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Inner City Public Schools Still Work : How One Principals Life is Living Proof!

Tuesday, May 28, 2019Tuesday, May 28, 2019 admin

And I have lesson plans. They're in my computer and the principal can read them anytime he wants. I believe in lesson plans. I just don't need to print them out and have them right in front of me like I'm reading from a script. To realize the significance of an unsatisfactory evaluation you need to know a little something about CPS probationary policies, so bear with me, readers. Basically, probationary teachers—that is, those with less than four years in the classroom—have no tenure rights.

They have their jobs on a year-to-year basis and can be fired without much of an explanation. Moreover, probationary teachers who are given unsatisfactory evaluations and who are not rehired at their schools are slapped with a do-not-hire designation.

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Principals can hire back teachers evaluated as unsatisfactory, but if they don't, the teachers are essentially banned from ever teaching anywhere in the CPS system. Traditionally, CPS reserved its do-not-hire designation for really bad people who do really bad things, like abusing their students. But last year, then-schools CEO Ron Huberman expanded the designation to include probationary teachers with unsatisfactory ratings whose schools decide not to rehire them.

So now do-not-hire includes people who don't put their lesson plans in the red folder. Anyway, Bates met with Williams on March 3 to talk about the evaluation. I said, 'Of course I am. My kids come in at a fourth-grade reading level. I want them to do better.

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The Wall: Romes Greatest Frontier.

Anyone would be frustrated. But that doesn't tell me about my teaching. All told, Williams fired seven teachers, roughly a quarter of the staff. In addition to Bates, four others were probationary teachers who now face lifelong bans. Two of them tell me that Williams's evaluation cited them for not putting the lesson plans in the folder. On May 16, about students walked out of Austin Polytech in a show of support for the ousted teachers.

Once he'd delivered the letter, Williams led Bates back to her classroom to get her jacket and purse. Bates, where you going? After being escorted out of the school by security, she drove to the Area 19 administrative office. No one told me what I was charged with or what incident or matter they were investigating.

How a CPS teacher went from 'excellent' to 'do-not-hire' in one year | On Politics | Chicago Reader

They punished me without telling me my crime. Eventually, a union official—who filed a grievance on her behalf—told Bates that she'd been accused of inciting the student walkout. I had nothing to do with it. For the last month of the school year, until it officially ended on June 17, Bates reported to work every day at the area administrative office, where she sat at a desk in the corner and read a book. She's now appealing her unsatisfactory evaluation in the hopes of overturning the do-not-hire designation so she can get another job in the system.

As for her students, they got a month's worth of substitute teachers.

Winter 2003

Or, as Mayor Emanuel might put it, they "got the shaft. Incidentally, Williams is no longer at Austin Polytech—he took a new job as principal at suburban Bolingbrook High School. You're writing about the school-teaching kids of teachers you wrote about years ago. In the winter of , I noticed a story in the Sun-Times pointing out that six of the ten winners in a citywide high school poetry-writing contest came from Lane Tech. Curious about why so many good poets were coming from one school—which back then was primarily known as a technical school—I made a few calls and wound up having coffee at a north side cafe with an English teacher named Randy Bates.

I came up with a plan to follow the production from auditions to cast party and write one of those endless epics the Reader used to run in those days. Alas, a few days before auditions, the principal fired Bates as drama coach and reassigned him from creative writing. Apparently the principal was upset because Bates had complained about safety hazards in the auditorium to Lane's local school council, an oversight body of parents, teachers, and community reps. A few dozen of Bates's students walked out to protest his hiring, staging a demonstration right in front of the school.

I wrote it up, hammering Lane with everything I had. Randy Bates told me that the assistant principal said to him that if "that newspaper guy" ever came to Lane, "I'll kick his ass. Fortunately, he never made good on that threat, though I went to Lane every year to watch its Thanksgiving basketball tournament. Good thing I always wore my Groucho Marx mustache.

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How a CPS teacher went from 'excellent' to 'do-not-hire' in one year | On Politics | Chicago Reader

Winter 2003

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