As a token of his appreciation for the voters of Chicago—or at least the growing segment that favors an elected school board—Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his allies on the City Council recently offered an early Christmas gift: a big, fat middle finger to the face.
That’s not to be confused with B-3, which is what the mayor affectionately nicknamed schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the woman he brought in from Detroit to be the genial face on his cuts and closings.
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You get the idea.
And that of course there’s nothing to be gained for anyone naive enough to stand with ordinary teachers, students, taxpayers, and various Reader columnists on the leading educational issues of the day.
And they conveniently look the other way as the mayor uses the tax increment financing program to take as much as $250 million a year in property taxes away from the schools—money that he’s free to spend on things that have nothing to do with schools.
The mayor headed off that initiative by putting three relatively meaningless questions on the ballot, taking advantage of a rule that limits the citywide ballot to three referenda in an election.
He was trounced by an overwhelming margin.
