<p>“A WASTE OF MONEY | Report says staffers skirted rules to buy 30 coffeemakers, changed athletes’ grades, falsified addresses.” Parents: Have we lost control of our schools?</p>
<p>[Chicago</a> Public Schools’ cappuccino bill: $67,000 :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Education](<a href=“http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1365268,CST-NWS-inspect07.article]Chicago”>http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1365268,CST-NWS-inspect07.article)</p>
<p>Yes, and quite some time ago, from the looks of things in my district.</p>
<p>I wish parents had LESS control in mine. =/ They’ve made things so bad, complaining every moment they get. We almost had to get rid of our Gay-Straight Allience because the PTA freaked out.</p>
<p>
OK, so their Vocational Ed department wants to train baristas for Starbucks. You’d think they’d have higher aspirations for their students. I imagine there are a few who this is all they will manage, but you need to have this set up all over the district?</p>
<p>And probably unnecessary, as most coffee houses will train their own.</p>
<p>I’m sure their Senator is going to fix the problem…</p>
<p>Maybe that guy that got elected President from there will help 'em out too…</p>
<p>I’m still puzzled that this “bright light of hope” is coming from one of the most politically corrupt communities in the nation? A “black” president who never mentions the influences of his white mother, white grandmother, white schools etc. Something’s odd here.</p>
<p>Toadstool,
I hope I missed some sarcasm in your remarks! Or I hope you are just a high school sophomore that knows nothing, and listens to his parents red neck remarks. Obama not mentioning his white grandmother? ARE YOU KIDDING! The guy has said over and over again that he owes his grandmother so much! He made public speeches just about his grandmother! When she died, his grandmother WAS HEADLINE NEWS! WHY!?!?! Because she was such a big part of his life.</p>
<p>Offering cappucinos to the teachers at all time of the day should be expanded to all public schools in Chicago. If the local hospital can afford a phantom Director of Community Relations for years on end, this expense should be trivial and might contribute massively to teachers actually … showing up instead of calling in substitutes for about 50% of the time.</p>
<p>A Caramel Machiatto for one hour of actual teaching sounds like a bargain in the windy city. I hope they send a few machines to Willian Ayers as well.</p>
<p>Good thing CPS CEO Arne Duncan is leaving Chicago to become Secretary of Education - them’s the kind of smarts we need in the White House.</p>
<p>The article noted that there was a grade change for the athletes’s college admission and that the grades were changed back after the transcripts were sent to the colleges.</p>
<p>I’ve read here in the CC that most (all?) colleges will require a copy of the FINAL transcipt once the senior has graduated. So, what happened then, I wonder???</p>
<p>Toadstool is absolutely spot on regarding his first point. I used to live in Chicago, and stories like this are hardly news. The problem is nobody is willing to fight the Chicago Machine, no matter how many times the press exposes its corrupt, patronage-ridden, nepotistic ways. Chicago Public Schools does not escape this dishonest tradition.</p>
<p>Is it possible that the cappuccino machines were part of a restaurant program? Many of those are income centers for the schools. If they cost $69000 to buy, did they bring in $70K in income?</p>
<p>Is not Chicago such an awesome example of superior public education for all of us? The low scores and other trimmings. That is why we will have Chicago person in charge of country education. I am looking forward! I just hope that NYC system stays independent of it all with my grandchildren still in elementary school there. Sorry, cannot pray for whole country, NYC is big enough for one person to pray.</p>
<p>
Wait, I thought we desegregated schools. Man, I’m gonna have to write Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard letters about their blatent disregard of the Brown v. Board Decision. Seriously, are you twelve?</p>
<p>Is there no issue that some will use an excuse to point how Obama is handling his race incorrectly?</p>
<p>This is why I get really ****ed off when my parents have to pay taxes for public schools when they chose to pay much more for private.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hey, don’t knock the cappuccino machines. Some schools use them in student-operated coffee shops. Rather than training the kids for Starbucks, they are teaching them how to run a business. (Having on site coffee drinks for students and staff is an added benefit!)</p>
<p>This would be part of why Illinois is so completely screwed up…</p>
<p>While they are enjoying their $70,000 in cappuccino, other schools are doing with very little. $70,000 down here could do many school districts a lot of good… like hiring at least one, almost two full-time teachers!</p>
<p>
I don’t think a Vo Tech school is trying to teach their students how to “run” a business. More likely is that they are teaching the basic skills necessary to start at the bottom rung of the hospitality industry, which is typically a line cook. We happen to have a top rate hospitality school at the local public U here in town and I’ve been in the kitchen. No capuccino machine there.</p>
<p>I guess there is a place in teaching some how to work in a coffee house in a large city. </p>
<p>If this were going to a full-service high school, I could see the “run a business” as part of the curriculum, as there are kids there who are at the level where you learn how to plan (in the case of a restaurant, it is about menu offerings, market analysis, etc.) a simple marketing effort. A small coffee booth would be a good sample for students to learn from.</p>
<p>Nice to see someone else actually discussing the story and not just turning this into another political sniping session about people who had little if anything to do with the actual purchase of coffee machines.</p>