英语访谈节目:芝加哥教育委员会计划关闭54所学校

JESSE RUIZ:Well, we have been doing this a little bit at a time for last decade, frankly.

And we're, frankly, weary of having to go through this every single Europe in Chicago. Every spring is school closing season. We want to be done with this business now, get it done with, right-size of district. It's frankly something that should have been done. This is a problem that has been a decade-long in the making, should have been addressed before.

The current school board and school management at CPS is determined to not ignore those issues. I think, frankly, that I would be disappointed in all of us if we didn't recognize this issue and address it, and not be satisfied with the status quo. And let's go on to the next five years, and have a moratorium on school closings, which the mayor and the school administration has said would be the case, and focus on teaching and learning every spring, not closing schools.

JEFFREY BROWN:Race is inevitably an issue. These are largely black and Hispanic majority schools and students affected.

What do you say to people who say that this is always—it is these minority communities where the disruption is felt?

JESSE RUIZ:Well, it's these minority communities that have been underserved, and thus, even though we're facing a billion-dollar deficit, we want to take those savings and reinvest it in the schools that do need those critical supports, that do need wraparound services.

And this is a way to get those monies out of, frankly, buildings and put them into student services and classrooms that directly impact the learning environment for a student. And so we're cognizant of that. And, again, we're frustrated that folks that were running the school system previously didn't address this, and we're here today, and we're going to address it today.

We think there's an urgency about this to get this work done, do it well, and make sure that the best interest of the student is always at heart, which it is.

JEFFREY BROWN:And, finally, does this mean loss of jobs, teachers' jobs, administrative jobs, and do you think this is it? Is there more to come?

JESSE RUIZ:There potentially could be some loss of jobs. In the last teacher contract, there was a negotiated system of how these teachers would reapply for positions.

Obviously, the students aren't going away. They're just being consolidated in one school building. So we still need those high-quality teachers. We will save on some custodial services, that we will have fewer of those needs in one building vs. two or three.

And, yes, we look forward to this being it, and thus making a big effort this year, making huge strides in getting a current right-size system, and then for the next five years being done with this and focusing on teaching and learning.

JEFFREY BROWN:Jesse Ruiz of the Chicago Board of Education, thank you very much.

JESSE RUIZ:Thank you.

JEFFREY BROWN:And joining us live now is Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago's Teachers Union.

Welcome to you.

So, tell us, what is the most important reason that you oppose this move?

KAREN LEWIS, Chicago Teachers Union: Well, we oppose it because it's completely destabilizing of neighborhoods in which their neighborhood is already destabilized.

Jesse Ruiz is very good at laying out the problems from a spreadsheet analysis. And it makes perfect sense. Oh, let's put two places together that are underutilized. The problem is, the reason most of these buildings are underutilized is because we have had decades of school closings.

So, the school closings have created this underutilization issue. And one of the things that is very problematic about it is, if you listen to him, it's all corporate-speak. So, this is an attack. It's a corporate attack on public education. We have 25 buildings right now that are still vacant from the closings.

I love how he says, well, we're going to repurpose these buildings. Those are all perhaps. I hope everybody noticed that. There's no plan for this. There's no safety plan block by block. People do not understand how unsafe Chicago is right now. I know you have heard it and you have talked about it. But, literally, we have 59 different gangs in Chicago and 650 branches of those gangs.

So, we're talking block by block. So sending children from one place to the next could be deadly. And, in addition, there are a lot of special ed programs. I was at a school yesterday that was a fairly new building that had already been retrofitted with the things that they said they wanted to give, libraries, computer labs, science labs, beautiful building.

They're being sent to a school that is much, much older, not in good shape, and not really equipped to handle the children with special needs there.

JEFFREY BROWN:All right, let me ask you the same question that I asked him about whether and to what extent Chicago is failing its student today. Where do you see the failure and where do you see the cause?

KAREN LEWIS:I mean, I don't understand the—what we're talking about when we're talking about failing.

We have been failing poor and minority children across this country. It's not just Chicago. It's everywhere. And the issue is, we don't want to have honest conversations about poverty, because doing these other things and focusing the conversation somewhere else allows people to not talk about the other issues.

So, in the poorer parts of town, children have not had access to good things, and then, all of a sudden, we're starting to see that happen. Almost every single school that is on the bubble here, we have seen a lot of resources put in lately, but some not so much at all.

So the city and the administration, look, we have had four different CEOs in the last three years. We have had a constant churning of the Board of Education and people in CPS. This is not the time for them to do this drastic, draconian—I mean, this is a complete warfare.

This is warfare now. So we're not going to only have food deserts in Chicago. We're going to have places that actually have school deserts.

JEFFREY BROWN:I asked him about potential cuts. I wonder what you—how you see that. Do you see this as an attack on teachers and the union?

KAREN LEWIS:Absolutely.

I mean, this is a problem that we have been seeing, again, nationwide. But here in Chicago, it's especially heinous, because we have a mayor that only has the ear—the only people that have his ear are the corporate reformer types. So they won't listen to ways to really accomplish the kind of things we want to do.

Everyone wants the best education they can possibly have for their children. We don't blame parents. We don't blame society. We don't blame anything, but we have to honestly look at why are they attacking us so much? We feel like we're in Chiraq. It's terrible here.

JEFFREY BROWN:Well, let me turn it back on you, because there is a perception, fair or not, from many people that teachers unions are often a barrier to changes that are necessary.

And you heard this when you went on strike last year, that whatever is put forward, the response will be, no, we want to stay with the status quo. Right?

KAREN LEWIS:And that is not true. The status quo is that rich people get richer and beautiful schools, and poor children have bad schools.

We are absolutely against the status quo. But what our children have been subject to is status quo education, a status quo of ranking and sorting. We are absolutely against the status quo.

But they use it all the time because they are the ones that actually promote the status quo. They don't want to end—they don't want to end the status quo. But they want to point their fingers at us.

JEFFREY BROWN:What happens now? Are you planning to fight this? How do you do that?

KAREN LEWIS:You know, there are a variety of ways. But you never put all your eggs in one basket. There are legal means. There are legislative means.

There are -- but the most important way is to mobilize our parents. We have had weeks and weeks of hearings. They have had thousands of people come out and say, do not close our schools. This was Rahm Emanuel's number, the number that we have now, 50. It was always that number. They put out 300 and some. Then they came back with 129.

They were always spent in having this number, this shock and awe, this complete destruction of publicly funded public education in Chicago. The key is mass mobilization of our members, our teachers, our paraprofessionals, clinicians, along with parents and community. They do not want their neighborhoods destroyed.

JEFFREY BROWN:Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union, thank you so much.

KAREN LEWIS:Thank you for having me. And we miss you in Chicago.