CPS Praying For State Money, Racial Tensions And A School Shooting
Gee this looks familiar – a CPS budget calling for furlough days and larger classes, tense race relations at a Chicago high school, and a school shooting. This is from the WMAQ-TV 10 p.m. newscast on Nov. 27, 1972:
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From the Museum of Classic Chicago Television, which dug up the clip:
“Floyd Kalber reports on the proposed 1973 Chicago School Budget and cuts and layoffs deemed necessary by Chicago Public Schools Superintendent James Redmond.
“Floyd then reports on the continuing Gage Park High School controversy and truce, involving race relations in general and boycotts of the school by white students. Featuring Irene Schrader, Gage Park High School PTA President (and head of the Gage Park Coalition), as well as comments by Joseph Lodato, of the Gage Park Civic Association, and the Reverend Willie Barrow of Operation Push.
“Finally, Floyd reports on a school shooting in Pontiac, Michigan, in which a 16-year-old high school student shot and seriously wounded a student during a quarrel, with the rest being hurt as innocent bystanders.”
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From the Nov. 28, 1972, Tribune:
“School Supt. James F. Redmond yesterday recommended the cutting of up to 3,22 jobs and a 17.5-day layoff in order to balance a record $838.8 million tentative budget for 1973.
“Redmond proposed the tentative budget to the School Board yesterday. The budget is for $74.7 million more than the 1972 version, but the School Board will run short of cash unless $43.7 million in services and staff is cut, Redmond said.
“Among the recommended job cuts are the trimming of 1,100 to 1,200 teachers.
“‘Nobody’s going to like this tentative budget and nobody’s going to like the final budget,’ Redmond said when he announced it at a meeting of the board’s Fiscal Policies Committee. ‘The situation remains – we are still underfinanced.’
“Redmond said the School Board already has put in a bid for more state money from the legislature, which is meeting in special session this week.
“He said he is fairly confident that more state funds will be received in 1973 to help rescue the schools.”
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On Gage Park, Nov. 26, 1972, Tribune:
(ENLARGE)
(ENLARGE)
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FYI: Soll died last month.
From Wikipedia:
“On December 7, 1975, [Tribune editor Clayton] Kirkpatrick announced in a column on the editorial page that Rick Soll, a ‘young and talented columnist’ for the paper whose work had ‘won a following among many Tribune readers over the last two years’ resigned from the paper after acknowledging that a column he wrote that appeared on November 23, 1975, contained verbatim passages that another columnist wrote in 1967 and later published in a collection. Kirkpatrick did not identify the columnist.
“The passages in question, Kirkpatrick wrote, had been in a notebook where Soll had copied words, phrases and bits of conversation that he had wished to remember. Although the paper initially suspended Soll for a month without pay, Kirkpatrick noted that further evidence then came out that another column contained information that Soll knew was false.
“At that point, Kirkpatrick wrote, Tribune editors decided to accept the resignation that Soll offered when the investigation began. Soll went on to marry Chicago newspaper (and future TV) reporter Pam Zekman.”
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More Tribune, um, coverage:
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On the Pontiac, Michigan shooting: Shootings At Pontiac Central.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on May 17, 2016