I have Mr. Proft's permission to run his email of August 5 as a blog.
In today's JS, "Word on the Street", I quote "There is a school district meeting Tuesday at 6:00 P.M to continue the discussing of charter schools." The only way charter schools will become an actually in Peoria is not with District #150 permission but because of community pressure and actions to form schools that are not in any way under the jurisdiction of the school board and their stifling union but by groups pressuring the State of Illinois for permission to form more private charter schools in our community and in the state and the transfer of some public funding to help support them.
Charter schools are not public school run academies. District #150 ran unsuccessful "academies" for years before abandoning them in 2006.
The math, science and technology school that Superintendent Hinton is talking about is not a privately run charter school but be an academy staffed and run by #150.
Merle Widmer
Proft's latest featured commentary on Don Wade & Roma:
Rethinking Meeks
Click here to listen to an .mp3 of this commentary as heard on this morning's Don Wade & Roma Morning Show on WLS AM-890.
Click here to email Dan Proft
I was too tough on Illinois State Senator James Meeks.
Last week, I offered both a commentary and rigorous interview of Rev. Meeks on the WLS airwaves as to Meeks' controversial declaration that he will bus thousands of Chicago Public School (CPS) students up to New Trier High School on Chicago's ritzy North Shore for the first day of school next month to protest state education funding inequities.
While I stand by the substance of what I said, I violated a cardinal rule of politics in making the perfect the enemy of the good.
On The Don & Roma Morning Show last week, in addition to discussing his PR stunt, Meeks also explained that he would be introducing legislation to effectively create statewide school choice whereby students could take state dollars and attend any public school they wish.
Meeks is on the right street but he's at the wrong address. While I have no philosophical aversion to his approach, major surgery on Illinois education is only politically salable at present to the sucking chest wound that is CPS.
Rather than creating regional conflicts that further push off the promise of choice in education, Meeks should use his political capital both in Springfield and among minority families in Chicago to apply pressure on a system whose results are indefensible by any measure.
While Meeks corrected identified the multitude of problems with CPS, Meeks failed to embrace the inescapable conclusion that followed his premise when he suggested that Illinois taxpayers pour $2 billion more into a system he concedes has proven to be incapable of educating our young people.
CPS should not be given more money; it should be subjected to a RICO prosecution.
His internal contradictions notwithstanding, Meeks is doing more than any other legislator, Republican or Democrat, to spotlight the ongoing criminal enterprise that is the Chicago Public School system, robbing young people of their futures, and demand justice.
If Meeks can shed his misdirected allegiance to the CPS bureaucracy, he has the opportunity to be for Chicago what Polly Williams was for Milwaukee nearly two decades ago--a black, inner city legislator with the courage to take on the teachers unions on behalf of low-income families whose children deserve so much more. In other words, Meeks has a chance to be a hero.
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Dan Proft is a Principal of Urquhart Media LLC, a Chicago-based public affairs firm and political commentator for the Don Wade & Roma Morning Show (5-9am) on Chicago's number one news talk radio station, WLS-AM 890. He can be reached at dan@urqmedia.com.
For other Dan Proft commentaries (radio & print), please visit: http://www.urqmedia.com/proft/
For other recent Don Wade & Roma interviews, commentary, and discussions visit: http://www.wlsam.com/sectional.asp?id=16410
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