• Sun-Times Media
  • Blaine Elementary principal Troy LaRaviere

The case against the reelection of Rahm Emanuel next spring is more than one issue long, but the one that’s stirred up all the passion is education. The hostility of educators who oppose him seems anchored by the belief that he regards them with contempt, and public education as a beast to be subdued. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, more than held her own against Emanuel in the 2012 teachers’ strike, and she’s the obvious candidate of enemies who believe education is Emanuel’s Achilles’ heel. But Lewis drips with electoral negatives, and besides, she’s said she doesn’t want to make the race.

For example, Amara Enyia, who’s executive director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, launched her campaign for mayor June 2 in Bridgeport, and LaRaviere not only was there but introduced her. She and LaRaviere know each other from the University of Illinois, where she studied law and education policy, he studied education administration, and both were involved in a poetry slam. He told me he accepted Enyia’s invitation to speak as a chance to make some points about education in Chicago, but then he discovered she was already making them. So his introduction said so, and if he didn’t endorse her platform then and there it was because she hasn’t formally issued one.

What makes LaRaviere so interesting to listen to is that he defends those hoops. He compares education to the judicial system. “The state invests in defense attorneys,” he said. “The state invests in prosecutors.” And it invests in judges and courtrooms. “So the system can work. If you’re taking someone’s freedom away you have to respect that process. Imagine a prosecutor saying it’s impossible to convict someone of a crime! It’s not impossible. [But] it’s a process. I think if you’re going to take someone’s job away—and there are so many unscrupulous principals who want to take someone’s job away for reasons other than ability—there has to be a process.”

“I actually see reform getting rid of good teachers,” LaRaviere insisted. “Reform is attacking the profession of teaching and making good teachers feel continually attacked and belittled and underappreciated.”