In Chicago: Tight Funds for Public Schools; Tax Deals for Biz Allies

Thursday, August 9, 2012
"Rahm sends millions in TIF money to Penny -- not to schools"
(TIF means Tax Increment Financing. (Wikipedia article;
Other articles or sites: "TIF Subsidies Given to Chicago Companies, Nonprofits Bypass City Neighborhoods in Need of Jobs", "Report: TIF Funds Aren’t Helping Schools", "TIF Money For Chicago Public Schools: Like TIFs in Miniature".)
Mike Klonsky writes in his blog:

I'm still on the road but trying to keep up on Chicago happenings. Stunned but not surprised to see that Rahm is delivering millions from his TIF slush fund to his billionaire pal Penny Pritzker for her new Hyatt Hotel.
Pritzker sits on the mayor's hand-picked school board. [Chicago Public Schools] She's also [President Barack] Obama's chief campaign fundraiser. Pritzker is also an anti-union hard-liner who's trying to bust the union at Hyatt. She's claiming that there's no money left in the budget for even small teacher raises. The union argues that TIF money can be used to help solve the crisis. But Rahm obviously has his own priorities. Pritzker obviously has a conflict of interests.
“This one example shows the fundamental corruption in the way things are done here,” said David Orlikoff of the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, a labor and community coalition growing out of Occupy Chicago’s labor committee and supporting the Chicago Teachers Union.
“Then they tell teachers they don’t have any money for anything, except the mayor’s pet projects. It’s a conflict of interest – and it will be a conflict until the school board is elected.

Link to blog on Pritzker and TIF:
Curtis Black, at Community Media Workshop, August 8, 2012, "Penny Pritzker's TIF":

School board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels Corp. is benefiting from a $5.2 million TIF subsidy on 53rd Street – while CPS’s proposed 2013 budget cuts seven schools surrounding the hotel project by $3.4 million, which is roughly the portion CPS is losing from the TIF deal.
“This one example shows the fundamental corruption in the way things are done here,” said David Orlikoff of the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, a labor and community coalition growing out of Occupy Chicago’s labor committee and supporting the Chicago Teachers Union.
CTSC will hold a press conference and speakout and picket the project at 53rd and Harper on Wednesday, August 8, starting at 5:30 p.m.
“As a member of the Board of Education, it’s Penny Pritzker’s job to find money for our schools, not to take our money for her business,” Orlikoff said.
The $5.2 million subsidy is part of $20.4 million in TIF funds going to the University of Chicago-led redevelopment of Harper Court (see here for some background). In addition to the hotel, the university is building a 12-story office building in the first phase of the project.
CTSC points out that Pritzker has a net worth of $1.8 billion, and the University of Chicago – now engaged in a huge campus expansion – has an endowment of $6.6 billion.
“They have plenty of money,” said Lorraine Chavez of CTSC. “They don’t need a taxpayer subsidy to pay for it. It’s outrageous.”
At Catalyst, Penny Pritzker clarifies that she’s not personally receiving the $5.2 million, and in a statement to Newstips, Hyatt points out that the Hyde Park Hyatt will not be owned by the corporation but, like many Hyatts, operated under a franchise agreement, thus “neither Hyatt Hotels Corporation nor Penny Pritzker…is receiving TIF funds as a result of this project.”
Conflict of interest
“The school board should be defending school funding when the mayor wants to take it for TIFs; it’s the only body in a position to do that,” Orlikoff said. “But they’re appointed by the mayor, and they look the other way.
“Then they tell teachers they don’t have any money for anything, except the mayor’s pet projects. It’s a conflict of interest – and it will be a conflict until the school board is elected.
“We need representation on the school board, and we need to end the chronic underfunding of our schools,” Orlikoff said.
CTSC, which exists “to support teachers and fight for equitable quality education,” calls for increasing school funding “by reclaiming TIFs and taxing the rich.”
TIF is “a failed program,” Orlikoff said. “It’s not fighting economic blight, it’s a way of taking from everyone and giving to the One Percent.”
Questions on 53rd Street
There are lots of questions right now about the 53rd Street TIF, especially with a new TIF district now being carved out of it by a second developer.
Antheus Capital, planning an upscale residential and retail development at 51st and Lake Park, wants to break its parcel out of the 53rd Street TIF to form its own TIF district – in order apply for $10 million or more in TIF funds. The 53rd Street TIF advisory council has okayed the proposal.
But after ten years of operation, the 53rd Street TIF fund has a balance of just $3.7 million.
Now, with thirteen years to go, it’s on the hook for a $20-million subsidy, while revenues are slowing (due not just to a lousy economy but to the County Assessor’s new formula, which shifts the property tax burden from commercial to residential taxpayers) – and the TIF district is getting smaller.
“Many of us don’t expect to seek Phase 2″ ( a 26-story condo tower and four apartment buildings, estimated to cost $100 million), said longtime community activist George Rumsey. “It’s hard to see where the money’s going to come from . Everyone is wondering if there’s going to be enough to finish the first phase.”
“For two years I’ve been asking who is liable if the TIF funds come up short,” he said Rumsey. “I have not gotten an answer.”
Fourth Ward Ald. Will Burns has backed Hyatt’s TIF subsidy, telling the Sun Times it’s “absolutely essential,” though the Ramada Lakeshore hotel is located a few blocks away.
Time to ‘revisit’ TIF?
The Hyde Park Herald called for “revisiting” the 53rd Street TIF in an editorial last week. It points out that the TIF district was sold to residents in 2001 on the basis of promised community benefits, including a new addition for Canter Middle School and a parking lot, none of which have materialized.

