Lotto and Kill School Reform with their Dues! Now, That's Collectivist Bargaining!

Andy Stern is busier than a dog gifted by nature with a surplus of male reproductive appendages!

1. Stern is out to Destroy Charter Schools and Murder School Reform in Chicago

2. Andy Stern's SEIU is blackmailing Bank of America CEO into backing Card Check Legislation

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26649c82-2d44-11de-8710-00144feabdc0.html

3. Andy Stern and Ivy League Commies of the SEIU Leadership are Buying the California Lottery

SEIU donates to lottery ballot measure
By Anthony York | 04/17/09 12:00 AM PST

The state’s largest public employee union has given $300,000 to the campaign for Proposition 1C, the lottery modernization measure that would allow the state to borrow up to $5 billion from lottery proceeds.

The money comes as deep divisions swirl among the Service Employees International Union over how to play in the May 19 special election. SEIU’s state council has opposed Proposition 1A, the state spending limit measure, and opened an account earlier this week to launch a formal campaign against 1A.

But SEIU has endorsed Proposition 1C, and a spokesman for Local 1000 said it makes sense for the union to support the measure.

“Our position on Prop 1C is consistent with our position that the state of California could be generating more money out of the lottery if it had a different managerial structure,” said Local 1000 spokesman Jim Zamora.

SEIU’s contribution did not go to the committee controlled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political team, which is pushing for passage of all of the May 19 measures. Instead, the money went to a committee sponsored by GTECH, a Rhode Island-based company that contracts to supply lottery equipment to the state.

Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the Yes on 1C committee, welcomed news of the contribution. “One thing we all agree on is that if we can generate additional state revenues without tax increases, it makes sense for everyone,” Salazar said.

But the big question remains the extent to which the state council will fund the No on Proposition 1A campaign.

Stay tuned.
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SEIU and CTU Have Been Murdering School Reform!

Andy Stern's Purple Finger prints are all over Marilyn Stewart's CTU work to murder School Reform in Chicago. Stern and radical activist Mike Klonsky are old hands at this stuff. Work within the system and you really get to blow things up!

From Dist 299 -

SEIU Organizing Charter School Teachers
A couple of posts down, Mike Klonsky highlights the fact that some charter schools in other places -- NYC, LA -- have organized teachers, and that it hasn't always been via the teachers local. (I know that substitutes sometimes end up being organized by nonteacher locals, too.) In LA it was SEIU, for example. What I'm wondering is whether SEIU does any better than CTU would do, what folks think about the idea of charters under union agreements, and...well, mostly those two things.

Here is the concern of a Charter teacher on that same site.

I think one issue is whether SEIU would do any better. As someone in a charter school I have no interest in belonging to CTU (and by law, I actually can't).

Unionizing charters will be hard for a number of reasons. Each charter school would have to have their own contract with their teachers, or suddenly every charter school would have to have the same hours, prep periods, class sizes, school years, etc., and then the point of charters being able to decide these things independent of the school district would be lost.

I think you'll also see a lot of resistance from some of the larger national charter school funders, many of whom aren't the most union friendly groups in the world.

I don't see any need for a union at my school right now, I was given a fair review and a chance to negotiate my own contract, and when it comes down to it, I'd rather be the one at the bargaining table. The only people I know who wouldn't are those teachers who don't deserve a raise anyway.

That being said I'm sure there are other charters where teachers probably aren't treated with the same level of respect, and I'm sure if charters start to unionize, they'll be the first to go. Either way, it will be interesting to watch what happens. It would definitely be a blow to the neo-cons.

Posted by: Charlie | July 26, 2007 at 01:45 PM

Not to Neo-Cons, Charlie. To School Reform. You sound like a professional and that is what education needs.

Trades Unions! Watch. When CTU Murders Charter Schools, Apprenticeship Programs Will Be Next. SEIU and Andy Stern Want it So!

SEIU wants to Kill School Reform and they have the money and muscle to do it. Killing School Reform, which actually means the advent and genuine success of Charter Schools in America, is a means of killing the Bureau of Apprenticeship Programs in Illinois and other States in favor of a State run Apprentice Program - run by a local politician like James Meeks, as Emil Jones will be at an undisclosed off-shore paradise.

Card check will be the key and Teachers Unions are already thugging it up.

appeasement on vouchers only whets unions appetites for eliminating all meaningful types of choice. With voucher programs facing termination in Washington, D.C., and heavy regulation in Milwaukee, the teachers unions have now set their sights on charter schools. Despite their proclamations about supporting charters, the actions of unions and their allies in state and national politics belie their rhetoric.

