Remind me again why an elected school board in Chicago is a good idea
& timeless advice on smiling for you to follow this summer
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Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.
‘Chicago Teachers Union members vote down effort to raise union dues to pay for political campaigns’
The proposal voted down by about 60% of CTU members with 80% of the vote counted was for an increase in dues of up to $800 a year for the highest earners in the teaching ranks. Current annual dues are $1,476.
“We must win a majority of the first 21-person, fully elected school board in November,” CTU officials wrote in documents, outlining the new dues. “Millions in dark-money donations are trying to ensure record school board closings and austerity instead of a fully funded district.”
Imagine that! Outside interest groups hostile to union interests are investing heavily in winning a Chicago school board majority that will rein in union power.
Five years ago, the union leaders were ecstatic when Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation that gradually took away the Chicago mayor’s power to appoint members to the board or education. This is from their statement at the time:
Students, families and educators will now have the voice they have long been denied for a quarter of a century by failed mayoral control of our schools. Chicago will finally have an elected board accountable to the people our schools serve, as it should be.
Charming naiveté, the notion that these would be campaigns of ideas earnestly debated by citizen volunteers and decided by a concerned, informed electorate, as it often is in low-profile suburban school board elections.
In a district the size of Chicago, such elections were bound to turn into national proxy fights over “school choice” and union rights, and attract major donations from interest groups whose megaphones would drown out students, families, educators and other local stakeholders.
And rather than having a mayor to hold accountable for the fortunes of the schools, citizens would have to evaluate the performance of 21 largely obscure board members, all of whom ran pledging to have the best interests of the children in mind.
Now the majority of teachers have decided that they don’t want to pony up still more of their money to fortify their union against 21-frontal “attacks against public education,” in the words of a union statement announcing the defeat of the proposed hike.
The statement said the increase was rejected “at this time” because members “voted against moving forward with this proposal right now.” It added that members should “expect to come back to this discussion in the fall.” This seems to signal a hope that teachers will be inspired to open their wallets when they see how large the war chests are of those who oppose the union’s interests.
And maybe they will. But I read this result as a rank and file rebuke to the union leaders who promoted this idea for decades only to realize that it stands to be disastrous for their interests.
Et tu, Northern District of Illinois?
In normal times, the colossally slippery, disingenuous and vindictive behavior of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago in trying to secure an indictment of the so-called Broadview Six would be a huge national scandal, with firings and disbarments all around.
Before two separate grand juries last year, a federal prosecutor repeatedly stepped over the line, including “vouching” about the strength of the evidence, telling panel members who disagreed with the prosecution’s theory of the case that they could just leave, and having “ex parte” communications with a grand juror outside the proceedings, according to a series of bombshell revelations in court Thursday. …
I was incredibly shocked by the redactions that were made,” (U.S. District Judge April) Perry told the assembled parties, according to the transcript. “I have read hundreds, if not thousands, of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. Attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”
But times are so abnormal with our highly partisan, weaponized U.S. Department of Justice that I doubt there will be any serious repercussions for what was revealed as the case fell apart and was dismissed last week. Another odious outrage under the Trump regime. Ho hum.
Welcome to the longest possible ‘summer’
This year, Memorial Day — the last Monday in May — fell on the earliest possible date on the calendar, and Labor Day — the first Monday in September,— will fall on the latest possible date on the calendar, Sept. 7. Thus we can look forward to the longest possible unofficial summer.
The 105 day span won’t happen again until 2037, though it generally happens every five to seven years.
Notes and comments from readers — lightly edited — along with my responses
What is the ‘secret sauce’ that ostensibly makes private schools better than public schools?
I’ve been asking this question for decades to those who want tax dollars to support private, often religious K-12 education in the name of “school choice,” and the question is relevant once again as Gov. JB Pritzker weighs whether Illinois should sign on to the Federal Tax‑Credit Scholarship Program. See last week’s Zmail.
Edward Fee — As per your school vouchers question about the secret sauce: it’s the parents of the students. Parents of students who attend private schools have a desire and means to take advantage of the opportunities for their kids to do well educationally. And I think that’s one of the reasons so many of the vouchers end up in the hands of parents who already send their kids to private schools.
Jenni Roberts — When a parent makes the financial sacrifice to send their kids to a private school, there is a commitment on their part which most often continues to the classroom in volunteerism and sense of community. Furthermore the school was picked for reasons shared amongst the parents which propagates a sense of community. The teachers generally also have the same commitment to that community. The cost per student is significantly lower, partly due to those commitments but mostly due to lack of resources for special needs. How to bring that sense of community to public schools with a much more diverse population is a secret sauce that would hugely impact school success—most likely this “sauce” is more common at specialty public schools.
