Chicago Daily Observer

Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) wants more money for Chicago Public Schools and points out that New Trier High School District 203 spends more money per pupil than Chicago. Here are a few observations:

1. CPS today spends more money per pupil than most school districts in Illinois. According to the Illinois State Board of Education, in 2007 the average Illinois school district spent about $9,900 per pupil while CPS spent about $11,000. In fact, among unit school districts, those that include both elementary and high schools, CPS was in the top 5 percent in terms of its operating expenditures per pupil.

Click the above link to download the 10 page document, “Illinois 21st Century School Reform Initiative”.

We believe in the philosphy of Ron Edmonds who said “We can, whenever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interst to us. we already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.”

What drives this effort is the well-documented fact that too many students are failing to learn, failing to compete academically, and failing to complete their education in Illinois. That failure is compounded by the reality that youth of today will be confronted with a world-information economy that demands better than we’ve produced in the past-and therefore makes the prospects for those who fall short of success even gloomier than we now face.

To not fix these problems ... Read More...

A Democratic state senator and a former Republican candidate for governor on Monday proposed a pilot program aimed at proving that better funding and more resources would translate into better students at low-performing schools.

Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that he would drop plans to have Chicago students boycott the first day of schools Sept. 2 if Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan would publicly back the proposals.

Meeks is threatening to bus Chicago students to the New Trier School District Sept. 2 and then sit in the lobbies of downtown businesses in following days to dramatize state funding inequities between wealthy and poor districts.

Meeks and Ron Gidwitz, a former Republican governor candidate and former head of the State Board of Education, said their plan would set up four clusters of schools—two in Chicago, one in the suburbs ... Read More...

In protest of Chicago’s failing school system, Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) is staging a field trip of sorts. He’s urging kids from his legislative district to skip the first day of school, board buses, travel to Winnetka, and attempt to enroll in New Trier High School.

One can understand why Meeks would want better educational options for Chicago kids. But on his way to Winnetka, the senator might want to take a look out the window where there are already many Chicago public schools—charter schools—that are performing on par with top-notch suburban and downstate schools. One such school, Chicago International Charter School, graduates its students 86 percent of the time—comparing quite favorably with public schools Downstate and suburban Chicago, which have an average graduation rate of 84 percent. Overall, charter public schools in Chicago graduate 77 percent of their students, compared with a citywide average of 51 percent.

Why aren’t ... Read More...

“School funding” is becoming the new “gun control.”

Raise the subject with your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends, and be prepared for a necktie-loosening, shirt sleeve-rolling, handkerchief blotting, down-and-dirty fight.

Why? Because the politics of school funding have little to do with schools or money. The conversation quickly evolves into a debate about class, race and parental responsibility.

State Sen. James Meeks’ controversial plan to bus Chicago kids to Winnetka’s New Trier High School on the first day of school is igniting this very debate. He wants the state to lease the Illinois Lottery to a private company and use the cash to infuse more money into public schools, which Gov. Rod Blagojevich proposed in 2006. Instead, lawmakers are looking at the lease idea to fund a statewide construction plan

That was big of Sen./ Rev. James Meeks to dare someone to arrest the kids he’s leading out of the city’s public schools in an ill-conceived protest, when he’s the guy who should be pinched.

As for the students, truant officers ought to round them up and take them back to school where they belong. Of course, no one will do any of that because they don’t want to appear mean, racist or elitist. And that’s exactly the point of Meeks’ plan to haul Chicago students out of the first week of school to protest, at downtown offices and at Winnetka’s New Trier Township High School, the “inequities” of the state education funding formula.

Al Sharpton has now endorsed the call by Reverend/state senator James Meeks for students to boycott the first day of school, a protest against education funding disparities. Sharpton’s political allure being what it is, his announcement isn’t going to convince the likes of Mayor Daley, Governor Blagojevich, or Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan to drop their opposition to the plan—all have said they want to fix the funding gaps but don’t like the idea of keeping kids out of school, even though they’ve previously shown no reluctance to do it themselves when the rally is for a cause they want to be seen showing “leadership” on, such as tougher gun laws.

I was too tough on Illinois State Senator James Meeks.

Last week, I offered both a commentary and a rigorous interview of Rev. Meeks on the WLS airwaves as to Meeks’ controversial declaration that he will bus thousands of Chicago Public School (CPS) students up to New Trier High School on Chicago’s ritzy North Shore for the first day of school next month to protest state education funding inequities.

While I stand by the substance of what I said, I violated a cardinal rule of politics in making the perfect the enemy of the good.

On The Don & Roma Morning Show last week, in addition to discussing his PR stunt, Meeks also explained that he would be introducing legislation to effectively create statewide school choice whereby students could take state dollars and attend any public school they wish.

Meeks is on the right street but he’s at the ... Read More...

State Senator, and Reverend, James Meeks launched himself back onto front pages Monday, by encouraging students in inner-city neighborhoods to skip the first day of school. The reason for the protest is something Meeks has harped on for years: inequities in school funding.

We should give Meeks credit for being persistent. But unfortunately we can’t give him credit for being effective, or even honest, in his protest. Meeks loves to make enemies out of suburban schools spending decadent amounts of cash on computer labs and sports facilities, while inner-city kids struggle for books and decent teachers.

But this obsession with the suburbs is the tip off that Meeks’ primary motivation is political. Why? Because there are inequalities within the City of Chicago that are just as great as the inequalities between city and suburbs.

A 2005 Chicago Catalyst study of school budgets found that some schools in Chicago, like ... Read More...

Rev. Senator Meeks of Illinois plans to bus thousands of truant CPS students* to Winnetka’s New Trier School District and enroll them in the affluent northern suburb.

Given the cost of gassing up the buses need to take his expected ‘thousands of children,’ Rev./Senator Meeks is going on the hip in a huge way to bring focus on what he believes to be a two-tiered funding inequity in how education dollars are spent.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered, I was 19 years old and fancifully considered myself to be far to the left of him. Notwithstanding that, he felt to me like one of my moral elders and tutors (as he still does). When I was first asked to sign a petition to make his birthday a national holiday, on a Manhattan side street in 1970, I was 21 and signed with pride. When, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan finally signed also, authorizing the bill for the King holiday, I was humbled to think of how far along I was in my 30s and how comparatively little I had to show for it. And last weekend, reading a beautiful reminiscence by King biographer Taylor Branch, I was arrested by the realization that King has now been dead for ... Read More...