Joravsky Does it Again

Once again, a guy working for a free paper, exposes how Chicago politics really work:

• A couple weeks ago I wrote about how top administrators with the Chicago Public Schools, from CEO Ron Huberman on down, had budgeted themselves raises even as they threatened to lay off teachers, asked coaches to work for free, and cut sophomore sports to chip away at a deficit approaching nearly $1 billion.

  I also reported that the district's chief spokeswoman, Monique Bond, said Huberman hadn't received a raise but wouldn't provide any documentation to back it up.

  It's safe to say the CPS brass has read the story. Two days after it hit the streets, Bond called me. My story was wrong, she said—the district's top people didn't get raises.

  OK, I said—if the salaries of the top brass went up, what's that called if not a raise?

  She said she would be happy to explain—if I'd come to the central office at 125 S. Clark to talk about it in the presence of CPS budget officials.

What follows is one of the best pieces of play-by-play journalism we've read in years. It shows the spin efforts by insiders, the lies, the sleight-of-hand and legal mumbo-jumbo used by Shortshanks and his people to justify so called "cuts in spending" by asking teachers, coaches and low level administrators to sacrifice while middle managers and insiders reap six-figure salaries while the schools go bankrupt.

Joravsky is at the top of his game, and along with Warmbir and Novak, seems to be one of the few willing to actually rattle the Machine and it's corrupt practices.