Chicago, May 23 — Thousands of Chicago teachers, parents, and students petitioned, spoke out, rallied, sat in, marched and disrupted meetings to stop school closings, turnarounds, and consolidations that will attack over 40,000 students at 120 schools. Nevertheless, on May 22, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 schools, turnaround five, and co-locate 11 with charter schools. “Transformation” of schools means a combination of shutdowns, overcrowding multiple schools in one building, firing teachers and redecorating schools based on the racist performance standards of federal and/or private grants.
Students from closing schools will be sent to 54 other schools that will cause overcrowding. The Board made this ruling in the face of clear and well-known evidence of racism — 88 percent of affected students are black, more than twice the percentage of black students in Chicago Public Schools (CPS.) Yet they could not defend their lies that schools needed to close to save money or that students would get a better education in the “welcoming” schools. Their hand-picked “hearing officers” had even recommended taking 13 schools off the list (at the last minute, four closings were removed.)
The move to shut down schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and other cities, mostly in black neighborhoods, is part of the racist attack on the living conditions of the working class. The ruling-class-led Broad Foundation is guiding this attack. Its plan is to close schools and divide up school districts in urban areas. This will further advance educational inequities and redistribute more education dollars to the wealthy. Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, with the help of the black CPS CEO, Barbara Byrd Bennett, is implementing the Broad plan despite opposition. Even Chicago’s ruling-class press called for fewer school closings. It’s not that they oppose attacks on working-class education, but that they disagree on how fast or how obvious these attacks should be.
The answer to this is not, as the Chicago Teachers Union promotes, a massive voter registration drive resulting in the election of a new mayor. Under capitalism, the needs of the capitalists dictate the parameters of reform wins. For example, when Richard Nixon was president, he enacted social programs that Barack Obama is now helping to destroy. It has nothing to do with the politicians as individuals or whether they are Democrats or Republicans. It has everything to do with the times.
Nixon was president when U.S. capitalism was dominant in the world — they could afford the social programs that a mass movement was fighting for. Now, in spite of all the billionaires and the growing disparities between rich and poor, U.S. capitalism faces serious competition from China, Europe, India, and other capitalists in the world. Its status as “Number One” is fading fast and it will need to depress working-class wages and conditions and go to war as it attempts to regain its standing. Electing a new mayor will not change that.
What will? The building of a revolutionary communist movement. When PLP was involved in the meetings, marches, and rallies, members pointed out the racism and the anti-student nature of the ruling-class system every day. School closings are an intensification of those attacks, but we also need to fight the daily capitalist status quo of neglect, lies, overcrowding, and under-resourcing schools.
To that end, we have plans to set up a “Freedom School” this summer to implement aspects of communist education on a small level. As our influence and experience grow, more will join PLP in the fight to end capitalism and its self-serving education system once and for all. Under communism, the need to move humanity forward will guarantee that everyone is educated to our fullest potential!