as i have posted diaries here over two years now, Chicago Public Schools' policies create conditions for violence and murder. Now it is worse since no one in the top 100 leadership positions in CPS has any long term experience teaching or living in the City of Chicago. In fact many of the top administrators in CPS do not even hold any Illinois credentials to be teach students. The school were the student got stabbed to death was a private contractor not a regular school operated by certified union teachers and staff.
and it continues....
Chicago School Stabbing: Chris Wormely Dead, Another Student Critically Injured _ March 1, 2012 (VIDEO)
Family of teen killed in stabbing at school: ‘We are not good’
A 17-year-old boy was fatally stabbed by a schoolmate, who also injured another student, inside a far South Side alternative high school Thursday morning.
The teenager believed to be the perpetrator, who is also 17, is in Chicago police custody following the 7:30 a.m. incident outside the AMIkids Infinity high school, 10211 S. Crandon, said Chicago Police Officer Robert Perez.
“He wanted to go back to Lawrence Hall,” she said. “He said all the kids did at that [new] school was gangbang. He actually had a new red coat that he stopped wearing and would just wear a grey hoodie in the winter because he didn’t want any conflict out there if he wore that color.”
“We have not had a previous situation of this magnitude,” said Willie Tubbs, executive director of the school, which moved into a space on the South Side that previously housed Oliver Goldsmith Elementary School about a year ago.
http://www.suntimes.com/...
2 students stabbed, 1 fatally, at Chicago school
Shuftan says the school is run by a private company that contracts with the district. It serves about 20 students with behavioral and emotional needs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Principal accused of attacking students - March 1, 2012
"He (the principal) choked me really hard, he put pressure on it and then he threw my head into the wall and my tooth, it came loose right here," Ken Elmore Jr. told the news channel.
The unidentified principal was removed on the same day that parent Kenneth Elmore told WGN-TV that his son and two other children were called into the principal’s office at Joyce Kilmer Elementary just before noon Wednesday.
His son, Ken Jr., said the principal tossed him against a wall, loosening one of his teeth, which eventually fell out during his lunch break.
The Sun-Times Media Wire reported the principal is accused of physically assaulting three students. Elmore said his son and the two other children had all been called into the principal’s office for misbehaving, the Tribune reported.
13-Year-Old Raped Going to School - February 28, 2012
Twelve-year-old Carlos Humphrey said he walks down the same street to school with his sisters every day. He’s afraid of what could happen to them.
“I tell them, ‘stay in front of me, and keep walking,’” he said. He knows walking past abandoned homes and vacant lots adds to the danger kids face in Englewood.
walking past abandoned homes and vacant lots adds to the danger kids face in Englewood.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/...
My diary from Dec 2011 showing what Chicago school children walk thru to get to school, all the while mayor 1% figures out how to give contract and public assets to his crony buddies.
Rahm's Chicago - Abandoned Buildings
http://www.dailykos.com/...
this diary will continue to be re-posted due to the importance of historical knowledge in the resistance to the tyranny of the 1%. these people have no regard for human life if it get in the way of their profit. it is now 3 years since Derrion Albert's murder and the violence continues in Chicago despite $60 million plus dollars spent on security and mayor control of the schools.
Millionaire Mayor Emanuel is attempting to force the closing and turnaround of 17 schools this year. Despite data, demographics, alternative plans, crony connections revealed and union busting tactics uncovered mayor 1% is still full steam ahead.
This is a history lesson for mayor 1% and all his carpetbaggers, but mostly it is to help remind people what turnarounds are all about.
Bloody Days in Chicago
Violence in Chicago today is not an accident nor is it a sign of the economic times, it it can be directly tied to the privatization and deregulation schemes of Mayor Richard M. Daley, Arne Duncan and Ron Huberman. The murder of Derrion Albert broadcast around the globe exposed the daily violence that youth are subjected to in Chicago. Just in the last few days on Chicago streets there were 41 people shot, with four dead in 26 hours of violence this before the summer has yet to begin. Mass school closings slated for next year that include immediate cancellation of after school sports programs and thousands of educational staff layoffs are sure to compound the destabilization of already impoverished neighborhoods and urban youth that are losing their last place of comfort and safety. The increases in violence among urban youth and gangs is not sporadic or unpredictable but rather a reaction to the policies of privatization and gentrification as witnessed in Chicago.
continued........
Bloody Days in Chicago - Déjà vu
In a new documentary, The Interrupters, airing on the PBS program Frontline this past week follows the daily of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. The cycle of violence and its causes are examined and interpreted throw the eyes of ex-gang members who are now working to stop violence in Chicago neighbor hoods. In watching the film the same struggles that public school teachers face every day in class in the most at risk schools in Chicago. One of the most interesting parts of the movie is when the organization Cease Fire is having a group meeting discussing the Derrion Albert murder.
The tragedy at Chicago's Fenger High School was not the only one resulting from the murder of a teenager during the last full week of September 2009 — only the most dramatic because the murder itself was captured on a video that the world is now watching. But more than most other gang induced murders in Chicago — and affecting the public schools — the murder of Derrion Albert is the result not only of the city's massive drug gang problem, but of the Chicago Board of Education's policies of 'New Schools' and 'School Turnaround.' By closing Calumet, Engelwood, and Carver high schools — and forcing the most challenging students from those schools into Fenger and nearby schools — Mayor Daley, Arne Duncan, and Chicago schools officials appointed by him guaranteed that Fenger would "fail." When Fenger failed, Daley's school board voted to fire all of Fenger's teachers and force a program called 'turnaround' on Fenger. The destabilization resulted in chaos in September 2009.