On February 22, 2006, the Chicago Board of Education, as usual without discussion or debate, voted to pay UNO (United Neighborhood Organizations) another $11.6 million to operate an expanding number of charter schools across Chicago. Also approved that same day were motions to pay Perspectives Charter School $1.5 million and the L.E.A.R.N. Charter School $2.2 million.

On February 22, public attention was focused on the controversial closing of five more public schools — four outright and one through “reconstitution” — as part of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s unprecedented attack on public education in the third largest city in the USA.

Even if some of our colleagues in Chicago’s media had wanted to write about the illegal expansion of Chicago’s charter schools (the city is supposed to have no more than 30 charter schools and now has nearly 50, depending upon how one counts them), they would have been barred from the discussion in two ways. One, their editors all know that charter schools are good and public schools are bad. Two, the information about the cost of Chicago’s charter schools is covered up by the Board of Education in all of its financial and public reports.

Elsewhere we’ve discussed, at some length, how news is managed in Chicago to promote a mythological version of history that says that the public schools were “saved” by Mayor Daley’s courageous agreement to take them over in 1995. That mythology will continue to be challenged in these pages in the years to come until the truth finally becomes what our friends in academe call the “dominent narrative.”

In the next two months, more public attention should be focused on the secretive and unaccountable world of Chicago’s publicly funded but privately managed networks of charter schools. Hereare a few things we’ve learned so far:

1) The Chicago Board of Education refuses to even outline the cost of its charter schools in its annual budget documents. Last year, charter schools were left out of both the Proposed Budget and the Final Budget. “Charter School” was not even in the “Glossary” of the “award winning, “ 1,100-page budget document.. A mention of charters finally surfaced in the annual audit of the Board’s financial books (called the “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report”) in January, when the report was distributed to members of the Board — but denied to members of the press at the time. [Substance finally had to go to the Board’s financial offices for a copy, which was readily supplied]. Curiously, the only mention of charter schools in the annual report comes in a footnote and is part of the report that the auditors specifically say they are not verifying.

2) Charter schools are the only public schools in Illinois which are permitted to refuse to make their payroll data public. Requests by Substance for the “Position Files” for Chicago charter schools have been denied, with the Board of Education insisting that each charter school has to be asked individually under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for a list of its employees. To date, none of Chicago’s charter schools have provided this information, which formed the basis for the report in the April Substance on executive salaries at CPS. Chicago’s public school employees are all publicly known, by work location, job title, and annual salary. Chicago’s charter schools are protected from this public disclosure, despite the more than $100 million being spent on them in Chicago this school year.

3) Public schools get criticism and audits, charter schools get propaganda and plaudits. For more than three decades, Substance has regularly criticized corruption in public education in Chicago. At the same time, as fierce supporters of public education we’ve praised good things. Never before have we seen anything like the deregulation and privatization lies that allow the current version of reality to go unchallenged. Chicago’s public schools and public servants working in them are subject to often withering slanders. The city’s charter schools ride on a magic carpet of media propaganda, self prmotion, and uncritical adulation. Nonsense it is.