19th Ward Parents leader on chaos in Chicago Public Schools
There is a plague spreading through the Chicago Public Schools. It has left in its wake a score of school closures and school turnarounds, an unfunded longer school day lacking adequate resources to support high-quality education and the first teachers strike in a quarter century — a bitter fight to ensure fair compensation, basic learning materials and adequate staffing in our schools.
Parents and teachers have been promised remedies for overburdened or failing schools. But these promises are empty at best and counterproductive at worst. The increased staff promised for the longer day has amounted to no more than one position at most schools, with some simply restoring jobs cut in the past few years.
Much of this funding had to be dedicated to ancillary staff, non-teachers required to supervise students during mandated lunch and teacher planning time. A longer lunch and recess may be nice, but this has not created
