From Fox 32



Chicago Public Schools wrap up classes this week, and that means some of the schools will only be open for a few more days before they are closed as part of the CPS 5-year reorganization plan. It's a plan that continues to rile parents and teachers, who rolled out a new tactic in their protest Tuesday night. The protest highlighted budget cuts that parents and teachers claim will pits the need for things like toilet paper against staffing. "Imagine coming up to the front of your classroom to ask your teacher for toilet paper... No!" says Nettlehorst Elementary teacher Michelle Gunderson. A parent with children at Lafayette Elementary says that school, for example, is facing a half-million dollar funding reduction that puts the cost of cleaning supplies into the principal's budget -- the same one that pays for teachers. "So we got socked," says CPS parent Jennie Biggs. "Losing money and now we also, my principal also has to pick up supplies, so there's a real chance he's going to have to pick between teachers and toilet paper." While protesters marched outside, CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett talked with the head of the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board at a $20-a-head event.

The Twitter hashtag, #CPSWipes went viral shortly after the event.

Here are some tweets from last night. Click here to read them all.



CPS Teacher Ray Salazar was at the Chicago Tribune event and was not impressed with the softball questions lobbed at Byrd-Bennett.



"We should," [CPS CEO Barbar Byrd-Bennett] ended, "be able to move the performance of [schools closed and combined with existing schools]" We should. Why didn't she use the future tense, we will, there? Dold should have asked her why not? Perhaps this is why Byrd-Bennett is determined. She's created a plan for her leadership that will succeed no matter what. "We should be able to" she says, but if they aren't, the wording will still tell a story of success. Dold ended by saying that people want her to succeed. People should want her to. As a former teacher, she should be able succeed in this leadership role. She should be able to make decisions that are undeniably good for students. She should. But she hasn't. She should, instead, recognize that closing schools is disrupting families. She should recognize that transplanting or transitioning children from school to school carries the same risks. She should recognize that per-pupil funding sounds like autonomy but is creating more limits for schools. She should recognize we know Chicago politics, too. Her humble origins story, she should recognize, has gotten old. And, she should recognize, if her plan fails, then so will schools, and communities, and kids. Only then might she be able to accept, much too late of course, that she should have listened to what the people most affected by her decisions had to say.

Video produced by Last Stand for Children First on the TP debacle.



Two high school students point out the current conditions of their school's bathrooms.