General Mattis' Resignation Letter

General Jim Mattis’ Resignation Letter to a Man Without Military, Political, or Strategic Understanding

“I have been privileged to serve as our country’s 26th Secretary of Defense which has allowed me to serve alongside our men and women of the Department in defense of our citizens and our ideals .

“I am proud of the progress that has been made over the past two years on some of the key goals articulated in our National Defense Strategy: putting the Department on a more sound budgetary footing, improving readiness and lethality in our forces, and reforming the Department’s business practices for greater performance. Our troops continue to provide the capabilities needed to prevail in conflict and sustain strong U.S. global influence.

“One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliance and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies. Like you, I have said from the beginning that the armed forces of the United States should not be the policeman of the world. Instead, we must use all tools of American power to provide for the common defense, including proving effective leadership to our alliances. NATO’s 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof.

“Similarly, I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours: It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions — to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.

“My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues. We must do everything possible to advance an international order that is most conducive to our security, prosperity, and values, and we are strengthened in this effort by the solidarity of our alliances.

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my positions. The end date for my tenure is February 28, 2019, a date that should allow sufficient time for a successor to be nominated and confirmed as well as to make sure the Department’s interests are properly articulated and protected at upcoming events to include Congressional posture hearings and the NATO Defense Ministerial meeting in February. Further, that a full transition to a new Secretary of Defense occurs well in advance of the transition of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September in order to ensure stability within the Department.

“I pledge my full effort to a smooth transition that ensure the needs and interests of the 2.15 million Service Members and 732.079 DoD civilians receive undistracted attention of the Department at all times so that they can fulfill their critical, round-the-clock missions to protect the American people.

“I very much appreciate this opportunity to serve the nation and our men and women in uniform.”

RESCIND THE 3% CAP ON LOCAL DISTRICT CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS.

From IEA/NEA:

Sign the petition! The Illinois General Assembly: Protect our Profession

Friend,

I signed a petition on Action Network telling The Illinois General Assembly to protect our profession.

IEA members and all supporters of public education are asked to sign this petition to reverse a harmful piece of legislation that was inserted in the budget passed by the Illinois General Assembly last week. Without warning or discussion of the damage it would do to students and schools, Illinois lawmakers imposed a 3 percent threshold on final average earnings salary increases for any education employees participating in the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) or State Universities Retirement System (SURS). 
Please sign this petition to encourage lawmakers to reverse this terrible piece of legislation and show educators that their work is valued and that teachers and professors deserve respect. Tell them to rescind the 3 percent threshold. 

Background: 

In the final 48 hours of the 2018 legislative session, Illinois’s four legislative leaders sneaked into the budget implementation bill a measure making school districts or universities financially liable for any contribution to those employees’ larger than a 3 percent increase in the final 10 years of their careers. Because educators qualify for a pension after five years and can leave at any time, districts and higher ed institutions would likely institute a 3 percent threshold across the entire contract. 

Impact:

 
As a result of this legislation, teachers would likely be denied extra compensation for after-school work that benefits students, such as coaching, directing plays, tutoring in the evenings, taking classes toward master’s degrees and, therefore, devaluing the continuing education of our educators and ultimately harming students. In addition: 

Reducing benefits to educators will make the already serious Illinois teacher shortage even worse. At a time when committees are being formed to try to figure out how to keep graduating seniors from fleeing the state and choosing instead to stay at Illinois higher education institutions, this action will drive professors away from the profession. This would financially harm the teachers of this state who devote their careers to teaching the next generation of students, impacting their salaries now and in the future, by limiting salary growth to no more than 3 percent, when rates of inflation hover around 2.5 to 3 percent each year. Please sign this petition to encourage lawmakers to reverse this terrible piece of legislation and show educators that their work is valued and that teachers and professors deserve respect. 

Tell them to rescind the 3 percent threshold.

Can you join me and take action? Click here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/demand-lawmakers-protect-our-profession?source=email&

Thanks!

