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Outcry from Chicago teachers as city votes to close 50 schools
Officials say closures are necessary to improve standards but teachers union president calls it 'a day of mourning'
The Chicago board of education voted Wednesday to close 50 schools and programs, an ambitious plan that has sparked protests and lawsuits and could help define — for better or worse — Mayor Rahm Emanuel's term in office.
City officials say the closings are necessary because of falling school enrolment and as part of their efforts to improve the city's struggling education system.
"The only consideration for us today is to do exactly what is right for the children," schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said before the board's vote.
Critics have blasted Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, and Byrd-Bennett, saying the closings disproportionately affect minority neighborhoods and will endanger children who may have to cross gang boundaries to get to a new school.
They protested during the board's meeting Wednesday and sent busloads of parents, teachers and students to Springfield to lobby lawmakers to approve a moratorium on the closings. Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis called it "a day of mourning" for the children of Chicago.
She also pledged to start a voter registration drive in an attempt to register 200,000 new voters before the 2015 municipal elections — when Emanuel will be up for re-election — and to raise funds to support candidates for mayor, city council and statewide office.
"We know that we may not win every seat we intend to target but with research, polling, money and people power we can win some of them," Lewis said.
The board — which is appointed by Emanuel — voted to spare some schools that were targeted for closure in March. Many experts say it is the largest number of closings at any one time by any school district in recent memory.
The mayor said Tuesday he believes closing the schools is the right thing to do, and that possible blowback from voters wasn't a factor in his decisions.
"I will absorb the political consequence so our children have a better future," Emanuel said. "If I was to shrink from something the city has discussed for over a decade about what it needed to do … because it was politically too tough, but then watch another generation of children drop out or fail in their reading and math, I don't want to hold this job."
Chicago is among several major US cities, including Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit to use mass school closures to reduce costs and offset declining enrolment. Detroit has closed more than 130 schools since 2005, including more than 40 in 2010 alone.
The school closings are the second major issue pitting Emanuel against the Chicago Teachers Union. The group's 26,000 members went on strike early in the school year, partly over the school district's demand for longer school days, idling students for a week.
Emanuel and Byrd-Bennett say the district's financial and educational struggles call for drastic action. They say the nation's third-largest school district is facing a deficit of about $1bn and that too many Chicago Public Schools buildings are half-empty because of a population drop in some city neighborhoods. They've also pledged students will be moved to schools that are performing better academically.
CPS says it has 403,000 students in a system that has seats for more than 500,000. The closures include one high school program; the rest are elementary schools, serving students up to eighth grade.
Alderman Jason Ervin, whose West Side ward includes several schools slated for closure, fears the closings could further destabilize the area. He said many area residents have grown frustrated because they feel the decision about which schools to close was made months ago, despite weeks of additional hearings and community meetings.
But he was less certain what impact, if any, it could have on Emanuel's political future.
"He's the mayor. I'm the alderman. We still have to work together," Ervin said. "People will make those decisions when the time comes."
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Iran's Ahmadinejad looks to outsider options
Oklahoma tornado damage could top $2 billion
Oklahoma rescuers wind up search and prepare for tornado clean-up
Attention shifts to clearing the rubble and debris as officials say they are no longer searching for any more missing people
Rescue workers were scaling back the search for victims or survivors of the deadly Oklahoma tornado, as stories emerged of the many people who escaped with their lives.
Though the twister levelled entire blocks, flattened two schools and killed 24 people, it was becoming clear amid the rubble that the disaster could have been far worse.
As residents of Moore returned to survey their ruined homes, the White House announced that Barack Obama would visit the area on Sunday.
Officials said on Wednesday that six people remained unaccounted for. "They're not sure if they've walked off or if they are in the rubble," Albert Ashwood, director of Oklahoma's department of emergency management, told a news conference.
Experts explaining the low death toll cited a relatively long advance warning of 16 minutes for the tornado and high awareness of the dangers in a region known as Tornado Alley.
Tonya Williams, 38, said she still felt in shock after surviving the tornado by taking shelter in a closet. She put bicycle helmets on her eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, collected her three dogs and pushed them all into a hall closet. "We prayed. I could feel pressure, and being sucked. I put my body over them to try to protect them," Williams told the Associated Press.
Neighbours dug them out. The roof and upper story of the house had collapsed into and around the closet. Williams and her children suffered only minor injuries.
The clean-up – let alone the recovery – will be an enormous job. The tornado left a trail of destruction 17 miles long from the spot where it touched down outside of Oklahoma City and then along the path that it tracked as it headed into Moore. At its height it was 1.3 miles wide and packed winds that raged at more than 200mph. The National Weather Service declared it a rare EF-5 tornado – the top level of the Enhanced Fujita Scale used to measure their power and destructive potential.
The tornado was the worst to hit the United States since a storm ploughed Joplin, Missouri, exactly two years ago and killed 158 people. The Moore storm, though far less lethal, has nonetheless left 2,400 homes damaged or destroyed and affected an estimated 10,000 people. Insurance experts believe the eventual cost of the storm will actually exceed the Joplin disaster, which ended up causing $3bn of damage.
