More of those moments when logic seems (at first) to fly out the window

The cop who sent a text message to a 12-year-old asking her to send him “sexy” pictures of herself who will not face any additional discipline?

Or the mother who claims she got fired from her job at a grocery store because she chose to stay at home with her son on one of the days when Arctic-like weather caused the schools to be closed?

THOSE WERE A pair of stories that turned up in the news coverage on Wednesday; both of which are meant to arouse the reaction of us shaking our fists in anger and shouting out some epithet about damned fools who just can’t appreciate logic.

Although I’m sure there is a letter-of-the-law interpretation by which both actions are completely justifiable.

Personally, I’m more offended by the predicament facing Woodstock police Sergeant Chip Amati, who did get a 30-day suspension without pay after it was learned he sent the text message seeking salacious photographs.

The girl was the daughter of the woman Amati was dating at the time, and she was the one who objected to his conduct when she learned of it.

WOODSTOCK MUNICIPAL OFFICIALS penalized Amati back in October, particularly after it was learned that the sergeant also had used police computer databases to learn more about his girlfriend – even though police policies specifically prevented officers from using the databases for personal use.

The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday that village officials determined no additional punishment is possible because Amati cannot be disciplined more than once for the same offense.

So those people who want to view Amati as some sort of miscreant for his behavior toward the 12-year-old are going to have to accept the fact that nothing more will happen.

Even though the newspaper noted that he never really lost a month’s worth of pay – because the Police Department in Woodstock is choosing to split the time up into increments; thereby reducing its impact on his personal and professional life.

AARGH!!!!!!!

Some people are having that same reaction this week about Rhiannon Broschat, a 25-year-old from the Logan Square neighborhood who used to work at a Whole Foods grocery store in the Lake View neighborhood.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday that about 40 people picketed the company’s regional headquarters in the River North neighborhood on Broschat’s behalf.

She says that when the Chicago Public Schools were closed on Jan. 28 because of the wintry weather, she was unable to find someone who could stay with her “special needs” son. So, she says she called the store to tell them she could not show up at work – even though she had a shift scheduled for that day.

WHOLE FOODS OFFICIALS won’t comment on the incident, but Broschat says her store called her the next day, telling them she had abused the company’s attendance policy.

On the surface, it easily becomes a case of a callous company punishing a person for not putting corporate needs ahead of their personal ones. Although my gut reaction is to wonder how many other times had she been forced to call in absent because of personal needs.

I can comprehend how the job needs to get done, and that the company might want to find someone else who is capable of doing it. Yet I don’t know that this is the exact circumstance that led to this woman’s current “unemployed” status.

Who’s to say how this particular case turns out.

ULTIMATELY, IT COMES down to perspective, as Broschat herself told the Sun-Times she’s convinced she made the “right decision” when she chose to stay home with her son.

I’m sure that with all the cold weather and number of days the local schools have been closed in recent months, there are a slew of parents who suddenly found themselves in the same jam that Broschat made and will be totally sympathetic to her choice.

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Did CPS drive students away from school? What can keep them in class?

When the Chicago Public Schools closed several of its inner-city facilities as part of a measure to control costs, much was made of the complaints from some parents that they didn’t want their children to attend the schools that had been picked for them as alternatives.

In many cases, it seems that the walk to the new school would cause kids to have to enter, or pass through, neighborhoods that were not deemed safe.

IN SOME CASES, street gang alliances were not being taken into account, and parents feared their children might get caught up in the middle of that layer of nonsense that afflicts our city’s neighborhoods.

So it was with some interest that I read the Chicago Tribune report published Tuesday that said almost half of the kids who had their old school closed were not transferring to the schools that CPS officials intended for them to go to.

Which means the roughly $233 million in renovations and other improvements that were meant to help the “new” schools accommodate the extra student load may not have been spent in the most practical of manners.

The Tribune has reporters who found parents who decided that rather than have their kids go to school at the place the Chicago Public Schools thought was practical, they were making arrangements to send their kids elsewhere.

EVEN THOUGH IN many cases, it means an even longer commute and more of a hassle for the parents – all because they REALLY, REALLY don’t want their kids in school environments where they fear the urban violence factor will overcome any learning benefits their kids might get.

The Tribune found the Metcalfe Elementary School near the Pullman neighborhood that has 77 new students due to the school closings of earlier this year – even though that school wasn’t supposed to get newcomers, has limited access that creates problems for students with disabilities, and a lack of funds to fix the problem.

All in all, it sounds like a mess – school closings that weren’t thought out thoroughly enough.

