"No One In The Room Who Has Any Power"

Wendy Katten talked last night about the charter school "hearings" that were held at CPS this past Tuesday. Remember, CPS just closed 50 neighborhood school due to a "utilization" crisis. The schools were "half empty, " according to CPS.

The whole thing was shown to have been a strategy developed by the Broad Institute.

Nevertheless, the schools were closed.

Now CPS has already approved 10 new charter schools for next year and is considering as many as 21 more. And these "hearings" are the public's chance to say something on the record. But there's nobody at these hearings who is remotely connected to the decision-makers. No board members, for example.

It's all Potemkin. It's pretty much a measure of Rahm Emanuel's position on democratic governance.

What they've done is destabilize public education to the point where people in the city no longer view a neighborhood school as a first choice, like people do all over the country. And they've done so in the name of "choice," but in reality, it's actually been done in the name of zealotry.

Here's the show.