In Chicago, Students Rise Up Against Corporate Assault on Public Education

Student after student on Wednesday took to the podium at a public board meeting of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to deliver a unified message against efforts by Mayor Rahm Emanuel which they say are systematically dismantling the public education in the city.

“Our voice has been silenced by this unjust board. And it is now our duty to reject and overthrow this government. The duty of a government is to serve the interests of people not corporations. This board has failed.” –Ross Floyd, student

Their immediate demand: Listen to us. Their rallying cry: ‘Whose Schools? Our Schools!‘ And their revolutionary threat: Abandon the corporate-fueled model of education reform in Chicago or face a student-led and community-powered revolt.

Led by twenty members of Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools, a student-led educational activism organization, each speaker offered prepared remarks that covered the gamut of student and community concerns regarding the policies set forth by the CPS board and Mayor Emanuel in recent years, including the impact of school closings, teacher layoffs, privatization, and the rise of for-profit charter schools.

But the students at the board meeting focused on the impact the cuts, closures and other policies were having on them and their fellow classmates.

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As Asean Johnson, a nine-year-old from Marcus Garvey Elementary, so eloquently and powerfully stated to the board, “You are slashing our education. You are pulling it down. You are taking our education and our potential away.”

“You are saying this is all about the kids,” Johnson continued, “But I’m a student myself and I’m pleading and begging that you help these parents who are low-income. Give them what the need. Give them these schools.”

He blasted the board for giving he and other students only two minutes to speak while letting “corporate businesses” have more than an hour at similar hearings. “Let the community talk,” Johnson demanded with a stern voice though he barely reached the podium microphone. “Let the students talk! Let the parents talk! Let the teachers talk!”

“Let them control this board, don’t let the banks control this board,” he said as the room erupted with applause. “You need to go tell the mayor to just quit his job.”

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“Students are speaking out because our voices are not being heard,” says Jamie Leann Adams, a rising sophomore at Roosevelt High School, who was among those who addressed the board. “We’re the experts on Chicago Public Schools, and we know best how closings will affect us. The Board of Education says they want to put students first. To do that, they need to listen to us.”

In one pointed statement, Ross Floyd, a CSOSOS organizer and student at Jones College Prep, went even further as he read from a ‘Declaration of Education’ that ultimately called for the “overthrow” of the powerful, but unelected, board of education.