Now I’m not about to start ranting (again) about the flaws in the school closings. To briefly summarize my past stance, it was that while I realize the fact that many of the closed schools were aging facilities that needed replacement, the whole issue put many parents in a position where they were forced to fight to keep flawed schools open!

BECAUSE SCHOOL OFFICIALS didn’t quite think the issue through to the end.

It seems that the parental concerns about the places where Chicago Public Schools officials wanted to shift students are more intense than the potential for financial savings that were incurred by the closings.

I’m wondering when the novelty of a longer school commute wears off and it becomes just a hassle, how many kids are going to wind up finding “excuses” to miss more and more school.

A mind may be a terrible thing to waste – or so goes the old United Negro College Fund tag-line. But some people may be put in positions where they will feel it is just beyond their means to fulfill a quality education.

WHICH IS A terrible way to view the situation. But it is something that some people are likely to do.

In fact, I’m wondering if some students wind up being lost along the way. They’ll just decide that transferring anywhere is a hassle.

I’d like to think this is a situation that can be resolved by some serious thought and a willingness of public officials to view the issue more from the perspective of what is good for the children and less of what benefits the interests of the public officials.

Because the cost of continuing to mismanage this situation is way too high on our society for us to be able to afford it in future years!

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And on this corner, we see a couple of crackheads selling drugs to your kids…

How many people would think to use the 45^th anniversary of the date of the shooting death of Martin Luther King, Jr., to take a bus tour of some fairly decrepit neighborhoods in Chicago to point out all the things that are wrong?

EMANUEL: Is he really all-powerful?

That actually was the tactic of the Chicago Teachers Union, which on Thursday put together a bus tour meant to take unsuspecting people to the neighborhoods that will be impacted by the Chicago Public Schools plan to close some 60 facilities.

AS THOUGH IF people see for themselves the street gang-infested neighborhoods that some children would now have to walk through or attend schools in due to the closures, officials will suddenly feel sympathy.

Somehow, I doubt it worked. Largely because the Chicago schools officials already are putting on their “game” face that they’ve acted, and they’re not in a reconsideration mood.

That’s how I take schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s comments earlier this week about how she’s insulted that people are describing the schools closure plan as “racist” because so many of the schools that will be closed down are in African-American neighborhoods.

Somehow, I don’t think taking people on a bus tour of black-oriented neighborhoods will sway that many people, because too many Chicagoans already are oriented to ignoring such neighborhoods.

PERHAPS THEY MIGHT think, “It’s not my neighborhood,” so they don’t concern themselves with it. One only has to look at recent activity along Michigan Avenue involving robberies to realize that there are no barricades between neighborhoods, and we really are tied together as one city.

One’s problems ought to be considered as all of our problems.

Now I have stated before that I think the real tragedy concerning the fight about closing schools is that it puts people living in substandard neighborhoods into fighting to maintain schools that are substandard themselves.

We ought to be thinking about how to improve the opportunities for those people – rather than encouraging this particular fight that has the ability to make everybody look seriously stupid.

OR ARROGANT, WHICH is how the Emanuels are now coming across in this particular political fight.

Take Mayor Rahm’s brother, Ezekiel, the one who is getting attention these days for the book he recently wrote about the lives of himself, Rahm and third brother Ari. He also is the guy who went on the Huffington Post to “advise” the Chicago Teachers Union to, “give in now. Give in now. Rahm will win. He always does win.”

He also elaborated that the unions, by putting up any fight to Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools (who are merely following Rahm’s dictates on this issue) are merely “banging their heads against the wall.”

That’s tough talk! It seems that Rahm Emanuel (if his brother’s talk is at all true) thinks he’s already as mighty and powerful a municipal executive as anyone named Daley!

AS ONE WHO remembers the mayoral terms of people like Eugene Sawyer, Mike Bilandic and Jane Byrne, I’m well aware that it isn’t the position itself that gives people the power to treat Chicago like their personal fiefdom. Particularly in the case of Byrne, this city has a way of snapping back at people who try to push too hard!

It makes me wonder if the final outcome of all of this is going to be the bloody political showdown that will make the racially-tinged hostility of “Council Wars” seem like a political tea party!

All I know for sure is that we have a teachers union that is angry enough to charter a bus to drive around some neighborhoods that many of us try to pretend do not exist. That is, if we have ever even bothered to set foot in those neighborhoods (which may be the real problem).

It could end in a hard-fought victory for the mayor, if certain circumstances work in his favor.

THEN AGAIN, IT could also turn out to be a case where Emanuel (as in the mayor) gets hung out to dry.

Could this someday become the sight of a bloody mess? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

Because that kind of arrogance (“He always does win!”) is usually the type of attitude that causes people to desire the equivalent of a severed head put on a pike just in front of the Picasso statue!

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