Melinda Abney Kaiser — Guess how many private schools were ready to accept my special needs student? Even “public-ish” charters (in Michigan which has a gazillion charters) were not welcoming when they found out my kid had an Individualized Education Program (IEP). When you get to pick the kids who don’t need supplemental services and don’t get free/reduced price lunch, you get a different student body than the school that has to take everyone.
Zorn — As Kaiser points out, private schools don’t have to accept and educate all students, and can easily shed themselves of students who are disruptive or have too many expensive special needs. They tend to have a far more engaged and wealthier parent community.
Here’s Robert Pianta, one of the authors of a University of Virginia study of private vs. public schools that found that there’s one main reason for the apparent advantage of private schools:
If you just simply look at private school versus public school — don't consider any other factor in the kids' history — you see huge benefits to being in private school. They're about a standard deviation of like 15 points higher on test scores, they're more motivated and the like. And then as soon as you put into the equation that you're using to predict, as soon as you put in family income, those differences disappear — and they never reappear again, no matter how many other variables that you put in.
Ted B. —My wife, a CPS teacher rock star, retires in 2 weeks. Anytime we meet students past or present, it’s easy to see the positive impact she has had on their lives. Some have written letters years later thanking her. She wouldn’t be retiring if not for all the extra BS outside the classroom. Endless redundant training sessions, politics, badgering from admins about nonsense, switching classrooms/grades/subjects every year, etc. After parental involvement, my guess on the secret sauce for private schools is more independence from the conflated BS of a larger system.
Zorn — Ted makes a good point. Private schools have an easier time shedding low-performing teachers and tend to be more flexible about curriculum and other practices. BS, in short.
But those who frequently refer to “failing public schools” don’t seem to acknowledge that many public schools with unionized teachers in wealthy areas do really well by nearly all metrics.
I’ve noticed that supporters of the program to allow taxpayers to direct some of their tax money directly into private school scholarship funds — a little shell game that will put public money into religious instruction— have taken to reminding us that some of this money can go to into supporting public school add-ons, such a tutoring.
OK, so how about this? A tax-credit program that directs money only to supplemental public school programs. Though I’m generally opposed to the idea of letting people earmark their tax dollars for specific pet ideas, I’d be fine with an experiment that would let me direct my taxes to low-performing schools instead of, oh, I don’t know, fancy ballrooms, triumphal arches and outmoded military weapons.
Diverting public funds to private schools in the name of improving public schools is an incoherent idea. Diverting public funds to private schools in the name of depopulating and therefore weakening public schools and the unions associated with them makes a lot of sense, if that’s your goal.
Point of clarification
Gillean Wilsak — I sense an unexpressed confusion. I think most people don’t really understand the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. I wouldn’t mind a clarification myself because I think it matters to the discussion.
Eric Zorn — A deduction reduces the amount of income on which you owe tax. So if you earn $100,000 in taxable income and donate 10,000 to charity and your tax bracket is 20% (I’m using easy numbers for illustration purposes) then you will pay taxes on $90,000 of income ($18,000) instead of 20% of $100,000 ($20,000), for a savings of $2,000 on your tax bill. A tax credit for a donation of $10,000 (And yes, I know the federal limit is $1,700 under the law for now) is $10,000 off the amount of taxes that you owe, so a savings of $10,000 on your tax bill. So using these numbers, the credit saves you five times more than the simple deduction.
On the Trump phone
John Houck —Nothing shows Trump’s utter contempt for his supporters than charging them $500 for a cheap phone spray-painted gold.
Zorn — It’s really strange to me how so many in rural America worship a narcissistic, mendacious big-city nepo baby president who clearly doesn’t relate to or care about the struggles they face.
On Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s profane response to a heckler
Steven K. — This multimillionaire twerp is supposed to be a professional baseball player. Being able to tune out heckling fans should be as elementary as the ability to catch a routine pop fly, or getting bat on ball. Any player who cannot clear that ridiculously low bar should have his ass put on the bus and sent down to season for a month in Triple A. The fan paid to get in, so she gets to call out bad plays and the bad attitude of opposing players. If he didn’t want to get heckled, then he should have caught that ball (it wasn’t that difficult.) The impolite fan called him a pussy and said he sucked, which he definitely is and does, and then this petulant twerp lashes out at her with vile language, apparently unenlightened on the social protocols that demand respect be conferred upon a lady, even if the lady is behaving in a most unladylike fashion.
Laurence E Siegel — We expect professional athletes to ignore heckling. But is a ticket to a game permission to act like a jackass? What makes this fan’s behavior more acceptable at a baseball game than other places?
