Thread by @kylehillman

Why mislead the public @chicagosmayor ? Especially when there are receipts. #Twill #Thread @CTULocal1 #CTU

See, the number they are using to mislead parents is wrong - blatantly wrong. It comes from a grant request. To come to that number the agency took every student and social worker in schools. Except there is one huge problem with that strategy...

Some states don’t even have school social workers. Take Nevada - it isn’t even a licensed profession. That isn’t a national school average - that’s just lazy statistics.

Now it is one thing if you didn’t know this - but CPS literally asked me. As a follow up to a call which seemed to be an attempt to discredit the association’s recommend standard Sendhil Revuluri, Vice President of CBOE specifically asked me about this grant number.

I told her what I felt was wrong with it and then gave her actual numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (located within the US Dept. of Ed.) nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/t…

In it you can see Public schools in a city with at least one social worker have a ratio of 1:650 not even remotely what the mayor is pushing out in that propaganda piece.

This is all about trust. The @ChicagosMayor wants parents to trust her while she deliberately attempts to mislead them. This is why @CTULocal1 needs to fight.

But that isn’t all that is wrong with that report - here is a breakdown just on the social work staffing sections:

1.) “However, social workers, nurses, counselors, and other similar positions are hard to hire.” = FALSE

Illinois is graduating 2k Swkers a year. It takes 1 year to graduate an MSW with advanced standing - 2 without. If you put commitments in writing they will choose the school specialty. You are only adding 200 over 5 years. That can be done easily,

2.) “Second, setting strict limits in the contract for the number of support professionals the district must keep on staff limits our schools’ ability to best support their student population” = False

That is only true if you fundamentally believe these baselines aren’t needed. What school in Chicago doesn’t need a nurse, a social worker and a librarian? Or better question - why are you arguing some kids shouldn’t get medical care?

2b.) “Schools in higher need neighborhoods may need multiple social workers and other support staff while other schools may need less.” = False.

There is no school in Chicago that needs less than a part-time social worker they have now. None. And if you need more than one - do that.

3.)Third, opening hundreds of new nursing, social worker, librarian, and other positions all over the city in a short time period ...could have negative unintended consequences. “ = What in the actual heck? I mean I guess?

You can’t build equitable schools in this city if you aren’t willing to invest quickly in tearing down what has been a racist and inequitable system. Kids trapped in deliberately underfunded schools should not have to wait because you are afraid of unintended consequences.

What you are doing instead is acknowledging disparities, doing nothing and therefore creating intended consequences. Consequences that will result in students not getting the necessary health care they should get because of inaction.

This whole thing is morally repulsive. Do better.

* Correction: 1:680 (same premise.)