Around Valentine's Day, parents and teachers from Guggenheim elementary school approached the Mayor's assistant Press Secretary, Lance Lewis at City Hall and demanded a meeting with Daley within seven days. No meeting was scheduled.

On Monday, February 22, 2010, we returned to City Hall after school, this time with nearly 300 parents, teachers and students from McCorkle, Bradwell, Phillips and Marshall for the Council hearing on a moratorium on school closings. School members were not allowed to speak because they were too late. (Shame on us for teaching and learning all day!) Representatives of Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) and CORE VP candidate Jesse Sharkey went early and did testify. Here are excerpts from Jesse's remarks:

"Turnarounds are mostly taking place in the African American community, 'displacing' veteran black educators and replacing them mainly with white novices. Today, Chicago has 2,000 fewer African American teachers than we did in 2002. Turnarounds deprive students of role models who look like them and share their background. This cannot stand. The EEOC has upheld a discrimination complaint filed by CORE and it is moving forward. This battle isn't over.

"There is a historical parallel between today's turnarounds and the reconstitutions of the late 1990's in Chicago and San Francisco. Reconstitutions recruited the best teachers for targeted schools—as well as curricular and other supports. And in both cities the effort was abandoned because those schools wound up with most of the same difficulties they faced before. In fact, one of this year's turnaround targets, Marshall, was reconstituted in 1997!

"The turnaround process is like a fad diet—we're trying it because we're desperate for results. But like any diet that hurts our health, we'd be better off consulting our doctor and using a little common sense. In this case, take the advice of educators and school communities, not venture capitalists with a product to sell. Do not fire your most dedicated, veteran teachers who work at your toughest schools. Stop turnarounds."

After Jesse's testimony, we took it upstairs again to the 5th Floor -- Mayor Daley's office -- to demand that Mr. Lewis honor his promise of a meeting with the Mayor. This time we had hundreds in our ranks yet Lewis claimed that he did not remember making such a promise. Although Lewis made an effort to connect us to the right people in the Mayor's Office, no meeting had been scheduled as the Board of Education was poised to decide the fate of ten schools on February 24 -- the very schools denied a meeting with the Mayor.

So we made the third trip on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 while the Board was sequestered to make their final Hit List decisions. Twenty five members of the Bradwell, Marshal and JN Thorp school communities, with allies from CORE and GEM, stormed the Mayor's office. We were told that the Mayor defers to his appointed experts at the Board of Education. CORE Co-chair Jackson Potter responded that, as a teacher, when he receives permission to go on a field trip from his principal and someone gets hurt, then the school leader is held accountable. In this case, we hold the Mayor accountable and demand an explanation from the Mayor to representatives from the fourteen school communities originally slated for turnaround, phase out, consolidation and closure.

Stay tuned. The Board's vote is in but this isn't over.