Last year the school advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education threw a party celebrating its 20th year of “parental advocacy and action.” Earlier this month it sent out a fund-raising letter breaking some bad news: PURE’s at the end of its rope.
They form coalitions with other outsiders and advise aggrieved teachers and parents about the ins and the outs of our clout-heavy school system. They’re not afraid to file lawsuits—as a matter of fact PURE’s got one challenging the Board of Education’s stance on local school councils in charter and privately run schools right now. On issue after issue—centralized curriculum, high-stakes testing, accurate measures of the dropout rate, school closings, how and where the school board spends its money—they counter the spin coming out of the central office. Over the years they’ve been the go-to people for anyone looking for the real deal on what’s going down with Chicago’s public schools. They’re a repository for information—test scores, school board press releases, reports and studies on education—that they make available to reporters, researchers, and school activists. With the press cutting back and the mayor having successfully consolidated almost all the power in town, we need watchdogs like PURE more than ever.
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And of course, the flavor of the day in corporate fund-raising is the Olympics. In the last two years the Chicago 2016 committee has raked in more than $40 million to fund the city’s bid to win the games. It’s unprovable, but I’ll wager that a sliver of that money might otherwise have gone to the not-for-profit agitators who dare to keep the mayor on his toes.
The CDC, charged with overseeing the city’s development plans, is for the most part a rubber stamp, and most aldermen limit their remarks before the panel to a few minutes. But Natarus, who lost his post to Brendan Reilly last year, was in a league of his own when it came to oratory. Once he got started, he couldn’t stop—like a character in a Coen brothers movie or a John Guare play.
Just as it seemed he was heading down an irreversible path away from whatever ultimate point he wanted to make, he found his way. “Meanwhile, the Loop went down,” he said.
As I read, I recalled being at that meeting, sitting in the City Council chambers, watching Natarus speak without notes, much less a script, and wondering, Where is he going and how will he get there?