JD

Amending the Pension Protection Clause Is Unnecessary, But It's Great Political Theater

Amending the Pension Protection Clause Is Unnecessary, But It’s Great Political Theater

Recent calls by outgoing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to “amend” the Illinois State Constitution, specifically the Pension Protection Clause, are getting significant traction in the local press and the city newspapers. The lead in Thursday’s (December 13) Tribune Editorial page opines, “Calling all mayors: Join Emanuel’s pension push.”   

The Tribune, understandably, embraces the exiting mayor’s position: “There’s no question Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel can influence public policy with unique firepower.  Even as he leaves the city’s top post, his ideas to address Chicago’s pension challenges can perk the ears of a wide and influential audience.”  

Mayor Emanuel, who has decided not to run again for mayor of the Chicago, is nevertheless quite willing to provide a veteran’s advice to those many who would replace him.  Breaking from a Democratic/progressive position on pensions and liabilities, Emanuel juggled two disparate political concepts:  promotion of a graduated tax system for the state and the overturning of the public pension protection clause for state workers.

Emanuel’s office, like the State, faces an ever-increasing pension liability for public workers, teachers, police, firefighters, etc.  For that, he blames the promise of an annual compounded 3% Cost of Living Agreement.  “Think about it.  What kind of progressive sustainable system guarantees retirees three percent annual pay increases when inflation has been basically at zero and current employees have at times been furloughed, laid off, or received minimum pay increases?”

The Pension Protection Clause of the Illinois Constitution (1970), which the Tribune 

characterizes as “rigid,” states: Membership in any pension or retirement system of the 

State, any  unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality 

therof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be 

diminished or impaired.”  (Article XIII, Section 5)

The annual compounded Cost of Living became a serious concern in the 1970’s.   It was a 

time of rampant inflation.  Inflation rates for the entire decade of the 70’s was 7.25%, and in 1978 and 1979 the numbers were vaulting back again (as in ’74) to over 12%.  People were choosing ridiculous balloon mortgages for housing and essentials were often unavailable or found at the end of a meandering queue.  In Illinois, concerns for the well-being of those on 

fixed income/pensions resulted in an attempt by the General Assembly to find some remedy.  

 The TRS AAI remained unchanged until 1990, when the formula was altered in state law to require subsequent increases to be compounded – calculated from the member’s current pension amount instead of the original amount. Inflation at the beginning of 1990 was 5.4 percent.

The 3 percent compounded AAI is a product of a time when inflation was higher than it is now and had been increasing at a steady pace for many years. Inflation averaged 6.37 percent during the 20 year period prior to 1990, with a high of 13.9 at the beginning of 1990 and a low of 1.46 percent at the beginning of 1987.

Since 1990, the growth in the cost of living from year to year has been slower. In the 29 years since the current TRS AAI was set, inflation has averaged 2.47 percent, with a high of 5.4 percent in 1990 and a low of -0.09 percent in 2015.

But now, the 3% compounded COLA has become the villain in our state’s sordid financial 

drama.  Emanuel stated, “The truth is, going back decades too many elected officials, labor 

leaders, and civic leaders – people in positions of responsibility – agreed to a funding and 

benefits system that was not sustainable and therefore not responsible.”  

Actually, that’s not the truth.

The real truth is going back decades too many elected officials – people in positions of responsibility – shorted the actuarially required contribution to the pension funds while workers 

contributed their required amounts; thus, a shortage that snowballed over the decades to 

become what is now a behemoth of debt for which the departing Mayor of Chicago would 

blame an increase in COLA costs provided 40 years after pensions were provided for Illinois workers and the 40 years after their provision.  

Looking back at the truly culpable elements in the increase in unfunded pension liabilities, 

the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability has found that nearly 42% of the increased 

debt is due to inadequate state contributions.  Benefits like the compounded COLA are 1.6%.    

Finally, Emanuel’s lame-duck advice to dismantle the Pension Protection Clause through a Constitutional Amendment is unconstitutional, difficult, and unnecessary.  