But, despite that, Moore clearly had a relatively lucky escape. Experts explained the relatively low death toll in Moore to an effective early warning system and a prevalence of storm shelters in homes in the area, many of which had been built after a similar storm struck Moore in 1999. "There would have been a lot more people killed, we believe, if they had not had that warning 14 years ago," Oklahoma senator James Inhofe told CNN.
Already the Oklahoma state legislature is drafting a law to allow the local government to tap into the states "rainy day" fund for $45bn in cash to help finance the rebuilding effort in the city of 55,000 people. Meanwhile President Obama has also pledged that the federal government will do everything it can to help in the rebuilding effort.
In a speech to the nation on Tuesday, Obama vowed to the people of Moore: "You will not travel that path (to recovery) alone. Your country will travel it with you, fuelled by our faith in the Almighty and our faith in one another."
But there is already a political row brewing over the extent and cost of federal aid in the wake of the disaster. Inhofe and his fellow Republican senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, have a long record of opposing federal funding for disaster relief. Both politicians opposed last year's $60.4bn aid bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy and are now in a political bind as they face the prospect of reversing that opinion for Moore or having to oppose aid to their own voters.
Inhofe has been telling reporters that the situation in Moore is different from Sandy because the legislation to help storm-struck east coast last year was laden with unnecessary funding for other projects. Meanwhile, Coburn has stated that he supports aid to help Moore as long as the costs of that help are cut from elsewhere in the federal budget.
Paul Harrisguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Oklahoma rescuers wind up search and prepare for tornado clean-up
Attention shifts to clearing the rubble and debris as officials say they are no longer searching for any more missing people
Rescue workers were scaling back the search for victims or survivors of the deadly Oklahoma tornado, as stories emerged of the many people who escaped with their lives.
Though the twister levelled entire blocks, flattened two schools and killed 24 people, it was becoming clear amid the rubble that the disaster could have been far worse.
As residents of Moore returned to survey their ruined homes, the White House announced that Barack Obama would visit the area on Sunday.
Officials said on Wednesday that six people remained unaccounted for. "They're not sure if they've walked off or if they are in the rubble," Albert Ashwood, director of Oklahoma's department of emergency management, told a news conference.
Experts explaining the low death toll cited a relatively long advance warning of 16 minutes for the tornado and high awareness of the dangers in a region known as Tornado Alley.
Tonya Williams, 38, said she still felt in shock after surviving the tornado by taking shelter in a closet. She put bicycle helmets on her eight-year-old daughter and six-year-old son, collected her three dogs and pushed them all into a hall closet. "We prayed. I could feel pressure, and being sucked. I put my body over them to try to protect them," Williams told the Associated Press.
Neighbours dug them out. The roof and upper story of the house had collapsed into and around the closet. Williams and her children suffered only minor injuries.
The clean-up – let alone the recovery – will be an enormous job. The tornado left a trail of destruction 17 miles long from the spot where it touched down outside of Oklahoma City and then along the path that it tracked as it headed into Moore. At its height it was 1.3 miles wide and packed winds that raged at more than 200mph. The National Weather Service declared it a rare EF-5 tornado – the top level of the Enhanced Fujita Scale used to measure their power and destructive potential.
The tornado was the worst to hit the United States since a storm ploughed Joplin, Missouri, exactly two years ago and killed 158 people. The Moore storm, though far less lethal, has nonetheless left 2,400 homes damaged or destroyed and affected an estimated 10,000 people. Insurance experts believe the eventual cost of the storm will actually exceed the Joplin disaster, which ended up causing $3bn of damage.
But, despite that, Moore clearly had a relatively lucky escape. Experts explained the relatively low death toll in Moore to an effective early warning system and a prevalence of storm shelters in homes in the area, many of which had been built after a similar storm struck Moore in 1999. "There would have been a lot more people killed, we believe, if they had not had that warning 14 years ago," Oklahoma senator James Inhofe told CNN.
Already the Oklahoma state legislature is drafting a law to allow the local government to tap into the states "rainy day" fund for $45bn in cash to help finance the rebuilding effort in the city of 55,000 people. Meanwhile President Obama has also pledged that the federal government will do everything it can to help in the rebuilding effort.
In a speech to the nation on Tuesday, Obama vowed to the people of Moore: "You will not travel that path (to recovery) alone. Your country will travel it with you, fuelled by our faith in the Almighty and our faith in one another."
But there is already a political row brewing over the extent and cost of federal aid in the wake of the disaster. Inhofe and his fellow Republican senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, have a long record of opposing federal funding for disaster relief. Both politicians opposed last year's $60.4bn aid bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy and are now in a political bind as they face the prospect of reversing that opinion for Moore or having to oppose aid to their own voters.
Inhofe has been telling reporters that the situation in Moore is different from Sandy because the legislation to help storm-struck east coast last year was laden with unnecessary funding for other projects. Meanwhile, Coburn has stated that he supports aid to help Moore as long as the costs of that help are cut from elsewhere in the federal budget.
Paul Harrisguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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