Sweet home Chicago

When you’re right, you’re right

PLEASE DO yourself a favor this morning, Gentle Reader. Sit down. Push your coffee back a bit. Try to stay calm. We’re about to say something nice about Rahm Emanuel. Yes, this president’s former chief of staff and chief enforcer. Naturally, he’s now mayor of Chicago, Ill., in the great tradition of the Bosses Daley, father and son.

Yes, that’s the same Rahm Emanuel who once went on national television to advise politicians to never let a serious crisis go to waste, not when it could be used to further their agenda-whether financial, ideological or both. Yes, the same Rahm Emanuel who had to apologize to mental-health associations after calling somebody he disliked retarded in one of those insider meetings that pols love.

But voters up in Chicago don’t seem to disqualify political leaders just because they’re coarse or rude. They may even consider such traits a mark of a leader who gets things done. Even if at times his rhetoric may lack a little refinement, or even logic. (“The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”-Hizzoner Richard J. Daley.)

Rahm Emanuel is back in the news again. But it’s for something other than hurling the kind of insults that anybody on the South Side would recognize. This time he’s attracted attention because Chicago’s board of education voted to close 50 schools in an attempt to fix the city’s school system. Which is not only broken but broke: The school district is facing a billion-dollar deficit. Many of its schools are half-empty because many of its neighborhoods are in decline. The district has a little more than 400,000 kids, but it has seats enough for half a million. And so inefficiently, disgracefully on.

Hence all these school closures. And oh by the way and for good measure, the city’s board of education would transfer many of these kids now at soon-to-be-shuttered schools to other ones that perform much better academically.

The horror! As you might imagine, the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to decry such actions. The president of Chicago’s teachers’ union called it “a day of mourning” for the children of Chicago. And just when you think those self-serving teachers’ unions in the Windy City who look on the school system as a jobs program couldn’t possibly surprise you again . . . .

Television showed protesters carrying signs that said “Save Our Schools.” Not “Save Our Kids.” In Chicago politics, perks have always come before posterity, vested interests before the public interest.

Saving the kids was what Chicago’s board of education was trying to do. And to do it, some schools would be shut down. In order to free the kids in them from a failing system that has held them hostage for too long-just to protect the teachers’ unions’ turf.

Let it be noted that Chicago’s board of education is appointed by none other than His Honor the mayor, one Rahm Emanuel. So naturally the president of the aforementioned union, Ms. Karen Lewis, pledged to start a voter registration drive to sign up hundreds of thousands more voters before 2015-when Mayor Emanuel is up for reelection. You’d be forgiven if you don’t think she’s trying to register the kind of voters who’d be inclined to re-elect the mayor.

The mayor’s reaction? It’s worth quoting:

“I will absorb the political consequences so our children have a better future,” he told the papers. “If I was to shrink from something the city has discussed for over a decade about what it needed to do . . . because it was politically too tough, but then watch another generation of children drop out or fail in their reading and math, I don’t want to hold this job.”

Goodness. It’s rare enough for a professional pol to stand up (1) for kids, and (2) to a teachers’ union. It’s even rarer in Chicago. And it’s rarest of all when that politician is a Democratic insider like Rahm Emanuel.

IT’S AT SUCH moments that hope is reborn in the heart of even a hardened editorial writer. And a wild thought occurs:

What if all educators, school administrators, teachers’ unions and even members of school boards were to put the kids first and everything else second?

What would happen if all those people who reflexively oppose charter schools and waste the taxpayers’ good money on litigation and high-priced lawyers to fight reform (see Little Rock, Ark.) were to take the same position as Rahm Emanuel?

What if all those who just repeat whatever line the teachers’ unions are pushing today were to follow their own independent judgment instead? Even their own conscience. Suppose they started to focus on the kids’ needs instead of the union’s demands?

What if every politician put kids first and his own career second? Imagine what all could be accomplished.

Imagine the better schools. Imagine the kids’ better test scores. Imagine what those kids could learn, what they could become. Imagine a better future.

Thank you, Mayor Emanuel. At least for today, you’ve provided an example for other politicians-from governors to mayors to members of school boards-and, yes, even for a president. What if all these politicians forgot the vested interests they’re beholden to, like teachers’ unions and ward bosses, and just set out to save the kids? Yes, imagine.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 05/29/2013

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