Unconstitutional:  If we learned anything in the unanimous decision of the Illinois Supreme 

Court in May of 2015, it was the antecedent court cases and the careful wording of the 

Illinois Constitution that prevented Lisa Madigan, Pat Quinn, and the General Assembly 

from using a crisis of their own making from undermining the contractual promises to public sector workers.  (Thank you, Henry Green and Helen Kinney).  As Director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability Ralph Martire reminded during a recent NPR radio interview: “You cannot reduce a benefit that was a pension benefit that was promised to an employee 

in the state of Illinois that’s a public sector worker as of the date of their employment.  That 

is their benefit for their tenure.  Period.  End of story.”  

Unnecessary: Incoming and new hires coming in to the public sector in Illinois do not have access to a compounded COLA in their retirement.  Nearly a decade ago, the legislature in 

the General Assembly passed a bill generating a second Tier for incoming educators which would force them to work longer (age 67 without penalty), for a simple and capped interest COLA based on the CPI, and the same payments to the pensions as Tier One (those who 

have 3% compounded).  The dwindling population of Tier One teachers is now heading 

toward retirement.

The General Assembly can (and has) made changes to the COLA as well as other 

requirements and diminishments for public sector workers who are entering the public work 

force.  That is legal and easier to do.  Again, Martire: “Why take away the constitutional 

protection for workers when legislatively, you can create a Tier II, Tier III, Tier IV that has a 

different cost of living adjustment, COLA, for workers going forward? You accomplish the 

same thing in much less time, because passing a piece of legislation through Springfield is 

a much quicker process than getting a constitutional amendment.”    

In addition, a Tier III is being added after 2018, if approved by the Internal Revenue System for meeting basic requirements for a state retirement program to be used in lieu of the social security system.   A hybrid plan, the Tier III program in Illinois will also dispense with the 

compounded COLA and provide only a simple interest COLA linked to the CPI or an 

opportunity to move to a 401(k) rather than a defined benefit.

Emanuel calls on the incoming Mayor and the General Assembly to combine an amendment for both the progressive tax schedule and the alteration of the Pension Protection Clause.  The latter, as I have tried to explain, is unnecessary as well as unconstitutional.  It is also 

unnecessarily difficult as 3/5th’s of each of the House and the senate of the General 

Assembly must agree to the Amendment and the voters can them approve or disapprove in the next general election (2020).

 Summary: The calls by the outgoing Mayor of Chicago identify the critical costs and debt 

the city (as well as the state) have built up over the last 80 years, but to try to blame a single reason (like the compounded COLA) ignores the truth as well as the answers.  

The legislature has already addressed those issues through Tier developments even if 

unfairly. 

The Illinois Supreme Court states that such an attempt will not affect current Tier One 

retirees.  Any changes, even those by constitutional amendment, can only be enforced 

“going forward.” 

The refusal to amortize the pension debt and subscribe to an artificial “ramp” that is draining services is undermining the general revenue. By 2030, $6.5 billion in General revenue will 

be required to pay the pension ramp (PA88-593) unless the General Assembly acts.

Tier Two and Three (and other) employees will never be given protection against inflation.

What should the departing Mayor advise?  

Amortize the unfunded liability to pensions, dispense with the 1995 pension ramp used to 

short pension payments, recalculate the annual required contribution to meet the current 

(not smoothed) needs, create a tax structure which is both progressive and comprehensive 

to the people of our state.   

Tribune Resurrects Pension Crisis

The Tribune Resurrects “Pension Crisis” Again…

In the latest Tribune editorial, “Even pension loopholes are protected?  Then amend the Illinois Constitution,” the readers are provided with egregious acts of double dealing and slippery allowances that provide for the very cagey to get away with getting more than they should have in retirement benefits. 

It makes a teacher with 34 consistent years of work and experience cringe.  At first it seems objectionable.  And…maybe it is?

(2018 IL 122793)

In short, public workers who took leave from their positions to work for the unions representing them sued to be given their pensions for time served in (what was arguably) a not-public, now private position.  Other seemingly malicious examples included an individual who served as a lobbyist but later subbed for one day to receive an eligibility in the Teachers Retirement System.  

