Having just received my mail-in ballot, I am preparing to vote early. I am especially interested in the school board elections and I have educated myself about them.
There are 32 candidates, and voters will pick one board member in each of the 10 districts. The mayor appoints a second member in each district, plus a board president to complete the 21-member hybrid school board.
Voters will (hopefully) elect candidates who have the Chicago Public Schools students’ best interests at heart. Mayor Brandon Johnson could appoint people who owe their allegiance to the Chicago Teachers Union.
In my opinion, this does not bode well for a smooth transition in January. Because of the departure of the entire school board, these months until January could be chaotic.
How will a potential school board, which may have factions loyal to the CTU, come to a consensus about the budget deficit, budget gaps, CTU contract, pensions, school closings and agreement about the contract of CEO Pedro Martinez?
I believe our new school board should have as its primary goal the best education we can provide for our precious children.
Elizabeth Butler Marren, Beverly
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Tough financial choices
I believe Mayor Brandon Johnson has some tough choices to make, like many mayors before him. Taking out a loan to get through today is unfortunately short-sighted and dangerous. Taking out a loan may help CPS students in the short term, but those same CPS students will be tasked to pay that off down the road.
If we take a loan out now, how much tax money will be taken away from schools to pay off this debt in the future? One could argue the reason we need to take out a loan in the first place is that too much of our tax money is already going to paying back loans. The cycle continues.
Children need adults to make wise financial decisions for their benefit, even if it means short-term pain. The mayor can frame it like he’s a savior to the children of CPS, but we are not doing children any favors by taking out a massive loan for them to repay. Future Chicagoans, including today’s CPS students, will thank any mayor for not passing the buck down the road.
Michael Wiesenhahn, Chicago
Handing debt to the next mayor
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new rubber-stamp board will bring Chicago deeper into long-term debt while giving the Chicago Teachers Union exactly what they worked so hard to elect him for. The next mayor gets the debt to deal with, akin to Mayor Richard M. Daley’s parking meter deal.
CJ Martello, Pullman
CTU should practice what it preaches
The Chicago Teachers Union put a full-page ad in the paper Sunday with the heading, ” ‘Adequate’ is not good enough.”
The ad goes on to say how the CTU is at the bargaining table fighting for students and teachers trapped in a broken system. They say that our kids deserve after-school programs with digital and visual arts, sports and music activities; full-time librarians; and dual language and special education classes that open doors to new opportunities. They wrap it up with, “Our kids deserve better. We cannot accept ‘adequate’ when the need is so great.”
I couldn’t agree more, although this is rich, coming from the CTU.
During the pandemic, it was the CTU that kept kids out of the classrooms after every other school system was back full-time. They were given money to enhance filtration systems in the schools, and classrooms were retrofitted to keep the students a safe distance from the teachers and from each other. Still, they would not return to class.
The CTU is supposed to represent the teachers. I know a lot of teachers, including my own daughter, and none of them wanted to stay out of the classroom when it was reasonably safe, which it was, long before they finally returned to class. So just who does the CTU care about? Not the teachers and definitely not the students. So, who do they care about, anyway?
John LaBrant, Norwood Park
Mayor has ‘weak approach’
In following the fiasco as to what is happening with the Chicago Public Schools board and the mass resignations, this situation tells me that Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to run the city and its operations with a group of toadies and lackeys who will never challenge or question him about anything.
In addition to this fiasco, he has shown with his weak approach to crime and his lack of future planning to bring in new business that he is in so over his head, that it is not even funny. It is very clear that he takes his marching orders from the Chicago Teachers Union, a group that is solely concerned with advancing its own personal agenda and has no care for any of the students. Taken as a whole, this is a recipe for disaster. Chicago still remains a major city of the world but recent events put this standing on very shaky ground. Sadly, its current leadership has no concept of this.
Howard Herman, Skokie