New CPS CEO
For the sake of the children in the Chicago Public Schools, I hope Jean-Claude Brizard, the new schools CEO is successful. I would not bet on it though.
It will take him six or more months to find his way around our great city and an equal number to become familiar with the hundreds of schools and the thousands of people in them. In addition he will have to overcome resistance to being an outsider brought in by a mayor who has vowed to shake things up. This is in a system that has had to endure the tenures of numerous school leaders who were non-educators and who, through all of their efforts and changes, achieved very little.
The morale of teachers has to be affected just as police officers are affected when their leaders are chosen from outside their ranks. Morale cannot be overlooked. It cannot be taken for granted regardless of the level of pay. Resentment can build up when, out of the ranks of thousands in the school system, some person with experience and competence cannot be found to run this system
If no one has risen to the top in the system — and that is hard to believe — then a plan that is well-defined and laid out needs to be implemented immediately to allow for advancement through the ranks to the top. It is difficult to promote a sense of family in an organization if the head of the family is always an outsider.
That being said, the new CEO can be successful if he can somehow shed his Rochester image of being autocratic. He must be a collaborator and realize that orders from on high will not get the job done. If he works in a non-adversarial role with all parties as a team, he might survive.
If you are part of the decision, you are more likely to buy into the plan and get the job done.
A good starting point for such an effort would be to get all parties together and plan the best way to implement a longer school day. This writer would encourage an increase in course offerings of art, music and physical education, courses that are life-enhancing and will allow for many students to succeed who might have difficulty in other subjects.
— Ned L. McCray, Tinley Park, retired principal of Simeon High School
Teachers pension
Please leave the teachers pension as it is. We worked for more than 34 years and faithfully put in our contributions without fail. The fact that our legislators used our money as the state’s checking account is not our problem. The people of the state have benefited from them not paying the state’s portion of our pensions because the money was spent on other projects. Now it is time to pay back what was borrowed.
Please keep your hands off our pensions!
— Carol Kovacik, Berkeley
Student success
Mayor Rahm Emanuel outlined a bold plan for Chicago Public Schools in his stirring inaugural address. His plans to increase the school day and the school year are critical to improving the success rate of CPS students. It is clear the mayor is serious about significant change, and he’s not afraid to push the envelope or make waves.
We know the personal involvement of an adult in a child’s education is critical and, as the mayor pointed out, parents need to be accountable. For those students, however, whose parents can’t fulfill that role, we need to be sure there are others to step in to take that nurturing and helping role.
There are many successful models in our community that show how it is done. One is our LINK Unlimited program, which is an extraordinary local model for addressing the unmet needs of urban, high-performing youth. It offers academically promising African-American students from economically disadvantaged homes an opportunity to attend the city’s highest-performing private and parochial schools. Each LINK scholar gets four years of financial support by an individual mentor from the business and professional community, who guides him or her through his or her educational journey. One hundred percent of the graduating seniors benefit from LINK’s academic enrichment programs; this results in acceptance at top-tier four-year colleges and universities.
— Virgil Jones, president, LINK Unlimited, Chicago
Lessons being learned
After reading “‘The Marine’ keeps ’em in line; At high school where performance has been dismal, principal leading reform charge is starting to get results” (Page 1, May 25), by Tribune reporter Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, I extend my congratulations to principal Kenyatta Stansberry, who has turned around the behavior of the students at Marshall Metropolitan High School in Chicago. That is certainly a wonderful feat to focus the students on being good members of our society.
I am very disappointed at the three lines that were devoted to what is going on at Marshall in regard to instruction. What are we teaching them? Why are we teaching them a specific facet of history, math, English, etc.? The taxpayers want to know more about the instruction rather than the fact that they can now behave. What is the vision of the school in regard to instruction? Do we teach the students to read statistics, to analyze poems, to figure out the major players in the development of the history of Chicago? I would like to know more about the instruction that is taking place every day for six hours. That’s what we send our students to school to accomplish.
— Eileen Quinn Knight, St. Xavier University, Chicago
Experienced educator
I’ve been a public school teacher in Chicago for the past six years, and it frustrates me when new initiatives are denounced before they are launched. The new Chicago Public Schools CEO, Jean-Claude Brizard, hasn’t had a chance to prove his merit in Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is no-nonsense about education. He’s stated numerous times that improving Chicago’s schools is his No. 1 priority. Emanuel has chosen an experienced educator to lead our schools, and I’m hard-pressed to believe that Brizard has anything other than students’ best interests in mind.
Any solution to our city’s education problem is going to require a number of groups with different stakes in our schools to work together. I have read different spins on Brizard’s accomplishments from diverse sources. It’s hard to form a conclusion from it all. All I want to see, as a teacher and lifelong Chicagoan. is a leader take the helm and remind this city’s parents, students, business leaders and other stakeholders that the we need to work together. Brizard hasn’t shut anyone out of the conversation; thus, so far so good.
Moving forward I hope to be held accountable for my performance, I hope my students to be held accountable for theirs and I hope Brizard to be held accountable for his. Accountability cannot be assigned until action has been taken. Let’s wait until we have something to chew on before we spit it out. Brizard must be given a chance.
— Zachary Ian Novick, Chicago