The heart of the issue was whether a law written and signed by then-governor Pat Quinn preventing those who sought leaves of absence in lobbying or other union positions could continue operating as if employed by their original public union.  Prior to the law (Act 97-651) enacted in January of 2012, personnel who worked as public employees within a school, labor force, or service provider could request and receive a leave of absence from their position to work within the union leadership – and make continued payments to their retirement pension plan based upon the salary or earnings they were receiving from their employment while on leave.  

In example, Ms. Kendall departs her position of 10 years as a teacher and takes a position as an IEA contract-negotiations advisor in the northern half of the state. Before Act 97-651, she would elect to pay the portion of her earnings to the TRS to secure the promise of her retirement benefits at the end of her career.  This would include the possible return to her teaching position if she so chose.  Act 97-651 disallowed those payments, creating a severance from her union representation and the original promise made in the Pension Contract Clause of the Constitution.  ““Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.” (Article XIII, Section 5)

In writing the Act 97-651, the Justices of the ILSC found that this particular attempt to find a means to blunt earnings without identifying the responsibility for the “questionable employer” created an ambiguity which undermined the constitutionality of the Act at the outset.

¶32 “We find that, regardless of the purpose of the benefit and the merits of the suggested utility of the benefit, it was a matter for the legislature to decide. And, as Kanervanoted, “[w]e may not rewrite the pension protection clause to include restrictions and limitations that the drafters did not express and the citizens of Illinois did not approve.” Id. Accordingly, we hold that the circuit court correctly determined that Public Act 97-651 was unconstitutional to the extent that it eliminated as a pension benefit for current participants the ability to earn union service credit previously bestowed by the legislature.”

And within the opinion’s conclusion by Justice Thomas:

 ¶65 “We find that the circuit court properly held that, with respect to participants who were already members on the effective date of Public Act 97-651, the denial of the future ability to earn service credit on leave of absence for labor organization employment violated the pension clause of the Illinois Constitution. We reverse the circuit court’s judgment dismissing the portions of plaintiffs’ complaint that alleged a violation of the pension clause of the Illinois Constitution related to Public Act 97-651’s change in the law to deny the use of a union salary under section 8-226(c) or 11-215(c)(3) to calculate the “highest average annual salary.” We also reverse the circuit court’s rulings on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment that resulted from the circuit court’s construction of section 8-226(c)(3) to include defined contribution plans within the definition of “any pension plan.” 

So, if Ms. Kendall had returned after 12 years of paying dutifully into her pension obligations for her IEA position and then performed another 12 years of work and pension payment, well, what’s wrong with that? Maybe she’d be part of the mass of retired public workers in Illinois earning approximately $10,000 less than the median earnings of workers in the United States ($62,175).

But, the Tribune and its confederate Illinois Policy Institute have begun another assault on the concept of any defined benefits in retirement owed to those who toil for the state of Illinois. 

“The solution to the state’s multifaceted pension crisis should be crystal clear to taxpayers.  The Illinois Supreme Court isn’t going budge.  The pension clause needs to be amended.”

EMPHASIS on pension crisis,labor bosses, and plenty of outlier examples that make a normal pensioner take an unsettled notice.  On the other hand, the Tribune editorial identifies 11 of the more than 200,000 retirees of public labor unions who worked long and industrious careers for the people of the state of Illinois.  Eleven…

And, therefore, the Tribune and IPI rail that we need an amendment, but remember my friend, neighbor and reader: Even with the amending of the pension protection clause, the UNFUNDED PENSION LIABILITY WILL REMAIN.  

In the editorial’s accompanying cartoon by Stantis, a pop-eyed taxpayer is held in a small cage with a behemoth Frankenstein entitled “Pensions.”  It is not really the outliers that bother the Tribune or the IPI: it’s the existence of pensions, collective bargaining, and any benefits at all.    