Paul Hybel —It was a human reaction in the heat of the moment from an intense young ball player and I’m OK with that. Just because they’re being paid gobs of money doesn’t mean they should stifle their human reactions to over-the-top conduct by opposing fans.
Ken Bissett — The heckler got a taste of her own medicine. It’s not a big deal. Life will go on.
Subscriber service
Geri Barrath — Online I got a two-year digital subscription to the Chicago Tribune for $2. Yes, the Trib isn’t what it once was, but $2 for two years is an amazing deal. Even if all you use it for is the crossword puzzle that’s less than .002 per puzzle! The only catch is you’ll need to be sure to cancel the subscription before it expires, or they’ll start billing you almost $20 every four weeks.
Zorn — It’s a great price. You can’t go wrong. But the offer is labeled “Limited Time,” without specifying when the offer expires, which is typical of how the Tribune runs its subscription business.
Reconnecting with a reader who gave me column fodder 25 years ago
Susan Francesconi — The Picayune Sentinel is one of the best and most interesting newsletters I read each week! I don’t know why I haven’t been a paid subscriber until today. What is wrong with me?
By the way, when you were still writing for the Tribune, I sent you a list of lessons my recently deceased grandfather, Domenick Serino, taught me that began with “always answer the phone with a smile.” It gave me and my family such a thrill when you included his advice and his name in one of the columns you and Mary Schmich collaborated on.
Zorn — Good to hear from you again. Thanks for being a supporter. It means a lot. Here is that column, starting with my message to Schmich:
Forgetting to smile? Pencil it in
July 4, 2001
To: Miss Mary Sunshine
From: The Artist Formerly Known as Eeyore
One of our readers sent me a terrific bit of advice the other day: “Answer the phone with a smile.”
Normally, I answer the phone with a cadaverous expression that conveys wariness, irritation and detachment. This often reflects my true state of mind, but the tone is not deliberate. I’m usually just too distracted or lost in thought as I ponder High Matters, per my job description, to mind my phone manners.
At this slack greeting, callers frequently ask, “Is something wrong?” or, “Did I wake you?” This gets conversations off to a bad start, which is not good. Gruffness ought to be a response, not an attitude toward life.
So I tried phone smiling for a whole day, inspired, in part, by the challenge you issued in your May 11 column for people to go 24 hours without complaining.
The phone would ring, I would pause, force a grin even broader than seen in the unnaturally cheerful photo in my column logo, then pick up the receiver. I found it almost impossible to sound sour with my face contorted so sweetly.
Callers, in turn, brightened. My tone welcomed them gladly into my life, and I believe many of them rang off under the impression that I am a nice guy. I was sowing sunshine, all thanks to an affected grimace no one could see. Since then, I’ve tried, with some success, to remember to force a smile whenever picking up the phone.
I owe my now growing reputation for being good natured to Susan Francesconi of Naperville, who sent me the tip in a list of life’s lessons imparted to her by her grandfather, Domenick J. Serino, who recently died at age 89. …
Mr. Serino also advised, “Ask questions,” and so I shall: How did that experiment with cheerfulness go?
To: Smiley-Faced Zorn
From: Grumps Schmich
Eric, did you know that everybody from ancient Chinese Taoists to modern scientists would agree that your smiley face, however calculated, makes you a greater pleasure to yourself and others than you ordinarily are?
A few years back, smile researchers — yes, there are smile researchers — asked subjects to bite across a pencil to activate their smile muscles. Other subjects had to force a frown.
The ones with the forced pencil smile had a more upbeat attitude than the frowners and found things like cartoons funnier.
Another study showed that people who smiled at themselves in the mirror in the morning had higher self-esteem. Never mind that a grump might interpret such behavior as narcissism.
Oh, is my primer on smiling a little too academic for you, Smiles? Well, bite my pencil.
Smiling is an important part of many meditative practices. “The inner smile” or “half smiling” — an inner attitude and a slight uptilt of the mouth — are recommended when you wake in the morning, when you’re idle, and when you’re irked, as ways to shift your energy and your emotions.
The early Taoists, pioneers in the notion of the constant inner smile, didn’t mention the phone, but they surely would have if they’d witnessed the surly way so many of us answer it.
Too often, I answer the phone the way you do, or did before your conversion. I’ll try to smile for my hellos from now on, and maybe I’ll be more successful than I was with my anti-complaining campaign. Having challenged readers to go 24 hours without complaining, I barely made it through six.
On the bright side, I am now more aware of complaining — my own as well as everybody else’s — than I was before my failed boycott. Do you think a mindful bad attitude is more spiritually advanced than the mindless kind?
