Looks Like Karen Lewis May Have Defeated Rahm After All

As I watched jubilant teachers, wearing union red, from the Acero charter school network celebrate the new contract they’d won after a four-day strike, I had a flashback to the way things used to be.

Wait, wait, as long as I’m reminiscing about changes from the bad old days, remember how recently elected Mayor Rahm, marching into town like Napoleon, took Karen Lewis out for dinner and told her how it’s gonna be with the schools?

 When Sposato protested, Rahm got zoning committee chair Alderman Danny Solis to rough up the rookie alderman.  “It’s almost an embarrassment that an alderman would say no to children and to good education in this city,” Solis declared.

 Rahm’s appointees at the board of education recently voted not to approve three new charters, as they try to struggle to figure out how to fund the schools they already have.

 For one thing, Rahm’s damage has already been done. Eight years of closing schools and subsidizing development in gentrifying neighborhoods has forced poor and working-class people out of Chicago. 

 So far, Amara Enyia is the only mayoral candidate who says she unequivocally opposes the Lincoln Yards TIF handout.