In New York, for example, the unions have backed a new budget that effectively cuts $51.5 million from charter-school funding, even as district-school spending can continue to increase thanks to local taxes and stimulus money that the charters lack. New York charters already receive less money per pupil than their district school counterparts; now they will receive even less.

Unions are also seeking to strangle charter schools with red tape. New York already has the "card check" unionization procedure for teachers that replaces secret ballots with public arm-twisting. And the teachers unions appear to have collected enough cards to unionize the teachers at two highly successful charter schools in New York City. If unions force charters to enter into collective bargaining, one can only imagine how those schools will be able to maintain the flexible work rules that allow them to succeed.

Good schools and solid Trades Programs are paths to success. Andy Stern can not and will not have that. SEIU sucks up unskilled and no skilled members, who are not and will not have an opportunity to train and study for a path into the American Middle Class. That was the Old Way - This is Change America, Sweetheart!

In Change America, group think and group wage will be based upon what the Tax-levying bodies in each State ( soviet) dole out to the rank and file.

Andy Stern wants an end to all Trades Apprenticeship Programs - no longer will the Pipefitters, Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, Sprinkler-fitters, of Engineers set standards for application to Apprenticeship Programs, nor will they run training schools.

SEIU will determine who does and gets what through each State's James Meeks, or some other Purple Approved Legislator.

Play ball with Andy Stern and you will get a knife in kidneys for your troubles.

SEIU is ACORN with an Advanced Degree ( Social Work @ University of Pennsylvania usually) and they need millions more members to feed the PAC. There are many more spineless politicians to buffalo and millions more children that Andy Stern needs for future harvests of no skill and unskilled members. That harvest is threatened by School Choice - Catholic Schools, Private Schools and especially Charter Schools.

Progress Illinois Andy Stern's graphic novel ( comic book)of propaganda is going flat out to help the oafish Marilyn Stewart's Chicago Teachers Union geld Charter Schools.

The Wall Street journal offers this roadmap:

When charter schools unionize, they become identical to traditional public schools in performance. Unions may say they support charter schools, but they only support charters after they have stripped them of everything that makes charters different from district schools.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have given speeches promoting charter schools. Despite their talk, charter spending constituted less than one-quarter of 1% of education spending in the stimulus package. And the Obama administration has done union bidding by killing the D.C. voucher program. They did this in the face of solid evidence of academic progress for the voucher students, and despite their stated commitment to do "what works for kids" regardless of ideology.

Vouchers made the world safe for charters by drawing union fire. But now that the unions have the voucher threat under control, charters are in trouble. It's time for reformers to increase pressure on politicians bending to the will of the unions and close the new education gap -- the one between what Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan say about education and what they do.

Killing School Reform through unionizing Charter Schools is a step to killing Trades Programs. Kill competency and grow fat on millions of locked-in, impoverished and no skill members is the goal of Andy Stern, SEIU, Card Check,and Chicago Teachers Union.

CTU Hellbent on Destroying School Reform - Progressives Help Them!

Progress Illinois is a comic book published by Andy Stern's SEIU -the folks who worked over-time with Rod Blagojevich to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate after working hand in pocket with Rod Blagojevich for the good part of his two years in office.

SEIU had a starring role in the December 9th Criminal Complaint against Celebrity Survivor Ingenue the disgraced former Governor of Illinois. SEIU is Lefty PAC masquerading as a Labor Union. Members dues go to frightening spineless elected officials and papering the lampposts of Blagoshere with hit pieces on political enemies ( William Daley, Mayor Daley, Mike Madigan, John Shimkus, Mark Kirk, Tom Cross and Jim Durkin) with Progress Illinois staffed by the kids of Old Radicals and Leftists like Angela Caputo who takes another salary of Sun Times News Group - for now.

Progressive and the tax-salaried American Federation of Teachers and their Banana Republic branch -Chicago Teachers Union want to kill school Reform.

Vouchers and Charter Schools are the only hope for the already hopeless Chicago Public Schools.

Catholic Schools outperform Public Schools and save Illinois tax-payers millions of dollars.

Angela Caputo is tasked with doing hit pieces on Charter International and its Educational Management Organization (EMO) Civitas.

Read the 'All Hail the Working class' rhetoric in Ms. Caputo's giggle piece - funny like cancer.

Click my post title for the full nonsense.

Here is the most idiotic paragraph.

