Word Is Spreading About UNO's House of Cards

In a significant breakthrough, La Raza has published a short piece by Antonio Zavala that talks about Byron Sigcho's hold-no-bars public forum series, which we will be repeating this Saturday at the West Belmont Branch Library, at 31004 N. Narragansett, at 1PM.

I've been trying to track UNO coverage, and I can't remember a Spanish language piece about UNO that dares to pull the wool back.  So, we're making a dent.

If you haven't seen the presentation yet, come out the the West Belmont Branch on Saturday. We're taking it to the Archer Heights Branch Library on Monday night, too.

Here's the Google Translate version of the article, and yes, I realize it's imperfect.

Public money is priority ONE

Although studied communications at Northeastern University and worked briefly as an illustrator, Juan Rangel is not an educator by profession.

Yet Rangel is leading a network of 13 charter schools with 6,500 students, most of them Hispanic, and about 400 teachers.

Rangel was released in the beginning of La Villita 90s, while working for Educational Party and then joined the United Neighborhood Organization (UNO).

It was there that he inherited political contacts UNO founder, Danny Solis, an ally of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Thanks to these political contacts, UNO has received millions of dollars from the city and state, while Rangel attacks public schools being overcrowded and lacking in quality.

But an analysis of what happens in schools UNO, performed by Byron Sigcho, University of Illinois at Chicago, shows that education is not the priority of UNO.

Only 45 cents of every dollar received goes to UNO education. So UNO cuts in other areas such as special education and avoids giving computer classes to adults.

Only 25 percent of the nearly 400 UNO teachers are certified to teach. Another 25 percent are students of Teach For America program. The rest of them, 50 percent, are neither educators.

Reportedly ONE gave them to their partners and friends $ 13 million in contracts.Another $ 8.5 million in contracts were awarded to a brother of Michael Scot, while he was vice president of UNO.

And while UNO Hispanic culture uses to promote their schools with names of Mexican writers, students are punished and fined for speaking Spanish. What would this Octavio Paz?

Antonio Zavala is a journalist and works as a correspondent for Reuters in Chicago.Comments or suggestions to ixtlah@gmail.com