Ed Notes Exclusive: Celebrating the end of the strike and embarrassed over Chicago parent Matt Farmer's revelations of the kinds of privileges children enjoy at the Lab School, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he will remove his children from the elite school immediately and place them in schools in Chicago's roughest neighborhoods.
Emanuel made his decision after viewing a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMUboOIQT48) of Farmer comparing the services – small class sizes, libraries, physical education, books, working bathrooms – Emanuel's and other kids, the Obama kids included, enjoyed at the Lab school, services denied to the majority of Chicago public school students.
Emanuel was so shaken he was heard to say, "What the fuck."
Emanuel is actively searching for the most under-resourced schools with the highest class sizes he can find for his children. President Obama announced if he should lose the election and have to go back to Chicago he will follow Emanuel's lead and place Sasha and Malika in the same school Emanuel chooses for his kids.
Emanuel felt challenged to prove wrong the Chicago Teachers Union's claims that learning in class sizes over 40 in non-air conditoned rooms with few wraparound services can be harmful to kids. "Mr. Emanuel will show how his own kids can learn in these conditions as well as they did at the Lab school," said a spokesperson for the Mayor.
"Rahm is actively searching through a list of the most under-resourced schools with the highest class sizes he can find to make his point. His problem is that there are so many choices – and the Mayor does believe in choice – he is having trouble making up his mind from the hundreds of schools starved of resources. He has found classes over 50 but is still looking, sure he can find class sizes that will break the 60 barrier. The more the merrier," said the spokesperson.
After Emanuel's children get the highest scores in the school - and if they don't he will put them up for adoption – he and Obama will make a joint announcement that the school will be closed and all the teachers fired.
Emanuel had no comment other than to say, "A GIANT FUCK YOU TO KAREN LEWIS."
Farmer's video:
Warning: [satire alert]
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Emanuel apparently will not be watching the interview below:
I am writing to share a 30-minute interview that we broadcast on Democracy Now! today. As Chicago public school students return to school following the nine-day Chicago Teachers Union strike, Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union joined us to discuss the beginning and subsequent suspension of the first teachers strike in Chicago since 1987. Ms. Lewis is also part of the union's Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators - known as CORE and used to teach chemistry at Martin Luther King High School on the South Side of Chicago.
You can watch this interview here: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/19/chicago_teachers_union _president_karen_lewis
The new contract calls for a double-digit salary increase over the next three years, including raises for cost of living, but both Karen Lewis and her fellow union members stress that the strike is about more than just a pay raise. "We've been micromanaged into doing things that we know are harmful for children," she said in reference to several of the constraints featured in the former system that included the inability of teachers to make their own lesson plans. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the new contract could bring welcome changes to the city's public schools.
Please feel free to share our report today by posting on your website or social media network. I have provided the link and video embed code below. The complete transcript will be posted soon on our website.
Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Please let me know if you have any questions.
My Best,
Jamie Hall
Social Media and Online Outreach Intern
Democracy Now!
******
DEMOCRACY NOW LINK:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/19/chicago_teachers_union _president_karen_lewis
VIDEO EMBED CODE:
4 comments:
Fabulous satire!
Mayor Bloomberg said he'd like to fire half the teachers in NYC, humongous class size be damned! (merit pay would make all the difference, so he says). But in an effort to do damage control to his position, he takes a media outlet to task for not publishing his FULL QUOTE. However, his FULL QUOTE hardly helps in that it only adds that the Mayor sees EDUCATION just like the REAL ESTATE BUSINESS!!!
And that isn't satire, unfortunately! Apparently, not only does the Mayor want to rid teachers of their jobs, but satire writers as well. You cant make this stuff up!
See the FULL QUOTE, below:
http://gothamist.com/2011/12/02/bloomberg_i_would_cut_the_number_of.php
"Update: The Mayor's office writes to chastise us for not including the full quote from Bloomberg's remarks which, they emphasize, are purely hypothetical. Plus, in this hypothetical world, he'd totally pay the remaining teachers double after he'd fired half of them. Here's the full quote:
'Education is very much, I’ve always thought, just like the real estate business. Real estate business, there are three things that matter: location, location, location is the old joke. Well in education, it is: quality of teacher, quality of teacher, quality of teacher. And I would—if I had the ability, which nobody does really, to just design a system and say, ‘ex cathedra, this is what we’re going to do,’ you would cut the number of teachers in half, but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. And double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for the students.'"
I have tried unsuccessfully to post a comment here echoing the above commenter on Bloomberg's ridiculous class size view, with a bit more on his ridiculous views, related. It will NOT post here! All my other comments on other entries on this blog, and here ("Fabulous satire!") are posting.
I am baffled as to why this one post is not showing up. Will it show up 4 times, at some later time?! (I finally wised up and copied it, before trying again. Duh!)
Sandrine -- I must have been late getting to it.
I moderate all comments beginning 24 hours after a piece is posted and all phony comments with ads will be blocked or deleted so just don't waste your time if you are linking to something that promotes yourself as the commenter from Canada just found out.
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