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What Was: Chicago Public Fools
I began the blog Chicago Public Fools at the outset of CPS’s mass school closing process under the direction of then-mayor Rahm Emanuel and then-CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennet. It’s an old blog, but still a decent place to go to learn about charter proliferation, privatization, school defunding, and large corporations profiting off our kids.
In the blog I chronicled what was happening in our local schools, and also examined the national-scale corporate control of education—the methodology by which those large corporations profit off our kids. After 5 years of telling what I saw, I ended the blog for two reasons. First, promoting my work on facebook just became a complete forget about it the more I saw what a manipulative and destructive landscape it is. Second, Rahm Emanuel, one of the nation’s great cheerleaders for corporate control, stepped down as mayor. Our school-closing CEO is serving a prison sentence for bribery; the CEO who followed resigned after illegally cutting special ed services for thousands of children, then covering it up. At present CPS is in a just very slightly more stable place; at least, it doesn’t feel like the bulldozers are just outside the gate.
Writing about public education in Chicago is—as you may guess—exhausting and kind of heartrending, and after all this I went dormant for two years, still doing occasional work on behalf of schools.
What’s New: CPF Insider
In my ongoing work with school policy I realized something. I missed my people. I knew I could use your help, and furthermore, that you would want to help.
The great thing about being a widely read blog with a widely read facebook page was that a lot of you could be quickly mobilized to fill out witness slips, call legislators, or what have you. You had a tremendous impact! So I threw out a lifeline to my old readers, seeing if anyone wanted to read an email newsletter with way less depressing reporting and way more things to do to support public schools. No social media promotion or community, no pressure, just a newsletter for those who want it, with good easy little jobs to help our schools and our kids, throughout all of Illinois. And so here we are.
Join in, read along, and get ready for your Insider missions, should you choose to accept them. And thanks ever so much for reading.
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