Subscripts

...While the foot soldiers of the almost defunct Chicago Teachers Union’s “United Progressive Caucus” continue to pay for the parties and leaflets — and do the grunt work of trying to hold that old threadbare piece of history together — the aristocracy is still doing well. Regular readers of this newspaper already know that former union president Tom Reece is collecting a “teacher” pension of more than $150,000 per year (making him the highest paid person drawing money from the pension fund). Others in the old hierarchy are doing well, too. From time to time we need to remind our readers just how well. In the past two months, Substance confirmed that former UPC leader Gail Koffman was the only “teacher” able to cash in more than 400 “sick days” at the time of her 2001 retirement. The retirement took place shortly after the UPC was ousted from the union leadership by a vote of and irate membership that totalled 57 percent (for Debbie Lynch’s PACT caucus) to 43 percent (for Reece’s “United Progressive Caucus”). After they got over the shock of ouster, the old UPCers made sure they got as much as they figured they had coming to them. We don’t know if certain freedom of information policies apply to such things, but if they do someone should ask to see a copy of that check Koffman recieved. It totals more dollars than many teachers will take home in a couples years of classroom work. Another UPC stalwart is also doing quite well. Former CTU recording secretary Pam Massarsky is currently drawing an annual Chicago pension of $76,019.28 (nearly double that the teachers she began her career with in the classroom). Still in need of funds, however, Massarsky has taken a new job. A reliable source reported that Massarsky now works for Paul Vallas, the former Chicago “CEO” who now heads the Philadelphia school system. So, today, Massarsky’s helping Vallas screw the unions there (from the side of management) just like she helped him screw the unions here (from the “labor” side). Fans will remember that Massarsky and Reece were the two leaders who “negotiated” that infamous 1998 “contract” (which officially began in 1999) with their buddies Paul (Vallas) and Gery (school board president Chico). Finally, Massarsky is officially on the Vallas team. In Chicago, she did his work from the union side of the bargaining table. We hope the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers is taking note of this addition to the local budget...

…We kept waiting for the other shoe to fall, but it didn’t. Chicago is blinded by race. All of the victims at the E-2 tragedy on February 17 were African American. Stretching south from the E-2 is the largest contiguous Black ghetto in the United States. More segregated schools in it than in any state in the old Confederacy. Segregation was part of the tragedy. Intense segregation. Promoted not only by the current government of this city, but by all the major players…

…The one was CLEAR as mud to many. Check out the details provided by one of our friends in central office, from a recent memo. The guess what is that before Paul Vallas took over the schools and “reformed” central office, this stuff was already being done, and quite effectively, by employees of the school board, instead of by million dollar outside consultants. Here is our memo of the month: “Beginning March 4, 2003, Project C.L.E.A.R. representatives (“floor canvassers”) will visit each department to identify, assess, and asset-tag all working computers in your department. Next, the Project C.L.E.A.R. technicians will visit each department/office to clean, and install TREND anti-virus software to each computer. In addition, the team will install Microsoft Systems Management Server [SMS] (for PCs) or netOctopus /Timbuktu (for Macs) network management software on all machines. These software packages will help protect the CPS environment against future security breaches; provide administrators with an informed, real-time view of the entire system; be used to push software updates; and allow technicians to provide remote support to users anywhere on the network. For additional information about the CPS policy for Network Standards, please visit http://_policy.cps.k12.il.us/_documents/604.5.pdf”...

...When you read that some lawyers doing legal work for the Chicago Board of Education are being paid between $2,000 and $3,000 per day, you know the priorities of this city are pornographic (even if our mayor is a sanctimonious babbler recently reelected in a landslide). Remember, these lawyers are working on outside contracts with the school board — an addition to the more than 75 lawyers working in the Board’s own Law Department. Our reporters’ persistence in following the money trail to some of the city’s largest law firms has begun to crack open a major story that spans the breadth of Chicago politics from the Park District across City Hall up the street to the Chicago Transit Authority and back down the street to the headquarters of the Chicago Board of Education. The extent of pinstripe patronage in city politics goes far beyond the billings of the outside lawyers who kept Substance in federal court for more than four years. We wouldn’t be surprised to find that Chicago taxpayers have spent more than $50 million (in all the various agencies and taxing bodies) on outside lawyers since the Decade of Greed really swung into high gear in the mid-1990s. No matter how you measure that patronage — in CTA routes or low-income housing, in teacher salaries or better playing fields in all Chicago parks — that’s a terrible hit. Now that the city and state are facing lower budgets, we hope that someone among our colleagues in the media takes a close look at the ties that bind City Hall, the other major city agencies, and the big (and not so big) law firms that get away with billing at the rate of $200 to $500 per hour for their “services”...