Because the staff (and public) is largely kept in the dark about the administration of charter schools, it's hard to know how CICS' books have changed in recent years. What's clear is that the instability at these particular schools had led to an increased rate of teacher turnover, a concern raised by Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) in a report (PDF) last fall.

Shall we, Chicago taxpayers, demand an open accounting of Marilyn Stewart's Chicago Teachers Union?

The great Labor Force that spent the better part of a year firing and locking a Union Leader -Ted Dallas - out of the Headquarters?

Oh, Let's do !

Start here -

Cashing out sick days is a common practice at the Union, he says, but he says he is charged with doing it “without approval.” He says that because Stewart does not study Union policy and past practice, other staffers have been able to cash out sick days after discussions at meetings, and that the policy of going through the Executive Board has not been followed because Marilyn does not follow rules.


Those amounts contested for Dallas are peanuts, when compared to many of the expenditures by Stewart, Dallas noted. For example, he cited the $850,000 laid out at the May House meeting by John Feldman, American Federation of Teachers CPA, as spent by the Stewart administration in a policy which allowed the officers and staff to cash out “compensatory days” for extra work on weekends during 2006. Feldman said that this plan was to be revenue neutral, but that now the officers know it to have been a mistake.


Dallas says he is also charged with helping Presidential Aide Diana Sheffer cash out her sick days at $63,543.80 when it became evident that President Stewart was on a vendetta to fire all those who disagreed with her policies. Sheffer was fired in December 2007, with security walking her out of the Union offices.


The Dallas “trial” will be conducted by the Union Executive Board — dominated by Stewart loyalists — on June 12th at the Union offices at 4 p.m. Dallas’ supporters are encouraging Union members to attend.


The case against Treasurer Linda Porter is still in limbo. In December, 2007, President Stewart took away all of Porter’s fiduciary responsibilities as Treasurer and gave them to her new Chief of Staff, John Ostenburg. Ostenburg was formerly the editor of the union newspaper. He has never taught in Chicago’s public schools. He is the mayor of Park Forest and a former members of the House of Representatives in Springfield. Ostenburg was one of those Stewart did not fire in August 2004. The first page of the 112-page complaint against CTU vice president Ted Dallas. The complaint was brought to the union's executive board by two union members who should not have had access to all of the internal union financial data that they used against Dallas.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=78

Charter Schools Offer Hope - Teachers Union the Anchor of Failure

I have three kids in a charter school and two in union CPS schools. The quality difference between the teachers and the kids performance is stark.

Comment on Chicagoist Click my post title for the full Chicagoist feature.

Charter Schools offer a stark contract to Chicago Public Schools - Catholic Schools Offer much more than that - real documented success. Charters are pretty good alternatives to wasteful and incompetant public schools dominated by Teachers unions.

Teachers unions seem to do little more than haven the useless, and protect the lazy.

Public School Teachers want to be considered Professionals like accountants, doctors and lawyers, but demand to be insulated from accountability. I worked only in Catholic Schools and worked only with professionals - the weak and the incompetant went off to find new lines of work - some in the Public Schools.

Chicago Catholic School Superintendent Mary Paul McCaughey noted in talk to the Fifty of Friday Club last week that graduates of Catholic Schools go on to college - 97% go on to college.

CPS is saddled with a less than 37% high school graduation rate for young men.

CPS is staffed with 100% Chicago Teachers Union membership - Marilyn Stewart CPS President spent last year locking a rival out of his offices at CTU. ( see the Ted Dallas Document above)

Yet Marilyn Stewart offered this about Charter Teachers joining CTU:

CTU President Marilyn Stewart and Illinois Federation of Teachers President Ed Geppert, Jr. had this to say in a joint statement: “We are very supportive of this strong group of teachers and staff at the Chicago International Charter Schools’ as they form a union. These charter school teachers and staff are acting today to improve their schools’ operations and environment for their student’s performance. We feel as strongly as they do that the views of teachers and staff are critical to school success and that school administrators must formally recognize the teachers and staff contributions. Their dedication will help their schools become trailblazers of innovation and collaboration within community.”

These charter school teachers and staff are acting today to improve their schools’ operations and environment for their student’s performance.

Marilyn, you have got to be kidding! For real?

Charters were enacted to offere real competition and not 'same old, same old, Marilyn!

It's not about power for you Marilyn! It's about the Children! It's all about the Children! Right?

A real hard-hitting journalist should take a very, very hard look at Marilyn Stewart's hard run at Charter Schools.

I think something stinky is afoot!