 "TRS benefits are not responsible for the majority of the unfunded liability at TRS. “TRS actuarial reports show that 66 percent of the unfunded liability over the last 15 years was caused by contributions from state government that failed to meet the “full funding” levels set by actuaries. For instance, between FY 2014 and FY 2017, the state’s total contributions were $7.2 billion short of the actuarial requirement.

“In addition, the chronic lack of proper funding from state government means TRS does not have that money to invest, and those “unrealized” investment returns over time account for 27 percent of the TRS unfunded liability, along with the cost of issuing pension bonds and other miscellaneous factors. Of the $578 million increase in the state’s annual contribution to TRS for fiscal year 2018, only 4.7 percent is attributable to benefit increases. According to the group “Illinois is Broke,” over the last 15 years 50 percent of the TRS unfunded liability is the result of underfunding by state government, 25 percent from pension bond costs and miscellaneous items, 21 percent from unrealized investment profits and only 4 percent from benefit increases.”

As long as the Tribune and the IPI deny the already huge deficit created by the shorting of pension payments from the state of Illinois over decades in order to divert Ms. Kendall’s payments and others to avoid the real costs of running a government, nothing will ever be corrected, not really.

Instead of facing the actual issues and finding a means to correct them, they scapegoat those who have already fully paid into their retirements.  

It’s not just the bizarre and hyperbolic examples that the Tribune and the IPI want to paint broadly across the minds of those willing to be beguiled.  It’s all of us, even those of us who forsook social security and earnings to work for the benefit of students, those in need of services, or in maintaining our state’s infrastructure.  Feel guilty?  That’s what the Tribune wants.  Feel like someone is scapegoating you?  They are.

The Pace of Trump's Lies is Increasing!

Counting Mendacious Coup?

Trump has been boasting today that he has answered all of the Special Counsel’s questions - "and I did it all by myself,” he smiled like a good little boy who had done his “big boy” task.  But we know that is just one more falsehood from a person so out of touch with himself and reality that he cannot utter words without dissembling or fabrication.  So sad.  So moronic - for none of us would ever have taken pen to paper while under investigation without a lawyer(s) sitting next to us.  

If there is a pattern to Trump’s quantity of lies, it might be discernible, thanks to Daniel Dale from the Toronto Star.  He counts them.  Not an envious job. Like counting the flies gorging on the murdered body of the Presidency.

But his spirit of deceit took a MAGA-jump in the last month.

From the Toronto Star and reporter/statitician Daniel Dale, who is the Washington Bureau Chief:  “815 false claims: The staggering scale of Donald Trump’s re-midterm dishonesty.”  

For the entire article and list of 815 falsehoods, please read the article. 

“It took Donald Trump until the 286th day of his presidency to make 815 false claims.

“He just made another 815 false claims in a month."

“In the 31 days leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, Trump went on a lying spree like we have never seen before even from him — an outrageous barrage of serial dishonesty in which he obliterated all of his old records.

“How bad have these recent weeks been?

• Trump made 664 false claims in October. That was double his previous record for a calendar month, 320 in August.

• Trump averaged 26.3 false claims per day in the month leading up to the midterm on Nov. 6. In 2017, he averaged 2.9 per day.

• Trump made more false claims in the two months leading up to the midterms (1,176), than he did in all of 2017 (1,011).

• The three most dishonest single days of Trump’s presidency were the three days leading up to the midterms: 74 on election eve, Nov. 5; 58 on Nov. 3; 54 on Nov. 4.

“As always, Trump was being more frequently dishonest in part because he was simply speaking more. He had three campaign rallies on Nov. 5, the day before he set the record, and eight more rallies over the previous five days.

“But it was not only quantity. Trump packed his rally speeches with big new lies, repeatedly reciting wildly inaccurate claims about migrants, Democrats’ views on immigration and health care, and his own record. Unlike many of his lies, lots of these ones were written into the text of his speeches.

“Trump is now up to 3,749 false claims for the first 661 days of his presidency, an average of 4.4 per day.

“If Trump is a serial liar, why call this a list of “false claims,” not lies? You can read our detailed explanation here. The short answer is that we can’t be sure that each and every one was intentional. In some cases, he may have been confused or ignorant. What we know, objectively, is that he was not telling the truth.”