And do you think that people who forced themselves to smile while reading this column found it more amusing than it really is? I suggest we add free pencils to our home subscription bags.
Unpopular opinions?
Now that we’re getting down to the wire on the Bears’ stadium site selection, I will reiterate that I don’t really care where the team plays its home games, since the games are just TV shows as far as I’m concerned. I continue to contend that it was monumental blunder in 2002/2003 when Soldier Field was thoroughly renovated without a dome — purists and their love for outdoor football won the day, and the powers that be didn’t listen to those of us who pointed out at the time the missed opportunity for all sort of indoor events such as the NCAA Men’s Final Four and winter mega concerts.
Now the team wants a brand new domed stadium paid for, in part, by property tax breaks (Arlington Heights proposal) or just increased taxes on citizens (Hammond, Indiana proposal).
Here are your options for the click poll below.
A domed football stadium would be such an economic engine to Chicago that the city should go to great lengths to keep the Bears here.
The proposed “megaprojects bill” in Springfield designed to help the Bears build in Arlington Heights looks risky and overbroad; potentially as misguided as Chicago’s parking meter deal.So let the team go play in Hammond.
The Bears stadium / entertainment complex proposed for Arlington Heights looks like the best option. It will boost the regional economy and be a lot of fun to visit.
Chicago or Arlington Heights, I don’t care which, but no way should the Chicago Bears move to another state.
I really, really don’t care as long as my tax dollars aren’t going to help billionaires build stadiums.
I realize this doesn’t cover all the options and nuances. Supporters can offer other answers in comments.
Last week’s result
Cate Płys — You forgot the choice “Dylan is often incoherent and self-indulgent with a mediocre voice AND I love him.” I choose that one. It’s true that a lot, if not most, of his lyrics sound trite and ridiculous if you just read or say them out loud, with a lot of twisting just to make a rhyme. But then there’ll be a gem stuffed in between. Bottom line: Anybody who could produce “Blood on the Tracks” gets a lifetime pass.
Zorn — I disagree that “a lot, if not most, of his lyrics sound trite and ridiculous if you just read or say them out loud.” It’s true that not all of his lyrics are Nobel-worthy, but given how poorly most song lyrics survive the transition to spoken poetry, I think he’s a standout. And a lot of what passes for high-art poetry amounts to an abstruse and incoherent effort to convey manifestly obvious or quotidian sentiments, and it fails to withstand similar scrutiny.
Don McLeese — If you’ll indulge just the slightest bit of critical hair-splitting on the Dylan poll, I find the “great voice” option problematic, even though that’s the one I chose. Dylan is a terrific vocalist, and the definitive interpreter of his own material, but he by no means has a “great voice’ by any conventional standards. And this to me is a crucial part of his influence and legacy—he opened the floodgates for so many other non-singers to become great vocalists, be they monotone, raspy, conversational or otherwise idiosyncratic. After Dylan, a “pop star” didn’t need to look or sound a certain way or fit a certain mold. So I would have preferred the option of “Great songwriter, great vocalist’ and changed the others to follow suit.
Zorn — “Vocalist” would have been a better option for the poll. I do like Dylan’s voice, though. It’s not mellifluous — not even during his “Nashville Skyline” phase when he tried crooning sweetly — but it’s exquisite for what he’s doing. Other readers have compared it to Rod Stewart, Cindy Lauper, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker and others with unconventional voices.
NewsWheel
Inspired by the WordWheel puzzle in the Monday-Friday Chicago Tribune and other papers, this puzzle asks you to identify the missing letter that will make a word or words — possibly proper nouns; reading either clockwise or counterclockwise — related to a story in the news or other current event. The solution at the bottom of the newsletter includes a link to a related, explanatory news story.
The week’s best visual jokes
Here are some funny visual images I've come across recently on social media. Enjoy, then evaluate:
There’s still time to vote in the conventional Quip of the Week poll!
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Info
Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above. Paid subscribers receive each Picayune Plus in their email inbox each Tuesday, are part of our civil and productive commenting community and enjoy the sublime satisfaction of supporting this enterprise.
Contact
You can email me at ericzorn@gmail.com or by clicking here:
I read all the messages that come in, but I do most of my interacting with readers in the comments section beneath each issue.
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Answer to the NewsWheel puzzle
OUTBREAK
Though I will also give full credit for the less newsy BREAKOUT
Great visual jokes this week, I laughed at every one. I totally see myself paying $1.59 at the Goodwill store for the Princess Diana plate LOL
What a surprise for me to see that our brief exchange from last week inspired you to include my grandfather's lifelong lessons in today's column. Now I have another reason to smile today.