For conclusion of Community Media Workshop story click to here.

Here's a map of TIF projects in Chicago.

PURE reports that TIF money is going to build another Hyatt hotel (hello, Hyatt mogul and CPS board member, Penny Pritzker), but it says that TIF money should instead go to public schools.
"PSAT for 8-7-12: Boycott Hyatt for public education"

House Committee Defunds Race to the Top; House Committee Says 5 Week Experienced Teacher Can Be Highly Qualified

In a lightly followed item, a U.S. House Subcommittee voted to defund President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan's signature Race to the Top program. This has been the program, launched in 2009, Obama's first year in office, that one early conservative critic dubbed, "NCLB 2: The Carrot That Feels Like a Stick." It has pressed states to institute teacher evaluation systems and to expand the number of charter schools. Compliant states would get extra federal funds. Individually, deficient teachers would get fired, "successful" teachers would receive bonuses (Michael Winerip, New York Times, January 22, 2012, "In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom.")
Alyson Klein, Tuesday, in "House K-12 Spending Bill Would Scrap Race to the Top" in Education Week reported,

The Obama administration's signature K-12 initiative—the Race to the Top competition—would get axed under a proposal put forward by Republicans on the House panel that oversees K-12 spending.
Two other major Obama priorities—the School Improvement Grant program, which provides $533 million to help turn around low-performing schools, and the nearly $150 million Investing in Innovation grant program—would also be eliminated, according to a press release put out by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The spending bill was introduced today by Republicans on the House subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, Education and Related agencies. It would cover fiscal year 2013, the fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1. The panel is expected to vote on the legislation tomorrow.
But it looks like not all of the administration's favorite programs would be big losers. The bill appears to renew two new competitive-grant programs. One is Promise Neighborhoods, which helps communities pair wraparound services with education programs. Promise Neighborhoods would get nearly $60 million, the same level as last year. That's not as much the $100 million President Barack Obama wanted for the program.
The measure also would renew the nearly $300 million Teacher Incentive Fund, which provides grants to districts to create pay-for-performance programs. And it would keep in place a nearly $160 million comprehensive literacy program.
So which program would win out big-time? Special education state grants, which would get $12.1 billion, a $500 million increase over current levels. By contrast, Title I would get $15.1 billion, the same level as last year. The Obama administration had proposed flat funding for those programs this year.

Alas, this could be a repeat of last year, when the Republican House saved teachers from Race to the Top. The Democrat-controlled Senate prevailed in the negotiations between the two houses and RTTT was restored.
Klein closed with her thoughts on how this year's general election results might impact on RTTT.

This isn't the first time House Republicans have attempted to jettison many of the programs on the Obama administration education-redesign hit parade. Last year, the committee also proposed scrapping Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, SIG, and other programs. But, the Democratically-controlled Senate—and the administration—ultimately won out in budget negotiations.
So when we will know the outcome this year? Probably not until after the presidential election. It's unlikely that Congress will actually finish its work on the bills before that deadline—it's become tradition for them to pass stop-gap measures extending funding until they can work out a deal.
That means that if Obama isn't re-elected—or if Republicans take over the Senate—it's going to be much much tougher for programs like Race to the Top and i3 to survive the chopping block.
Want more? Check out the full draft bill right here.

* * *
Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post reports that a House committee (same one?) has voted to extend for two years defining teachers with five weeks training as highly qualified. [Yep, better have those Teach for America trainees in classrooms than experienced ones. Bravo to Michael Bloomberg for driving experienced teachers out of the profession.]

Does 5 weeks of training make a teacher ‘highly qualified?’ — Updated
By Valerie Strauss (Updated with House subcommittee vote)
Should someone with five weeks of teacher training be considered a highly qualified teacher?
A U.S. House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation on Wednesday that extended for two more years the federal definition of a highly qualified teacher as including students still learning to be teachers and other people with very little training.