Petition Forces CEO of Noble Charter School's Resignation - About Time

2018 – Noble Charter Schools CEO MILKIE TO RESIGN AFTER STUDENT PETITION OF 6,000 SIGNATURES

It was back on April 12, 2014, CEO Michael Milkie of Noble Street Charter Schools decided he would grace his students with a rescinding of the $5.00 fee for each infraction requiring detention.  While that appeared a moment of humanistic charity, it was more likely the heat of exposure, General Assembly concerns, and bad press which caused Mr. Milkie to adopt this costume of largesse and caring.  

Now, after protest by both students and parents, Noble Network Chairman  Allan Muchin has announced that Michael Milkie will be gone by January of 2019.  A copy of the petition can be found through an earlier blogpost by Fred Klonsky.

Below, you will find a piece written nearly six years ago warning our readers in the “blogosphere” want was really going on in Charter-World, especially when it comes to pulling in profits for a CEO like Milkie.

From 2012. (HT:FK)

"If you don’t like it – you can leave.”  - (a description of CEO Milkie’s and Mayor Emanuel’s response to questions regarding discipline policies at Noble Street Network School) – Jasmine Sarmiento, Voices of Youth in Chicago Educations.

“Noble is forcing low-income parents to choose between paying the rent and keeping their child in school. This is a tax on Chicago’s Black and Latino families, and it’s wrong..”  -  Donna Moore, parent of a student in Noble Network Schools. 

Charter School Discipline (…or...How to take out the trash, and look real good)

Back in the day, I mean way back in the day, students actually got to determine their own form of discipline – a long piece of green hickory branch usually cut by the very student about to be switched.  This was considered a vast improvement in exchange for the cane used during the 17^thand 18^thcenturies.  Ah, progress.  

After the mid-nineteenth century, continued disciplinary progress for public students included the paddle, in my own case, hung in plain sight above the principal’s office desk as a reminder of his overt ability to dispense justice in the form of extreme pain.  But I was just one of many south side kids being “taught” and civilized in a continuing grand experiment on a national level. 

Before all of us, even unto the mid 1850’s, education in America was provided primarily to the wealthy, and the overriding sentiment was that the poor were both uneducable and unworthy any attempts at education.  It wasn’t until 1852 that Horace Mann, then Secretary of State for Massachusetts, urged all states to provide education to allstudents, creating what he hoped would be the great equalizer and the ultimate disappearance of poverty.    

Later, the efforts of modernists like Phillipp Emanuel von Fellenberg and Francis Parker (1850’s) promoted concepts that remain current: “modern behavioral modification methods should attempt to address the underlying reasons or motivations for student misbehavior and tailor consequences to fit the (particular) transgression.  School administrators should seek to encourage a positive association with school along with socially acceptable behavior” (www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/evolving_classroom/discipline.html). In essence, these movements suggested that learning was best accomplished with support, encouragement and kindness. This was quite the opposite of discipline for being incorrect in answer or deportment.  Remember that word, deportment.

In the early 1900’s, as schooling became mandatory for all American youngsters, teachers found themselves stepping further and further into the roles of parents (in loco parentis), and “one value attached to this development asserted that while adults should be punished for their crimes, children should be rehabilitated for theirs, thus formalizing a beginning to the separation between juvenile misconduct and suffering as its remedy” (www.public.findlaw.com/education/school_discipline_history.html) .  I’m often sorry my own principal had not harkened to these findings…but I digress. 

Augmenting these modifications of the kinds of discipline painfully dished out in the working houses and boarding schools of the past, the 20^thcentury educator awakened to the concept that education was more than simply transfer; instead, with the assistance of forward thinkers like Rosenblatt, Berne, Spock, etc., psycho-social arguments promoted the student’s own involvement in a transactional paradigm of learning.   In short, teachers and educators moved way from the traditional belief that students learn best by rote and by sitting demurely in linear rows at rigid attention; quite the opposite, best practice now held to a more personalized and interactive learning/teaching construct.

