Catalyst Caucus

Ron Huberman is the third in a string of superintendents--oops, I mean CEOs--brought in by the mayor to run the schools. CPS has become little more than an extension of City Hall, run on a business plan rather than an education plan.

With no background in public education, Huberman is the prototype Daley manager, a fixer, in the true sense of the word. He was moved over from the police dept., to City Hall, and then the CTA, to fix the mayor's political/educational problems and to do damage control. In that sense, Huberman has shown some acumen for the job. He's loyal and efficient, if not effective.

There are certainly plenty of problems to be solved (or contained) and plenty of damage to control; i.e. ,the end of the court-ordered desegregation mandate has led to re-segregation of the magnet schools; exploding school and youth violence in the wake of Renaissance 2010 school closings; a growing community push-back against those closings; student recruitment scandals at the city's selective-enrollment schools, and a new wave of corruption and money mismanagement scandals that led Huberman to revoke credit cards from many of his own team members. It was the latter scandal that may have even led to the sad suicide death of Board President Michael Scott. Then there's the matter of Huberman’s own lack of fiscal restraint; i.e., his need for two company cars and driver.

To make things even more challenging, he's inherited a wealth of problems from the Duncan administration without time or room to start over with a clean slate or his own educational improvement plan. And even if he had such a plan, he’d be forced to implement it with a team of retreaded managers he brought over from the CTA.

He's also has been forced to tiptoe around a tidal wave of new research showing that Ren10 wasn't what it was cracked up to be. His unwillingness to openly confront these research findings doesn't bode well for his future or the school system's. Since he can't openly admit Ren10's failings, he's forced to move ahead with Ren10 "Phase 2"--more of the same failed policies.

As for any of Huberman's own ideas about education or teaching/learning, it's too soon to fully assess them or even know what they are. BTW, whatever happened to Barbara Eason Watkins, our near invisible chief education officer who probably should have gotten the top job?

Huberman’s response to school violence doesn't look promising. It's an expensive ($60 million) plan to identify, through data analysis, potential victims before they become victims. I'm all for good use of data, but someone will still have to explain that one to me. About 6,000 CPS students each year are arrested and taken to jail right out of their classrooms--a surefire way to guarantee dropping out. Huberman's plan to predict individual at-risk students doesn't seem like a solution.

Finally, he still seems bent on massive school closings, giving schools over to private management companies, firing entire faculties, and using test scores to punish low-scoring schools. This appears to be the heart of the district's Race-To- the-Top proposal. This is not yy any stretch, the much-needed plan for school improvement.

Mike and others highlighted points quite well. More recently on our community’s mind has been how Mr. Huberman has responded to the annual school closings. To his credit, I applaud him for removing 6 schools from the proposed closing list last year. In addition, over the years community groups have asked for greater accountability in ensuring smoother transitions, safer pathways and transportation, and ensuring students are not sent to lower-performing schools no matter what the reason is for closing a school (i.e. there were instances were students were sent to lower performing or similarly performing struggling schools). Mr. Huberman’s administration has created a Students Bill of Rights around school closings et al. Although these are guidelines versus policy and there remains a test of accountability should these guidelines not be met, it is a good start. Community groups are even pleased to hear 2 Board members will sit in on every school closing hearing, based on concerns that the CPS Board of Education approved decisions without understanding the dynamics from the school’s perspective.

With regards to student safety, we were pleased to hear that Mr. Huberman and his new director of Safety and Security finally heeded to the community’s call of concern to student and community safety when our 6 Bronzeville area high schools let out for the day. We are pleased to acknowledge that at GBF’s urging to Mr. Huberman’s predecessor, Mr. Shields is meeting regularly with these high schools, Alderman Pat Dowell, the Chicago Transit Authority, and the Chicago Police Department since we believed that all agencies need to address this issue together.

In the way of improvements, there are areas in which Mr. Huberman and his administration could adjust. The first most notable is how guarded the CPS administration has become. Mr. Vallas and even Mr. Duncan reached out to communities in a more timely manner and they seemed more sincere in getting the community’s input. This past year I have noticed that the outreach gestures are much more last minute, less genuine, and are often through the staff with very little decision-making power. Connected to its guardedness about information and outreach, this administration seems to have a far greater need to control situations.

There remains this dichotomy where this administration responds to safety and violence by calling on communities to be involved, and yet there seems to lack genuine collaboration on CPS’ end with exceptions to some of their trusted, loyal groups (I applaud the mentoring grant, however, the south side Bronzeville communities were left off the list). On the same note of safety and violence, the Culture of Calm initiative seems to lack what many experts are saying – the need for CPS to acknowledge that by systematically incorporating conflict resolution, restorative justice, and school trainings to address social emotional issues of students, we will have better invested in student safety and discipline that improves the opportunities of having our young people graduate, and less on the schoolhouse to jailhouse track. Sure it is more timely for schools to be trained, but it will pay off in the long run and help us all achieve the same goals of keeping students in school and having them to graduate.

Finally, the Mayor and this administration continue to feed to the public the notion that parents and community are responsible for an influx of student violence and a failing public school system. However, we must continue to ask how parents and community may become legitimate partners when the administration does not model this behavior, nor does it seem to genuinely come from the top to our CAO’s, principals, and local schools. Many parents and communities are closed off from the school, but by opening up these relationships, we can become working as a village to provide the best for our children.

Recently the Sun-Times focused on the travails of schools chief Ron Huberman's first year in office in " A year of living on the edge for CPS boss Huberman." The piece identifies the challenges of budget deficits, teacher compensation and reforming bad schools. Unfortunatley, a number of these problems have been exacerbated by Huberman and his team at the Board of Education.

The purported $900 million deficit next year is partially a result of poor investment decisions when the district invested in derivitatives to limit the interest rate risk on bonds used to fund capital improvements in the schools. In addition, there have been multimillion dollar surpluses in Tax Increment Financing districts throughout the city that have not been reinvested back into neighborhood schools and parks, even though such practices are commonplace in other counties. Also, more than 2% of the district's budget is dedicated to testing and performance management, both highly questionable methods for measuring student gains. Lastly, the reforms necessitated by Renaissance 2010 have been extremely costly (as pointed out by Rod Estevan), the closing of 70 schools and opening 100 new ones is no small endeavor especially when most research shows that Renaissance 2010 has not delivered on its promises.

When Huberman claims that he needs to re-open the teacher contract to pay for deficits, perhaps he should look elsewhere. Why are the people most integral to creating good educational outcomes the first to get shortchanged? Why do bankers, real estate agents and unproven charter operators get paid first?

If Huberman is as data driven as he claims he would realize that bad financial decisions, charters that perform no better than neighborhood schools, and poor distribution of resources at the city level are responsible for the current crisis. His willingness to sacrifice smaller class sizes, profesional educators and fully staffed schools, is a sign of his business acumen -- not his committment to educate Chicago's youth.