A Teach for America recruit gets classroom management training. (Ricky Carioti, photo/THE WASHINGTON POST)
The nonprofit organization Teach for America places college graduates into high needs schools after giving them five weeks of training in a summer institute. The TFA corps members, who are required to give only a two-year commitment to teaching, can continue a master’s degree in education with selected schools while teaching.
Of course it doesn’t make any real sense that a new college graduate with five weeks of ed training or any student teacher should be considered highly qualified — because they aren’t. But federal officials inexplicably partial to Teach for America have bestowed millions of dollars on the organization, and TFA has, not surprisingly, lobbied Congress for this legislation.
The reality is that teachers still in training are disproportionately concentrated in schools serving low-income students and students of color — the children who need the best teachers. This inequitable distribution disproportionately affects students with disabilities.

Strauss closed with an overview of what No Child Left Behind requires and how federal courts are colliding with legislative decisions in the area:

The No Child Left Behind law requires all classrooms to have highly qualified teachers, though the definition of just what those are has been debated for years.
In 2010, Congress approved legislation that defined “highly qualified teachers” as including students still in teacher training programs. There is an effort now among supporters to keep that definition on the books — even though the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals twice ruled that it violated No Child Left Behind because it did not fully meet a credential standard set in that law.
Last month the Senate Appropriations Committee was on its way to extending the federal definition but, after some protest, decided not to. Still there is support in the Senate to do so.
The House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday approved legislation that would eliminate most of the funding for President Obama’s Race to the Top and other education programs — and would allow teachers in training to be considered highly qualified teachers through the 2014-15 school year.
The Obama administration has given waivers to more than half of the states, which allows them to ignore major parts of NCLB. That includes the highly qualified teacher provision, if they include student achievement in teacher evaluations.
However, there are other federal education funds, such as Title 1, tied to a highly qualified teacher provision.
Bottom line: The issue isn’t over.

Obama threatens veto to get his school-deform ways

Obama vetoing over his bullying for school de-forming.

He's making this the rare case of using his veto?????
And people wonder why we use the term, "Obushma"?

From the L.A. Times, July 12, 2010:
Obama's school-aid showdown
The president is wrongly threatening to veto a school-aid package unless cuts to his Race to the Top program are eliminated.

All across the country, the most pressing need in schools right now is to keep as many teachers, janitors, counselors and librarians as possible. Less important: expanding charter schools and linking teachers' evaluations to their students' test scores.

So we're surprised by the tumult over a school-aid package approved by the House last week as part of a larger appropriations bill. It would provide $10 billion to keep as many school employees as possible in their jobs during the recession, but would do so, in part, by imposing some cuts on the Obama administration's key education initiative. Race to the Top, a $4.3-billion program that provides competitive grants to states that draw up reform programs in keeping with the administration's priorities, would lose $500 million. Two other incentive programs would lose a total of $300 million.

President Obama has threatened to veto the school-aid package unless the cuts to these programs are eliminated. But Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), who inserted the aid package, included those cuts among many others to offset its cost, thus winning support from Republicans and conservative Democrats. Even with the reduction in its budget, Race to the Top would have billions of dollars to hand out. Would the president really undermine desperately needed school funding over a less-than-lethal reduction in the grant program's coffers?


Opponents of the cuts say that more money for schools won't help unless reforms are instituted. But the $10 billion doesn't represent "more" money; it simply makes up for — to a limited extent — devastating budget cuts that schools have suffered in recent years. And reforms will accomplish nothing unless schools can keep teachers in the classroom.

Of course, if Obey had seen Race to the Top as invaluable, he wouldn't have touched its funding. And here we agree with him as well. The concept behind the program is brilliant: Leverage a relatively small amount of money by using competitive grants as an incentive for states to embrace change. Dozens of states have drawn up new legislation and made new pledges in order to align with the administration's goals. But some of those goals are untested and others are too severe. We too believe that teachers' evaluations should have some connection to how their students score on tests, but are dismayed to see states win grants by promising to make those scores account for at least half of a teacher's performance. And though well-run charter schools have brought welcome new practices to public education, the jury is still out on whether charters improve educational outcomes as a whole. Just as important is the question of which charter schools work well; some perform significantly worse than public schools.

It's too bad that Obey's school-aid package doesn't include some reasonable accountability measures of its own, such as a requirement that states not lay off teachers strictly by seniority when doing so would hurt low-income and minority students, or that they begin drawing up plans for thoughtful teacher evaluations. But above all, let's keep teachers.