Introducing NOBLE STREET.

The Noble Network of Charter Schools, which runs 10 city high schools and yearns for more after recent school closings, has found an entirely new, novel method of exacting discipline for student “misbehavior.”  This is the same network of schools that Mayor Rahm Emanuel praised for having the “secret sauce” for improving students’ scores, behavior, and success rates.  It would appear that the secret sauce of which the Mayor and Superintendent Brizard crow is in great part actually a monetary disciplinary fee that has raised nearly $400,000 this year for Noble Street, left parents foundering to scrape together fines that are imposed upon them for their own student’s deportment, and has caused the flight of nearly 13% of students from the Noble Street charter schools back into the public system from whence they came – seeking opportunity and assistance to improve their own lots in life and finding failure for disciplinarily high expectations – monetarily? 

In fact, according to the Chicago Tribune (Ahmed-Ullah, Noreen.  Protests targets charter discipline fees. Chicago Tribune. 14 Feb. 2012), the loss of students from the Noble Network schools to other public districts has increased from 211 students in 2010 to 473 students in 2011.  At the same time, CEO Michael Milkie will point glowingly at the Noble Networks improved graduation rates, not surprisingly – from 78.8% in 2010 to 86.2% in 2011.  And CEO Mr. Milkie, who earns an annual salary over $200,000, should be proud of his enterprise’s increased revenue stream.  Noble Street has received almost $400,000 in disciplinary fees since the 2008-2009 school year (Ahmed-Ullah).  George M. Schmidt of Substance Newsreports “the charter company is profiting to the tune of some $200,000 per year from a disciplinary code that can only be called predatory” (www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3055).   

Following the kind of schema found in the factory/transference models of business and schools of the early 1900’s, Noble Street has implemented the “SMART” disciplinary code.  Here is what SMART’s acronym entails:

S = Sit up straight and be ready to learn.

M= Make eye contact when addressed.

A= Articulate in standard English and speak in proper volume.

R= Respond appropriately.

T= Track the speaker.

Each of these misdemeanors comes with a fine of $5 or more.  In fact, infractions include an unbelievably long list of potential infractions not necessarily spelled out – chewing gum, carrying “chips,” forgetting your belt, tardiness, carrying a marking pen, having an energy drink, making a noise with a pen, etc.  Each infraction (and others) will cost a student $5.00 or more (Rossi, Rosalind. School’s discipline: you act up you pay up. Chicago Sun Times.  14 Feb. 2012).  

By the way, if a student is having a bad day – or time of it – 12 detentions/infractions or more will result in a $140 fine (they call it a fee) to attend an obligatory class on “behavior.”  Additional detentions will result in an additional discipline class for an additional $140. Any student (more likely their family) who cannot pay will be held back from moving on to the next class – regardless of his or her grades.  Please keep in mind that even though Noble Street schools are funded by wealthy benefactors like Penny Pritzker, nearly 90% of the families are low-income (Schmidt, George), and cannot afford the mounting fees for students who are having difficulty adapting to the “SMART” model.  

Unlike the public system, Noble is allowed tougher disciplinary policies than the CPU because it is a charter – remember our earlier changing characterizations of public vs. private when it came to our model Chicago Math and Science Academy (see Vocabulary – Feb 19 & 26).  Meanwhile, CEO Mr. Milkie affirms that SMART and the other “disciplinary policies at NOBLE promote basic, common sense citizenship things, which you know teenagers need” (Golab, Art.  www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3055)

On the national level, school chief Arne Duncan also touts Milkie’s Noble Street agenda and, along with Pritzkers and other wealthy benefactors, endorses the programs used there: “’ We’re dramatically changing the opportunity structure,’ Duncan told Chicagoa few weeks before leaving his CPS post to become the U.S. secretary of education. ‘We have tried to make this [city] a mecca for people who want to make change in public education ‘” (Rodkin, Dennis. Charting a new course. Chicago Magazine.com.  29 Feb. 2012).